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.

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"]

snuggle-puff

Look how my little babies have grown. Granted not much, but they're jus' lil' things to begin with. (Check out their baby pictures, I'll wait.) Clearly, Beans [left] has grown the most all around. Pickles [center] has gotten taller but remained skinny. Scooter [right] . . . well Scooter's a little tubbier and still the shorty of the trio. But bless his heart, he's still my favorite because he's safest to pet. Quite the snuggle-puff by comparison, actually.

Meanwhile, what have I done in two months? I love my cacti, but darn if they haven't made me feel stunted. Have I grown at all? Girth-wise, let's just say I'm like Scooter minus the shortiness.
But I'm not here to talk physiology; I'm here to talk poetry, philosophy--of life's riches and dearths. Have I made progress in my understanding of the world? No. In fact, I have been in retrograde motion in that regard since I was 25. Have I grown to know myself any better? Well, I have grown to bore myself more, if that counts. Hopefully that's just the contempt born of familiarity and not the 4D image I project on the world.
Have I learned new things--unnecessary but beautiful things? Have I chiseled any marble-nudes? Are there any tempera frescoes on my ceiling? Perhaps, I expect too much of myself. Maybe I should measure my success in ounces and millimeters. One poem at a time. Paragraph by paragraph. In doses of modest improvement. Horizons expanded by the merest thread each day.

All things considered, it may be my only choice. Which is no choice at all but one, nonetheless, I must choose. Or not. There's the philosophy. Here's the poetry: Cacti are green/ Roses aren't blue/ Both will prick flesh/ What else is new?