From Win and Lose and Still Somehow
Tonight, on a random, impromptu fall down the rabbit-hole of Youtube, I had a moment of ennui for the young woman I was.
Was I the same person that had collected songs like shiny pebbles, and ate words — poetry, songs, and books — like a starving person?
A person who smelled the damp-dirt and faintly green onion scent of spring and noted it.
Who took the time to breathe deep the dried-herb smell of fall, and listen to the music of leaves skittering on pavement.
Had I once noticed tropically-colored sunsets and giant golden moons? Does the sun over Tennessee still set in a riot of color some nights? Does the moon sometimes glow almost orange, oversized in the night sky?
I was a girl who hated mornings, but felt like a foggy one was worth waking up for — the world viewed through a frosted-glass lense of God’s impressionistic glory was payment enough for waking.
I realized that it is no wonder that I feel alone. Whatever there was of me that made me who I was — whatever was worth loving about me — is lost, or at least hiding. And so, I am lost or maybe hiding.
What is left is simply the stressed, busy shape of me. Or is this who I am now?
Who was that dreamy person I was? When did she finally cede to this tired, cranky, pragmatic middle-aged shell? When did passion turn to peevish intensity?
I’m not foolish enough to wish for the effervescent, hope-infused, irrepressibleness of youth. Instead, I wonder what middle-aged woman that dreamer could have, or should have become. How do I find her, buried deep in my tired mind and behind my armored heart? And if she’s there, how to make time for her to spark, then slowly flame?
But maybe not all hope is lost, because I felt the tears rise tonight as Regina Spektor plaintively cried, “Loveology, I’m sorry-ology,” backed by an orchestra. Then I felt understood, when an aging Joni Mitchell swayed and sang, “Well something’s lost, but something’s gained/In living every day/I’ve looked at life from both sides now/From win and lose and still somehow.”
Just the other day, I lost my breath for just a second, teaching Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. The fact that a man could write a poem within all the constraints of iambic pentameter, and sonnet structure, and it be beautiful, and meaningful hundreds of years later just took me by surprise again.
Like that young woman once titled dozens of Myspace blogs, I just titled this with a line from a song.
Maybe, not all is lost. Or, at least, can be found.
