The End

Aug 28 2018

When I looked up eschatology

it said “the science of last things.”

How reassuring, that there is a science to this,

a search for truth

about the last slice of pie

my maxed-out credit card

the one great love of your life.

And the final answer

to Man's perpetual question

of what comes next,

after the last rattle of breath

when the body pales and sags

and the face imperceptibly flattens,

and you can just imagine

some fleeting weight

departing its mortal flesh

wondering how, and why, and when.

Apparently, in some esoteric lab somewhere

a gaggle of white-coated acolytes

working on a generous grant

are bent over Bunsen-burners and test tubes

and have seen beyond the pale.

Have already cracked death,

the last of life, and its aftermath

but haven't published yet,

unwilling to risk

their endless denunciation

by the fierce defenders of faith,

the end

of their sweet collegial sinecure.

More specifically, it was the New Yorker (Sept 3 2018) , and the word was eschatological. My iPad has a convenient function that allows me to click on a word, and the definition comes up. I'm not sure of the ultimate source of the magazine's generic dictionary, but I trust their authority. So here is the exact wording:

“eschatological: the part of theology concerned with death, judgment, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind. Christian hope is concerned with eschatology, the science of last things.”

Those last few words immediately struck me with their presumption, their odd conflation of science and faith: as if science might actually have the power to answer the age-old mystery about after-lives and reincarnation and everlasting heavens and hells. And also their evasion: the euphemistic substitution of “last things” for what they clearly meant, which is “death”. The science of last things was an irresistible invitation to riff, and so I grabbed a pen and gave my stream of consciousness free reign. (“Riff” (as per Merriam-Webster): ...2 : a rapid energetic often improvised verbal outpouring; especially : one that is part of a comic performance. 3 : a succinct usually witty comment.)

When I sent the rough draft of this poem to my first readers, I prefaced it with this (below). I thought I'd repeat that paragraph here, since it gives an interesting context to my writing. I'll elaborate by saying that I hardly wrote at all this summer, and was seriously wondering if I was all written out. (Hardly wrote poetry, that is. Lots of prose. But that's another story.) This year, the last week of August is unseasonably cold here (ironically, in this year when climate change seems so ominously omnipresent, the only place in North America, it seems!), and so the electric heater and the disinclination to be outside.

“It's definitely the weather. I already feel in hibernation mode. I'm sitting at the dining room table (my usual writing surface) in a very cold room with a lovely electric heater keeping my feet toasty warm and losing myself in the flow of writing. So after a summer when it was looking as if my pathetic career as a self-proclaimed poet had arrived at its predictably ignominious end, here I am coming up with stuff almost daily. Here's the first rough draft. A little Billy Collins-ish, if I'm permitted to say. This is one of those that pretty much wrote itself. If I look at the page I transcribed it from, there is almost nothing crossed off; it flowed out the end of my pen almost word for word. Those ones often feel as if they're too easy and therefore illegitimate; but then as often end up being pretty good ones, and definitely keepers.” 

Outlier

Aug 25 2018

A solitary firefly

in the dog days of August

on a dark and windless night.

Slowly circling, as if uncertain of its place,

its cold light, quietly vanishing

then re-igniting further off

as I hypnotically watched

its random wanderings.

How odd, I thought,

to see a lone firefly

against this great starless sky;

a creature not meant for solitude,

but who should rather be a part

of a vast congregation

of silent dancing lights.

Yet there are always outliers in nature,

who inhabit the tail-end of seasons

or behave out of sync with their kind.

Because from this comes her resiliency,

the error, and difference

by which life persists.

Our diversity, and idiosyncrasies

are nature's treasury,

insurance

against the disruption and change

that are sure to come.

Still, this firefly seemed lonely

in its scattered looping flight

as I watched it blink

at its predetermined rate,

set to attract a mate

who will never appear.

The futility of the outlier,

who serves a purpose

larger than itself.

Yet so beautiful

in its solitude;

its hopeful light

sent out into the night

like some private semaphore,

that none will ever answer

or even understand.

