Day In The Life

One of my favorite things to do is to memorize poems. I have quite a catalog, as I’ve been doing this many years. I know all my decent poems by heart, but when I learn other poets’ poems, my life is immeasurably enriched.

In my canon currently is one poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow called “The Day Is Done.” It is so beautiful, when I recite it, I get teary-eyed. Sometimes I just say it out loud when I’m cleaning house. Sometimes I get to say it out loud to people, which is better than saying it to the toilet brush but that’s better than nothing.

I made the illustration for this post a few minutes ago and when I posted it, I realized I had used a portrait of Alfred Lord Tennyson. Not Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I always get those two dum-dums mixed up.

The Day Is Done
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The day is done, and the darkness
      Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
      From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
      Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me
      That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
      That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
      As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
      Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
      And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
      Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
      Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
      Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
      And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
      Whose songs gushed from her heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
      Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
      And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in her soul the music
      Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
      The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
      That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
      The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
      The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,
      And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
      And as silently steal away.

There are lots of other reasons. I’ve been making a list for about a year and a half.

For almost two years, I have told myself that the jagged lump of limestone in my stomach was normal. Back and forth to Chicago more times than I can count for business, family, or friends, I can see now they were also attempts to either convince myself I was no longer in love with the city or to make sure it was still there. Because maybe I’d be back one day.

It’s one day. It’s time to go home.

I wasn’t looking for a fresh start. An adventure developed in 2014 and I rode that horse because riding horses is what I do. I don’t want a medal for it; frankly, I’d like someone to yank me off the damned thing half the time. My move to New York City was an experiment and the result was unacceptable. Exiled from Chicago because there were tenants in my home, I went to Washington to wait them out; when it came time to return to Illinois, I realized I wanted to stay with Washington at least a little while longer. I absolutely made the right decision. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but I found it. Someday I’ll know what it was, but I don’t know now.

So what happened?

About a month ago, I put my condo on the market. I cannot, will not be a landlady another year. It’s a terrible job, but there’s no way I can afford to live anywhere else without renting my Chicago home. But no more. No more Mary Management Co. My love for Washington was total enough to see myself relocating there permanently, so I called the real estate agent who sold me the place. We filled out all the forms.

The moment the listing went live, a gorilla sat on my heart. It was awful. “It’s normal, it’s normal,” I told myself. “This is what happens when you sell a home, when you leave a town; it’s emotional.” I’d think about someone owning my keys for good, about trading that beautiful space for numbers in my bank account. I’d think about never walking down Wabash Ave. again, thinking about what I was going to make for dinner. My hand would move to my mouth and I’d squeeze my eyes shut. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t right. It was wrong. It was wrong. Unless it wasn’t, and this was just the way these things feel. I would swallow hard and go back to whatever it was I was trying to do. I would do that thing poorly.

Home in Iowa to tape TV, I was sitting at the kitchen counter in my mother’s house eating a carrot-apple salad. No one was home. There was no radio on, no television. I wasn’t reading a magazine or anything online. I was just eating my salad in silence and all of a sudden, I sucked all the air from the room into my lungs and let out a terrible, pathetic sob. I pushed the salad away and vaguely remembered the now-defunct website, CryingWhileEating-dot-com, which was amazing. My body crumpled and I put my head down on the counter and wept like someone had died.

After some minutes into this private ugly-cry (the best sort of ugly-cry there is), I realized what I wanted more than anything on this Earth. “I wanna go home,” I whispered into my wet sleeves. “Please, please let me go home now.” That’s when I decided to move back.*

The condo is delisted. When I get home, I will take a bushel of toothbrushes and use them to scour every inch, every centimeter of that place until it shines like the top of Willis Tower.

*The other reason to return is to be near my doctors. They’re putting this sentiment in writing for the management company of my building as we deal with the breaking of the lease. Nothing like a letter from a surgeon.

This summer’s road trip taught me two things about myself:

1. I can wash my hair in a bucket
2. I should probably slow down

The first is straightforward. The second thing is something that I’ve been told for years and for years I have not known what it’s supposed to mean, nor how one does it or why a person would want to do it. How do you “slow down” life? Do you go to the beach more? I don’t like going to the beach. Is it choosing to sleep in until 11am on the weekends? Sleeping that late gives me a headache and half the day is over. I like the day! You sleep! These people want me to be less scrappy, cunning alley cat and more laze-on-the-sun-porch farm kitten.

Here in my thirty-sixth year, I’ve inched just a bit closer to understanding what this concept means. For me to be a farm kitten, it would mean taking fewer gigs, traveling less. It would be doing less TV. It would be sleeping in (or at least not getting up at 5:30am most every day.) No more flying back and forth from DC to Chicago. There are certain things that I have incorporated into my life since the trip that are smoothing me out a bit, if you will: heading to bed earlier, more yogurt, allowing myself to watch documentaries on Netflix and just watch them and not feel like I’m wasting my life if I’m not drawing, sewing, etc. at the same time.

Outside those things, though, I’m not slowing for a second. I mean, you gotta be nuts. There is so much cool stuff coming up. There always is! There’s so much to see and do and make. I’ll lie down later and when I do, just think how sweetly I’ll sleep.

One of my favorite writers told a story about how a friend of his said, “Stop working so hard; you’re burning the candle at both ends.” My favorite writer said, “Yes, but it gives a lovely light.”