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Thursday, February 24, 2005 |
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Yesterday was yet another spring day in the midst of winter. The springiest so far, in fact--breezy, bright, sky of transparent blue punctuated all over with small cottony fluffs. I finally was able to remove the rogue category page from the Salon server and this lightened my spirit. After our morning appointment with social services persons--the annual review which determines that my brother (a) still lives and (b) still has Down syndrome--we drove out to fetch the mail. These mud roads are drying fast, and I don't need 4WD anymore. At the mercantile, I bought some greeting cards. Mailed a birthday card to my Aunt Jane; scrawled a quick note to my cousin in prison. At home again, I continued with the cleaning binge I'd started early in the day. Washed blankets. Fed animals. I received the beautiful dream described below in yesterday's email from my friend in the Bay Area. After dinner we talked on the phone about our projects and plans. He has been translating European literature for many years and now finds himself drawn to write his own stories. Despite the fact that he is content with his translating and would be happy to continue doing only that, plots and characters are suggesting themselves to him with greater insistence. We discovered we shared feelings of pleasure and satisfaction in our work that increasingly outweighs, supercedes the work of human commerce--how our sometimes unpleasant involvements with family and friends can interfere with the creative work we want to do, and how tempting it is to pull up stakes and remove ourselves completely. Well, I have done so already, seemingly, although I was only dimly aware of it when I first came here. Anyway, it was interesting to observe how, when we were less secure in our vocations, when our efforts tended mostly to provoke feelings of frustration, it was difficult--unpleasant, even--to sit down and do the work. But as the occasional successes grew more frequent, this difficulty lessened, and there was a point at which they finally outpaced the frustrations, and it was at that moment that we turned away from the world's hubbub and happily gave ourselves over. I suppose it becomes less work and more play. This reminded me of something I read in Richard Hugo's The Real West Marginal Way a few days ago: "Mostly my writing [in the beginning] was just to get attention, to satisfy a terrible streak of narcissism, and it wasn't until I concentrated all my efforts on poems that I was to realize the only real reward of writing, that special way you feel when you've done something you like. That's far more satisfying than seeing your name in print, good reviews, flattery or applause after a reading. And more enduring." This understanding is helpful too in considering lives such as Emily Dickinson's, which can mystify. Here is a dream--not mine, but so pretty that I wanted to share it: "Last night I dreamed that I found, in an old bookstore, a lovely small volume, bound in gilded leather with gilded page edges, of some Italian poetry translated into Norwegian, which I wanted desperately to read. Some of the pages were curiously embossed with square and rectangular jewell-like areas, and there were florid illustrations. When I put the volume back reluctantly onto the shelf, unable to afford it, bits of fine gold dust were left adhering to my fingertips."
When I asked permission to post this, my friend replied, "Go ahead and post the dream. I don't think much of how I've written it, but the dream itself was kind of heart-stopping for a while. The binding was soft, almost skin-like, as if alive..." |
