One Small Act of Morning
11 things after reading James Crews
Step out and breathe. I try to do this every morning, coffee in hand. The sunporch is hands-down the best room in the house. From there, a door to the small empty deck, which has three steps down to the patio, also empty, and small footprint of a backyard filled with barely kept wildness, plants and flowers we inherited from the previous owners.
They were Irish Catholic. O’Connor or O’Connell or O’Donnell. I don’t remember which, and have a pang of self-consciousness that this is no different than if they were to say, “The new owners are Jewish – Schwartz or Steinberg or Goldman or Rothman.”
There is a terrible joke about this. The one guy says, “Did you know the Jews were responsible for the Titanic?” The other guy says, “You idiot. An iceberg sank the Titanic.” To which the first guy responds, “Iceberg, Weinberg, Goldberg… they’re all the same.”
After writing that down, I realized I left out the whole first part of the joke, and can’t for the life of me remember it. I know it would make you cringe. (I looked it up. OY.) I am a terrible joke teller.
Also a terrible storyteller. I do not retain details and marvel at people who do, like my wife, who recalls entire conversations verbatim and recreates them to a T.
I do remember birthdays and number-y things.
I want to return to the poem. I’m aware of how sticky my office is right now. For all of my kvetching about the air conditioners (too cold, too expensive, too bad for the planet, etc.) I’ve also gotten used to spending more time downstairs this summer where it is much cooler and admittedly more comfortable.
Evidence of your aliveness. There are few things I love more than feeling my body gliding through fresh water, looking up at the clouds, imagining the clouds looking down and seeing me there swimming. Is this what it means to belong on the earth?
Lately I feel much more attuned to direct experience and much less capable of or even interested in trying to understand things. I can’t decide if this is good news or worrisome news.
One Jewish mother in me asks, “Oy, should I be worried?” The other Jewish mother in me says, “Why be worried?” Amazing how unstoppable the impulse to label everything is – good, bad, and otherwise.
I do belong to the earth, though. I know this because when I step out and breathe, the air enters my lungs and the light enters my eyes, where my retinas convert it into vision (what?!) and thousands of unseen miracles occur in the very instant of that one small act of morning. Lately, it’s all I think about it seems – this earth, these bodies, this irrepressible evidence of aliveness. I am never not aware of all the threats to it – to us – and honestly often do not know what to say or do. So I breathe and swim and write and listen and hope, hope this belonging matters in some way I will never see or know, like a whole planet I’ll never set foot on.
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I love this, Jena, so much. XO
Beautiful poem and reflections.