Reread the Instructions

I wish my life was as glorious as a certain musician friend of mine, pictured here on tour

Not much time to ramble today. I’m sort of in the middle of some things and I woke up before the NYT email which makes me exceedingly happy. The coffee is very (maybe too) strong and I’ve had some lovely friend time for the past few days (including a writing group in a beautiful sunroom by the water with three keepers of pieces of my heart) and today I must return to the glamorous life of the glamorous Seema Reza: I need to get to writing and also go to a yoga class and also go buy laundry detergent.

————-then I fell asleep and dreamed of making sandwiches and woke up late and actually made sandwiches and rushed the kids out———————-

Thursday I’m reading at Fall for the Book, which has such an awesome lineup, including readings by Tarfia Faizullah, Karan Mahajan and Mohsin Hamid (who my older son and I are planning to go hear together because How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia was a joint favorite novel–it’s so brilliant). Good things.

Yesterday we had such a great discussion of the below poem. Each of us read it aloud. I so missed hearing these voices read poems. We talked and talked about it. And then referenced it on our drive home. It’s that kind of poem. Useful, like a knife or putty or tweezers. Read it. What line sticks out for you? Write it down then write about it. 20 minutes.

From the last section of Shooting Script by Adrienne Rich:

Whatever it was, the image that stopped you, the one on which you
came to grief, projecting it over & over on empty walls.

Now to give up the temptations of the projector; to see instead the
web of cracks filtering across the plaster.

To read there the map of the future, the roads radiating from the
initial split, the filaments thrown out from that impasse.

To reread the instructions on your palm; to find there how the
lifeline, broken, keeps its direction.

To read the etched rays of the bullet-hole left years ago in the
glass; to know in every distortion of the light what fracture is.

To put the prism in your pocket, the thin glass lens, the map
of the inner city, the little book with gridded pages.

To pull yourself up by your own roots; to eat the last meal in
your old neighborhood.

edited to add: I hit post and then literally thirty seconds later watched this video which feels related to the idea of the projector.