Saturday, October 4, 2008

Pasting a leaf on my first page

Yesterday was one of the few days I've had in Manhattan this semester. It was a pleasure just to walk over to Union Square to Whole Foods to find something for dinner. I hadn't expected that the Greenmarket would be up and running on Friday afternoon, but the Square was full of booths. It's always a visual feast, but it seems richest in the fall: squash and tomatoes and greens. One booth had tubs full of maple branches, the leaves gone glorious. I thought, well, I'm not going to be in the apartment all that much. And, is there something odd about going out for food and buying leaves, having the luxury to buy leaves?

This is my first post on this blog, so it feels as if I've just bought a new notebook. Somehow to replace the great blank of potentiality with any one thing seems too small a gesture -- whatever I write here couldn't be as nice as the big field of silence I'm stepping into. But who wants a world full of blank notebooks? So I'm putting on the page those leaves -- which I came back for, after buying some heirloom tomatoes and then going to Whole Foods and getting some necessary stuff. There was something lavish about carrying one of those reusable grocery sacks down 17th Street with a big spray of leaves coming out the top, a blaze of ardor. For seven dollars.

7 comments:

lalizi said...

Mark, I am so glad to see you blogging. It's nice to hear your "voice."

Mark Doty said...

Thank you, Carmen, it feels like a fun new project.

Eduardo C. Corral said...

great to see you blogging.

i like the idea of blogs as notebooks.

but my blog reads like the diary of a high school girl: a space to record crushes, gossip, and the occasional rant.

sigh. when will i grow up?

Leslie said...

I love the idea of buying leaves.

If you want, I'll mail you a whole bag full from the front yard.

Kidding.

Eduardo: Don't ever grow up. I love your blog. And thanks for the shout-out about the poem.

Mark Doty said...

Eduardo, that inner high school girl has gotta go someplace, no?

Collin Kelley said...

Welcome to the blogosphere, Mark. We're looking forward to seeing and hearing you at the Atlanta Queer Literary Festival next week.

octopod said...

My world is full of blank notebooks, or else ones where I did write on the first page and found it so unpleasant a shock that I never opened them again.

Maybe I should stop doing that.