Advice to
Myself
by Louise
Erdrich
Leave the
dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an
earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the
black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the
cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch
anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even
sew on a button.
Let the wind
have its way, then the earth
that invades
as dust and then the dead
foaming up
in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to
them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep
all the pieces of the puzzles
or the
doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses
whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at
all.
Except one
word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the
authentic—decide first
what is
authentic,
then go
after it with all your heart.
Your heart,
that place
you don't
even think of cleaning out.
That closet
stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort
the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if
we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't
answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over
anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds
will grow within those sealed cartons
in the
refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to
the dead
who drift in
through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on
the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the
mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what
destroys
the
insulation between yourself and your experience
or what
pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse
you call necessity.
From The Writer's Almanac
