It Begins With a Call (Part 29): The Glass Half-Full

I recently suffered a long spell of feeling (and living) like a hermit. This is, of course, not inappropriate for winter, but it was not merely a time of turning inward.  I was not only not reaching out very much to friends, I wasn’t making plans that I knew I wanted to make.  Finally, one day I said to Barry, “I think I’m depressed, and I have been for quite a while.”  The words came out my mouth without a lot of forethought, and they surprised me.  I don’t think I had truly realized it until the words spilled out.  I often see my mood as largely dependent on my physical state, and I’ve had plenty of symptoms of various types I could blame in order to justify my mood.  But admitting depression seems to have opened up a space for something else to happen.

One day soon after, I took myself and my journal out for a walk and stopped in at the newest coffee bar in the neighborhood (the plethora of cafes on Piedmont Avenue is truly astounding).  Writing in cafes is an old practice of mine, and one I hadn’t done, hadn’t even thought about doing, in ages.  Out of that little foray, this poem came:

The Shift

Sitting at Blue Bottle Coffee,

journal on the communal

table, latte at hand,

I felt a distinct inner shift

occur, clear and strong,

though I did not quite

trust it.

Brain scientists claim

that it is possible to

carve new neural pathways

by changing the way

that you think.

Some time ago,

I wrote a poem asserting

that I wanted to change

not just my thoughts

but the way I think.

Desire alone could

not accomplish such

a shift, though.

But in that coffee bar,

In the middle of a

gaggle of young hipster

caffeine enthusiasts,

a click happened, and

a new groove opened up

in my brain.

Why then, why there?

A mystery, that.

Perhaps the mostly full cup

sitting by my right hand

provided the necessary image.

I have always been

a glass half-empty

kind of person, suspicious,

fear-based, looking and

waiting for the other shoe

to drop.

What if that shoe stayed

tightly laced onto my foot?

What if I could retrieve 

the already dropped shoe

and walk fully shod

and balanced?

Now that my longed-for

feeling of gratitude shows up at last,

when the needle jumps to the new groove,

the next cut on the album,

I’d be a fool not to sing

the new song.

The next day I called an old friend, and I reserved a house in Yosemite for my whole family to go in celebration of Barry’s and my upcoming 70th birthdays. I’d almost given up on the idea; finding a weekend we could all go was problematic to begin with, and I just couldn’t muster up the energy to try until my son said, “No, we need to do this!  Don’t give up on it.”

A few days after, I screwed up my courage and also signed up for the Writers’ Intensive with the teacher at the end of May.  Movement!  It’s a little terrifying, but I need to go and acknowledge the fact that I am a writer.

I avow that I am willing to work on this glass half-full neural pathway.