Friday, November 7, 2014

Marking Days





The afternoon sun that falls into my bedroom so early in the late afternoon is delicious. I lie on the bed, done with the day of teaching and driving and laundry and cooking and feeding and changing diapers and thinking, and watch the motes of dust suspended in the beams of light. I've been listening to a lot of Pema Chodron these days, mainly on the highway after my early morning drop-off at Henry's school. Do you mark off your days, at least the significant ones, by the books you've read, the music you've listened to, the movies you've seen, the way the sun comes in just so at 3:50 on a November afternoon? In my own distant past, there is La Wally, sung by a diva in Diva . Further back there's holding the hand of a boyfriend in the school chapel while the lights dim and The Grapes of Wrath comes up on the screen. There are Charlie Smith's novels and John Dos Passos, certain passages marked in tiny script. There's Van Morrison's Purple Heather in an apartment in Druid Hills, and Chet Baker whisper-singing in a dingy apartment, an unmade bed, my back cold on the shower tile, depleted by love, the hum of the electric fan over the stove as he smoked. Sometimes I'm overcome. There's Pema Chodron, now, and Patty Griffin's full throat.



Cast my memory back there, Lord. Sometimes I'm overcome.

Van Morrison



10 comments:

  1. "Cast my memory back there, Lord. Sometimes I'm overcome."
    Yes. Today I have been thinking about the red sweater my mother wore when I was a little child and wishing I could remember one time when my father kissed me.
    Thinking about the last time my lover loved me.
    And so forth.

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  2. Yes, to the books and the music. Not so much the movies. God, I love your writing.

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  3. Pena Chodron puts it all in perspective. Beautiful writing and a haunting self portrait.

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  4. Beautiful post. Mine: Lay, lady lay by Bob Dylan, a yellow shirt with long full sleeves and a black vest, my hair spread out on the floor...

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  5. I do and I am.
    Thank you for writing that all down.

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  6. I do measure my days by those sorts of things, but I'm not sure I could write them down as eloquently as you. :)

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  7. La Wally in Diva is part of my list. Brings back a summer night after open air cinema during my last year at school with the wind in my long hair sitting on my bf's Vespa.

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  8. breath-taking heart-throbbingly gorgeous
    writing, wow!

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  9. What everyone has said. Leaves me with a sense of deep melancholy, whether yours or mine I'm not sure. I know Van Morrison is part of it. xo

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  10. Gorgeous. Just the other day I was thinking how Lucinda Williams sounds like the past--not the one I have, but the one I dreamed of then.

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