The Art
of Reinvention
Fingernails on a
blackboard.
This may leave you puzzled,
too young
This may leave you puzzled,
too young
to remember fresh chalk,
dusty brushes.
When each morning began
with a clean slate,
bleary-eyed
usually late.
At home, your role was the youngest child,
when children
were seen and not heard.
And at school, an aspiring nerd
in the subterranean world
of the deeply uncool.
But in summer you learned
the art of reinvention.
2 months at camp,
when all the preconceptions
of who you are
were off,
you slate wiped clean
and you could be anything – within reason – you wanted.
Now, like most golden ages
this time seems mythological,
the stuff
of wistful longing.
You are who you are, what you’ve become;
the world knows you this way
and change
is surely impossible.
So must age
leave us narrow, rigid, afraid?
Will it ever
be summer again?
Today is the longest day.
Now, the light begins
its imperceptible waning,
a cautionary tale
of interminable winter.
When I remember freedom
with the electric thrill
of fingernails on a blackboard.
When I think of clean slates
and immortality.
Of chalky nubs, thinning brushes,
that never quite
come free of dust.
I'm not sure they even have blackboards at schools these days. Whiteboards? Screens?
Anyway, I was reading a review of a recently released movie, Obvious Child. Its star and creative force is the actress Jenny Slate (better known as a comedian, an alumnus of Saturday Night Live). At one point, she describes herself as an outcast in high school who was able to re-invent herself (or at least freely express her essential self) as an entertainer at summer camp. Summer camp is an extraordinary and protected space: both the time of life – a time of beginnings, and infinite potential; and the place, with its heady freedom from structure, want, responsibility. Her comment really resonated with me: this idea that at this rarefied place called summer camp you were free to re-invent yourself – for perhaps the first and last time in your life. My lifestyle and sense of self still owe a great deal to that long ago experience.
Of course, the article was cleverly (if somewhat obviously!) entitled "A Clean Slate". Which ended up giving me the central metaphor of the poem.
I've never before written about my summer camp experience. So I thought a poem about that subject deserved at least a try. My concern was that it would be so narrow and personal, my hypothetical reader would quickly glaze over and flip the page. So I tried to find something universal: this idea that, with age, most of us allow ourselves to get walled-in by experience and expectation and fear; that change becomes hard, and horizons narrow.
When each morning began
with a clean slate,
bleary-eyed
usually late.
At home, your role was the youngest child,
when children
were seen and not heard.
And at school, an aspiring nerd
in the subterranean world
of the deeply uncool.
But in summer you learned
the art of reinvention.
2 months at camp,
when all the preconceptions
of who you are
were off,
you slate wiped clean
and you could be anything – within reason – you wanted.
Now, like most golden ages
this time seems mythological,
the stuff
of wistful longing.
You are who you are, what you’ve become;
the world knows you this way
and change
is surely impossible.
So must age
leave us narrow, rigid, afraid?
Will it ever
be summer again?
Today is the longest day.
Now, the light begins
its imperceptible waning,
a cautionary tale
of interminable winter.
When I remember freedom
with the electric thrill
of fingernails on a blackboard.
When I think of clean slates
and immortality.
Of chalky nubs, thinning brushes,
that never quite
come free of dust.
I'm not sure they even have blackboards at schools these days. Whiteboards? Screens?
Anyway, I was reading a review of a recently released movie, Obvious Child. Its star and creative force is the actress Jenny Slate (better known as a comedian, an alumnus of Saturday Night Live). At one point, she describes herself as an outcast in high school who was able to re-invent herself (or at least freely express her essential self) as an entertainer at summer camp. Summer camp is an extraordinary and protected space: both the time of life – a time of beginnings, and infinite potential; and the place, with its heady freedom from structure, want, responsibility. Her comment really resonated with me: this idea that at this rarefied place called summer camp you were free to re-invent yourself – for perhaps the first and last time in your life. My lifestyle and sense of self still owe a great deal to that long ago experience.
Of course, the article was cleverly (if somewhat obviously!) entitled "A Clean Slate". Which ended up giving me the central metaphor of the poem.
I've never before written about my summer camp experience. So I thought a poem about that subject deserved at least a try. My concern was that it would be so narrow and personal, my hypothetical reader would quickly glaze over and flip the page. So I tried to find something universal: this idea that, with age, most of us allow ourselves to get walled-in by experience and expectation and fear; that change becomes hard, and horizons narrow.
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