Breathing Time

I've always considered myself to be good at keeping New Year's resolutions.  But now that I think about it, I've only kept one.  About 13 years ago I resolved to not go to bed until all of the dirty dishes in the sink were cleaned and put away.  I did that for a full year.  Exactly.  Since then maybe 25% of the time.  Better than never.  Well I kind of kept another.  A few years in a row...probably around that same time frame, maybe 15 years ago, I resolved to be a nicer person.  I think I accomplished that, at least for a year.  Although maybe not every day.  And the retention rate may even be better than the dishes.  It probably had a lot to do with being a parent.  Seeing yourself through your children's eyes and worse seeing your less admirable qualities mirrored by your progeny is a huge motivator for self-improvement.  So I've done okay with two resolutions.  There is another one however, that I've returned to year after year and have yet to keep past January 5th.  And that is to adopt a daily writing practice.  

Regardless of how much I hated school as a child, and resented homework in particular, I've come to realize that I need deadlines.  I need to be held accountable in order to actually finish anything.  My house is only cleaned right before I have company (so please save me from squalor and invite yourself over).   I exercise more often if I'm expected to attend a class.  The last piece of artwork I completed was in college, despite the lovely easel and small fortune in paints in my closet.  And the last poem I wrote was in a workshop about 5 years ago.  One of the most fulfilling weeks of my life.  And yet, I could not sustain the momentum.  Not without the energy from the circle of other participants and not without the pressure of a deadline.  Not without the pressure of knowing that each day of the workshop we returned with a piece of work to share.  No matter how many times I've read this poem by Denise Levertov for inspiration:

There will never be that stillness.

Within the pulse of flesh,

in the dust of being, where we trudge,

    turning our hungry gaze this way and that,

the wings of the morning

brush through our blood

as cloud-shadows brush the land.

What we desire travels with us.

We must breathe time as fishes breathe water.

God's flight circles us.

Perhaps the thought that we are consuming time like water is what I need to keep writing.  Oxygenating.  Sustaining.  And panic sets in when it feels like it is running out.

But I'll forget that, just like the countless other times that I've read this poem and thought it made a difference.

But this time is different.  I'm writing now.  To you, for me.

Whether anyone will read this it is hard to say.  Some people have entirely too much time on their hands.   Some people seem to accomplish two days worth of living into one.   (An odd image of them with gills sitting in a fish tank just popped into my head.)  And so, for the purposes of trying to keep this resolution that has been my elusive Moby Dick* I will use the illusion that someone out there will be disappointed on the day that I don't write.  You, whether or not you are out there, will be holding me accountable. 

*Just curious...did I use this reference correctly?  I never actually got past page 19 of Moby Dick.  However I read up to page 19, 19 times.  On the day of the test in Mr. Rotundo's class I turned the paper over and wrote a poem about how unreadable Moby Dick was.  Mr. Rotundo graded it an "A".