Do you ever go through periods where you feel like a poor little idiot in search of a village? Boy I do. This last weekend was one of the worst spells I’ve had in a while. It started gradually on Friday afternoon, lasted all weekend, and it might not be over yet. It just seemed like every time I opened my mouth, what came out hadn’t been run past an editor, or even a crossing guard.
I ran into a fellow poet at the reading Saturday night, and learned that he’d changed his first name. Or perhaps reclaimed a family name that he’d set aside earlier in life. That’s cool, right? Sure. But my pitiful brain tried telling him about my friend named E~ who I met after years, and found he’d become a woman named E~. (Similar names.) Not a great subject from the start – not for that setting – and I did a bad job explaining how I felt that it behooves us all to accept one another unconditionally, to let each person follow his/her bliss. But that’s not what I said. I blathered for what must have been 30 seconds but seemed like 30 minutes. There was something about his face that changed in that long expanse of time. (The face of the poet, not my friend who had the sex change.) He went from looking like a metaphorical peach to an overripe avocado. Darker and with a heavier pit. There was also just the hint of a squirm, like "oh spare me and let me go."
I ran into a fellow poet at the reading Saturday night, and learned that he’d changed his first name. Or perhaps reclaimed a family name that he’d set aside earlier in life. That’s cool, right? Sure. But my pitiful brain tried telling him about my friend named E~ who I met after years, and found he’d become a woman named E~. (Similar names.) Not a great subject from the start – not for that setting – and I did a bad job explaining how I felt that it behooves us all to accept one another unconditionally, to let each person follow his/her bliss. But that’s not what I said. I blathered for what must have been 30 seconds but seemed like 30 minutes. There was something about his face that changed in that long expanse of time. (The face of the poet, not my friend who had the sex change.) He went from looking like a metaphorical peach to an overripe avocado. Darker and with a heavier pit. There was also just the hint of a squirm, like "oh spare me and let me go."
After the reading, I tried to talk to a poet with whom I organized a Day of the Dead poetry reading several years ago. On impulse, I asked if she’d be interested in doing that again some time. She wasn’t. Isn’t. Fuhgeddaboutit. But since I’d made up new business cards that day, I just had to give her one. Sheesh. All the social grace of a bull elephant seal.
It was still with me on Sunday, when Pete and Erin visited. I don’t remember anything plainly stupid being hacked forth, but I felt right on the brink, the lip of the abyss of the inane. And about as sharp as a pingpong ball.
We ought to have a common understanding, like holding the door for someone behind you, or covering your mouth when you cough, that everybody has a stupid time now and then, and should just be compassionately ignored. Unless, or course, it’s just me.
Metaphor 