Home > Author > Kyo Maclear
41 " Waiting for a late friend. Waiting in line at the movies. Waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting for the mail. Waiting at the checkout counter. Waiting in traffic. Waiting for the train. Waiting for the plane. Waiting in a darkened theater. Waiting in a foreign country. Waiting to give birth. Waiting for sluggish minors. Waiting for elderly parents. Waiting for something to go wrong. Waiting at the doctor’s office. The waiting of chronic illness. Eroded public services waiting. Waiting for the Messiah. Wait list waiting. The hoping and waiting, the waiting and hoping. The waiting of childhood. The waiting to grow up. The waiting of old age. Waiting to recover. Waiting for another stroke. Waiting for the body to let go. Waiting for inspiration. Letting-the-field-lie-fallow waiting. The thinking-of-nothing and thinking-of-everything waiting. Waiting just as the storm ends. Waiting for the sun. "
― Kyo Maclear , Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation
42 " But it is not glorious lulls that concern me. It is the lulls that have no velocity, that offer no structured reassurance, that bloom unbidden in the middle of nowhere—when the work is done, when children leave, when illness comes, when the mind stalls. One does not ask of a lull: What can you do for me? These lulls do not have the quality of idyllic floatiness we associate with creative loafing, vacations, or leisure time. (If they did, we might fight them less readily and feel less personal distress.) These lulls carry a restive feeling, the throb of being simultaneously too full and too empty. They evoke what Jean Cocteau once described as “the discomfort of infinity.” What if we could imagine a lull as neither fatal nor glorious? What if a lull was just a lull? "
43 " What do you regret? I regret the times I have acted with too much head or, conversely, with too much heart. I regret the times it seemed better, somehow, to hang back and not step forward. I regret, along with writer George Saunders, the tepid and timid response, the moments when another "being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded ... sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly." I regret the instances I have turned to others for guidance even when I already had a hunch of what to do. I regret the part of me that is deferential, that fears being sentimental. I regret I am not more propelled by impulse, nerve, instinct. "
44 " The birds tell me not to worry, that the worries that sometimes overwhelm me are little in the grand scheme of things. They tell me it's all right to be belittled by the bigness of the world. There are some belittlements and diminishments that make you stronger, kinder. "