When you have nothing to say, might as well watch Ollie play with his purple worm.
Truthfully, this is one of those times when I have nothing to say. I have nothing on my mind, no “message,” no thru-line. You should go empty your dishwasher; don’t bother with this.
All I have is my commitment to write to you every two weeks. And our common humanity. I talk to each of my children once a week. Often there’s nothing going on, as we say. Just another week, no big news. But as we talk, the smaller news begins to emerge, what we think of AS we talk, not what we might have planned to say.
One could decide it’s not worth a phone call, but the value of hanging out together on the phone, not talking about anything much, may be more than the momentous calls about big events. The minute threads of conversation weave us together.
We humans want to know each other. We want to be known. Even those who hide, who keep their lives private, want to be known, I’m pretty sure. People used to write letters. The sweep of the penmanship, the curves of vowels, was its own language. Aunt Patty must be angry! Look at the way she’s pressed down on her letters, made them so large. Twelve point type doesn’t give us that information. We’ve eliminated hands and body in the communication.
Speaking of body, I’ve transitioned from water therapy for my back to regular PT. My trainer just sent me this morning my list of daily exercises. It’s the body core, of course. It’s the tendons and muscles which have to work harder to compensate for the collapse of age. I also got several cortisone shots in my lower back. Miracle! Suddenly there’s almost no pain. This won’t last, of course, but as the Dr. says, it gives me time to strengthen what needs strengthening.
It's too bad so many of us sit so much—for our work, to watch TV, etc., slouched on the sofa with our phones. But we do. Our backs hurt.
When I am at PT, when Kristie is showing me an exercise, when I am at the dentist having my teeth cleaned—those are oddly the times when the disparity particularly haunts me. A little tartar on my teeth! The people stumbling through the rubble of their lives have teeth that need care, too. They have aching backs, too, that must be ignored because of the bombs. I hear the cries of the children, I hear the cries of their parents. I guess it has always been thus—rich and poor, war-torn and comfortable—but it’s worse, and its visible in ways it wasn’t before. The burden of suffering is falling on all of us and will continue to do so.
I read poetry magazines and journals. The voices are there, the ones we’ve not heard before, telling the stories of their suffering. It’s hard to imagine how narrow my life was when I thought poetry was written only by people like me. Oh, I see, the thru-line of this post is about seeing everything, using the whole self, the whole community of selves. Communication isn’t a line on a page. It is the whole thing.
At the moment, in my mind seems to be in the disappearing aquifers I just read about, the diminishing underground water. And Israel and Palestine and Hamas and Ollie diving in and out of his three grocery bags, chasing his little worm-toy. In my head is my sister and her major health problems, my son-in-law recovering from back surgery, my stepdaughter, braving on through stage four cancer, the autumn rain on the bright yellow leaves, the car tires on the wet pavement. All of it. All of it.