Catherine Egan's Blog - Posts Tagged "katha-pollitt"
All Roads Lead To The End Of The Road
Dear Blog,
Quite frequently the boys and I will be heading to the park or the grocery store or the bus stop or wherever and they will stop to admire some flowers. They can spend a long time admiring flowers. Or maybe there will be an ant crossing the pavement, or a whole anthill bursting up through a crack in the sidewalk, or an inchworm dangling from a tree, or a particularly appealing stick or rock or leaf. Sometimes I’ll see a big ant before they do and I’ll think please-don’t-see-it-please-don’t-see-it-please-don’t-see-it, and then one of them will yell “ANT!” and they’ll both abandon their bikes and go crouch near the ant, watching it scurry and weave and stop and start again. I know supposedly ants are incredibly organized but they always look totally discombobulated and confused to me.
I hear myself saying, “Come on guys, let’s go,” as they are delicately sniffing flowers, and I always think to myself, ha ha, I’m not letting them stop to smell the roses. I try to slow down, I try to enjoy these moments, but it drives me crazy every single day.
I was a fidgety little kid and I am a very restless adult. There is something so impatient in me. It is what makes motherhood so difficult at times. I want to be in motion. I want to be going somewhere. I try, I really do, but I do not want to watch that ant. I do not want to smell those flowers. I want to keep moving.
And I want today to roll into tomorrow, I want it to be next month or next year because I always think the really good times are just around the corner, that things are about to get easier, that I am about to become better at living the life I’ve made for myself. I’m always racing towards the future like it’s all green grass and milk and honey thataway, and you would think at my age that I would know better. I mean, as I hurtle through time, through days and weeks and months and years, of course it would be a good idea to take a break right over here and marvel at the cooperation of ants. My sense of smell is quite poor but even so, it might be a good idea to do as my kids do and give that flower a sniff.
It’s hard to change and I’m never sure how much I want to. But sometimes when I take a breath and stop myself from yelling hurryuphurryuphurryup-stop-marveling-at-nature-and-let’s-get-moving, I think about my favorite poem by Katha Pollitt and its heart-stopping ending. She is talking about sex (and death) and I am just talking about my restless feet and mind (and death), but I think about it sometimes and I wonder when the turnaround will come for me, when I will recognize where it is taking me and will beg my restlessness, please just wait, just wait, there’s no hurry, there are some flowers over there, hey waitaminute, I see an ant!
Mind-Body Problem
by Katha Pollitt
When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself
but for my body. It was so direct
and simple, so rational in its desires,
wanting to be touched the way an otter
loves water, the way a giraffe
wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling
the tender leaves at the tops of the trees. It seems
unfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer
because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled
with certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions
that made me tyrannize and patronize it
like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
English-professor husband ashamed of his wife –
her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
and regional vowels. Perhaps
my body would have liked to make some of our dates,
to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl
with “None of your business!” Perhaps
it would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.
If we had had a more democratic arrangement
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
and Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
instead of the current curious shift of power
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body as though by some
swift and powerful dog. How eagerly
it plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,
as though it knows exactly where we are going.
Yours, ant-indifferently, flower-snubbingly, ever-restlessly,
Catherine
Quite frequently the boys and I will be heading to the park or the grocery store or the bus stop or wherever and they will stop to admire some flowers. They can spend a long time admiring flowers. Or maybe there will be an ant crossing the pavement, or a whole anthill bursting up through a crack in the sidewalk, or an inchworm dangling from a tree, or a particularly appealing stick or rock or leaf. Sometimes I’ll see a big ant before they do and I’ll think please-don’t-see-it-please-don’t-see-it-please-don’t-see-it, and then one of them will yell “ANT!” and they’ll both abandon their bikes and go crouch near the ant, watching it scurry and weave and stop and start again. I know supposedly ants are incredibly organized but they always look totally discombobulated and confused to me.
I hear myself saying, “Come on guys, let’s go,” as they are delicately sniffing flowers, and I always think to myself, ha ha, I’m not letting them stop to smell the roses. I try to slow down, I try to enjoy these moments, but it drives me crazy every single day.
I was a fidgety little kid and I am a very restless adult. There is something so impatient in me. It is what makes motherhood so difficult at times. I want to be in motion. I want to be going somewhere. I try, I really do, but I do not want to watch that ant. I do not want to smell those flowers. I want to keep moving.
And I want today to roll into tomorrow, I want it to be next month or next year because I always think the really good times are just around the corner, that things are about to get easier, that I am about to become better at living the life I’ve made for myself. I’m always racing towards the future like it’s all green grass and milk and honey thataway, and you would think at my age that I would know better. I mean, as I hurtle through time, through days and weeks and months and years, of course it would be a good idea to take a break right over here and marvel at the cooperation of ants. My sense of smell is quite poor but even so, it might be a good idea to do as my kids do and give that flower a sniff.
It’s hard to change and I’m never sure how much I want to. But sometimes when I take a breath and stop myself from yelling hurryuphurryuphurryup-stop-marveling-at-nature-and-let’s-get-moving, I think about my favorite poem by Katha Pollitt and its heart-stopping ending. She is talking about sex (and death) and I am just talking about my restless feet and mind (and death), but I think about it sometimes and I wonder when the turnaround will come for me, when I will recognize where it is taking me and will beg my restlessness, please just wait, just wait, there’s no hurry, there are some flowers over there, hey waitaminute, I see an ant!
Mind-Body Problem
by Katha Pollitt
When I think of my youth I feel sorry not for myself
but for my body. It was so direct
and simple, so rational in its desires,
wanting to be touched the way an otter
loves water, the way a giraffe
wants to amble the edge of the forest, nuzzling
the tender leaves at the tops of the trees. It seems
unfair, somehow, that my body had to suffer
because I, by which I mean my mind, was saddled
with certain unfortunate high-minded romantic notions
that made me tyrannize and patronize it
like a cruel medieval baron, or an ambitious
English-professor husband ashamed of his wife –
her love of sad movies, her budget casseroles
and regional vowels. Perhaps
my body would have liked to make some of our dates,
to come home at four in the morning and answer my scowl
with “None of your business!” Perhaps
it would have liked more presents: silks, mascaras.
If we had had a more democratic arrangement
we might even have come, despite our different backgrounds,
to a grudging respect for each other, like Tony Curtis
and Sidney Poitier fleeing handcuffed together,
instead of the current curious shift of power
in which I find I am being reluctantly
dragged along by my body as though by some
swift and powerful dog. How eagerly
it plunges ahead, not stopping for anything,
as though it knows exactly where we are going.
Yours, ant-indifferently, flower-snubbingly, ever-restlessly,
Catherine
