Breaking Up
by: Billy Collins
Like the nomadic dollar
I pass to the cashier
behind the register
you are off to other hands.
We break up with things and people every day of our lives, from the moment we open our eyes in the morning until we close them again at night. Some breakups are easy: dropping your son off at school, knowing that he will be climbing back into your car in the afternoon. Other breakups are more difficult--watching your daughter drive away from your house with all of her belongings packed up in her car, knowing she will never sleep in her childhood bedroom again. At the end of every book or poem we read, we break up with its characters or subjects. When you're done reading this blog post, you'll break up with it, as well.
Of course, breaking up with something or someone doesn't mean you erase them from your mind or heart. No. Every individual you encounter or movie you watch or taco you eat remains a part of you. Forever. I can still taste the pineapple I ate on a coral bay when I was on my honeymoon. And I can still conjure up the feelings of standing in line to see the first Star Wars movie way back in 1977. Nothing is ever lost, from first kisses to final kisses.
A few days ago, I submitted a huge grant to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). It's the third time I've written an NEA grant for the library. The first time, I requested $20,000 for programming inspired by Joy Harjo's An American Sunrise, and I got it. The second time, I asked again for $20,000 to fund events focused on Andrew Krivak's The Bear. I didn't get it. My latest: $16,600 for programming based on Roz Chast's graphic memoir Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
I truly enjoy dreaming up experiences for people, whether it's an encounter with a U. S. Poet Laureate or an essay on the meaning of joy. I love the ability of art or music or theater or writing to somehow change a person in a meaningful way. Of course, the nature of any art is temporal. It lives for a brief time and then evaporates like frost, leaving behind only memory.
This is true of even seemingly permanent works of art--paintings or sculptures or literature. For instance, I've read The Catcher in the Rye ten or more times in my life, starting when I was ten or 11 years of age, and, with each reading, I experienced different emotions and reactions. Because I was a different person each time, and Holden Caulfield meant something different to each one of those different persons.
So, loving any kind of art is about forming a relationship with it, and all relationships are temporary. Eventually, there will be a breaking up/letting go. Perhaps you will reencounter and reexperience that work or art again, and you will form a new and different relationship with it. Or that work of art may just remain a lovely memory, like the taste of fresh pineapple on your tongue as you watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean.
I've had my fair share of breakups. Said goodbye to people and things I love. Perhaps that's why I'm a poet. I'm keenly aware of the passage of time and the need to preserve experiences in a tangible way through word and image. That's what all art is about: trying to capture lightning in a bottle. Or on a canvas. Or page. Or with musical notes. Or in a blog post.
Saint Marty has a piece of pizza to break up with now.
❤️
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