Out of Love with Ordinary

I made this hilarious joke on Instagram and I don’t feel like it was properly appreciated. I even texted a bunch of people to ask them why they hadn’t responded appropriately to my hilarious joke. I think they just didn’t see it enough times, so I’m making it again here. See? Because the only thing that makes Beyonce’s weird cut out photos cool is Beyonce. And maybe her super cool clothes. So me doing the same things in my bro jeans and sweatshirt is so funny. Jeez. Why are you being difficult? It’s hilarious.

I don’t know that this is rooted in fact, but I think I read somewhere that Janet Jackson just looks like a regular smooshy perfectly beautiful lady most of the time, but before she is about to go on tour she gets it the fuck together. She dances a ton and changes her diet and puts all her energy into that. She works to the exclusion of all the ordinary things when she has to, knowing that she’ll not have to be this rigid and disciplined all the time. It’s necessary for the moment, and she puts it at the top of the list. She knows she’ll have some ice cream later.

From Upstream by Mary Oliver:

…those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook—a different set of priorities. Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity. Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always—these are forces that fall within its grasp, forces that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit.

So meanwhile: sorry about that email I didn’t send you or the plans I didn’t make or keep or whatever. It’s not that I don’t love you. Who doesn’t love ice cream? It’s just a Janet Jackson time lately.

Been stepping out of my body some.

The fantastic Rickey Laurentis posted this poem on Facebook*. Read it.

A Blessing

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies 
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Right???? I’m telling you. Poets on Facebook.

Your opening phrase is “Suddenly I realize that if I stepped out of my body I would…”

*ps–I deleted the Facebook app on my phone. Highly recommend it. But now that I think about it, that may be why I am inclined to make labor intensive Beyonce jokes on Instagram…