From my illustrated version of William Bronk’s The Tell
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
I wake up before dawn and listen to the smooth, velvet call of darkness. I wake up before the rest of my family and it feels like waking up before the rest of the world—there is only me and in the morning I see, quite clearly, myself as someone to love. I wake up to write, I wake up to ponder, I wake up from all the people I’m not. I wake up.
My lower back cracks first, then my knees, then my neck. I see the bridge between ankle to leg, I see each weathered toe—evidence of a body that continues to show up, that does what’s asked of it and does not ask for much in return. These are the sounds of loyalty; these are the sounds of my oldest friendship. The mourning doves chatter outside my window and our tired 100-year old house invites their conversation in. I listen and I am lucky to listen and I feel the luck well deep inside me like a river. I wonder who these birds were before they were birds, I wonder who I was before I knew I was someone worth knowing. The radiators come to life, abruptly. They clang and hiss. The dog bristles in his sleep and occasionally, a car drives by.
Cutting the fruit, buttering the toast, making the lunches—even these chores are sweeter in the morning stillness. The creak of the stairs as T comes down, earlier these past few days, with all of his teeth and a smile. I put Tea for the Tillerman on and Stevens’ familiar voice washes through the kitchen and hovers above the island with mine.
N turns away when I wake her, her body longing for more silence, more rest, more; the light streams into her bedroom in strings, beguiling. F’s generous smile—immediate upon waking, the way she finds me as soon as I leave the room, her small hands clinging to my knees. N singing along to the Frozen soundtrack, hoping she didn’t miss any let it go’s. I clean the floor, the walls, the cabinets after F eats, my hands and knees satisfied from use.
The first deep breath outside, the cold air rushing into my lungs; the crack of twig or tree branch, everything growing, everything going. The first sip of coffee, well-earned and deeply wanted, the changing light on my child’s tiny face, the agony of push and pull between too-much and never-enough: these are the things I’ll miss when they are gone.
TUESDAY
“What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it's very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on—it's what I've always demanded myself—but as a child, no, the truth is it's a war of attrition, rationality doesn't come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn't do it, then it's really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her—especially in the last, painful years of her life—for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself.”
—from Swing Time by Zadie Smith
WEDNESDAY
I spent the last couple of weeks working on a new welcome illustration for Dear Somebody. I was inspired to do this by Adam Rex’s header, which I’ve loved ever since I saw it. This newsletter has been through several evolutions over the past few years, and I haven’t felt like it visually reflects where I am in my work, and who I am as a person, for awhile now.
Mine’s not perfect but it does feel a lot more like me (perhaps for that very reason!). Also: I was able to experiment using mixed media (my dream is to work more like N—”a little bit of everything”), I learned a few things, and I showed myself, again, that doing something for no reason (other than I want to) is usually worth the effort—which is just plain ol’ nice.
THURSDAY
As a longtime fan of Cal Newport’s work, I was pleased to provide a few words for his latest book, Slow Productivity. Here’s what I had to say about it:
The belief that the process of creating art should, and can, be completed quickly is the artist’s greatest source of discontent. It is the reason many artists develop imposter syndrome and become disillusioned with their work and their own abilities. Often, it is why artists stop creating work at all. In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport effectively charts the birth and growth of productivity culture, and explains how it led to the removal of personal values, deep focus, and deliberate care in our work and communities. His book is an opportunity to understand why we so often feel frustrated with the demands of the world we live in—and what we can do if we choose to turn inward, once again.
Slow Productivity was published this week and is available everywhere books are sold.
FRIDAY
Poetry is not made of words.
I can say it’s January when
it’s August. I can say, “The scent
of wisteria on the second floor
of my grandmother’s house
with the door open onto the porch
in Petaluma,” while I’m living
an hour’s drive from the Mexican
border town of Ojinaga.
It is possible to be with someone
who is gone. Like the silence which
continues here in the desert while
the night train passes through Marfa
louder and louder, like the dogs whining
and barking after the train is gone.
—The Presence in Absence by Linda Gregg
xx,
M
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