Drew Myron's Blog, page 30
November 2, 2017
Twist of fact and wish
Once I wrote a letter that lasted weeks.
Once I wrote a letter that did not end.
This is the field, or a river, a wide sky expecting rain.
This is fresh paper, without blemish, without fear.
This is the letter turned to you, to god, to myself. Signed, sealed, sent to an undeliverable address. This is me hiding.
___
He wrote a book of poems to his dead wife. I wondered if this was mastery or manipulation. But what poem isn't a twist of fact and wish? A rewrite of life as if facts were nails or hammers, something solid like a tool, or a fastener to truth that hangs useless until put to purpose.
____
Because something loosens and stirs, I keep writing, though the words make no sense, though I do not direct the message, do not even have a message. I keep the pen moving, the way my lips move in prayer, the way my mother pleads with me to keep moving, keep doing the work.
The way even now I do not know if she said those words or I wanted her to offer the kind of encouragement we could never seem to say aloud.
____
When nothing moves in me, my hand moves quickly across the page, with some sort of faith that life is more —and less — than now now now.
The here is the after, the after is here, on this page, in my hand, writing to you.
____
This is why I pray with just one word, whispered, begged, again and again: please.
October 11, 2017
Wonder, defiance, a bath
[image error] Joy is an act of defiance.
— Bono
The New York Times
1.
Because the world is too much, the outlook so grim. Because my heart hurts and my body is burden. Because there is much breaking and the mending is so slow. Because of this, joy is a struggle but also a balm.
2.
When I meet with a friend, our time is filled with wine and laughter. It's not that I'm happy, she says, but that if I don't laugh I'll cry.
We're relieved to have found an envelope of safety where laughter buffers despair.
3.
At the nursing home the man sings What a Wonderful World, and Betty cries.
Real tears, full tears that she wipes away with the full of her hand, then looks around with a half-smile, embarrassed. She's not alone; a lump has gathered in my throat too.
I see skies of blue and clouds of white
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
The singer is a one-man-band but I’m moved nonetheless. We're sitting in a dining room turned temporary concert hall, and suddenly I’m so damn sad. When I look about the room — the vacant stares and blank faces —I wonder the point: Why the charade of fun and light, of music and good times? So many of these folks are in pain, some of them out-of-mind, seemingly numb and distant.
And yet, there’s Betty with a sad smile, the music moving her to someplace deep and meaningful. And when I look closer, Helen, sitting next to her, is gazing at Betty with a sort of empathy I’d never seen. And a few wheelchairs away Rose is swaying gently in her chair.
Though we are alone and lost in ourselves, music is the powerful nudge, stirring mind and memory to tell us we are here, now, that we are loved, and that we have loved too.
. . . and I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
4.
Because of this, I run water for a bath, slip into lavender and eucalyptus, and gratefully wash the weary away.
* as always, names are changed.
September 17, 2017
In a weary world, why write?
Reality has so much
good and bad
you have to
shape it to
live in it.
Answer to the question, "Why write?" in a conversation at The Wild Pleasures of Writing, a writing workshop in Parkdale, Oregon in September 2017.
September 12, 2017
Found!
Who will save this town?
The examined life is
everyday reimagined.
What we cannot see is
the new normal, designed
for a more spirited drive.
When remaking change
keep it loose, be moved.
Artifice is so unpretty.
Our most important mark
is this wild kingdom.
— Drew Myron
Lost, found, reconfigured. When words don't flow, I dip into those already composed. This poem is created entirely from headlines and adlines in the latest The New York Times Style Magazine. I've added is and a when for transitional purposes.
I like to play with words, and found poems reduce the pressure to write "good." Sometimes the path to good is a road near borrow (with attribution).
Want more? Check out these excellent visual found poems:
• Sarah J. Sloat - poems in the pages of Misery, a novel
• Judy Kleinberg - cut-n-paste poems
• Mary Ruefle - a master of visual poetry
• Austin Kleon - king of the blackout poem
See some of my found poems:
• See Me
September 7, 2017
Not Thankful Thursday
It's Thursday. I should be thankful.
This is the one day each week (I can only muster one?) in which I gather up my gratitudes and express appreciation for people, places, things and more.
But I'm not feeling generous.
The West is on fire. The East is in floods. An old man is deporting children. And I haven't written a good poem in months. To say I'm cranky indicates a temporary state. Let's just give up the look-on-the-bright-side banter.
