THE MOSES DILEMMA

GROWING OLD IS BEING LIKE MOSES

You’ve crossed to the other
side of despair, drunk the last drops
of stale, bitter water;
you’ve parted the Red Sea.

Now you stand on top of a mountain.
God points, casually
leaning on the air: “Those
vineyards and olive orchards,

that sun-dazzled river —
that’s the Promised Land.
Look long and deep because
you are not going there.”

A classic Kafka scenario:
God who wastes no words.
Who is the kiss and the knife.
Whose other name is Life.
~ Oriana © 2015

**

His destiny was not a triumphal entry, but an exile’s death in Moab, his body buried in an unmarked grave (let’s put aside the issue of whether Moses actually ever lived).

Kafka says about Moses:

He is on the track of Canaan all his life; it’s incredible that he should see the land only when on the verge of death. The dying vision of it can only be intended to illustrate how incomplete a moment is human life, incomplete because a life like this could last forever and still be nothing but a moment. Moses fails to enter Canaan not because his life is too short but because it is human life. ~ Franz Kafka, quoted by Harold Bloom in “Ruin the Sacred Truths.”

Who is the kiss and the knife.
 Whose other name is Life
 
~ that we must give thanks to and adore, for we shall have no other gods.

*
It happens more often than it is politically correct to admit: for many, and perhaps for most, their great dream does not come true.
 
Those who love to look at the bright side could say, “From this we learn the lesson that it’s not about arriving, it’s about the journey.” I wonder if Moses would have been consoled by that New Age motto — which I admit IS consoling, but perhaps only to those who have learned to “savor the moment.”

In any case, Yahweh isn’t interested in consoling Moses or anyone, and doesn’t say that it's about the journey. In his eyes all those born in Egypt are impure and thus unfit for the new life in the Promised Land. Individual merit doesn’t matter. In the Ancient Near East, religion was collective and based on observance, not on being a good person. 
 
(A shameless digression — yes, so soon — was the Promised Land more affluent and beautiful than Egypt, the most impressive place in the Near East? I have my doubts.)

(An even more shameless digression: Is Christianity about being a good person? I invite the reader to google this; it can be quite eye-opening.)

In any case, Moses was hardly a good person (for the moment, let’s suspend judgment as to whether Moses actually existed or was strictly mythical, though here is a fascinating article on this matter: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/30/moses-man-versus-myth-ridley-scott).

But let us take the myth on face value. Even if he was a nasty, genocidal old man who came up with religious excuses for his dictatorial powers and his cruelty, his final fate can still strike a chord with us. Imagine: all your adult life you worked hard toward a goal. No, for Moses it was not about the journey. That’s not why he put up with the grumblings of the Hebrews rather than giving them the finger and taking off by himself and the chosen few in a spiffy chariot. If he’d done it, I don’t think he’d head for Canaan; he’d probably once more try his luck in Egypt, where the action was.

Moses had a vision even more glowing than the Burning Bush: he planned to rule Canaan as a religious prophet. Theocracy does not thrive under nomadic conditions; it needs real estate.

But as soon as he climbed Mt. Pisgah, certainly an effort for someone his age, as he stood there panting, he received the bad news. A glimpse of the land was all he was to get. He would not be permitted to enter. Raised as an Egyptian prince? Sorry, that’s not kosher. Like all the older grumblers he dragged along, not worthy of the Promised Land.

All the waiting, all the ordeals, all the wandering for decades? All the dedication, all the sacrifices?

That’s just too bad. 

And those allowed to enter not half as deserving as he? Just because they were not born in Egypt?

Life is not fair. Get over it.

Mount Pisgah (also called “Nebo”)  is somewhere there.

*

And Moses, stiff-lipped through so many ordeals, couldn’t bear it anymore. He fell to the ground, shaking with violent sobs.

God quickly walked away, not even mentioning to Moses that this was another opportunity to admire the divine backside. God wasn’t about to console anyone, even if he knew how.

When Moses at last lifted his head off the ground, it was sunset. It was gold, then red, but something was missing. Moses suddenly remembered the sunsets on the Nile, the immense river turning to gold, then fire. In his mind he saw again the beauty of it, the beauty he squandered and abandoned. He would never again sit in a royal canoe in the middle of this liquid fire, hushed with wonder, the boat swaying like a caress. How could he have thought that paradise was somewhere else? The “Promised Land,” how ludicrous! Now he saw his error, the mother of all errors. 

 
*

The “Mt. Pisgah moment” resonates with me at the deepest level. Once I too was on my way to the Promised Land. I too saw myself barred from it. And I thought about Moses, how shattering it must have felt.

More shattering for him than it could possibly be for me. And there was some consolation in that — and, later, in seeing how common the crisis is, how human, how nearly universal. The final victory is laughter: “If at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving definitely isn’t for you.” But it wasn’t funny back then. “Comedy is tragedy plus time.”

I was still at midlife — I could even say “in my prime,” though I saw that only after I closed the door on depression. I managed to invent a “posthumous” life for myself (“posthumous” refers to the death of ambition in the sense of trying to get recognition). Moses, though, was too old to start another career. Besides, he couldn't really switch from being a prophet to taking up pottery “just for the fun of it.” Though he knew Aron was kind to suggest a second career in drought-resistant gardening, and Miriam meant well when she said tambourine lessons would cheer him up, that was useless advice. After a lifetime dedicated to achieving a great goal, nothing could cheer him up.

Today we could easily diagnose the problem: Moses did not “live in the now.” He lived for the future. He lived dreaming of reaching Canaan, and settling there, presumably as the head of state and high priest in one. He fantasized of building a palace surrounded by wonderful lush gardens. Everything he did was a stepping stone toward that future.

Now there would be no future. Nothing would be a stepping stone to anything else.

And the former “stepping stones”? They were just hot, barren rocks eroding in the ruthless sun and wind.

Moses didn’t understand the joy of being posthumous. He didn’t realize that being posthumous was the greatest gift life could offer: the years when there’s nothing to achieve, nothing to prove, and no hurry since you’re not going anywhere. That’s why older people are happier than the young. The young have great expectations leading mostly to great disappointments. People who manage to live long enough to lose the future are finally capable of living in the now.

They wait for nothing. Expect nothing. They think small and do less (a guaranteed way to success, but that’s a different post). They gaze at the world as if for the first time, amazed by the beauty of the most ordinary things. The gleam of water, the way the moon seems to walk with us — things we found beautiful in childhood, but later forgot to pay attention to. That speckled pebble, that bird-like cloud — that is paradise, that is eternity.

And their failed ambitions? They are not important any more. They may not have accomplished what they set out to accomplish, but they did do accomplish something. Others will finish the task. After all, we are a part of a larger story.

*

“To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.” ~ Hunter Thompson

It is this loyalty to ourselves that can guide us in what life remains.

Another secret of joyful older age is to ditch any kind of THINK BIG philosophy. As I’ve already mentioned, the secret of success is to think small. Instead of great ambition, cultivate micro-ambitions.

