DOORWAYS CAUSE FORGETTING; PLATH'S MAD GIRL'S LOVE SONG

Existence is plagiarism. ~ Emile Cioran

~~~

BORROWER

A hesitant knock on the door.

I look out, then down.

The neighbors’ little boy,

I think his name is

Christian, stands staring at his

tennis shoes, faded T-shirt ripped

at the neck. He holds a cup tilted

at a forlorn angle, stammers,

I don’t remember

what my mother sent me for.

Standing at the blue door

of a long life,

my cup only half full,

I can’t remember either.

What did I come for?

What was it I wanted?

~ Una Hynum © 2012

           

I’ve used this wonderful poem before, in the post THE BURDEN OF CHOICE; I’m pleased to use it again. A masterpiece does not get “used up”: a great poem has the power to leave us in hushed awe time after time. (This may not be true of Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium”; in my view, that’s because, after the first three gorgeous stanzas and the perfect closure of “gather me / into the artifice of eternity,” the last stanza is relatively weak and the last two lines are flat.)

Una’s poem has a very effective, hush-producing ending. But readers also love the line that says “standing at the blue door.” Yes, that’s the final door. In life we pass through so many doors, literal and metaphoric. As we are about to pass through the last one, it is our final chance to ask ourselves what we came for and what we wanted. I think Ray Carver was among the lucky few: he managed to answer at least the second question. Dying of lung cancer at only fifty, he wrote this:

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

           ~ Ray Carver (1938-1988)

If we suddenly had to “leave this plane” (as we say in California), most of us, I am afraid, would not say that we got what we wanted. But then we’d have to confess that we didn’t really know what we wanted. Or perhaps we knew it at an early age, had no courage to reach for it, and remembered that summons from destiny only when the clock of life said: Too late.

And how interesting that Carver, a successful writer (I also enjoy his poems), chose not fame, but being able to "call myself beloved, to feel myself / beloved on the earth." My chief desire has been to be on the right path in terms of work. It's when I feel I am on the right path that I feel myself beloved. And no, it has nothing to do with fame. Interesting, I keep saying to myself, interesting. Just to be doing what feels I should be doing. 

I did not have this clarity even a few years ago, so I am all in favor of saying: let us not be so hard on ourselves. To know what we want in life is perhaps the most difficult thing of all. A trivial foreshadowing of this “not knowing” is the near-universal phenomenon of walking into a room wanting something, except we can’t remember what it was.

Why can’t we remember? One reason is too many doors. The most fascinating article I found last week was “Doorways Cause Forgetting”: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-mishaps/201205/doorways-cause-forgetting

It happens to all of us. It’s not the beginning of dementia. It turns out that “doorway-caused forgetting” is part of normal brain function. That’s why it’s so common for people to walk into a room and there blank, with no idea of what they came for.

 “Walking through doorways empties your mind,” the author explains.  This was shown in experiments where people had to walk through doorways as opposed to continuing in space with no doorways. “When we enter a new environment, we construct a new situational model, which erases the old model.” And the old model included the information about the momentary previous self that needed to get something.

This confirms the fragmentary nature of our perception: the brain does not have a complete picture of “reality.” It has just dots to get by: the brain improvises by connecting the dots and filling in the gaps. A new environment, such as a different room, can easily erase our vague memory of what it was we needed in the other room.

One remedy, I’ve discovered, is to name the object you need, and then repeat that name as you keep walking (e.g. “masking tape, masking tape”). This little triumph of language as memory can spare you many useless trips, especially if you need to climb the stairs. I suspect it’s not only doorways that cause forgetting; step by step, stairways are even worse. The self at the top of the stairs is not the same as the clueless self at the bottom. Regardless, repetition is the mother of memory. Carrying a word is like carrying a holy icon: it can work miracles.

###

After all this self-help, let’s have more poetry – and what is poetry, real poetry, if not a kind of holy icon that keeps us in touch with our innermost reality?

Mad Girl's Love Song

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

~ Sylvia Plath, 1951; published in Mademoiselle, August 1953.

**

The first two lines are actually quite right on, and remind me of Bishop Berkeley’s precept that “to be is to be perceived” (esse est percipi). This poem could also serve to illustrate the meaning of solipsism (solus – alone; ipse – self): one can’t be sure of the existence of anything outside one’s own mind. Are other people “really real”?

I love the rhyme – I’ve always been crazy about rhyme, though now it’s forbidden and even slant rhyme mustn’t be too obvious. And of course I love the heaven and hell references: “God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade.” The fall of god extinguishes the fires of hell: the screaming and moaning cease at last, after so many centuries (though only decades in an individual’s life – still a horror). (Although it’s possible that the only way to reach paradise, in this life, includes a willingness to enter hell.)

Note that here the speaker controls the life and death of the world. She is above nature – she can make the world live, or die, simply by opening and closing her eyes. Call it solipsism or call it a keen insight: the world lives in us. We make it up in our head. 

“I should have loved a thunderbird instead” adds a touch of humor for me.

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.

The mythological thunderbird becomes more real than the lover (who may indeed be imaginary – or so rarely seen in flesh that he becomes more fantasy than a real man).

But ultimately any lover is, to a shocking degree, someone that we make up inside our head. We can experience another person only so far and no further. We can’t get inside their mind and see the world through their eyes. That’s where we come up against the “otherness of the other.”

Something that Yeats said applies here: The tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul.

“Mad Girl’s Love Song” is a villanelle; while in college Plath wrote a lot of villanelles and other poems in form. (I first said “young Plath” — but she never got past being “young”; she was only thirty when she died; yet we can say “early Plath” versus “mature Plath”.) I love the music of this one. It shows that Plath had an astonishing mastery of craft even before The Colossus. This poem reminds me how extraordinary Plath can be — even the early Plath.

