This has been a hard week at work. We went through a round of layoffs, and many close colleagues are no longer by our side. Two of my teammates were let go, as well as a partner who felt like a teammate though he was on another team. Their absence feels like walking down an empty, echoing hallway. I won’t name anyone out of respect for their privacy. I want to acknowledge my deep gratitude to them and appreciation for them. They are esteemed colleagues and dear friends. I want to take this space to give my thanks to them for all they’ve helped us build. Our work going forward will be built on foundations they helped lay.
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We put the top down and drive 55 on Lee Highway to Roanoke. White flowering trees decorate the ribbon of road in cones of cottony blooms. Forsythia erupt in saffron tangles.
Halfway to Salem, where the road is fringed more with forest than farms, the white blossoms fade away. They are replaced with the fuscia-nubbed stems of redbuds. I first see one or two peeps of pink blossoms amongst the naked brown trees of the wood. Then dozens. Scores. I see swaths of hot pink.
We’re out of the woods and back into farmland. Here’s a weeping willow with tender new leaves — the first spring green. Chartreuse strands sweep the ground, like a gnarled crone in a fairy tale, hunched over a pond. So many trees are leafing out as we come down the mountain! Here’s a magenta tulip magnolia opening its apple sized blossoms. Here’s a hedge of golden forsythia, taller than me, wide as a Volkswagen, and spraying strands of gold like firework trails along the full length of the property line. Here are tidy gold mounds of the same shrub, trimmed into bright globes at the entrance to a school.
Now the pale pink of cherry blossoms, presented on delicate airy branches, lifted to the sky, like gifts in the palm of the tree’s hand.
I sneeze from the pollen. Wisps of hair at my ears and neck — the strands that have come loose from my hat — whip in the wind. My husband taps his fingers on the gear shift in time with the music.
We bought a convertible Mazda Miata a couple of years ago, and it is an endless source of joy.
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Somewhere, someone — an author, or maybe a songwriter — challenged his readers or his students (or maybe himself?) to write a 6-line rhyming poem every day. I liked the sound of this challenge. This is very different from the kind of writing I normally do. Mostly I brain dump the thoughts in my head into notebooks, I type all day at work, I message friends and coworkers, I blog. I do not rhyme, I do not (knowingly) pay attention to rhythm, I do not write verse.
Recently, our son has gotten me interested in poetry. He’s double majoring in Computer Science and English in college. Whenever I talk to him, I want to know how his English classes are going, who he’s reading, what he likes, who I should read, too. He loves T.S. Eliot, especially “The Waste Land,” so I bought a small volume of Eliot poems that I pick up every few days to read and re-read, to try to understand what’s happening. I usually do not understand.
I do understand Mary Oliver’s poetry. It is simple. It is beautiful. It blows my mind. When I read it, I shake my head in wonder. How does she do this? How does she distill the essence of life into these elegant, uncomplicated verses? Into this one line? If you have not read Mary Oliver, and you like beauty and have an interest in the evocative power of words, I recommend her. “The Summer Day” ends with a line you might recognize. “Invitation” is one of my favorites. As a morning-lover, I love her Thousand Mornings collection.
At our local bookstore, when I asked the shopkeeper if they had a writing section, and she smiled apologetically and said, “Well, yes, but there’s not usually much there,” I may have gasped and made a small clap with my hands when I saw Mary Oliver’s name on the shelf. There sat a used copy of The Poetry Handbook. I did not know this book, but I did not need to. The combination of “Mary Oliver” and “writing section” was enough for me. I bought it and stuck my nose in it even as I pushed the door open with my shoulder (because my hands held the book) and walked down the sidewalk.
From this book I’ve learned about sound, meter, rhyming patterns, and diction (word choice). Each morning for a week, I read from this book, read the example poems, then picked up Eliot again. I couldn’t get his rhythm, so I looked on Spotify if I could find anyone reading his poems. And what do you know – I found Eliot himself reading his poems. I listened to him read “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and “Portrait of a Lady,” and now when I read the poems, I hear his lovely voice, and the soothing rhythm.