Micro-ambitions suit me well: the smaller I think, the more I actually accomplish. Imagine a self-help book by Oriana, called Think Small. I’m not kidding — if I felt some need of “last words,” of making a contribution that could possibly touch thousands, I’d write a self-help book about the most important thing I learned in life, which is to think small and take baby steps.

(A totally shameless digression: my newest plant, a Calandrinia spectabilis just put into the ground, has just come into bloom: it now has two beautiful poppy-like purple flowers. More will be coming.)


 
*

It’s been at least ten years since I wrote the Moses poem and meditated on how devastated he must have felt. But I see now that I underestimated his resilience and the human ability to recover from almost anything.

Yes, I can still imagine Moses casting himself on the ground and crying — howling — in the pain of defeat. The disappointment, the humiliation.

It’s true that he may have felt unable to re-invent himself. It felt like the future got stolen from him. There is no denying the initial despair.

But then, sunset or no sunset, a thought like a small cloud rose in Moses’s mind: “At least I got them this far.”

And Moses laughed.


 
THE MANY MOUNT PISGAHS WE CLIMB
 
Michael:

For several years I've thought about writing a book titled Hymns Foreplay--this to mock and enjoy the naivete of the hymn writers (So heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good), and the evolution of meaning in language (e.g. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing; Fill Me Now...), and to provide some raucous hilarity in the bedroom. (Let's leave aside the obvious fact that this is the project of a demented, juvenile mind). As an atheist and secular humanist, I have (had) little respect for Christianity (in recent years) or anything connected to it and I looked forward to the work. Two weeks ago I started reviewing hymns and found myself, surprisingly, transported to a time when my conscience was tender and my religious sensibilities eager and willing. I felt again a soft touch, the brush of angel's wings, and heard divine whispers--and I had to stop. There will be no Hymns Foreplay. I cannot mock that which used to hold so much meaning.

It was in this context I cringed from time-to-time at your irreverent but funny reductions of the Moses story (and necessary and just). Still, I cringed. True story or not, in it is writ the desires of the human heart.

The OT and NT are full of mountaintop stories and to me, from a meta-perspective, they are touching: the bumbling, Magoo-like human climbing as high as possible to contact the god who is so high, yet, it is hoped, not actually so far away. And occasionally, the god deigns to lower himself and in some small way--with a view of his backside, a booming voice, or a whisper in the wind--communicates with those importunate and pathetic humans. The quest and desire are real and, for most of us, the climb continues incognito.  

You have prosed (It's a bit ugly to verb that noun, isn't it?) the record well. As a child, I took the story on differently. Moses loved his people (even once offering to exchange his life for theirs) and his loss wasn't entry into the promised land but not entering with his people. He was 120 years old. Eye sight undimmed, physical fervor undiminished. And humble. The humblest then and since. In the end he got the better deal--resurrection. Emissary to Christ. Buddies with Elijah. Hobnobbing with god. Or so the story goes.

Still, it was a Pisgah moment. I think the mantra about journeys and destinations is wrong. There are no destinations. There is only journey. I think of the many promised lands I've tried to enter, some of them successfully. Once arrived I found myself thinking, Now what?

I could only journey on.

My greatest Pisgah was the climb and the discovery there is no god and I stumbled down that mountain with no sense that paradise lay in any direction. What others hear as voice I know is only wind. Rocks tumbling. Psychic machinations. There is no promised land.

(I've been wondering what the psychic impact will be when we discover life on another planet. How will our paradisaical aspirations change? What new Pisgahs will we climb?)

Are we left with only laughter? That's as good an answer as any. Why not? I want to laugh off my seriousness. I've done what I've done. I am where I am. There's not much else for it. I'm all for laughing with Moses. At least I got myself this far. And maybe I should thank the Universe for Pisgahs. Nothing like a long hike and empty mountaintop to set the mind straight.  
 
NOTHING LIKE AN EMPTY MOUNTAIN TOP

Oriana:

Thank you, Michael, for this deep and thoughtful response.

The discovery that there is no god wasn’t quite a Pisgah for me — it was a liberation from a torturous death march. But there is a way in which the metaphor does hold: I had to somehow get on the heights of broader knowledge — in my case, learning about other mythologies — to gain an overview of this one mythology that was poisoning my life. How interesting that the serpent was a positive symbol in other mythologies — that of wisdom, healing, and immortality (because it shed its old skin and seemed rejuvenated; have you ever found a shed snake skin while hiking? It’s so interesting. But I digress.)

Since I left the church at 14, not much supportive and comforting text has registered on me. I know that such text could be found, but for me it was overwhelmed by the toxic threats. I couldn’t love a god whose power rested on the kingdom of hell. And even Jesus was supposed to return as a JUDGE, in spite of his own preaching about not judging.

So leaving the church was liberation. The monstrous judge did not exist. And Jesus is never, never, never coming back. He is not going to throw me and my parents and other loved ones into hell. And I don’t have to crawl on my knees (a very catholic practice) and beg to be spared. RELIEF!

But thinking about the Mt. Pisgah moments in the metaphoric sense, I’ve certainly had those. Isn’t disappointment a rich and fascinating psychological experience, once we are over the shock and pain? As long as we don’t commit suicide, we generally manage to move on.

America was the new Promised Land. In Polish literature there is a novel called The Promised Land — about going to America, the myth, the hope. It was never “the United States” — it was America the All-Accepting Mother Goddess waiting for the huddled masses etc.

I wasn’t the first one to discover that the relationship between the United States and America is a difficult one.

But I came to love California and that ultimately helped save me from living in bitterness and regret.

Marriage can be a climb up another Mt. Pisgah, but it’s possible to find a “peaceful solution” so that respect and gratitude prevail. (Or even a “two-state solution,” LOL.) Likewise with romance and heartbreak. Talk about really strenuous trails . . .

The hard one, the one that almost killed me, was of course poetry. That was the steepest climb of all, and part of it was sheer euphoria, the drunkenness of high altitudes. Alas, a vision of fame and a different life it was supposed to bring managed to poison everything. It took years and a whole succession of insights before I was finally at peace and even happily harvesting. There can be a delight in failure — talk about joyful surprises!

And yes, laughter helps. “Laughing with Moses” — a new hymn could be written with that refrain. 

And sitting on empty mountain tops — quite mind-clearing, yes.

I also thank you for quoting “So heavenly minded as to be of no earthly good” — that is a gem.

I am of course aware that there is also the tradition of Catholic mysticism where the soul is the Beloved and not a worthless sinner. I discovered it later, but it was too late — too much religious mumbo-jumbo in the way. And “Beloved” was for the elite, not for the dumb sheep that ordinary church goers allegedly were. In any case, the great adventure is loving a real person, with all their flaws and neuroses and contradictions, and not an imaginary ideal. 

