Busy Time and Dreamtime

It’s so tempting. When I was professional and overworked all those years, the little things did not get done: the corner-sweeping details of house and garden. Now with the luxury of time, I am enjoying getting around to some of these in an unhurried way.

But wait! It’s possible to get completely engaged with this taking-care-of-things. I find myself thinking that I could get everything truly in order, when that’s not really my nature or calling. It’s important not to get busy all over again. I need the dreamtime to watch dragonflies and herons at the beaver pond, write poetry, and follow impulse.

Technorati tags: retirement, nature, time, leisure, busy

Poems On Retirement

On Retirement—75 Poems, edited by Robin Chapman and Judith Strasser (University of Iowa Press) has just come out.

The collection embraces wonderful, thoughtful poems by people like Ted Kooser, Denise Levertov, Maxine Kumin, Ishmael Reed, Lucille Clifton, Grace Paley—and my "Walking Out"! They muse on changing roles we play, on open spaces of time, on continuing parenting and grandparenting, on our relationships to cities and countryside, on connection and disconnection from those we love.

“This collection is a magnificent entrée to a season of life when time is at once bountiful and limited, is taken and surrendered, has been invested and withdrawn. Some of these voices say that time is leaden and some say it flies, and all are resolute in facing the arc of life’s course.”—Dave Ekerdt, director, Gerontology Center, University of Kansas

The Third Half of the Show

The Car Talk guys coined that phrase, “third half of the show,” but as I took a walk today in the winter woods, ice crunching underfoot, I thought Yes, that’s what this time of life feels like. The first part of life, maybe up to age thirty, was growing up and getting educated. The second half was work and family. I’m not sure how it feels to other people, but when I hit 60, I felt a strong sense of coming to the downward arc of my life. It’s not downward in the sense of despair or depression, but it’s clearly moving towards an ending. I am conscious of mortality nearly every day, even though my health is excellent.

I’d never planned for the third half of the show. People tell me it’s time to do the things I’ve always wanted to do and they ask if I am traveling to colorful places. But really, the work of creative writing is an exotic land to me. I don’t so much yearn to see the Amazon as I wish to allow unformed and creative parts to emerge and do their dance.

It’s time to develop my spiritual life, which I see as connection within myself; connection to nature; a new, less goal-oriented way of being with other people; and attunement to the creative process. These inter-connected elements make up the core of my third half life.

Technorati tags: retirement, writing, creativity, leisure, spirit

Getting out of busyness, again

How did I do it when I was working 60-hour weeks and trying to have a life? Over the past six weeks I got very busy—well, “very” is relative, but I did help my son roof a cabin, set up a website for the Authentic Movement Community, have houseguests, submit a manuscript to my writing group, join a dance group of differently-abled people, and do some of my own writing. All good things.

Now I’m making the transition back to “my own time.” It’s hard to describe the difference. It’s not like I do nothing, but I have the sense of doing nothing. It’s not like I have endless time, but I attempt to treat it as endless. I stop the lists running in my head (I have one on the kitchen counter for the basics). I notice that voice that keeps asking “What next?” and “What should I be doing?” “Nothing,” I answer the voice.

“Shouldn’t you check email?” “It will wait.”

“Shouldn’t you do errands?” “They can keep.”

I spend time looking out the window at the branches waving in the wind. I suddenly have ideas for three poems—now those are worth the time! I take a walk. I make tea. I write this essay. Tomorrow is a busy day but I have three days in a row after that with no fixed points. What luxury!

Technorati tags: retirement, leisure, meditation

free fall

(a little meditation on retirement)

as if I deserved it
the whole forest turns
gold, light enters
on a daring slant
leaves flame in the swamp
the beaver dam barely
holds back tons
of shining water

time that was never
mine, is now

in July monotonous
ranks of worker
leaves made sticky
molecules
for mother tree

one October sunrise
the work of holding on
is complete
I hold my breath
to fly between
unclasping and the
anonymous pile below

This poem was published in Peregrine XXIV, 2006

The Gift of Time

An old pseudo-folk song said, “Nothing is what you could wish it to be.”

Oh life is a toil and love is a trouble,

beauty will vanish and riches will flee.

Pleasures they dwindle and prices they double

and nothing is what you could wish it to be.

It’s true but it’s not true, and how fortunate I am—no beauty was there to dwindle and I have enough money and I have time. Who knows how much time, but while it’s here it’s mine.

The Last Gift of Time, Carolyn Heilbrun titled her quirky book about the challenges and joys of being in her 60s. She had thought she would commit suicide rather than face that decade but instead she wrote a book about the changes. Then killed herself at 77, when she was still in good health. I was angry at her, knowing her only through her writing—the high-toned murder mysteries and the essays. Why destroy herself when she was well able to negotiate the city she loved and while she still had friends and the infinite horizon of writing to be done? In The Last Gift she wrote of her friendship with May Sarton who—as Heilbrun describes her—was in her old age still feeling angry and deprived because of the recognition she didn’t receive in academic and literary circles. Only millions of actual readers, not the establishment, loved Sarton. There’s definitely a lesson there in taking what you have and being grateful.

But while it’s here, time is mine, that was the thought. My time to pick the ugly larvae off the Asian lilies, to walk in the Quabbin Reservoir wildness, to talk to the cats, to write whatever I choose, to cultivate new friendships. To learn to live in what already is.

Art and Fear

Among my indulgences is a shelf full of books on writing and creativity. A friend loaned me a wonderful little book called Art and Fear—Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

One of the major themes running through the book is that artists (including writers) are people who continue. Many people who start creative activities get discouraged, feeling they won’t ever be great or famous, or whatever they think of as achievement. If you keep going, you might or might not do something great; if you quit, for sure you won’t.

Bayles and Orland tell the story of a pottery teacher who divided his students into two groups, one to be graded on the basis of quantity, the other on quality. Those graded on quantity would have all their pots weighed at the end of semester and the weight translated into a grade. Those who were working for quality only had to produce one perfect pot to get an A. At the end of the semester, most of the really good work was done by those who worked on quantity and had the chance to learn from their work.

As Art and Fear says, no one can tell you what it takes for you to keep going. It’s different for every person, though we can learn from one another about some general patterns. So good luck to you in your creative endeavors, and keep on working!

book, art, creativity, Writing and poetry