The Gift of Time

            When two writers live together, there is no spare time—there is only writing time.

            With a family in the mix, writing time is something only one person can do at a time. Let’s face it—someone has to help with homework and make a blanket fort and cook the meals and fold the laundry, all the daily stuff that ends up in the writing, and someone else gets to write, in those times when the other tasks can be handled by only one person.

            Sometimes it’s all hands on deck, of course, when it comes to the chaos of the household, and then no one gets to write. And then there are days when paper-grading and other professional tasks get in the way, and the needs of students and colleagues must come first. There are even days when it all has to happen at once—everyone has work to do, the house is on fire, the kids are naked—and then you juggle the best you can, making use of spots of time here and there.

            On calmer days, the writers in the home might get together and express their needs and desires. We might bend over backwards to give time to each other—that’s how we think of it, “giving time,” as if hours were valentines. And it’s a loving gesture, giving time—it’s more precious than money, to a writer, and more rare, and the lack of it is just as likely to cause stress and strain.

            It’s possible to go overboard with the divvying up of time, so that every spare minute is claimed for writing and those other tasks we do to clear the decks for writing to come later. Then the writers in the home run the risk of never spending time together at all—just scribbling or babysitting until one or the other joins the snoring partner in bed.

            When we have limited funds, we stretch our dollars with sandwiches for lunch and leftovers for dinner. We make do with the clothes in the closet; we entertain ourselves at home.

            With limited time, we write short pieces—poems or flash fiction. We think and plan while we scrub dishes so that we can use every moment that is gifted to us.

            Whatever it is we lack, money or time, we tighten our belts and do the best we can to share what little we have.

Using the Archipelagos

            It’s a new month, and a short one—a perfect time to embark on a poetry project.

            I’ve mentioned before that I like working in projects, as doing so eliminates the need to spend time pondering over a subject or messing around with a false start.

            This month, I’m sort of feeling my age—not my physical age, which seems to range from twelve to about eighty, but my poetry age. I’m late getting a full-length book published, and it sometimes feels as though time is passing me by. I’m twenty-one years older than John Keats when he died, and, come to think of it, thirteen years past Jesus. It’s becoming increasingly unlikely that anyone will ever name a city after me, or even, for that matter, a dog.

            So no fiddle-farting around for me—I am feeling an urgent need to make my writing count, and a poetry project results in poems of greater depth, or at least greater breadth (a good fake for depth). Good poetry requires good thinking, and I find it mighty hard to think on most days. If I set the alarm to get up early so I can stare off into space, chances are good that a kid will get up, too, and thinking time becomes breakfast time. If I stay up late (not my best time for functioning, as a morning person), chances are good that someone, somewhere, will barf—probably on me.

            A few times a year I take a writing retreat—I have one coming up in a few weeks, in fact—and those long weekends out of town—and alone—have proven to be critically important to my progress as a poet. Keats didn’t have kids. Neither, for that matter, did Jesus, although he was more a storyteller than a writer.

            On my writing retreats, I write poems, but I do other things, too, like shuffle the manuscript around and spend long, fuzzy moments over a cup of tea. It’s all part of the work of poetry.

            But in the mean time, I have to make my spots of time work—the minutes that open up between feeding and playing and cleaning and paper-grading. There are actually a lot of free minutes in the day, if we’re being honest about it (thank you, Xbox); they’re just not contiguous. A poetry project makes it easier to get down to business in those archipelagos of time we do have.

            Throughout February, I’ll be operating from a word bank that I’m still finalizing. This means that each poem will contain words from a list—not all of the words, but some. The trick is to pick interesting words—words that aren’t obvious, but that still evoke some kind of response when I look at them. One of my February words is “litter.” I like how it suggests things—anything—strewn across my path, and I like the sound of it, like dried leaves skittering across the bricks. I don’t know where “litter” is going to take me, but I’m eager to find out.

            My word bank, ultimately, will have twelve to twenty words that anchor my thinking. I have no other plans in mind; it is my hope (and my experience) that the words I choose will want to play together, and that each day they will suggest a subject for rumination.

            I’ll let you know how it goes.

Standing at the Intersection of Art and Grace

            Someone was mean to me once, and it threw me ten years off course.

            It is sobering to look around in my mid-forties and realize that I’ve squandered some important creative years, all because I took to heart some freakishly harsh criticism from a person I loved, a person who should have done better by me.

            The “who” doesn’t matter. What happened is this: I was in the middle of a creative project that thrilled me, and I talked about it to one of the people I cared most about. This person sat me down and told me all of the things that were wrong with me. I felt I was better than everybody else. I lorded my accomplishments over others. I flaunted my education. I refused to speak normally, and instead used big words and complicated constructions to say basic things.