It’s possible that the only way to reach paradise, in this life, includes a willingness to enter hell, a willingness to make sacrifices for one’s vocation and take risks, such as a love relationship with an exceptional person, that may lead to a disaster.

Yet Plath held poetry close to her heart, like one of Dostoyevski’s heroines who jumps out the window hugging a holy icon to her chest. Poetry can be that icon, connecting us to the inner life —almost always, of course, in the service of life, not death — of enduring.

**

Extraordinary – I don’t use the word lightly. And again I want to quote that crucial passage from James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code:

Extraordinary people display calling most evidently. Perhaps that’s why they fascinate. Perhaps, too, they are extraordinary because their calling comes through so clearly and they are so loyal to it . . .  They seem to have no other choice . . . Extraordinary people are not a different category; the workings of this engine in them are simply more transparent. (p. 28-29)

“Extraordinary people are not a different category”; it’s just that they have clarity about their vocation and a great loyalty to it. And this brings me to another article:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/strategic-thinking/201206/why-quitters-win

The title is misleading. By “quitters,” the author, Nick Tasler, means people who can commit oneself to one option and eliminate the rest. To use an extreme example (mine, not his), Frank Lloyd Wright also loved music. But he didn’t try to be both an architect and a piano virtuoso. He chose his path early and persisted. Architecture is a kind of frozen music – but we don’t need to go that far. He made his choice, and became extraordinary.

Here we come back to the finding that less choice is better, and no choice may be best (depending on the matter at hand). REDUCE OR ELIMINATE CHOICE. Keeping options open is not only stressful, but virtually guarantees failure.

But how can we know if option 1 is the best if option 2 looks yummy also, and option 3 has its seductive angles as well? If the pull of a single option is not that distinct, we have to make a leap of faith. I hate to confess how many times I simply tossed a coin . . .  but even that is better than sitting half-dressed at the edge of a bed, like a woman in a painting by Edward Hopper. Should she put on the red dress or the blue one? (Do I hear someone say, “But Oriana, she is trying to decide if life is worth living!” – Listen, I know what it means to be a woman. She can’t make up her mind about what to wear. The problem is that it all looks good. It’s the cumulative microtrauma of trivial choices that makes women so exhausted.)

Decisiveness: the ability to choose one thing, one course of action, while “quitting” others. Eliminating the stress of choice. To quote from the article:

The inability to make what Harvard ethics professor, Joseph Badaracco, calls “right vs. right” decisions can be a fatal strategic flaw. An otherwise talented manager who can’t bring himself to focus on one customer segment at the expense of others (but what if they want to buy, too!?!) winds up taking his team in circles, and his career into a rut.  

At the heart of strategic thinking is the ability to focus on one strategy while consciously quitting the pursuit of others. Choosing what we want to do is easy. It's choosing what else we want to do that we are nonetheless going to quit doing that is the hard part—to build the school by stripping funding from the hospital; to develop this product while shutting down production of that one. As David Packard (of Hewlett-Packard fame) once said “more companies die from overeating than starvation.” The same truth applies to our careers and personal lives.

**

I’m not sure if I agree with the statement “choosing what we want to do is easy.” For some people it is, for others it isn’t. Perhaps the author should have said: “choosing what we most want to do.” But even then . . . Try asking someone, “What’s the most important thing in your life?” People I know would sooner discuss their sex lives (or lack of them).

I do agree, though, that paying the price of focusing – sacrificing other attractive things and activities – may be even harder. Not particularly for me – once I have clarity, it’s relatively easy for me to be single-minded. But I’ve known people so immersed in a dozen attractive activities that they are always in a rush, frantic, unable to do anything at the level of excellence.

We live in a manic, multi-tasking, short-attention span culture. My most important motto is DO LESS. The less you do (but the more thoroughly you do it, and the more you enjoy doing it), the more you will accomplish.

Why? For one thing, you’ll be eliminating a lot of choice-making, possibly the primary source of stress in modern life. The future belongs to the decisive – the “quitters,” those who quit doing too many things.

Plath had the advantage of one huge blessing: she found her calling early in life. Call me Scorpio Rising: I love “Mad Girl’s Love Song.” With a wisdom uncanny for someone so young, Plath exposes the solipsism of being in love. It seems to us that that’s exactly when we are the least self-centered, being so connected to the Beloved. But is the Beloved mostly someone we made up, a holy icon we carry in our heads, driving with that image in our mind all the way to Canada? Even so, it’s a state of grace.

A state of grace as long as it inspires rather than interferes with our accomplishing something in the world. Remember Longfellow (I harbor a secret fondness for Longfellow):

Life is earnest, life is real,

and the grave is not its goal.

Not the grave, but accomplishing something – which could be writing poems that connect us with that mysterious Otherworld which is in this world. Or it could be having loving relationships and “gracious living.” It could be volunteering for a charity. There is enough potential “meaning in life” to fit anyone’s talents and personality. The only problem is that we “can’t have it all.” Once we accept that, the rest is . . . well, not exactly easy, but doable. As one visual artist told me, “When you concentrate on one small thing, something huge begins to unfold.”    

**

Hyacinth:

A neat blog.  Reading it, I realized the key word here is "KNOW." Do we ever know what we want enough to make a conscious choice? It seems more fate or luck. And everyday we wake to pass through the door of a new day and forget, if we ever knew, what we came for.

Oriana:

I love your prose poem about passing “through the door of a new day and forgetting, if we ever knew, what we came for.” Yes, each day brings such an avalanche of new challenges, sometimes I wonder how anything gets done as planned. No wonder there is a small book for “Women Who Do Too Much,” and the main idea is: “Today I’ve done (fill in the blank), AND THAT IS ENOUGH.” It’s an attempt to gain control by doing LESS. Another key word in this blog is LESS – the need for less, so we can give more attention to what is MEANINGFUL, what brings us closer to our perceived purpose.

