Being afraid

I knew I wanted to share something from John Keats. The poet wasn't the problem. I knew, too, that I wanted to mention the critically-praised Keats movie coming out - "Bright Star", directed by Jane Campion - that has me thrilled, especially thrilled after reading this movie review. I knew that I wanted to share this sonnet. The poem wasn't the problem. (Poor Keats!)

I think something happened to Tuesday. It slipped right off my planner. We've had rain and cooler weather, and my joy in the cooler, rainy weather has obviously eclipsed everything else.

I feel like I'm in a better place than last Thursday. Thursday evening is my time to catch up, clean up and all of that. Last week (and other weeks), I do those chores with a vague sense of guilt around my neck because I worry that I've inflicted unnecessary stress on my children. Though it's only Thursday morning, I'm feelin' good. Fairly rested since I decided to sleep instead of enter grades online. Fairly well fed, too, since I made all of us scrambled eggs and English muffins as a bedtime snack. 

This week, I'm feeling okay. We've done better on getting out of the house on time. I've done better on volume/stress levels. The kids have done better on trying to hustle. We've eaten our breakfasts together, sitting down, at the tiny table to moved back to the kitchen. (More on my reorganizing efforts of last weekend ... mostly for my own benefit. I want to write it down so that I remember!) I talked to the kids in a Scream-Free Parenting-approved way about the importance of getting out the door on time, and we've read lots of Friend articles together. They haven't been about getting out the door on time ... but still, it's been nice. This life? This week? I can handle this.

What has any of this to do with Keats, 1795-1821? Not a whit. One of my favorite grad school classes covered the Romantic poets. Their collective story is a beautiful one. All that gazing and reflecting and exquisite writing! I continue to romanticize the lot of them: Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Coleridge, the lakes they strolled around ... and coughing on the perimeter, poor tubercular John Keats.

There is something heartbreaking in his life story - the death of his mother, the unhappy childhood, the death sentence of tuberculosis always near, the scathing criticism of his work (though he would be later celebrated and placed posthumously onto his canon pedestal), and his own early death at 25 in Italy, a place he'd gone to in hopes of getting well.

This poem grabs me every time. I too fear that I may cease to be 'before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain', though that has more to do with 1) my paralyzing approach to writing what's in my heart, 2) my energy levels, 3) my medium-level abilities and 4) my could-be-improved time management style than any chronic disease. 

Poor Keats indeed! He worked so hard even when he wasn't well and even when he was very afraid. 

When I Have Fears 

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.