All that can happen in a thousand days

Day 726: Stop!

It was an exhausting day of butt-in-chair, my shoulders hunched over until they hurt—“posture check” called, out loud, to no one, every so often. I would sit up straight, or get up and move around my vast two rooms. I did not drink enough water; I did not accomplish as much as I had planned. But I thought a lot, moving from here to there, from desk top to lap top and back, from lounging on bed to lounging on sofa. My mind was full, so thinking was part of the task at hand. Questions of the day:

a. Whether to reposition an entire chunk of my thesis

b. or cut it out all together

c. which would compel me to change the title

d. which I’m thinking about changing anyway.

Really. At this 11th hour, or 11th day, or 11th something? Will I need to get advisor approval to change the title at this point, since the former title is what he approved (with reservations) two drafts ago, and with more support for the last draft, a slightly longer version of it (direct from the poem included).

And now I want to change it all together. And, the kicker, to a well worn cliche.

What value in that? Well, I think it’s less dramatic (that was an early criticism), though it is, admittedly, less concrete and less visual. Less punch. But maybe, just maybe, less dramatic and less punchy (provocative) is more honest?

I don’t know.

But I do know this: this thought, to change or not to change, to revise this critical component, which changes, fully, the tone of the piece, consumed me all day long. While I was sitting, or slouching, or eating or not drinking enough water or napping. I didn’t swim or bike or do anything strenuous with my body yesterday. My mind was on overload. And I need to just decide (and/or write my teacher) because I have other work to do and I can’t let this question dominate another entire day.

It dominated my dreams. Even though the words weren’t flying by like an animated alphabet, or planing through space like Star Wars 1 (or is it IV), my dreams were filled with overwhelming decisions. To pack the 50 pound typewriter or not. (Common sense does not play a factor in my dreams.) The red dress or the green one. (Both of which I don’t own, thank god, because they looked like costumed Christmas.) To wait or not for my friend in the rest stop bathroom before continuing on. Well, that dream was even crazier because I didn’t wait. I decided one minute was too long and I needed to get to Santa Fe before sun down. Without her, I guess. I left my friend in a complete lurch, at a rest stop in some unnamed mid-western locale. I had a mission and her need to pee was not part of my plan. I told some stranger to tell my friend, sorry, she had to go.

Decision made. A poor one. A not very kind one.

How can I do that for my thesis? Drive along. No stopping for pee breaks. Just decide, damn it. I was fine with the title, with the frame, until yesterday. Well, it’s been a week or so since I’ve talked to my trio of readers, and received feedback from my teacher. I am easily influenced by others, I know. I trust new information, valued perspectives. I’ve also been called a marketer’s dream. I’m easily distracted by new and shiny things.

So is this title conversion just that? Something new and shiny—perhaps fleeting—and tomorrow I’ll discover I like the old version just the same? Or am I finding, as I do as I work with redactions/contractions/erasures, the truth hidden within? Or one truth.

I think I’ll view the TED Talk with Dan Gilbert again. I was directed to it when I was having a terrible, terrible time with deciding between grad schools: Warren Wilson or Bennington, North Carolina or Vermont. Number 1 versus number 2 school (the three top low-residency writing programs do a sort of annual musical chairs). Fly (which I don’t mind) or drive (which I sometimes do). The costs were the same (save for flying, which would add some more). Both offered mountain vistas and the lure of getting away. In the end, in my gut, I knew Bennington was the right place. Maybe because it wasn’t venturing so far—I could do an advance recon mission. Maybe because I just like the feel of the Bennington web site more. Maybe because I’m New England through and through. And maybe because if I hated I could easily get in my car and turn around. Maybe because I loved Amy Gerstler’s poems and wanted, badly, to study with her. And I did!

Whatever painful process I had to go through, I came out all right. I’d be a Warren Wilson groupie, too, should I have ventured there. But I did so some fact checking, and I came away convinced that Vermont was my direction. So I need to fact check my title a little (I did some—there are several books already with the title—one which is a book about helping librarians to keep their inventory in check. No conflict there!

So, Lick the Knife—which comes from a poem that may or may not stay (with sections called “Before” and “After”—which I’m liking less and less);

OR Less Is More—which doesn’t come from a poem, and seems that it doesn’t need to given the overarching cliche (with the first section called “More” and the second section called “Less”).

I’m writing this out for myself, for posterity, for when I finally get my manuscript together to be published, when the title turns out to be neither of these and I can look back and laugh on Day 726 wasted, so much energy boiled away.

_________________________

excerpt from Meditations in an Emergency

  by Frank O’Hara

Am I to become profligate as if I were a blonde? Or religious as if I were French?

Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there’ll be nothing left with which to venture forth.

Why should I share you? Why don’t you get rid of someone else for a change?

I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.

Even trees understand me! Good heavens, I lie under them, too, don’t I? I’m just like a pile of leaves.

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.

My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up. It makes me restless and that makes me unhappy, but I cannot keep them still. If only i had grey, green, black, brown, yellow eyes; I would stay at home and do something. It’s not that I’m curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.

Day 725: was 10 hours ago

and I had a drink. A big one. Tinto. With limon. That’s Spanish for a kick-ass tall sangria with lemon. It was not, decidedly, lemonade. No, it was deep red and icy and in a pint glass. And I drank mine really fast and my head felt it instantly. And my mouth felt in instantly—I was on a tear. Poor Wendy, having to listen to me. But the music was good and the tapas were excellent (even though the gambas—giant shrimp—had their heads on still. I learned how to decapitate them pretty easily).

