How to Make Art by Using Lists

I realized last night that I’d gotten all caught up in thinking that each post here at You’re Already Ready should be deep and life-changing. And of course, that led to thinking I needed these to be well-written and lyrical. 

Now, you already know this about me. I can write well, and I can write lyrically. 

But mostly, I’m a sturdy writer, and proud of it. 

Sturdiness is great, in both mind and body. I have short legs. In fact, just this morning I stood naked at the kitchen sink, downing that first gorgeous glass of cold water, and my wife exclaimed, “Just look at those short legs!” I tried to be mad at her, but it’s hard to be mad at a simple fact. 

I’m compact. I’m built like I was made to pick potatoes, or berries. My center of gravity is low, and I’m just as comfortable squatting as standing. My body, when it’s working well, is serviceable. It’s functional and durable.

My prose is serviceable, too. It serves a function—it speaks to you. With it, I talk with you. 

I don’t ever want to get on a soap box and wobble out platitudes made of snake oil, words that do nothing but sound like the current trendy thing to say. 

Nope. 

So I’ll tell you a few things that are really, deeply true right now. 

1. Joy hums like bees inside me sometimes. I’m feeling it right now. Slightly dangerous, but capable of making such sweetness. 

2. I can’t live without peanut butter and bananas. Especially when both of these are spread on toasted sourdough. 

3. I’m drinking more coffee lately because someone said I should (I can’t remember who, but it was specifically a health thing) and thank you, Baby Jeebus, because every few years I abandon coffee for other health reasons, and it’s always, always a mistake. 

4. Kamala Harris was sworn in on the morning I started writing this (it sometimes takes me a while to post), and I didn’t see it happen because I was sitting on the couch in my office, trying to figure out what I was feeling, and why it hurt. This had nothing to do with my body, and everything with my heart. 

5. So I wrote a poem in those moments. Here it is. 

For four years,
Hope has been wedged 
between old suitcases
and the box of holiday decorations
we didn’t even bother to 
pull down last year. 
I’m shut like a forgotten tomb.
I’ve forgotten where hope fits.

But she is the key to the rusted lock.
(It hurts to feel the pins move.
Slowly, so slowly,
my soul’s rheumatic lament.) 

Then she starts to sing, and I realize:
I still know every word by heart.

6. Then I went back on the livestream and watched Biden’s speech and heard Amanda Gorman’s poetry and remembered that, yes, art is how we recover. 

6.5 I’ve sold more books in the three weeks of the Biden/Harris term than I have in a very long time. I’m not the only person with more space in their heads for joy and art and books and peanut butter. 

7. Making art is hope made visible. 

8. I finished a terrible first draft of a funny, sweet book on Friday. It’s neither funny nor sweet yet. It’s not even a book. It’s a collection of phrases lying on my office floor twitching their tails hopefully. I’ve promised each one they’ll be in the final version someday, but I know I’m lying to some of them. Please don’t tell them—they’re all so earnest. 

9. Lists, when done right, can also be art. 

10. I am so lucky that I can write this while in bed. My window is open, and I can hear a goldfinch chirping and above it flies the Oakland bird of all seasons, the ever-present black helicopter. 

11. I got tired after getting to number 10, and took a nap, because resting was my One Job at that moment, and I’m only finishing this list a couple of weeks later. Which is also okay. Lists can hold literally anything, hopes and fears, what you need to get at the store, who you’ll be when you grow up, and the reminder to get a smog check which is a bullet journal item that slips from list to list, still undone week after week. 

12. I really need to get that smog check. Doesn’t it seem kind of silly to need a smog check for a SmartCar? I mean, I think our air popper is less green than my car is. 

13. Do people still skip the thirteenth floor when labeling stories in a building? This always seemed rather magical that they were allowed to do it—the thirteenth floor just IS, no matter what you call it. Does pretending it’s not there really make a difference? 

14. I’ve always thought that the number thirteen and black cats are lucky. A black cat crossing your path is really lucky. But my mother always said that a black cat who starts to cross your path and then changes its mind—that’s unlucky. I think mostly because you have a much greater chance of hitting it if it doubles back, right? 

15. Once, when I worked 911, my medics couldn’t find a house where someone was having an asthma attack because the residents had decided their house number wasn’t auspicious and just changed it by simply painting a new number on their house and alerting no one in the city. Everything worked out okay, so I guess they were right to do it. 

16. This. This is what I needed to shake me out of the feeling that You’re Already Ready has to be “good.” It doesn’t. It has to be done, that’s all. What I’m meaning to do is catch moments and string them together, that’s all. Each moment that I hang up is a tiny light, and when they’re all turned on, my soul glows like a million fireflies. 

17. Your soul, too, has the same tendency to glow and brighten the space around you. Why not let that shine today in some very small (or very big) way. It doesn’t have to be pretty or perfect or good. It just has to exist, and only you can make that happen. Use a list, or use a song, or dance your way across the kitchen floor. You’re worthy of hanging those lights for yourself, and you never know exactly what you’ll illuminate. 

The lists within me honor the lists within you, my sweet friend. Now, glow.