I have been thinking a bit lately about the state of things in my life. The fact that I go for months without seeing my friends because any ‘free’ time I have I feel compelled to spend on work (ie brain work) or house work. The fact that I feel like I am going round and round in circles with alternating phases of intense dissatisfaction / frustration / enervation and more positive / optimistic / life-is-good and we-are-very-fortunate. I’m not making much headway with the brain work at the moment and spent my last ‘free’ day writing letters and reading a book because I just could not face trying to be creative with zero energy or creative focus.
Blogs are great when it is 10 at night and you haven’t had any meaningful interaction with grown ups and the things they think about but are too tired to actually ring up a friend for a chat. A couple of blogs have made me laugh / felt encouraged or just put things into perspective. A fantastic blog that made me laugh out loud is Not Drowning, Mothering, especially the page on Domestic Godlessness - the photos of other people’s mess made my heart sing and also made me realise that chaos is relative.
While looking through Arts & Letters Daily I found a review of a biography of American poet Elizabeth Bishop. The review focuses on the poet’s relatively small output, averaging two or three poems a year but each of these are described as works of “quiet perfection”. This also made my heart sing, but for another reason. So much of the guilt and frustration I feel as a ‘creator’ is because I am not creating enough, that my current output of one piece a year is pointless and futile. But I can aspire to write one beautiful piece this year, and then maybe two beautiful pieces the following year – who is actually keeping a tally except me?
And in my idle moments (when I am hanging out the washing or tidying the living room or making big girl's school lunch) I try and formulate metaphors to describe how things are in my life at a particular moment. Does anyone else do this? Try to find a succinct and illuminating analogy for something that seems to be quite hard to describe? Two crackers that popped into my head this morning...
Unpoetic Analogy #1
I feel like a fly stuck inside, buzzing around hurling itself at a closed window when there is an open window right beside it.
Unpoetic Analogy #2
The inside of my head feels like the contents of a blender. Someone keeps adding random things into the mix and what started out as a raspberry smoothie is becoming eggplant dip.
Can I make this an invitation to anyone who has tried to find a way of describing their personal chaos/pre-occupations and come up with something less than poetic? The more bizarre the better. Send me some of your best efforts in the comments here - I would love to read them!