**

PS. Here is a wonderful video. I know you don’t need convincing that hell doesn’t except (except here on earth, as does heaven). It’s the part about god enhancing our humanity rather than rescuing us from it, god as something unfolding in us, that I find quite congenial. Not that we need the god label, but for those who have positive memories rather than god-the-monster, I think that might be a way to eat your god and have him/it too (I know . . . just couldn’t resist it . . . too many communion wafers).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF6I5VSZVqc

and here is another treat: Johnny Cash singing "You're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyStrEnDIbw

RILKE: A BREATH AROUND NOTHING

A god can do it. But tell me, how
can a man follow through the narrow lyre?
His mind is divided. At the crossing of two
heartways stands no temple for Apollo.

Song is not desire, not wooing
any favor that can still be attained;
song is existence. Easy for the god.
But when do we exist? When does he pour

the earth and the stars into us? Young man,
it’s not about love, when your voice
forces open your mouth — learn to forget

your sudden outburst. That will run out.
True singing is a different breath. A breath
around nothing. A breeze in the god. A wind.

~ Rilke, Sonnet to Orpheus 3, 1

“Gesang ist Dasein.” There is no capturing the music of this assonance and consonance, those wonderful vowels that are lost in “existence,” nor at their best in “being.” But even if the music is lost, the poetry that remains (by one definition, poetry is what remains after translation) is sufficient to stun us into silence.

"To sing is to be." But sing about what? The first difficulty is that we are rarely completely confident about anything. Our mind is divided into fifty shades of “yes, but.” And poetry (usually identified with singing) works best when we make simple declarative statements: “What will remain of us is love” (Larkin, “The Arundel Tomb”). We have to take out all species of “almost,” “perhaps,” or “sometimes.” Prose is more permissive and subtle that way, closer to reality. But poetry, when it works, has more emotional power.

Second, Rilke dismisses a cherished belief about poetry: that it comes from being in love. That inspiration and that material will run out. And if real singing is a breath around nothing, then it’s hard for the immortal young to grasp that core meaning. A breath around nothing is a breath around the nothing to come after someone else closes our eyelids. We sing about and against our personal knowledge of mortality.

(It could be argued that a poet like Donne, or Dickinson on those days when she at least tried to believe that “this world is not conclusion,” could also produce real singing in the expectation of living forever, disembodied at first, but eventually rising in flesh — apparently true paradise depends on having a body after all. But Rilke, who knew that all religions are human inventions, at best tried to imagine a non-Christian kind of afterlife, where the dead have their special tasks.)

There is Donne, but Donne is small next to Shakespeare, who is not a religious poet. And that is almost an omen of secularism: real singing will be around nothing, i.e. poetry will embrace this mortal life. In any case, the process of creating a poem is not between the poet and god, but between the poet and the language. I suspect it was that way even for religious poets: they would rather go into erotic mysticism than stick to dogma and spoil the melody and/or image.

Besides, like all writing, poetry requires dramatic tension. No surprise for the poet, no surprise for the reader. If all the answers have already been provided by religion or an ideology (Adrienne Rich’s poetry deteriorated when she became a vociferous feminist), the poem is too predictable. A poet needs to remain in the “cloud of unknowing.”
Photo: Trey Ratcliff

This is not to say that poetry is without its gods. Beauty and art are among the gods of poetry, but so is melancholy — a kind of beautiful sorrow, a twilight. Now and then, a true night of despair. After all, without darkness, there would be little need for poetry. In modernity, unadorned observation of life has become the most common mode, without necessarily — or at any rate not obviously — seeking to provide an uplift. But beauty itself is always a triumph of the human sprit.

And poets must hurry into the narrow lyre because tomorrow may be too late. “Sing now while you have a voice.”

Still, poetry has to delight in order to be poetry. “It must give pleasure,” as Wallace Stevens said. For me this is the first commandment of poetry. And even in translation, I think this particular sonnet to Orpheus does give that deep pleasure by which we know art. The poem stuns us with its depth, its originality, its courage (it does take courage to say that “true singing is a breath around nothing”), its excellence, and its beauty.

Rilke wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus rapidly, in the white heat of inspiration. Poems that come in this manner are often the best. But even if it took only minutes to write down the first draft, we must remember that it also took a lifetime of incredible dedication. To Rilke, nothing came ahead of poetry. Nothing was more important, not even his daughter’s wedding (I knew a woman who refused to read Rilke because she couldn't forgive him for that — he said he didn’t want to lose the creative momentum).

The Sonnets, I feel, became Rilke’s last will and testament. We are all the rich heirs. 

**
In summary: This particular sonnet is about poetry. And it’s quite a feat, since most poems about poetry aren’t that engaging, not even to poets. Rilke asks: how can we write poems? How is that possible at all? “A god can do it” — but a human being, that mess of contradictions? To a god, everything is a simple yes or no, but our mind is divided: we see how almost any statement is both true and false.

And there is a second major point. True poetry, Rilke says, does not stem from falling in love; it comes from confronting our mortality and still being awed by the earth and the stars. It’s when we see the magnificence that of the world that we truly exist and can celebrate the strange, improbable glory of being alive, of being able to feel joy though we hold the knowledge of mortality like an apple in our mouth. To Rilke, just to exist is transcendent.

Chateau de Muzot, where Rilke completed the Duino Elegies and wrote the Sonnets to Orpheus.

Hyacinth:

My favorite sonnet  of Rilke . . . I never get tired of hearing or reading or discussing it . . . thank you.
Oriana:

It’s hard for me to pick a favorite, with such wealth. The second one, “A girl almost,” was the first sonnet I fell in love with. And of course I love the unicorn sonnet, and the one about mirrors, with Narcissus in the last line.

Speaking of lines, sometimes it’s not the whole poem but a line or two: Be ahead of all parting; if drinking’s bitter, turn into wine; money lives in a pampering bank; does it ever uncurl (a beggar’s hand); does it really exist, time the destroyer — the list goes on. The more I re-read the Sonnets, the more certain lines become part of my psyche.

Charles:

It’s so true that beauty is the god of the art world.
Oriana:

Or it used to be. I hope, naively perhaps, that it will be restored, just as architecture is no longer an imitation of factories.

Michael:

I admit to hiding behind "yes, but" as an excuse for my limited intellect or heart intelligence. I've never been able to make much of Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus and a well-placed Yes, but has come in quite handy from time to time — it allows for masking my not having a clue. Talk about never being sure. That's it. Most often I don't have a clue what he's talking about and that's the kind of poetry that leaves me deflated and self-flagellating.

And then enters a commentator, like yourself, unraveling the mystery. And I'm grateful but mostly awed and left scratching my head. I scrolled to the top a number of times to read the bit again. Is that what he meant? Really? How did she dig that out of that?

Perhaps poetry has more than a time and a place. Maybe it picks its people as well.

For me it truly is a breath around nothing — meaning the dusty recesses of my mind.
Oriana:

Michael, relax and trust yourself. The meaning of a poem is not what the poet put in it like a thing that never alters (a kind of altar??) A poem, once out in the world, belongs to the reader. Even if the poet comments on a particular poem, explaining the intended meaning, that commentary can be discarded and your own response given priority.

Just think of a myriad ways a bible verse can be interpreted. A historian will see it differently than a psychologist, a mother who’s lost a child differently than a young man who sees himself as one of the “masters of the universe.” The reader needs to find a personal interpretation, or else the text is dead to him or her, and often repugnant since the morality of an ancient deity is inferior to our modern ethical sensibility. 