I sent the rough draft of this poem to one of my “first readers”, who enjoyed it, commented on the title, and referred back to a previous poem about lightning bugs that we both quite like. I wrote her this in response.

“I guess no one got that this is one of the most personal and confessional poems I've written. And believe me, I'm far more guarded in my poetry than most writers, so confessional doesn't come easy or often.

Do you not see that the reason this solitary firefly struck me so instantly and powerfully was because  it's me who is the outlier? I often talk of myself as being in the "long tail", by which I mean the long tail of the normal distribution curve, many standard deviations from average. In particular, so far along that I'm shouldering up against Aspergers, even though I think on many levels I don't fully fit. Which -- not fully fitting, that is -- is both good and bad. Good, because it's nice not to be pathologized. (And also because Asperger himself was a Nazi collaborator ...but never mind about that!) And bad, because it's nice to have the validation as well as the sense of community that a label confers. It's also useful to have that word -- "Aspergers" -- as a convenient shorthand (even if it's not fully accurate) with which to represent yourself quickly and succinctly to others. 

There are "lightning bugs", and then there are "fireflies":  two expressions for the same thing.  The first one is more whimsical; the latter more haunting and evocative. That's why I chose it."

Makers

Aug 24 2018

Written by hand.

The kinaesthetic pleasure

of ink on paper,

the slight tug of friction

the easy-rolling nib.

The unmediated path

between brain and hand;

between tactility and sentience,

learning, and remembrance.

This is not the hand-thrown pot

or embroidered tapestry,

objects of heft and touch

and imperfection.

The thumbprint left, the wheel's wobbly travel,

the stitch dropped

fringe starting to unravel.

Love letters

in an old desk drawer.

Her elegant penmanship

my messy chicken-scratch.

The ink she traced

and paper touched

that still contains her scent,

the nib she licked and left.

Reduced to neat uniform script

in light and ink

on paper, screen, and print.

To the alchemy of thought,

the mental image

that only lives

for as long as I exist.

Like all the things

we lost in the fire

we thought would never end,

as if we once actually believed

the comforting conceit

a thing could last forever.

It's all just stuff, they say.

Yes, but the stuff

that makes our lives make sense.

The talismans we hold

and memories we cherish,

the strong gossamer thread

from which we weave ourselves.

It's how the hand that makes

and the words I know by heart.

How there are 3 lbs of matter

in the average adult brain,

and how the human mind

without space, or weight

can occupy the world.

How I still have her picture

after all the photos burned.

I really just wanted to write about the demise of handwriting -- the personal letter, the actual object -- and also how writing by hand is linked to the creative process. And then this general idea of hard tangible things -- the things we make -- as opposed to the virtual worlds we now tend to inhabit:  how things are incrementally reduced to abstraction; how the ability to make -- the competence and mastery of makers -- has become increasingly rare in our lives. But it took its own direction, as these things do.

The Angels' Share

August 17 2018

To age as gracefully as Scotch

in its wooden cask

in its misty highland home.

Mature notes

of malt and peat and smoke.

With hints of tropical fruit

umami and salt

toffee, leather, soap.

And as the barrels swell, the potent liquor concentrates.

So each successive year, 3 percent is lost,

just as inexorable fate

as I approach my end

will be loss after loss, as well.

While whiskey fanciers console themselves

that the scent in the air

is the angels' share

as time exacts its tithe.

As if to appease the gods.

Or as if to declare

that a single malt

brings you closer to heaven

and relieves your earthbound cares.

Tipsy angels

drunk on fumes

cavorting in the boozy haze,

too pissed

to dance on pins

or recite their evening prayers.

But I know nothing of fine whiskey,

taken straight

over spring water

without garnish or ice.

In a thick-walled tumbler

made of plain clear glass,

as unaffected

as the steady hand

in which it's held.

Its heavy bottom

anchored to the polished bar,

a warm amber glow

suffusing its charge.

In an age of instant gratification

a well-aged Scotch

is as close to priceless as it gets.

Because even the richest man

cannot buy time

no matter how much he desires it.

The decades it takes

are irreplaceable,

and his horde of gold

might just as well be dross.

So to stave in a barrel

before its time

is a kind of sacrilege.

