Those great goddesses of peace

Back in ye olde days, I worked as a bridal consultant. Zipping and pinning and steaming, I could, movie-like, anticipate the litany of the remarks a bride or her mother would make: "This will be the happiest day of my life. Today is the day we love each other the most. Today my family means the most to me. Today I love him the most. This is the best time of our lives. The wedding has to be the most perfect day of my life." The air was palpable with the apex of someone's life: the climax in the narrative of their life. I could taste it, and it was bittersweet. I knew beyond knowing that the day had come to resign when I told a bride I had vowed to let my life operate on a ten-best principle.

Of course, accepting a ten-best principle means also adopting a ten-worst principle. On February 13, 2001, on June 24, 2001, on September 11, 2001 on March 20, 2003, on April 17, 2004, on February 16, 2007, on June 1, 2009, on January 30, 2010--I cracked open my well-read copy of The Colossus and Other Poems and reread "Lorelei." So often--I should have it memorized. I don't except the closing line--"Stone, stone. Ferry me down there." Did Plath have a death wish or a peace wish? Probably both. Hearing this expression of the agony, the wish for peace, well. Helps. I wish it had helped Sylvia.

It is no night to drown in:
A full moon, river lapsing
Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,

The blue water-mists dropping
Scrim after scrim like fishnets
Though fishermen are sleeping,

The massive castle turrets
Doubling themselves in a glass
All stillness. Yet these shapes float

Up toward me, troubling the face
Of quiet. From the nadir
They rise, their limbs ponderous

With richness, hair heavier
Than sculptured marble. They sing
Of a world more full and clear

Than can be. Sisters, your song
Bears a burden too weighty
For the whorled ear's listening

Here, in a well-steered country,
Under a balanced ruler.
Deranging by harmony

Beyond the mundane order,
Your voices lay siege. You lodge
On the pitched reefs of nightmare,

Promising sure harborage;
By day, descant from borders
Of hebetude, from the ledge

Also of high windows. Worse
Even than your maddening
Song, your silence. At the source

Of your ice-hearted calling --
Drunkenness of the great depths.
O river, I see drifting

Deep in your flux of silver
Those great goddesses of peace.
Stone, stone, ferry me down there.

Listening to Ray Lamontagne

Possession(s)

I passionately love AS Byatt's works. I own almost all of them, and have read them multiple times. Her words evoke scenes in which all the details are imagined and meaningful, from the characters themselves to the art on their walls, the books on their shelves, and height of the grass on their lawns. One scene she constructed in her novel Possession has stayed with me like few other images from a book ever has. Literary scholar Roland Michell imagines a perfect home to be white. White walls, floors, fixtures, towels. Clean, free of stimulations, peaceful. My mind needs to feel like that for a little while, I think.

I have felt entirely too cluttered over the last 7 or 8 months. Therapy helped, to some extent, allowing me to repackage one particularly traumatic event into smaller, bite-sized pieces. That experience is something that will always hurt, but finally talking it through has freed up a great deal of mental energy to devote to other thoughts. But what other thoughts? I had forgotten a time once existed when I didn't have to think about it at all, and I could use that space to analyze poetry, figure out how to rearrange my closets, plan for the future.

Over the last little bit, work has had many ups and downs, and I have felt unequal to the task. Everything needs to be done right now, and everything depends on everything else getting finished first. My finances do not withstand my own scrutiny. They would wilt under my mother's, and be positively charred to cinders under the eyes of Dave Ramsey. Because of some health issues, my nutrition is all over the map, and I feel a little like I'm backpedaling at the idea of having to get back in the habit of meal planning, etc. Exploring a relationship with a man with whom I have many, many common interests and thoughts on life and the living of it is truly a blessing and a very pleasant distraction (but still a distraction) from more tedious things like, oh say, personal finances, that are desparate for my attention.

Here's where all this is leading: I have to organize. To streamline. To declutter. The kind of decluttering that gets down into my soul and stays there. Reducing my possessions, limiting my consumption of goods, decreasing my debt load, purging my facebook page. Setting boundaries and following them so that I can fulfill my obligations not only with adequacy but with an extra measure of personal satisfaction in a job well done. I would be interested in hearing what other people are doing. I am a little daunted by this task, but think I know where I am going to begin.