A work of literature belongs to the culture — and culture changes: we read Homer differently than Plato did. Human nature may stay relatively the same, but our values differ quite significantly from the value of antiquity. Each reader has a different perspective: life experience is especially important here. “Trust the poem, not the poet.”

This particular sonnet is about poetry. And it’s quite a feat, since most poems about poetry aren’t that engaging, not even to poets. Rilke asks: how can we write poems? How is that possible at all? “A god can do it” — but a human being, that mess of contradictions? To a god, everything is a simple yes or no, but our mind is divided: we see how almost any statement is both true and false.

And there is a second major point. True poetry, Rilke says, does not stem from falling in love; it comes from confronting our mortality and still being awed by the earth and the stars. It’s when we see the magnificence that of the world that we truly exist and can celebrate the strange, improbable glory of being alive, of being able to feel joy though we hold the knowledge of mortality like an apple in our mouth. To Rilke, just to exist is transcendent.

(Looking at the last two paragraphs here made me think that my “explication” wasn’t clear enough. I need a kind of “in summary” — so I'm going to add these paragraphs to the main body of the post.)

The next post will be about Moses on Mt. Pisgah, and you’ll feel more at home. I don’t mean that you’ll enjoy thinking of those mountain top altars where bulls and rams were sacrificed, but I think you’ll bask in the relative clarity of the psychological meaning.

 

UPHOLSTERED RUT: THE GLORY OF DECLINE

Franz Marc: Blue Horses
 
You are closer to glory
leaping an abyss
than upholstering a rut
                           ~ James Broughton

SPIRIT HORSES
August, in Vermont,
I saw mist swiftly rise,
white horses from a black
forest pond —

Rearing in a rush of breath,
they rose straight up,
then veered
toward an unseen shore.

From stillness to stillness
they sped, spirit horses
free from all weight,
a star-braided mare

calling to them
from the other side.
In the mirror of the night I saw
I too was a ghost, although

still flesh, leaf-deep in the now.
But the horses, as they
disappeared,
in silence called.

And I knew that soon
I’d lay my head along
my spirit horse’s fluent neck,
hold on to the imagined mane —

Still I wavered: drop my
rags, my chores? I said,
I’m growing old. Then her
voice, star-deep in the night: 

But without wanting
the highest, is it really life?

~ Oriana © 2015

I'm collecting poems for another possible chapbook or manuscript. Only one of the poems will be new. Yes, last year I wrote one memorable poem — and maybe one or two that I don’t even remember. I also wrote tons of prose, but prose doesn’t keep; a poem, if it has enough magic (or call it “poetry”), lives on. I wrote one real poem. It was a surprise. An astonishment. “You are an astonishment,” I said to my unconscious from where it welled up the best way: on automatic, without effort. 

But I also know that as a rule it doesn’t happen anymore. As a poet, I am posthumous. I seem to have lost the kind of brain function that it takes to write poetry — more demanding by far than prose, even vivid, artistic prose shimmering with images and metaphors. Prose is a playpen. Poetry is being hit with a lightning.

Because I'm posthumous myself, I immediately understood why Donald Hall announced that he was done with poetry: “Not enough testosterone.” This translates into not enough dopamine and other neurotransmitters, except for serotonin.

The levels of dopamine drop steeply with aging, while serotonin holds out a lot better. Hence the well-known “mellowing” with age. Serotonin keeps us contented. I am certainly not leaping over any abyss in the hope of glory. In fact the word “glory” seems utterly pretentious and ridiculous. In truth, last year I spent a lot of time upholstering my rut, and loving it. The house and the yard are my blissful burdens.

Friends keep telling me that I'm not done with poetry — that I only need to try harder. But poetry doesn’t come from trying harder. A poem is a gift. It’s found and polished, but the finding is primary. This happens, prolifically at first, and then, for most of us, less and less often until it stops happening. Oh, there are poets who keep on writing, and succeed mainly in repeating themselves, in a less imaginative way than at their peak, with none of the freshness and boldness.

When I saw that I was repeating myself, grinding through the old nostalgias, I mourned. Then I realized that at least I have had the privilege of writing strong poems that some found beautiful and magical.

Once I lived as the gods,
more is not needed.
     ~ Hölderlin, “To the Fates”

To the objection that all poets repeat themselves, circling around their main themes, I reply that one runs out even of repetition.

Kasimir Malevich, The Knife Grinder, or the Principle of Glittering

Besides, prose called. I wanted to do what is forbidden in poetry: to communicate. To speak clearly and directly on any subject. Poetry is a very restricted, minimalist medium. Prose is infinite.

True, one can express the infinite in a poem, but of the “infinity in a grain of sand” variety. Prose is an endless walk on the beach.

For the sake of emotional stability, I needed something that would be there for me every day, independent of the whims of inspiration. Even with prose, there are still surprises, and I still feel that I don’t really choose what to write about — the adventure remains. But it’s more mellow: a gentle drizzle, not a storm.

A SPECTER IS HAUNTING US
 
That dreaded word, decline. Now that we have the privilege of living longer than ever, a specter is haunting us, the specter of decline. There is certainly physiological decline as measured by markers such as arterial stiffness, lower metabolic rate which translates into less energy, diminished dopamine which means less drive to do anything, much less create, reduced muscle mass, and on and on — no need to produce the whole long and depressing list. 

But is it all strictly decline, or the kind of change that we don’t necessarily equate with things getting worse? Can older mean better, or at least more content? For instance, I have found it 100% true that men don’t want to regain youthful intensity of libido. The fear of “that nightmare” (as more than one man described to me) is what keeps many from testosterone replacement (don’t worry: the dose will maintain a middle-aged sort of libido while doing wonders for muscles and mood).

Nor do women want to feel obsessed with romance the way they used to be. They don’t even want to those embarrassing memories: how they’d risk messing up their life in pursuit of someone who now seems so mediocre and uninspiring they can’t understand what was so exciting about him. I remember thinking in disgust, even when I was still at the mercy of hormones, “If X happened to be a woman, we wouldn’t even be friends.” Now, blissed out on peace of mind, a woman can turn to more interesting pursuits.

Those don’t usually involve glory. The dream of fame (if it ever existed) is no more — how exhausting that would be, constantly traveling to give readings, attending those boring award banquets! The dream of riches — is there really any need to take that "luxury cruise"? But a flowerbed does not seem trivial anymore. If we must have a rut, let’s make it a joy to look at, and luxuriously comfortable.

But these are easy consolations. It’s the mental decline that hits us hardest, much as we try to turn memory lapses into unfunny jokes. There is plenty to be said for dying before the worst of aging hits. Consider this well-argued article: http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/09/why-i-hope-to-die-at-75/379329/

Dr. Ezekiel Emmanuel (not a pen name!) explains why living too long is a loss — some might say a catastrophe:

“It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.”

