I'm sharing a snapshot from my journal on 10/13/2024. It is a gorgeous morning in mid-October, I've been feeling a lot of anxiety, and so I sat down at my writing desk and decided to list things I'm grateful for, to slow my mind down. This is what came from it, and I feel there are some interesting tidbits here, that I could use later, or keep in the back of my mind. Some tools to build a poem, an image, an idea...
10/13/2024
I'm grateful for the sun shining through my window, slanting a knife shape of light, or more a butcher knife-shaped slant of light or a pick comb shape or a cake batter spatula.
It is something I could hold in my hand, a tool for ordinary living, of daily routine. It sounds both dangerous and comforting.
What could I use a slant of light for?
How can I hold it in my hands?
How can I pick it up from the wall behind me?
Ah, I see it now.
Through this poem, I pick it up.
It becomes a pen to write with a huge peacock feather at the end of it,
& I get to write & the gratitude is like liquid light, the word overused, like trauma & self-love & memory & forgotten.
***
A deeper dive
Peacock appeared again in my writing. Ever since my daughter saw a peacock for the first time in Innsbruck
, Austria. I've been thinking about them, and all the times I've seen them. On the grounds of the palace in Gwalior, India and in the palace in Seville, Spain. Such regal birds, it's funny that I've seen them so frequently in old unused palaces for tourists. But I also remember my parent's neighbor had attracted a wild peacock and it began roosting on their roof, waking them up at 4 am every day and attacking their dogs. Regal and aggressive.
I like in this journal clip that I'm serious, but at the same time, playing with the image and the words and the idea of gratitude and overused words in our current lexicon. I feel poems come from these intersections of play and seriousness, of poking fun of certain things, but at the same time understanding why these keep coming up for me and for everyone in this current period of time.
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