Be in Love with Your Own Life
Day 9: One Month of Magic
As we move forward, we will focus on some of the elements of magical thinking: inviting joy, wonder, and even mystery into our writing.
Want to invite more magic in? One of the most magical things you can do is be in love with your own life. What things, big and small, make your life wildly delicious and undeniably inspired?
Read the poem “In Love” by Chole Martinez recently featuring on the Slowdown.
In Love
Chloe Martinez
After Dorianne Laux
I’m in love with you, coffee,
and with you, green ink in my pen,
and with you, imaginary reader.
I’m in love with you, recirculated office air
that gets a little too warm, then
a little too cold, because now I am
putting on and taking off repeatedly
this shawl I got long ago
when I was a student,
living in India for the first time,
and it still smells like incense
in Mount Abu, where the lake
was named Nakki, fingernail,
and the surrounding mountains were said
to be holy fragments of the body
of a goddess who fell to earth there.
I was a little in love with her.
I climbed long flights of stone stairs
to visit the mountain cave shrines
where she accepted flowers, coconuts, and cash.
Shawl, I’m in love with your pattern of vines.
Your border that runs wild. I’m in love with you, memory
of how my body felt then: curious
and excited, shy and defiant.
Also you, knowledge of how it feels
now: sometimes tired, or heavy
with sadness and experience,
which are often the same thing,
but other times, electric, connected
back to that person. She didn’t
know much. I wasn’t in love with her
then, but now I see her better.
How she stood unsure on a rural road.
Nowhere she had to be, and the forest
lush and loud all around her.
Prompt: Write to celebrate all the things you love about your life. Be sure to include the big, the small, the silly, and the serious. How can you bring magic into each moment of pause and presence? How can you celebrate the awe of each experience?
Late to the game, but I LOVED this prompt so adding my own response here:
Title: New Case
After Chloe Martinez, after Dorianne Laux.
I’m in love with you, warm fingers of light
prying the window edges at dawn. I love
you, alarm clock hum like the rippling song
of ancient brass bowls. Sure, I may groan
as you rattle my ear drums back to life. But
I love you. As I love this sleepy dog waggling
his white flag tail, his loud whines insisting
I let my tea grow tepid on the counter
to present myself before the neighbors, out
on the street. Whether or not my teeth
have been brushed, whether or not
I feel ready. And I never feel ready. I love
never feeling ready and doing it all
anyway. The scariest moments are those
I am not prepared for (most of them).
Yes, I love even you, my shrill harpy
interior voice. I love knowing you’ll trail
off when I tell you who is in charge
today. I love you, today with all your maybes. Today
I love approaching you slowly. Finger to chin
looking closely, with a hmmmm and a huh
interesting. Like some regular Nancy Drew
with an exciting new case
on her hands.
Check Your Purse
There’s every memory in the world in there.
Lipstick the color of a dusty rose you carried
down the aisle. A half-broken eye brow pencil
You used to write down a number on a napkin, your phone
full of photos, because you're always Making friends with a flower
on the side of the road, or finding something interesting to snap up,
to write down. It's what's important. Why you keep moving around.
In all kinds of weather. Why you must cary an umbrella, folded and barely fitting
Next to the novel you read, one-page at a time,
While waiting in lines. Closed up now and nested
next to the cough drops you carry. The iboprofen to prevent a backache,
hangover, headache of any kind. You're older now and know things.
Like how to keep a journal, who to call in case of an emergency,
or what to take to prevent getting sick.
Especially now, when you have that trip to Kansas City
Coming. The One where you will see your old friends
From L.A., and write poems over pints of mid-western beer,
Squeezing in time for one another's lives, like slices of nostalgia.
You were young together once, passing around pipes.
Now you bring an extra bag of vitamin drops
They taste like oranges, and everyone is surprised
you managed to do something useful. You assure them you haven't
changed, and if they want more, come to you.
You've thought of everything this trip. All the ways things can go wrong
in one weekend. That's why you brought extra
paper, pencils, vitamins. This is the pleasure of aging.
No more writing things down with a broken
make-up crayon. If anyone needs anything, don't worry,
you have it. You remembered to bring it, to pack extras, to carry with you, a seemingly endless supply.