She would like someone to speak to her,
And is almost afraid that I
will commit that indiscretion.
~ Ezra Pound, "The Garden"
Timid women excite me. The trembling smile and quivering lips ... the blush and the quick turn-away ... Such a compliment!
How can it be that I inspire such reaction? I with the the alcoholic face and the darkling eyes ... The sullen rapport of self with self ...
Yet it happens.
Time and again the season lets me know the extent of ability, the reason behind the rhyme, the law of nature exhibiting a portal of solace to an abandoned soul. If there were no more women in the world, I would curl up beneath a tree in the park, gin bottle in hand, and slowly die, a death of peace and quiet contemplation ... A peace unknown to man since this garden began.
Contemplation: in the ancient Greek, qewria, a term reminding us of God, qeoV, and indicating that the highest form of thought is the turning of the mind towards Divinity. But there is no divinity, just a crackling field of energy extending far beyond the parameters of human thought.
We drag this energy with us, into the most unlikely and inauspicious of territories. At least I do. A pretty intern smiling down at me as I am pumped full of vitamins. Good. Let me live, even though I agree with my darling Sylvia: "Suicidal, at one with the drive / Into the red" (Sylvia Plath, "Ariel" 29-30).
Tired, lonely, and bored: such is the life of the mind in the age of quickness and effects. Chausson speaks to me, in his lonely poem for violin ... The exhausted drift of the melody as it forces the violin almost to the dramatic intensity of the human voice ... He knew.
II.
I don't know what
Po' weary me can do.
Gypsy says I'd kill my self
If I was you.
~ Langston Hughes, "Bad Luck Card"
Poe said that the most moving and effective subject for poetry is the death of a beautiful woman. We wish death upon those we love because we do not want an other to possess them! It is that simple. But a more mature manner of living dictates something more honorable ... Exit. The last statement of a soul in torment. Fine. But what of the impression? If I make an exit in any way undignified ... If I step into the void with no love to guide me to the destination ... Then what?
Exhaustion causes all kinds of maladies of the mind ... Excess of vision, a torment bordering on a cry for salvation ... Never!
Missing the point is natural; gaining the prize is superhuman, and insupportable. Solon said that happiness can only be gauged at the end of life. So why strive for it in youth, or middle age? We are all, as Pascal said, chained in a dungeon awaitng death.
Easily it may come. III.
I dewyne fordolked of luf daungere
Of that pryuy perle wythouten spot.
~ The Gawain-Poet, Pearl I. 11-12.
Indeed. To languish alone is the fate of many ... However, it is worse for the intellectual, who knows the extent of his emotional power, and the manner in which it shaped the lives of others. It would be impossible for me to sit in my room and watch sports all day, drinking cheap beer and eating chips ... It works for some, but not for me! Someone told me recently that my reclusive nature is selfish, that I need to get out into the world and share myself again ...
But I miss my pretty pearl without a spot.
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