“But I know X who is 86 and is perfectly sharp and still goes running every day,” begins the standard objection. There are indeed exceptional individuals who are still productive into their nineties. The trouble is we all assume we will be just like that outlier — the exception and not the rule. 

Meanwhile personal experience of decline can’t be denied — even if can still do push-ups or write a coherent essay, maybe even a competent poem with traces of former wild leaps. If we could no longer remember how to write a check, then we may agree it’s wise to no longer take up room, we think. And we think that’s a long time off, if ever. 

I'm not sure that Buddha said any such thing, but he might have. Life was shorter then, and certainly didn’t begin at forty. Old age began at forty. But even assuming that now old age begins at sixty-five — or seventy — or even later . . . (the definition changes according to our nearest birthday), there is still no denying that there are only so many good years left — a finite number. 

Let’s set our standard low and and define “good” as absence of dementia, and let’s assume that mental function holds out until about 85, when the risk of Alzheimer’s (by no means the only cause of dementia) rises to 50%. Usually aging accelerates in the late seventies, but let’s be generous and assume 85. Even so, the limit looms.

Those who have been reading this blog for a while know what will follow: my personal discovery of that limit has been one of the best things that ever happened to me. I realized it was too late for depression, so it had to stop immediately — and it did. There was simply no time to waste on brooding, bitterness, and crying fits. If I still wanted to make even a slight contribution and to enjoy the (probable) good years, I’d have to set about it immediately. And I did.

MY POSTHUMOUS CONSOLATION

As I compile poems for what will be another try for a chapbook, I ponder how blessed I am. There is no anxiety to it now. I’ve won three chapbook contests, and that is enough — even though many lovely potential manuscripts could be created.

I am considering this poem:

LAST NIGHT OF THE LEONIDS

No moon. The pines like black wind
brushed the tips of stars.
Horses stood in their corral,
carved as if outside of time.

You said, “They are sleeping.”
But suddenly one horse
at full gallop  
ran toward us, a rift in the dark.

The other horses never stirred.
They slept, eternal statues. Only he
shot through heavens
like a marble flame.

We almost
stopped breathing, struck
with pure rhythm,
muscle and mind —

that shining horse waking up —
then standing still,
the frost of stars
braiding his tall outline —

And we too stood still,
in the shivering starlight.

~ Oriana, © 2015

I will never again write another poem like that one. The horse happened only once, and I happened to be in top form. The following year, C and I walked by the same corral, and — nothing.  The horse had lost his spirit. You could say he was in decline.

When Galway Kinnell told me, in private, “A poet knows when his best poems are behind him,” I didn’t want to believe him. But he was right. He still wrote some fairly good, competent poems, but never again anything as powerful as his Book of Nightmares. 

And yet after Galway uttered those dreaded words to me, he smiled a happy smile. Only now I understand that smile: he knew he’d been given a rare privilege of having written wonderful poems — and that was enough.

Of course he also won fame. I don’t mean to put myself anywhere near his rank. I have to content myself remember the times when, at a poetry reading, someone would lean to me and say, “Your poems are so beautiful.” And that is glory enough for me.

The official label for this contentment in later years is “diminished expectations.” It may not sound good, but it is. It implies less ambition, if any. And, in this case, that’s good. It’s an end to torment.

Is it an end to achievement? To a certain kind of achievement, probably so. But there may be another kind. I remain an agnostic on that question. We know that the completely unexpected may happen.

The completely unexpected has happened: thanks to decline, I have gained happiness.


 Michael:

I am painfully aware when a communicator is working at their craft. I feel the effort, the force, the heavy hand, the intensity, the word that's just a bit off, the halting rhythm, or failed cadence. But when there is flow, like a river, where the overflow spills down into vessel after vessel, I am happy. I forget I am listening or reading. I hear music.

Rilke expressed it like this:

May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
the deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea."

And that, I believe, is the mark of a good communicator — when no effort is apparent. It's what I felt in your prose (Upholstered Rut: The Glory of Decline) and two poems. Gentle and flowing.

Nothing-more-to-prove seems to open the way to unfolding. One of the fruits of decline, I think. Last Night of the Leonids and Spirit Horses have moved to the top of my favorites of Oriana poetry. Nice notes to end on (But who's to say they will be your last?).

During harvest I notice the fruit growers in the valley don't plow or prune or fertilize. They just pick.

I think it was Cicero who, when asked about the advantages of growing old, listed as one of many "freedom from the tyranny of passion." I asked an 80 year old man, hours away from getting married, if he had experienced this kind of freedom. He assured me he was experiencing no such thing. But I get Cicero's point. The passion of youth was tyrannous and bloody exhausting. Much better is the love that comes with--I was going to say middle age, but that's not it. Love that comes after miles traveled, aborted journeys, break-downs, rest stops, grand vistas, and the memorable good traveling companion. My only fear is that Cicero's tyranny may yet again rear its head. Perhaps the downhill journey to the doors of the tomb is traveled in fits and starts, not so different from the uphill part of the journey.
 
Oriana:

Thank you, Michael. The concern with decline that you mentioned in your comment on the previous post, “The Homelessness of Wallace Stevens,” was a vital part of my inspiration for the current post.

Prose is “always there for me” because it’s a craft rather than art. It can rise to the level of art, but it doesn’t need to. Prose can give pleasure just by trotting along. Poetry that doesn’t rise to the level of art is not worth reading. In fact it’s not even poetry.

Creating true poetry is not controllable, which is both the glory and the agony. “I haven’t written a poem in months!” is the familiar lament of a poet who’s frightened that it’s all over now. For me to each new poem seemed like the last one, and yet a week later . . .  but that was then.

Both “Spirit Horses” and “Last Night of the Leonids” were written many years ago. You will see many more of my classics, my “golden oldies,” my “magicals,” on this blog. From the start, I’ve been using poems that I’ve already written. Sometimes I touch up a word here, a line there. Yes, it does feel like harvesting. That’s why I am not devastated by the departure of poetic inspiration. Rather, I feel grateful for such a rich harvest.

And it’s likely that you’ll see the same poem twice or three times. One of the pleasures of poetry is that a good poem gains with each re-reading. As with music, familiarity breeds affection.

Can I really be sure it’s over? Falling in love produces a dopamine tornado, and I know from experience that writing would result — either poems, or more artistic prose. But falling in love is unlikely. I love the peacefulness of my well-upholstered rut.

It’s more difficult for men because it doesn’t take much testosterone to maintain libido — less than it takes to maintain muscles and bones. And the male brain has a much larger area devoted to sex. This happens already in the womb: sex, aggression, and spatial ability are the gifts of testosterone, with fewer neural regions available for social skills and nurturing. Still, the libido at eighty is not what it is at eighteen.

But at some level both men and women keep waiting for the “magical other.” While it’s always women who are mocked for waiting for the Prince, studies show that men are more emotionally dependent on women than women on men; both sexes are emotionally dependent on nurturing women. Of course individual cases can differ. My life has been mainly about vocation, vocation, vocation. Becoming a writer was the first stage of liberation. But simply having serious interests of any sort has a profound effect on one’s priorities. There is an old joke: “An intellectual is simply someone who has discovered something more interesting than sex.”

