What I’m Reading
While it is common to see escorts on Twitter boast of the expensive gifts they have received from clients (and I know I have been guilty of this once or twice, too!), my favorite client gifts are often less than $20. As many of my regulars know, tucking a donation into a book, rather than a white envelope, is the path to my heart!
Not only are books sexier than envelopes—but, they are so much sexier!—but also because the books they choose offer insight into who they are and the ideas that have shaped their intellectual and emotional lives. In many cases, these gifts begin to shape mine in turn.
On my most recent trip to Buffalo, a new client met me at a restaurant with this book in hand: Maggie Smith’s Goldenrod. Last weekend in Chicago I devoured it from cover to cover while soaking in a deep and luxurious hotel tub. (This job may not come with health insurance, but the other perks are amazing!)
While I don’t often pick up books of poetry on my own, I have to admit that Goldenrod was one of the most satisfying reads I’ve had in some time.
There is so much to unpack about Smith’s poems, much more than I can cover here. They skillfully weave together observations about the natural world, parenting, divorce, aging, love, and embodiment.
For now, I want to highlight 3 poems. The first two share a theme, that of divorce:
And the third poem is about the birth of her daughter:
If divorce or birth are not themes that you have an interest in, I urge you to stay with me because the lessons that can be learned from both extend far beyond the particularities of these poems.
What I’m Thinking About
I often write in my Musings about the way my life has been shaped by both divorce and motherhood, so there are obvious reasons why I would gravitate toward these poems. However, I find myself drawn to them for reasons that extend beyond the obvious.
As I read, “At the End of My Marriage, I Think of Something My Daughter Said About Trees,” I thought back to the responses I got from friends and acquaintances when I told them that my first marriage was ending. They almost uniformly felt sorry for me, which is a response that I suppose I should have anticipated, but for some reason did not.
As I read the poem, I realized that part of the reason that I did not anticipate this response is that it was the first time, in a long time, that I felt like I had space to breathe on my own.
In the way that the sky rushed in to fill the void left by the tree in Smith’s poem, I felt like oxygen rushed into my body to fill the space that had just opened up inside my body. Perhaps inside my heart, rather than my lungs? Metaphors of the body quickly become muddled at the height of intense emotion.
It makes sense to me that the first poem would be something her daughter said at the end of the marriage and the second after the divorce. Once you learn to breathe in a new way, it is not possible to go back to an environment where this new way is constricted. Once the body… the lungs, the heart… have adjusted, they fight to maintain their new form. This may be true of divorce, but not exclusively. It is true of any major life transition.
I remember when I was still working as an adjunct professor, hearing my college freshman talk about returning to their small hometowns after being away at school for the year and finding it difficult to relate to the people who did not leave, despite the fact that they had known them their entire lives.
There is, of course, always a mourning process that accompanies such a change—I indeed mourned the ending of my first marriage—but at some point, there is also the realization that you are no longer the same person, and therefore the life you left behind is no longer yours; when you recognize that you now see the world as a changed person.
Perhaps it seems like a leap to move from this to Smith’s poem about the birth of her daughter—not to mention that it’s clearly anachronistic (a mother holding her newborn is not reflecting on the baby’s future words or the divorce that won’t come for years)—but there is something about the newness that accompanies a major life transition (birth, marriage, divorce, death), that seems illuminating here.
What stood out to me about this poem, especially in light of the others, is her admission that even though we learn and grow, we are always still a mystery to ourselves. The last line of the poem is one that has not left me since I read it:
“The body remains a house unaware of its rooms.”
I was thinking about how the other poems illuminate how change, even painful change, can bring about new ways of being in the world. But it also brings new knowledge, including self knowledge.
The house as a metaphor for the body is one that has always intrigued me.
What does it mean to be unaware of the rooms within us?
What are we hiding within our bodies? From others? From ourselves?
What is stopping us from opening the internal doors to those rooms and peeking in?
I often think that when new clients come to me they do so with the desire to have embodied experiences that they do not have access to in other areas of their lives. Truth be told, I feel fortunate to have a job where I get to bask in these intense physical connections and experiences as well. What these poems really made me consider are the myriad ways in which these kinds of physical and sexual connections may provide the keys to some of these doors. Sexuality, after all, is a very powerful tool.
What I’m Excited About
I had a really relaxing weekend in Chicago last weekend that gave me some space to think about writing again, which I have been distracted from for the last several months. I am feeling inspired again, and I really expect to pour some of that energy into new Musings, and my other “small” writing project, the book manuscript that is long overdue! I will make some headway, I can feel it.
Availability & Booking
I am excited to make my way back to New York City at the end of the month. Make sure to check out my travel schedule on my website.
NYC | March 30 – April 2
Buffalo, NY | April 14-16
Houston, TX | April 27-30
Cleveland, OH | May 18-21
Flagstaff, AZ | June 16-20
Pittsburgh, PA in between
