“I need an attitude adjustment,” I said to my husband. We were driving downtown last night to share an evening of live jazz with friends. He said little, a sure indication he agreed with my assessment, since I’d been less than jovial for much of the day. “I’ll try to “right” myself,” I said. “I don’t enjoy my crankiness any more than you do.”
It’d been an uneven week for me; my mood lopsided, leaning in the wrong direction despite my best efforts to right myself. Whether fatigue at the end of teaching a time-consuming course, the continuing turbulence in the world, a sense of loss as my cancer writing workshops wind down in the next three weeks, or the impending decisions that come with my husband’s retirement in July and the life changes it signals for us, it’s difficult to say. But the world was, it seemed, too much with me.
An evening of music helped soothe my troubled spirits, old familiar tunes from Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington, but the shared laughter and conversation with friends was especially good medicine. By the time we returned home, my mood had lightened, and the fog of my spiritual malaise had dissipated, although none of the impending decisions have yet to be resolved. But it was this morning as I shared the sunrise with my dog, sitting quietly on the deck, and the two of us serenaded by the community of birds calling and chirping to one another across the canyon. I closed my eyes and remembered lines from a favorite poem by e.e. cummings:
may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old
I bought a children’s book this week, a habit I acquired when my daughters were small but still persists, thanks to my three grandchildren. It’s titled enormous SMALLNESS: A story of E.E. Cummings, and written by Matthew Burgess. I’d learned about from Maria Popova’s fine weekly newsletter, Brain Pickings Weekly. Cummings’ ranks among my very favorite . I’ve filled my volume of his complete poems with underlines, asterisks, and dog-eared pages. Cummings, Burgess tells us, liked to “work and dream, peering out at the world above and the world below” from his third floor room. While his poetry often broke the rules of rhythm and rhyme, which many found strange, they were fresh and thought-provoking. Cummings’ poems, Burgess writes, “were his way of saying YES. Yes to the heart and the roundness of the moon, to birds, elephants, trees and everything he loved.”
Yes. Of course. As cummings put it “yes is a pleasant country…” It’s such a simple word, and yet, thinking about it seemed to open my mind to possibility instead of anxiety. Yes. Yes to life, to whatever changes ahead of us. Yes to simply being alive and present in the world. His words echoed in my mind as I watched the sun creep across the canyon, listened to the birdsong and stroked the ears of my dog, peacefully curled in my lap. Yes, I thought, and my heart opened, as e.e. cummings’ might have intended. The poem continues:
may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
for even if it’s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young…
(From: “53” by E.E. Cummings, In Complete Poems, 1904-1962, ©1994)
Maybe it’s the birds, the peace of early morning, the quiet that any of us need in the midst of this rush-rush world, but for me, his words, the riot of birdsong in the morning–it all reminds me to be grateful for the life I have, to let go of the trivial annoyances that sometimes grow beyond their size, to be grateful for each new day, the “twenty-four brand new hours” that Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of, and to always see the world with “new” eyes. Yes.
yes is a pleasant country:
if’s wintry
(my lovely)
let’s open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april’s where we’re)
(e.e. cummings, “yes is a pleasant country… (XXXVIII),” In: Complete Poems, 1904-1962, ©1994)
As you write this week, consider these questions: What helps pull you from the doldrums? What opens your heart? How might “yes” be a pleasant country for you? Do you have a favorite poem or poet in whose words you find comfort and inspiration?
Thank you for this! And for reminding me of cummings, who I seem to have forgotten. And forgotten how delightful he is!