Fresh Morning, Broken World
Notes on Mary Oliver, swamp witches, and the Autumn of Our Discontent
“It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world.” Mary Oliver, Red Bird
Every day I seem to concoct a brand-new theory about what, exactly, my problem is.
Today, for example, I've decided my problem is that I don't get out into nature nearly enough.
It’s probably because it’s high autumn — the liminalest of seasons — and because, against my better judgment, I read a Mary Oliver poem upon waking. (On a week like this, it’s hard to know what else to do.)
As always, her words were luminous and also kind of devastating. Something about serpents and loyal dogs and cultivating wonderment for life’s beauty and pain, etc. This poem made me wish, as I always wish when I’m reading her work, that I were out tromping through a soggy wetlands, sniffing at the autumn air and pocketing cool rocks instead of stuck indoors, chained to a flickering screen, with a day of typing and pandering ahead of me and the world disassembling around me.
It’s silly thing to wish for, of course. On good weeks as well as bad, Ms. Oliver surely spent way too much time at her desk just like the rest of us creative hacks do, even if she cultivated a healthy appreciation for the need to rail against the stifling hours, to strike into the wilder corners of one’s own town and one’s own mind as soon as the work was done, or maybe even a little bit before.
And yet! If I could slip the net of my ordered life today and scamper outside, make my bed in a pile of rushes and transform into a swamp witch or a mushroom hobbit, wouldn't I be a happier human? Wouldn’t I be more self-actualized, more at peace with the politics of love and hate, if slathered in lichens and oozy mud? Wouldn’t I have worthier things to write about the sorry state of the world?
Maybe. But I also know deep down that a squishy wetland trail isn’t the decisive cure for what ails me in particular, or what ails this country in general, nor is the tyranny of my desk the cause of my most cutting woes.
Perhaps my true problem is my persistent need, always, to identify a clearly delineated problem. Yes, that must be it!
Oh, who am I kidding? This is the same old malaise that wraps its clammy tendrils around my neck at the changing of every season, when the clocks do weird things and the kids grow fidgety as field mice and even the house groans in protest at the unwelcome atmospheric shifts.
There’s no cure for the steady march of seasons with all its accompanying toil and unheaval, and if I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t like things any better even if there were. Probably, I’d get bored of wiping my runny nose and scraping the mud from my boots if all I had to do was wander through the woods all damned day.
So I’ve got the office window open wide to welcome in the morning chill as I settle into my morning work. The air is thick and cold, the pear tree is finally dropping its leaves, and the light is thinning most delightfully. It’s all so lovely one could almost forget … the rest of what’s been happening here. Almost.
Later, if there’s time, I’ll put on my new sweater and go kick at a pile of leaves, maybe snap a photo or two, and I’ll think about what’s coming next, both good and bad, and how I want to greet it, and that will be enough … Because it kinda has to be.
Love,
Erin
