Mile-Post
Jan 11 2015
I travel the same route daily.
The small sedan
in its appointed lane
on settled pavement,
worn down
by the weight of wheels.
Where I navigate
automatically;
my sly reptilian brain
keeping track
while my mind wanders,
the car in its comfortable rut.
Until I'm there, suddenly
not knowing exactly how.
Which is much like life
looking back,
surprised to find myself
so far along;
the years lost,
the age that sounds
like it belongs to someone else.
And looking ahead
to a time I stop making sense.
That moment of clarity
in the dementing haze
when I realize where and when,
overcome
by fright, longing, despair.
Suddenly aware
of the familiar things
that anchor me,
the drawn faces
that have somehow found their names.
So the destination is fixed
but the journey isn’t.
There’s always a side road
you can take,
until the pavement runs out
the houses thin
the glow of town
disappears.
Arrive late
with a story to tell
and time well-filled.
Make mile-posts
of memory;
they will serve you well
when it goes.
We're all familiar with that feeling of driving on auto-pilot, when time disappears: finding yourself suddenly there, as if teleported. I rarely vary from the same route (although the bad road and frequent bad weather and a heavy population of deer make it hard to default to auto-pilot). I had in mind an aerial shot of a boring sedan beetling along, like a slot car along its track.
As I contemplated this, I immediately thought of an article I just read about Alzheimer’s. It's an interview based on a recent book called The Long Hello (great title!!), in which the adult daughter writes about accompanying her mother on her descent into dementia. Not only are there those precious moments of clarity when her mother is suddenly aware, but also unexpected pronouncements of subtle wisdom and delightful juxtaposition that emerge from her clouded consciousness. When the author begins to accept her mother's altered state as a kind of re-invention instead of loss, and when she comes to appreciate how she now has a chance to see more deeply into her unguarded mother's essential self, she begins to take far more delight from their interactions: that is, giving up her futile resistance and going with the flow, despite the acknowledged frustrations. It's the first part of this -- those precious moments of sudden clarity -- that made the connection for me: how it must feel to emerge from that haze, and suddenly find yourself marooned in this untethered time and place ("fright, longing, despair"); just like the sudden surprise of arriving, no memory of having driven.
The poem touches on the nature of memory and the perception of time:
That we aren't a linear recording device with limited space, but that the brain is inexhaustible. And the more memories, the more cognitive reserve: the more we can lose without missing it.
That our sense of the passage of time depends on how busy we are. And the paradox that our sense of time is diametrically different depending on whether we're in the moment, or looking back. That is, in the moment, time drags on and on when we're not engaged, when we're bored. But looking back, the absence of memories make that period of time seem infinitesimally short: as if for those days or months or years, we had vanished into a black hole. While time races by when we're busy. Yet looking back, that's the period of time that is full, and seems to have gone on forever.
Of course, the poem’s conclusion is obvious, and I'm afraid it makes the end kind of anodyne: the journey/destination stuff; the trope of the open road; the invocation to take chances, err on the side of doing, seek out new experiences. And also rather hypocritical, since of all people I'm the poster child par excellence of routine, of conservative (fearful?) living. But I have no choice except to go where a poem takes me; so that's where I went.
I used "suddenly" twice. It's a cardinal sin of writing to use that word at all. But here, it somehow works; and I can't seem to come up with anything else. At least the duplication contributes a useful coherence to the poem, calling back from the Alzheimer's tableau to the driving scenario.
I travel the same route daily.
The small sedan
in its appointed lane
on settled pavement,
worn down
by the weight of wheels.
Where I navigate
automatically;
my sly reptilian brain
keeping track
while my mind wanders,
the car in its comfortable rut.
Until I'm there, suddenly
not knowing exactly how.
Which is much like life
looking back,
surprised to find myself
so far along;
the years lost,
the age that sounds
like it belongs to someone else.
And looking ahead
to a time I stop making sense.
That moment of clarity
in the dementing haze
when I realize where and when,
overcome
by fright, longing, despair.
Suddenly aware
of the familiar things
that anchor me,
the drawn faces
that have somehow found their names.
So the destination is fixed
but the journey isn’t.
There’s always a side road
you can take,
until the pavement runs out
the houses thin
the glow of town
disappears.
Arrive late
with a story to tell
and time well-filled.
Make mile-posts
of memory;
they will serve you well
when it goes.
We're all familiar with that feeling of driving on auto-pilot, when time disappears: finding yourself suddenly there, as if teleported. I rarely vary from the same route (although the bad road and frequent bad weather and a heavy population of deer make it hard to default to auto-pilot). I had in mind an aerial shot of a boring sedan beetling along, like a slot car along its track.
As I contemplated this, I immediately thought of an article I just read about Alzheimer’s. It's an interview based on a recent book called The Long Hello (great title!!), in which the adult daughter writes about accompanying her mother on her descent into dementia. Not only are there those precious moments of clarity when her mother is suddenly aware, but also unexpected pronouncements of subtle wisdom and delightful juxtaposition that emerge from her clouded consciousness. When the author begins to accept her mother's altered state as a kind of re-invention instead of loss, and when she comes to appreciate how she now has a chance to see more deeply into her unguarded mother's essential self, she begins to take far more delight from their interactions: that is, giving up her futile resistance and going with the flow, despite the acknowledged frustrations. It's the first part of this -- those precious moments of sudden clarity -- that made the connection for me: how it must feel to emerge from that haze, and suddenly find yourself marooned in this untethered time and place ("fright, longing, despair"); just like the sudden surprise of arriving, no memory of having driven.
The poem touches on the nature of memory and the perception of time:
That we aren't a linear recording device with limited space, but that the brain is inexhaustible. And the more memories, the more cognitive reserve: the more we can lose without missing it.
That our sense of the passage of time depends on how busy we are. And the paradox that our sense of time is diametrically different depending on whether we're in the moment, or looking back. That is, in the moment, time drags on and on when we're not engaged, when we're bored. But looking back, the absence of memories make that period of time seem infinitesimally short: as if for those days or months or years, we had vanished into a black hole. While time races by when we're busy. Yet looking back, that's the period of time that is full, and seems to have gone on forever.
Of course, the poem’s conclusion is obvious, and I'm afraid it makes the end kind of anodyne: the journey/destination stuff; the trope of the open road; the invocation to take chances, err on the side of doing, seek out new experiences. And also rather hypocritical, since of all people I'm the poster child par excellence of routine, of conservative (fearful?) living. But I have no choice except to go where a poem takes me; so that's where I went.
I used "suddenly" twice. It's a cardinal sin of writing to use that word at all. But here, it somehow works; and I can't seem to come up with anything else. At least the duplication contributes a useful coherence to the poem, calling back from the Alzheimer's tableau to the driving scenario.
No comments:
Post a Comment