(no subject)
I am afraid. I didn't think I was afraid of anything for a long time. It's easy to be brave when you don't perceive the things you stand to lose. It's easy to be brave when you're lost, too, because there's nothing you can really do about being lost except keep going until you recognize your surroundings or stop and ask directions. Of course, the latter requires you to know when you are lost, same as how the fear of losing something can only follow one's awareness of its presence. Sometimes without thinking I ask my students "What do you not understand?" and it makes me smile a bit because there is no way to answer this question, but they will try anyway until I rephrase, each time reminding them that it's not what I meant to say.
I think poetry is both more wonderful and more stupid the longer I teach. Let me explain. I don't care about the misery of anyone who came here to die. I find myself making lists of the right reasons to be afraid. I find every reason absurd, but I have to survive here same as you. At first I barely noticed, I thought I needed new meds. A new diet. A new place to live. Consequently, many other new experiences passed through me unseen, and each time I was slightly rearranged. I have long known the error of ardently wishing and willing only to become blind to present moments, another maddening thing-- there is constant value to occupying the present moment but that moment is also never the same. Knowing the error isn't knowing the error.
Once, some years ago, I lost my suitcase somewhere in Madrid. When prompted to describe the missing bag, the only thing I could say was "it's red and big." I'd had that suitcase for ages. Indeed, it is the only suitcase I've ever owned. It's possible, even easy, even mundane and bureaucratic, to simply not know what we have lost. At the very least, to not know it as well as we may think.
I think poetry is both more wonderful and more stupid the longer I teach. Let me explain. I don't care about the misery of anyone who came here to die. I find myself making lists of the right reasons to be afraid. I find every reason absurd, but I have to survive here same as you. At first I barely noticed, I thought I needed new meds. A new diet. A new place to live. Consequently, many other new experiences passed through me unseen, and each time I was slightly rearranged. I have long known the error of ardently wishing and willing only to become blind to present moments, another maddening thing-- there is constant value to occupying the present moment but that moment is also never the same. Knowing the error isn't knowing the error.
Once, some years ago, I lost my suitcase somewhere in Madrid. When prompted to describe the missing bag, the only thing I could say was "it's red and big." I'd had that suitcase for ages. Indeed, it is the only suitcase I've ever owned. It's possible, even easy, even mundane and bureaucratic, to simply not know what we have lost. At the very least, to not know it as well as we may think.