Gently, Gently Now

I’m undecided if my writing over these past years has gotten better or worse. I think both. But more I think that I haven’t been interested in whatever could be said about “better” or “worse”. I’ve spent little time on organized work and instead have devoted myself to my thoughts. So to a degree my work has suffered from a lack of focus. Though it is for myself that the work exists so in that I have succeeded.

     In Thoreau’s eulogy Emerson lamented:

     “I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting that, instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckle-berry party.”

     Another of Thoreau’s close companions, William Channing, held a similar view:

     “His journals should not be permitted to be read by any, as I think they were not meant to be read… I have never been able to understand what he meant by his life. Why did he care so much about being a writer? Why did he pay so much attention to his own thoughts? Why was he so dissatisfied with everyone else, etc? Why was he so much interested in the river and the woods and the sky, etc? Something peculiar, I judge.”

     How curious! I am not surprised that Time has looked more friendly upon Thoreau than on his companions.

     I walked through the dry dead poisoned cornfield until I reached the other end and the path there immediately became grassy. And my little A. ran up ahead chasing butterflies and I said: See A. do you see the difference? Do you see how the path is alive again?

     And she said: Yeah, Papa. It’s too bad they do that to the cornfield. Why does the farmer do that?

     And she skipped after another butterfly while I muttered that I didn’t know.  Because I don’t know I really don’t know. I know the reasons yes but I don’t know how we arrived here and I don’t think there’s any getting rid of it. Like the Blue catfish in the bay. It’s all here to stay yes and I watched the breeze caress the dry meadow grasses the new growth coming in and my eyes went to the tree line and I thought:

    “…Held for him by a rim of ancient trees;

     You gaze and the landscape divides and leaves you

     One sinking and one rising toward the sky…”

     And as my little A. skipped into the shadows of the forest I turned back to watch the landscape divide and leave me and I thought:

     “And you are left, to none belonging wholly,

     Not so dark as a silent house, nor quite

     So surely pledged unto eternity

     As that which grows to star and climbs the night…”

     And I said to my little A.: Do you see these greens here, with the little white flowers? And she nodded and I said: You can eat them. They’re kind of spicy.

     So we took a bite together and chewed and agreed on the flavor and moved along toward the ruins of the old brick house through the rose thorns. And my little A. was fascinated yes she was fascinated by the ruins… that someone had lived here long ago she climbed up onto a rock and through to a crumbling old window to snap a photograph with her little camera.

     And we moved on and came to an opening the meadow there was starting to bloom crimson clover and we made a note to pick them when we returned from the secret beach.

     Well this story goes on and on and I may continue to tell it at a different time yes there were flowering mustards and the red clover and the knotweed all along the banks of the Sassafras. And the rose bushes were budding and some had blossomed and there were many wild raspberries it may be a good year for them and down on the beach the water was warmer than I expected and we had our lunch and little A. took off her dress to swim and we were all alone exploring this big wide open river with no one in sight and I thought:

     “To you is left (unspeakably confused)

     Your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,

     So that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all

     Is changed in you by turns to stone and stars.”*

     Yes unspeakably confused… life gigantic and ripening and full of fears. I don’t know why we poison cornfields. I don’t know why there are bits of plastic trash scattered among the driftwood on the shore no it isn’t going anywhere and I don’t think I very much care.

     And I know the reasons but what do I actually know what do any of us actually know about anything? I don’t know anything and I’m not pretending that I do anymore I know that this place this secret place with my little A. my little girl doing handstands in the sand her hair falling down getting wet in the river I know this is magic I know I will miss this moment when it’s gone I will sob. I will sob one day at these memories an old man with a grown up little girl but I’m still young and she’s still my little girl and this shore is still beautiful and the water is still nice on my bare feet and I don’t care how horrible they say this world is I don’t care that they refuse to be happy that when one holocaust is over all they do is go looking for another… No I don’t care. And my little A. and I walked hand-in-hand down the sandy beach barefoot and she returned to check on the caterpillar she’d placed on the knotweed leaf and he was still there. And she picked him up again gently, gently now, I said, and she placed him up onto a tree branch high above the incoming tide.

    

*Evening, Reiner Maria Rilke