At the end of the week, after I’d finished The Poetry Handbook, my husband and I went to see the saxophonist Sarah Hanahan, and as we listened, I thought, Music and poetry are the same! They are math and they are language — they are sound, meter, pattern, and diction — and my god humans are creative and amazing and beautiful!
To add some novelty to my own writing practice, and to break me out of creative ruts, I’ve been writing 6-line rhyming poems every day for the past week or so. They’re terrible, truly. But I do have a couple of fun ones that make me laugh.
Fuck it
At some point
I’ll smoke a joint
And quit worrying about creating.Soon
There will come a date
I’ll say fuck it, and I’ll create.
KittyRattly purr
Shedding fur
You look up to my face.
Rest on my belly
You’re kind of smelly
Yet you wriggle into my heart space. -
I need a desk. Not my work desk in the basement, but a writing desk with an above ground view. I’m sitting in my chair by the front window, as I do every morning after I eat breakfast. I’ve got a wooden lap board on my knees and a fat cat laying on my left arm while I try to type.
Spread all around me are books and notebooks. On the pouf at my feet are two hardcover size A5 journals — one black and ruled, one teal and dotted — and my larger softcover size B4 composition journal. Why so many? I do not know. I like notebooks. Especially these Leuchtturms that are such a pleasure to write in with fountain pens. I wish I had even smaller ones to carry in my pocket or my purse.
On the side table next to me are my water bottle, my daughter-made pink coffee mug, my all-purpose spectacles (while I wear wear my granny computer glasses), and multiple books in untidy piles. My foot is falling asleep underneath me. I can’t stretch out because of the cat and because I’ve covered all the surfaces around me with my crap. My left shoulder hurts, too. See again, cat. This chair, which isn’t ergonomically great for writing, does not help with my foot or my shoulder. But the chair is next to the window, and the natural light and view of the world trump everything else.
The world outside is a muted blue gray. The sun isn’t up yet, but it’s coming. The cloud bellies are fuchsia.
I live for mornings. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my favorite weekdays because I don’t swim. I get up early as if I were swimming, and then I have oodles of time to myself before I start my work day. After breakfast this morning, I sat with my coffee and a poetry book and read before I started writing. When I looked at the clock and saw 6:44, I was giddy because I still had over an hour until I’d log in for work. I can journal and blog with that kind of time.
I daydreamed this morning about a proper desk in a space where I want to be (ie, not in the basement or in a non-ergonomic chair). Our daughter’s room has a perfect window. Her leaving is too fresh to think about rearranging her room, though. I don’t know when any of us will be ready for that.
Daily writing promptWhat are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like? -
With our transition to e-readers, we donated most of our books to the library. Our bookshelves gradually became storage spaces for non-books: racks of ink, fountain pen supplies, a fabric bin full of camera straps and lenses.
Over the past couple of years, my husband has slowly accumulated a shelf full of graphic novels, which for obvious reasons are more pleasant to read in physical form. He bought a small clip-on light for reading in bed, which is still one of my biggest blockers for reading books in paper form, and he has now switched back to physical books for novels as well.
A couple of weeks ago, he mentioned he was running out of shelf space. Maybe we should get another book shelf. We looked around at a few and felt like our life force had been sapped by the process. We could not get excited about cheap particle board shelf, didn’t have ideas for where to look for real shelves, and honestly didn’t want to spend our free time (or money) scouring the world for a decent wooden book shelf that we’d just hide away in the guest room anyway.
Instead, when we got home, I gathered all my art supplies, my camera supplies, my doodads and knick knacks, and I consolidated. Camera stuff I access once or twice a year went in a drawer. Rarely used inks? Also in a drawer. I found new homes for objets d’art. I distributed what was left of my art supplies and ink samples onto a shelf with sketch books and fresh journals, and my small box of bottled inks went on a shelf with hobby books about gardening and drawing.
Every time I see my hobby books and supplies organized in the bookshelf, I feel a jolt of pleasure.
When I was done, I’d cleared two shelves — one for myself and one for my husband. Faced with an open shelf all to my own, I started collecting the books that survived all the cullings: my writing books, the Tao Te Ching, Basho’s On Love and Barley, a book of Mary Oliver’s poetry, a collection of American short stories I bought at a used book store with our son, a book he gave me for Christmas one year (Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory).
