Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Mama Manifesto #1 .:in progress:.



When I started this blog, I thought long about the motivation behind it, and overall, had a hard time defining what I wanted it to offer - both to myself and to the community of people who may encounter it. My lack of clear direction held me back from beginning it at all for some time. I decided finally that maybe that could be the direction - a space to help me sort out the process and the work.

The subtitle of this blog is : a rambling path through art, food and motherhood. Lately in my life I feel the truth of that statement as a description of my habits... the truth is, I am interested in just about, well, everything. I'm addicted to learning, to joy, to books and community. I feel that it is necessary to attend the meetings at Tenzarelli's Waldorf School, to be the driving force behind the children's group at Deer Park, to knit, to sew, to hoard food like a squirrel for winter, to read A Wrinkle in Time again, to take on the project of installing our wood and tile floors in the house that love is building, and to get the boys enough outside time. No, my house is not clean today and the contents of the refrigerator are, um, suspicious...

But I'll defer to Louise Erdrich on that one... that amazing writer whose fantastic Birchbark Bookstore I recently made pilgrimage to... Her advice sounds pretty true to the two boys whose photos in their moments of joy make me sure there is nothing more you could want than all of this.

Advice to Myself

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

Louise Erdrich from her 2003 poetry collection, Original Fire



2 comments:

MeganMonday said...

Sweet post, mamalyssa.

"Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out."

and

"don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity."

sigh.

gardenmama said...

BEAUTIFUL!!
And your last photo sums up this poem so perfectly!! Thank you for sharing this : )