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Distracted by the Five Lusts
Apr. 23rd, 2008 | 8:31 pm
Man, I had great intentions when I started this:
I have one year left in California and I'll document it. I'll get out and do something new every weekend and
write about it... a sentimental journey-logue. A voyage of vignettes, if you will.
...she thought. Enthusiastically. Earnestly.
Well, I'm happy to report that I'm accomplishing at least some of that plan.
My diagnosis is as simple as this: I have spring fever.
Instead of writing about hikes and baseball games and art exhibits and short jaunts around California and
even Arizona, I want to just DO all of these things. And I have been. It's a unexpected precipitate of this Last
Year Here project: I'm going places. I'm walking and running. I'm flying. I'm hiking, even.
And I'm having fun. Do you know how gorgeous California can be?
Doing things leads to doing other things and meeting people and doing things and so on and so on, like the
old Breck shampoo commercial.
So that's where I've been. I've been alive.
But I've committed to doing this, admittedly with some diversions from the original list. I'll be back on track
this weekend with a (my first) trip to Big Bear. Girls only, we're renting a cabin and bringing the dogs. I'm sure
I'll have time to write while I'm in the jacuzzi sipping something sinful. Or at least I'll just take notes.
I had a poetry professor, who, quoting someone else, said that the hardest thing about being a writer is
applying posterior to seat-cushion and writing.
I curiously googled that poetry professor... her name is Debora Gregor.
I found this little gem that was published last year in The Atlantic:
On Being Fifty-Something
From thirty to forty, you are distracted
by the five lusts, which I don't need to go into.
From seventy to eighty, you're prone
to a hundred diseases or more.
Who can remember their names,
or the ones of friends who've gone
and died on you? But, from fifty to sixty,
you're free of all that.
Grief doesn't know where you live yet,
only gravity, the body starting to sag
under the weight of memories that,
like extra pounds around the middle,
you can't seem to lose. At the theater, you doze,
your eyelids curtains that refuse to stay raised.
Suddenly, you're the director of a play
about to begin. Time: no time like the present.
Place: a room you think you recognize.
On the desk, a typewriter squats like a toad,
waiting for a tasty word to devour.
The wall's the wrong color, too cheerful,
but its painted muslin quivers:
from backstage someone tries the door,
which refuses to give. How young you were
when such bright shabbiness was yours,
how like a desert full of dream.
*
Years from now I'll look back at this last year here, California, this desert full of dream, and think that very
same thing.
And now, posterior to seat-cushion. I must catch up.
p.s. Thank you to S. and to Wendy for missing this.
Comments
Apr. 23rd, 2008 | 8:31 pm
Man, I had great intentions when I started this:
I have one year left in California and I'll document it. I'll get out and do something new every weekend and
write about it... a sentimental journey-logue. A voyage of vignettes, if you will.
...she thought. Enthusiastically. Earnestly.
Well, I'm happy to report that I'm accomplishing at least some of that plan.
My diagnosis is as simple as this: I have spring fever.
Instead of writing about hikes and baseball games and art exhibits and short jaunts around California and
even Arizona, I want to just DO all of these things. And I have been. It's a unexpected precipitate of this Last
Year Here project: I'm going places. I'm walking and running. I'm flying. I'm hiking, even.
And I'm having fun. Do you know how gorgeous California can be?
Doing things leads to doing other things and meeting people and doing things and so on and so on, like the
old Breck shampoo commercial.
So that's where I've been. I've been alive.
But I've committed to doing this, admittedly with some diversions from the original list. I'll be back on track
this weekend with a (my first) trip to Big Bear. Girls only, we're renting a cabin and bringing the dogs. I'm sure
I'll have time to write while I'm in the jacuzzi sipping something sinful. Or at least I'll just take notes.
I had a poetry professor, who, quoting someone else, said that the hardest thing about being a writer is
applying posterior to seat-cushion and writing.
I curiously googled that poetry professor... her name is Debora Gregor.
I found this little gem that was published last year in The Atlantic:
On Being Fifty-Something
From thirty to forty, you are distracted
by the five lusts, which I don't need to go into.
From seventy to eighty, you're prone
to a hundred diseases or more.
Who can remember their names,
or the ones of friends who've gone
and died on you? But, from fifty to sixty,
you're free of all that.
Grief doesn't know where you live yet,
only gravity, the body starting to sag
under the weight of memories that,
like extra pounds around the middle,
you can't seem to lose. At the theater, you doze,
your eyelids curtains that refuse to stay raised.
Suddenly, you're the director of a play
about to begin. Time: no time like the present.
Place: a room you think you recognize.
On the desk, a typewriter squats like a toad,
waiting for a tasty word to devour.
The wall's the wrong color, too cheerful,
but its painted muslin quivers:
from backstage someone tries the door,
which refuses to give. How young you were
when such bright shabbiness was yours,
how like a desert full of dream.
*
Years from now I'll look back at this last year here, California, this desert full of dream, and think that very
same thing.
And now, posterior to seat-cushion. I must catch up.
p.s. Thank you to S. and to Wendy for missing this.
Comments
