The True-Blue American

Tomorrow, I leave on a roadtrip to Richmond, Virginia. I'm tagging along with two of my favorite found-family members, my friends Cat and Jill. In acknowledgement of this All-American trip, and in response to the repeated and frightening rhetoric of the Republican National Convention, I share a poem by the writer Delmore Schwartz.

"The True-Blue American"

    Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,
For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must
Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,
Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,
Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity
For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and
Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah
Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split
He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it
Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:
Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;
Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between;
Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing
         in his breast
                  The infinite and the gold
                  Of the endless frontier, the deathless West.

    “Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed
         By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten,
Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of
         Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon,
Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and
         Shining in the darkness, of the light
On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures,
The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light
Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,
         Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

- by Delmore Schwartz, from Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems, 1938-1958 (1959)

Mojo Pin

"All the untidy activity continues,
awful but cheerful."

This is a way more articulate sentiment than I could produce right now (or ever), but it speaks to a certain sense of ennui/dread/wonder/distraction which currently occupies my head. These are the final lines of "The Bight" by Elizabeth Bishop, and are also the epitaph on her headstone. I visited it once, but I can't seem to find the photo I took of her grave. All I have is an image of this tree across the road.

November 2015

Anyhow, when I was on my wild Greyhound trip back from visiting my friend Rose in Chicago (hi, Rose!), I listened to this Jeff Buckley album a lot. There was a bunch of night lightning in the western sky over Illinois, and I caught a calm twenty minutes of sleep to this music. Then a fight almost broke out at the bus station and our bus broke down in rural Missouri, but the adventure was worthwhile.

- "Mojo Pin" by Jeff Buckley, from Grace (1994)

On Kindness

My sister and I were talking about this speech yesterday, and I thought it was worth sharing. You can watch the whole thing below, but I've copy-and-pasted a few highlights from the New York Times' transcript in case you're into skimming:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

...kindness, it turns out, is hard — it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, everything. 

...The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.” 

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE. If you have kids, that will be a huge moment in your process of self-diminishment. You really won’t care what happens to YOU, as long as they benefit.

...So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf — seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Cookies, Cocaine, and Hospitals

I got a phone call on Wednesday morning from a detective who told me I'd been sent a suspicious package. After I asked a few clarifying questions, he told me FedEx had reported it as leaking a "suspicious substance" and that he and two other detectives were driving to my house to deliver it.

Then he asked if he had my permission to open the box, specifying that "if it's anything illegal we have to take it." I consented, and he told me that the suspicious package was a box of rainbow sprinkle cookies sent to me by my thoughtful friends Broti and Katie:

Clearly drugs and explosives, right?

Then, that afternoon, I ended up in the hospital after a panicked nurse at the Minute Clinic told me that my airway was being obstructed by a tonsillar abscess. After a very cold trip to the E.R., the nurses and doctors told me that it was just a rough case of tonsillitis and that I'd probably contract it not infrequently from here on out. They gave me the good drugs for pains and fever and infections and sent me on my way.

That's all I've got for now. There's plenty more to write about—there always is—but to cop a phrase from T.S. Eliot (whose hometown I'm about to visit!), "there will be time, there will be time."

The Dentist and the Crocodile

Here is a poem by Roald Dahl. According to the Poetry Foundation, it's "good for children."

The crocodile, with cunning smile, sat in the dentist’s chair.
He said, “Right here and everywhere my teeth require repair.”
The dentist’s face was turning white. He quivered, quaked and shook.
He muttered, “I suppose I’m going to have to take a look.”
“I want you”, Crocodile declared, “to do the back ones first.
The molars at the very back are easily the worst.”
He opened wide his massive jaws. It was a fearsome sight—
At least three hundred pointed teeth, all sharp and shining white.
The dentist kept himself well clear. He stood two yards away.
He chose the longest probe he had to search out the decay.
“I said to do the back ones first!” the Crocodile called out.
“You’re much too far away, dear sir, to see what you’re about.
To do the back ones properly you’ve got to put your head
Deep down inside my great big mouth,” the grinning Crocky said.
The poor old dentist wrung his hands and, weeping in despair,
He cried, “No no! I see them all extremely well from here!”
Just then, in burst a lady, in her hands a golden chain.
She cried, “Oh Croc, you naughty boy, you’re playing tricks again!”
“Watch out!” the dentist shrieked and started climbing up the wall.
“He’s after me! He’s after you! He’s going to eat us all!”
“Don’t be a twit,” the lady said, and flashed a gorgeous smile.
“He’s harmless. He’s my little pet, my lovely crocodile.”

- by Roald Dahl, from Rhyme Stew (1989)

Cool It Now

My great friend Kate shared this with me last year. In celebration of her birthday, her employment, and her existence, I give you New Edition.

- "Cool It Now" by New Edition, from New Edition (1984)

Back from the Dead (+ some stuff I wrote)

I'm exhausted, but I finally have a computer again, so here's to more posts.

My thesis was released online last week. I'm still revising it, and I think it has a way to go. That said, I feel very grateful that this is online, and excited to see what the future holds.

If you're interested, you can find the collection here.

Now I have to go write cover letters, because I graduated and am yet unemployed. (Did I mention that I graduated? There's a lot of catching up to do. I'm not sure where to begin, so I'll just save all that for another time.)

On a Weekday

At the dead end

For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike

I found this poem a few days ago. If you like it, you can find more about its author, Laura Kasischke, on her website. Hell, if you really like it, you could even send her a note saying as much. I'm beginning to realize it never hurts to let people know when you like the things they make. Regardless, here is a poem she wrote.

"For the Young Woman I Saw Hit by a Car While Riding Her Bike"

I'll tell you up front: She was fine—although
she left in an ambulance because
I called 9-1-1

and what else can you do
when they've come for you
with their sirens and lights
and you're young and polite
except get into their ambulance
and pretend to smile?

"Thanks," she said to me
before they closed her up. (They

even tucked
her bike in there. Not
one bent spoke on either tire.) But I

was shaking and sobbing too hard to say good-bye.

Later, at a party, I imagine her telling her friends, "It

hardly grazed me, but
this lady who saw it went crazy. . ."

I did. I was
molecular, while
even the driver who hit her did
little more than roll his eyes, while

a trucker stuck at the intersection, wolfing
down a swan
sandwich behind the wheel, sighed. Some-

one touched me on the shoulder
and asked, "Are you all right?"

(Over
in ten seconds. She
stood, all
blonde, shook
her wings like a little cough.)

"Are you
okay?" someone else asked me. Uneasily. As if

overhearing my heartbeat
and embarrassed for me
that I was made
of such gushing meat
in the middle of the day on a quiet street.

"They should have put her
in the ambulance, not me."

Laughter.
Shit happens.
To be young.
To shrug it off:

But, ah, sweet
thing, take
pity. One

day you too may be
an accumulation

of regrets, catastrophes.
A clay animation
of Psalm 73. (But 

as for me, my feet. . .) No. It will be
Psalm 45: They

saw it,
and so they marveled; they
were troubled, and hasted away. Today 

you don't remember the way
you called my name, so
desperately, a thousand times, tearing

your hair, and your clothes on the floor, and
the nurse who denied your morphine
so that you had to die that morning
under a single sheet
without me, in
agony, but 

this time I was beside you.
I waited, and I saved you.
I was there.

- Laura Kasischke, from The Infinitesimals (2015)