May 27, 2004

Sitting in the Library... Just took my final



So here I am, an eager young mind. Well, maybe not so young. The test was a joke. So many grammatical errors and unformed questions. This class was one of those that was simply a hoop to jump through. At least this term is one session away from being history.

I went to see MM today. God I love her.

She is the woman that I dream of when I sleep, and hold dear to my heart when I am awake. I miss her when she is not by my side and am most at peace when beside her.

It is my birthday. 47 years old. Damn, that seems old. I don't feel it. I'm told that I don't look over 35. I really don't know. I do know that this moment is all that I will ever have. Some moments are depressed (see my last posting) and they have to pass away in the stream of time and conscienceness. Others are joyful and will also pass away in that same stream. Eventually, we are all carried out by the tide into the eternal. Maybe that is why I love the ocean so much. It speaks to the primal rhythms of my life and calls me to see moments that ebb while others flow. I don't think I could have said that when I was 27.

Here I am, very much in love with MM, my dear heart, my other self and looking forward only to the moment when I am whole again by her side.

I do love her so.

But I am a lovesick fool...

Today is my birthday…


And there is a part of me that wants to say, "Big fuckin' deal." I have really hated this day for years. I have a history of being depressed on my birthday, of feeling like life is really nothing more than a lot of meaningless noise that keeps us busy until we die.

Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.


- Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5

And in one-hundred years - what the hell? How about a moment after death - does any of it really matter? Even presuming faith and the hope of eternal life does this mere shadow of life that we call existence mean anything? I don't think so. Let the Bard of Avon speak again:

I have of late,--but wherefore I know not,--lost all my
mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed, it goes so
heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth,
seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the
air, look you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical
roof fretted with golden fire,--why, it appears no other thing
to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a
piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in
faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in
action how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the
beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what
is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me; no, nor woman
neither, though by your smiling you seem to say so.


- Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2

The quintessence of dust: there is an image. In Genesis God is supposed to have created humanity from the dust. We are little more than the dirt under God's fingernails. And so it is that year another anniversary of my birth seems to be a cause for depression rather than celebration.

I keep thinking that my life has been a case-study in unfulfilled potential; a lost opportunity for excellence and achievement. There is much that I have done, when I look back over the past several years. I just have not realized much material gain. What I did was destroyed by people that did not value my work. It is a hard thing to see the labor of a lifetime trashed. Dirt under God's fingernails, indeed.

I suppose if I am given to quoting poetry that I should quote a couple of my favorites.

MINIVER CHEEVY, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.


E.A. Robinson is not known for his cheerful verse. He is not Ogden Nash. He speaks to my love of history and feeling that I am something of an anachronism, a man born out of time and misplaced in my origins. Miniver Cheevy is a singularly unsympathetic character: he sits, drunk, in his disdain and loathing of all things current wishing for a glorious past that never was. Unfulfilled potential, a case-study in self-hatred and unrequited possibilities: Miniver is much worse off than me.

FUBAR... Or the Augustinian doctrine of original sin? Pelagius spoke of original innocence. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition: dirt under God's fingernails. Like Sateen-Dura Lux and FUBAR, I am Rabo Karabekian holding a key to an old potato barn. I watched my life's work simply fade away into the recesses of faltering memory. My secret is bigger than a breadbox and smaller than Jupiter... I am a man twice divorced. Having lived in a sort of emotional stasis for the past three years, feeling the stirrings of life just recently revived. Recalled to life? Will I get the message from Tellson's Bank? Is Mr. Lorry looking for me?

My mother's name is Lorry.

We don't talk much anymore. None of my family and I really share more than an occasional pleasantly. What possible message could I find there? I was the scion of hope's dreams fulfilled for one brief shining moment; now I am the pariah of a dream deferred. Wilted up like a raisin in the sun...

There was a story about me as a baby. I was born premature and was not expected to live. Following an extended period of time in the oxygen-pure atmosphere of an incubator - the cause of my poor vision - I was moved to the nursery. They swaddled me, as they did in the fifties; one of my hands crept out of the bindings and forced the blankets to free myself. I hated to be bound then as much as I do now. I did make reference to another poem. From Tamar, by Robinson Jeffers:

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.


47 years old. Big fat hairy deal. Thank God for MM.

Just another day in the life of this fool.

LATER IN THE DAY...

I was listening to Writer's Almanac and heard this poem. Too good not to post. "What We Want," by Linda Pastan, from Carnival Evening. © W.W. Norton.

What We Want

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.