The Birds Sing in February

Living for the hope of it all

“In March I’ll be rested, caught up, and human.” — Sylvia Plath, in a letter to her sister, February 1953

I’ve been trying to walk places more without my headphones. Sometimes I’m confronted with the things I often block out on purpose — arguments, people playing loud videos from their phones, catcalls. Other times, I’m greeted by the good stuff. The rustling of leaves, birds chirping, laughter. Things I’m so often missing, though how often, I don’t know. And, god, is it wonderful. Some of my favorite sounds bursting in the quiet like fireworks. Is the potential for a few moments of bliss — the chronic anticipation — worth all the rest? How long do you look for a needle in a haystack before you give up?

“Golden Plover over Knowlton” By Nicholas Hely Hutchinson

When I was eleven, I brought a small Playmobil figurine to school. I remember what it looked like: blonde with a green shirt, and my friend and I named her Annie. We wrote comics about her. One day — I can’t remember how or why — she ended up buried on the playground beneath the mulch. We spent every recess for a week looking for her and more sparsely thereafter until we moved on. Still, the week before I graduated, I remember wandering the playground, with some sentimental excuse, kicking the dirt at my feet just deep enough to see if there was something underneath.

I’m the kind of person who never stops looking. Every so often, I’ll try and find out what’s happened to a friend I had a falling out with six years ago. I’ll spend years hunting a rare book in person. Before I started dating my now-boyfriend, I searched for something in every passing face, every banal interaction I had with a clerk or a bartender. If I think about it, I’m so rarely met with the satisfaction of the finding, but the hope of it all keeps me going. I love the moment before meeting someone for the first time or the sacred few days before hearing back on a job offer or a bid for a new place to live. It gives you time to dream. People often tell me not to get my hopes up, but I consider it a form of soul exercise. I stretch the boundaries, asking myself How alive am I? In this world of despair, I discover hope still exists in me. I kindle it like a dying flame.

“Summer Morning” by Mary Oliver:

Heart,
I implore you,
it’s time to come back
from the dark,
it’s morning,
the hills are pink
and the roses
whatever they felt

in the valley of night
are opening now
their soft dresses,
their leaves

are shining.
Why are you laggard?
Sure you have seen this
a thousand times,

which isn’t half enough.
Let the world
have its way with you,
luminous as it is

with mystery
and pain–
graced as it is
with the ordinary.

Last month, in a period of depression, I told my boyfriend: I feel like I’m waiting for my life to start. He responded, confused: “Is this not it?” We were walking to get coffee together on a Sunday morning, and I was peering in the windows of established homes and watching families guide prams and fluffy dogs through the park. In that moment, I loved us. I loved us so much that I couldn’t wait, so I threw my mind into the future. I wanted to get married and have a cat and a dog and a nice flat with wood floors, Persian rugs, and a mid-century credenza. It was a way of validating a future that didn’t exist yet, as if the present wasn’t enough: his hand in mine, a mindless walk after a sleepy morning. What else could I want?

I’ve been lucky enough to live a relatively stagnant life in the past year. As everything transitioned, I was always wide-eyed, looking up and down, making sure that the frame of my eyes wasn’t missing a single thing. I was in love for the first time, living in a neighborhood I’ve always wanted to live in, working a stable corporate job. All of this was new and beautiful, but it was beautiful because it was new. As I’ve leaned deep into it, I fear may have gone too far. I’m being pulled taut by the future like a rubber band. Sometimes, I stretch too much, and everything snaps. Instead of being shot forward into my life, I’m pulled back and mangled mid-air, landing loose and heavy back where I started.

From “Some Kinds of Forever Visit You” by Brenda Hillman:

Here comes the fond
     mild winter; other
         realms are noisy
        & unanimous. You tap
the screen & dream
       while waiting; four
            kinds of forever
      visit you today: 
something, nothing,
everything & art,
   greater than you are
          & of your making—

I’ve always felt the most present in a novel atmosphere. The most grounded I’ve ever felt was when I first moved to London, hyper-aware of all the newness, with life so dreamlike that thinking about the future seemed like a waste of time. Eventually, the city became more familiar to me than my suburban hometown, with its changes so stark, the time between my visits growing longer as the years go by. I’m knee-deep in my working life, having little time for the unfamiliar. I see my friends at our normal spots, I pack the same thing for lunch every day, and I sit on the same park benches when the sun is out. I don’t grant myself time to come across the unexpected, so I let my mind take me there instead.

In November, I took a few days off to go see my aunt in Geneva. I’ve been a few times, once for a month, so I know my way around the city. I went to work with her one day to a second location of her office, which is in a tiny French village on the outskirts of the city. I spent much of my time in the waiting room working on my novel, but my aunt suggested I go for a walk. Writers have to go out in the world to write, she said. I left my headphones inside and pictured unscrewing the top of my head to let a bit of fresh air in. There was no expectation, and I didn’t have anywhere to be — this always tends to hinder my sense of wandering — so my observation was heightened. I saw the sun hit the tops of orange trees like they’ve been set on fire. I saw a few rogue flowers left over from summer, bright red in the pale garden of a first-century church. I saw a hidden opening to a park, which contained a glorious silver fir tree that I sat under for many minutes and thought of nothing else. Just the mountains in the distance, the fluffy clouds, leaves beneath my feet. New bird sounds. I’ve never been one for meditation, but it made me wonder if there was a way I could get myself to that feeling within the familiarity of my own life.

“Today” by Frank O’ Hara:

Oh! kangaroos, sequins, chocolate sodas!
You really are beautiful! Pearls,
harmonicas, jujubes, aspirins! all
the stuff they’ve always talked about
still makes a poem a surprise!
These things are with us every day
even on beachheads and biers. They
do have meaning. They’re strong as rocks.

I used to be quite good at this kind of stuff, but I think maybe it was all circumstantial. I’m entering a period of my life where there’s not much learning to be done (at least without looking for it), so new things are rare — even rarer when you don’t have much money or time. The Internet is exhausting, and there’s a constant search for the next big thing. Start now, they say. You’ll be famous. You’ll be able to wear that swimsuit in the summer. Your stock will grow. I can’t do it anymore. I want to stand outside and stare at the sun.

I’m still working on my novel. It’ll be two years in May. I said I’d finish last September, and I’ve only just made it halfway. What it’ll become is haunting what it is now — is this sentence worth a life-changing amount of money in a book deal? Is it worth a 4.5-star average on Goodreads? Is it worth an Instagram post with a screenshot from Publisher’s Marketplace? Will it make my parents proud of me? I don’t know. What I do know is that the echo of these questions is putting pressure on the other side of the door. I love writing. I love writing this book. I want to finish it and enjoy the process. That’s the only goal. So, why all the questions? Asking them is preventing me from finding the answers.

“Today” by Billy Collins:

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

The solution is easy. I used to think that I’d have to do everything for my future self, to save that version of me from disappointment. I want to say I love you and leave out the unspoken please don’t break up with me tomorrow, a month from now, in six months. I want to watch my typed words trickle across the page without thinking about how they’d float in someone else’s head. I want to go to Pilates class because it’ll make me feel good, not so I can fit into that old pair of jeans again. I just want to do everything for the sake of it.

The birds long for spring. They sing in search of it, but maybe they’re singing just because they can. I’ll never know, but I enjoy the sound anyway.

---

Hope you’re all taking care. It’s a tough world.

It’s been a while since I’ve updated the Devotions playlist, so I’ve thrown in some songs that have been important to me in the past eighteen months, for one reason or another.

I’ll see you soon.

<3

Tara