A Mountain Facing a Mountain.

I'm a happy person. I think.

By that I mean, I'm in a good mood most of the time. There's nothing about the day-to-day that I dread. I like my job. I love the people I work with. I love my family. I enjoy music, rainbows, sex, art, TV, salami, chocolate. The basics.

Lately, though... I do have a sort of restlessness about my life. A low, steady pulse of anxious energy that manifests as spotty, unfocused enthusiasm for a bunch of little projects.

(I must clean the top shelf of the closet. AH, wait! I have to finish this painting while I'm still inspired. But ACK! It's three in the morning and I still haven't worked out today!)

Is this how life is for most women? For most people?

I wonder if this is one of those deep self-worth issues. Is this restlessness rooted in fear that I might be wasting something: My time? My youth? My potential? Or is my restlessness healthy: Is it rooted in a desire to improve the world, my life, and the lives of the people around me? Is it important to discover the roots in the first place? Does it even matter? Is the question too self-indulgent to even ask? Shouldn't I be sewing my son a Halloween costume?

I remembered this poem yesterday, when I was thinking about a lot of this stuff. I've read it a lot and I have always loved it. I think it's about power and about potential. Vulnerability. And about the subtle difference between choosing to engage the world and choosing not to. Choosing the perspective of an artist and a poet, whether one acts as artist or poet notwithstanding.

A Mountain Facing a Mountain

What poetry demands is worse

than nakedness, and less knowable.

A woman with dark hair, maybe,

at the front door of her house

on a mountain, the earth

sloping down in the dusty

olive trees.

When there are no crops,

the winnowing ring fills

with weeds. The wind blows

through history, not dancing,

leaving no harvest, keeping

its own virtue, its own separateness.

-Linda Gregg