I can stay pretty balanced during the day. There’s lots to do at work, and I’m with people some of the time, so I get feedback. Then I can go to the gym, listen to my favorite podcasts (Dan Savage, Slate Culture Gabfest, Mark Kermode’s Film Review (BBC), Howard Kunstler, Podcastle). But when I get home, I’m at a loss. Hence the beer and wine. Hence the obsessive Fairyland game activity. I used to be more self-sufficient. I also used to smoke cigarettes and write poetry, often at the same time. The same hope still lingers; one more NoDoz tab, and I’ll write the best poem ever! One more half-a-beer, and I’ll figure out how to quit Firefox, open up the word processor, and express myself freely again. I may be addicted to the internet in some undocumented, insidious way. Sometimes we do indulge in television here at the homeplace, but when doing so, I always have the feeling of being “kept” on the couch by my spouse so that we can “enjoy” the show together (albeit it’s always Netflix, since we don’t have cable). My remaining calm involves more beer or wine, and corn chips. Since I don’t really eat dinner, this isn’t making me fat, but I do wonder what exactly it IS doing. Enabling me to work the next day, I guess. Why doesn’t watching a really good episode of an HBO TV show give me the same internal “cred” as reading literary criticism does? Or better, writing some literary criticism! I just don’t approve of myself these days. I don’t know what it will take for me to approve of myself. Probably doing something totally horrendous about which I shall be FORCED to feel righteous. Don’t know what that might be. All I know is that I want to go back to being the author of my own life rather than a spectator, even if it’s being a spectator of others’ pretty-good productions.
1 comment:
I know you only through the internet, Marylyn, but I empathize with the same wistfulness in wanting that you speak of here: Having the desire to DO and to BE, but not, in my case, having the energy and commitment... I think I'm just really, really tired. And when I'm really tired, it's hard to DO anything, so I will fall into the TV trap, after which I feel guilty for 'wasting' my time, which just makes me tired all over again!
But you: I'm impressed not only with your poetry, but the fact that you want to write poetry... and that you do!
Yes, if I felt I was scripting my own life right now, I would certainly be writing something else: something more fun and exciting, with a whole lot more adventure and productivity. I think I'm just kind of lost in my own becoming right now, with no clear direction in which to head.
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