For years I've believed wholly, deeply, not-quite-religiously in the power of positive thinking. What you focus on becomes. What you resist, persists. I really do believe that gratitude is a powerful and valuable way to pivot from despair to repair to release to rejoice. Sounds corny, I know. But the weekly pause for gratitude helps to counter my small self and petty complaints, along with all the big world aches that crush the spirit. Until now, when the big and small overwhelm my ability to "find the good."
Turns out, I'm not alone. Writer and comedian Liz Brown says she was saved by the Ingratitude List.
"Gratitude lists didn't help me one bit. Writing them was a practice that drove me deeper into shame and self-loathing when I was already in a very dark place," she writes. "Gratitude lists imply that those of us who are in pain are choosing misery and just aren't working hard enough and that if we just think happy thoughts we'll float up above our problems like the kids in Peter Pan."
Ron Lubke, writing for the Dallas News, has been called "entertainingly grumpy" in his disdain for the gratitude list. Among the many things he's not thankful for are "bathroom stall talkers. I just want to play Yahtzee on my phone in peace."
Today, I am thankful for my bathtub. That's all I got.
It's Not Thankful Thursday, how are you?
September 3, 2017
Winner!
[image error]Dear Readers, Writers, Thinkers, Feelers.
A name has been chosen (eyes closed, hand-picked) and the winner of the book giveaway is . . . Lisa Carnochan!
As always, thank you for reading this blog and taking the time to respond & interact. While we couldn't all win the drawing, I urge you to find, borrow, or buy this book. It's that good.
Already read it? Consider these other books I've found helpful:
• A Bittersweet Season: Caring For Our Aging Parents — and Ourselves
by Jane Gross
• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gwande
• God's Hotel: A Doctor, A Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine by Victoria Sweet
• Bettyville: A Memoir by George Hodgman
• Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir by Roz Chast
And now, your turn: What books on the topic — end-of-life, aging, slow medicine — do you recommend?
August 27, 2017
Love that line! Win this book!
Dying is hard on the dying.
Death is hard on the living.
Blending medical history with personal story, writer Katy Butler explores Slow Medicine — a new, yet ancient, way to embrace dying and death. She masterfully integrates a reporter’s skill with a daughter's love and a poet's heart to share the story of her parents' long illnesses and eventual deaths.
Of course we don’t want to die. We don’t want to say goodbye to those we love. We certainly don’t want to be the one who says to a doctor, “Enough.” In this we are not alone. . . Perhaps if we find ways to make the pathway to natural death sacred and familiar again, we will recover the courage to face our deaths. If we don’t, technological medicine at the end of life will continue to collude with our fear and ignorance and profit from it. Unless we create new rites of passage to help prepare for death long before it comes, we will remain vulnerable to the commercial exploitation of our fears and to the implied promise that death can forever be postponed.
In the last few years, by chance and later by pursuit, I've read many books in what is known as the "End of Life" genre. The most compelling I've found are Being Mortal and God's Hotel.
Published in 2013, Knocking on Heaven's Door is now at the top of my list. Written with such skill and heart, I'm baffled this book has not received the attention it deserves. But I'm grateful to have found a handbook that reflects my heart and hope.
[image error]In fact, I like this book so much I'm giving it away! No tricks or gimmicks. Just provide your name and contact email in the comment section (for blog readers) or by email (for blog-by-email readers).
I'll close my eyes and draw one lucky name on Sunday, September 3, 2017.
August 15, 2017
Thankful Tuesday because we need it now!
[image error]
It's not even Thursday but this week has been so ugly I'm countering with a gratitude surge. If every day offers an opportunity for thankfulness, let's make it happen now.
Please join me for Thankful Thursday on Tuesday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more.
1.
As the first chords play, before the singer offers a single word, my face is wet. I'm in an audience of 25 elderly people, and I'm the one crying.
Not Jane who can't hear. Not Shirley who can't talk, not even Martin who is tenderhearted. They are dry-eyed. But me, the happy event organizer, is sitting among wheelchairs, dementia, and diapers, biting back tears.
I turn to Dorothy, who looks at me with fright and confusion. Her eyes are wide and searching so I tuck a blanket around her and gently rub her arm. We hold hands. She loosens and breathes and in a tone that suggests this is a party and she is the host, says "I'm so glad you came."
2.