I want to sidestep the eternal and non-resolvable debate over free will versus determinism by saying that yes, all cognitive processing is unconscious, and yet, and yet . . .  The very fact that some of it does get communicated to those brain regions that generate consciousness must have some significance. Maybe this conscious knowing, or the illusion that we know, helps us to “hold the course,” the way repeating a word virtually guarantees that we will remember what it was we wanted from another room – unless we encounter something startling on the way, and that of course has the power to erase our small and temporary “holy icon.”

And if we remember an idea – for instance, that by doing less we will accomplish more – if we keep repeating that, and offer conscious resistance against the onslaught of competing demands – then there is some hope for not being merely a straw carried by a flood.

There is also this: making a leap of faith, closing other options, and working in a full-hearted way – but also being very sensitive to feedback from all directions. A friend of a friend said he “listens to what the universe says in response to his decision.” Usually there are pretty clear signals if we are on the right or wrong track. An athlete’s training schedule may seem pretty grueling to the rest of us, but to the athlete it’s ecstasy because it has a MEANING. An athlete KNOWS what he wants: to get faster and/or stronger, to win the race, the game.

There is a power to knowing, because it’s a power of having a meaning, a purpose. Alas, self-help books tend to ask: write down ten things you want in your life. No: write down ONE thing, the one you want most. But wait: is the word WANT the right one? Should we perhaps say: the one you LOVE most?

When I look at what I loved most at the age of 12, 22, 32, 42 and on, I get an instant answer: reading interesting books. Learning. Writing is secondary to my being a learner; it grows out of it. But that’s getting into another infinity.

                                                                                                                                

Scott:

Your blog raised, as always, thought provoking issues, and with coffee by my side I will attempt to add to your excellent musings. I would be very reluctant to leave all my choices; I have, we all really do, so many. Birds, whaling, poetry, history, college football, coffee, travel and just so many others too numerous to list have been my joy and passion for so long I just don't see how I could possibly choose.

Poetry is a relative latecomer, only in the last few years has it risen to a true passion. I loved your thought on poetry as a “holy icon”– the best poetry is very akin to that. I think of how poorer my life would be today had I not discovered poetry after 40...and your blog I might add. I have written over the years so many scraps of outlines for stories, poems and other writing projects, they fill a drawer – and even a large coffee mug my daughter brought back from London: my cup truly 'overfloweth'! And the vast, vast majority have never seen completion and I sometimes take myself to task for that. But then I recall....you guessed it....a favorite quote:

  

 For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!” ~ Herman Melville, Moby Dick. 

Plath is such a tragedy: what talent and promise! It's a common refrain, I know, but why are so many poets victims of this melancholia. I ache for these “Odysseuses of the arts” who sacrifice so much for our enjoyment of their gifts. 

I have been reading a lot of Tennyson of late. He too was often distressed and anxious over his life and was renowned and lauded in his lifetime, unlike Melville. I prefer the Tolkien life, full of family, friends and a grand project that consumed him all his life. And even though his Lord of the Rings masterpiece did indeed consume him, he also found time to be a poet, artist, translator, wrote several children's book and taught at Oxford for decades. Throw in his happy home life of a wife and children who went on to have successful careers of their own.

Contrast that with Tolstoy who had fame, money and title, and for years was absolutely miserable...I'll take the Hobbit life in the Shire with food and drink with loved ones. Plath's intellect, upbringing and talent are a prime example that having good looks and brains and talent does not guarantee happiness. Plath was a fan of Moby Dick, and I came across this great quote:

I am rereading Moby Dick in preparation for the exam deluge tomorrow—am whelmed and wondrous at the swimming Biblical & craggy Shakespearean cadences, the rich & lustrous & fragrant recreation of spermaceti, ambergris—miracle, marvel, the ton-thunderous leviathan. One of my few wishes: to be (safe, coward that I am) aboard a whale ship through the process of turning a monster to light and heat. ~ Sylvia Plath, Journals, pg. 370

I wish that last line too!

Oriana:

Thank you for that magnificent quotation from Plath’s journals. Spermaceti, ambergris – I can imagine how much she loved those words. (“Ambergris” is one of my favorite poems by Jorie Graham: “We must be unforgettable or not at all.”)

I hope I didn’t create the impression that a writer should have no particular interests, and indeed even wide interests. The whole beauty of being a writer, and especially an essay writer, is that you can use practically anything that comes your way.  You learn alchemy: how to transform even the whale of the mundane into light and heat.

My point was rather that once you are aware of what is most important to you, and dedicate yourself to it, the other interests are made to serve the calling; they are subjugated. Those that seriously compete for your time will drop away. So the sacrifice is of that of other potential callings, not of activities that feed what you sense is your true calling.

But I speak as a “born writer,” or however we may want to call it. Some people might want to put a derogatory label on it, such as “workaholic.” They think great achievement is due strictly to “talent,” something one is born with; then they read the famous person’s biography, and discover a “workaholic” – which should be a source of inspiration rather than dejection – but it’s a rare person who wants true achievement.

I do, even if my accomplishment is bound to be modest. It’s not about fame; for me it’s about enjoying my life, being able to shape and release my thoughts. In the morning I can’t wait to read something good, and then to get to the keyboard.

Now I can hardly believe that I went through periods – years – and not long ago, but even quite recently – when I felt I had no venue for my gifts and intelligence; no one wanted what I had to offer. It took enormous labor to get a handful of people to attend a poetry workshop – no matter how much praise I received for my innovative workshops. Poetry was so marginal for others, while it was central to my life. As a poet in a family-centered community – after having developed within the Los Angeles poetry scene, not so permeated by the idolatry of the family – I felt I was truly “from another planet.” From that kind of isolation it’s only a step to suicidal depression. You can imagine how blessed I feel now.

I’ve discovered that a sense of calling is a great source of strength. Now, whatever life throws at me, I can transmute into writing. (Ideally, that holds true for poetry also, but poetry is a hundred times more difficult than prose.) What a difference from being constantly devastated (and over time it took less and less adversity and rejection to feel more and more devastated). All this fortunate change because now I can say, “I am a writer.” I confess I am astonished.

