That's me, "fighting the good fight." What am I fighting? I'm not sure yet, but I'll probably need that thing that looks like a snow shovel, an odd critter wrapped around my leg, and most definitely that big-ass bow. It's all about priorities.
So, anyway, I was walking down Woodward Avenue this morning in my pajamas and a coat. It seemed like the thing to do at the time. Don't ask. Hey, at least I wasn't wearing the monkey pants. I had a head full of Bukowski (Thanks, Denise.) and Wallace Stevens. It was mostly Stevens because it's Sunday Morning, and I was thinking about oranges and peignoirs, although the line from Bukowski about angels sitting down to light your cigarettes has been on a continuous loop since I looked at it again last night. There's just something delightful in picturing one of those androgynous creatures from Papist iconography sauntering into a room with wings folded, copping a squat next to you, and offering you a Bic. Hey, we all want familiarity . . . Until it breeds contempt. It's human nature. We don't know what we want, so we fuss, fuss, fuss until we have a drink and get happy, fall in love and get happy, find God and get happy, read a self-help book and get happy, get therapy and get happy, take a pill and get happy, buy a house and get happy, have sex and get happy, watch TV and get happy, join a cause and get happy, decide that happy can just go fuck itself and get happy . . . Until. We wake up and realize that we're just not happy, so we blame someone else, or we blame ourselves, or maybe we jump out of a window. Maybe we curse and mutter through an entire day, wake up again with an epiphany, decide to make a change, feel empowered, whistle through the next day, wake up again feeling like crap, then repeat the process, maybe again and again and again, ad nauseum until the window starts to look more appealing or until we get old and just don't care anymore.
Maybe we go to the woods and live life deliberately. Are those folks happy? Who knows? If they're doing it right, they don't have phones, so we can't ask them. I daresay that they might have a leg up. After all, if you're chopping wood, finding and killing your own food, and just trying to generally survive, you probably don't have time to worry about whether you're happy or not. Maybe it really is all about priorities. Happiness is not getting eaten by a bear today. Or, think about it . . . You've been by yourself for five years, utterly bereft of human companionship, and one day a random person happens to wander over to your tent, cabin, cave, whatever, and wants to have sex with you! Big HAPPY! Until . . . That person starts to badger you about commitment, wants to put curtains up in your cave (even though you have no windows), and won't shut up about how much time you're spending in the woods. Then, you have to feed that person to a bear, and, that might make you feel a little bad . . .
I digress . . . Well, not really. I have two books that are signed by Orson Scott Card. In the one that isn't Ender's Game, he wrote, "To Amy: Don't get eaten by a bear." Maybe that's the soundest advice I've ever received. Out of the mouth of a creepy Mormon with an overinflated ego . . . Hey, you take wisdom from wherever or from whomever it comes from. Maybe I can even take it one step further: Don't give anyone a reason to feed you to a bear. Out of the mouth of a woman who wanders down Woodward Avenue in her pajamas for no apparent reason . . . On a Sunday Morning with a head full of poetry.
No comments:
Post a Comment