Dear My Depletion,
Did you happen to know that I lost my agenda when we got back from Idaho? --by "agenda", I mean my actual, physical calendar, but now that you mention it, the word could refer to the figurative thing as well.
This past week was crowded: with dinners and breakfasts and lunches, LMS trainings, focus group meeting, writing group, date nights and family Harry Potter, shopping and movies. All of these appointments and their various delights I kept in the agenda of my brain, because the actual calendar was gone. Often, My Depletion, the calendar and its busy agenda are harbinger, the very symbol of you. This week, however, you hummed in the background of all these events and reminded me:
you are not writing
summer is almost over
you are not writing
something is so very wrong with you
I literally hate your song, My Depletion. But I have not been able to come up with a substitute.
I have notes on slips of paper, that say things like "Monday: house stuff! film." or "T: write 500 words." And who knows? Maybe Monday or Tuesday--maybe Monday and Tuesday--will be the days I hop out of bed and take Bruiser for a walk when the morning is still cool, and say pish to the internet, whip out my sewing machine or catalog my film clips or even write 500 words! I can see, theoretically, that this is possible. Saying so, maybe, makes it more likely to be so.
But nothing like this will occur unless--it must be said, My Depletion--you stop humming that goddamned song. It is getting on my last nerve.
Sincerely,
htms
This LMS trainings, focus group meeting, and the "this week was crowded part"...this does not sound like summer vacation from college to me. Those people who say teachers get three months off each summer? Those people clearly do not know you.
ReplyDeleteGlad for the writing group, date nights, family Harry Potter, shopping and movies though. More of that for you, please. Until the writing starts flowing out of you again. Because it will.
I think there are some people who live . . . poetry-infused lives, and I think you are one of them, HT. Whether it's the uber pancakes you make for breakfast, the coffee/meeting with a colleague you gently navigate in the afternoon, or the movie review blogpost in the evening, there's poetry in't. I'm sure your life also has its share of the prosaic, but the HTMS essence is steeped in poetry, says I, and poetry will out, one way or t'other.
ReplyDeleteAnd, also too, there was never a song of such woe as your Depletion Song. I've had that one stuck in my head longer than that one goddamned Lionel Ritchie song. Painful.
My voice goes "what did you do today?"
ReplyDelete