Note also that prose writers don’t have the startling suicide rate that poets do. A poet is at the mercy of inspiration; a non-fiction prose writer can find inspiration in anything – what joy! 

Plath is a tragedy, but also a triumph. Look, we are reading her words . . . her brain children live . . . her stars continue to waltz out in red and blue.            

Sarah:

The early Plath poem is extraordinary – glorious! and so is your post, particularly the bit actually about doorways causing forgetting. I am not sure I agree about the stairs, but the passing through doorways – it's a small felt shift, a flash of satori, every time, and one I never noticed. We forget what we wanted and who we are and it feels – well to me it feels good. So while knowing what you want and getting it before the final doorway is of vital importance in life, at the same time the second we are through that doorway it is not going to matter at all.

This brings me into a discussion I was having with a colleague yesterday about choice and self and how intertwined they are, and how the illusions of and attachments to both can be dropped, leaving us with actually a more solid existence.

Oriana:

Plath’s villanelle is indeed glorious, and deserves to be better known. It’s very odd, given its importance in Plath’s life (the Mademoiselle award that led to Plath’s experiences in New York, and later to The Bell Jar), that Ted Hughes somehow “forgot” to include it in The Collected Poems.  

When I think of the dreadful waste of my chronic depression, I see that one of my central problems was getting stuck on both self and choice. I thought that I, a definable self, made a terrible choice, the fount of all the disasters that followed. Eventually I realized that, given the circumstances, my inexperienced and quite forgivable early self really had no choice. It wasn’t even about forgiving myself so much as understanding that there was no need to forgive. The choice had been illusory. The solution was to embrace my circumstances and make the best of “fate.” When I found myself making the best of it, I came to see the obvious: I love my quiet life. What a privilege! How crazy that just several years ago I was having crying fits because my life was what it was, quiet rather than exciting.

To the Buddhist saying, “No self, no problem,” I’d like to add: “No choice, no problem.” That’s what the second article, “Why Quitters Win,” keeps affirming. Commit yourself and close the other options. “When standing, stand; when sitting, sit. Above all, don’t wobble.” 

I also need to correct myself about stairs and forgetting. In my experience, as I go downstairs, I often forget what it was that my upstairs self wanted from the kitchen or the dinette; but as I ascend, I begin to remember what it was downstairs that I forgot to bring with me (and yes, to get to the stairs I pass through a doorway; the piece of paper on which I scribbled some morning insight remains a part of the “dinette context,” instead of being envisioned near the computer). I admire the wisdom of grandmothers: never go upstairs empty-handed.

Charles:

Love the first image.

Love Cioran’s quote, “Existence is plagiarism.”

Thank you for explaining why I forget so often when walking into a room.

Love it that you are still on the topic of God.

Speaking of forgetting going from room to room, in a Jewish home the Mezuzah is put on the doorpost of every room to remind people of Divine energy and the oneness of the universe. Not exactly what you are talking about but an interesting aside.

Oriana:

Yes, the Mezuzah is an interesting example of a “reminder.” As you walk into the house, the transient outdoors self is discarded, and now you are reminded of religion. It was interesting to read that the parchment in the Mezuzah often contains the name Shaddai, or the letter shin meant to stand for El Shaddai. There are various names of god used in the Hebrew scriptures that are essentially lost in translation. The serene, generous Elohim in the first chapter of Genesis does not seem the same deity as the lying, vengeful Yahweh. “Shaddai” is probably “god of the mountain,” but it’s interesting that a female biblical scholar suggested an association with Shadayim, “breasts,” implying nurturing. In the future there will no doubt be other interpretation, according to the spirit of the times. With more female scholars, will there be a renewed interest in Asherah, the Hebrew equivalent of Ishtar? It’s impossible to predict.

Jack Miles, in his award-winning “God: A Biography,” writes: "The God whom ancient Israel worshiped arose as a fusion of a number of the gods whom a nomadic nation had met in its wanderings” (p. 20).

                                                                            

THE BURDEN OF CHOICE

I remember a small paragraph in a book created for the men’s movement.  Under the heading Don’t burden the female with choice, the paragraph said:

A woman wants a man who is decisive. When a woman asks you, “Should I wear the red dress or the blue dress?” – don’t say, “Either one is fine.” This throws the burden of choice back on the woman. Without a moment’s hesitation, say, “The red one.” After all, it doesn’t matter.

Never mind the patronizing tone. In our politically correct era, this kind of “male straight talk” is downright amusing. I loved the heading: “Don’t burden the female with choice.” Once done with the inner chuckling, I went past it to extract the treasure: AFTER ALL, IT DOESN’T MATTER. The man is not supposed to say these words to the poor choice-burdened female. But he is supposed to know the great secret, the secret that makes him strong and (mostly) silent. Thus he can give a decisive answer right away, sparing the unenlightened woman hours of agony on the cross of choice.

In the one minute it took to read this paragraph, I learned two revolutionary things: 1) choice means stress; 2) AFTER ALL, IT DOESN’T MATTER.

That last sentence kept rolling like huge thunder in my mind. I realized it applied to a lot of things that I thought mattered. But the word “thought” wasn’t the right one. I had never given it much thought. I only assumed a lot of various things mattered, without pausing to examine if that was true.

In the last two years of her life, my mother became Ecclesiastes. She started saying, “That’s not important.” It wasn’t just red dress versus blue dress, but practically everything. She knew she didn’t have much time left. “That’s not important” became her mantra, her last clarity. I can’t believe that I never dared ask her what WAS important. The answer is of course obvious: there is no such thing as THE answer. What's the most important thing in your life? As with the meaning of life, the answer is different for each person.

