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When I said I wanted to travel light, didn't mean I'd part with undies and mascara.
That all my baggage should go missing.
When the airline rang my hotel with "sorry,"
I started making excuses -- "I won't be able to attend the writers' conference after all,
medical reasons, my heart, etc."
When the Buddha realized he'd lost everything, that we were born to die,
he stopped desiring. (Nu, Grandma Anna would have asked, was he Jewish?)
But the female boddisattvas wrapped in silk, swirled beneath headdresses
that rivaled Yerushalayim. Not so the mishpokah.
Grandma in the shtetl, cousins becalmed by the Schwarzwald were forced to let go.
My parents clung hard to their houses, cars, and daughters.
Which begs the question, Marilyn, what ghosts can you pack up, pitch over the side?
What will you take with you into your 60th year?
Hanging here like a little spider, lightness feels pretty good, no?
Even with the dark gulping around you.
Packing Light started out as this very trivial event which was the loss of my luggage.
You know I bragged about it, "I'm gonna pack light." Then suddenly, I didn't have any luggage
and I just freaked out. But the same day there had been an article in the New York Times
about the Buddha who when he realized he had lost everything, that was the beginning of his spiritual life.
And you know it also teaches me over and over again about poetry -- that it starts off in one place
and if the poem is any good, it's going to take you to some kind of insight or discovery or surprise.
And it has got to surprise the poet, because otherwise the reader isn't going to be interested.
So, but some of the poems are just silly little poems.
I mean the one about fig bread is just, it's just silly.
Dark crust bejeweled with figs, we ladies thought we'd pass out when we slathered it with Brie.
We swooned and let go of body image, Weight Watchers, we swigged Sancerre and chomped some more.
Reader, don't bother me with your fat grams!
I devoured a loaf smeared with homemade Brie.
Tell my husband I've left him for crumbs.
I can never go home to Wonder Bread, Tennessee.
The state of mind that I go into this with is that I'm going to write praise poems,
and anything can be the subject of a praise poem, anything.
In this case it's the food -- the food is so good. I mean French food is internationally known,
it just seems like a ready made poem, you know, because it's so wonderful.
So anything can be the poem.
Stefane's doggie doesn't know he's French.
I like him for that--no snippety tongue, no snobbery.
He wags his stubby tail and grins.
I like him for that. He doesn't slobber, no kissy-kiss,
he wags, grins, ignores me so we can each return to business.
No kissy-kiss, no wet tongue, unlike some important men
who wag, smile and slobber over girls, oozing, "It's custom!"
Stefane's doggy doesn't know he's French.
But the dog, you know, I walk down the street and it comes running
with its little tail wagging and I think, "Now that's the attitude!"
It just loves you, it doesn't care what you say or whether your accent is perfect.
This one is called Jonah on Oprah
"I've lived through gut-wrenching remorse, been swallowed up by it.
Now I understand I can't run from my problems.
I bear witness, whales blow worse blubber-breath than my boss,
all undigested krill!
I pay attention, take my medication, do as told.
I've boarded up the souvenir shop in Ninevah. No more scrimshaw.
Whales endangered. I'm not gloating.
I water my spindly plants until I near-drown them.
Voices? Only on the tube. I prefer Law and Order,
and though she's abrasive as the Negev, Judge Judy.
I just love watching idiots scramble, try to argue, try to flee!"
Shelley said the imagination is the great moral good because it let's us go out of ourselves.
And so you get to try, to be larger than your own individual self -- larger than your own small self.
And you have a broad palette because you're not just writing the praise, the happy notes,
the bright colors. You've got this other material
which is the side of humanity that is difficult to assimilate.
We embraced, there in the parking lot of the ordinary.
How could I know your arms were arguing last things?
Your cheek in my hair. For a moment, I pressed against you. Goodbyes can be vast.
In a breath, we traded lives. I didn't know you were a cliff I had reached the edge of.
Your touch echoed. I simply followed it like song.
With "Saying Goodbye" you know, I was -- one of the things poetry can do is help us, it consoles us.
We're singing the blues essentially. Somebody leaves or somebody dies
and you can't bring them back with a poem, but your song or your poem or your art
is kind of a bridge that keeps you connected to that person.