There are some days where I struggle to find anything to write about in my blog posts. I literally sit and stare at my blank laptop screen, trying to conjure up any kind of interesting idea or anecdote. I don’t always succeed
Hence, I sometimes don’t post for a few days and search for anything of note to discuss. Recently, it’s been Agent Orange and his band of Merry Pranksters who’ve distracted me. It always seems like people in power (however stupid or morally bankrupt those people are) inflict abuse on the less fortunate.
Sharon Olds writes about the abuse of power . . .
Indictment of Senior Officers
by: Sharon Olds
my sister and I would meet at night,
eyes and hair dark, bodies
like twins in the dark. We did not talk of
the two who had brought us there, like generals,
for their own reasons. We sat, buddies in cold
war, her living body the proof of
my living body, our backs to the mild
shell hole of the stairs, down which
we would have to go, knowing nothing
but what we had learned there,
so that now
when I think of my sister, the holes of the needles
in her hips and in the creases of her elbows,
and the marks from the doctor husband’s beatings,
and the scars of the operations, I feel the
rage of a soldier standing over the body of
someone sent to the front lines
without training
or a weapon.
It's a pretty dark poem, written by Olds right as the United States was recovering from Watergate and the Vietnam War. The President of the United States had been forced to resign, and the AIDS epidemic was in the wings, waiting to show its fatal face.
I don't remember much of those days. I was fairly young and too wrapped up with my own dramas. Puberty does that to you. My memories are simply flashes, like a slide show running so fast the images all blur together. I survived the Reagan years. The first presidential candidate I voted for was Michael Dukakis. My first kiss was so unremarkable that I've forgotten the name of the owner of the lips.
You see what I mean. Memory is a slippery thing, always swimming downstream on the way to an ocean or sea. So I'm not sure how accurate my childhood recollections are. I can barely remember what I had for dinner last night, let alone the name of my kindergarten teacher or first grade crush.
I do remember the guy who used to beat me up on a frequent basis in second grade. (I eventually beat the shit out of him, and he left me alone after that.) And I remember my second grade teacher who took pleasure in humiliating me in front of my classmates. I could tell you about the person who used to take pleasure in holding me underwater in freshman swim class, and I know the days my brother and two sisters died.
I guess trauma and cruelty stick with me more than simple, daily pleasures. I think that's what Olds' poem is getting at. Pain (physical, emotional, and spiritual) leaves scars that don't heal. Maybe that's why a boring day, like today, when nothing too damaging occurred to me (on a personal level--I'm not talking the horror show in Washington, D. C.), doesn't really take up too much space in my brain.
I guess you could call my current state being and nothingness. (Look it up. It's an allusion.)
Saint Marty wrote a poem for today about absolutely nothing, based on the following prompt from The Daily Poet . . .
In a memorable Seinfeld episode, it’s proclaimed that Seinfeld is “a show about nothing.”. Of course, everything is about something, so for this expertise, write a poem about nothing—a poem where nothing fantastic happens. Make sure to focus on the particulars of this regular day where nothing out of the usual happens. Focusing on the specific details will help to ensure that your poem connects with its audience.
Nothing Happened Today
by: Martin Achatz
I ate two hardboiled eggs and kumquats
for breakfast The kumquats made my ears
ring and jaw ache from the sour. I answered
an email from one of my students whose car
ran out of gas on the way to school for the third
time this semester, plus he's had two bouts
of food poisoning. Salad for lunch--spinach,
flax seeds, boiled chicken, shredded cheddar.
Watched the sky change from blue to gray
to black to gray, as if it couldn't make up
its mind. A writer friend stopped by
my office to give me a copy of her new
book--poems about growing up during
Adolf Hitler's rise to power. She weeps
every night watching the news now.
I read a Mary Oliver poem, and a Sharon
Olds and a Joy Harjo because they were
beautiful. Ate Chinese, drank beer for
dinner with some old friends, decided
not to have a second beer since
I had to drive home and it was getting
dark. Took my Australian shepherd
for a walk, let her bark at passing
cars and a squirrel tightroping
across a power line. Changed into
my pajamas, sat down with my journal,
took out my fountain pen, write at the top
of a blank page "Nothing Happened Today."
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