Yesterday's puddles have have tightened into ice. Walkways are glossy under the streetlights, and coaxing the recycling bin to the curb will be an adventure.
This afternoon Jeannie and Teresa and I will have our monthly Poetry Lab conversation, and I've been working on a set of poems to get ready, reading the books we've decided to discuss, jotting down various small thoughts to share. So I hope the sun comes out this morning and thaws the ice so I can get outside for a walk beforehand. My body is tired of winter.
I've plucked Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd off the shelf but haven't yet opened it. The poems of Garcia Lorca are rattling around in my skull. I want to be a real artist but I'm not sure I'll ever get there. I'm feeling cramped in myself. I'm not enough.
This is where the chores come in handy. Chop wood, haul water, as they say . . . that bossy, self-confident they, the booming pronouncements of the Eternal Dad.
It's Friday, it's second-guess-myself day, it's what-the-hell-do-I-think-I'm-up-to day, and that always irritates the Eternal Dad. Find something to do or I'll find it for you, he warns. And eventually: Do you want me to give you something to cry about?
1 comment:
Both of those final quoted "parentisms" are things I heard and heard and heard-- they sent a visceral shudder through me. Though they are in the voice of my mother...
And yes, I, too, feel a smothering, a stasis, almost like a box around my head. It's winter, it's the chaos, it's the sense of futility. Thanks for sharing what's in your head and heart-- lots of us, I suspect, feel the same.
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