Dwight Okita has this poem about quitting from his book Crossing with the Light. He wrote it back when he worked as a dance instructor. It's about a student he became friends with.

Dwight Okita
Somewhere in Chicago, a woman unplugs a toaster from a wall, and suddenly her apartment is empty. She wraps the cord jump rope style into a bow, lowers the appliance into a box marked "Kitchen Things," and tapes it shut. All day, boxes move past her, a brown blur against the white walls. How many men does it take to lift a woman's spirits?

"Make your arms like a barrel," I scolded, your dance instructor, fox-trotting you around the room. "Women are always walking backwards, aren't they?" you said, looking at your feet. And I spun you. "No, just going in circles." And here we laughed. In the mirrors of the dance studio, we laughed. And I saw us, lost in the fun house again. I want it always to be fun.

Now everything is loaded on the truck. She sits behind the wheel of something larger than her. "I'm going to Timbuktu and I'm taking my time," she says her hands on the wheel. "Peaches, pears, apples, plums. Tell me when your birthday comes." And I wave to her from the curb.

It paints a sad picture, this woman in a van pulling out of a driveway no longer hers. And for her, I do a farewell samba on the lawn, alone, taking the darkness in the crescent of my arms, leading it in a dance I'm just beginning to learn.

Ira Glass
"The Farewell Samba" by Dwight Okita.

And we're going to close our broadcast today with a piece by the late Philip Larkin, which seems perfect as you contemplate upcoming quits. Over the course of the next week, we're not quitting anything. I think that's what you've gotten out of this particular program. Anyway, this is called "Poetry of Departures."

Sometimes you hear, fifth-hand/ As epitaph/ He chucked up everything and just cleared off,/ And always the voice will sound/ Certain you approve/ This audacious, purifying,/ Elemental move.

And they are right, I think./ We all hate home/ And having to be there/ I detect my room,/ It's specially-chosen junk,/ The good books, the good bed,/ And my life, in perfect order/ So to hear it said/

He walked out on the whole crowd/ Leaves me flushed and stirred,/ Like Then she undid her dress/ Or Take that, you bastard;/ Surely I can, if he did?/ And that helps me stay/ Sober and industrious./ But I'd go today,/

Yes, swagger the nut-strewn roads,/ Crouch in the fo'c'sle/ Stubbly with goodness, if/ It weren't so artificial,/ Such a deliberate step backwards/ To create an object/ Books; china; a life/ Reprehensibly perfect.

 

 

© 2012 Chicago Public Media & Ira Glass