Even before all this enlightenment (including also the moment when a friend said, “It’s only a poem”), the question of what matters intrigued me: the mystery of it, the suspicion that it’s something different than what I think it is. I don’t know if I lived the question, as Rilke tells us to do, but I certainly loved the question. Specifically, I loved this poem by Bukowski:

it bothers the young most, I think:

an unviolent slow death.

still it makes any man dream;

you wish for an old sailing ship,

the white salt-crusted sail

and the sea shaking out hints of immortality

sea in the nose sea in the hair

sea in the marrow, in the eyes

and yes, there in the chest.

will we miss

the love of a woman or music or food

or the gambol of the great mad muscled

horse, kicking clods and destinies

high and away

in just one moment of the sun coming down?

~ Charles Bukowski, The Pleasures of the Damned

The great horse stands for the sublime, the beauty that’s the beginning of terror and could destroy us. The juxtaposition of “clods and destinies” says everything about the ultimate fate of our ambitions. Perhaps it’s only the sublime moments that matter. I knew that I would probably never have an absolute answer, but at least I began imagining myself at eighty, looking back at my life, asking what mattered. Poetry? The taste of wild strawberries? Service to others? Love – or maybe deep affection rather than love; not the excitement of romance, but tenderness?

In old age, I wonder, what will I

remember? Pages I have

written, pages I have read?

Or will one of my souls go back to

where we used to walk

on the beach, holding hands –

~ Oriana, “Praying with St. Augustine”

*

But even at eighty, can we be sure we’ll know? A poet who is past eighty wrote this poem:

BORROWER 

A hesitant knock on the door.

I look out, then down.

The neighbors’ little boy,

I think his name is

Christian, stands staring at his

tennis shoes, faded T-shirt ripped

at the neck. He holds a cup tilted

at a forlorn angle, stammers,

I don’t remember

what my mother sent me for.

Standing at the blue door

of a long life,

my cup only half full,

I can’t remember either.

What did I come for?

What was it I wanted?

~ Una Hynum

**

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have some reason to believe that eventually an angel will tell us what we came here for and what we truly wanted. But no matter how long we stand there with our cup, begging for an answer, nobody can give it to us. The universal fate – with some notable but few exceptions – is that we die not knowing. But we keep constructing the story of our life as we go along, trying to put some meaning on our experiences.

And that’s already magnificent – that even in the most absurd circumstances, we manage to create a tiny crumb of meaning that keeps us alive. A tiny bit of love, in the end sometimes just for a houseplant, the widow’s last geranium. Do not despise the geranium. Its ability to blossom in its bedraggled condition makes it the ideal companion. So that’s my attempt at an answer to some of the huge questions: that geranium matters.

“PLAY THE PIANO UNTIL THE FINGERS BLEED A LITTLE”

You may say that the mantra “It doesn’t matter” is fine when it comes to things that really don’t matter, but what about the great decisions about education, marriage, career? According to Barry Schwartz (The Paradox of Choice), it’s pretty much the same. Most people don’t really know what they want, so it doesn’t matter. Don’t let yourself be paralyzed. Don’t stall. Close your eyes and leap. Commit yourself and make the best of it. Your brain will later manufacture reasons to show that your “choice” was the best given the circumstances, and you will be happy with it. If the worst comes to the worst, you’ll shrug it off as a “learning experience.”  

But to complicate matters, now we have the advice that could not have been uttered in, say, the Victorian age: follow your bliss. Bliss is not hedonistic pleasure. It’s deep pleasure, “soul pleasure.” In old-fashioned idiom, that was “Follow your heart” or “follow your passion.” Some prefer to say, “Follow your intuition.” Generally, however, we’ve been so manipulated since early childhood, so governed by choices that others made for us, that it can take a long time before we know our bliss or our passion. And then it may take a lot of courage to follow it, or life circumstances may not allow it – often due to decisions made by the ignorant teenager we used to be, decisions that have determined our adult life.

And besides, there is the subversive argument flickering at the edge here: that it doesn’t matter so much what we choose, but that we choose, and then work at it with full dedication. Even if we are lucky enough to know our greatest talent, it will come to nothing unless we work at it. “Play the piano till the fingers bleed a little,” Bukowski says, with what we can imagine as a sadistic smile. But every artist knows the truth of it.

And this, ultimately, is what Kohelet (Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher) suggests is the only escape from the universal “vanity of vanities” – the dedication to life and work that today we’d call “engagement.” “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest” (Eccl 9:10). 

And another wise person -- alas, I don't know the source -- said, A mind divided by choices, confused by alternatives, is a mind robbed of its power. All gods are jealous gods, but all are equally protective if they can take over completely.

*
There we have it: make a choice, any choice, and close the door on the process of choosing. Throw yourself into this one thing. Work “with all thy might,” for there is no work once life is over. And though the Preacher says something about putting on clean garments and delighting in the embrace of your wife, none of this is so emphatically stated as putting your whole heart into your work: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, DO IT WITH ALL THY MIGHT.”(Oh, you too, lone heart, ancient intellectual, I want to murmur to the Preacher.)

In his famous “Aubade,” Philip Larkin likewise says we are saved by work. Sometimes I say that the hope of one more sunset is enough to keep me alive, but deep down I know it’s my daily work. This too could be questioned as of no lasting value, but I’ve learned not to question, to let work be its own reward. Dedicated work was my way out of suicidal depression – not just an escape but a permanent closure on that long chapter in my life. Heaven without work would be hell for me.

But last night, as I listened to Chopin’s nocturnes, I felt such pure delight that I thought I wouldn't mind spending a century just listening to those. A century for the first three nocturnes, and then a bit farther into eternity listening to the rest. So I think that to Freud’s reply about what matters in life: “love and work,” I’d add music. Beauty in general, but especially music.

