From the Goldfish Bowl

I'm having a bad week, and need these goldfish and geraniums to cheer me.  A week of drudgery, of too many meetings, too much work of the least satisfying sort—and then of having just those things to write about, and with the writing effectively doubling them.  

Let them go, the Buddhists would say.  Be a fish, swimming in clear water.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Breathe myself out.

I want out, that's the problem.  Want out of my bowl.  Want a far blue lake to swim in.  A sun-dappled pool under some waterbirch or pine.  A lazy river with a gypsy caravan parked beside it, windows wide open to the lemon-scented air (the lemon groves recalling the Corfu or Cypress of Lawrence Durrell).  Want to splash, to make a splash, not circle endlessly in constricted obedient circles.

To—literally—write myself into a better place.  Tell myself, tell those others, what it is I plan to do with my one wild and precious life.  Answer Mary Oliver's urgent question.



image:  Henri Matisse, Goldfish