Sounding My Barbaric Yawp

“Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” Thoreau said that in a bout of living in the woods, I think. And tonight I beg to differ. Most men don’t even know what they are missing. They (and most women) seem to accept the day-to-day grind and the mundane of life. They are content with their beer and their football; they cash their paychecks and go out for a steak dinner every two weeks. They watch the world spin as they wake, shower, work, eat dinner, and fall asleep in front of the television. Each tomorrow is a carbon copy of today for them. They get drunk on Friday nights.

It is I who am desperate. And I don’t feel all that quiet about it either. My poet’s heart is filled with longing, dissatisfied with the status quo of my daily life. I wake, shower, work, eat dinner, and fall asleep in front of my computer while trying to spill my thoughts on the page, writing my heart. The daily grind is there, but I try to rise above it. I watch the sun set. I kiss worms. I marvel at the crispness of the air as I go about my daily list of must-do’s. But all the while, I know this is not enough for me.

And my desperation is getting louder. It is the living deliberately that I am stuck on. The path of least resistance versus the path of full living. And I’m not really sure where I fit. I find it sticky and difficult to choose the ways to spend my time. I have children to mother. I have friends to tend. I have housework to accomplish. And the list goes on. I beat myself up. Yes, I could probably do all of these things mindfully if I were out in the woods by myself. But here in this world of spelling words and birthday parties, washing sheets and clipping nails, I can’t really find my balance. I can barely find my voice.

What’s a woman to do? I’m sucking marrow through broken straws and trying to write straight with crooked lines. I know there is more for me but I can’t quite reach it from here; grasping at those broken straws gets old after a while, I think. As for me, I remain loudly desperate. Perhaps a barbaric yawp would do the trick.