Throwing Words to the Wind

Confessions of a Chronic Chronicler

I used to diarize and write my ideas down on napkins. Now that I don’t go to many places that have napkins, I bring along my book.

I’m a chronic chronicler. Every day on Facebook for a lot of years (and Flickr for many years before that), I’ve been posting a photo I took that day and writing about that day’s events.

It started as writing practice for times when I didn’t have a blog-worthy post. It’s where I dumped my shit, almost literally, like details about my colonoscopy. It became indispensable when I realized I could search “colonoscopy” and find out when my last one was. I’m able to do this for Marty’s colonoscopies, too, and for my last Botox treatment or tetanus shot or the time I went to the ER and discovered I had a little cancer.

That time in the ER when my sister sat with me while, missing a Bob Schneider concert, I was diagnosed with lymphoma.

One drawback to the practice is that I would see friends out and about, and they’d say, “I’d ask how you are, but I read it all on Facebook.”

I’m an open book there in a way I feel I can’t be here.

Then again, that’s where a paywall will come in handy. And while I’m still on the seemingly endless job search, I think I’ll use it to give the juicier details.

My friend Susan, leader of writing retreats and author of several books and the Substack Writing and Roaming, advised me at lunch yesterday to get out of my own way. She saw that I was constantly throwing up roadblocks to keep from advancing to the finish line with my own projects: two unfinished novels, an unfinished children’s book about bugs (a passion project) and my finished poetry manuscript, Words with Friends.

I bought that manuscript with me, and she said “It looks finished! Why haven’t you submitted it yet?”

“Because it’s not organized. I need to put the poems in order.”

She said, “The last thing I want to read is six poems in a row about bugs” (or something similar), and I thought shit! She’s right. “Take this manuscript and throw it up in the air. Pick the pages up randomly, and that’s your order.”

Then she flipped through the manuscript, catching on a poem called “Pine.” I kept talking to her while she was reading it, and she was so intently focused on that poem. She pulled it from the stack and said, “Except make this one first.”

What has stopped me from pursuing personal writing goals and instead sent me to the basement to make lamps? Is it a fear of failure? Is it money? It’s certainly not a lack of time, now that I have nowhere to go.

I won’t call this a “resolution,” but I’ll try to spend my time more wisely.

In 2025, I will post my daily diary, along with other content, here, with a TL;DR summary on Facebook and a link to the post. And I will throw that manuscript up in the air and start sending it around.

I’ll end this post with the poem Susan thinks should go first. It’s written for my friend Karen Hill, a lampwork artist and mosaicist, wife of my shiatsu guy, Jim. She died, and I was filled with grief. Then I saw a story on CBS Sunday Morning about someone who put a phone in the woods so people could call their deceased loved ones. It’s called “Telephones of the Wind.”¹²

pine
for karen

I never wanted the machine, just your voice, a lilt  
at the other end, sweet mandolin chirping
a bespoke love song as you penciled me in.
your husband, you’d hum, would test my tensile
strength at nine on Thursday, trench a ditch
beside my spine as I’d breathe into the pangs.

“How are you, love?” you’d sing, nuance of concern,
and I’d decry the nature of my aching frame—
contentious bone and tissue, angry nerves now half-
healed by the energy of your hello, by the kitchen’s
pungent lamb wafting into the treatment room,
unplanned aid to your husband’s shiatsu mystique.

Autumn dropped its golden wilted leaves,
converting garden to ground as you plotted your next.
In the dark, spiders spun their gossamer on flower stems,
stitching them into the fabric of fall woven by morning
but you were gone, peaceful as sleep, the tapestry
fading to colors more demure in protest.

I could speak my grief to the wind; trees will listen
and even bend toward my wordless sorrow.
But someone tacked a touchtone phone to a pine,
a compromise for those who love cathartic metaphor.
I hold the receiver to my ear, amber sap sticking to my hair. 
With angsty fingers I dial and hope for your machine.

1. “Telephones of the Wind”

2. This is a Words with Friends poem, which means I asked for random words from my Facebook friends, and these are the words I was given. I use one per line to make what I hope is a cohesive poem:

mandolin (rachel l.), gossamer (robyn b.), amber (kristi l.), energy (maya s.), listening (lloyd l.), converting (aliza w.) stitch (sarah m.), compromise (karen s.), lilt (anne m.), ditch (susan g.), pungent (serena m.), wilted (beth m.), wordless (sharon m.), pine (marty m.), nuance (belinda g.), bespoke (richard d.), tensile (alan r.), peaceful (sharon p.), frame (laurie a.), pangs (cybele p.), demure (Lynn j.), contentious (eli c.), angst (kevin m.), mystique (lia m.)