When I said the word it felt like a live fish in my mouth, like I’d never heard it, never knew what it meant, like maybe I never said it before. How could that word be about me? It blasted my ear like a tumble from a front loader.
So today, when “run away” flashes though my mind, it’s not just fear of the creative, it’s not just the special vulnerability of having to create art and knowing it just might be shit. No, I’ve always hoped someone would save me from the moment, the task, the possibility of foolishness, uselessness or failure.
You’ve been standing in this rich sculpture garden for years. Ruth–what do you have you to say for yourself? You’re just now noticing? Just getting the idea? Well of course, Sister, daughter, Mother, come along then. I don’t know what we’ve been waiting for but now is always the right time.
And you, Mom? You knew that loneliness at such an early age. But you’ve never complained about it, not when Grandma was sick, not when you were nursing Dad, or after he died, or when your friends started to move away to go live with their children. Even now you won’t let the word take hold in the room.
Who knew that asphalt could be a tender touch,
that this patient, old-friend town of mine
would roll out padding and take me easy,
She screams out ”Won’t someone please shoot this dog? Please, if I circle back around the block one more time, will you please have your gun ready and try to shoot the dog? Shoot the damn dog and don’t shoot me? Please.”
Since when do I collect anxiety in my thighs, my knees, my buttocks and calves?
It’s sorta like if a tree falls in the forest and your name comes thundering out of the ground, shaking the birds and the worms and the little critters in the soil. Was it there a minute before? Prob’ly not. When did it get there—when the tree fell or in my case, when she felt a little winsome.
All spice all the time. Ordered by the slick magazine-version of my life . A surface of long restless hours in torpid poses on white silk, perfect boredom pouting my lips, airy laughter and animated wineglass-clink? Bones long for earth, floors, mattresses, to hold them up. They lay heavy with morning Should-for-me brain scrubs them [...]
I’m no longer young enough to try everything, but I’m old enough to try anything. I’m probably allergic to knitting, mysteries, gardening and organized fun. I’m too old and too young for some things anymore: too old to pretend I like those things I really don’t; too young to stop trying new things, even if they might not work for me.