Past and Present

 

I was at a City Council meeting—our City Council—last night for the first time in years.

Years.

I went with Warren because Council was talking about a long-delayed reboot of its flag and banner policy. The Symphony has banners for Concert Week that have not been flown in months as the City has been slowly reviewing its policies in light of the Supreme Court ruling in Shurtleff v. Boston. (Note: Not much progress was made last night either.)

I had a small sense of Old Home Week when I walked into Council chambers. I used to serve on our Civil Service Commission, so there was a joke with our Police Chief (who'd been a captain back in those days) and I was able to congratulate our interim Fire Chief, someone I had gotten to know well from those years. (The firefighters union, to my delight, was ever-present at our meetings; our interim Chief was in that bunch back then.) The head of HR, also someone I had known forever, came in behind me, tapping me on the shoulder and leaning in to tell me she was glad to see me. And I sat right next to the young person who I will be voting for in the next Ward elections.

I do not know most of our Council members at all anymore, although I still know the City Manager and, of course, the City Planning Director. ("Of course" because I also sat on our Historic Preservation Commission for several years. Plus I was a zoning lawyer , so even thought the current planner and I did not overlap extensively in that era, I still worked with him and his department before I hung it up.)

I found myself thinking back, way way back, to myself as a college student, to the year I was in between schools, and all the hours I spent at council and school board meetings during that time.

When I withdrew from Chicago at the end of my freshman year, I retreated to Delaware,  moving in with my Aunt Ginger and my Grandma Skatzes. It was a long period of putting myself back together — in every way imaginable. I did not work those months. I volunteered at my high school, teaching classes with the greatest English teacher I ever had. And I started attending council and school board meetings.

I had met a newly elected council member on Election Night that fall, and he encouraged me to see what city government was all about. As I was thinking of staying in Delaware, I started thinking maybe I should get a better idea of how the school board operated as well.

It ended up being a fascinating time – I made friends I still have, I felt at home at council meetings (never school board, interestingly enough), and I began to learn how this city functioned. I knew the insider jokes and side comments at Council. I change my career goal to law school, realizing that, if I was going to stay in Delaware, as I was strongly thinking I would, I wanted to make a difference and have a say in how the community operated. I started to have plans to run for Council at the next election cycle.

That was in late 1975, early 1976. By that summer, I was back in Chicago, eventually on my way to living out west for several years. I did not return to Delaware permanently until the fall of 1990.

I did become a lawyer. And when I moved back, I ended up practicing in the office of that Council member. I had met so many years earlier.

I never ran for City Council. That was not a goal by 1990 and thereafter. I almost ran for school board, but had a conflict, so did not. My service on the two city commissions was enough.

I did not sit there last night full of  nostalgia or wondering "What if...?" Maybe I had a sense of relief that I had not ventured into politics. But maybe not even that. Maybe just a sense of being there, listening to Warren make his public comments, and then heading home.

And that was more than enough. 

By Special Request: Another Pantoum

My blogger friend Kim commented on yesterday's post and suggested I needed to write an ode to twist ties. I do not often write a poem on request, but this one, dear Kim, is for you.

Stopping For Bread Ties On A Winter Evening (With apologies to Robert Frost)

Whose bread twist ties these are I think I know - 

Oh, who am I kidding?

I stuffed them in there long ago

Clearly anticipating a twist tie shortage.

Oh, who am I kidding?

Our household is two, not 22.

Clearly anticipating a twist tie shortage,

I saved every single one.

Our household is two, not 22.

A loaf of bread lasts for weeks.

I saved every single one –

Well, not the paper-wrapped ones.

A loaf of bread lasts for week.

But still I continued to amass those ties - 

Well, not the paper-wrapped ones.

They never last.

But still I continued to amass those ties.

They were becoming unruly.

They never last.

They were not true to me.

They were becoming unruly.

I had to clear them out.

They were not true to me.

I closed my eyes and let them go.

I had to clear them out –

I will be telling this ages and ages hence

I closed my eyes and let them go.

Forty ties stuffed in a drawer.

I will be telling this ages and ages hence -

Whose bread twist ties these are I think I know - 

Forty ties stuffed in a drawer.

I stuffed them in there long ago.

Tiptoeing Back Into Poetry: Pantoums

A pantoum is a highly structured poem. They are a Malay form of poetry and historically have been rhymed. As I noted many times before, I don't work well with rhymes. Luckily, a pantoum may also be unrhymed and mine tend to be. I last posted (and wrote) pantoums back in 2011. 

It is always written in quatrains (stanzas of four lines each). The second and fourth lines of each quatrain become the first and third line of the next quatrain until the final quatrain, which is so neatly linked back to the first and third lines of the first quatrain that you feel as if you have just tied up a package.

I receive the daily "Poem-a-Day" email from the Academy of American Poets. One recently featured a pantoum. Oh my gosh. Back in 2011, when I was writing more extensively, I wrote several pantoums. I had forgotten all about that form and their precise structure.

Maybe, I thought, that was a good place to start writing poetry again.

It's been a while. A long while. 

Pre-Covid, I belonged to a poetry group, started by myself and someone else who was a close friend. Over the months and years, we added to the group. He invited someone; I invited someone. Then a newer member would say, "Hey, we should invite so-and-so to this group."

And so we did.

At its height, we probably had 10 to 12 regular members, with out-of-town guests sometimes joining us. We would gather monthly, often but not always at my house. Someone would usually bring wine, some of us would bring snacks, and we would share our own poems or read a poem that we had come across and felt like reading. (Billy Collins was often read at our gatherings.)

