contributed photo
I like a good poem in the morning. Something to set the day. I also like to scroll aimlessly through social media from the warmth of my covers at dawn. (What can I say, I’m a mixed bag.)
Mary’s Oliver’s poem A Summer Day is a favorite. You may recognize the closing lines:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
It’s a question that dogs me. A mantra. A smooth rock. A provocation to better action.
So, as you can imagine, it didn’t take much for me to click “follow” on the Instagram account for @maryoliversdrunkcousin when it came floating down my ipad stream.
Lyndsay Rush, aka Mary Oliver’s Drunk Cousin, is brilliant. Her homage to the great Mary Oliver is a thin veil for her own genius. I love her immensely. We are soulmates. No, we have never met IRL.
But, here’s proof she gets me:
And she has a WHOLE BOOK of these that bless the weird and wonderful, the upteen ways you or I might choose to spend our one wild and precious life.
And this morning, as if I needed a further sign from the gods that I’m okay. And you’re ok. And the world is going to be okay, the patron saint of gangly, nerdy, misunderstood, mouthy women – Phoebe Waller-Bridge – made a guest appearance in my bed. (Well, in my feed, while I was in bed.)
You know how it works. You think about something…just a snippet of a thought really…and the cyber spirits manifest the answer on Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or whatever young people flock to these days.
What am I going to do with my one wild and precious life? I was thinking…again.
And there, according to Phoebe Waller-Bridge and her mother in a 2017 awards acceptance speech, was the answer I’ve been seeking all along: I’m going to be whatever I want to be . . . as long as I’m outrageous.
Be outrageous today. Be an extra French fry, a champagne shower, fireworks. It’s your one wild and precious life. Be wild. Be precious. Be a bit much.
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To reach Jen directly: jsa@aniskovich.com