It has been a strange week-end, a week-end where I've tried to work ahead on the writing that I do for my minister job at Faith Lutheran in Bristol, Tennessee, while also trying to help my spouse with plumbing and the other tasks that need to happen before the dry wall installing team arrives tomorrow. Yesterday, I made this Facebook post, which sums up the week-end in so many ways:
"I'm working on a sermon, and my spouse is listening to a KISS album while working on rerouting the plumbing, and I'm hearing the song "Beth" and thinking about how 11 year old Kristin heard this song and imagined a future life which didn't really involve plumbing or sermon writing or feeling nostalgia for men in make up."
When I was young, I saw that song as an achingly beautiful love song. Now that I am older, I am seeing it as a song that shows how difficult it is to balance the needs of a creative life with the needs of a partner. And as we listened to the album, it was a much softer kind of album than I remember it being. Of course, KISS was never one of the bands that held my heart. I found them scary, probably in the same way that many parents do.
I've been feeling a bit of despair about my lack of coherent poetry writing. I jot down a line or two, or a stanza or two, but very little comes that feels worth revising and polishing. Perhaps it's the state of the world we're in. More likely, it's that my writing energy is being channeled in other ways right now.
Take the past three days for example. I've written 3300 words for just my church job. That doesn't count any of the writing that I've done as a student. It's no wonder that there's not much wonder left for my poetry brain to feed on.
I've been in this writing state before. Poetry has returned, often in a richer way than before. I will be patient and keep the garden bed mulched. At some point, sprouts will emerge.
No comments:
Post a Comment