The innocent hope of the previous days was fleeting; a cold draft swept through the room, it whisked the small smile away. I’m tired, tired from a night of entertainment, of entertaining, when the muttering crowed smothers my thoughts and I cannot hear who I am -- and so I am left playing the shallow role of myself. Shallow, because I cannot quite recall myself, I cannot get at my motives, feel what I’d feel. I guess and gesticulate and hope that my role is but a minor one, so that I will not be embarrassed.
We dined out. It was there that the din smothered and choked. I wanted to center myself, to be myself, but it was all too much... I felt nothing but the infernal emptiness of that shallow role.
-- there was no connection, rather the gaping chasm which separates the dead from the living. But at least the dead rise, phantoms that howl their piercing song to the shrinking living. For me, there is little hope of even this willowy connection...
Rationally! -- not the poet! --
(... the poet evokes a vision of the future in his hymn to the present -- what there, torpid logician? The future is dim, radiance just beyond the horizon. While the poet cries, “Impossible!” the other says, “Not so!” Truly, they temper each other -- the poet and the logician -- for were the situation such that the logician would shout, “Impossible!” the poet would grin and say, “Have hope!”)
Though despair’s deep cloth shrouds my eyes, I recall the hope, the life, the potential. Logician, speak! Prophecy over these dry bones! Hark, he speaks, and his voice is grave, though a smile lingers on his ragged face.
“Remember the despair -- and the hope before that. Remember the past and how the both seemed to ever-last. Remember the weight and how -- as of late -- you bear it ever-easier. Remember the things you know, about the world, about your soul.”
He rises from the couch, and paces, and calls out. “Remember your name: remember that the battle ends, another or one way. So, take hope, be of cheer -- see the ground you have gained, and surrender your fear...”
So I am tempered, and so I am saved, and so the future seems to me, gained.
... a distinctive pleasure is to be found in the window seat: as one scribbles, he sees the world move ‘round -- but he remains a passive observer, reflective through crystal reflection. It does provide the perfect observational. I don’t feel lonely, nor do I feel crowded and choked by hustle, like I might at a coffeeshop...
... the day wakes, in secret, shrouded by weighty cloth, a dark red that contrasts the hopeful morning. I stand, today, on the side of the latter red, caught between laughter and tears. I feel strangely hopeful; not about today (I really have few expectations there) but about my life. I can’t quite explain this -- but as the mightly light roars through the room, as the snow sparkles and twirls and slaps at the windows asking in, as I forgetfully swallow the blueberry muffin and OJ, as I sit here and smile at the world, I have an excited hope. For what -- a life of joy and love and hope...
... now this is an oddity -- I only fear the things for which I care...
... he is a mean man; that is, he is middling and frustrated about it...
I walked through Gurnee Mills today, I was bathed in color and movement, the shifting and speeding of this human race. Such an odd place -- or so it struck me, as I saw sentimental songs of Christmas bygones sung by a lithe and sensual singer, her dress and manner a jarring disjunction to her sweet song. Which ought I desire, friend? -- the sensual or the spiritual? You tell me both, and neither. (Kierkegaard’s aetheticist would be proud -- both are reduced to lesser feelings that cannot truly hold the heart of men.)
About me swirled motley humanity performing their various business, concerned with their various needs. I saw the hardened friends push their way though the crouds; “Why are they here?” I wondered. For their granite faces betrayed no concern; they could not be Christmas shopping. Their hearts, perhaps, had been attacked and destroyed; and warm love decays to frozen rage.
I saw teenage girls with their teenage curls and their perfect faces and just-so clothes. Speech dispells the image -- they prattle and gripe dumbly, little better than the manikins they imitate. I wonder if they’d intentionally decided, “This is the better way!”, if they’d seen the possible and then made their choice.
The burble of speech was about me, momentarily shifting to a roar -- the shriek of children, the angry couple, the cautious friends, all running together in this sound, writhing, writing a new song, unaware and unconcerned. I became aware, so aware, of this humanity, the minds all different in thought and philosophy. And I woke from this odd dream I’ve been having, in which I am the only man, that my concerns are they only concerns. What are their cares, I wondered. What will satisfy not only my needs, but theirs -- these different and diverse, what is their answer to the mysteries of this life?
For, surely, they seek an answer...
...perhaps it is the function of the philosopher to bring all things to absurdity and reasonableness. -- to show God possible and not; to show naturalism possible and not; to place the true decision -- that of faith and trust -- before men and shout, “Choose now!”...
...”the man who takes joy in the world for any length of time in these present days of struggle must live through much that he loves and much that he hates...” (Beowulf, 56)... and how do we look with pity and mockery at those simpler times? Is this not wisdom, is this not life as we know it -- to so trenchantly describe the world as it is?...
...put music on loop, playing those indefinite, melancholy songs. Cautiously quiet step to the doorway. Open door with a firm grasp. Glide under the silver stars, the dark glass sky -- the cold falling from the body like leaves from frosted trees, till the extraneous is stripped away. Rest and breathe, the heat of the body propelled outward, force exhausted into sleep. Dream the dreamless sleep of the angels. This, I think, would be a good night...
...poetry, best poured in passion and ground in reflection...
...”Faith has in every moment the infinite dialect of uncertainty present with it” -- S. Kierkegaard...
...I am, in some basic manner, what I am and there is no changing this. I can alter the peripheral, develop certain skills, but I cannot exist in violation of my basic nature, without feeling the violence of this violation. My literary impulse is not foolish, my love of tome and poem not wasteful, my mystical impulse not dark. I care deeply: this is no weakness...
