The Problems With Poetry

The problems with poetry begins with a book of it that might be good but you're not sure. You've read it once. You're reading it again. Lying in bed. Winter only a few stanzas away in the night. You're too tired to read the next poem with all the wondering whether the book is good or not. So you open Mark Strand's Man and Camel, a thing of certain and exquisite beauty. So good it solves all problems. You read six poems. Each a gently impossible wave brought to shore by invisible forces, celestial bodies on elliptical paths. Too much wonder. You need to share these poems with someone who would understand enough to simply sigh and smile at finding the divine on these pages, inside these brief poems, between man and camel. But you don't know anyone who reads poetry. Not that way. And even if you did, they'd prefer some other book. Not that Mark Strand stuff, they'd say. You'd tell them how wrong they are, but the camel has spit all over you and the man has climbed up to ride away. A real poet's exit. The kind of poet you see in your sleep, his book of poetry open on your chest rising up and down, as though pulled by some celestial and poetic force, the other book lying next to you filled with questions a mere mortal such as you hopes someday to answer though the poetic part of you knows you never will. Those are the problems with poetry.

Time & Story Changes

"Does anybody really know what time it is? Does anybody really care?"

Daylight Saving Time: the clock on the wall is out of sync with the clock inside me, and I don't like it.

Rather than go on about my dislike of clock changes, I'm thinking about the stories I tell myself. Clock time is, after all, just a shared story on which we agree. It gets us to parties and tells us when to leave.

Yesterday, we had one story about time. Today, we're been handed another. Overnight, there was a break that upset me, knocked me off balance. I was used to the old story and still cling to it. I have that habit.

Three years ago, my story had me playing the character of a terribly depressed teacher. The plot grew darker each day. The theme was of a character stuck, unqualified for any other work. It was a tragedy, that story was.

I thought the story was written for me, that I was a character following along, powerless, perhaps helpless. Stories become more powerful as they go on and I felt too far in to even consider breaking with that story.

Story breaks, even small ones, can be tough stuff. It takes me days to adjust to the time change. Climbing free of the main story of my life, well that seemed downright impossible.

Until it wasn't.

The change in time happened suddenly last night, like the flip of a switch. Two years ago, on a weekend morning in January, words suddenly formed in my mind and I wrote them on a page:

"I will quit my teaching job in June."

A new story began. Just like that.

I had considered quitting many, many, many times; dreamed of, wished for, and even planned it; but the old story rolled over any ideas I had for writing a new one. Two years ago, through some mechanism or good fortune I still don't understand, one simple sentence broke two decades of story in which I had been stuck. Poof, like magic. A new story was begun.

After that, came the slow work of writing the new story. I told my wife. I told my daughters, brother, mother, friends, and colleagues. I began creating a character who no longer believed in being stuck at that terrible school though he didn't yet know what else to become.

Mostly, I accepted the responsibility of writing my own story. That sounds great, but it is also a burden. There are times when it's easier to play along in a story being written for me. But all those stories turn out to be tragic.

I still have stories to break down and rewrite, stories I tell myself about love and family, work and opportunity, health and growth, and on and on. Just noticing that I'm the writer of those stories helps remind me that I can move them and myself in new directions.

The clocks have changed. It's 9:41, not 8:41. I didn't get to decide that one, buy my story continues to roll out onto the page in blue ink from the pen held in my hand and as for the story of what time it is, Chicago was right to wonder why anybody cares.

The Low Bar (again)

It's possible I've written about this before, but originality isn't a bar I need to clear. I've lowered the bar to writing something on my mind that feels important.

I'm trying to be a little healthier. I want to be a lot healthier, like thirty-five pounds lighter and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I keep failing at that.

So the hell with lofty goals.

My "get a little healthier" to-do list this week is:

• Run/Gym 3 times
• Weigh In 3 times
• Walk To Work once There are two checks next to Run/Gym, three at Weigh In, and today I checked Walk To Work. It was just too beautiful this morning not to walk.

If I run or to the gym today, tomorrow, or Sunday, I'll have reached my goals. No big celebration will follow, just a quiet attaboy. These are only low-bar goals.

That's the point.

Change is tough for me. All sorts of things get in the way. Clearing low bars is good. Not great, just good.

And that's good enough.

Shaving Soap (A Zen Parable)

In the bathroom sits a shaving mug into which I swirl a wet brush each day to soap my face before I shave with an old-school safety razor. I could go on and on about why I use such things, and I'm sorely tempted, but instead I'll just describe how the shaving soap seems never ending.

In December, seeming near the bottom of my shaving cup and having found a local shaving soap maker, I bought a puck of new soap. Two things to know about me in these situations: I love that the shaving soap lasts and lasts, but once I buy a new puck, I can't wait until I finish the old one.

There remains just the smallest sliver of soap in the mug. Hardly enough for a lather, yet each morning there's still soap left for the next day. It's kind of driving me crazy because I'm stuck on a couple stories I tell myself.

The first is that I'll finish the soap any day now. The second is that a new soap will change my life.

Both stories are fictions, but that doesn't keep me from acting on them over and over. I'm Charlie Brown with the football, except eventually I really will finish the soap. Charles Schulz never got around to drawing Lucy letting Charlie Brown kick the ball, but I know what happens. No matter how he kicks the ball, Charlie Brown remains Charlie Brown, no happier than he was before, maybe not even as happy.

I'm writing this at night. Soon I'll go to sleep, proud to have figured this much out and developed a bit of wisdom. Maybe I'll sleep well and wake tomorrow refreshed. Then I'll wet the shaving brush and swirl it in the cup, and I know just what I'll be thinking: "Today just has to be the day I finish this soap, start the new one, and begin living a tremendously better life because of it!"

Lucy, Charles Schulz, and maybe Buddha (looking a lot like Snoopy) will all laugh themselves silly watching me stand at the sink, froth all around my mouth, wearing a hopelessly naive smile.