The snow keeps coming and coming. It’s quite lovely from in here, with all our high windows. Across from the window of my study, a guy is snowblowing the third floor balcony, snow feathering out like a peacock’s tail over the edge. However, I’m a bit stir crazy. I can’t put on my boots and go walk in the drifts. My back/hip pain is keeping me from doing darn near anything. When I try a few exercises, I hurt. When I walk down the long hallway, I hurt. So I sit and read and write, waiting for surgery on Jan 27th. Did I tell you that? I have a date now. It’s a pretty dramatic surgery. No point in describing it except to say that the neurosurgeon says he’s “confident” I’ll be much better when I’ve healed from it. Not entirely pain free, but much better.
I have two goals: to eventually be able to walk 2-3 miles again most days, and to be able to swim again. Is that so much to ask?
Meanwhile, I’ve put down words, a fair number but still slower than in the old days, I’d say. I write blurbs, recommendations for publication when a press asks—the kind of citizenship writers need to do. The prose poems are what’s going slowly. Some days if I add one line, I feel okay about it. I am stacking them up for some purpose, I’m sure, but I can’t see it yet. What the shape will look like. I bring two or three of them to my smart writers’ group each time, and they seem to be well received.
I just realized at 6:30 this morning that today is a Wobbly day. I have no theme ready, nothing cohesive, so I’ll just ramble. I have gotten quite fond of reading other writers’ rambling. I just finished reading Margaret Atwood’s “A Memoir of Sorts,” which I thoroughly enjoyed. She calls it “of sorts'“! Maybe it has to do with age. I’m sure it must. Everything I do is less structured. I wonder if it’s necessary to prove (to yourself) that you can write a good sonnet, villanelle, sestina, or simple rhyme, before you give the words permission to fly off in any direction. Maybe it takes the confidence of long work to trust that the structure can be meaningful and can be artful without additional decoration. Is form “decoration”? Certainly not, but I do notice that older writers tend to slowly abandon received form. By “received” I mean the forms we’ve inherited (see above).
I guess I write a lot about age. But I find it fascinating--the changes in skin, in weight, in attitude--my attitude, even toward memories. Memories change. I have more sympathy toward my mother, for example. In fact, I wish I could hold her right now and tell her I understand. My father before he died said that same thing about his parents. In general, I have more sympathy, more kindness, the older I get. It took Ebenezer Scrooge three visits from the spirits to change his attitude. Most of us, it takes just getting older and having our own sufferings.
I do love the snow. I’m glad we chose to live where there’s often a lot of it. It feels purifying, like wiping the slate clean for another start in the spring. Like hitting Control+N to get a new page.