Sometimes, it is enough

 

 

My kitchen windowsill in Canterbury, England, early in 2009.

Last night, I was reading Malena Morling's poem "Simply Lit" (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2011/11/13) in which she asks, "Isn't it enough to be a person buying/ a carton of milk?"  My answer is, "Yes."  Sometimes, it is enough just to be alive, just to able to put one foot in front of the other to take a walk, to slice a piece of cheese, to peel an orange. 

A couple of weeks ago, browsing among the photos on my laptop, I came across this one taken during my semester in Canterbury, England.  I often ate breakfast standing at that kitchen counter, looking at the flowers that took me through the grey days into the unusually sunny spring.  I bought the flowers at the Wednesday market, where I also bought Brussels sprouts and tomatoes.  My life in Canterbury was simple.  I had arrived for fifteen weeks with two suitcases.  My clothes took up only a small section of the narrow wooden wardrobe and barely filled the drawers in the dresser.  I shopped often because the grocery stores were only a short walk away, and I bought little because I carried my groceries home.  And because I needed little.

The simplicity was freeing and comforting.  It allowed me to clear my head.  Living in a medieval city with a famous cathedral outside the kitchen window--I had only to look up above the brick wall--was both exhilarating and overwhelming.  Sometimes  I focused on the flowers on the windowsill instead, and on the breadbox.  And I felt that it was enough just to be a person drinking her cup of tea on a February morning. 

Falling in Love with a Place

Recently, going through some files on my computer, I came across this fragment of a blog entry that I had written last summer, when I first started toying with the idea of blogging.  I’m posting it for Valentine’s Day, a day dedicated to love.

 

August 5, 2011

Last night, when I said “Iowa City,” I found myself smiling in that involuntary way I used to when I was first in love and had an opportunity to say my partner’s name: Marilyn.  Just saying her name was a joy, a delightful reminder of the new thrill in my life.  I would feel shy and happy and self conscious all at once.  It was as though in saying her name, my love, our love became visible.  Simultaneously, I felt myself enjoying a secret thrill, a physical sensation that no one else knew was occurring.  I’m realizing that one can fall in love with a place in the same way: with the same thrill at the newness, the same slow discovery of loveable quirks, the same pleasure at talking with someone else about the new love.  That this new “love” of mine is Iowa City is unexpected and even a little amusing.  I live in Champaign, a Midwestern, Big-Ten university town, so Iowa City, home to the University of Iowa, should not have been novel.  And I arrived there at the beginning of the heat wave of 2011, so I did not explore it as much as I had thought I would.  But here it is: a shy smile when I name the city in casual conversation.

Part of what made this experience unusual was driving west by myself to a place I had never been before.  I am not used to driving long distances alone, so I was both excited and nervous.  However, after I drove around Peoria, which was prettier and more urban than I’d remembered, I grew excited.  Approaching the Mississippi and then crossing it felt momentous.  I saw a sign for the official Iowa Welcome Center just on the other side of the river, so I got off Route 80 to take a break—and to make sure that I was headed the right way.  As I walked around the Welcome Center—a large, unremarkable, pale yellow building that could have been a medical practice in another life—I delighted in the art gallery and the free coffee and even updated my Facebook status to describe these amenities.  The art gallery was simply a section of the Center set aside for a current exhibit, and the oil paintings of the Midwestern landscape were filled with bold colors and large brushstrokes.  The rest of the Center was a store that had some merchandise specific to Iowa, while the rest was a blend of museum-store-type treats and Cracker-Barrel-like knickknacks. 

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That’s as far as the fragment went in my first attempt at blogging.  I no longer feel a thrill when I say “Iowa City,” but I have fond memories of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival (http://www.continuetolearn.uiowa.edu/iswfest/), where I enjoyed a week immersed in words and surrounded by writers.  I hope to return some day.  I’ll end this post with a few photos from Iowa City at the height of the heat wave of 2011, when it was often 101 degrees Fahrenheit at seven in the evening.

At the Iowa City Public Library

This little girl knew how to handle the heat during an evening concert.  Me, I savored an ice cream cone from Whitey's and listened to the music.

I enjoyed an Italian lunch while reviewing the work of a fellow workshop participant.

On Thursday evening, the clouds foreshadowed a break in the heat, which came on Saturday, my last day in Iowa City.

A souvenir of the week.

It was too hot for dinner, so I ate dessert instead.

I loved coming across quotes from literature on sidewalks all over the city.  This was one of my favorites.

The art museum, located on the river, was closed after the floods of 2008.

Words in the most unexpected places.

I had to get a couple of these for my eight-year-old nephews, who are big Harry Potter fans.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.

Fog and Clarity

           On Monday morning, I woke to a “freezing fog”; that’s what the weather report on the radio called it.  It was a perfect description for the air that was suddenly visible and for the delicate ice crystals that had settled on every branch and twig, and even on the prairie grass around the lamppost in our front yard.  The cold I have had all week had just begun its stay in my body, and I felt a kinship to the haze outside: my mind felt foggy, and my insides were freezing. 

            The next morning, I was rereading Adrienne Rich’s poem “To the Days” (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2001/02/09), one of my favorite poems of all time.  I was preparing for my Women in Literature class that afternoon.  The first line of the second stanza, “Fog in the mornings, hunger for clarity” is lovely, as is the image in the next, “coffee and bread with sour plum jam.”   I felt fortunate that this was my work, is my work, to help students appreciate and analyze such sensory, evocative language.  That morning, I was also grateful for my copious notes on the poem; my mind was still foggy, and the day ahead was going to be long and full.

            At one o’clock that afternoon, I met my students in our classroom, where the sun streams in from the south, a luxury on a campus where some classrooms have no windows at all, and those that do are not always a source of light.  We spent over an hour on that one poem, discussing each line and all it evoked.  As always, I gained new insights, too.  When the class ended, the last student to leave chatted with me as she packed up her books.  She had been telling her advisor about this class, she said, and her advisor had remarked, “But I thought you didn’t like poetry.”  “I didn’t,” she had replied, “but I understand it now, and I love it.” 

At the end of class the previous week, after we had discussed poetry by Elizabeth Bishop and Anne Sexton, another student said to me, almost as an aside, “I didn’t like these poems before we discussed them.  I didn’t know what they were about.  Now I really like them.  I understand them.”  She had contributed to the discussion that day, and I hadn’t noticed that she was confused, so her comment came as a surprise to me.  A surprise and a gift. 

            This Tuesday morning, discussing the line about “Fog in the mornings,” the students talked about the weather the day before and all the metaphorical meanings of fog.  Apparently they felt a “hunger for clarity,” too, and it was satisfied.