Scarlett Letters

Earlier this week, recovering from WorldCon, I experienced one of my periodic bobbles: stay in Seattle, move back to New York. WorldCon has a record of doing this to me, mainly because it opens up a lot of personal history for me, making me question everything: career choices, living choices -- everything. Close friends of mine know that this happens occasionally and, when it does, it's dramatic and shakes me up pretty badly, and then it takes me time to settle back to my center. Getting centered usually involves a lot of very practical list-making and emotional exploration (and, often, tears, which help relieve stress; they come and go pretty quickly). I figure I'll be done with resettling by the end of the weekend this time around. Earlier today when I wrote up the list of things I wanted to write about, I didn't include this, but thinking about it now, this is the thing I think I want to write about most of all.

The thing is: I've already done it. I've already written about living in Seattle and longing for New York, being unable to give up one for the other one way or another. The entry was written on July 17, 2008. I'm reposting the meat of that entry because, without alteration, it covers everything I've been feeling the last couple of days.

( This may be familiar to some of you. )

I spend a lot of time with prose writers. A lot. So much that I forget sometimes that the way I really started writing was that I wrote poetry. Reams of it. So many poems that in high school I had a party to celebrate having reached a certain numerical landmark. I took the University of Washington's certificate in poetry program years ago. I've had several poems published (one in Asimov's, which I'm still proud of and which is still a favorite of mine). But I haven't read or written poetry in a very long time.

Autumn seems to be when I purge my library. One of the reasons I know it's an annual autumn purge is that I will usually take my books to the University Bookstore to trade in for credit so that I can spend a little less money come holiday time. It always seems like a fair trade: more space for me, lovely gifts for friends.

So today, while scanning the shelves looking for books to purge, my eye fell on the bookshelf where I keep poetry. I pulled out my copy of Otherwise by Jane Kenyon, a book I haven't looked at in years. Some books, I just grab off the shelf and throw into the tote bag. Poetry always gets a second look. I can't remember the last time I cracked this one open, so I did.

What did I find? I found annotations. I made notes in pencil throughout the first 12 pages of the book, noting turns of phrase I liked and didn't like, or stanzas that could have stood by themselves, or why one poem in particular didn't work for me. I don't remember doing this. I have to assume it was an exercise I imposed on myself during my UW certificate period, searching for poets whose work was the kind I aspired to. Oliver was one; Billy Collins, Harry Humes were others. Not rhymers, these people. Not strict adherents to form, either. But they are all people who listen to the sounds of words, who observe carefully and can paint pictures in a handful of carefully chosen, onomatopoeiacally (!) tasty words that arrest the reader. (That there was kinesthesia--the mixing of sense experience, in this case, tasty sounds--a poetic technique. See? I remember.)

So here was this thing I had done that I don't remember doing, that I hardly ever do--writing in books in the margins. It took me aback and I was actually kind of fascinated, because it feels like a whole different me must have done it. But I remember a time in my life when I made a point to read poetry before I went to sleep because it felt a little like prayer. And I remember a time in my life when, for one brief period, I had the self-discipline to work on something that was meaningful to me. I miss writing poetry. And someone who passed through my life rather carelessly a couple of years ago kind of ruined poetry for me for a while.

I wonder if I can reclaim it. There's going to be other purging this autumn, of more than just books. Perhaps that will make room for writing and reading poetry again. We'll see.

Last night, Billy Joel played the first of two concerts that will constitute the last such at Shea Stadium before the venue's destruction. jon_chance posted about attending the show over in her LJ (for which I am truly grateful; I am envious of her getting to attend but delighted for her that she did). Both Newsday and The New York Times have posted poetic, nostalgic reviews of the show. All this discussion has made me a little homesick this morning.

At the end of every contract, at the end of every job, someone in my Northwest posse inevitably asks me if I'm moving back to New York now. With the end of this contract looming, I've already had two people ask this very question. It's become sort of a ritual, the nearly-annual reconsideration of my residence in Seattle. I won't lie and say that moving back hasn't occurred to me because it does, and often. You can take the girl out of New York but you can't take the New York out of the girl, even if she has gone a little native. (There are only two business suits in my closet: one that's never been worn, and one that was last worn more than a year ago -- for a funeral.)

The point is...the prospect is always there in the back of my mind. It never goes away. The arguments for a return are many and compelling: living closer to my brother; living closer to the friends who have been with me longer than anyone here in the Northwest ever will be -- simply due to math if nothing else; theater and museums unparalleled by anything in Seattle; a whole different job market; a whole different life. It would be another new beginning. Such things are difficult to navigate but rarely, in my experience, bad.

Seattle has its own compelling reasons for staying: a circle of friends who have become a second family, a quality of life that is hard to argue with, a condo that I really do like, a less stressful ambiance over all and, my God, it's beautiful here. There's a lot to be said for seeing a volcano and a lake during your commute rather than the inside of a subway tunnel. I used to say that one of the reasons I'm still in Seattle is that I haven't done everything here that I was meant to do yet; now, I'm not so sure about that. And the job market here hasn't been kind or easy on me; that's for sure.

But this discussion always ends up pretty much even. Every argument for a decision one way or another has an equally compelling counterbalance. The best explanation I ever wrote for my being torn was a poem called "Bicoastal," which I'll include beneath a cut. (I wrote it during a brief flirtation with the idea of getting into the slam scene, so it's probably better spoken than read but there it is.)

This morning, I'm in a New York State of Mind. Tonight, I'll drive home across Lake Washington with Mount Rainier reigning over the landscape and wonder how I could ever consider forsaking the mountains for Manhattan.

( This seesaw tug of two lovers is too great to bear )

As I was driving to work today, I heard a story on NPR that a new poem by Robert Frost has been discovered, called "War Thoughts at Home". The article at the link to NPR above includes an excerpt from the poem, full of bird and weather imagery that's quite striking. This kind of rich economy of language just knocks me flat: two sentences that create a whole world.

Apparently the poem was found inside a book that was donated to the University of Virginia as part of a collection. The Virginia Quarterly Review holds the exclusive publication rights to the whole poem, so unless someone lifts the poem from the magazine and posts it on the Internet, the VQR is the only place the poem will be available in whole for quite some time yet.

Can I just say: this is so cool. And I may yet shell out money for a subscription just so i can read the whole poem.