After the great discovery of vocation, and the better-late-than-never decision against depression, I keep on making little discoveries. Reading books, for instance, makes me peaceful, while reading online is pro-inflammatory. Deep focus heals the brain, while surfing Facebook gives me a rash (a symbolic image of hellfire, I'm sure). And writing arising from serenity is different than writing arising from passion.

That downhill journey to the tomb that you mention — as long as health holds out, that can be the best part of the journey. Autumns and sunsets have a beauty vastly beyond high noon. As always, “individual results may differ.”

Speaking of autumns and sunsets:

LATE VENUS

“Great mothers, which way?”
I ask red desert rocks.
The mothers do not reply,
their faces always serene,
their breasts a stone lullaby.

“Where to?” I ask the ocean.
“Where are you leading me, my life?”
Only the glassy breaking of the waves;
only rustle of pebbles rushed 
toward and away from the shore.

“Where am I going?” I ask
the wind harp of trees,
hillside grasses hurrying into green
before smoke, before straw.
I know what the earth will reply.

I watch the stained glass of autumn,
the wine-dark river of sunset.
Late Venus shines
purest light. Then the diamond
winter of the stars.

~ Oriana © 2015

A friend looks at me sadly and says, “I don't have any strong desires anymore.”
“How about the weak ones?” I ask him.
“Weak ones — yes,” he says, after a pause. “But they're so weak, most of the time I'm not even quite sure I do have them.”

~ Mikhail Iossel


*

Less dopamine. Bring back the dopamine, and you can have strong desires again. But do we really want that?

I still have the desire to “harvest” my best poems — not because they will be immortal, but because simply the act of collecting them and sharing them in a modest way gives me a lot of pleasure. That's one way I practice unbridled hedonism.

And I still have the desire to read good books and learn interesting new things. And to keep enjoying beauty. If the worst comes to the worst, if I can still watch the sunset, it’s a sufficient reason to live.

THE HOMELESSNESS OF WALLACE STEVENS

One of the Pacific sunsets that took the place of all my poems of nostalgia. Photo: Brian Connolly 

*

Aside from his personal life, he was a happy man ~ a colleague of Wallace Stevens at Hartford Insurance Company.

Each person completely touches us
With what he is and as he is,
In the stale grandeur of annihilation.

I think these are arguably the deepest lines that Wallace Stevens ever wrote. I had to live a while to understand the meaning. We wouldn’t expect a 15-year-old to grasp them — or a 25-year-old. A 35-year-old — still iffy. I am afraid that there is no substitute for watching someone significant decline and die — especially someone who was once powerful, always in charge, brisk, smart, competent, self-assured. And now — how could this outrage possibly happen? — they are in their eighties. That’s when you get to feel how precious and touchingly helpless they are, how unique and irreplaceable, their memories like antique mosaics. 

And that, of course, applies to any old person, a survivor of so much — and now not for long.

There is something touching about the condition of being so old that the person could go any time now. How much swagger we have in youth, when we think we’ll live forever! Aging and dying — we acknowledge that this happens happens, but secretly we think that it won’t happen to us. And suddenly — certain options are closed, giant mistakes can’t be undone, and some important things will now remain unsaid forever; important questions will hang in the air unasked, with no chance of an answer — those who might have answered them now literally “gone with the wind” — we scattered their ashes, we know.

Sure, there are the adorable elderly and the mean, bitter, miserly ones, the hoarders and conspiracy theorists, or the interminable tellers of tales no one wants to hear. But even the mean, bitter ones evoke compassion in the end, often having missed out on love and everything else that truly matters. We can be sure of just one thing — everyone ends up having suffered a lot. And the rich and the mighty — even they end up losing that battle that all of us are doomed to lose. Even the body is not our native land, and will be taken away from us.

I tend to see men as more homeless than women. Women’s domesticity gives them more “agency.” They arrange the environment around them in the literal sense of “making a home.” The simple act of choosing curtains and fruit bowls means creating a micro-universe. Little girl, you’re a queen!

Stevens thought it was acts of the mind that accomplish this transformation of world into home. But I suspect he was closer to truth in “Anecdote of the Jar” (I placed a jar in Tennessee) than in the wishful thinking of the wonderful penultimate stanza of “An Idea of Order in Key West” (which starts with “She sang beyond the genius of the sea” — referring to an unknown woman walking on the beach, singing to herself):

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Most of us would say that it’s the world that shapes the mind. For Stevens, it’s the mind that shapes the world. Both statements are true; it’s a matter of emphasis. Stevens would say that the creative power of the human mind orders, even “masters,” the universe; it names the constellations and domesticates the earth (note that EARTH is an acronym of  HEART), building towns, mooring boats at the dock, affixing “glassy lights” because the moon and stars are not enough. The “blessed rage for order” transforms the world into our home.

Or it almost does. The dark still falls as it will, but we have gained a measure of autonomy, and feel more secure. In “Final Soliloquy of the Internal Paramour,” Stevens admits that this is at best a partial security and we are deceiving ourselves:

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest, and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

We wrap the man-made comforts around us, and only in that “artifice” (a very Stevensian word) we feel reasonably comfortable:

. . . a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

“We make a dwelling in the evening air.” But the evening falls day after day, a fact which we suddenly find insufferable when we feel particularly cornered by mortality. 

Stevens and Frost, 1940, Key West

*

I think Stevens declined as a poet as he aged, growing both more garrulous and more abstract. I can’t believe that once I was awed by “To an Old Philosopher in Rome”:

A light on the candle tearing against the wick
To join a hovering excellence, to escape
From fire and be part only of that which

Fire is the symbol: the celestial possible.
Speak to your pillow as if it was yourself.

I used to be awed by “the celestial possible.” Now I finally notice the immense loneliness of “Speak to your pillow as if it was yourself.” Stevens wasn’t fully at home either in the natural or the human world.

But maybe I’ve also declined as a reader, with less tolerance for abstraction. Many poems of my youth now strike me as not amounting to much, though they used to be praised as my best — “all that passion.” Now the hysterical pigeon-soiled windowsills (ah, nostalgias! even for that) of deluded depressive thinking shine through like the lights of Mobil Oil Refinery at night, not to mention the infernal glow of the torch that burned off excess natural gas. (A literal personal inferno, as if my existential ones were not enough!)

The poems of the young Stevens of “Harmonium” can be wildly inventive. Then the vitality dissipates in favor of arid philosophical statements, most of them completely forgettable. But the shorter last poems of Stevens contain some gems, including this one:

THE POEM THAT TOOK THE PLACE OF A MOUNTAIN

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactnesses
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.

~ Wallace Stevens

This is the poem in which Stevens comes closest to confessing his homelessness, his dependence on the mental world to provide him with a dwelling where he could feel he had a right to be there. To feel native in the world, he had to create his own world. One almost wants to tell him not to try so hard and protest so much, to accept a mountain “as is,” without making it his “his” mountain. But that easy acceptance of the world “as is” was not to be granted to this poet. And that urge to build a mental dwelling may have had its start in not really having a physical dwelling that was truly his own.

