holding a highball in your hand, can't
even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,
all your grief and failure come clear at last."*
Sometimes, Garrison Keillor doesn't add anything at the end of the writer's almanac. He just copies out the poem, and it seems to be enough for the day. I've never put poetry quotes on this blog, but I'm going to tonight, and I think at least one of them should be saved at the end, so that those words stay on longer than mine.
I know how to be lonely. I like to remind myself of that. When I wake up alone, and I know exactly what to do. In my new house, I even have the added bonus of closeness, and I can walk wherever I need to go. I can be alone and think. Walking sets the pace, creates the meter for your thoughts. I-know-how-to-be-lonely. Even after being in bands, I never learned anything about timing, but I hear it in my head just the same.
On Sunday I stretched out and walked to find the New York Times, not that I needed the information, but just for the luxury of sitting down in the sun and reading it front to cover (AND the magazine) in its entirety. Just like a cat in the sun, literally bathing in something, I don't know what, the ability to just not be interrupted maybe. Some friends and I walked down the Hawthorne Trail to the graveyard and kicked stones around. The oak trees were black against the sky, just like in a movie, and so were we when walking back to town. A good walk with friends goes a long way. Then the simple pleasure of cooking, and being close in a kitchen together, before everyone went their own ways before bed.
The past couple of days have been less fun. Nikki said, "when you're lonely it feels like everyone else is happy." I have great fears that all my self-righteousness and introspection will get me is nowhere, and the rest of the world will go on without me, happily (and worse still, that I might deserve it!). I stop to take a look around, so to speak, and end up alone in a room with the lights off and the door shut. I've been panicking a little. Pacing around my room, picking up different books. Unfocused. Still doing a lot of walking though, and even in the rain today I caught the words bubbling up, and then I sat on my balcony and tried to arrange them. I've been unable to write for a few months. Writing in this doesn't count. I mean really writing, and not just for my graduate school applications.
I just wrote two pretty lousy poems. Still, the fact that I got them down at all made me cry. The unimaginable pleasure, to just sit down and write! That's the pay off in the end, for thinking, and for walking.
"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things."**
*Bill Holm, from The Icelandic Language
**Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese
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