snapshots of Snapshots

Here are some snapshots from Snapshots of a Voyage, as promised. It is a blank verse retelling of Charles Darwin's journey on board the Beagle with Captain Robert FitzRoy and of his exploits on various continents and islands around the world. I have tried to be faithful to the idiosyncrasies of Darwin's manner and phraseology as gathered through his letters and diary. It is easy, I think, to amalgamate Darwin the living breathing human, with Darwinism, the theory of evolution which sprung from his scientific aptitude.

Of those whom our retrospect makes giants, research generally proves to be of average height. This is especially true at this stage of Darwin's life. At the age of 22, a young man embarks on a remarkable journey of discovery--of self as well as of the natural world.

(These excerpts may seem like a lot but the work itself is 24 pages long. So I've been extremely selective. The pictures are for purposes of the blog, they are not a part of the poem itself. Which is to say, I'm not a multi-media artist. Not cool enough for that.)

***

Can one

Take back harsh words or do they pollute

Until the end of time? At any rate,

This place is gorgeous, Father. Let that be

The final word on Salvador. The grass

Is elegant. Has that been said of grass

Before? Even the greedy weeds possess

A beauty to match the flowers.

Collage

Of sound and silence, chaos of delight.

***

A veritable sailor is your Charles,

Dear sisters—taking sport in furling sheets

Against the Samarang. A regular

Man o’ war befuddled by our Beagle.

There I was, picture this, both hands engaged

With the main-royal, studding-tack betwixt

My teeth. A major breakthrough with the men.

Imagine me, the seasick note-scribbler,

Ensconced in quarter-deck tomfoolery,

Allowed in sacred precincts, bawdy tales

Fantastic with the lies of otherwise

Shy seamen.

***

Beagle boasts

A fiddler. Funny fellow, this one is—

Up to one thing or another all day.

Mostly tinkering. Occasionally

He helps me with my obsession—the birds.

Me and my man, Syms Covington, have caught

Some eighty species. Slit ‘em and gut ‘em

And jot yoor’n letters, he sings while we seive

The entrails through our fingers. What a joy

That Covington is.

What a bloody mess!

***

What Eden is this

Where reptiles rule? Is all temptation moot?

All knowledge native? Where, Creator, hide

Your likenesses? Erasmus, get a load

Of this, because I’ve said nothing yet

Respecting their monstrosity:

Eight grown men to shuffle these tortoises

A mere ten feet. Humdingers fourteen stone

At least. And damned disgusting iguanas—

These clumsy imps of darkness.


***

I hear the grunts behind a hut—three, four,

Perhaps five heathens forswearing the laws

Of their Creator. Dipsomania

Abounds, all manner of vice oozes, seeps

Through street-ruts, pools and festers.

A woman wails. A missionary daubs

A single tear with a grime-stained sleeve.

I am on the verge myself. A child wails.

A mongrel dog lies dead in our path,

Flies swarm the mange and feast. I cry.

Now FitzRoy takes my hand. Deluge—my tears

Like God’s bursted firmament. Heaven help

These creatures. Oh, Fitz, they need Christ.

***

By elephant,

I clomp through the Mauritian wilds.

The scenery bewitches. Oh, a sweet

Virginia would be nice. A lovely girl

For romance and idle nights beneath stars.

***

Cape Town—another little embryo

Of England hatching. Nations send their men

To lose their tongues and spend their hearts out.

***

Yes, there is much of matter—bugs and beasts,

Stone and tree, lava and river—to see;

But there’s a sense in solitude, amidst

The temples nature built, that matters most . . .

More stirs in the chest of man than mere breath.

on being and rudeness

"You really are."

You--in this case it was me.
Really--in full actuality, in this case modifying "are".
Are--present indicative of being, in this case a "real" being and therefore, existentially, presumably, an ontological inarguability.

And now, because I've brought it up . . .

Ontological Inarguability--a phrase I just made up intended to mean that a "Being" can only BE what it IS, "really," no more, no less, regardless of prejudice, hindsight disallowed. (Though Sartre, I believe, would have us also being Will-ares and Was-bes (phrases I just made up and with which I am self-delighted)--an amalgam of forgotten and unknowable states, respectively--but in this case, let's be satisfied with a limited definition of "Being.")

So it was like this:

Earlier, I was compelled to stop productive momentum, be-coat myself, and drive to the library--some books and movies for to return. I was listening to my Speak German CDs and calling out responses to the teacher's prompts when my turn came upon me suddenly. Traffic was heavy and I am easily confused when thrust into the Immediate. Heroically, I navigated my course successfully, wedged though I was, precariously between two cars, fore and aft.

However, as I made my turn into the library's parking lot, I noticed that another car--one of those mini-vans-but-not-really-- was all tight up in my business like a lead ball in a musket. The driver, a blond woman, veered left when I turned right toward the drop-off awning. No harm, no foul.