BUT WHAT ABOUT CARING AND SERVICE

“Follow your bliss” presumably fuses love and work and beauty into an overarching guiding principle. Critics jump on “follow your bliss” as an example of the narcissism that spells the doom of the Western civilization. In “For a Moment,” I confess to a moment of blindness in my early teens:

I remember, when I was twelve,

an older cousin sermonizing

about the blessedness of giving.

Standing at the portal of life, still safe,

my joy complete just looking at the river,

I exclaimed, I don’t want to give.

I want to take and take and take.

There’s no memorial to the honey hue

of that lush July, that lazy breeze

when I pronounced my heresy.

Nor to the blinding noon when I knew

I had to live on because

I had not given enough.

That “blinding noon” did not happen until I was in my mid-thirties. Only then I finally grasped the pleasure of giving, of touching the lives of others in a significant and positive way. To quote the Preacher again, “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days” (Eccl 11:1). But goodness and generosity are their own reward; they feel good in the moment.

This, too, was one of the surprise discoveries I made embarrassingly late in life. When we give, we feel powerful; acting loving is the opposite of the feeling powerless and useless. Is it possible that we are wired for altruism as much as for aggression? Probably, since we are social animals. That’s why I decided that Azrael isn’t just the Angel of Death, but the Angel of Love as well. The knowledge of our common fate reinforces empathy with others. O the puzzles and complexities, the “oy” in joy. And the delicious suspicion that what matters isn’t at all what we think matters, but that it comes to pass anyway.

And here inevitably we come to the idea of “being a part of something larger than ourselves.” We automatically are a part of that just by being human. Call it the ripple effect, call it the immortality of influence, call it the mystery of human life – we sense that something larger is playing itself out. We are the instruments for that larger music.  

And we are just barely beginning to think in terms of humanity rather than a particular country, say. For me, the first stage of that larger thinking came with the casual remark by an American stranger (it’s still impossible to imagine this exchange taking place in Europe). Let me close with a poem that describes yet another of my moments of enlightenment:

AZRAEL

“Polish or German, what’s the difference,”

he shrugged, the American

who thought I was German.

“A huge difference,” I began,

face flushed with the venom of history.

Dates of battles,

marshes of blood.

I grew up in a mass graveyard.

Yet the stranger was right.

No nation is eternal.

Greece keens over the splendid

broken bodies,

Egypt sleeps in her own tomb.

Who I really was –

Polish or German,

French or Russian –

empty thrones in echoing museums.

*

On my second trip to Poland, we visited

my mother’s schoolteacher.

Ninety-four, she’d grown tiny as a child.

Her skin was peeling like old oilcloth.

Straining to see us, eyes bleached of color,

she fluttered to the oak wardrobe:

“I must put on something pretty!”

She recognized only

my cousin Yanka, daughter of her

great love. Told over and over

who I was, whose daughter I was,

she’d forget and greet me again,

looking up with such light

in those half-blind eyes

that slowly I understood:

who I was, what my name was –

echoes thinner than the soul.

When the Angel of Love and Death

stands over us with trembling wings,

no difference as she sings

another story. It’s the music

that carries us on.

~ Oriana © 2012

Hyacinth:

The blog delicious, full of wisdom and points to ponder. I picked up a book by May Sarton, and in her intro I found this: “Here I am, willy-nilly writing poems in my eightieth  years and the reason is partly because I am a foreigner in the land of old age and have tried to learn the language. These poems are minimal because my life is reduced to essences. No more travel except across a room, dictating instead of writing a journal, a lot of meditating, looks at the sea from my window down at the end of the long field, and as always I am mesmerized by flowers on the table beside me. I live with essences with what is innermost these days because outermost is often beyond my strength. I can pay that absolute attention Simone Weil called "prayer" to a bird at the feeder outside my window or a bunch of anemones opening to show purple hearts. I have more time for being and less ability to do than ever before. So a poem that flies in the middle of the night is very acceptable."

Oriana:

That’s a beautiful description of how being physically handicapped, even in a relatively mild way (no more travel except across a room), can result in a more intense life of the mind. Also, aging makes us more aware that we will have to say goodbye to all the things we love, so we better love them while there is still time. Thus, being mesmerized by flowers and the absolute attention to the bird at the feeder. Now I must have flowers in the house; years ago I didn’t care. I must listen to music every day; years ago, I let go of music, preoccupied as I was with accomplishing – accomplishing what? I can’t even remember. Now I see beauty as indispensable. I’m not willing to live without it.

I’ve just started the habit of eating raspberries and wild blueberries – I get the relatively inexpensive frozen kind at Trader Joe’s. Years ago, the idea of eating berries every day would have struck me as an extravagance. Now I know that both health and pleasure are incredibly important.

I see now that my worship of achievement was a kind of belief in the afterlife – still in this life, but always in the future. I had to let go of the afterlife and “risk delight” in this life, in the present. 


Marjorie:


I love Una’s poem. It flows so easily. It’s so natural. But so affecting at the end. Who knew it was going there? 


Oriana:


I think it's in Una's Top Five. A simple analogy, but who'd think of it? Only a poet who already is "at the blue door." 

Darlene:

I love the part about the red dress versus blue dress. Women are brainwashed since childhood to think in terms of appearances, not essences, and millions get stuck in trivialities. So, OK, red dress versus blue dress -- it doesn’t really matter. What else doesn’t matter?

Oriana:

Well, if you are a fashion designer, red versus blue does matter. That’s a special case, but also an instance of how we can decide which choices matter, and at the same time break away from the tyranny of choices that don’t matter.

Self-knowledge is the best guide. A fashion designer KNOWS that s/he is a fashion designer. It’s part of the person’s essence. Now, Catholic theology taught me one thing: there is essence, and there is “accident”: the surface, the appearance. The first commandment should be: KNOW THY ESSENCE. Only then you can follow your bliss and make choices with relative ease.

