what I am not writing about

I am not, at present, writing about politics (though I could), or job talk preparation (oh boy), or the vague anxiety over possible futures that leaves me twitchy and incapable of sitting still. I am not writing about the strange question of what comes next, or the obsessive frequency with which I check my email, recently. I am not writing about the sadness I have over institutions and sorrows, or the hope I have for people's happinesses, or other vague feelings of dread or joy.

I am writing, instead, today, about the weight of a Norton Anthology in my hands, against my knees, and the humor of Oscar Wilde. I am writing about the small bits of a life, the tea and biscuits carted on a plane from London to Detroit to Chicago six months ago and moved to Montana and cherished. I am writing about Mary Gordon's novel Pearl, which I am less than halfway through but finding haunting and lovely and important. I am writing about the blue of the sky, and the desperate prayer for snow, and the leaky pen that marked my fingers with ink yesterday and reminded me of Jo March with her russet apples in the garret, scribbling away.

In other words, in the face of the grand and unknowable, I am focusing in on the manageable and concrete. As my heart rate accelerates with life, I type the letters of the words that say my dailyness: poached egg, toast, coffee, sweeping, walking, branches, clouds.