Tuesday, March 03, 2009

The Recrudescence of Routine

So it goes after big events; the resumption of the quotidian seems anticlimactic.

I donate a kidney.
My father dies.

Well, and the kids go off to school, and I go back to work, and the meetings are scheduled, and it rains, and the days grow longer, and the bills are due, and the clean laundry must be folded and put away.

Except that I want the experiences of February to have made a change that stays with me in some tangible and obvious way. So I've made this new commitment to myself as a poet, and I start each day by reading poetry, then writing something (notes toward a poem or a first draft). I sweat the small stuff less - this will take concentration and practice - and I honor other people more, and I am grateful for the many gifts I've been given, without feeling the need to protest that I don't deserve them or must return them. The giving is an expression of the gift-giver, and it's not my job to determine my worthiness to receive whatever I am offered. I am humbled, and grateful, and thus I learn a bit more about Love.

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