Salsa conduits can be hard to come by in the grain-free life, but sweet potato chips are surprisingly tasty with my salsa today. They also happen to be a handy metaphor for accepting agency and responsibility, not only for my food needs but also my writing needs. I would prefer to use corn chips for salsa, but corn in any form makes me quite sick. So I choose an alternative, just as I would prefer to let some of my poems live in a lighthearted humorous space, but sometimes they want more than that.
I’ve been procrastinating working on a difficult poem today. I just realized I’ve been procrastinating. It can be a sneaky practice. It can look like meditation and catching up on email and washing the kitchen floor. A friend gave me the feedback that I needed to work on it. The feedback, in summary, was an invitation to go deeper. While the poem as it is would make people laugh, the material actually comes from a raw, vulnerable place. I am afraid to go down into it. I believe I must. Sigh. I am going to use one of my favorite revision tricks after I finish writing this post. I am going to tell myself that all I am going to do is read the poem. That’s it. I don’t need to commit to anything else. Something else usually follows, but if it doesn’t, that’s OK.
Also related to the needs of my writing life, I believe it is important to note that I am in the last week of this blog. Some of you have made a lovely case to me that I keep going beyond my one-year commitment to post a selfie a day with some writing. I have loved considering that option, as every writer loves having readers. But I am ready to complete this project and see how my writing life evolves without this practice. I plan to go about this last week as I have every other week of the life of this blog, which is to write about whatever I feel like with whatever time I have and post it straight away without fuss or revision. I suppose the blog has been a practice in mindfulness in its own way. Therefore, it seems appropriate that I will not be planning a big, intentional finale. Whatever comes on Monday, March 20th in the present moment of when I write it will be the last post.
I put a collection of William Stafford’s poetry in my bathroom yesterday, and I opened to this poem just now, which seems rather perfect for honoring the last week of a selfie blog:
When You Go Anywhere by William Stafford
This passport your face (not you officially, your picture, but the face used to make the passport) offers everyone its witness: "This is me."
It feels like only a picture, a passport forced upon you. Somewhere this oval, sudden and lasting, appeared. It happened that you were behind it, like it or not.
You present it--your passport, your face -- wherever you go. It says, "A little country," it says "Allow this friendly observer quiet passage," it says, "Ordinary," it says, "Please."