Leaving my car running (the weather outside was frightful and my heat was sure da-da-dah), I dropped my materials into the outside deposit slot. I turned back to my car and was confronted by a red-faced blond woman.

"Could you really not let me in back there? You were in such a hurry?" she barked at me. "You're gonna make me miss the library when I'm trying to turn in my kid's book so it won't be late?" she continued, in quite a froth. I shrugged, stunned. Again, confused by the unexpected immediacy. But it dawned on me, maybe this woman was trying to get in the turn-lane that I was so tenuously keeping in line with. But I would never . . . not on purpose . . . it's just not the way I am . . .

"You are rude on Christmas, you know that?" she says and then (wait for it) . . .

(wait for it) . . .

"You really are!"

As she strode triumphantly through the library's automatic doors, I managed a polite "Who even are you?" But she was gone.

And gone she is and yet those three words still linger. On the drive home, I actually felt bad. Some kind of jerk, I am. She had almost missed her turn. (Another, more accessible, wider-laned, turn was a mere thirty feet farther down, but still.) Her precious child had a brush with delinquency. (Narrowly missed by the six hours before closing, but still.) And on Christmas, no less. (December 13, but still.) I was truly disturbed, upset. My stomach felt empty, my chest cold. The thought--I am rude--like a dull ache in my head.

But wait. No I am not. Not when it comes to courtesy on the road. In fact, I err on the side of extreme, inordinate, extra-mile-type courtesy when it comes to allowing drivers to merge and cut or enter the traffic. One car, two cars, oh what the hell, three cars come on in. The more's not the merrier but we all gotta get where we're going in this life, might as well scootch in.

So why was I letting myself feel guilty of an un-willed act? A fact of circumstance not at all linked to my Being; an event of objects not of subjects. Of cars and calendars and just one in a billion near collisions across the universe any given second.

Maybe that's the way I am. Too easily mussed by the "gaze of the other." [Sartre] Too readily ashamed of my place in a big, fast, confusing world.

noses notwithstanding

There is something to be said (if begrudgingly) for goal setting. Recently, my son played trombone in an honors band concert. One of the guest conductors, having been filled, it seems, with the spirit, offered (no extra charge) a brief homily on the importance of music in the kids' lives. The main point was that kids engaged in the arts have purpose--as a rebuttal to the notion that such programs are useless. What struck me as a platitude at first, later sunk in as a meaningful truth.

Because what's the purpose of purpose? To simply have and hold til death come and swipe it? My cynic's brain would have it so. But the purpose of purpose is movement. The goal of a goal is impetus.

Let the ends resolve into what they will, but let the means be always churning.

Sure, there are certain goals one should strive to reach for the reward of having finished and, presumably, to have a showable product to point to; but often, in our various and plenary endeavors, the end is amorphous and possibly unreachable. It is especially in these latter cases that the importance of movement is crucial to a life worth living, or, at the least, to a purpose worth having.

As a writer, this is a monumental revelation. And then some for a little fish, big pond writer like myself. It is easy to become lax, go limp, forfeit, take a nap, get on Facebook, make a blogpost when the inspiration whimpers-out. Easier still when the inspiration never yawps-in to begin with. I need hardly admit that these maladies of indolence afflict me regularly. But I admit, anyway. For the record.

Over the last week or so, I have been writing a blank-verse treatment of young Charles Darwin's adventures on board the Beagle. The idea came to me while listening to a lecture which touched on the history of phrenology and physiognomy. As a point of amusing interest, the lecturer relayed an anecdote from Darwin's introduction to Captain FitzRoy of the Beagle. It seems D was applying for the job of the vessel's Naturalist and FitzRoy, a dabbler in the "science" of phrenology, almost withheld the position on account of Darwin's "squashy nose." Indicative of a lack of resolve, not a good trait for a long journey.

The rest of the lecture was a blur. I was absorbed in the notion of a naturalist's nose. How Darwin lacked one. How such an arbitrary presumption nearly altered the course of history. Sure there were other naturalists well on their way to completing evolutionary theories, but would the proliferation of those theories have been so wide-spread? These were my thoughts as the lecture wore on.

And then the next thought.

I will write a story about that. An alternate ending. The repercussions of not being hired. Darwin left behind to trifle with beetles. Oh how brilliant it will be, my story. How worthy of the man himself. To say nothing of the ironies. Brilliant.

As I said, my treatment is a poem, not a short-story. Furthermore, I did not end up following the alternate route. I took a stricter approach historically, taking my liberties in the form of poetic devices and fanciful asides. But the point is . . . I had a goal. The means of reaching it morphed and vacillated, but it kept me going days on end, plodding line of pentameter after plodding line of pentameter. And now, it is finished.

It is what it became, not what it was meant to be.

Goals can be illusions even delusions but what they must be are infusions of purpose. Momentum is the key. In states of inertia no music is made, dreamed of perhaps, but not tromboned.

[Stay tuned for excerpts from "Snapshots of a Voyage: 1831-1836"]