Future Self

I am intensely familiar with my Future Self. She is driven, and poised, and always wearing something Blue. She has a career that she loves, and that she worked hard to get. She can bike up mountainsides, she can drop and give twenty. She fits into the size 8 jeans that are sitting at the back of my closet. She is charming, and calm. She does not worry. She does not feel unnecessary guilt. She is happy.

But what about my Present Self?

Present Self is working hard. She has down days. She doesn't like her job, but is making the most of it. She can't exactly give you twenty yet, but she can bike to and from work, which is something. She has dishes to clean, and laundry to do, but she cooked a hell of a meal last weekend for a family she loves. She has a stack of pretty dresses that fit her just fine. She has time. She has love. She is strong. She will be okay.

Our culture sings the praises of the Future Self. We are urged to work harder, jump higher, push farther, win more. (("Gotta do more, Gotta be more" says the Nuwanda in my head)). Future Self will be better, we think. And we resent Present Self for everything she hasn't become yet.

It's good to have goals, and it's good to have plans. It's good to work hard. It's good to know what you want. But Present Self doesn't deserve the resentment, or the frustration. She deserves acknowledgement, and trust. She deserves to have a little faith put into everything she already is.

So I think it's time for me to let Future Self go for a while. Present Self and I have a lot of catching up to do.

Images by Matt Wisniewski.

To Be a Poet and a Cabinet Maker

Excerpt from "What Rose Light as Breath," For Love of Common Words by Steve Scafidi

I met Steve Scafidi in my senior year of college. At the time, a friend and I were co-editors of our college literary magazine. We had arranged for four semi-local poets to come to campus for poetry readings and one-on-one workshops with creative writing students.

Luckily, of the four poets we invited, I was paired with Mr. Scafidi for my one-on-one. We sat at a cafe table, and he pulled out a copy of a poem I had written, which he had read before our meeting and had written all over in scribbly black pen.

When he is not a poet, Mr. Scafidi is a cabinetmaker. He owns a farm in West Virginia, which he shares with his wife Kathleen. When he sat down with me that day to talk about my poem, he apologized for the state of his hands. They were rough, and his nails were covered in brown, stained lacquer. He said the stuff was nearly impossible to scrub away. And before he said anything about what he had written about my poem, he asked me to read it aloud for him.

When people tell me that they "don't understand" poetry, I want to take them by the hands and lead them to a place where they can hear someone like Mr. Scafidi reading his own work aloud. Poetry was meant to be heard. Real, honest poetry is filled with breath.

We had a long talk that day, about language, images, and the things people feel between lines of poetry. I promised him that I would send him a copy of the finished poem, but I never rewrote it. The copy covered in his notes stays folded in eighths and tucked in my copy of For Love of Common Words.

I rarely write anything anymore, let alone poetry, but a secret part of me still dreams of someday being a poet and a cabinet maker, like Mr. Scafidi. To spend my time among wood and words, breathing in sawdust and listening--waiting--for the poems to speak.

((Barn photo by ~QwikDrah on deviantart, found via Pinterest.))