Again, rough -- first draft, jotted... link to all of the archived poems.
Remember that red maple tree?
It was planted when I was born
-- or close enough --
It entered a barren yard
And spread out its arms and grew
And made it full and green.
One could say that we were brothers,
Or that he was my tree
Or that I was his boy.
We played together,
In the summer, I danced about
While he swayed to the wind’s song,
He watched over my evening battles,
And provided a rustic pillow in the time of frost.
And now that the shadow of my life stretches long,
I now see that my brother has grown
Mighty and wise and tall.
And, for the first time, to me he speaks,
“Are you my brother?”
(He whispers this, sadly,
Leaning and shifting so as to see me
A scant man, slowly watching from far across the yard.)
“Are you -- as me?”
A pause from the poetic, which I imagine is quite dull.
...children don’t say, “My life isn’t quite ending up how I’d imagined” -- there is a certain profundity there...
...Sentimentality -- my impulse is to rage against it. Isn’t it just empty emotion? Fluttering lips and fluttering heart? I fear emotion and so I fear the sentimental, the emotional movements of the holiday season... as if these feelings are baseless -- are they not motivated by principle? Do I not wistfully set my eyes upon the snow, do I not grow bleary-eyed at some traditional melody -- do I not grow sentimental because of certain beliefs deeply held? Of family, love the Christ -- and their high value? The sentimentality is only empty when it fails to manifest those principles during the less-common days. (Does that person truly hold the principles dear?)...
...Grendel, “A man cut off from good cheer” as if the destruction of joyfulness -- mead, mutton and the board -- were enough to render a man but a creature. But cheer is more than joy, for that monster had a terrible joy of its own... cheer was to be found in the feasts of the comitatus, brother rejoicing with brother over their good fortune, drinking deeply to their triumphs, to their honor, to their deep commitment to one another.
Grendel was utterly alone and he hated this cheer, cut off as he was from communion -- with God and thus with man. A man can possess joy, says our song-weaver. But only men can have cheer. -- and only such men as these, hero and heroes all, differing in skill, perhaps, but bound together with the same strength of honor and duty.
”... the, cut off from the noise of cheer, in the fen, his fortress, he laid down his life, his heathen soul. Then Hell took him in charge...”
A boy in the sand
Builds a castle on the land
Or a castle on his hand
It’s all the same, to him.
He reaches in his mind,
For a place of timeless time
And there the child finds
The noble, mystic hold.
This future to him is dear,
Call of battle in his ear
Restive deer standing near
The greenest silent forest
And when tomorrow comes today,
You will never hear him say
“This isn’t the future I’d thought to gain.”
-- he will merely imagine, again.
Slowly, faded she sits
Weary, not weary enough.
She hunches and her eyes
Softly rest on her book
As her hand provides a graceful weight
Heavy, not heavy enough.
Face is shaded in a rose hue,
Not of summer, but late and old;
Her eyes the blue of water, falling down
Falling, not falling enough.
Her face has the beauty of ancient glass
Clear, not clear, but the memory lasts
Darkly she’s seen, darkly she sees
Seeing, not seeing enough.
And on her finger is a score’d ring
Aging metal creeping green
Her hand drifts from rest
The gold remains, the beauty decays.
Beauty, not beautiful enough.
I stand upon the shore,
Cake yellow sand falling flat into the distance,
White water rolling on its side.
I step and the ground is a soft pad,
A bare print forms:
The dimple relaxes and fades.
I breathe deep, for the sweet air
Cleansing and cold.
But it is thick and warm,
Scale and brine.
”... [had Blake’s gifts] been controlled by a respect for impersonal reason, for common sense, for the objectivity of science, it would have been better for him. What his genius required, and what it sadly lacked, was a framework of accepted and traditional ideas which would have prevented him from indulging in a philosophy of his own, and concentrated his attention upon the problems of the poet... the concentration resulting from a framework of mythology and theology and philosophy is one of the reasons why Dante is a classic, and Blake only a poet of genius. The fault is perhaps not with Blake himself, but with the environment which failed to provide what such a poet needed; perhaps the circumstances compelled him to fabricate, perhaps the poet required the philosopher and mythologist; although the conscious Blake may have been quite unconscious of the motives.”
- From T.S. Eliot’s essay on William Blake
Indeed. I’ve not read much (if any!) of Blake nor would I regard myself of any sort of genius, but the particulars of this comment directly address the great struggle I currently face -- in which I spend much of my time attempting to construct that philosophy, quite apart from an “framework of accepted and traditional ideas”. I find myself compelled to perform this task, though I find it quite revolting. (It is not a thing I find myself wholly attracted to; it’s an important task and as such I’ve commended myself to it -- though I’ve always loved ideas, I find system nauseatingly difficult and generally despicable.)
I do this because I’ve not been offered that traditional framework of thought, the structure and methods of systematic and structured thought. As such, I must discover this on my own and I fear that this task is performed far too late into my life to form a true foundation; it may (at best) be enough to keep my mind intact, and allow me the space to breath and create. I’ve often wished -- here, and in my heart -- that I’d as a child been exposed to the sort of necessary reason to which Eliot refers... My life would be better for it.
Could do with more editing, but eh...
Old man, why do you struggle?
Why write in your journal,
With thought on your face?
None will ever read that
None other than you
So what do you consider,
On this day of gloom?
Soon they will bury your body
Soon they will cover your face
And the memory of you, soon time will erase.
Your toil will be lost,
Sheaves fed to flame and to rock,
Old man --
Old man, why do you smile in thought?
