As CavanKerry's managing editor, Starr Troup, notes in her very sweet blog post, Same Old Story is shortly due for release, maybe even next week. I feel calm, almost bemused, almost detached, and I hope this is a good thing because I would really like to avoid another bout of postpartum melancholy. Perhaps part of that detachment arises from the knowledge that 90 percent of my poet acquaintances have flown to Seattle for AWP. But even though I have never seen Seattle and have old friends there whom I'd like to visit, I am not at all sorry to be missing the conference. I seem to have an allergy to throngs of smiling, anxious, bustling networkers. At last year's AWP in Boston all I wanted to do was huddle behind the CavanKerry table with Teresa and count the minutes till we could leave.
Still, there's always something about not going to the party--even if it's a party I don't want to go to--that reinforces my awareness of isolation. Introverts always find a way to be unhappy. For instance, this afternoon, when I show up at the Waterville Opera House for the Poetry Out Loud state finals, everyone will be acting as if this is the place to be, and then suddenly I will be back in huddle-behind-the-table mode: "Oh my God there must be some mistake I think I will just slip into a bathroom stall and read a book until this is all over."
It's a good thing I have spent a lot of time training myself to be civilized because there's a funny thing about introverts, something I've noticed in my son and even in my husband, who is by far the most extreme introvert in the family: once we override our self-defeating reactions, we turn out to enjoy the company of other people. We even thrive on performing in public, and when it's all over we are pleased and excited and proud of our bravery. "Everything will be easier next time," we think. But it never is.
3 comments:
I have noticed that there are 2 kinds of introverts. The most well-known is the stay-at-home, avoid contact, shy sort and then the kind who are actually very social until they are on people/crowd/too much going on overload. This latter type needs alone time, down time. I call it "vegetable" time. When I first was thinking about singing at Open Mic, I told my 5th graders. One young lady said, "Oh, do it Miss H. and then you'll be brave enough to do other things!"
What can we do tonight but stand again at the dining room window and recall how once upon a morning time our eyes feasted in darkness on that deep space, now invisible, but still rooted somewhere below, above, and beyond our experience of a waning crescent moon and the luminous intensity of our primordial planet of beauty and love?
O, yes, we can read and reread the appreciative words of a caring editor like Starr Troupe, who writes in praise of Dawn Potter's Same Old Story: “The magic of her words tugs at my deep love of mystical places.”
Ruth: that's definitely true about down time. Even when Paul was an infant, we could tell he routinely needed time alone. James, on the other hand, was chatter chatter go go go. While I wouldn't exactly call him an extrovert, he was certainly a tiring toddler project for his parents.
Post a Comment