I have blog ideas on little slips of paper I leave all over my house. On one, I’ve written patience. When I sat down to think about what I wanted to say about patience, the first word that came into my head was rest. I remembered a poem I found during a particularly difficult time in my life and it seems like a good one for life as we start to move around again, but without so many of the things that make us human.
Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale
by Dan Albergotti
Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life's ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.
My biggest struggle right now is seeing all the things I love about summer in northern Michigan cancelled. Since I write grant applications for arts and cultural organizations, I’ve written many times how music and art and theater and literature are essential to our humanness. It’s one of those things I know intellectually. But now I’m feeling it, deeply. I continue to watch some Zoom events. But. After several months without live music and museums, and now no Shakespeare in the woods and no outdoor concerts and no art fairs for who knows how long, I feel more isolated, more adrift. And so I will notch the long days, look up at the blue sky, and be thankful that I have been swallowed with all hope.
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The Dan Albergotti poem is used totally without permission as I would prefer to ask for forgiveness. The photo, by my friend Jeff Wier, is used with his permission. Please see his website for other wonderful work. I know that he has great photos that are not on the website (including this one), so if you don’t see what you want but have an idea, he may have something you’d love tucked away. See his photos at www.pointnorthphotography.com.