Edification – The Art of Untangling
Edification – Newsletter #82 – August 8, 2021
Dear Reader,
Happy Sunday!
Can you feel that trough bottom of August? We had some bad news this week – my husband didn’t get a job that we thought was a sure-thing since June (nota bene: never assume such things) – and all our other planful dreams cascaded right down the hill. House-hunting is out. College plans for our teen are rerouting. Our current house renovations are being re-evaluated.
What’s the feeling? Like sitting buckled in on an abruptly braking shuttle-car, lurching violently without going anywhere.
It’s okay; we’re okay. We’re just… idling.
And that’s pretty much what a lot of life feels like right now, like we’re queued up, waiting for something that depends on other people moving before we can move.
On the writing front, I’ve gotten nothing but form rejections this week. I’ve submitted nowhere. I’m biting nails over a response that ought to be coming soon on a full manuscript request for my most recent novel.
Above all, of course: the pandemic, the pandemic, the pandemic. Here in West Virginia, the state’s color-coded map looks a lot more, well, green, than maps from places like the Mayo Clinic. Testing is low, vaccinations are low, and the schools are ready to open. Is this what existential dread looks like, little chicken nuggets of red and orange?
I’ve tinkered with tiny things this week as an unconscious form of therapy. Short poems, organizing my jewelry, even cleaning the bathroom floor grout with an old toothbrush.
This weekend I also printed out a few dozen poems to tinker around with a new poetry chapbook or two. As you probably know, I’ve been on a kick of nature/garden poems this year. Before that, I found myself writing a lot of motherhood/childhood poems. These sets have been distinct in my mind and in my computer files; this is the first time I’ve considered they might have some articulating hinges.
So after printing a bunch out, I went through with colored pencils and marked poems by broad themes: nature, parenting, architecture, relationships.
Most were more than one category, which is not surprising. I tend to write in layers because those are the kinds of poems I like. Poems that are accessible but not just about whatever they’re “about.” Garden poems about marriages or grief. Bird poems about aging or alienation. That kind of thing.
What was surprising in my re-reading was that I discovered themes threading through that I hadn’t fully appreciated before: math, physics, art history. Goya, Dorothea Lange, Gauss, and Heisenberg make appearances. A math chapbook? Art chapbook? Could happen.
Color-coding the poems has helped me see writing I’ve done across months as related in new ways. I have forgotten poems from January on the same topic as something in July, but the ideas have flipped. They are twins I wouldn’t have appreciated without printing them out and marking them up.
The process made me realize something about my problem-solving style: I need visualization and physicality. By scattering pages, coloring on them, cutting them into pieces – creating clutter – I can see my work in new ways. I know clutter is very out these days, but I guess that makes me very much the old-world artiste with a bird-nest in my beard.
Maybe I was already trying this with my jewelry box, dumping everything out and finally untangling all the necklace chains my toddler had long ago savaged. And I had forgotten about so much of that jewelry! It was almost as if the disorder had paralyzed me; “Guess I’ll just never wear jewelry again.” And funnily enough, the vines all over the backyard had me just as paralyzed until I went thrashing and slashing through their tangles this summer.
Now I’m untangling my hundreds of forgotten poems, trying them on, and wondering how to pair them in new ways. It makes me wonder how many other problems I could solve in my life by getting radically tactile. Could I finally declutter the boxes in the attic and the basement? Could I finally pare down and (gasp!) organize my books?
Perhaps I’ll pull it all apart and see what happens. Hey, it’s the end of the world, might as well make myself at home in the rubble.
Talk soon,
Edie
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