Judy's Weblog

Unrelated

June 21, 2011 at 1:47 pm (Uncategorized)

I have to admit that I was perplexed by the writer’s block that hit me last week. I tried to think of reasons to explain it, and finally, on Thursday, just decided to start writing. The first attempt:

Bananafamine, brain envy, just write, just write, just write. Cuaderno. Words. Tell about the bus splashing the puddle on the girl on the sidewalk. Tell about the inconsiderate bus driver stopping on the grass instead of the driveway. Don’t edit, spell check or anything but keep the writing coming. Listen to the songs you like. Admire the green ring; wonder if it is emerald, olivine or peridot. Wonder why you picked it. … listen to the contractors until 10 pm, fall asleep in the car after the drive home. … stop editing, correcting typos – listen to the sound of the keys between Come What May and Roxanne Del Tango. I should be thinking during these down times, but I can’t think. The beat of the song is perfect and the angst is real. …Okay just listen to the music you have tried you have tired you are done.

Then, on the ride home, I started to collect images and sensory details, and compiled a list, and turned it into a 14 line poem (my conceit – a free verse sonnet):

Unrelated

One Day:

Fireflies in the yard at dark
Youth magical and powerful
One leaf ending its life in a dramatic fall
From a tall tree, followed by a whirly-gig
A wombly ride down Race Street,
A petite, immaculate, woman whose perfume fills the bus,
Makes my head crawl with pain
A stiff woman: trying too hard to talk about the weather
Homework to practice socialization
Me thinking about the weather,
But not speaking my desperate hope for clear skies
Pine needles drying in my yard,
The hot smell of pine – quintessentially summer
The steady beat of hammers reassuring,
Upstairs snug under new plywood and felt
I am waiting for windows so I can look out

Then Monday, I added to it, from sensory details and images from Friday and the weekend:

Another Day:

From the back of the bus today
Hostage to the perfume, I want to tell her
(She would stop, I think): I am disabled by scent
It’s hard to see, unlike her cane
View the moving world from stadium seating
Something is different: something has started.
An empty route is now full; I recognize three.
At home the dog huddles, shivering against the storm
Not knowing the shelter of shingles has been renewed
No water ravages the plaster. Impulse purchases
Shift from chips to wallpaper, and drop cloths
big enough to cover a room
fireflies still float up out of the magic of
a weathered grill and a circle of chairs
and still the beat of hammers reassuring
I will have windows, I will look out.

Today, I’m feeling the fatigue of my fibromyalgia, and an article about primary progressive aphasia from Brain in the News is all it has taken to get me worrying about the changes in my language and memory. I try not to dwell there, but acknowledge that this may be the most profound thing I have to write about today. I keep the 14 line form, but am concerned that this stanza focuses only on yesterday’s bus ride, and does not include any images from home. I purposefully bring the window image back in. I am literally waiting for the window installers this week – but am also aware of the metaphoric image that windows create.

And yet another:

At the front of the bus, the stiff woman
Converses freely in her own language, smiling,
With an older man, who departs,
Quickly lopes to an Ag building.
I think of language then as the stiff woman retreats again,
The assumptions I have made,
as I ponder the changes to my own words:
the ‘boats’ and ‘bowls’ that leap from my mouth
instead of ‘basket’
I wonder if I will sit quietly on the bus
Waiting for someone who speaks my language
Or who will let me sit silently
Terrified that I will not be understood
Alone at a window, looking out

The 60’s-and-70’s-part of me wants to leave the reader with this forlorn image. I think there may be more, though. I’m at a point in my life where I think pathos is somewhat boring and a waste of time. Maybe the fourth stanza should be based solely on images from home. Maybe a free-verse sonnet should have 14 stanzas . . .