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| Photo courtesy Filip Kruchlik |
“Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just
going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”
—A.A. Milne
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| Photo courtesy Jake Hills |
No, this is not a late-night TV ad: “For just three payments
of $29.95, you can have this beautiful Whatsit! But wait, there’s more…”
No, this is my current motto. Lately, I’ve been feeling
stuck, overwhelmed, frustrated…all squirmy and uncomfortable inside. As tired
of complaining to my long-suffering friends about my frustrations as they are
of hearing me complain. And the more I’ve stewed, the more drained and
frustrated I’ve felt.
June 10th’s quote offered me a clue about the
answer to this problem. I’m certainly uncomfortable, unhappy and
unfulfilled…what am I going to do about it? Sit and think some more, or act?
In the past, I’ve noticed an immediate surge of energy and
lifting of spirits when I do something, even if it’s as mundane as
cleaning out a drawer in the kitchen. So that’s what I did. I cleaned out two
drawers in the kitchen. Then I reglued the wood trim on the breakfast bar. Then
I dropped off the comforter set at Goodwill that I had been carting around in
my trunk for literally months.
These small actions relieved one tiny, itchy part of my
brain, but they were just the warm up. Lately I’ve felt especially stuck and
unsure of myself as a writer. I’ve been plugging away here on the blog, but
I’ve let all other aspects of my writing slide. I’m ready to get back into
freelancing, but I have a number of issues to deal with, including feeling
terribly rusty and out of practice locating markets and pitching articles. So I
took a small step towards correcting this by joining the Freelance Writer’s Den, and exploring the resources available there. My first goal: get a writer’s
website up as soon as possible. And, in the meantime, I’ve already collected a number of my writing clips on a
portfolio site, which you can see here.
Yes, I do believe in the value of contemplation and that doing
is not always better than being, but sometimes you must act. It doesn’t
matter what the step is, as long as you take one…and then another. So that’s where I am. Taking baby steps, looking
for “different ways [and] truer answers.”
Did I need more orchids? Well, no, I didn’t need any,
but when my orchid-loving friend Barb asked me if I wanted to go to a wholesale
orchid nursery, I said yes. I counted my empty orchid pots (there have been a
couple of casualties lately) and decided I could buy a few. How many did I buy?
We’ll get to that.
After a two-hour drive, we came to this unprepossessing
exterior:
Which led into this:
No, I didn’t drool.
But I did spend a happy hour with my friend examining
orchids, choosing which to add to our collections, trying to guess what the
ones without open blooms would look like. Prices ranged from $3 to $12,
depending on the size and variety of orchid. We filled a large box with our
choices, paid for them and loaded them in Barb’s van. Definitely a delight-ful
field trip.
I bought nine. Most are in some stage of blooming, but I
have one that will be a surprise. Its buds are tightly closed and I don’t know
yet what it will look like.
Here are some photos:
Have you taken any field trips lately?
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| Photo courtesy Tori Campbell |
Introduction by Ted Kooser: How’s this poem for its
ability to collapse all the years from childhood to middle age in a matter of
fifteen short lines? George Bilgere is one of this column’s favorite poets. He
lives and teaches in Ohio.
The Wading Pool
The toddlers in their tadpole bodies,
with their squirt guns and snorkels,
their beautiful mommies and inflatable whales,
are still too young to understand that this is as good as it
gets.
Soon they must leave the wading pool
and stand all day at the concession stand
with their hormones and snow cones,
their soul patches and tribal tattoos,
pretending not to notice how beautiful they are,
until they simply can’t stand it
and before you know it
they’re lined up on lawn chairs,
dozing in the noonday sun
with their stretch marks and beer bellies,
their Wall Street Journals and SPF 50.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry
Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also
supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2014 by George Bilgere from his most recent book of poems,
Imperial, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2014. Poem reprinted by permission of
George Bilgere and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2015 by The Poetry
Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet
Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do
not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
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| Photo courtesy Milada Vigerova |
“The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to
occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it
is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to
step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.”
—M. Scott Peck
“June is the Friday night of summer, and all is full of
possibility.”
—Laura Vanderkam
Each new season brings its own delights. Though summer is not my favorite season here in Florida, each year I grit my teeth and make the
best of it. I was inspired by Laura Vanderkam’s words (see above, and read the
full post here) to start thinking about things I can accomplish and enjoy
during these hot and sweaty months. Maybe working on the list will distract me from the heat and humidity?
In keeping with my word of the year (delight), this summer
will be long on delights/adventures/pleasures, but that doesn’t mean I’m only
going to play. I want to experiment with different writing venues (#2) and try
some new exercise classes (#7). I always take a little more time for reading (a future post
about my summer reading list is in the works), but this year, my summer bucket
list includes:
- Take Tank to the beach. Yes, really.
- Go to the library to write (the only downside is I can’t take my coffee with me).
- Take a week’s “staycation” (or maybe several long weekends?).
- Go to a Tampa Bay Rays game with my mom when she visits in August.
- Sketch in my sketchbook. Maybe even finish—i.e., fill all the pages of—a sketchbook!
- Make homemade frozen pops. I never got around to doing it last summer.
- Try a month of unlimited classes at Karma.
- Spend a day by the pool.
- Go to the beach at sunset with my husband.
- Rewatch The Princess Bride and Support Your Local Sheriff (my cat is named after the female lead in this movie).
- Try the new gelato place in town.
- Make pesto with the basil from my garden. (Done!)
Introduction by Ted Kooser: Of taking long walks it has been said that a person can walk off anything. Here David Mason hikes a mountain in his home state, Colorado, and steps away from an undisclosed personal loss into another state, one of healing.
In the Mushroom Summer
Colorado turns Kyoto in a shower,
mist in the pines so thick the crows delight
(or seem to), winging in obscurity.
The ineffectual panic of a squirrel
who chattered at my passing gave me pause
to watch his Ponderosa come and go—
long needles scratching cloud. I’d summated
but knew it only by the wildflower meadow,
the muted harebells, paintbrush, gentian,
scattered among the locoweed and sage.
Today my grief abated like water soaking
underground, its scar a little path
of twigs and needles winding ahead of me
downhill to the next bend. Today I let
the rain soak through my shirt and was unharmed.
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