The next day, I take a long drive — to lose (and find) myself in an abandoned school, a broken down store, an endless road. I'm driving not to find what I lack but to remember what I have: wide spaces, big sky, long lonely stretches. I travel a bumpy gravel road that does, finally, meet solid ground. In everything, metaphor and message.
3.
Today, because I'm waiting for the dentist, I count the minutes with agitation. The drill is not on, the dentist has not even appeared, and still I'm near tears because in my fatigue with the world this tooth feels like our collective rot. I'm wearing all the aches, and just want it to stop.
4.
First, the heat of an unusual summer. Then the smoke and haze of unusual fires. Nothing is usual. The weather is erratic, the sun and moon are in a dance toward darkness, and something or other is in retrograde. It seems we're all spinning, spitting, hurting.
And in this mess, the dentist brings me toothpaste instead of a drill. I find my way home to a soft bed and a good nap. And Dorothy and I sing quietly together.
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin' ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
- from Landslide, by Stevie Nicks / Fleetwood Mac
And you, dear one, what are you thankful for today?
August 6, 2017
Looking for Grief (in all the wrong places)
It started with just three lines:
Separation
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
Last year I made a file and called it "poems-grief."
Now, as the file grows, I don't know if this brings comfort or alarm. Each addition feels like a weed multiplying in a once-tidy garden. There is too much sadness, too much loss, and not enough blooms.
With each sickness, with each death, I searched for comfort in poems. I wanted someone to know my grief, to speak the words I could not find, to carry my heart in words.
Much to my surprise, it was difficult to find good poems. I searched for books specifically on grief, and while there were plenty of collections none seemed for me. And I searched online endlessly, and again there were plenty of poems but nothing that wrapped me in comfort.
Admittedly, my criteria was strict:
No sappy or sentimental poems.
No happy endings.
No predictable poems.
No rhyming (which often feels forced)
No hippy-dippy, in-a-better-place, happened-for-a-reason poems.
No old poems, of a "classic" era with thee and thou and dost
And, oh, no more Mary Oliver.
(Yes, yes, I like Mary. We all like Mary. She's good and prolific and written many good poems that I have loved and shared. But she is also sometimes too known and rote, too nature-is-inside-us predictable).
Instead, I want real expressions of grief's relentless presence, its weight and fear. I want a way in, but not too much, and a way out, but not too quickly. I want someone to get it.
And so my hunting and gathering increased and my collection grew with many good poems. But it was only a few months ago that I found one that really spoke to me. And once found, I sent it everywhere. Copies and copies were shared with friends who had lost a mother, a father, a pet. And colleagues who grieved an aunt, a brother, a son.
This week, I read the poem over and over to myself, for myself. I whisper the lines like prayer, and write them down, word for word copied to paper, as if the ink could bleed itself into my heart to form a pulse I would recognize as my own.
Blessing for the Brokenhearted
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
— Henry David Thoreau
Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.
Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.
Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this —
as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,
as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,
as if it trusts that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.
— Jan Richardson
from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief
July 18, 2017
No More Narrative
By Matt Groening
At a writing workshop years ago, the instructor provided a list of words to avoid. The list was lengthy and I remember just one: lavender.
I loved lavender. The plant, the smell, the emotional elegance of its earthiness. I wanted to ladle lavender into every poem.
But she was right. Lavender is too expected. Lavender is overused. As much as I adore lavender — the plant and the word — I left it for better, less expected, words.
_____
Remember when green was used in every-other-sentence as a signifier for good and environmental, and then was replaced with sustainable. And then we suffered a cliche hangover and spoke in plain language that said what we meant?
Okay that last part didn't happen. We may have momentarily come to our senses, only to replace story with narrative and talk with dialogue (it's not a verb!).
Here's a tip: Using bigger words doesn't work; it just makes you bloated and big-headed. It doesn't make you deep or thoughtful or smart. (I'm looking at you Krista Tippet).
Just talk to me. In plain language. If you really want to conversate (yuck), just talk — directly in plain, easy language.
_____
In the spirit of saving us from ourselves, I offer an updated list of words to avoid, in writing and in life:
incentivize
paradigm
paradox
narrative
agreeance (the word is agreement; don't try to fancy it up)
muse/musings (unless you're 12 years old and writing with a pink pen)
dappled
moonlight (due to overuse the moon is no longer poetic)
luminous
What's on your list?
_____
I miss Matt Groening's Forbidden Words. We need an update!
