For days, the weather’s gone like this: rainbow squall rainbow squall…ad infinitum. I keep thinking it must stop but it doesn’t. Usually we have a steadiness of one thing or another. Not a steadiness of unsteadiness.

Why it matters is that, because the squalls will short out my electronics, I’ve been living in even more isolation than my usual isolation. The cost/benefit ratio of my going out into the world is pretty high, and I’m always trying to muster the oomph to leave the house. This seems like a queer sort of life, though I often think, well Emily Dickinson didn’t leave the house and she didn’t fret about it.

Then today I read this poem by Charles Simic that approximated the circumstances under which I live.

To Laziness

Only you understood
How little time we have.
Not enough to lift a finger,
Not enough to blink.

The voices on the stairs,
Ideas too quick to pursue—
What did they all matter?
When eternity beckoned.

The curtains drawn,
The newspapers unread.
The keys collecting dust.
My mind was like a motionless ceiling fan,

World-weary, languid
As if the bed was a barge on the Nile,
One red sail in the sunset,
With barely a breath in it.

When I moved at last,
The stores were closed.
Was it already Sunday?
The weddings and funerals were over.

A few sluggish clouds in the sky,
Shadows idling in the doorways,
The patches of waning light
More and more silent and absorbed.

___________________
Lately I’ve been thinking about the value of indirection versus the value of declaration. My mind chooses rainbow then squall then back to bow, and then the “accessible” bow seems childish.