It’s taken me 24 years to write this poem.
Writing Oblique Strategies #1
Note: When I pulled this card, I knew it was fate. I’d been wrestling with finishing this for the last couple of years, and it all seemed too perfect: spend 24 years working on something, only to give yourself two hours, in the end, to actually finish it. I was hoping for 25 years but who am I to thumb my nose at fate? And it feels good to get this done.
It started when my fawned-over lover left.
Nineteen and disconsolate,
shrinking into my bedroom.
It was then I first tried to be a writer.
Lonely and heartbroken,
reading too much Sartre.
The experience birthed a roman à clef:
overwrought and trite,
moody slacker protagonist.
But it helped me through the self-inflicted storm.
goals and routine,
and it had a new observation (for me?).
The story described a micro déja vù -
predictable and daily,
each morning at the sink.
As I brushed my teeth I had the same vision,
days in and out,
a brief flash of familiar fiction.
A monster from a TV show long past,
prosthetics and shadows,
lurking in a happier past.
A show I watched with an earlier lover,
nightly and amorously.
Basements, happiness, youth.
The roman à clef rightly abandoned,
archived and shunned,
never even gifted a plot.
But the déja vù of a happier time,
routine and comfortable
stayed with me for life.
Years went by and the vision found siblings: each
warm and worn,
echoes of times past.
Latched to a single chore or a lapsed moment,
standby and routine,
bubbling up as my mind wanders.
Do I alone experience these visions?
Microscopic and warm,
touchstones to times past?
Or do small déja vùs travel with us all,
internal and unspoken,
secret small comforts we secretly hoard?
A decade in, I tried to start listing them,
elusive and slippery,
to share the phenomenon
with others in order to find common ground.
Quirky and fun.
But the task proved elusive.
Even to remember one for a minute,
brief and eternal
was a battle for the years.
And fifteen years later I think I have it,
quotidian and inscrutable
but for me nourishing, familial.
Little moments, when we turn off our brain,
autopilot and wandering,
our subconscious takes center stage.
While we do these tasks without too much thinking,
art and experience,
pipe up and clean house.
And so, then:
***
When I apply skin creme
I think of the The Monster of Peladon: the original vision.
A happier lover stepping in to alleviate more recent failings.
When I cut my nails,
I think of Bo Derek in Tarzan, or rather the accompanying Playboy pictorial.
Early confusion and sexuality, shamefully and illicitly felt.
When I cut radishes,
I think of hunting squirrels growing up in Alaska.
The moment I first experienced the horror of killing.
When I trim my mustache,
I think of Yoda on Degobah, inverted Luke, entombed Vader.
My father teaching me to be a man with a razor.
When I chop garlic,
I think of a hometown sports shop in Fairbanks.
I loved it for the skis, my friends tried to rob it.
When I slice red peppers,
I think of an elementary school in my home town I didn’t attend.
But my sister did, and she was scared. We’d recently moved.
When I cook Brussel sprouts,
I think of a run-down hotel on a lake near my grandparent’s house.
Mountains in the distance, standing over three generations of my family.
When I cut shallots,
I think of Shadow of the Colossus, a video game.
We played it on breaks at the one job I ever really loved.
When I cut up plastic six pack rings,
I think of The Watchmen: Rorschach, Owl, Comedian.
Modern social responsibility mocked by renegades.
When I cut cooked chicken,
I think of Buffy, Xander and Willow.
A new vision perhaps five years old, nuptially birthed and welcome.
When I marinate meat,
I think think of the Magnum PI episode where he had to tread water
Confronted only with his memories, hope and regret.
—
The next card is: Go to an extreme, move back to a more comfortable place.
Writing Oblique Strategies is a semi-regular writing exercise dictated by the drawing of an Oblique Strategies card. You can learn more about it here.
