Incoherent, but thoughts nonetheless.
Nothing eloquent to say today, New York has been a hard place to write. I have a stack of unfinished letters under my desk, half baked thoughts of so little substance there’s not much to sink your teeth into. I’m really only writing this because the last few days have been the first in a long time I sense a rekindling of my curiosity. I have a few embarrassing attempts of poetry between my Notes app and the little journal I carry around with me that’s been neglected in the last four months. The bitter winter reminiscent of my Chicago days has gentled into spring, cherry trees clutching their grand bouquets of blossoms. ‘How much more can I give you?’ the trees said to me this morning, spilling its flowers over the fence and onto the pavement.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Mary Oliver’s poem Peonies. Still trying to understand what about it captivates me, if it’s the flowers personified or the ants painted as tiny garden menaces or just the phrase “honeyed heaviness”. Regardless, it’s a poem I’ve been living in- breathing in the sweet air of the dew—laden grass crushed under my feet, moving with the peonies in the breeze, cherishing a humble and silky life before being hurled back onto a street side bench in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
I’m hoping this spring warmth will thaw my curiosity. It’s been interesting to see how the more decisions there are to make in a day the less time there is to just observe what’s happening in the life of the mind. I gave up music for Lent, and those in-between, transitional moments of life I usually live in a soundtrack became sweet moments of acute observation, this new nursery for new ideas and reconsiderations. I think I’m coming to realize that meaning and curiosity aren’t things we’re really entitled to being handed on a silver platter. That’s not to say that meaning doesn’t exist, I think I just wonder if there’s this great opportunity to swim around in the potential of more meaning than we think we can afford to imagine. I don’t know if I’m meant to be in New York City, but I’m wondering if it’s even about that at all. Does meaning exist in being here simply because I’m existing here?
“Come and create,” you’re beckoned, “come jump into this sandbox of meaning and build yourself a life of play and poetry.”
Two things I’m reconsidering: enjoyment, and disappointment. My, how bad I am at both. To be elaborated on another day. Until then, this is a small offering of words just to remind myself that when all is said and done, there is still writing as your life’s companion chronicling the movement of winters to springs. Maybe none of this makes much sense, but it’s words on a page. And that’s a start for now.
