dealing with my dumbness

Once upon a time, in a physiology far, far away, there lived a fellow of my height and build (minus, say, ten, er . . . twenty pounds of flesh) with my blond hair (plus, say, fifty, er . . . seventy-five percent more volume) who was considered a man of astute perception, now and then erudite, always inquisitive, and, more often than not, brimming with strong, at-least-partially-justified opinions.

His exploits were many. Armed to the hilt with gleaming rhetoric and razoresque wit, he set about vanquishing armies of brute Ignoramuses, felling along the way fey beasts of sundry ilks--It of the Daft, It of the Dunce, It of the Downright Dippy.

All was well (discounting, of course, the alienation of friends and family) until one day, a day of doom, he was greeted by the grinning dragon--that coiled wyrm of distant legend--Oligodendroglioma. For years they fought, meeting in the wilds or along well-traveled paths. At first, they were evenly matched. He met his foe with aplomb and jocularity. But time wore on, as did his nerve, his will, and his strength.

At last, the Recondite Knight was forced to lay his weapons down. Very little has been heard of him since. Legend has spotted him napping copiously and staring, nonplussed, into the depths of space and time.

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Moral: I'm dumb anymore. And one of the greatest feats of my life to date has been coming to terms with my chronically benighted state of mind. Every day and all around, issues of great importance mock my decreasing ability to comprehend them, much less expound upon or rail against them.

The seeming and/ or real, literal and/ or emotional disenfranchisement of Mexicans; Occupation of paved roads against amorphous fiends; the Ontology of Me and the Otherhood of You. It's like . . .you know . . . er . . . yeah . . . what do you call it? . . . uh, is that a rabbit over there?

But I am coming to terms. Slowly, unsurely, I'm relocating myself in the scheme of things. Where answers elude me, beauty finds me. Where gravity drops me, I rise on an invisible gust, transported to a realm of shrugged shoulders and wide, wondering eyes. Sometimes it's pleasant here. Sometimes excruciatingly lonely. The loveliness and the horror vacillate. But I belong here. Whether once I was meant to know, to understand, to argue, is irrelevant now. Now I am meant to guess, to ponder, to behold.

In short, the poet has a place and mine is in nature. The heart is a short migration from the mind. The knight trades his tower for a hermitage, grows vegetables and talks sensibly with invading bunny-rabbits.

Happily? Leave that to the utilitarians. Ever-after? Leave that to the metaphysicians.

The end? Leave that to me.

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.