Also -- and this statement has also been revolutionary for me -- if you are true to yourself, then every choice you make is a good one. Let me repeat that: If you are true to your essence, then every choice is good -- so don’t waste too much time trying to decide. That’s torment.

Darlene:

But isn’t it your unconscious that ultimately decides?

Oriana:

Yes. The decision then “appears” in our thoughts. Alas, we often waste time arguing against “first thought, best thought”: but what about A, what about B, and so on with the rest of the alphabet. No. If you are being true to yourself, often there is only one option, and deep down you know right away. If there are two or three options, and they all feel true, just take a leap and don’t look back.

Ursula:

I very interested in the question of choice. It's seldom just this or that. My husband and I have a favorite restaurant. I always order the same thing because I love it and it has never disappointed me. My husband always orders something different because he likes the adventure. In other situations, I always choose "adventure," while he makes the same predictable move.

I agree most things are unimportant but still find it surprising that so many people find "doing without" to be a form of social criticism. 

Oriana:

I started ordering the same thing even before I learned about how stressful choice is. I don’t go to new restaurants unless I have to – usually they are disappointing. I save my sense of adventure for more meaningful things.

I generally wear the same clothes. I remember the years when I felt I needed to figure out a new outfit for every occasion – what a waste of time and money.

The surprising outcome of this “stick to the tried-and-true” policy: life has become simpler, richer, and happier.

I can understand why businesses, especially those dedicated to manipulating people into buying things no one needs, might consider the anti-consumerist attitude disastrous. But I also agree with the motto: “Buy experiences, not things.” Buying experiences (and a lecture is often free or so inexpensive that I hesitate to call it “buying”) means buying memories.

Doing without as a form of social criticism? I haven’t thought of that. I thought of it as wisdom, but then wisdom is a form of social criticism, isn’t it. 

Ewa Parma:

This post is too rich to comment here, it would take an evening with a bowl of raspberries and long conversation, Oriana! 1.I love the phrase: "Do not despise the geranium", good for a poem. Details matter, microcosmos depicting macro etc. 2. you know that Freud hated music? Poor guy, so scared of monsters inside him, concentrated on work and sometimes false assumptions 3.the question of choices is strictly connected with the idea of "free will" or rather lack of it; we choose what we are determined to choose (by nature, genes etc., not by "destiny", though you may call it this name afterwards if you wish) 4.music, yes, it carries us on. I have the habit of listening to my beloved voice on the phone without understanding words and meanings, just like music -- an extraordinary experience, which I also described as a kind of joke in one of my poems 5.the final poem -- great! Thank you.

Oriana:

I have only frozen raspberries, but surprisingly good! Nothing like raspberries straight from the bush, of course, but I've lost those forever when at 17 (sic!) I "chose" America. Actually already at 15, that age of wisdom, I began preparing to live in the West -- as if I knew how to prepare!! Nevertheless, through persistent effort (probably the least efficient way), I acquired a near-perfect READING knowledge of English. You can imagine the comic errors that resulted from my literary English.

Nevertheless, I keep asking myself: did I "consciously decide" to study English with 100% commitment? Did I have any other choice, given my intensity, and my (sometimes insane) tendency to throw myself totally into a task once I have clarity about my goal?

Yes I know that Freud hated music; he'd put his hands over his ears. I love music, but I have the same reaction if the music is not under my control, e.g. someone starts playing it when I am still in my mental writing space, thinking. Music takes over my brain in such a way that I can no longer concentrate. But when I want music, it's one of the feasts of life. I almost can't believe that Mozart and Beethoven existed, Chopin, Tchaikovski -- what a miracle! So much beauty! 

Yes, forever this question if we truly choose anything. Probably not, but having a strong sense of having chosen our goal, however deluded our notion of choice may be, can be helpful in continuing to motivate us to work toward that goal. Some cognitive illusions may be beneficial.

Freud was wrong about so many things, but he did say something ahead of his time: all cognitive activity is unconscious. Only some of it is communicated to the consciousness. Thus we are spared the pain of slow deliberation. Nevertheless, sometimes the mechanism of “intuition” -- another name for behind-the-scenes neural processing -- fails and we find ourselves faced with the “agony of choice.” What can be more pathetic than a woman in the throes of agony because she can't choose which lipstick to buy! And there she stands for 40 minutes or so, idiotically wasting time over something that simply doesn't matter.

Fine, the reader may say, but do we ever know what really matters? I suspect that if there if there is a significant miscommunication between our unconscious (the true "decider") and what we proclaim on the conscious level (never mind that no one can really define consciousness), the brain will act to straighten things out. True, as Una's poem points out, some (most?) people cannot put in words what is most important to them. But when we look at their actions, we can get some idea. // To return to what Obama said -- "I wear only gray or blue suits" in order to eliminate the burden of deciding about trivia -- I don't think he has any idea how revolutionary this is -- how women in particular are stuck in trivia -- and the way to accomplishing anything means eliminating decision stress. // Isn't this wild, that even if we only "think" that we decide, this experience of trying to decide can cause enormous stress and drain our energy? Yes, that's why shopping is so exhausting. That's why I learned to buy pretty much always the same thing, wear the same clothes, go to the same restaurants and order exactly the same thing, etc -- saving my energy for things that are more important to me. 

Ewa:

I laughed about shopping because I do the same and as seldom as possible. Choosing is exhausting. And when you think of it in broader context, i.e.choosing your partner or profession when you are only 18, it seems clear that you don't choose at all. It just happens to you.
 
Oriana:

It is a horror, to think that the teenager you were did things that may be still blighting your adult life, decades later! I had a lot of forgiving myself to do, and what helped me tremendously was not only the excuse of having been young and foolish, but also the perception that I did not really have a choice, given my circumstances and my lack of knowledge of what it's like to be an immigrant, or what America is like, not just its obvious dark side, but precisely the trivialization of life through consumerism and being forced to be more consumerist, e.g. in California you MUST have a car, or you can't get anywhere, and having a car means maintenance, means insurance, means buying a new one every so many years (I drive mine into the ground). I never knew how much I loved streetcars! I never knew how much I loved the simple life that we used to lament about, calling it "shabby," "gray," etc.

