I feel so overwhelmed by responsibilities. I feel strangled by the commitments I've made. I feel that my life has become a succession of details, and I've lost the feeling of living without a script. I have to go to co-op; I have to go to soccer; I have to write blog posts; I have to make podcasts; I have to teach my classes; I have to go to parties; I have to do all kinds of things. No one made me do them, and individually, I like them all. But put together, they make a sticky web out of my life, and I am the fly stuck in them.
So, I am busting out. I don't have to podcast for a while since Jenn's family is in town this weekend. I can spend all of co-op and soccer lying on a blanket, reading poetry and American history. I can walk to and from my classes barefooted and picking up dandelions. I can skip parties if I want to. I can go on a blog vacation. "I hear it in the deep heart's core" that I must do these things. I will let go of the things I can, and I will drape the things I cannot let go of with daisy chains. Here's my plan, summed up pretty darn well by Yeats:
THE LAKE ISLE OF INNISFREE
By William Butler Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
1892
