A blog, a newspaper, and a poem.

I've come to the conclusion that a blog is like a pet: it needs regular feeding and exercise. Even if it's out of sight, it's never really out of mind, and generates its own variety of guilt. As you drop off to sleep, this vague uneasy thought burrows under your consciousness--"I should have written something today.."

My usual mental response is: better to write something of interest than to write for the sake of writing. Which is all well and good, BUT..it doesn't really stop that little mole from digging up a pile of guilt anyway.

I was on the Metro last week and was absolutely riveted by one of my fellow passengers. At the time, it was just curiosity, but I'm beginning to think that he is the beginning of a poem. I took my seat and started reading my paperback, and noticed that the gentleman in question was reading his newspaper--but in the most orderly fashion I've ever observed. With almost military precision, he picked up each section from his lap, folded the section vertically, then horizontally--read the top sheet, flipped to the quadrant below, then turned the section, refolded, and read top and bottom quarters. He repeated this for each page: northwest quadrant, followed by southwest, northeast, southeast. By this time, I was watching him more than I was reading. How neat! How tidy! How considerate of other riders! And how beyond my capabilities...The man qualifies as a true wonder of nature.

When I open a newspaper--or a map!--anywhere, it immediately expands to fill the space available. I could, I believe, fill an entire Metro car with one of my exploding newspapers. In the car, I wrestle prodigiously with your standard gas station map--so much so that I have been reduced to buying ADC maps because they are bound with that little black plastic spiral that keeps them leashed and confined and incapable of crawling into the already-crowded backseat of my car.

I wondered where he had learned his method. I wondered if I could learn it. I imagined him in a crowded elevator, elbows in, rectangle of news held in front of his face. Stepping off the elevator, he would tuck his neat package of information under his arm and proceed to his office to organize nothing short of the D-Day invasion. He made me think of Roman soldiers, running in such tight formation that one misstep could topple the century. (I was reading about Rome in my paperback.) This is a man, who in one of our society's rapidly-shrinking theater or airline seats, could manage to be comfortable, yet not spill over into someone else's personal space. He is self-contained, respects boundaries, is informed and efficient. Everything I wish I were, and so obviously, am not.

And so, the poem. What better metaphor for poetry than my friend, the subway rider? Perhaps he started off as messy and (pardon the expression) all over the map as I. Perhaps he has worked to refine his behavior, his actions, his newspaper reading, much as a poet refines and polishes the great lump of words he initially produces, taking away the superfluous, amping up the things that work, grinding away at the rough spots until the words flow smoothly and effortlessly describe, picture, and pin down the intended meaning. Perhaps what I saw was the zillionth reading of his newspaper-reading poem, performed every day for donkey's years on the Metro. And the finished product was awe-inspiring.

May I someday be as accomplished a poet as he was a reader.