Why Imperfect Offerings?

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

--Leonard Cohen, "Anthem"

I'm sixty, and I'm feeling old. I have gray hair, which I don't color. I drive the speed limit. When I walk downstairs my knees shriek in protest. I have Cocktail Party deafness--I can't hear you talking if there's background noise. (If you needed the explanation you're probably in the wrong blog.)

I'm retired, so my life's no longer controlled by the lockstep schedule and emotional/logistical/impossible demands of being a high school English teacher. But often I don't seem to have much to talk about, especially with anyone under forty. Sometimes I just sit on my front porch and watch the world go by. Yes, it's lovely to be able to do that now and then, but it's not what my life should be about now.

Not that I'm not busy. I've spent the last ten years writing two novels and trying to get them published. This is a dream akin to those of my students who used to be sure they'd become rock stars or pro athletes, and the odds are about as long. I'm on the verge of putting the novels and writing books and agent directories in the closet and finding more rewarding ways to spend my life. The other day a man I had just met looked down his nose at me and informed me that if I hadn't been published yet, it was because I hadn't put enough heart into my writing. The passion that has kept me going for more than a decade and the frustration of failing to find a publisher roared to life inside me, and I wanted to spew fiery breath on this stranger who had probed the wound of my disillusionment and diagnosed my problem with his ignorant platitude.

Which leads me to Leonard Cohen's wonderful words above. A copy of that verse sits on my dresser below a print of Beverly Perdue's "Youthful Reflections." In the painting a shapeless, gray-haired woman sits in front of her dresser mirror, where her younger self is reflected. Both women look toward and are illuminated by the light coming in from an unseen window. A lot of people would probably interpret this as heaven or an afterlife, but to me it's about this life and its possibilities, which are perhaps more limited at sixty than they were at thirty, but which still abound. We can sit in our rooms and watch them float by outside, or we can leave our comfortable seats and go make something happen.

So this a blog for people with some gray hair (literal or figurative, hidden or not) and the sense that maybe we need a little renewal of the belief that we have much to offer. Even if our offerings are less than perfect.