I don’t want to be a passenger in my own life.
Category Archive: Diane Ackerman
A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.
I’ve always found it best to have a routine. I go to my study at the same time every day and climb into my bay window. I may not be inspired every day, but on the days I am, I need to be in place to write. If I’m not particularly inspired, I’ll revise or do research or correspondence.
In the winter, I enjoy cross-country skiing and raising orchids and amaryllises. If I could grow tropical flowers as perennials, I would, especially hibiscus and mandavilla.
My mother always said I must be part Mongolian because of my lotus-pale complexion and squid-ink black hair.
Living with anyone for many years takes skill. To keep peace in the household, couples learn to adapt to one another, hopefully in positive ways.
Brain scans show synchrony between the brains of mother and child; but what they can’t show is the internal bond that belongs to neither alone, a fusion in which the self feels so permeable it doesn’t matter whose body is whose.
The simple, stupefying truth that, as a woman, I am a minute ocean, in the dark tropic of whose womb eggs lay coded as roe, floating in the sea that wet-nursed us all, moved me deeply.
Gardeners may create order briefly out of chaos, but nature always gets the last word, and what it says is usually untidy by human standards. But I find all states of nature beautiful, and because I want to delight in my garden, not rule it, I just accept my yen to tame the chaos on one day and let the Japanese beetles run riot on the next.
Nature is more like a seesaw than a crystal, a never-ending conga line of bold moves and corrections.