I've been suffering from a (hopefully mild) case of Blog Aversion this last week, which manifests as an internal cringe every time I think about composing a post. So instead I've been allowing myself to enjoy my unemployment for a space: easy to do, since I'm a cheap date—a cloudless, cool Chicago spring afternoon, a baguette, and the leisure to walk wherever, and I'm reasonably satisfied.

I have three regular practices that sustain me, intellectually and creatively: Zen sitting, poetry writing, and blogging. (And of these, the least consistent practice is blogging. Probably because it's the one I'm most dubious about, in terms of its intrinsic worth and its impact on my psyche and disposition. It's just not good for anyone, over the long run, to be constantly stoking your political anger.) The job-and-money stress of the last couple of months has had an impact on all of them; in particular, I hardly feel like I've even approached a poetry-writing groove since practically the end of February. (Some of that has to do, beyond immediate circumstances, with the rhythm of the practice itself: I write in the morning, while I'm still drifting half asleep, trying to ride the linguistic fluidity of that state as long as I can, and as it gets lighter earlier that's harder to do—it takes time to adjust to the new shape of the day, as it takes time to adjust again when dawn starts retreating in the fall.) That's hard, because—though I've never published, don't know whether I ever will, and can't really know whether anything I'm writing is especially worthy—poetry is vastly more important to me than any other kind of writing I might do, and very close to the core of my self-concept.

Anyway, I don't usually do this on the front of the blog, since it's not what people really come here for, but I'm posting one of the few complete poems I've come up with in the last couple of months (one of the few I'm currently sure is complete, anyway)—short, and it speaks to the condition of semi-alienation from practice that I've been struggling with in the last little while. Take it as an earnest that some more regular blogging schedule will emerge here before too long.

Without its gorgeous implications the show
is over.  The old life has somehow ended
but we keep coming back for more.  
He finds that his property
is like the rain, which is speaking in tongues
no one will ever use.  (Being rational,
it does its best never
to stop.)  He writes it
as his obituary, I'd rather
be doing both, then steps aside
to answer the dull reassurances of the day.

posted by michael  10:15:35 AM  
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