Maybe you need to write a poem about grace.
Communion
In the subway I had the impulse to kill
and sat and stared straight ahead
to avoid the eyes of strangers
who might read my dread
and when finally I had the courage
to shift my gaze from the poster above
I saw to my dismay the eyes of others
turning away.
David Ignatow
-----
I came across this poem last night in a fit of word-hunger. It reminds me of some of my favorite lines from a book I can never remember: "I feel like such a fake. I've been spending all of this time putting my life back together, and no one has even noticed."
I've been thinking lately about cycles of self-doubt and the renewal of confidence that eventually comes. Even those of us at our most depressed can, hopefully, attest to bright spots among the shadowy spaces of existence. For myself, I seem to live my life in spurts of pause and action, pause and action. I'm mostly tired all of the time when I am alone. But with others added to the mix, SPRING!, JUMP!, CLANG!, BASH! (insert cool Batman action words here), I come alive and many have commented on the unprecedented level of energy I can carry. This is one of my constant conundrums--how can I take this energy that I so create in frenzies of sociality and apply it to myself? I'd like to bottle it up, put it in a boiler, melt the result, and put it in a liqui-gel capsule.
I don't know if I have a point (one of my many deficiencies, yes, I know), but I do know that this morning waking up before 7am to go to a class across town made me feel like my life is finally coming together. For really no reason at all. I took a class last semester on my lunch break. So what if this time around the class is in the morning before work? For some reason this makes me feel together, and at this intersection, that is enough. I feel like the poem: by the time I have composed myself, no one is watching anymore. Why can't others watch us in our times of composure? Why is anxiety attractive?
It doesn't really matter, because by the time I had bought my textbook after class my life was in shambles again.
In the subway I had the impulse to kill
and sat and stared straight ahead
to avoid the eyes of strangers
who might read my dread
and when finally I had the courage
to shift my gaze from the poster above
I saw to my dismay the eyes of others
turning away.
David Ignatow
-----
I came across this poem last night in a fit of word-hunger. It reminds me of some of my favorite lines from a book I can never remember: "I feel like such a fake. I've been spending all of this time putting my life back together, and no one has even noticed."
I've been thinking lately about cycles of self-doubt and the renewal of confidence that eventually comes. Even those of us at our most depressed can, hopefully, attest to bright spots among the shadowy spaces of existence. For myself, I seem to live my life in spurts of pause and action, pause and action. I'm mostly tired all of the time when I am alone. But with others added to the mix, SPRING!, JUMP!, CLANG!, BASH! (insert cool Batman action words here), I come alive and many have commented on the unprecedented level of energy I can carry. This is one of my constant conundrums--how can I take this energy that I so create in frenzies of sociality and apply it to myself? I'd like to bottle it up, put it in a boiler, melt the result, and put it in a liqui-gel capsule.
I don't know if I have a point (one of my many deficiencies, yes, I know), but I do know that this morning waking up before 7am to go to a class across town made me feel like my life is finally coming together. For really no reason at all. I took a class last semester on my lunch break. So what if this time around the class is in the morning before work? For some reason this makes me feel together, and at this intersection, that is enough. I feel like the poem: by the time I have composed myself, no one is watching anymore. Why can't others watch us in our times of composure? Why is anxiety attractive?
It doesn't really matter, because by the time I had bought my textbook after class my life was in shambles again.
posted by eekbeat | 12:27 PM
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