Have a think.

I once read a blog where the writer posted about her husband lying down to have a think.  That image really struck me.  Who takes time out of their day to do that?  But then I thought it would be kind of nice to just lie on the bed or the couch and think about things.  It makes you slow down, maybe appreciate the good stuff in life.  Maybe it gives you a chance to work out a problem.  Well, lately I've caught myself actually putting the "have a think" into practice. 

I tend to read in bed before I go to sleep.  It usually calms my brain or, when presented with more boring material, actually makes me sleepy.  I noticed that sometimes my mind will start to wander to other things, especially if I'm particularly worried about something- to the point where 20 minutes later I find that the book has actually slipped and rests on my chest and I'm just staring at the wall straight ahead.  Now that's just silly.  Why not eliminate the middle-man and just go straight for the think?  So I did.  I got ready for bed and then caught myself reaching for the book on the nightstand.  I stopped.  Not that I wasn't into the book, but I've had a couple bouts with insomnia the last few nights because I've had a lot on my mind.  I figured, instead of just lying there in the dark cursing the sandman for skipping my house, why not get the thinking out of the way?  So I got comfortable, and I let my mind go and I thought and thought until an hour or so went by.  I still wasn't sleepy, but somehow it was helping.  It actually was kind of nice.  Maybe some people call that meditation or praying.  To me, that's something else.  I just call it having a think.

Psychoanalysis:  An Elegy

What are you thinking about?

I am thinking of an early summer.

I am thinking of wet hills in the rain

Pouring water. Shedding it

Down empty acres of oak and manzanita

Down to the old green brush tangled in the sun,

Greasewood, sage, and spring mustard.

Or the hot wind coming down from Santa Ana

Driving the hills crazy,

A fast wind with a bit of dust in it

Bruising everything and making the seed sweet.

Or down in the city where the peach trees

Are awkward as young horses,

And there are kites caught on the wires

Up above the street lamps,

And the storm drains are all choked with dead branches.

What are you thinking?

I think that I would like to write a poem that is slow as a summer

As slow getting started

As 4th of July somewhere around the middle of the second stanza

After a lot of unusual rain

California seems long in the summer.

I would like to write a poem as long as California

And as slow as a summer.

Do you get me, Doctor? It would have to be as slow

As the very tip of summer.

As slow as the summer seems

On a hot day drinking beer outside Riverside

Or standing in the middle of a white-hot road

Between Bakersfield and Hell

Waiting for Santa Claus.

What are you thinking now?

I’m thinking that she is very much like California.

When she is still her dress is like a roadmap. Highways

Traveling up and down her skin

Long empty highways

With the moon chasing jackrabbits across them

On hot summer nights.

I am thinking that her body could be California

And I a rich Eastern tourist

Lost somewhere between Hell and Texas

Looking at a map of a long, wet, dancing California

That I have never seen.

Send me some penny picture-postcards, lady,

Send them.

One of each breast photographed looking

Like curious national monuments,

One of your body sweeping like a three-lane highway

Twenty-seven miles from a night’s lodging

In the world’s oldest hotel.

What are you thinking?

I am thinking of how many times this poem

Will be repeated. How many summers

Will torture California

Until the damned maps burn

Until the mad cartographer

Falls to the ground and possesses

The sweet thick earth from which he has been hiding.

What are you thinking now?

I am thinking that a poem could go on forever.

 

-Jack Spicer

Is there a twelve-step program for this?

At one point in my life I felt confident enough to make a sweeping generalization about short stories.  Basically, I hated them.  My argument was, by the time I get invested in one, it's over.  There were only ever a few short stories I really liked.  A lot of them were Poe's.  And ironically for me (because I dislike James Joyce so intensely), certain ones from Dubliners.  Maybe if I'm on an airplane for five hours and have only the New Yorker to read, then I might give another short story a chance.

But . . . I'm about to share a secret with you.  I think some of my short story loathing was born out of jealousy of short story writers.  See, it takes a real talent to be able to create characters the reader cares about, a mood, a theme and a message all in under 10,000 words.  I don't think I have that capability.  It's why I like TV shows- they go on and on and on and you have seasons to develop your stories and characters (unless you get canceled).

Once I was able to pinpoint my major issues with short stories, I was able to work through them.  I mean, I like children's stories.  They're easy to swallow.  They often don't have many layers.  And consider a poem.  Is a poem that much different from a short story?  Poets are trying to convey something in an even shorter amount of space.  My thing with poetry, though, is that much of the time you're really only investing in a page or two.  Whatever effort you put into understanding it, it's rare that you feel ripped from the world when you finish reading a poem. 

All that aside, I decided to make an effort to put some short story elements into a poem.  Maybe if I could marry the two, I could be more accepting.  This is my attempt at a poem in three parts, connected by a common theme:

 Knowledge Is Power

I.
Mom used to say
she had eyes in the back of her head.
I wonder when I will grow mine.

II.
Would I recognize myself on the street
if I was walking five steps behind,
my back half,
my other half
and I
never properly introduced?

III.
When did we give up our fascination
with the backs of cereal boxes?
Or did cereal boxes
become too unwieldy
because we buy them Costco-size?