I’m starting over.
I’ve done that many times. I don’t stick with things. I quit after a time. That’s true. Each decision to quit was a good one. I’d do the same again. A bigger mystery is why this pattern of quitting? The only answer I can give now is: mysterious forces. By “mysterious” I mean something that as yet I don’t understand. And that’s hopeful. Because it means that it can be known. I just don’t. Not yet. I need someone’s help. Someone specific, whom I don’t know. They haven’t yet arrived.
I’m 57 and to me I sound like a child.
This winter, after crying on the phone to my doctor after I’d slipped on the ice on my porch stairs and caught the edge of the top step across my left kidney and spent $2,400 on emergency room bills to learn that I was ok because her assistant discouraged me from making an appointment with her and told me my best option was the emergency room—how could she do that and how irresponsible that was, especially during Covid and what a waste of money and I’m switching doctors and she was sympathetic and said that that assistant was gruff and was no longer working with her and then she told me, as I was half yelling and half crying at her, “You’re an adult.” and I don’t know what she said after that because I stopped listening because in that moment I saw that I was behaving like an angry child.
I’m a child. At 57. I’m ashamed.
What do I mean by “starting over”? Today I mean that I’ve lost interest in publishing poems—maybe I was never really interested in publishing poems—it’s been years since I’ve written a poem, though I started one last week. I want to write a story instead. Even if only one story. I’ve just re-read the first chapter of the John Gardener’s The Art of Fiction and am reminded that I need to master the art of short-story writing by reading a lot of short stories, and while I’ve ready many stories in my life, I’ve never read them with the eye of a writer. But I’m too old to start over. And I’m also a child. I search online for short-story recommendations for writers and write down the titles and authors—Nabokov, Chekhov, Alice Munro, Ursula LeGuin, Ray Bradbury. But I don’t trust anyone. Because I’m a child. So I’ve written to someone I trust and I’m waiting to hear back from him. I will ask him for his list. There needs to be a person at the other end of my ask. Not the internet. Because I’m—I’ve said it before—a child. A child shouldn’t be left on its own. I will get lost.