BlueStone Press, February 17, 2023, Page 15
Desert Island 5 Dear Wally – I was recently asked about the top 5 things I couldn’t live without if I was stranded on a deserted island. I wonder what you have to say about my list. Cell phone. Internet. Coffee. My dog. Chocolate. – Alive with 5 Dear Alive – Ahhhh, you have just barely cracked the sarcophagus of essential things that make life livable*. I will give you a pat on the head and a Scoobie Snack for your dog (and one for you) for your honesty (chocolate?!). Also, a gentle nudge in the direction of some other less tangible things that I’d argue you and I and everycan’t really live without. But Wally Nichols one first, from a basic survival point of view, we need water, air, food, shelter. Let’s say those don’t have to be on your list because they are existential givens, and likely your prompt (is this some gamey dating app poke?) is about the material things you THINK you can’t live without! *A confusing metaphor! When I think about this list as it relates to me plunked
Dear Wally
down on an island, I’d sheepishly agree with the cell phone, internet and the dog. For better or for worse, coffee and chocolate aren’t on my list. I know the sugar and the embedded caffeine kick are critical for some. Respect. And maybe if marooned, I’d come to Jesus on those, especially if there was no Netflix. I’d also squeeze in a guitar. Love is on the list, most definitely, and I’d invite you to consider how important experiencing love is to a best life experience. For sure being besotted can hurt (will hurt) at some point in a way that almost nothing else does, but love is what makes us human and it belongs in the list of 5, if we are being honest. It doesn’t have to just be romantic love, either. Love can have wispy overtones – you love gardening, flying airplanes, eating dessert, skiing, tracking spy balloons, family members, math, flossing, etc. Romantic love and passion and joy are intertwined inextricably, as they are with grief and loss. And what is life if not hugging the ass end of the mighty pendulum that bandies between both extremes and trying to not jump off or get clocked in the head or get knocked off? Real love, the kind that hurts when its silhouette morphs into something you no longer recognize, can no longer have, or can no longer identify, requires vulnerability. So if love is on the list, so must be vulnerability. Gratitude is another critical life list member. Technically, we can probably gimp along in this life without it, but is it more important than the internet? A resounding
yes. Gratitude for what you do have (cable!) versus what you don’t have (my crappy DSL), and that can also be nontangible things like passions, experiences, health, companionship. Also gratitude for what you can do, versus what you can’t do. Damn, this is starting to sound like a lecture! Let’s pivot back to the playful nature of the question. Your list is great. A big question might be, do you actually want to stay ON the deserted island? (It’s some people’s dream come true). Or are you trying to get OFF this island and on to one with an All Inclusive Club Med and lots of people? If you don’t like humanity, then the deserted island itself would be on your list of things you can’t live without. If not, might I suggest a jetpack or a surfboard to immediately vacate this isolated, sand flea ridden, scorched earth hellhole? And if you stay because you like it, and can get enough chocolate airdropped because it’s top 5 on your list anyway, you know your deserted island will then become a desserted island :). (Snare and cymbal hit please!) – Wally P.S. Don’t forget the dog food or YOU may be the dog food. Also use suntan lotion. (Damn, I can’t not lecture! Just ask my 15-year-old daughter) Got a question for our advice columnist or just want to whisk him away to your all-inclusive tropical island made out of love, gratitude, guitars and cell phones? Email him at cwn4@aol.com.
‘Swallowing Stones’ Poet chronicles grief and transcendence Cottekill poet Lisa St. John has been published in a long list of anthologies and journals and won several awards. “Swallowing Stones,” her first book, is a wildly evocative ride focused on love, grief and reawakening to joy, as experienced by someone whose love and grief are both fine-tuned to the particular and deep and wide enough to embrace all life. The stones she swallows are so hot they sizzle, finding form in deft, meticulous and precisely chosen words that hit like a chainsaw, evoking the devastation Anne of widowhood and the loss of Pyburn Craig one’s true love to cancer. “Give me back the world/of Mexican
Book Review
beaches/and the two of us dancing/alone/ late at night/before bed,” she writes in “Stomping My Foot,” letting the reader inside the coming together of pleading Cover and demanding when St. John we know both will be in vain. Part II glides smoothly onto the sharpened blade of life as a woman – part exultation, part rage, part anguish. St. John picks up her stones and examines their facets, cracks, smoothed surfaces and curves with an unflinching gaze, giving eloquent voice to the particular wounds and glories of the female experience in ways that center us amid the blood, mud and beauty of human existence.
Those existential questions are taken head on in Part III, opening with an incredibly powerful poem, “Why We Are Here,” that rings like a powerful sermon or the closing argument of a brilliant defender, as does “Label Me Human,” later in the collection. These are anthems. St. John’s feminism and anti-war passion never stoop to mere politics; this voice speaks from an awareness of the larger transcendent connections we can find, often by paying attention to the “little” things – breath, bugs, subtle gradations of color, the slant of the sunlight. To close the collection, St. John circles back to grief and widowhood with fresh strength, and sticks the landing perfectly. Unsurprisingly, her Feb. 19 book launch at Stepping Stone Creative Center is sold out; but a Meet the Author event is planned for the same venue sometime in March. Meanwhile, you can purchase the book at www. lisachristinastjohn.com.
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