Thirty Thoughts in Thirty Minutes

A few days ago, I heard about Dana Guthrie Martin's April Fool idea of writing 30 Facebook status updates in 30 minutes - a kind of micro riff on the novel-in-one-month, poem-a-day events that have become fixtures in the blogosphere. I got off Facebook, which I rarely used, a few weeks ago, and have been writing daily micropoems on Indenti.ca and Twitter. But Dana's challenge intrigued me, and this afternoon, between the hours of 3:30 and 4:00 pm, I gave it  a try. This is the actual result: neither status updates nor micropoems, just thirty thoughts with an occasional poetic twist; thirty minutes of paying attention to my head and senses, and trying to pull out a few impressions into some sort of coherent thread.

1. Three crows caw in unison and die away, leaving the sound of a fire siren.

2. Water in the street, rush hour traffic spills out of the puddles. Beads of rain hang on the spirea.

3. Can one imagine slowness in the modern city, even with the presence of slow-flying, slow-calling crows?

4. Every second someone passes in a blue or red or silver car, a bus, a truck carrying pictures of vegetables or baked goods.

5. Their sounds at this hour have the regularity of a lullaby. My husband awakens from a nap.

6. Where do I find slowness in my life – in the breathing of the Boston ferns, the dormant orchid awaiting spring?

7. In wine-drinking and love-making, in deciphering the mathematical intricacies of a Bach sarabande?

8. My grandparents lived an entire life without rushing, consumed daily bacon and martinis, lived to 90.

9. They did not eat radioactive snow or genetically modified tomatoes grown in dusted Californian fields.

10. My grandfather liked a mess of bullheads for supper; they swam in a pail on the slate steps; were fried in bacon fat.

11. He kept bacon grease in a tin can in the refrigerator, for popcorn-making on Friday evenings, and fried eggs.

12. He cleaned his glasses with gin from one of several bottles kept in various cupboards.

13. My grandmother rarely spoke about this; she loved him and kept knitting.

14. What is a life lived without hurrying, without deadlines, without pressure? I have seen it and didn’t find it boring.

15. As children, time is a different horse to ride.

16. When he was young, my grandfather drove the doctor’s horse-carriage through the Chenango County hills.

17. And later became a salesman for Henry Ford. At 90 he gave up his last car with sadness but grace.

18. Neither of my grandparents moved quickly, except when my grandfather threw a baseball. But grandma’s mind was like lightening.

19. How can we recapture that grace, the grace of libraries and peony beds, waltzes and wisteria vines? Impossible.

20. The rain is harder, the cars pass faster. All week I’ve thought it was Friday, a week of days tumbling toward its end.

21. Is it possible to be now, even in meditation, even in sleep, even in the midst of a bite of chocolate?

22. The red glass vase sits next to a candle, quietly bleeding its color into the grey afternoon.

23. It has shoulders like a woman and a dark mysterious heart, beating so slowly it can’t be felt.

24. A lone crow flies across the landscape. A man in a black parka. A woman with a black umbrella walks in the other direction.

25. Time passes: almost a half hour of poetry, of breaths, of rapid thoughts slowed intensively. Thoughts on beta-blockers.

26. My ancestors read poems: Tennyson, Longfellow, Sandburg, Frost; committed them to memory.

27. At twelve my great aunt gave me a blue-bound book of favourite poems she had written out by hand: a treasure.

28. Civil war poems, fairies in glens, Victorian love poems written out by a spinster school teacher who loved history, art, reading.

29. Have I done them justice, these gentle souls who taught me to think and look at a world slowly passing?

30. When I think of them, time almost holds still for us.

Comments

[Dave]

I think you've done them justice. It hangs together beautifully, Beth. Hard to believe something so meditative was written so quickly. Did you do any advance preparation? Some of the Facebook participants have admitted using prepared texts or fragments of texts.

[beth]

Thanks, Dave. Nope, no prep, just one thought about fifteen minutes before I sat down, that maybe I'd write something about slowness and my grandparents. I deliberately didn't want to prepare; I wanted to see what came out of the meditation, as it were.

You've still got some hours - are you going to give it a try? (She teased, wanting to see what he'd write.)

[Dave]

Sorry, Beth, I can't even type that fast, let alone think that fast. My hat's off to those of you who can.

[Linda]

Beautiful! I'm giving it a go at 11-11:30 PM pst. You've inspired me.

[Marja-Leena]

So lovely that reading it made time slow down....

[Kaycie]

You've certainly done them justice. This is a lovely post.

[Dana Guthrie Martin]

We haven't admitted to anything, Dave. There are no rules with FaBoStaMe. We do as we please.

Beth, these are incredible. I love them.

[Dick]

These are jewels, Beth. Each one is like a germination point for a poem. Whilst their very brevity contains their purity, maybe some might be probed gently for further life.

[Lorianne]

Wow! Such wonder in 30 bite-sized installments.

[beth]

Hi Linda - thanks for commenting - I checked your website to see if
you'd posted your own 30/30 but didn't find it - how did it go? I
found this a really good exercise in loosening up and not thinking so
much, but still trying to gently tease a coherent thread out of what
was essentially a thirty-minute meditation. Would love to see what you came up with!

Thanks, Marja-Leena - I read these at a party last night in celebration of a friend who had just finished a writing a book - he asked a couple of us to bring something to read, ince he also planned to read a chapter, and so I brought these. That's what struck me the most in reading them aloud - they really became a slow meditation, both for me and the audience. People were kind of incredulous about the concept, and then laughed at the funnier lines - the radioactive snow and the bacon bits - but as the reading progressed they got quieter and quieter. It fascinated me, and I'm glad I had the chance to read them aloud.

I left this comment at Dana's site, where her own poem is re-posted:
Dana, Nathan already said it! Your poems are funny and wonderful and thought-provoking - thank you - and totally different from anyone else’s responses, which is the coolest thing about the whole challenge. This was a great exercise for me, thanks so much for coming up with it. I’m likely to do it again because I can see it’s very good for someone like me who tends to intellectualize her poetry too much.

Thanks, Dick. It was a worthwhile exercise, I think, and like you
say, maybe there are a few thoughts in there that might yield
something else. It was pretty weird to just follow what came up,
trying not to be too cerebral about it!

[chris]

yes i must say it was a beautifully written piece, which definitely does them justice.

[Bill]

I so dig the catfish.

[lucas]

Well, I was inspired enough by this to do my own version. Gosh, it's a bracing experience: you're trying to think, you're trying to type, and doing less self-censoring that usual. And the clock breathes down your neck.

Thanks for the inspiration.

[Loretta]

These are enormously beautiful, as the above person said, single points of germination threatening to burst into a whole.

Will try myself.

[Teresa]

Oh, I especially love #19. It's causing lines of verse to swirl around in my chest now.

T.