Maybe I could start with Socrates? How’s that for dragging in the big names! But don’t worry, it’s only to give evidence of my folly. In my arrogance I thought I had invented The Socrates Paradox. Do you know it? It goes like this,
“I know that I know nothing.”
How perfect. Socrates was an absurdist. An existentialist. He understood our dreadful human predicament. And here we are, thousands of years later and we still cannot know and only fools think they know and only grifters pretend to know and only fools listen to the grifters. The rest of us just muddle along.
In my arrogance I thought I had invented that saying! That Paradox. I even wrote a poem about it. Can you imagine how thrilled I was to find out that Socrates and I shared a similar revelation! Socrates and me thinking the same thought across centuries. How brilliant is that? My chest puffed out for sure. I was ready to drink Hemlock. My little poem went like this;
“Let’s just say everything is a mixed bag.
I mean, you know you cannot know!
How mixed baggish is that?”
Terrible poetry! Truly awful. But Socrates and me walking in the garden together, peripatetic philosophers together, in cloaks and tunics, nodding our heads in unison, thinking the same thought! Imagine that. Then off we go to the baths or the temple or wherever those Ancient Greeks went for regeneration and to share more Deep Thoughts, together. I only tell you this so you will see how smart I am. There’s no other reason. And maybe you will like me.
Perhaps you see the problem?
I also believed, for a long time, that the Latin term, “Corpus Delicti” meant “Body Delicious”. I still think it means that. I refuse to believe that these lovely sounding words mean, “Body of Evidence.” How can that be? But then, somehow it is right. Because Love is both Body Delicious and then what follows, as Love grows cold, is The Dreadful Trial and then The Body of Evidence is brought forth inside boxes and boxes with reams and reams of paper inside these boxes and all this evidence is examined under the harshest light in every contentious detail. And then, everyone is guilty. Everyone is stripped naked before The Bench, before The Judge. And then, everyone must pay the price for their willful crimes and sad misdemeanors and Flagrante Delictos. Everyone must pay for their crimes against Love. The Flagrante Delictos are the most damaging. The Flagrante Delictos are never forgiven because they tear at the soft spots and the soft spots grow scar tissues and the scar tissues rub against the soft spots with every step you take, every move you make. And that’s Love. Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe I am way off base, again, and Love is something entirely different. Because, after all, I know that I know nothing.
Perhaps you can help?
Here we have an example of bad poetry and shameless self-promotion combined with talking about something you know nothing about. The author compares himself to SOCRATES! Talk about self-aggrandizing bullshit. And then, the pitiful fool, who has already shown himself to be an imposter trying to get his picture taken with The Big Star (you know the type); now this ignoramus has the audacity to pretend to know something about Love. Love my ass, all he knows about is how to ramble inanely.
Perhaps you see the problem?
Perhaps you can help?
But other than that? There’s nothing wrong with the work that follows. Nothing at all. Occasional mind-boggling digressions. But is that so bad? I mean really? After all, life is full of digressions. In fact, life is just one big fat digression. No wonder we don’t know anything. No wonder we can’t know anything. And my buddy Socrates and I know this. And we know that this is the only thing we know. Maybe. We are not certain.
BUT,
really, Socrates is not the place where I begin at all. I am just messing around. And hoping you will get to know me and begin to understand my terrible obsession with her.
I fell in love with her early in my life. The simple way that sentences made magic. The simple way she said one word and I’d repeat that word over and over and imagine her in various guises and disguises. One word from her lips and I was transported for days. If she breathed one whole sentence I was captivated and would breathe her words back to her like some incantation, like some river, and me on my little raft swirling and bobbing and plunging toward the rapids, toward the falls, toward the sea. Where in the hell did I think I was going?
And who were those voices who held me and hold me still, in a spell, with their cadences and their tumbling logic? And why would any sane person want to follow them when their lives were mostly disasters? It appears that the art of writing, of writing from some place between waking and sleep, the act of dredging the layers of sediment at the bottom of conscious thought, of finding stones buried in the clay in the river bottom and dragging them to the surface and holding them in the sunlight and watching them as they dry and lose their sheen and become commonplace, their magic evaporating, leaving only a carcass of words behind; it seems that art, that act, that search for meaning, is a most disturbing activity and often drives people quite mad. Why follow such desperate fools as these?
But follow them I did. Once the taste of her kiss was in my mouth my brain became infected and I was hooked.
For you, I could make lists of these writers in various categories. But what good would that do? You would not be able to taste them. Once again, only words. I could write about my lovers, my friends, my cousins, my aunties, my sisters, my brothers, my mother, my father. But what good would that do? For you, they have already written the most perfect lines. For you, they have already left an uncommon gift, a finely wrought gift.
What is left for me to do? Maybe I could quote them and then you could read them and maybe their words will turn you into a beast, or some half-human thing like William Blake’s Nebuchadnezzar! That is the danger of reading these damned people. I mean, really, what was Blake thinking! I don’t know. But I can’t resist him. And, somehow, Nebuchadnezzar reminds me of me. Of us. Of you. He is so distraught, so distracted, so transformed, so fixed for all eternity in his torture.
“He was driven away from people and ate grass like the ox. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.”
Daniel 4:33
Perhaps you can see the problem?
Perhaps you can help?
SO,
I hope you’ll turn the page and visit with me.
And we can have a cup of tea.
Maybe, we can have a discussion?
On poetry, or philosophy,
or Love, or war.
Maybe, we’ll drink too much
and laugh too loud.
Maybe, you’ll call me a fool
(I know I am)
and you’ll leave the room in a huff
and slam the door.
Maybe, you’ll come back to our room,
despite your pride,
(how kind you are)
and we’ll be warm with each other
and talk some more.
Maybe, you’ll recite poems to me
and sing songs to me
and I’ll sing songs back to you
and recite the poems I adore.
Maybe, we’ll sing songs together!
Silly songs from the old days
when our innocence protected us
from the big bad world.
And the room will vibrate with ideas,
like the hum of bees
in a meadow
and time will pass through us
in whispers and with shouts
and we’ll pass through time
in confusion and with doubt,
and we’ll wobble through space
together,
perched on this spinning globe.
For we are the narrow waist
of the hourglass.
We are the slender moment.
We are the single grain of sand shifting and sifting,
and falling.
I hope you will turn the page.