 *
 
I just watched a documentary, The Griefwalker, that examines our fear of death. One of the unexpected statements had to do with feeling homeless — in particular those whose ancestors immigrated to the current country. The documentary doesn’t even mention the immigrants themselves, I think because it’s trying to be subtle, and it would be too blatant to mention such pretty literal homelessness. I still remember the panic that engulfed me when, while ostensibly already "settled" in the U.S., I received the news that my father moved out of Warsaw. WHAT?!! You mean I no longer have a home? I can’t just suddenly up and go to Warsaw, and walk into “my” room?

My room in Warsaw, that first and true home — my refuge, my sanctuary, the holy place where I unquestionably belonged, and which belonged to me along with my favorite parts of the city — MY Palace of Culture! MY Aleje Ujazdowskie, MY river from MY bridge where I stood and stared until the river appeared to stop, and I rushed backwards to the source . . .   MY little park of Marie Curie, MY ponds at Lazienki Garden! MY swans! MY statue of Daphne turning into laurel! — gone, gone, utterly gone. I was emotionally homeless for many years — decades — after the terrible news. I thought of those ruthless commanders who burned the ship upon landing, so the soldiers could not dream of returning. It took me forever to construct a new home in every sense of “home.”

(A shameless digression: On my first return trip, I learned that some people wanted the Palace of Culture demolished. True, it's hardly beautiful, and it is a symbol of the Stalinist era. There is the expense of the upkeep. All those things are true. But it isn't, of course, just MY Palace of Culture. A whole generation grew up with it -- mocking it, denigrating it, loving it only in secret. The thought of demolition was unendurable to me. And by now new generations grew up with it too. You love what you grow up with. You love the familiar. The brain goes into panic when the familiar is gone -- that's a big part of the immigrant trauma. But the Palace of Culture is standing still, and I don't predict a quick demise . . . )

*

My recent experiences have dramatically shifted my perspective, and I no longer feel homeless. Owning real estate is only a small part of it. The important part of ownership is that you have significant say about this piece of land, as I found out when I opted to keep my sidewalk-buckling 75-foot tall tree, Jurassica, and removed the sidewalk instead (not the city sidewalk, but the sidewalk near the house). My bigger point about having a home is AUTONOMY. Co-ownership can’t give this gift, or at least not fully. “His part of the house” and “her part of the house” is a decent compromise. Yet only when it’s all ours, when we can rearrange a pillow here and a cloud there, then yes, we are at home.

Stevens had a miserable, sexless marriage. They didn’t say a word to each other during the last four years of his life. He’d come home from work and go directly upstairs to his quarters, without even nodding to his wife, Elsie, once the belle of her town — and not actually a dumb bunny, since she was able to summarize Stevens in a precise way: “Mr. Stevens is an excellent poet when he is not affected. Unfortunately, most of the time he is affected.”

He knew, no doubt, that Elsie would outlive him and never mourn him. She’d remove the paintings he loved but she didn’t. She’d fire the gardener and hire a new one, tell him to get rid of the old rosebushes and plant azaleas — anything without those huge spines, for God’s sake. And those old books, one more place for dust. Clean it all out! Toss those old curtains that only made the place dark. Her smile at her freedom would be, to her, like the first glimpse of the crescent moon. She’d fully come into her own being, at home in her own home at last.

Because an older woman needs not a lover, but a home where she doesn’t have to ask anyone if they’ll take her in. A place — not a book — that’s completely her own. It’s perfectly natural to call a woman a “home-maker.” And the home she makes cannot be replaced by a poem. (Certainly the cast-iron skillet cannot be replaced by a poem.)

*

Maybe Stevens never gave thought to how Elsie felt at the thought of being rid of him. She had her separate life, and he had his. And he could write a poem about the opposite of Elsie: Penelope, who preserved a home to which Ulysses wanted to return more than he wanted glory or even immortality.

Besides, he was busy. The act of writing is so devouring that there is no space to think of other matters while this fantastic inner drama is happening.

But there are the times in between. And there is a difference between having a home and having an escape, even if it’s a very effective escape.

*

I used to adore all of Stevens. Now I almost agree with Elsie. But the poems that continue to nourish me remain. The poem I already mentioned, about Penelope waiting for Odysseus (“The World as Meditation”), is one. “Of Mere Being” (“The palm at the end of the mind”) is another.

And there are always the fabulous passages, never mind if from the young or older Stevens (usually the younger):

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

I lean to “just after” — but the “just after” wouldn’t exist without the whistling first.

*

But if there is no actual home in the sense of “Better Homes and Gardens,” poetry can indeed provide some shelter. A poem that continues to nourish us becomes a part of our world, a world in which we have autonomy: “a place to go to in [our] own direction.” We own every word of that poem, just as if we had composed its landscape, its pines and rocks and clouds, so that we can get to the summit and rest, recognizing that we are completely at home. That home is unique and solitary just as each of us is unique and needs solitude simply to discover oneself. And then, having been refreshed by a stay in our home, we can come down and tell our story — if we are secure in the knowledge that we can go home again.

How redundant this little paraphrase seems when the poem has the perfection of the most beautiful quartz — the kind that’s pure white with subtle red veins, or the translucent kind.

*

There was a time when I too thought of books as my home. Or I’d make statements like, “My real homeland is poetry.” Or: “My real home is the republic of the mind, the world of ideas.” The more grand it sounded, the more I thought I was able to conceal my homelessness.

But ultimately there is no substitute for the plain meaning of “home”: your own bed, your lamp, your window. You can travel from there, but you need that harbor where you completely belong.

Not where they have to take you in, but where you have the key to the place, and I don’t mean either a literal or metaphoric key. I mean the garage door opener. Let’s face it, this is America, and you are nobody unless you have a garage door opener.

*

Still thinking about “The Griefwalker,” I was struck how the first interviewee, a woman dying of  cancer, suddenly brought up the fact that she was an adopted child — and that’s when her composure broke. She began crying. She’d never tried to find her biological parents, insisting that she didn’t need to know. “Now, if they came, if they showed up, that would be different.” But they never did, and she was apparently too proud — or too afraid — to try finding the people to whom she’d naturally “belong,” who’d normally give her her first home — but who probably had excellent, praiseworthy reasons for giving her up. At least she didn’t end up in a dumpster. The parents did what they thought was best for the child. And the adoptive parents should be praised as well.

But why did she break down talking about how she never felt the need to know her biological parents? Was she really above feeling abandoned when she was first told? Our very first home is our mother’s womb — what happens if you never meet your mother? Did the adopted girl not feel, at least to some degree, that the home where she lived was not fully her own? That she was not the true daughter of that house, that yard, that street? And now that she was dying, she was going to be homeless again?

https://www.nfb.ca/film/griefwalker/

Why do so many people say that they don’t want to die in a hospital, but at home? That’s rarely going to happen, and besides, what’s so important about dying at home? Why do some immigrants, after more than fifty years in their “new homeland,” go back to where they were born, specifically in order to die there?

