"This Room" by John Ashbery:
The room I entered was a dream of this room.
Surely all those feet on the sofa were mine.
The oval portrait
of a dog was me at an early age.
Something shimmers, something is hushed up.
We had macaroni for lunch every day
except Sunday, when a small quail was induced
to be served to us. Why do I tell you these things?
You are not even here.
I want to write with the luminous clarity of Ashbery. He paints a picture of something mundane, something routine. But he sees the portal in it: the refraction of daily life sparkling underneath. Suddenly, something makes sense, or we learn something about ourselves. Or about someone. “You are not even here.” We haven’t solved everything, but there is a moment of realization and the poem becomes a photograph. He finds gems embedded in sedimentary rock. He polishes them and sits them on his desk.
This webzine and blog is dedicated to going forward. I try to keep myself grounded by living through the mundane, seeing and logging moments of luminous clarity. It is really hard sometimes, and it was hard this month. We can peel back layers of the past, but I want to keep going forward. I want to keep discovering more about myself and the world, even though it can be so hard to be. But as long as we are still willing to walk into the opaque mist, there will be more to find.
I hope you enjoy November and find some peace and clarity. I wonder how things will change, improve, and progress next month. We’ll just have to see.
End-of-Month | webzine and blog 