Dammit Stop and Smell the Roses!

I'd been hearing this advice from various quarters (The Joy of Living, John, my Saturday poetry workshop even gave us homework to observe daily the world around us) yet yesterday I could still be walking downtown completely self-absorbed. Until this.

the noisy set ... the martyrs call the world

Towards the end of our session, John miraculously pulled these lines out of his mind, recalled from his college days, about the labor of poetry:

Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’

We were talking about how writing poetry makes me happy. When I'm making a poem, I allow myself to be free of judgment, of yardsticks, of rules of right and wrong.

With poetry, I am completely happy if in one day I only improve a poem by 1 word. Or, quoting Oscar Wilde, "I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

With poetry, I don’t have expectations or place demands on myself for success. I know there is no money. I’m not looking for acclaim. Yes, I’m happy to workshop a poem ... happy to hear what readers think … but that criticism doesn't feel like I’m being scolded by the “noisy set of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen, the martyrs call the world.”  Or like feeling scolded by my parents if I get something wrong.

With poetry, autobiography and fiction become irrelevant. Truth doesn't fit neatly between the gold-leafed pages of a bible.

With poetry, life is slow, no clock is ticking. With poetry, I can spend time watching leaves move branches around.

There is something about writing a poem that is the same as being around children. It is, in part, that when doing both I don't feel judged.

So I had a good cry. It was about Jack and Libby of course, And how I feel like a good daddy when I pick up my four year old friend. He asked if I could not find a way to make a relationship with someone, the way I would make a poem.

I have to get over feeling judged by the world, feeling guilty for letting people, friends, lovers … down … for not living up to the task of life.

John started our session by quoting a friend. The friend's last words were that he’d been listening to people all his life. John interpreted that to mean, listening to the friend's very demanding mother. My mother was demanding. And as I type this I realize she wasn’t just demanding of me, I watched her, all the time, be demanding of her husband … defining in part the father and soulmate I should become. I could not live up to her measure of being a good man. I tried. I tried so hard. Came so close. Denied so much in reaching for that. (My mother would disagree. She would say I had. I was a good man. She would console me, and I wouldn't hear her.)

So here’s Yeats poem on poetry, and the fall of man that seems to get in the way (makes hard work of) love.

Adam's Curse
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

We sat together at one summer’s end,
That beautiful mild woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought,
Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
For to articulate sweet sounds together
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen
The martyrs call the world.’
                                          And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There’s many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, ‘To be born woman is to know—
Although they do not talk of it at school—
That we must labour to be beautiful.’
I said, ‘It’s certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam’s fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precedents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough.’
We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time’s waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.
I had a thought for no one’s but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we’d grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

memorize a poem homework

I committed to Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke's:

Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: from here there is no place
that does not see you. You much change your life.

Short talk on happiness

According to Yongey Mingyur, who quotes other Rinpoches authoritatively, emptiness is absolute and pregnant with infinite possibilities. He writes that happiness is possibility. That achieving nothing, ever, even a single line of poetry, makes you happy.

(Thanks to Anne Carson & Sierra Nelson & Candy Shue.)

A first draft

the happiness project

my tears run all over the linoleum floor

they spill over thresholds and window sills

and seep through cracks to the basement below

all griefs boiling

dissolving one into another

fire burn cauldron bubble

over heat stainless steel

unbonds

a bicycle bell,
chrome grill and trim find a sky blue cutlass to accessorize.

iron? thumping the line flat with sweet smelling starch.

and carbon, graphite--this poem.

a break-up done well, does that.

stainless steel doesn’t crack, cannot grow.

so how?

is it time passing?

is it a project? filling your life with friends and hiking and sailing lessons?

is it exercise and a rose garden?

daily meditation? a season of therapy?

is it joining okcupid

answering questions

messaging strangers

then coffee chemistry and falling in love

again?

tasting her breath? wine on her lips? the salt inside her thigh?

i think it is space

only

the possibility

between diffused atoms

a stance of mere willingness

(Prompted by the rune Inguz and Richard Ford's alloyed with loss.)

CBT

I had a good session with John on Tuesday. 2 good cries about Jack. "You were happy when you were with Jack. You loved Jack."