It’s fun to go out to a bar-type place, to sit on stools (OK, one leg kind of fell asleep) and have to hunch in close to hear. Soon, you become part of the atmosphere—the clinking, the tunes, the voices—and the tastes sounds good and the music slides down your throat, easy, like sangria, or maybe more melty like the egg yolk, when pierced, spills over the grilled asparagus and pools on the plate. Beautiful golden and green. Like that.

Plus we had excellent hair.

Our monthly ritual, Wendy and I. We go to Staley, our hair guy of 20 some odd years, then out to dinner. Or a drink. Or both. Sometimes we do quick and easy (“cheap and cheerful,” Julie calls it) and stop at the S&S, an old hangout, and a place I worked in a million years ago. And sometimes we try new places, like Redd’s in West Roxbury, when it had only been open a couple weeks. This time we went back to Tres Gatos for a second time. It’s casual but classy, a little exotic (octopus!) and cozy, a little loud maybe, for some, but I like a little music on a Friday night. It would be a fun place for a date. There were plenty of dates taking place.

I also like this place because it’s a music store—vinyl LPs everywhere (Beach Boys “Pet Sounds” and Coltraine-something cover art at our table) AND a bookstore (during the day) and is dedicated to Spanish tapas cuisine. The wine list is all Spanish. Books line the high shelves of the place. Music, music everywhere. I hope they’re doing well. I have yet to buy a book, but I will make it to Jamaica Plain during the day one of these afternoons. I don’t have a turntable, alas, but it’s so much fun to look at the album covers. Ah, memories of my meager collection back in the day.

The owner of the place is always there. I know who he is from the website, and I follow him on Facebook. A recent trip to Spain, a specific region. Promises of a whole new summer menu. He envisions a place people want to come back to. So I’ve been there twice now. And I want to go again. I’m totally addicted to the warm olives (three kinds, all good) and the salty and oily Marcona almonds. Oh my. I want to say hello to the owner, but he plops down in a chair at a table near the door, hugs the other man sitting there. Is this his husband, his lover, his brother, his friend? A valued regular patron? His executive chef? His sommelier? No matter, there is a genuine gladness. A little relief, maybe to sit (I’d watched the owner helping to deliver plates to patrons.) And they hunched together, closer, to hear each other. No matter the relationship, they were talking and listening intently. Just like Wendy and me. Oh, and they had olives on the table, too. It was a poem unfolding before my eyes.

Or maybe the new summer menu.

___________________________

Among the Things He Does Not Deserve

  by Dan Albergotti

Greek olives in oil, fine beer, the respect of colleagues,
the rapt attention of an audience, pressed white shirts,
just one last-second victory, sympathy, buttons made
to resemble pearls, a pale daughter, living wages, a father
with Italian blood, pity, the miraculous reversal of time, 
a benevolent god, good health, another dog, nothing
cruel and unusual, spring, forgiveness, the benefit
of the doubt, the next line, cold fingers against his chest,
rich bass notes from walnut speakers, inebriation, more ink,
a hanging curve, great art, steady rain on Sunday, the purr
of a young cat, the crab cakes at their favorite little place, 
the dull pain in his head, the soft gift of her parted lips.

Days 723 & 724: Commence

It’s commencement season. High holidays where I work. For us, and I’m sure other schools, it’s not just a day. We have a 10 day run of grad activities and a whole slew of reunions. The 50th reunioners show up first, some spry 72 year olds; others, more challenged. Some walk around holding hands with their similarly aged wives. Others are notably alone, by choice or by circumstance. It’s remarkable to be that their alma mater means so much after all these years.

It’s typical that our lost and found collects an allotment of reunion swag over the course of the week. And sure enough, our first 50th reunion hat. But what’s this on the button—class of 1962? The guys (and previous few women, who officially graduated from a separate school) graduated from college THE YEAR I WAS BORN!

Oh my god. I am 50 years old. I keep forgetting. Now it sinks in.

It sinks in that I’m also older than the 25th reunioners, too. By three years. Average age for these folks is 47. Yeah, I’m old.

But then today was all about graduation. Some undergrads we know. My building filled to the brim with masters and PhD candidates from the graduate school. And then it hits me, in a different way than age does—in a few short weeks, I will one of these graduates, sporting my MFA. It wasn’t that long ago I didn’t have an undergrad degree. I will be 50, with a graduate degree. And I will be 115 pounds lighter ( or more!) than I was 15 months ago.

Wow.

The coolest thing: I will have something of s viable “book,” this far read by three people I completely, all who have given me the gift of encouragement. Is this collection of poems something? Yes, everyone of them has said. I am humbled and honored. And I need to tweak this thing to within its last breath. I have conflicting feedback in some cases—one likes a poem; another doesn’t. I have choices to make, and I will make them.

And then there details about the actual graduation. Like who is coming—family and a best friend. From 3000 miles away no less. Would I be a better friend if I insist my California confidante NOT come? Too much time/money/trouble. Yes, I probably would. But I remain conflicted. Too much everything versus my selfish desire to have him there while I stumble as I deliver my lecture, as i collect my diploma and my masters hood. Am I being selfish?

Probably. And I don’t want him there if he feels bad for me, or obligated. I am capable of doing things, many things, on my own. But friends do crazy wonderful things for friends sometimes. Like applaud at graduations. And listen to every large and small complaint along the journey’s way. The applause will go both ways.

Let us commence to the next surprising and frightening step—being done (for now) and facing 51. How about farewell to 150 pounds as well—and hello to a book!