Beneath the blossoms with a pot of wine,
No friends at hand, so I poured alone;
I raised my cup to invite the moon,
Turned to my shadow, and we became three.
Now the moon had never learned about drinking,
And my shadow had merely followed my form,
But I quickly made friends with the moon and my shadow;
To find pleasure in life, make the most of the spring.
Whenever I sang, the moon swayed with me;
Whenever I danced, my shadow went wild.
Drinking, we shared our enjoyment together;
Drunk, then each went off on his own.
But forever agreed on dispassionate revels,
We promised to meet in the far Milky Way.
~ Li Po (Li Bai)
Some time ago, another place and another mind, I found myself alone on a bench beneath a tree in what I thought (in my Mr. Flood-like state) to be a public park. It was late at night, and I was temporarily homeless; the “temporary distraction” (as I euphemistically called the harpy with whom I had been living) had kicked me out of her apartment. I was unconcerned, for I had a full bottle of gin and the night was warm and clear: stars wheeling overhead, the gently swaying branches of a stable, thick-limbed tree … oh, and the bench was partially rotten, sagging comfortably beneath my lax body. ‘Twas like unto a hammock.
For some reason, I was not willing to admit that I was in a crisis. Like Li Po I had three friends, only mine were the tree, the bench, and my own supine self. Thus integrated into that private ecosystem, I realized that certain moments are emblazoned forever on the mind, and are set to become monuments of or to the self, which is always in motion, even if its vehicle is temporarily disabled. It is part of the human quest for meaning to seek a reason for every situation, to follow some sort of tracery leading (supposedly) to a grand unified theory of personal existence. Well …
I refuse to follow Herrick and compose a farewell poem to my beloved booze, for we know that he ended up composing a poem celebrating his return to his favorite inebriant (called “sack” back then). Jinxes are psychological realities, alas. I am instead merely subsisting on tea, non-trigger music, and a rather forced zeal to write. This much is clear, and was clear to me beneath that tree on the bench: some events in life are morally and ethically neutral. They can serve as raw material for later use, perhaps, but neither good nor bad (indifferent, perhaps, as in the Stoic ADIAPHORA, but only for the moment in which they arise) – they are signposts leading toward a plot of ground on which the creative mind will erect a shrine to its own unicity.
Labor of this kind is invariably lonely. Eventually, as Li Po understood, each will go off on his or her own, with some outrageous promise to meet again in some impossible place or circumstance. The melancholy produced by this inescapable operation of inter-human existence can be as intoxicating as the contents of a bottle – and as addictive.
In the morning, when I awoke to the sound of crackling police radios, and opened my bleary eyes to see two amused officers looking down at me, the transformation had already taken place above and around my sleeping form. ‘Twas no park, but the ornate (if poorly manicured) lawn of a private residence. Bottle of gin at my side (empty) and rotten bench nearly touching the ground … I was kindly permitted to return to the cavern of Shelob whence I had come.
So now what? Li Po was wise enough to simply allow the language to take the shape of the event. Organic subjectivity. How’s that for a designation? Resisting the lure of analysis is hard for me. Re-presenting the immediacy of a moment through language? Well-nigh impossible.
Where have all the great poets gone?
Nevertheless …
Beneath a tree, bottle in hand
Breeze and my breath and a smack of the lips
As the fire infuses my form, I greet the tree
My friend the bench makes three
Da Vinci’s Ginevra understood the gin
And I daresay the night does too
A moment to myself in the inky night
A discovery: careless collapse and joy are kindred
I hum to myself as a gnat tickles my nose
I smile at the unexpected even as I shiver at some thought
She: a phone call away
I: a universe to my Self
Tangled like Neaera’s hair, we’re not through yet
Tomorrow a steep descent, or perhaps salvation for both
...
That sort of thing was acceptable in 8th century China. The United States in the early 21st century? That’s another matter. “A half savage country” indeed.
