A little fidgety, maybe prone to loud swallowing and leaving drink rings on your coffee table--
but back nonetheless. It's time. I haven't thought about this space but cursorily in ages, although I'm still reading blogs or at least glancing at them kind of a lot. And then I checked in on the multi-talented, multi-lovely Ellen Frances and saw my name linked and felt sort of sheepish, like to follow the link would be akin to looking at old yearbooks or something similarly uncomfortable and not-there-yet.
The last year has been eventful. I finished my book. I got my PhD. I had my baby amidst all of this, and had all of this amidst her. It was a time of wild output and inner, inward excavation and a sort of slumbering away from the world.
Now I have been put in the world again and everything is eminently rusted and creaky on one hand but on the other, the hinges are all different so maybe not, maybe this is just how they sound. I'm trying to find a home for the book and trying to write, and we're also trying to sell our home and trying to move (not far, just closer to town), so it feels a bit like I am either standing in one place and tap-dancing very quickly, or else covering too much ground with tiny, tiny steps. It is the kind of inertia that results from not-being-able-to-move-on-until. I'm trying to push on it, to make it not-so, and I'm wishing very fervently for one thing to tip and shift and galvanize the rest, repeating a line--"Something Beautiful is Going to Happen"--from one of my very favorite Sabrina poems, and I'm wondering every day if, despite how busy I look and even feel, I am actually quite utterly lazy. I think I am. I wish I could say that book #2 is tumbling outward, and that oh my, when baby naps it's like a desperate rush of creative necessity splattering violently onto the page, but it's not.
Now I will go to bed and think about things before falling asleep that will seem so feasible, so ripe for the doing, but tomorrow I bet I will not do them, because I will be doing other things.
I'm not melancholy, though it might sound that way. I'm happy and filled with longing.
The last year has been eventful. I finished my book. I got my PhD. I had my baby amidst all of this, and had all of this amidst her. It was a time of wild output and inner, inward excavation and a sort of slumbering away from the world.
Now I have been put in the world again and everything is eminently rusted and creaky on one hand but on the other, the hinges are all different so maybe not, maybe this is just how they sound. I'm trying to find a home for the book and trying to write, and we're also trying to sell our home and trying to move (not far, just closer to town), so it feels a bit like I am either standing in one place and tap-dancing very quickly, or else covering too much ground with tiny, tiny steps. It is the kind of inertia that results from not-being-able-to-move-on-until. I'm trying to push on it, to make it not-so, and I'm wishing very fervently for one thing to tip and shift and galvanize the rest, repeating a line--"Something Beautiful is Going to Happen"--from one of my very favorite Sabrina poems, and I'm wondering every day if, despite how busy I look and even feel, I am actually quite utterly lazy. I think I am. I wish I could say that book #2 is tumbling outward, and that oh my, when baby naps it's like a desperate rush of creative necessity splattering violently onto the page, but it's not.
Now I will go to bed and think about things before falling asleep that will seem so feasible, so ripe for the doing, but tomorrow I bet I will not do them, because I will be doing other things.
I'm not melancholy, though it might sound that way. I'm happy and filled with longing.
2 Comments:
It must be exciting to have a finished book! I hope it finds a home too!
thank you, ellen. and thanks for the prompt (unwitting, but still) to get blogging again. it's fun in here.
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