January 7, 2003.
I Need Some New Best Friends


Do I talk too much about poetry? I think I am a little bit obsessed with it.

When I was growing up, some of my closest friends were poems. I had certain scraps of verse that I treasured. I carried them around with me like well-worn stones. I found comfort in their weight and their texture, their heft in my hand. I wore the rocks smooth with my constant care.

Really, I didn't limit my list of best friends to just certain poems by certain people. The list also included special lines in special movies, and particular albums by particular artists.

Growing up, it was like a private art show up there in my head (and I don't mean this to sound pretentious, like I was some wildly gifted girl genius. I only mean that I was obsessed). Walking the halls of my high school between classes, I gazed at the ceiling, thinking:

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay)

And riding the elevator up to the eighth floor at my First Real Job out of college, I gazed at the ceiling, thinking:

There's always someone somewhere
With a big nose who knows
Who trips you up and laughs when you fall.
(The Smiths)

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Before I got married, the art show in my head included works by Rainer Maria Rilke, U2, Adrienne Rich, James Joyce, Rachmaninoff, and, yes, The Smiths. (Oh, yes. Especially The Smiths.)

And I still love all those people. I will always love them.

But I seem to be undergoing a seismic shift in the way I relate to those precious shopworn scraps of poetry and song. I find myself wanting to let go of them. I'm searching for new bits and pieces to take their place.

Sure, some artists are timeless (I don't think I will ever tire of Rilke), but some are probably not (I mean, can you really see me driving my future kids around in a minivan, listening to "The Queen Is Dead"?). Also, when I listened to The Smiths in high school, the experience was always so meaningful, because the lyrics were so true:

Now I'm outside your house
I'm all alone
And I'm outside your house
I hate to intrude ...
Oh, alone, I'm alone, I'm alone, I'm alone, I'm alone, I'm alone
And I never, never... had no one ever

(Never Had No One Ever)

Now those lyrics don't really hit me like they used to. You know, after I got married, I stopped driving by my crush's house at night to see if a light was burning in his second-story bedroom window.

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So I have this sudden great need to tuck away those old bits of tinsel, and start digging for something new and profound (boy, am I getting carried away with my metaphors here, or what? Stop me, please...).

And I know this all sounds a bit hokey ("local distressed melancholy girl now taking applications for epic muse!"), but truly, it is a struggle. I am hungry for meaningful music and poetry that will help me re-frame my new reality — life as a wife, as a thinking person, a contented person (yes! contentment is the new dress I've been wearing lately), a woman approaching the middle of her life, one who's seen enough of the world to know what's good for her and what's not.

Some new artists have brought me great comfort over this past year. I discovered this band called Hem last fall, and I know that they will be with me for a long time. And I find myself oddly drawn to the poetry of Mary Oliver (even though I feel like I should be ashamed of liking it, since it is the kind of poetry that talks a whole lot about nature, in ways I find somewhat extreme). And there is always Rilke, and there is plenty by James Joyce that I have not read yet.

But hey — if you have any new best friends to recommend to me, I'm taking applications. Stop by and say hello.