Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

Late one Friday, I said, we had a long week; let’s go to Cheekwood. We love our local garden and art museum here in Nashville. Didi applauded me for my spontaneous outing — rare for me these days. Even leisure time is scheduled. No exhibition called to us; we simply wanted fresh air and to walk ourselves into a contemplative space. In fact, I repeated Let’s move quietly.

The paths are typically crowded — not on this day, just a few young families with children and several other couples. Plus, the rains had come down the previous night; people thought better than of walking muddy paths, unlike us. We meandered around landscaped beds of daffodils and lilies.

I walked intently with my serious hands behind my serious back. In my head, I kept returning to my last Zoom meeting then to a remark a colleague made the previous day. No, no, no, I thought. Let’s try again. I tried to clear my head of work in the Japanese Garden, but then a boisterous kid, maybe seven or eight years old, arrived. His carefree roaming about and loud talk to his parents suddenly placed into relief how grave I had become, humorless even. He was present and I was bothered by things I had little control over. He didn’t care about a respectful volume; I idealized a peaceful silence. I decided to take a page out of the kid’s book. I ran my hands along the bamboo wall, and whistled to myself. Didi looked at me strangely. I said Don’t worry. I’m living.

Today’s poem invites us to find the balance between deepening our self-awareness and actually living life. Sometimes our journey means not letting that journey inhibit our sense of fun.

Taking Stock
by Elaine Equi

There I was —
mindfully minding 
my own business.

Industriously
scanning every item
in my body

and sorting them
into bins of seeing,
hearing, feeling, thinking.

Hearing,
feeling,
feeling,
thinking,
hearing.

Labeling every thought
leaves little time to think them,
which is probably for the best.

Labeling every pain or sensation
can sometimes make them disappear.
Perhaps they were in your mind after all,
whatever that means.

I wonder what will become of me
and my ambition.

Not living — but labeling.

Not lost in thought –
just thinking, thinking.

“Taking Stock” by Elaine Equi from OUT OF THE BLANK © 2024 Elaine Equi. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Coffee House Press.