blindfold, please: on contingency plans

i have been up to my gills at work, planning ahead like a mad woman for the duration of ten days during which i will be at my first winter poetry residency in cold massachusetts. some days my heart and temperament feel as frosty as the air i will soon breathe. and during these moments i am grateful that i am not operating heavy machinery or making large scale decisions that will affect the course of humanity.

i reconnected with the story of abram this morning, now called abraham, at this point, encountering a king called abimelech. he tells abimelech that sarah (his wife) is his sister, but before abimelech comes to "know" her, he is visited in a dream by an angel warning him of the fallacy. when abimelech approached abraham with the mistruth, good ol' abe responds that because she's beautiful he would probably have been killed and so he asked her to do him this favor and say she's his sister. he's smooth in his delivery because this happened already, two chapters ago in egypt. he's thought out all the what if's so intricately that he shows himself to be walking by sight, not faith.

which gets me looking at my life, pointing at all the blaring subtleties and a path that seems so irrational right now- pursuing poetry in the midst of managing a multi-million dollar company's marketing. it feels so larger than life to me that i diminish. my words dot the page like scratches on metal, and i am reminded of what it means to shut my eyes and take the first step (because it's always the hardest), letting the rest of them come as they will and not be so damn clever that i actually believe my contingency plan could be the best choice. blindfold, please.