October 2023
Blog
In
Search Of: A Haiku
That “I Don’t Get No
Satisfaction” must end with
Much satisfaction!
by Ann Wilmer-Lasky
(9/30/23)
I may
never know happiness or peace again, but I will know satisfaction. I will
pursue it with dogged determination.
It
seems I have been chasing rainbows and unicorns, looking for that pot of gold
in vain for all these years. What I really needed was to feel safisfied with my
accomplishments. Which was all well and good until I stopped accomplishing
anything.
I
guess it started with the pandemic, when everyone and everything seemed to stop
in its tracks. I forgot to get back on the path when it subsided. My son’s
unfortunate ending of his life just seemed to culminate everything. I stopped (I
guess you could say, “dead stopped”)
accomplishing anything. I guess I thought without peace or happiness I could
not enjoy life. Now I have realized that these are not esstial to existence,
but “satisfaction” is.
Without
being satisfied with something, there is no reason to do anything. As this
realization came to me, I started to look around me and at my life as it
stands. I walked around each room and rested my eyes on an object or an area,
and I asked myself if I was satisfied with it. More often that not, the answer
was “no”.
I
thought about my writing career and what I’ve accomplished so far. I am not
satisfied with that either. I want to start a new project and have so much left
undone, I would be hard pressed to fit it in and finsh the others to any good
standard.
But
that is what I must do. It is too important a project to leave undone. This
particular urge to write must be “satisfied”.
I
intend a book of poetry and prose as a tribute to my son and the dystopian
views we both seemed to share without me realizing it.
Upon
completion and publication, I will be donating a portion of the proceeds to a
suicide prevention organization in tribute to my son’s memory. The book will be
titled, “One Life: Unlived” and I’ve
already found an entry in a long-forgotten folder of writings to include. I
wrote it about 20 years ago. It is in the form of a sonnet. I believe it is the
only sonnet I have ever written and it was done as an exercise in a critique
group to prove I could write one. That it is about writing and death is
astounding to me at this point.
Now
with my new-found pursuit of satisfaction, I feel my coffin (when I occupy it)
will be a quiet one. I will be able to look at my surroundings and my
accomplishments and say to myself, “I am satisfied!”
I owe
that to my son’s memory and to myself.
The
original sonnet, titled “Unquiet Coffin”
is included here. More will follow.I would complete this new book by the 1st
anniversary of his death (March 26, 2023).
Unquiet
Coffin
A
Sonnet
by Ann
Wilmer-Lasky
Uneasy would
I lie, were I to die,
My song
unsung, my stories all untold.
Among my
woeful mourners, would I cry,
My soul
awash in tears, my spirit cold.
Nor could I
rest, were I to fall to sleep
To never
wake again, my soul suppressed.
Within my
heart, my characters would weep,
Their lives
cut short, their mythos unexpressed.
To never
rise again would come too soon,
If all my
words lie stifled in the grave,
That hearts
would never know their balm or boon,
And I would
never know what joy they gave.
I
owe my soul a coffin lain in peace;
I
owe my words their birth, their sweet release.
As always, I welcome your
reactions and responses to any of my blogs. I love to hear from my readers.
Also, here are links to my Twitter and Facebook accounts, if you care to share
your thoughts with me there or look for any publication announcements.
amazon.com/author/annwilmerlasky
(insert collage)
https://www.facebook.com/ann.wilmerlasky
It’s now October and the
year is winding down. I would have some satisfaction before I wind down with it.