            This were personal criticisms, not poetic ones, but they rose from my attempt to express that moment of artistic glee—I had a project that was changing my creative life and making me feel like I had real potential as a poet.

            By the end of that conversation, I had put my pen in a drawer, figuratively speaking, and it stayed there for a decade.

            The other day, a friend mentioned that she was worried about sharing her work with her loved ones. Other friends piped in with advice. The work is important, they said; the loved ones need to hear it and support it, or they are not worth loving at all.

            Sharing work with special people is tricky. I’m always hearing artists talk about the fear that accompanies a family member reading their poetry or seeing their visual art in a gallery. And it may not be worth the trouble. When loved ones are also artists, it’s easier; they know how to honor the humanity within the work yet separate the product from the creator. Loved ones who aren’t artists may look for themselves in work; they may psychoanalyze the creator or see something unhealthy about the way we work through things on page or canvas.

            It seems like the best move may be to go ahead and keep work and loved ones separate, unless family, friends, or lovers seek it out on their own, or otherwise show readiness for confronting the artist through the work. I certainly experienced no profit from excitedly talking about my life-changing project with someone who didn’t know or care what it meant to me.

Art, including literary art, can be regarded sort of like, say, gardening is. It’s lovely to hear that someone has planted dahlias in the side yard; we can hear about the bold blossoms, maybe glance at them and appreciate their beauty and the fact that someone has cultivated it. We don’t need to investigate the roots and stalk. We don’t need to count the petals. Seeing the happiness of the gardener is sufficient. That person—and maybe any person who increases, rather than decreases, the beauty in the world—should be congratulated, cheered on.

            It is tempting to be angry with the person behind this moment that never stops being horrible. (I go back to the conversation from time to time, and it hurts just as much after all this time as it did at the moment it was happening.) The fact that this person made the wrong call doesn’t even factor in. An MFA in creative writing is not the kind of education one flaunts. A non-tenure-track job, lowest rank in the institution, is not an accomplishment to be lorded. Being awkward and stilted in conversation is not a source of pride. The poetry, though? That’s a very reasonable source of delight. A professor I had once told me that there are two kinds of poetry: good poetry and great poetry. The act of making art is, in itself, ennobling, whatever the product.

            I think the rightful focus of anger is obvious. It’s me. Most people are nice and supportive—even strangers hold doors and spare a smile. We run into stinkers from time to time, though, and from time to time, we are the stinkers. The only unforgivable act in this scenario is not reporting for duty—not answering the call of those poems that tried to find their way into being during that empty decade. Who knows what words might have visited me, had I been in position and ready to accept them?

            The unkindness of others shouldn’t change me, and I won’t let it change me again. Whatever the actions of people around me, I choose, forever after, to be a loving person and a gracious host.

The No-Restaurant Resolution

            Last night, as a belated birthday celebration following week too hectic for cake, I was treated to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in my city, the SpringfieldGourmet Taco Company.

I love this place. The menu is wildly creative, and each bite is a little festival of flavor. The décor is fun—lots of black and red, film posters on the walls, neither a sombrero nor cactus in sight. I’m smitten with the cilantro tiger shrimp sriracha taco, with its grilled pineapple, feta, spinach, and cucumber.

My server, Ty, told me that they prepare all of the fresh ingredients each day, from the cilantro to the tiny minced pears to the white corn hominy salsa. They make their own chili sauce, four kinds of salsa for the chips, and six clever varieties of guacamole.

If I sound unusually excited about tacos, well, it’s because these are unusually good tacos—but also, this birthday meal happened to be my first restaurant meal in 2015.

My family made a joint resolution this year, and it was not to eat out in 2015, except for special occasions. A birthday, even a belated one, counts.

We’ve noticed myriad benefits to our no-restaurant plan. We’ve saved a ton of money. We’re more creative in the kitchen. Our food choices are more mindful. We direct more of our energy toward home and family. And, as evidenced by my birthday meal, the times we do eat out are much more memorable and special.

When we do eat out, it is our plan to dine at those places that do what we cannot. We could never fashion a curry blend to rival the flavors we find at the Taj Mahal restaurant. We might feel stymied by lemon grass, but they know just what to do with it at Thai Peppers. And I’m not about to mince pears into tiny quarter-inch squares—but I certainly enjoyed the little explosions of flavor on my tongue when I tasted them last night.

Maybe true innovation is best left to the professionals, but it has been satisfying to find that the home can be my family’s center of nourishment and sustenance.