Waiting
Posted on | March 18, 2007 |
Feeling the tight stomached ache of waiting, now. For spring, for the fat envelope, for several nights of sleep stacked up against each other like a solid cord of wood.
I finished The Year Of Magical Thinking yesterday, and all day today I keep going back to it in my mind. So many of her sentences are like the unusual pebbles we scoop up at the beach and then finger softly in the white cotton interiors of our pockets all afternoon.
This one, particularly:
“Marriage is memory, marriage is time.”
I randomly opened an old issue of Vanity Fair today, looking for inspiration, and landed on a page with her bird like portrait: frail after so much loss, but fierce. I clipped it to the wire running along the low wall near my desk, with other glossy pages ripped from other sources, each image causing amazement to quicken in my soul.
Waiting always feels like this. I heard from one school, yes. But the other, the one I dearly want, most, utmost, not yet. There are more birds now: doves, grackles, starlings, chickadees and a whole bevy of chatty bluejays at the feeder; but not yet robins from the tree tops, and not yet buds swelling large enough to force in jars along the windowsills. Though surely soon.
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8 Responses to “Waiting”
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March 19th, 2007 @ 7:51 am
Just remember that what is supposed to be will be … the most important thing is that you took the steps forward TO MAKE IT BE.
March 19th, 2007 @ 10:43 am
I have good vibes out there for you and for what comes in the mail soon. i did not get into the grad school that i dearly wanted to be at. But, that meant I moved here, and life trickles on in unexpected ways. i’m hoping good news for you!
March 19th, 2007 @ 4:27 pm
Love your quote image. How do you DO that?
I read The Year of Magical Thinking and didn’t really resonate - but of course, I haven’t lost a love, a parent, a child like she has now - and have plans to read something else by her. I know you think the world of her writing, and you wouldn’t lead me astray!
Sending you good thoughts, for the fat envelope you want and wait for. They would crazy not to have you, crazy like a bat. But there are plans for you, plans tenderly and carefully coming together - trust in that, my dearest one!
March 20th, 2007 @ 8:33 am
I always liked H. L. Mencken:
“Marriage is chiefly talk.”
Blogging, I think, is like a distillation of marriage, an outward revelation of the inward soul offered without reservation: “Here … it lies before you.” In that context, my experience has been that the arrival of fat envelopes is awaited with an expectation comparable to the arrival of a new baby. I still remember the vertiginous delight I felt when my first, fat small envelope arrived — instead of the manuscript I’d mailed out weeks and weeks and weeks before.
I like to think that’s why it’s so good to be married before having children.
March 20th, 2007 @ 9:06 am
Oh Christina. Your posts are like vitamins for my soul. I just know that your dreams will come true! xoxo
March 20th, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
i love the idea of the wire strung images. very inspiring!
March 27th, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
Hey, is that a yellow wall, I see? In my studio I have a wire strung across a yellow wall where I hang images that inspire me. Right now, a series of chairs.
btw, I just noticed in your sidebar… ‘learning to kneel at the altar of now’ oh, how I love that phrase!
September 16th, 2007 @ 5:19 am
hey, love your pictures and the thoughts you voice! keep up the posts… show us more work… xx