At it again

Posted on | October 1, 2009 | 8 Comments

Today I felt like maybe, finally, I might be making progress. I can’t really describe the way I’ve felt for the past couple of weeks, other than to say that I’ve felt like I’ve been drifting somewhere above myself, above my life. Out of touch, maybe, or tangled. Desultory. Haphazard. And this week has been all about coming down to earth. Getting on top of things. Organizing.

It was a busy month, and maybe that is my excuse. Introverted by nature, non-stop wedding parties and a week long visit with my dearest of dear friends, and a weekend visit from my sister and her husband, packed my September to it’s gills. Not to mention freelance work was eating up all my spare moments. The result: dislocation, distraction, doubt, disillusion, despondency. (Okay, so I’m suddenly alliteration drunk. But you get the idea.)

Either way, for the past couple of days since all the fun ended I’ve been moping about the house, doing heaps of laundry. SIDE NOTE: I kind of want to write another entire post about laundry, actually. How I had this groundbreaking moment watching my friend fold my laundry precisely, neatly, into these perfectly stacked rectangular piles of shirts and jeans and sweaters. Groundbreaking as in: it never occurred to me that the purpose of folding the damn laundry might be expanded to a) fitting more in one’s drawers neatly and b) to reduce the amount of wrinkles in any given garment. I honestly have been folding laundry all these years because it’s what you’re supposed do with laundry, right? I mean, who doesn’t fold laundry? But truthfully, I never put thought into it. Now, I am reformed. See? I simply must post more about this (with pictures!)–it’s become a new obsession.

It’s taken all week to sort myself out. But finally I’m starting to get the hang of my life again. I have my submissions calendar sorted out and some clear-cut goals, and some long term novel goals (40k words by the end of October) and some maybe sort of plans for an autumn party with the community of friends I am gradually starting to make here, and it all feels good.

It kind of astounds me how easily I got knocked off kilter in the past two months. I’ve felt so alarmingly fragile, up to my neck in angst and uncertainty that I’ve had hardly anything to post. Things have felt tenuous and flimsy around here financially lately, and that too adds to my apparent state of internal vertigo. My mind has been twirling all day long, but when I’ve come up for air, there has been nothing to put on the page. No way to capture the tightly wound, tugged-at feeling that’s lodged itself in the pit of my stomach except maybe to say that a part of me has been feeling a little like a kite caught up in a tree, thrashing about in the wind. But less so today after eight loads of laundry, and listening to Selected Shorts while making apple sauce.

So. Hmmm. All this brings me to October.

I have plans for October. Real, practical, concrete plans to disentangle and make things happen around here, including more organization and less stress.

And I’m thinking of doing morning poems again, as a way to slip back into writing for real. I have done morning poems in the past, and have loved it when you have joined me. I’ve gotten so much this exchange. These small scraps of joy and arc and moment that we capture, first thing, before the blur of the day takes over; before the laundry piles up.

Are you in?

The rules are really simple. Show up at the page every morning and write a poem. It doesn’t have to be good. It doesn’t have to be much of anything. All it needs to be is a small handful of words tossed up to the gods; an offering, a gift, a start to the day.

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