I walk the dog at dusk. No sunlight slants through the trees at this
hour. Shadows cover the path. Gnats thicken the air and I can't see them
until I'm within their cloud and one catches in the corner of my eye. A
tear blurs my vision. I press the heel of my palm against my eyelid and
stop still. I blink and blink and blink. When I brush my cheek the bug
sticks to my finger, black and immobile, drowned in holy water. I wipe it on my sleeve and walk on.
***
I've been reading this book about writing, and it's making me almost as happy as actually writing something myself. Almost. The author's best advice is to just write because you might pour out six pages of crap before you find that one, glinting gem of a sentence that was the whole point of the thing and never would have bubbled to the surface if you didn't decant all that froth from the top first. So I woke up early this morning and felt awake and alive for once so I'm sitting here with my cup of coffee and the single pen that I keep chasing around the house and a wrinkled scrap of paper because my real notebook is lost, it's been so long since I opened it. I want to say something about a moment from yesterday before the days dilute it and its spreads out all over my memory, blended into one million other moments that look exactly the same.
I pause because I don't know how to start. It's so ordinary. How can I paint a picture that shivers with beauty the way it does behind my eyes? It was an unremarkable day, a deep breath after the crescendo of busy-ness that was last week. The two middle girls wanted to swing so that's what we did. They laughed big crazy belly laughs and the baby watched the back and forth with wide eyes. Wise eyes. She knew what was going on. The air was just the right temperature and the breeze moved only slightly and not a single bug landed on my skin. My hands pressed into the littler one's back and she moved away and back, away and back and I was part of that pendulum rhythm without even thinking about it. The older one said the swing was her broomstick and hers could fly higher. Her sister echoed her laughter, flying high too but not understanding that -er as a suffix meant she was being out done.
One hundred years from now, none of this will matter. This is a truth I've been telling myself in moments of crisis or chaos or frustration or fatigue and it helps. But this sentence in my hands right now cuts my skin and I bleed. I'm the only witness to this moment that matters only to me and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow will bury it completely and I won't even remember the gold around its edges.
This makes my throat ache so that I think I might cry or scream or throw up and the only thing I can do is open my mouth wide and shove all of it down down down and try to remember the taste as it passes over my tongue. Maybe later I can dangle some fishing line past my teeth and hook some beautiful words like dappled and ephemeral and they will drip with holy water when I dangle them in front of my eyes. They'll reflect the light as if from within and line up in a perfect frame around something profound.
Maybe.
***
She takes off ahead of me, school bag bouncing against her back, bare
legs flying. She always gets the mail after school. I think she likes
that moment of anticipation when her fingers just touch the handle and
the door still hides the contents and there might be something inside
with her name on it. I am dear friends what that kind of hope.
The
huge pine in our yard points like a finger at the heavens and drapes a
skirt of shade across the grass. But I walk through a pleat of sun half a street behind. I balance the baby against my chest and she
blinks and squints at the world over my shoulder -- eyes in the back of
my head. A cloud of gnats hover in a strange, concentrated column just
next to the road and the sun glints off their individual bodies --
internally illuminated points of light traveling in crazy, unchartable
orbits, tethered by force or choice to an unseen center.
I see her drop half the mail so I hurry to help pick it up. It's all catalogs and advertisements. Junk. I toss it in the recycle bin as we walk inside and for a single second I wonder where it will be born again.
You have a poetic soul.
ReplyDelete!! thank you. the world is lyrical when i look at it, and i'm glad that maybe comes through even a tiny bit in what i write.
Deletejust write...yes. and thank you because it is such a delight to come here and read your soulful prose.
ReplyDeletethank YOU!
DeleteSometimes I think about parenting, the way I mother in mostly the same way I was mothered, and the way my mom mothered in mostly the same way *her* mother did, and then I think about all changes in medicine and in parenting advice that have taken place in just those few generations, and it makes me think there MUST be something important, meaningful and lasting (odd as it sounds) in those ephemeral moments. Maybe it's wishful thinking, but I feel like those moments are another form of communication, like they're a way to take a lesson in your hand, polish it, and pass it down. Your posts always reveal themselves to me slowly and I usually like to consider them for awhile before I respond, but for some reason I wanted to say that: my initial reaction. And also, have you ever read Snow Country by Kawabata? And also, what writing book are you reading?
ReplyDeletethanks for sharing your initial reaction, emily. i like what you said -- there certainly is something underlying and universal about mothering...and the idea that these ordinary moments connect us and help us speak to each other -- even to mothers who have left this earth -- gives me incredible comfort.
Deletei smiled to read your most recent post because your thoughts there reflected some of what is beneath the surface of this post, too.
i havent read snow country but if you recommend it i will definitely put it on my list. the book i'm reading is Anne Lamontt's "Bird by Bird." She's funny and poignant and spot on. her words inspired me to look for my notebook. i found it now.
Oh, but in one hundred years these moments *will* matter. One of your children will change the world, and perhaps it will be because of a thought she had on a swing :)
ReplyDeleteLove it.....There's that hope again....
Deletehi Sarah! I remember reading 'Bird by Bird' and was inspired by it too. I generally don't read books about writing anymore but I do like books about authors. They inspire me... or more like, drive me to get up out of bed and write- or pull myself out the half dazed night to make notes about a passage I want to rework or add to.
ReplyDeleteI too have decided that I must just write whether the passage is sewn with the golden shards of sunlight or a slog through the mud to find a small pool of reflected daylight. It's work- work which I need to tend to.
Beautiful as always!
Thanks for relating, Danette. I think one of the important things I learned from Lamontt so far is that sometimes it's so hard or depressing or overwhelming to think of the big picture of what you want to say that it can be totally paralyzing....and focusing then on something tiny -- a one inch picture frame -- can give you a start and let you explore the details and find out exactly what you need to put in there to get your point across. And that is what I was trying to do here. Thanks for reading, as always!
DeleteYour blog is great and this post was just AWESOME! :)
ReplyDeletexoxo
Susanna
http://susanna-behindmyeyes.blogspot.com