Silent as a…

Mouse? No. Mice are quite loud. They scamper and click their way through this world. They nip at the corner of the cereal box. When you’re alone at home, listening, this sound can feel as noisy as the pound of a sledgehammer.

If you listen well, not listen hard, as the act tends to be called, but listen open, everything makes sound. Even silence, or the absence of sound, can thrum in your ears with energy. My silence these past days has been loud, churning with thought and energy. I’d say I’ve been silent as a turtle. Thinking. Silent as a clock, ticking. Silent as a snake, waiting.

Some of you are aware of what occurred after my last post— a ripple of incidents, one leading to the next like a Rube Goldberg machine. I edited comments and removed the poem link because I was notified by a dear reader to a strongly worded comment on the blog I linked to. The poet commented to express annoyance that his work was posted entirely and without permission. I am now communicating with the poet and actually quite fond of him;  but this series of events got me thinking (and worrying) that all this time I’ve been sharing something which might not be mine to share: the work of others.

I believed that promoting the work of writers I adore and “spreading the gospel” of poetry is a good thing. I believed that if someone falls in love with a poem or if a single book of poetry is sold because of a poem I’ve linked to here, I’ve done a good job. I believed I was respecting the work of poets I admire by linking to poems rather than posting the entire poem. I don’t receive any benefit from sharing poems other than the joy of passing on love. Some poets might even appreciate it. But the smidge of guilt I felt upon reading the poet’s comment regarding reprint permission niggles at me, and I can’t deny the feeling of heartburn and dread.  I’m tangled up wondering what the right, true thing to do is, if such a thing as “right” and “true” exists.

I wonder what Rilke or Rumi would say about this.

The truth is I’m not really sure where to go from here. Should I cease posting links to the work of others? Am I taking something that doesn’t belong to me and giving it away? I love poetry. It sits inside of me, at the core of who I am, and I want to share it. Because poetry is generally not a commercial endeavor nor a commercial success, the rights, work, and meager profits of poets must be carefully protected. But for those very same reasons, successful work should be shared and celebrated. So I’m in a bit of a moral quandary.

My heart has a thumbtack in it right now: no poem today. I may have reached the end of lizislifelines in its current incarnation. Perhaps one day I’ll be able to post a link to a published poem of mine. Until then, or until my heart knows where to go, I’ll sit in silence and wait. Thoughts, ideas, and suggestions are welcome.

All creation holds its breath, listening within me, because, to hear you, I keep silent. -Rainer Maria Rilke

Joie de vivre.

When I left the movie theater on Sunday, I felt like a flute of champagne: fizzed, giddy, and ready to spill. I’d been given a few unexpected hours to myself– my in-laws were in town and S took his parents and the angel to see our local, underwhelming sights (mall, beach). I was glad for those hours because it was an opportunity to get Stuff done: errands, a scroll-length grocery list, laundry, and a closet patiently waiting for over a year to be cleaned.

I drove to the library and returned a few books. Item number 1, check. Then I had a sudden crazy thought: I don’t want to spend my day doing errands. I don’t want to spend my day trying to keep life neat, orderly, and manageable for us so I can say at the end of the day look how much I got done…my place at our table is justified. I wanted to throw the list out the window and go to the movies. And that’s exactly what I did.

The movie I selected was Midnight in Paris and I relished every second. A struggling writer! In Paris! Exhibiting antisocial tendencies! Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, T.S. Elliott all in one movie? Yes. Forgive my momentary lapse into Siskel and Ebertland, but it was a rollicking, frolicking, delightful few hours. So cheerful was the mood in the theater that when the woman sitting a few seats away from me creeped by to get to the restroom, she touched my knee as she passed and we shared a conspiratorial grin. Gertrude Stein, played by Kathy Bates, reminds us that the job of an artist is to help people forget their mortality. If this is true, then Woody Allen is back in my good graces because less than ten minutes into the film, I’d completely forgotten my tremor and angst. Thank you, Woody, for a job well done; for the giggles, chuckles, and grins. Thanks for the writing advice, the argument against nostalgia, and Owen Wilson’s nose.

Until yesterday, I’d never tossed a carefully written To-Do list out the window (well, actually, I tucked it in my purse for later). I had never brushed the crumbs of responsibility off my hands with such recklessness. I had never, in all my life, gone to see a movie in the theater by myself. The grocery store will wait! I cried, pounding the steering wheel with a gleeful fist. It felt good to be wild, but I was also a bit disturbed by how timid my idea of carefree abandon has become: popcorn and diet coke at a matinee.

I need to shake things up a bit, to unfurl that tightly coiled devotion to domestic order. I need to pour the thick finger-licking sauce of insouciance on the structure of my days. Maybe I’ll leave the beds unmade one of these days, even if the thought of disheveled beds is simultaneously unsettling and thrilling. Maybe I’ll swizzle-stick the evening by serving dinner at the wild and wacky hour of 8 p.m. I know; this is crazy talk and I should restrain myself before the situation gets out of control. But it might be too late to stop the tornado…I sense a laundry strike, red hair, and a tattoo coming on.

 Which act of daring/abandon/irresponsibility have you recently committed? Which small act of liberation will set you free this summer?

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Bukowski is a model citizen when learning how to track mudprints through tidy and proper days.

Today’s Poem: (click link to read entirely)

My Doom Smiles at Me by Charles Bukowski

there’s no other way:

8 or 10 poems a

night.

in the sink

behind me are dishes…

Letting freaky out to play.

Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free. – Leonard Cohen

Today, I’m bowing my head for a moment in reverence to wilderness.

In reverence to the wild places we travel to: the soothing wilds of the natural world that Wendell Berry writes about in his poem below, and the frighteningly dark, caved wilderness of our own hearts.

In reverence to the little fact that the word free lives inside the word freaky.

In reverence to gulping freedom down like water from the coldest spring.

In reverence to the thirst that makes us want to gulp that water down.

In reverence to the chains that bind us, and the act of figuring out how to remove them one at a time, one by one by one.

In reverence to doing whatever must be done to arrive at freedom, and then doing it again and again and again because freedom is a place you must continually figure out how to get to.

In reverence to rocking that inner freak all the way to freedom’s door. To stand there, even for a brief moment, is bliss.

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Today’s Poem: (click on link to read poem in its entirety)

The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound…