One Art

It's hard to believe it's been a year since I've written in this space. It feels like a hundred years have passed between then and now. I can't pin down one emotion at the moment, thanks both to the fact that we moved to a new state this spring and the fact that the world caught on fire a week after we moved. I expected the upheaval and loss that comes with a move. I didn't expect the world to shut down a week later thanks to a virus that may or may not be as contagious or widespread at the media makes it out to be. Who can we trust? Who has our best interests at heart? What is going on, and why?

Writing a list of losses, both literal and emotional, makes me feel less crazy. If you're living in 2020, it's a lot. And if you had any pre-existing life stressors, well, maybe it's possible that in terms of mental health crises at least misery loves company?

My list of losses includes little things like gift cards, bigger things like hearing aids, intangible things like time spent not sleeping or badly coping or zoning out. Then things like our sweet little house and the city in which I've spent the most and best years of my life and the job I'd made for myself that I loved. Then farther and faster, the way I thought marriage would be, the kids I thought I would have, the way I thought my life would look.



This Elizabeth Bishop poem comes to mind not infrequently these days:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or 
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.



The only time this doesn't feel hopeless is when I can zoom in one day (one hour) at a time: what can I do right now? What am I actually in control of? What daily habits can I start today that will get me where I want to go? Or when I zoom way out: God is good and sovereign and nothing is wasted. But when I dwell in the messy middle, it seems the only thing I'm good at is the art of losing.