Good Morning

I complain about KUT switching to music after Morning Edition at 9, but this morning, I caught a little Jimmy Cliff before I turned off the radio to get to work (well, after blogging). "Took the Children's Bread" is no Diane Rehm, but it was a nice cap to my morning radio/smoothie/coffee/neti/stretch* routine. 

In other news, it seems we've survived another election season. This one was pretty brutal, in terms of trying to stay focused on the work at hand, trying not to obsess and worry over every little tick of the news or poll cycle. I'll blame it on Twitter and Nate Silver and thankfully be moving on now. 

It's hard to find a balance between being a reasonably well-informed citizen and a head-in-the-sander. I'm so sensitive that I get swept away with worries and fears and anger over injustice. But it doesn't matter how much information I'm digesting, when it comes down to it, if I'm not transforming that information into action. Voting, I suppose, is a tiny ripple of action. But every two years (of voting blue in a red state, at that) is hardly the kind of wing flapping that's going to reach China, and I don't seem to be much of a taking-it-to-the-streets activist these days as I get big and homey and settle into my own. 

Right Work, I think, can be another ripple. That's one I'm thinking about lately, as my fellowship nears the half-way mark. I often think about Right Work and where the pursuit of art fits in there. I won't go all into it, but I'm not sure that I buy anymore (or ever did) the WCW lines,

                        It is difficult

to get the news from poems                        

            yet men die miserably every day                                                

                        for lack

of what is found there.

That's not fair. Sure, I buy the sentiment**, but men and women and children also plain old die everyday without food or shelter or education or a sense of safety. So what does that call us to do, how are we supposed to live? I think that to live a life of compassion, particularly active compassion, first requires us to live a seeing life. 

This is not to say when I finish my book writing's over for me. No way. And I know society needs true artists among us, devoted to the perfection of a craft, of a vision if you will. But it also needs the builders, determined not just to create beauty in the joints they bind but also to create sturdy joints capable of upholding a roof sound enough to keep out the rain. 

I guess I think my hermitty existence that consists of the reading and writing and eating and taking walks with the dog and obsessing over elections and world events is a fine (and wonderful!) one but one that, ideally, must be combined with a healthy dose of outward seeing and action***. Too much focus on purely your own needs and whims can't be good for your art...or the world. 

Yesterday when the water man pulled over the cattleguard as I was outside reading, my reaction was to gather my books and notes and run in the kitchen door, back inside. The dog, bless her hermitty heart, followed close behind. You get used to being alone, and you go inside yourself and it can be easy to become selfish and obsessed with all of your own thoughts. This, I think, is a very good thing for a time, but like all things, there is a time and there is a not-time. 

I said I wouldn't get into all of it, but there I went. Nonetheless, there will be time tomurder and create. For now, time to get to work building a story about a mule. A mule with beautiful ears, obviously.

                                     

*This very routine (sans coffee--that's my husband rubbing off on me) convinced my husband-to-be that I was a full-on hippy after our first sleep over. I'm sure it's only because I also played up my knowledge of 90s-era hip hop and my love of Mingus, that he stuck around past that first sun salutation. 

**I actually don't think this kind of dichotomy of art vs. service is what WCW was going for at all, but I've often heard these lines quoted in this context. 

***Back in September after having consulted with Mike Scalise on such things as writing hermittude and service, I had full intentions of volunteering somewhere, working with kids in some way. Then time passed and the dirt road connecting me to the outside grew longer. My belly grew fuller, and the days just flew. And isn't that always the way of things?