I am the main character in the Depression or Grief movie playing inside my head. When the main character is outside me, my child or my date, or an object like a soccer ball which I can step up and intercept, those movies are happy (or more likely to be happy I assume).

When I'm the main character, the movie is narcissistic, overflowing with self-consciousness.

John doesn't have a problem with my writing, per se, if I'm describing something outside me. But he is concerned when I write about myself. (Which is pretty damning since I write poetry and memoir. And these blog posts.)

I'm feeling enough, John said, I need to think my way out of the feelings--hence Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. By examining my thoughts, stop the movie (the feelings) before it starts.

This is where John's advice touches something new. I always thought my problem was I wasn't emotional enough. Whether I suppressing emotions, absorbing emotions, not expressing my emotions ... for the last few years I thought my work was emotional. I'm not sure John is contradicting this, but he says start with my thoughts. Notice my depressive pattern. When I start beating myself up, second guessing all the decisions I made with L, or start directing some anger at L, I should look at my thought and question it. What data do I have to support the thought? John used the word "data."

It seems consistent with mindfulness meditation. Stepping back from my thoughts and seeing where they come from.

Another tangent to our conversation was ... if something goes wrong, I fall back on my "good guy defense." I am a good person because I'm a gentleman, a boy scout. I follow the rules. I take out the trash. I pay my debts. I give up my seat on the bus. Believing I'm good, I battle the depression, the bad thoughts & feelings. I can hide there, safe, within the rules.

The Writing Part

Part of this Happiness Project is writing. I started that this morning. I have a Prologue and a Chapter 1 completely in mind--they could almost write themselves.

Prologue -- How did I get here? I've had agency. I've made the decisions.

I left my friends, my tennis and soccer buddies in New Jersey and moved to Seattle. I left a vibrant poetry scene in New York (and New Jersey--Princeton, Drew, Patterson). I chose a writer's life of solitude. I don't have a job--so I miss that social outlet and income. I live on the portion of my pension that survived the divorce. I moved 3000 miles away from my daughter. I recently broke off a relationship with a wonderful woman and am still deeply grieving Jack. Sackcloth and ashes. A life of denial.

Chapter 1 -- Denouement. I finally understand what "falling action" means. If the climax was the break-up, the denouement was the swarm of emotions engulfing me as I began to realize what I had done, what I had lost. I'd been merely surviving. I wasn't trying to make a life together with L. What doesn't grow, dies. I arrogantly perform euthanasia.

But I'm stuck. I'm full of doubts--with not a a single original one among them.

• In writing about myself, I write about others. I don't want to. I don't want to create caricatures. I don't want to "use" my friends.
• I doubt my skill. Can I write a description? Could I describe L to you?
• Is it fair to anyone new I meet, that they might provide content for this story?
• Is it fair to me? Can I have any hope of success in my project, if I'm keeping my writerly remove from the action?
• Is my recovery story of  any interest to anyone?

Moving forward is the thing. I have to just write. The goal here is to be happy--not to produce a book. I need a project. To be happy, I have to be working towards something. Happiness comes from pleasure but also from meaning and accomplishment. If at the end, the project doesn't work as a book. Fine. Maybe even a relief.

Chapter 1 is too fresh and painful. When I was writing Dear Denise, I constantly heard the advice that I was too close to the subject. "Maybe it would be better, Bill, if you let time pass and gain perspective." So I could choose to be kind to myself, and put this chapter aside. Some would argue it would make for a better book. But what if Chapter 1 part of the work I need to do? What if I can't get to happy unless I finish Chapter 1? I can rewrite later with perspective.

PS. I reviewed this post with my therapist John. I wanted to make sure I was respectful. His reaction was that the post was fine though he didn't understand this world of social media and blogging ... in fact it repelled him. He had concerns, though, about my abstracted, writerly self. That perhaps adopting a writer's personae got in the way of truly meeting people--being in the moment with them. Maybe it was the same thing Grace was saying in Dear Denise, when she said that my letters to Denise were a shield.

This is an old familiar concern of mine. I told John that he was finally getting me.

Our relationship is strong and I trust him. Maybe he is able, now, to help.