Words have come and gone. I’ve felt quiet. The night has been long without music and drink – intentionally so. My habit, if I write or paint or read, has been to have a glass or two of wine to ease in to things. When I first moved to Memphis, I went out several nights a week. I was trying to assimilate and learn and avoid the full force of being in a place where I didn’t know anyone. Like the glass of wine in the evenings, I’ve been easing in to something a little more solitary, something deliberately slow. Last night I read and was asleep before 11, tonight, I’ve been reading and just taking things in. My ex-fiancee, B, has been on my mind a lot this past week. There’s not much I can do about that. The argument (in my head) is the same. We had an amazing relationship that had its challenges. One can hold on to the good or hold on to the bad. Life feels too short to hold on to the bad, and I can easily convince myself that the good is still possible. Reading a little bit of Brain Pickings today, I read about Freeman Dyson. As the story goes:
When Dyson’s father — the English composer George Dyson — was a young music teacher, his closest friend — a lanky classicist who taught at the same school — was drafted into the British army during WWI and sent to fight in Paris. One day, this exceedingly tall young man stuck his head to look out from the trench. A German sniper killed him instantly. His sister, with whom he’d been incredibly close, was grief-stricken. So was his best friend. The grief brought the two together. A year after his death, they were married. When they had their first child, they named him for the slain hero: Freeman.
As Popova (author of Brain Pickings) considers the life that Dyson lived and his study of quantum physics (a science of chance) she writes:
never losing sight of the double-edged sword of chance that had made his own life possible by his uncle’s death. It informed his entire personal cosmogony, as a scientist and a humanist. Viewed in this light, this light of ultimate lucidity, all of our conflicts and combats — international or interpersonal — appear not only unnatural but anti-natural, foolish squanderings of the brief and improbable life that chance has dealt us, vandalized verses from the sacred poetry that is the book of nature.
Life feels too short to hold on to the interpersonal conflicts. My ex-fiancee”s dad once remarked how improbable it was that our orbits would cross… and so when I think of the connection we had, it feels like screwing it up was a squandering, a vandalization of verses.
The last two days in Memphis have been somewhat balmy. I spent some time in a bookstore yesterday. I bought a book of poetry by Stephen Dunn and went to a quaint coffee shop in midtown with and outside deck. I sat in the sun and read and watched people come and go. Walking back to the car I saw families and couple enjoying beers in the sun. Until I’m thoroughly enjoying those things in the radiance of someone else, they will always be colored with a sense of happy admiration, longing, and hope. This morning I went for a long run along the river, five miles. I have more jiggle in the midsection than I care for, too much sitting, too much beer and wine, etc. etc. I’ve exercised nearly every day for the past few weeks, but I’m not sure it’s helping. I spent part of the day at Cafe Keough reading more Dunn, and then walking around town to take in the seventy degree sunshine. Sometimes, the longing is in the form of waiting for your friend to join you. It’s as if every step towards moving on I want to look back and say – it’s gonna be fun, you sure you don’t want to come along. Of course I’m being selfish too – it will be fun, but it’ll be even better….
When I was in the bookstore, having just finished Hoagland and with a volume of Dunn under my arm, I wondered who are the women poets of everyday beauty and dissatisfaction? Both Hoagland and Dunn have a conversational style that elevates the everyday to something beyond. What women poets do that? I’d like to read them to see their point of view on divorce and sex and laundry and children. Tonight, in between poems, I surfed looking for some of those poets. The very first poem I read, “The Amenities” by Heather McHugh was about being raped as a seventeen year old. Is this the difference between men and women – the pain of life we each bear is so much more violent for one compared to the other? What do men know of rape or childbirth. I read older white men because I can relate – and while I appreciate the lyricism of their words, I can see the luxury of it all. I prefer the privileged subtle heartache as opposed to the forcefulness and violence of a knife in the dark of night. The next poem I read “The Empty House” by Sandra McPherson had a great phrase in it. She’s talking about the emptying out of a house and writes “If this was an error of ten rooms, a spatial mis-faith, who are we to trust each other.” There’s a sadness in considering our undoings of home as an error in ten rooms.
So…. while I began by writing about appreciating the cosmic accidents that are our lives and how it brings us together, I end with the other point of view that perhaps it’s just an error in a handful of rooms. This is how two people can view the same thing from two very different points of view – each trying to convince the other of what the truth is – which we all know is found somewhere in between.