Prose and Poetry – "ARE YOU THERE, ERMA? IT'S ME, SYLVIA."

Tilling and Toiling : A Perfectionist’s Weekly Diary

“A perfectionist? I don’t think so. No, not at all. Well, you’ll need to tell me how you see me as it relates to that term, then I’ll comment.”

“When you say comment, you actually mean disagree. That’s okay, too. That is indicative of your perfectionism. You need to find the exact word, even if it’s not your thought or sentence to edit.”

“Wow. Ouch. It is a good thing we are best friends and I can take a hit.”

“Sylvia, oh, you can clearly take a hit – the mark of a true perfectionist – you hit yourself, beat up on yourself, condemn yourself, and submit to your own judgments and self-imposed punishments endlessly.”

“Again, wow. I know I have major work to do, but you must admit, I haven’t given up, so that is something. Don’t you agree?

“Something? It is everything. It’s simply perfect in fact.”

Let’s all agree that perfect does not exist. We are not here to be perfect. We are here to till and toil, plant and cultivate, and do a whole lot of weeding. And just when we think we are done, it is time to dig a bit deeper – if we are lucky.

Can you tell?
She’s digging deep.

Uncovering what she was and discovering who she left behind. Creating herself one day at a time.

Sundays, she tills. With soul. With faith. The tears born from overwhelming grief water the ground beneath her as she turns and digs.

Mondays, she plows. Preparing to cultivate a field of fear and trepidation. With each upending and fold of the ground beneath her, she strews hope.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays, she sows. Not always pretty and patterned. Frequently not, in fact. Necessarily scattered.

Ah, Thursdays. Her day perhaps. To rearrange. To tidy. To make sense of the beginning. To anticipate fertile ground.

Fridays. Thank God they are? She thinks so. Tilled, plowed, germinated. She waits. Fearfully yet faithfully.

Saturdays. Stop.

Another hole to dig. This one deeper than the last.Another field ahead. This one vaster than the last. The tears are more abundant than the week before.

Another stop. Grief and joy intermingled.

Sunday once more. Fertile ground. More fecund. More prolific.

She’s digging deeper.
Can you tell?

Read What You Cannot See

Erma reads it, looks at the video clip, and laughs. “I’m fairly certain Emily was talking about how poetry set her free.”

Sylvia, at first nodding in placid agreement, then quips, “Well, you got the gist, Erma. Others might, too, if they read and don’t just look at the pictures.”

Ever the realist, Erma tells Sylvia that she might be hoping for too much. “People want quick, easy, not too much thinking.”

“I know, Syl, but just for today – this last Monday in June – I’m putting aside my cynicism and counting on all of the women who are ready to set aside convention and set themselves free.”

Erma, once again tickled by Sylvia’s newfound optimism, has one final thought to leave with her friend before she heads back home. “From dirty to flirty, lickety-split? I guess that’s not too prosaic, although I’d hardly call it poetic.”
🐦🦚💐🐦🦚💐🐦🦚
They shut me up in Prose –

As when a little Girl

They put me in the Closet –

Because they liked me “still” –

Still! Could themself have peeped –

And seen my Brain – go round –

They might as wise have lodged a Bird

For Treason – in the Pound –

Himself has but to will

And easy as a Star

Look down upon Captivity –

And laugh – No more have I –
~Emily Dickinson

Blow Me a Kiss

Sylvia woke this morning to a teeming rain with little hope of seeing the sun today; and for a while, she couldn’t get the “Annie” tune out of her head. She hummed silently and repeatedly, “The sun will come out tomorrow…”

She busied herself. Saturday morning chores ))nally raised her head from her routine a few hours later and realized that Annie was no longer belting out “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow,” she noticed the sun accepting the open door the clouds had left ajar. “No need to ever wait for tomorrow,” she thought. “There is joy right here in this second. I better blow it a kiss while I can,” she told herself.

And as the sun grew stronger and its beams broke through the dark sky closing the door on the clouds behind it, she knew that the sun never really leaves us. Joy, even fleeting moments – especially fleeting moments – are right here and there waiting to be kissed.
******************

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sun rise.~
William Blake

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