Astounding
In that pendulum of life, sometimes it is actually refreshing to hit bottom. Down there in the quagmire, covered in yuck, you realized just how good a hot shower feels, you suddenly see clearer that the chains that bind you are of your own making, and what you realize is that perhaps you have found a way to negotiate the “quiet life of desperation” that all of us live.
In a telephone conversation with a man yesterday who I have never met before, he mentioned he reads my blog, calling me “our own Anne Sexton” which I thought instantly hinged on my contemplations of suicide now and again (and ahem, most recently), but in reality I think he meant more I am confessing my soul to the world in the way Sexton did – giving weight to the mundane and taking victory laps when deserved.
At the end of the day, I’m astounded by how remarkably wonderful my life is even if at times it does feel like I am swimming through jello, suffocating in a woman-made green haze of goo. Glory to the moments when I break free.
Just Once
Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.Anne Sexton