...which is probably exactly when I need it to find me. My favorite example of this happened a very long time ago. I really needed a job at the time, and I agreed to go on a blind interview (kind of a like a blind date, except you don't know the job position you're applying for, instead of the person you're having dinner with). Let's just hypothetically say I was wearing a suit and I somehow wound up in Cookeville, TN, walking around selling office paper door-to-door in the rain on this job interview. Because I'm extremely graceful, I fell down the wet steps of an office we had just left, and when I landed at the bottom of the steps, minus one high heel, I looked up and there was a cafe across the street. The name of the cafe? Poet's. It was one of those moments I found myself so far off track that I needed a literal sign in front of my face to snap me out of it. I smiled and went home.
In the spirit of seeing inspiration in daily life, I want to mention something that happened yesterday. I was juggling a long to-do list with not much time. One of the things I had to do involved dropping something off at a client's house. (I've been working part-time lately as an assistant to a fashion stylist.) The client asked about the tattoo I have on my left arm. It is a fragment of Sappho's, and the whole fragment reads:
Some men say an army of horse and some men say an army on foot
and some men say an army of ships is the most beautiful thing
on this black earth but I say it is
what you love.
(translation by Anne Carson)
The last portion "but I say it is what you love" is what I have on my arm, but it is in the ancient greek dialect Sappho wrote in. I got the tattoo when I was living in Tucson and getting a Masters in poetry. Sappho inspires me. She is the first recognized/famous female poet. Ever. She wrote in 630 B.C. in ancient Greece, but her writing can exist and communicate in the present moment, thousands of years later, with amazing clarity and profoundness. All we have left of her work is one tattered papyrus scroll. There are holes in it. There are edges missing. Those remaining fragments are brilliant, and somehow, even the spaces that once held words that were worn or ripped away are also brilliant. Her work was widely appreciated while she was actually alive. From what I can tell from her writing, she was fiery, mysterious, smart, emotional. I just plain dig Sappho.
I get asked about the tattoo on my arm all the time. In a way, I knew that I would be asked what it says a lot, and figured it would be my opportunity to share poetry with strangers in unexpected locations, at any given moment of any given day that someone happened to ask.
Anyhow, so there I was, standing on the front stoop of this man's house, reciting a fragment of Sappho to him. After I finished, he said, "I write poetry too!" Before I knew what was happening, he pulled out his iPhone and started reading to me. I nodded along, distracted by the fact that I had left my car running in his driveway and I was wasting fuel and polluting and the vet was about to close and on and on. He read through two short ones. I wasn't listening. Then all of a sudden it hit me. I wasn't being present at all in that moment. Here, this man was being so emotionally vulnerable and brave and generous with me...and I wasn't even paying attention. Here, someone was offering me poetry in a random location and unexpected moment, and I wasn't even able to quiet myself enough to hear it and appreciate it. The universe was giving me a gift, one of the things that really feeds my spirit, and I was feeling annoyed and acting like I didn't have time to accept it.
I took a deep breath, told myself that there was nowhere in the world I needed to be more than right there, listening to his poems. I felt my stress level drop. I listened....really listened to the next two poems he read. I thanked him for sharing his work with me. I made it to the vet in plenty of time. My day didn't fall apart, because I took a few minutes to slow down....it actually got better. I completely let stress take me out of the present moment....and thankfully, I was able to recognize that and quickly find a way back to that moment, enjoy it, learn from it and find inspiration in it.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if I can learn to pull myself back into the present more often and keep my eyes open, I'll start finding inspiration everywhere.
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