All your friends will be there
One very long sentence and then a few others, Robert Creeley and a road trip
Before leaving Chicago yesterday morning, I pulled three cards and then one more, but only after writing fast and loose about 300 words in response to what do I want, in this case, specifically with regard to the next 7 weeks, most of which we’ll spend back in New Mexico—where you might recall if you’ve been here a minute we seemingly impulsively but more likely inevitably bought 20 acres of land last December, about 25 miles south of Santa Fe, on top of a mesa up a rocky dirt road from a one-time-company-town-turned-ghost-town-and-turned-once-more-to-artist-and-or-anarchist-colony, depending on who you ask—which was a nice thing to do, I think, spend a minute or five but more likely eleven just writing it down without really thinking what exactly it is I want, or hope for, out of this time we’ll spend together in this place we think we’ll live some way we’ve never lived before, some day, and after I wrote my 300 words but before I pulled four cards, I looked again and what I wrote and pared it down to just its diamonds, which were (not quite but mostly in this order):
joy
grace
gratitude
presence
play
poems
seeds
community
family
love
progress
people
health
beauty
Which is about the shape of it, I think, I mean the life I’d like to live. This is the value of writing it down. We get to glimpse the world we want. The cards help whisper the way there.
Anyway here’s a bit of good news from Robert Creeley who—fun fact!—once or maybe twice or more stayed in the cabin we’ll call home in June. It’s really something. The poem, yes obviously, and just the fact of it—we’re all kissing the same earth.
Okay. Be safe out there. Be kind. If you want to, if it helps, try writing it down. Whatever it might be.