Like a chainsaw to a tree

that has stood forever

and the weeds that will grow in its place.

The vandal

who desecrates nature.

The whiskey

we take to forget.

Self-Made

Aug 1 2019

The small ducklings

are little balls of fluff

that seem unsinkable;

like bobbing corks

that would shoot up and out

if a finger forced them under.

They frantically shadow their mother,

webbed feet, beneath the mirror surface

paddling furiously,

a determined flotilla

churning the calm.

So when one pauses, nods

vanishes

I think of dumb luck.

Of chance, fluke, and happenstance,

not Darwin's fitness as destiny

or the deserving rich,

whose article of faith

is that they are self-made

in a world of just rewards.

Because the pike's razor-sharp teeth

which strike from below

are oblivious to such certainties.

Because in life, there is the accident of birth,

and too much coincidence, contingency, randomness

to imagine agency rules

one's fate is earned.

And the children who are watching from shore

and are hustled away

and return to their play.

Or are instructed in the cycle of life,

by concerned parents

who do not mean to be unkind

but are too earnest to shield the eyes

of their impressionable young.

She, too, is a fine mother

and shepherds her little ducklings

as best she can.

As unbearably cute as they are

on this Arcadian lake

on this beautiful day.

Never mind what lurks

in the murky depths

its sun-dappled face conceals.

I've been reading a lot about something called the Universal Basic Income, a concept for a government program that will, depending upon your ideological worldview, either revolutionize social welfare or signal the beginning of the end of civilization. This sharp divergence became clear as I debated my sister-in-law. All she can see is moral hazard and the undeserving poor. While I see the research that shows how unexpectedly beneficial programs like this have proven not only to the disadvantaged but to society as a whole (for liberals like me, and especially in a society that is becoming more unequal and more resistant to social mobility); to cost saving (for the tax-cutters), and to efficiency (for the libertarians who champion small government and less bureaucracy). Really, I think her attitude comes from a worldview that believes we actually live in a meritocracy: that successful people are self-made; that the system is not rigged to favour the already rich or well-connected; and that the poor are deserving of their fate as much as the rich have earned theirs.

I'm also a fierce Darwinian. My intellectual formation has led me to reduce everything – from human behaviour to my understanding the natural world – to evolutionary biology, where all comes down to survival and reproduction. But truth is, the process of selection is not so clean. The sardine that gets plucked and eaten from a vast wheeling cauldron of sardines was no less genetically endowed, no less fit; it was simply the victim of dumb luck. There is no “selection” here, just randomness and chance. And yesterday, when I saw the ducks obediently trailing their mother – so at home on the lake, innocent and oblivious – I immediately thought how vulnerable they are here in open water; wondered how many will ultimately succumb to the perils of early life; and affirmed this notion of fluke and happenstance. Darwinian pruning works in theory and on average and in the long term; but you can't rigorously apply it to individual outcomes. Contingency rules. 

But while Darwin had it right, “social Darwinism” is intellectually dishonest. The “accident of birth” is not just genetic; it depends on the social environment. So outcomes should be seen as much through a sociological as a psychological lens: that is, not just the responsibility of the individual's character and choices; but of institutional impediments, social organization, and the unequal opportunity that comes from being born poor, or of a certain race or appearance or population group, and in a place and time. There may be the “undeserving poor” and the irredeemable; but their numbers are inconsequential enough that their existence should not determine social policy. And while there are, indeed, self-made men (and women, of course!), here again outcomes are due to so much more than individual fitness. Because so much in life's long passage is chance, not just preparation and initiative. Even the fact of being born well-off confers great advantage. So the rich do get richer; but by and large not because of any inherent justice or moral superiority or personal attribute.

Anyway, I saw an opportunity to write a political poem on the fallacy of the “self-made man”, but one that wouldn't seem quite so political, or pretentious, or preachy as that sounds.

I'm a congenital pessimist, and generally pretty morbid. Danger lurks everywhere. And death is the single thing all living beings share. So the ending is all me. But for those looking for uplift, I can only hope that its darkness is somewhat redeemed by those cute little balls of fluff!