I’ve been feeling spare.
Maybe it’s winter’s long gray, the bare trees against a steady sky, or the static line of stillness.
Life is full, of course, humming along with errands, appointments, deadlines, and chores. But there is a quietude to winter that distills the days. The season demands we get to the essence. Less blather, more basics.
“Unremarkable lives should go unremarked upon,” Neil Genzlinger wrote years ago in The New York Times Book Review in a rail against memoir.
I, too, am sapped by oversharing. And yet, daily life is a writer’s essential tool. Our unremarkable lives are the small seeds of routine that grow into a story that softens, a poem that moves, a painting that shouts.
“Poetry is . . . that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does,” explained Allen Ginsberg.
Lately, I’ve been documenting the days by writing in review. One good line, or two. A small gathering. I’m enjoying the low-pressure distillation, the way it clears and cleans. The exercise of language. The thrift of description.
In The Writing Life, Annie Dillard gave us both permission and push to be mindful of our time. “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” she wrote. “What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”
Try This: Near the end of the day, loosen your mind and let a highlight roll in. Morning coffee? A good walk? Pressing project? Battle with the boss? Any small thing will do. In fact, the smaller the better. If you experienced a big thing — a heated exchange, an illness, a happy surprise — break it down from chunk, to nugget, to seed. Think it out. Distill it down. Write it out.
Distillation is a great way to exercise the writing muscle. With less words, greater impact. And in brevity, comes levity. A lightness of being. The mind is sorting, the hand is sifting. The days take shape.
today, time lapse
trust
oh dark sky
oh winter moon
on these silent nights
how you shine
resistance
in a basement gym
muscles burn
against time
storm
eat, sleep, read
snow turns to rain
turns to sliding gloss
conundrum
a goodwill find brings
unexpected pleasure,
while an act of goodwill
creates unexpected tension
traveling in the dark
driving east, the wolf moon howls us home
mourning
a long bend stretches the body worn from winter’s ache
listening
a door cracks open
to let a friend begin
— drew myron