No surprise, the pandemic slam the door shut. There were no gatherings, no anything, while we all hunkered down and regrouped in our personal and professional lives.

Then one member suggested, maybe just to me, but maybe in a group email, what if we Zoomed? So we tried that.

It kinda sorta worked. But there were barriers, including most (all?) of us spending so much time in Zoom because of our jobs that one more Zoom meeting was just one too many. More than once, when I sent out the Zoom link, I will get a quick email: "Sorry, but I won't make it. I am on overload."

I should've pulled the plug earlier. (I am saying "I" because I was the one who set up the meetings.) But it turns out in the end that I didn't have to. On what became the very last meeting ever, sometime in early 2021, the club died a very swift death after two members behaved badly (one by email, one at the meeting) on the day of the last meeting. 

And that was that. 

For the most part, I stopped writing poetry at that point. I had not been writing regularly and that last meeting killed my interest. Oh, there were some scraps and half-bitten lines here and there, but not even much of that. I did not work at it or set aside time for it.

Two things happened.

Earlier this month, I opened my poetry file folder – not the one on the computer, but the massive paper one I keep in my desk drawer. [Know that I have hoarding tendencies. My poetry file made the bread twist ties stash and the plastic straws stash look like nothing. Don't ask. I cleared those out weeks ago.] I took out a handful of poems and read them in the silence of my study with an audience of one – me.

OK there was a lot of ehhhhhh there. But a few caught my attention.

Maybe? Maybe there is something here? 

The second, of course,  is the spark that pantoum email sent through me. 

Maybe I could try to edge my way back into writing poetry more regularly through pantoums? Maybe I just try it.

As I just noted in my last post, I have been writing a minimum of 15 minutes per day. Every day. Almost all of that writing is what may yet turn into a memoir. No, I am not ready to reveal anything about that but what about poetry too? What if I wrote for 15 minutes on the one project and then also allowed myself time to write poetry whenever it nudged me?

What if indeed? 

Here is a very recent and rough example from our trip to and from Mayo. I experimented with the traditional pantoum form in the very last quatrain, changing the wording of the very last line to create a different outcome. 

While driving, I saw

Two sunbows

On the wisps of a cloud.

The sun in a haze.

Two sunbows - 

The sheerest of colors.

The sun in a haze - 

My eyes glanced at the shimmer.

The sheerest of colors:

No wonder they fade in a blink.

My eyes glanced at the shimmer,

But I had to watch the road.

No wonder they fade in a blink.

How could they not?

But I had to watch the road

Instead of the sunbows.

How could they not?

While driving, I saw -

Instead of the sunbows -

Only the wisps of a cloud.

I am feeling my way back into writing. Let's see what comes of this. 

Recombobulating

Yes, this is a real sign at the Milwaukee Airport.

Thea Milwaukee Airport has a large terminal sign pointing passengers to the "Recombobulation Area."

I totally get that.

I am recombobulating. And my recent trip to the Emerald City (Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN) added to that feeling.

As I discuss my post-2022 life changes with friends, I continue to realize that I am still working to find the rhythms of the day and the week. I find myself struggling with writing. 

Seriously. 

I do not struggle with writing at least 15 minutes a day. That has become a valued routine. With the exception of this past Wednesday, which was a hard travel day back home (I can't write in a moving car), I have written for at least 15 minutes every day since January 2.

So where do I struggle? In recognizing writing as a valid use of my time. I am still struggling with honoring myself and my need and desire to write.

This is my own internal challenge. Warren is tremendously supportive and encouraging. My friends are supportive. My son Ben is pleased. And while I have not shared my writing regimen with Ramona, I know exactly what she would say if I did. "So what took you so long to finally write, Grandma?" And then roll her eyes for good measure.

One writer I follow, Kaki Okumura, recently wrote about how Japanese culture focuses on imperfection, citing kintsugi, the art of repairing broken ceramic pieces with gold, which both beautifies and emphasizes the cracks. Look at our lives through the lens of continuous progress, she wrote: anything we accomplish is progress.

Maybe I need to look at my writing as repairing the cracks with gold, and give myself the grace to do so.

While Warren and I drove the miles from home to Mayo (about 660 miles), we used some of that time to talk about personal matters that don't always get discussed in the rush of any given week. One topic, no surprise, was time. Even without a progressive, incurable cancer, I would be shortsighted to pretend that at almost 67, I have decades of life left. With an incurable, progressive cancer, and having far outstripped even the most generous post-diagnosis life expectancy, any time I have is pure gravy. (Thank you, Raymond Carver.)

I started this particular post in Rochester, on Monday evening after we arrived. In longhand, in my writing notebook. By midday Wednesday, we started our drive back home with some very positive results on the one hand (the myeloma continuing to be incredibly stable; my oncologist called it "surprisingly stable"), and a new (additional) diagnosis on the other (in the "we need to keep an eye on this" stage).

OTOH, OTOH indeed!

So now as I sit at home finishing this post tonight, I circle back to the writing struggle as I consider this new factor. After spending yesterday recuperating (this was a rocket trip of less than 72 hours from walking out the front door to walking back in, at 12:30 a.m. to boot), I got nine hours of sleep last night and could view my life with far more balance. (Truth be told, I felt a lot like George Bailey after realizing he had a wonderful life after all.) 

When my older brother died in 2015, I was one of his eulogists. I speculated in my talk about what lasting advice he would want us to take from his life. After making a couple of proposals, I said, "Life goes on."

And it does.

Raymond Carver was right: this is pure gravy.