The Silken Tent My Letter to the World September, 1999

I dwell in Possibility --
A fairer House than Prose --
More numerous of windows --
Superior  -- for Doors --

Of Chambers as the Cedars --
Impregnable of Eye --
And for an Everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky --

Of Visitors -- the fairest --
For Occupation -- This --
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise --
                        -- Emily Dickinson
                               J657

There you have it, one of Emily Dickinson's most widely anthologized poems. That means lots of people know it, or at least know that first line -- even people who don't know much else about Emily Dickinson. And lots of high school students find themselves assigned to produce 500 words explaining it.

Its first line hangs in my study as a piece of elegant calligraphy under a pastel rendering of spent dandelion blooms, their wispy spores dancing off the canvas like wishes, like dreams. And it hangs also on my refrigerator, white block letters on a black rubber mat, a magnet bought in Harvard Square the night I touched the desk where she wrote it.

The conventional wisdom concerning this poem is that it's about her reluctance to accept conventional wisdom, especially in matters of Faith and Truth. She would not be bound by dogma, by ritual gone empty of meaning, by a system of thought that could not accommodate growth and change.

It's one of my favorites,* and I live by that first line. I dwell in possibility, but something is moving in me these days, calling me to turn some of those possibilities into accomplishments, and dwell there for a while.

A few weeks ago I followed a suggestion in Leslea Newman's book Some Body to Love, a set of writing exercises designed to move one along on the journey to accept oneself. Newman advises the reader to set six or seven goals to be accomplished within a year. Although the book is specifically focused on issues of body image and weight, incorporating goals that are not related to food and appearance helps one to see that life has many components.

Announcing my goals in a public forum like this is part of my process. The more times I write them down, the more I publish them, the more I will feel myself motivated to turn them from possibilities to accomplishments. Herewith, then, The List:

• Goal 1: Become a Lifetime Member and Meeting Leader of Weight Watchers
• Goal 2: Write and send (if feasible) 100 Love Letters (letters of joy and remembrance to someone not expecting to hear from me)
• Goal 3: Compile my family history -- the No Brief Candle project
• Goal 4: Clear my environment of all of my Amazing Clutter (TM)  --  (okay, most of it-- umm, make that a whole lot)
• Goal 5: Reconnect with my "crafting self" and complete two projects (small ones)
• Goal 6: Finish my Katherine Project
• Goal 7: Have my entrepreneurial efforts "cooking or closed" -- that is, The Story Stream, my writing and photo preservation business, will be producing $500 a month income or I'll stop telling people that's what I do

(*I was once challenged to name an Emily Dickinson poem that is not one of my favorites. Believe it or not, there is one: J1, a treacly 50-line Valentine that begins with an invocation of the"muses nine." She wrote it when she was a teenager. You could look it up.)