This rearranging transformed me. My little shelf of books delights me. It makes me crave physical books again. Not novels, but smaller books. Books that I read during the day, or read excerpts from in the morning with my coffee. Or non-fiction that’s not work-related, like the excellent book I just finished, Life in Three Dimensions by Shigehiro Oishi, which is about a third dimension to a good life besides happiness and meaning: psychological richness. This third dimension, which is driven by curiosity and exploration, resonates deeply with me.
Our son loves to go book shopping, and I of course, am always happy to tag along on that kind of shopping trip. On a recent jaunt to a bookshop, where he needed to buy a book for school, I felt inspired to buy a book of poetry. I asked our son what poets he likes, and he said T.S. Eliot, so I bought a slim paperback volume that will fit nicely on my shelf when I finish it.
This re-opening to physical books has invigorated me. Instead of ordering books online or going to Barnes & Noble to buy my notebooks, I’ve started parking downtown in my tiny town. I walk to the art shop for my Leuchtturm journals, then up to Blacksburg Books. I ordered Life in Three Dimensions from there, and 1000 Words by Jami Attenberg. I browse their used book shelves for hard copies of some of my small favorites, or whatever else I might find. On my recent trip, I bought a used copy of A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver. I’ve been looking for something exactly like this! Maybe I’ll write poetry on my sabbatical.
These trips to local shops, where the atmosphere feels cozy and real, where the people working in the stores have expertise and care about their store and their merchandise, these trips feel rich and satisfying. Much more so than driving to suburban box stores and parking in a giant parking lot. And these books on the table next to me, with their paperback covers lifted to invite me in, they feel good in my hands. I like the feathery edges of the pages and the bendiness of the soft cover.
I feel a whole world has opened to me. I’m reading poetry. I’m reading about poetry. I’m getting out into my community. I’m chatting with shopkeepers. I took the day off today, and I’ll take my sketchbook to a local coffee shop and draw. I love walking around cities when I travel; maybe after I drink my coffee, I’ll walk around my own town. See the flowers and the shops.
And all of this from a simple rearranging of our bookshelves.
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This morning, when I skipped my workout and instead listened to a podcast, I learned a distinction in how to think about purpose in our lives. The podcast episode was The Happiness Lab’s How to Find Your Purpose.
I am a sucker for this subject. I want to live a rich, fulfilling life that leaves me with few regrets on my deathbed. Purpose seems to be a key component to both richness and fulfillment. But when I seek my Purpose, I feel anxiety instead of direction. I don’t know my Purpose! What if I never find it?
Jordan Grumet, the guest on the podcast, addresses this worry. He distinguishes between big P Purpose and little p purpose. Purpose with a big P is the one that gets me, and apparently a lot of people, stressed. It feels like, “Why am I here? What am I meant to do?” It induces anxiety if we want to find Purpose but don’t know where to look. Little p purpose, though, does not ask “why?”; it doesn’t examine the reason for our existence. Instead it asks, “what lights you up?”
Purpose does not have to be an epic, put all your eggs in this one basket or you fail at life kind of thing. It can (and Grumet argues should) be about the daily ordinary, where we spend the bulk of our lives. I love the daily ordinary! I can do this kind of purpose.
Open windows and fresh air light me up. Working in the garden lights me up: pulling weeds, growing plants, arranging them in the garden, putting fresh water out for the birds, looking for caterpillars, watching flowers bloom, sitting and smelling and watching. I cannot wait for my sabbatical for this! Great conversations light me up. Conversations where I learn a person’s inner workings and feelings, when they’ve shared something intimate and vulnerable, when we’ve taken each other into one another’s trust. Snuggling with my husband or the cats (or both) lights me up. Beauty lights me up: art, music, trees, nature, architecture, design, literature. Just the word literature makes my heart skip a beat. Writing something that resonates with even one person lights me up. Good food lights me up. Traveling, playing games, laughing, and talking about life with our kids light me up.
All of these are achievable. They are not intimidating. They are constant loves that are unlikely to change. They are my little p purpose that create a rich and fulfilling life.
Butterfly Mind 