When I get cocky, think I have a handle on this writing life, I cock it up…like this weekend.
It’s 10:30pm. I’m writing. Nevertheless I’ll be getting up at 8am because I promised M I’d go down to the water with her: sleep oh well.
I was looking at skipping this post-slot entirely, in fact. I didn’t even attempt sabbath-ing since I’m in a beach house with my restless spouse and two other couples. (‘Rents and Team M…is the task harder with relatives? Can’t say.) I didn’t pull myself away to write either yesterday or today…thought about it, but instead chose to sit near, to talk, to listen, to walk and walk. Which is what we do every year at this time…well, and eat. And read, though this year felt like less reading to me than usual. Probably because there was a jazz festival outing and a kayaking excursion: I did say “restless.”
I’m hanging out with M’s Hamil-tome tonight. It’s been an A.Ham weekend, what with this and Friday’s Hamil-doc… scraps of melody and memory tantalizing me. (What? I can’t soak in LMM’s words without having those five-syllable rhymes tug on mine.) Why haven’t I already gone to bed? He notes:
I don’t know how to describe the feeling. [This song] did not exist one moment and then there it was, coursing through my head…. …I got out of the train in Williamsburg and began singing into the voice memo function…. I said hi to my friend, had exactly half a beer, and turned around for another hour-and-a-half train ride…. Music doesn’t discriminate when it arrives either. It’ll get you on the A train if you’re open to it. p91
Poetry is like music that way. But my being open takes writing as well as waiting. So I’m typing away, past my bedtime, spurred into doing these finger exercises. I can’t live like this routinely, but what am I to do when my life is not routine? As it so frequently is? I have a lot of work to do to get a handle on being a writer in retirement-life.
Yeah, yeah, borrowing trouble. Or looking several moves ahead, something I do well.
And if there’s a reason I’m by her side
When so many have tried
Then I’m willing to wait for it.
I’m willing to wait for it.