Day Six Simplicity from Practical Magic/Slow Living with Renee Magnusson
Sometimes there is the choice to keep thoughts simple, I realised today. To not go there, to stop the dark, complicated wagon train of thoughts at the pass and send them tumbling over the cliff and not even watch them fall. The trick is to hear their distant thunder before they round the corner into full view. One such recurring thought that I’ve had since my client Thad died on Friday is “Could I have done more? Should I have?” My co-worker sent him to hospital first thing in the morning, right after my shift. He’d woken up when she saw him and, perhaps alerted by my concerns, she realised how confused he was. I fretted. Maybe I should have sent him in on my shift. What difference would that have made? And, of course, bringing up the clattering rear of the wagon train of dark thoughts: would he still be alive if I’d done that? I’d had concerns about the concentration of his urine but otherwise he was sleeping soundly and deeply. He was breathing… None of this makes any difference now. Deep down I know that I couldn’t have known that this night might have been any different from any others. I confronted my co-worker with my concerns. “Don’t even go there,” she said. “You know, we all know, how Thad was. His health. How it could change in a minute. You weren’t to know. How could you? How could any of us?” Keeping my thoughts as simple as possible helps, not going into the if onlys when I know in my heart that I haven’t been neglectful. It’s not always easy and sometimes I find I’m riding that wagon train along a precarious mountain path until I’m jolted into the simple now of this moment I’m in and I can leap off and send the thoughts over the cliff. On a lighter note, addressing Renee’s question of do I believe anything worth having or doing must be complicated, a poem arrived a couple of weeks ago, pretty much fully formed as I worked. I jotted it down, fiddled with a line which I finally took out. Then I embraced it and sent it to my poetry group for their critiques. Everyone loved it, found it profound, didn’t think they would be able to write around the heart of it the way I had and so on. I felt pleased and proud yet found myself shrugging it all off because I didn’t have to really work at it. Did I really deserve all that praise if it arrived ready-made? No matter that maybe my daily practice of haiku has led me to easily pare down my bigger poems. No matter that I read between the lines of a conversation to reach what was not being said and mulled it over enough that a poem formed. No matter that I trust my process enough, that I’ve honed it over the years, to be there, to flow out of my fingertips as I type because that’s how I work, so last minute having no choice but to trust the process. Because it came simply and directly I felt I had to downplay, almost disown, it. I realise now: a good poem is a good poem, no matter how it arrives. old tree split open weight of ice and snow on boughs our grieving hearts #339
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AuthorWelcome! I'm Sue Blott: a writer of all things, a poet at heart, mom, wife, daughter, step-mom, grandma, tea drinker, tai chi-er, mystic, artist, dreamer...and now a blogger! This is my world. Categories |