Can You?

In this short Life that only [merely] lasts an hour

How much - how little - is within our power

—Emily Dickinson, drafting on an envelope.

Sometimes I set myself a challenge, and I’ve offered it to students: Draft an essay a day, every day, using only actions or experiences that happen on that particular day between, say, coffee and work, or waking up and getting to class, or whatever two major cornerstones of starting a day are in an individual life, then reaching for the world of ideas, the world of what-ifs or if-onlys, deep history, philosophy, meaning, until building something both simple and complex.

Personally…I find it works more readily when I walk to work or take public transportation, because the more we isolate ourselves by working from home or moving from home to car to office, sometimes…the less happens, outwardly. Not always! Only sometimes. (But Emily Dickinson definitely, increasingly…with the years….*worked from home!* Ha! She did bring people to her, and chatted with children outside her window, and moved through the yard…I’m told…)

Emily Dickinson, the red headed middle child on the left…in what a docent tells us is the only portrait in full color of the poet, painted during her lifetime, her childhood.

Flanner O’Connor wrote, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.” I think about that so often, in agreement.

It’s about a way of looking at the world, thinking about writing, and about one’s own interests—more process than product, perhaps, at least at first.

For me, these rough drafts of ideas based on moments are never done, but they’re also fine as fragments. They’re the seashells in a bowl on the table, the rocks lined up on the windowsill, the beach glass—pretty things that compel me to look, to pause, to wonder…and slowly they fuel more complete work in the details and moments. It’s not quite a journal, but also rarely a real rough draft. It’s about capturing a moment, with a person in it, the essayist.

Enjoy the day, and I hope you’re doing well!

With appreciation,

M