I perfectly understand those “failed” immigrants who leave after a few months, saying that life in America is too complicated. They get frazzled by having to learn about personal banking, car maintenance and car insurance, all kinds of other insurance, all kinds of choices they never had to make before. It’s overwhelming. It’s stressful beyond belief, if you didn’t grow up within the culture, gradually learning how to cope and still be able to enjoy life rather than being mired in expensive trivia. 

Ewa:

The terror of consumerism is invading Poland and I try to avoid the beast as much as I can. I hate to see more and more malls being built around me, teenagers and families spending all their time in them; no friendly parks or city centres, even the new railway station in my town is a mall with shops and cafes, where you have to come in as there are no benches to sit and wait. We are not citizens any more, just clients.
Oriana:

I saw the beginning of that already back in the nineties. I saw the the advertising billboards, and thought that the face of Karl Marx, for instance, with that picturesque beard, was not the horror to look at the way a toothpaste ad is. Call me crazy, but Karl Marx was family, and there was something funny and wonderfully anachronistic about his presence; a billboard advertising lipstick is in a way a greater lie and that kind of consumerist propaganda is more harmful.

When I came to America, it wasn’t militarism that bothered me most; it was precisely advertising. I thought, “Capitalism made America both great and ugly.”

Imagine if in Kraków a huge mall wound around the city instead of the beautiful park of Planty.

You know what is a good armor against that: Buddhism. It’s against desire, particularly greed. Now, I think having some desires is natural and healthy, but the artificial desires that commerce tries to create need to be opposed. There is an anti-consumerist movement here, marginal but it exists!! In the hotbed of capitalism, anti-consumerism does exist! The voice of reason dares to say: Buy less. Save the planet. Be a human being first, a consumer last.
 
Ewa:

Kraków has already been devastated by a big mall in the centre between the market square and the railway station, called Galeria Krakowska. Because in Poland malls are called "galleries", you know? What a trick. You feel noble and distinguished in such a place when it's not called just a supermarket . . . you are the chosen one. Yes, CHOSEN. To spend your money there. I avoid such places as they remind me of Inferno and make me tired and irritated after 15 minutes. I was raised in the good old times (yes:) when there was nothing to choose and you were happy to get anything. And then the hell of massive goods everywhere began. So, in this aspect socialism with its poverty was as good as Buddhism perhaps: it taught you to want nothing.

Oriana:

Love your Inferno analogy. I guess the malls would be the Circle of the Wasters. The massive, pointless excess (whatever happened to the phrase “vulgar excess”? It needs to be reintroduced). You are invited to become a Waster.

Before I actually experienced capitalism, I assumed that everything taught about it in school was mere propaganda. And in a sense that was true, i.e. what we were taught was inaccurate, because the emphasis was on how capitalists exploit the workers: the fat capitalist with a cigar in his mouth, his boot on the back of a worker. But it’s not the exploitation of the workers per se, true as that may be in Bangladesh. The repulsive feature of capitalism in rich countries (and Poland is getting there) is the pressure to buy things you don’t need, and to waste a lot of time and energy (ultimately more important than money) choosing those useless goods whose production is also destructive to the earth.

I likewise acquired no taste for consumer goods. Instead, I acquired a taste for good books. During my first trip to Poland, imagine my horror when I discovered that my former nearest bookstore in Warsaw had become a shoe store.

You know, I was so naïve that for years I didn’t understand the meaning of the phrase: the American Dream. Finally I dared to ask, and was told that it was the dream of becoming rich. And people actually didn’t understand that I had no such motivation. I worked part-time jobs so I’d have more time for reading and writing. It meant  being poor -- but only in the financial sense. Intellectually, I was a millionaire. 

Glo (from New Mexico) sends us this pictorial comment about the change in priorities with age:

Scott:

The images you find are astounding; they need to be compiled in a book. You know I enjoyed the poem about the sailing ship and the sea – it brings my youth back, like 'John Marr'. And the comments in the reply about the bird feeder of course hit home too (no sign of my woodpecker this weekend, I pray he was at other feeders and staying away from cats!)

Simplicity is sooo key and just like your berries I must have my coffee every night. I have three writing projects am working on and more planned, a trip for every month this summer (one to Florida, one to the beach and one to the mountains).

For me, the key is to be working on something, an event to look forward to long and short term, and a totally unrealistic goal that you know you will never finish. For me, it is to find out the name of every Nantucket whaler that ever sailed from that island, the names of the crew, and where they are buried....and lay a flower upon the grave.' 'But Scott, not only does that make NO practical sense at all but it will be absolutely impossible to carry out.....' I know… and that's the total quixotic beauty of it.

Oriana:

During my second trip to Poland, I read in some casual source this piece of priceless advice: when you wake up, always have something small planned for today, and something big long-term. I love what you say about that distant and impossible goal. The first time I had a serious goal in my life was in my teens: it was to master English to perfection. It was a practical goal, given the transition ahead of me. I worked very hard, and that’s how I discovered that what I love best is working hard toward a goal. “You are a fanatic,” my mother said, and she was right.

The problem was that at 95% or so, I felt I was done. What remained was tedious, daily pronunciation drills, and I had more urgent things to do. So essentially I achieved my goal, and was left with a vacuum. Until I dedicated myself to writing, it was terribly painful. With writing, the goal became infinite. You have to combine interesting content with a lively style. Mastery is like the horizon . . .

Shipping records are fascinating. Here is what a friend discovered and sent to me (“snow” is pronounced “snoo”; it was a cargo sailship with a storm sail; Snow Oriana was bound for Cadiz! That's probably the port of "Tarshish" we find mentioned in the book of Jonah)