A geyser bursts through

Sometime in March 2007, when I was conducting an experimental writing class called Joy of Self-Discovery, I gave an assignment. Write something about nature. Compare it with your life. Then I found myself in some kind of trouble. I couldn’t think of something in nature that vaguely resembled my life.

Then one Saturday afternoon I was watching National Geographic on TV and I saw a geyser burst forth so magnificently high. It moved me to write this poem:

Look at my life — empty, barren bare

dotted with a few rocks here

some greens and brush there

nothing happening anywhere.

But wait, just wait, just listen.

It starts softly — a gentle hiss

and then a sudden wild rush

a geyser bursts out

through a crevice of caked earth

and rises thousands of feet into the sky

splendidly bowing to the few people

who watch gasp and sigh —

she has made it! She has made it high!

Nobody sees the roiling red mud deep under

the constant boiling pain

the endless suffering and devastation

that gave it the power to fly that high.

Even I am in awe.

This is my one last explosion,

my final success.

Then you will look at my life

empty, barren, bare still

but for the geyser

standing steaming splashing

in the center turning the land

moist wet fertile

preparing it for new life.

You cannot imagine what is going on in my life now. Suddenly, just like that, I had to find a new place to live. That had been building up for some time. I have lived in a one-bedroom condo I think for the past six years. In fact, I thought sometimes I would die here but other times I would get fidgety and need more space.

Certainly I need more closets or I need to throw away a lot of clothes. But I have a whole shelf of sweaters I knitted myself when I was still slowly recovering from my stroke. I can’t give those away or throw those away. Oh, never mind, I used to say, I don’t have to do anything about them now. Later, when the right time comes. . .

And suddenly the right time did come. Just like that. I went to the rental office I thought I had seen once when I had dinner at a nearby Vietnamese restaurant. Can you help me find a place to live? I asked, and they said yes. Here’s what I want — an old building, two bedrooms, not furnished. Cris, the rental agent, said he needed two days to line up a few.

We looked at quite a few that frankly demoralized me. Some of them were in good buildings but they were marinated in strange smells. Some of them were furnished, leaving me with a problem — what do I do with my furniture? But in the end we found this one. It has two big bedrooms, a big enough kitchen, a little porch and a place for my plants. It’s also on the third floor, which is fabulous for me. I’m getting old and concerned about elevators breaking down. Where I live now I have to climb nine floors to get home. But here in this new place . . . ah, I can manage to go up three floors.

Finally I found a place that’s perfect for me and for my children when they come to visit, also my cousins, my old classmates, my friends, when they all come to visit . . . it sounds like I’m hoping to run a hotel. . . it looks like I’m going to have loads of fun. . . it looks like my life will get so exciting. Suddenly I remember recipes I used to cook when I used to cook. Maybe I will cook again. Maybe I will entertain again. I used to do all that pretty well.

Now I have trouble with my schedules. Sometimes I have to do something that has to do with my move. Sometimes I have to do something that has to do with my work. Then there are the holidays. I think this year Christmas will play a minor role in my life. I need to get ready for 2011. That is the thought that awakens me at three or four in the morning and doesn’t put me to sleep again until the inevitable night when the lack of sleep catches up with me and I begin snoring at eight.

I don’t think I’ll be doing Christmas in a big way this year. Oh sure I can plug in my grape lights on Christmas night when I get home from my children’s places. I can do that between unpacking boxes. I need to do this, use the dead time between holidays to get settled. Be patient with me, readers, okay? Just remember I am preparing, resettling. In 2011 I will have a brand-new life. Something tells me it’s going to be a happy one.

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