I’m listening to an album released a few weeks back that, unless the world ends today, I plan to spotlight tomorrow. The singer-songwriter wrote me a while ago, as I praised his band’s last outing; I listened to this album, his second solo set, that same day, heard echoes of Dan Fogelberg’s better works ringing through his folk-flavored arrangements, and…and…and, well, here I am, almost a month later, just getting to it. There’s just not enough time in the day to do everything I want.
Some folks write fast, others slow. I’m a bit of both. I fret over meaning, meter and alliteration, losing myself in the minutiae only to miss glaring mistakes. While I sometimes write parts of my essays in the Notes app on my phone—the rhythmic opening to my review of Suzanne Vega’s Flying with Angels, for instance—I prefer working at my cluttered desk, where words flow out like endless rain into a paper cup…except, that is, when they don’t. Either/or, while doing so I reference the works of poets, search my photo library to see who and what I photographed on the same date last year, the year before that, and every year since 2010, when I bought an iPod Touch (i.e., an iPhone minus the phone component), all while writing, re-writing and tweaking my thoughts—and freaking out over my use of ellipses, em dashes, semi-colons and commas (to Oxford or not, that is the question), not to mention the length of some sentences. Was that last one too long? A run-on? Was my reference to the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” obvious or obscure? Should I have leaned on a CSNY song instead?
Today’s Daily Prompt question reminds me of the word romp that is Wallace Stevens’ “The Creations of Sound,” which finds him musing on poetry (and, by extension, life itself): “We say ourselves in syllables that rise/From the floor, rising in speech we do not speak.” The said and unsaid engage in a delicate dance, forever entwined despite frequent missteps. Much is the same with the notion of “having it all,” which exists in the space between the immediate and the imagination. The definition expands and constricts, shifting from the abstract to work/life balance to financial security to owning one’s home. It changes as we age, as our life situations evolve. To name it, to claim we’ve attained it, is almost meaningless, I think.
That said, at present, I define “having it all” as contentment—and I am content. I want for nothing other than time.
The Old Grey Cat 