Monday, June 21, 2010

 


PLAN Q



Plan Q. That’s the title of my future memoir. I started with Plan B, but it’s already taken – the amusing book by Anne Lamott (a writer whose wry and generous style I aspire to). Plan Q. As in “Nothing I plan ever quite works out the way I think it will, and my back-up plans have a way of morphing into barely recognizable constantly changing elaborate concoctions.”


Yesterday was the Summer Solstice – the longest day of the year – a day I love – a day I love to remember and recognize. Except that I totally forgot about it, despite having made several different plans in my head last week about the ways I could mark the day. I forget about a lot of things lately – one of the consequences of my eternally over-taxed brain.


My life has begun to feel like an archeological dig. I am constantly stumbling on the remains of ideas that were never realized – plans for improving my health, my home, my parenting style; epiphanies about religion, relationships, my true calling. Stuff like that. These plans/discoveries/intentions lie scattered around my brain, half-buried in the sand like the cast-off pottery of a lost civilization. I always feel nostalgic and a little disappointed whenever I stumble upon one, pick it up, dust it off and remember why it mattered to me.


I’ve always thought of myself as a woman of action. In fact, these days I am in constant motion – wiping up spilled milk, grading papers, bathing wriggling bodies, attending meetings, doing laundry, writing syllabi. But deep inside some part of me seems to be standing still – just standing in the middle of a weedy field full of unrealized ideas and forgotten inspirations. Like the bargain hunters on the Antique RoadShow, I’m hoping that if I look hard enough, I might spot a real gem. And maybe that would change everything.

Be well.

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