{my topography}

On Friday I took an airplane down to NJ to meet up with DH and the Bean who’d gone on ahead (the prospect of a 7 hour car ride with toddler suddenly overwhelming after a long week of six year olds.) The plane took off through a partial cloudcover just after sunset, and as we lifted above the ash and indigo clouds, the atmosphere above was smudged with vibrant orange, fading to pale yellow, and then to a hundred delicate shades of blue each growing darker as the vast distance of space increased.

Looking out the window, feeling the odd weight of my body pressing back into the seat, bucking gravity for liftoff, I was struck by how miraculous it is that as humans, we’ve grown used to this. To flying, miles above the earth. To this view above the clouds. Something about it still feels risky to me; I can’t help thinking of Icarus falling in flight away from the heat of the sun. It will always feel brave and terrifying to me, to lift off the ground inside a metal jet. To fly without wings, trusting aerodynamics to lift the weight of steel and small human life into the air.

I brought the newest Elle and Vanity Fair magazines to leaf through on the plane, and spent the flight skimmingt through the pages of models with smokey eyes and skinny jeans, to linger over the book reviews and essays. This happens to me sometimes. This sudden thirsting for stuff beyond the parentheses of my small world.

It’s a feeling that almost leaves me breathless. A craving. An intense realization that I am somehow parched for culture, for books, for time to delve into novels, read book reviews, attend theater, re-learn the myths of our culture, or wander through galleries. Without intention, my life grows narrow. I stop moving beyond the vocabulary of everyday. I stop pounding on the window that defines my view. And then, suddenly, like then on the plane, I run smack into my narrow vantage point.

All of the morning poems I’ve been writing this month have acted as a catalyst for this, I’m sure. They’ve stirred up something deep in me; made me reflect on the gaps I have in my ability to construct metaphors that matter, or to encapsulate with precise langauge, a specific circumstance or emotion.

The thing is, I’m not sure how to get beyond where I’m at. I’m not sure how to pick up a rock and throw it into the window. Not sure even, what the window or rock look like any more. But if giving ten haphazard minutes poems every morning has changed me, I can gather the same courage to toss myself towards books again, towards learning.

So what I want from you is this: what writers, or poets, or artists or films have had a lasting impact on the way you think and live your life? Name five.

Sun high on the meridian, humidity making my hair curl and the cat nap, a sprawling stripe of fur on the windowsill. Reason enough to head down to the local hardware store for a blue plastic kiddy pool. Cold water splashing on our sun-hot skin. A perfect afternoon

All night the cat slept curled
on the chair opposite the bed,
content to hear the heartbeats of her humans
lost in slumber.
Now she wakes and stretches
a beautiful apostrophe of feline ease,
becoming a comma, then an M
before she struts away.

This morning, all I could muster after a too-busy weekend with houseguests and rainstorms were these few lines written in dark ink, the words running together as water dripped from my hair.

I throw myself into the face of the day
waiting like an expectant martyr
to be handed alms
or be run over.

I’m at that point right now, before things feel easy, but after things have been at the hardest part. It’s that point between exhaustion and sweetness. That point at the end of being sick for a full week, and not having had two nights of solid sleep in a row—but after spending an evening in the curve of DH’s arm, watching firelight and making love so many times. We celebrated our anniversary today—-waking up to a leak in a pipe in the wall above the kitchen sink and a sick baby.

But we also woke up to another day together. Another day where what I wrote to him when we were first together, still rings true. Now more than ever: your hand fits the curve of my hand and your mind fits the curve of my mind.

A week of waking up, stumbling to the shower, making my way to the coffee pot and out the door just as the pale fog is lifting. I drive along the dirt road, the gravel slick with mud from the evening rain, and watch each how the leaves are turning. Now, at the end of the road all the maples are golden. I want to hold my breath. I want to slow things down enough to be able to drink up the beauty of the early morning light falling on the backs of grazing horses, and the mountain rising up tall and humble from the patchwork of trees like an old monk seeking alms. I want it to go slow enough to remember the breath of my sleeping son, eyelashes long and delicate in the first light of dawn.

I turn at the end of the road, onto the highway full of cars and make my way towards the brick school building where I work. I love it there, as much as I can. Some days my heart feels tightly wound like the pieces of an old pocket watch, and I tremble thinking of my little boy at home. Thinking of how my life now is like a grapefruit, torn up into sections of bittersweetness. But I’m growing used to the rhythm of this—getting up, leaving, doing what I am good at, and returning in late afternoon. Often I come home to my two guys sitting in the back yard in our two lounge chairs, side by side, sun splashed and handsome. I try to shift gears, feeling an internal lurch: longing for down-time, for solace, and then throwing myself full-throttle into the daily act of devotion that is raising a child and loving a husband. Some days DH and I reach out and touch, hold each other, drink each other up hungrily, and laugh. Other days, we have nothing to give, and in our emptiness we starve eachother. We bicker and get snappish. We hold on to little things, and forget how much we love.

But I am learning to be patient with time. Learning that things will come to fruition and fall into place if I give them space to do so. Like the morning poems I’ve been writing. I start with a handful of scraps, a few random lines still drenched in the half-consciousness of dreams. If I’m patient and I return to these lines later in the day, I find small gems I rarely expect. Things I’d never think of if I wrote later in the day, when impatience and busyness saturate my pores. So I’ll keep showing up next week. Showing up at the page. Showing up at the now of my life.