Consolations

I’ve been reading R.H. Blyth, Gertrude Stein’s lectures, and essays on Continental Feminism. I started these books I thought I was tired of poetry, but I realize now it’s philosophy I’m tired of, and I feel my way forward in the prose looking for the poetry in it: the feats of metaphor, the simplicity, the dance among its elements. Its consolations.

The fedupness could be just seasonal, feeling tired of my own habit of looking ahead toward some greater intelligence or instruction on how to live. I’m tired of being told; I feel dumb, impatient, windburned, and a little too vital to pay prolonged attention to the depth of oneness in Zen, the poetry in repetition, or the role of performance in gender.

Has anyone else felt tired of living by? What comes next? Sitting on the bus and discreetly eating a turkey sandwich, I suddenly felt I didn’t know if I was a convert, a completed being, someone with a satisfied mind. If I was, could I even tell? A paper takeout box of satisfactions, a goldfish bowl of doubts…

Something on primary language next week! Kisses—