Gently, though freely, I want this blog to remain worthwhile, so I’m not going to fabricate reasons to post just to stay in touch. I’m easy to contact by email. I couldn’t bear to orient my life around Facebook or spend lots of time Tweeting. Geez.
Part of what I’m doing today is organizing a year’s worth of sundry jottings and archived articles that are unrelated to current events (or indirectly related). I’m organizing it all into topics I’ll flesh out. It’s like sketching lots of works-to-do.
It includes coming across things I’d forgotten, like a poem by Wallace Stevens, “The Wind Shifts,” that affects me deeply to discover again. It must have affected me deeply back when, though I can’t remember finding it.
He’s despairing; I am not. And we are not like the carelessness of the wind. Yet we must live with those who are like the wind. And changes of time may surprise like a break of focus in a narrating line.
I think of this time next year, when I’ll have “retired” from my department—which will be a rebirth!
Years back, I’d drive across the U.S. on impulse, when I was unencumbered. What adventures I have to recount someday! More to come.
I don’t have a list of places on the skin of the Earth I want to find, but I can improvise easily. There’s so much writing I need to do. I’ve never visited my birthplace: Savannah (which my parents left when I was 6 months). There’s so much I’ve not lived yet.
The Wind Shifts
Wallace Stevens
This is how the wind shifts:
Like the thoughts of an old human,
Who still thinks eagerly
And despairingly.
The wind shifts like this:
Like a human without illusions,
Who still feels irrational things within her.
The wind shifts like this:
Like humans approaching proudly,
Like humans approaching angrily.
This is how the wind shifts:
Like a human, heavy and heavy,
Who does not care.
Meh.
