Wednesday, July 31, 2013

The obligations are beginning to pile up: lots of editing, a few workshops and readings on the horizon, my continuing slog into The Conversation. Today I hope to finish a chunk of editing as well as a chunk of my Donne chapter. But I also have band practice and soccer-match driving, a thicket of raspberries to wade through, lawn mowing, bread baking, and so on and so on and so on. You must be tired of rereading this repetitive list.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have nothing to do. But I cannot sit in my chair and write all day. Then I would get fat and ill. True, yanking a bad push mower over five acres of grass counteracts the fatness and the illness, but it wastes so much time. I could be writing.

Ay yi yi: the circular comedies of the underemployed anxious poet.

Meanwhile, Donne glowers from the cover of his biography. "Quit this fretfull Complaint," he remarks. Woolf snorts and lights another cigarette, while Homer ambles down the beach and vanishes among the rocks.

3 comments:

Carlene said...

I hate to show my ignorance, but is that a legitimate quote from Donne? If so, I need a HUGE poster of that for my classroom. =)

Hope all is well...and the dailiness of your chores and so on is not tedious at all for this reader; it's simplicity and sheer home-liness (is that a word?) are comforting, as are most routines we embrace, whether for our soul's enjoyment, for our heart's ease, or for our bodily sustenance.

Carlene said...

and make that "its" not "it's"....fingers betrayed me.
mea culpa

Dawn Potter said...

No, I made up the quotation. It's all lies lies lies.

Yes, all is well, and thanks for caring. I'm just not writing. And that stinks.