Tuesday, June 26, 2007

writer's advice

I can't even tell you where I found this, or how very much I needed to hear it.


Advice to Myself

Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes.
Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic-decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in though the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

4 comments:

Anna said...

Thank you for this! You don't know how much I needed this right now!

Denise said...

It's the "earthen scum," isn't it? My floor is all about the earthen scum while I follow one word...

Louise Erdrich, too, she is an amazing woman. If she can have earthen scum, then heck I can welcome mine.

Jenny Hillebrand said...

Oh yes. We create a tyranny of 'necessity'. Right now my four kids are clustered on the lounge carpet reading. I could tell them to go tidy their bedrooms, which really need it. But that can wait because this moment is creating memories. Thanks for the post!

Denise said...

Hi Jenny-- do I have two readers in South Africa now? Thank you for coming by.