"But it's the Internet," I said. "I could access my e-mail from a computer in Russia." Not having been to Russia, I couldn't test my assertion. But T., who I've known for almost fifteen years, also lacks quality-time spent on the rich Russian soil so we were at a stalemate.
I spend much of my work time on a computer and with the exception years teaching have done so since the mid-eighties. And when I was on unemployment my head was living in the clouds of cyber space.
Yikes. Now I have to retrace my aha! between T.'s e-mail quandary, blogging and poetry. I saw it five minutes ago. Drat, as we used to say in junior high.
Leading up to that aha!, instantly forgotten, I was wondering why I am less drawn to blogging these days. Work? No poetry there. There are narratives everywhere in life; ditto fiction; but despite my optimistic nature and open-minded perspective (I'm pretty fabulous), I'm not sure poetry is so equally accessible. An exception comes to mind--some James Wright (the novelist) haiku about insects, roaches. He was living in France. He brought an entirely new perspective to the art form.
Mainly, however, poets know idleness. We carve out the time or would if carving and whittling weren't such arduous tasks. We find work which has down time or summer vacations. Like T. and his (misunderstood) problem with email, I'm wedded to the notion of time, which is a notion, a concept, an elusive frame for life.
Nothing will keep me from poetry or the joy of thinking outloud (I'm assuming my words speak their presence) here. At work, however, I'm in the clouds these days. I'm a Google document. I see this posting isn't quite cohering. Oh well. For the record, a few hours ago I completed assembling my first go at a new collection. I didn't think I had written enough new work, but there it is, shorter than The Future Is Happy, bound to change, but a draft of a second book.
I'll call T. later in the week to see how things are going.
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