Is home, strangely enough, not the place where you live, but the place where you want to die? And what happens if a person can think of no such place?

This is not to say that Stevens took no notice of the beauty of the real world. On the contrary, he said, “The most beautiful thing in the world is the world itself.” And: “A poet looks at the world the way a man looks at a woman.”

And yet his real life was his inner life, the portable paradise within, the only home he had — and he loved it.

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange. 

*

And now — and it’s perhaps the strangest thing of all — Stevens lives in his poems, along with the imaginary women who walk through them also. There he gives them outrageous, oxymoronic names (“Blanche McCarthy”) and instructs them how to make a home in the self:

Look in the terrible mirror of the sky
And not in this dead glass, which can reflect
Only the surfaces –- the bending arm,
The leaning shoulder and the searching eye.
. . .
Look in the terrible mirror of the sky.
See how the absent moon waits in a glade
Of your dark self, and how the wings of stars,
Upward, from unimagined coverts, fly.

Ah, the romantic, the yearner. But in spite of his dead marriage, can we be sure that life did not give Stevens what he wanted? To have a home in poetry is no small thing, nor is having a mind that can create such an aerial dwelling. 
 


AGING AND ITS DISCONTENTS — AND SHOCKING CONTENTMENT

Michael:

Until now, I had never met the word “conspiration” [Oriana: a typo that I’ve corrected once Michael pointed it out] and I hope I never meet it again. It's an ugly word. I can't move it across my tongue.

You wrote, "But maybe I've also declined as a reader." I appreciate the observation. I've wondered about my own declines. The ideas, goals, ideals, and dreams that once seemed so important to me, that once seemed existentially essential, have faded to little more than wisps of memory. And I puzzle over this shift. I puzzle over the "decline."

Rilke wrote "I'm too alone in the world but not alone enough to make each hour holy." Maybe I'm in the process of making each hour holy, and maybe this process is necessary to vacate the castles built in my youth. Like you, I no longer think so many of the poems I once valued are interesting. In some cases I no longer understand them. Books read, authors admired, transformative ideas, lofty goals--done. Gone. Cerebral dust.

Maybe the decline is really a search for that final resting place---a home in which to breathe those final thoughts. Your account of Stevens leaves me sad. I know we get our final home where ever we can but I hope mine is better connected to places and people outside my mind. 
 
Oriana:

Of course I meant “conspiracy.” Maybe “aspiration” was trying to insinuate itself like a dead deity? Both history and life are strewn with dead gods. The moment we cease to worship them, they fall. Rilke intuited it, and felt sorry for his “neighbor god.”

Well, talk about decline. Thanks for pointing out the typo. Yes, I’ve become more prone to the kind of typo where one word fuses with another. Not good.

Decline is very much in my thoughts. I’m still not used to it. The onset is more dramatic for women. Menopause is a major death switch. Afterwards, for women, “memory is not what it used to be,” and tell-tale signs of neurotransmitter shortage reveal themselves in ways no one warned me about. Where are the vivid dreams of yesternights?

And, worse, the decline in creative drive (directly tied to the levels of sex hormones, which drive dopamine) and usually, alas, in the quality (with a few glorious exceptions, and all poets hope they will be Yeats — but no such luck). Non-fiction prose has been my savior since it’s a craft rather than art. It’s not one-tenth as demanding as poetry.

Both our brain function and external circumstances change as we grow older, and we realize that the future doesn’t stretch ahead the way it used to when we were younger. To use the most extreme example, a woman who didn’t become a ballerina or a fashion model in her late teens or at most early twenties will never be one. Someone who learns to play the piano in middle age will never become a virtuoso — though that person may still gain a lot of pleasure from playing the piano, and give enjoyment to friends.

Brain function can be rescued to some extent, and I'm close to enraged (but part of the decline is the sheer inability to get truly enraged) when I think that there is very little interest in what should be one of the primary goals of biomedical research. Dopamine sharply declines, while serotonin holds out longer — hence the common “mellowing with age” phenomenon.

But another feature of aging is that we become less inclined toward ambitious and exhausting projects and, with only so many good years left, we begin to prefer enjoyment. My shorter posts may be easier on the reader, but I confess I made the change for my own pleasure. For the first time in decades I'm writing primarily for my own pleasure.

All studies have found that we tend to become happier as we grow older. Since the future isn’t what it used to be, we are finally able to live in the moment and for the moment. The grand passions of youth that we thought would burn forever are now ashes swept away by the wind of time. But look — a great victory! — I'm no longer weeping and lamenting. How ludicrous to waste what life remains on bewailing the past. The ultimate home is the moment, now after now after now. And that’s still an immense wealth.

And in spite of the unquestionable decline, I have a feeling that I have just begun to live. It’s a new phase of my posthumous existence (posthumous in relation to life driven by ambition and vision of the future). The great, wonderful surprise of it is the abundance of joy.
  
Hyacinth:

So thankful for the words you give us and the language and the way you take us into a  poet’s life… you are a gift and I appreciate all the time you take to bringing this to your audience.  I read the Stevens poems you wrote about this morning; haven’t read him since college and was not that impressed then either, though he is good.. but it’s your own poetry I tend to enjoy the most . . . My favorite lines of his are from “The World As Meditation” — Penelope and her pillow.

Not sure what I’m looking for in poetry, only know it when I experience it and this is what I’m striving for in my own poetry: a place beyond where I am at at the present.

Oriana:

The entire Penelope poem is gorgeous. I know you mean this stanza, and it’s central:

But was it Ulysses? Or was it only the warmth of the sun
On her pillow? The thought kept beating in her like her heart.
The two kept beating together. It was only day.

This is the kind of poem for which we forgive Stevens all kinds of dull other poems. And, after all, it is the best that remains. “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” is another one we think will survive. Possibly “Snowman.” “Sunday Morning” is probably too didactic in the long run. Eventually students will not understand about religion, but Penelope remains a human drama that every woman understands. 

And that's perhaps the ultimate in poetry: to rise above your time, to be timeless.

As I was explaining to Michael, there are ways to rev up the brain function so that more people could be creative in their older years, but we are stubbornly backward and provide those drugs too late, when people already have Alzheimer’s, say, and are past saving. Falling in love is a temporary potent neurological drug — it really potentiates dopamine and other “happy chemicals,” not to mention providing fresh material.

This is a off the subject, but I keep thinking about the man ahead of me in the checkout line at Albertson’s. He was lamenting being unemployed, “and my husband [brief pause] . . . and my girlfriend isn’t working either.” I wonder how long this will continue, this hesitation about being openly gay. I know it’s not my fault, but somehow I was hoping that tolerance was written in my face. I wish I’d said, “To me you you can say, ‘my husband’ but I thought of it too late. That’s a little poem too, those encounters, and I'm glad I can at least write prose vivid enough to give testimony: this is what it is to be living in our time. Only some poems, the best few, are not a “product of their age” with a 50-year span at best. Aging makes us aware how ephemeral 99.9% of everything is. Still precious, like cut flowers.