June 1, 2007
My ClusterBomb
is a ClusterFizzle.
Gee whiz, on Wednesday afternoon when I read ClusterFlock, it was, you know, ClusterFlock, as I’ve grown to know it over these months. Then, when I checked back in on Thursday afternoon, it had been bombed. It took me a while to figure out what had happened and what was going on.
You folks have contributed some great entries, but I’m as boring as a one-dollar bill. I went to school; I graduated. I went to college; I graduated. I worked; I took some time off; I went back to school; I wrote; I worked. (And as my other entry for today makes clear, I listened to a lot of music.)
If there is anything (notice that if) distinctive about me, it’s perhaps a sum total of maybe 200 lines of verse and maybe a few pages of prose. And maybe my willingness to consider almost any line of thought as a possibility.
I drink tea; I do email and elimae; I read. I read a lot. I like to read. If (notice that if) I am in any way like Borges, it’s that my purpose in life seems to be to read. (And you’ll note that Borges didn’t do things either, whatever that comparison’s worth.)
I can tell you this: I may be one of the few ‘Flockers who, while playing hide-and-seek in a church building one night (not while church was going on, mind you), decided to hide in the baptistry. Which meant, of course, taking my clothes off. So, yeah, I’ve been skinny-dipping in a church baptistry. Boring.
But here’s a little bit of oddity. Those of you who’ve read my posts about ELO or Arthur Conan Doyle know already that I’m almost beyond humiliation, so how about a “poem” from high school? I don’t have a copy of this, of course, but it lingers in my head, in more or less accurate fashion (as well as one can know if a memory accurate), so I’ll give it to you. It’s not any good, to be sure, and well reveals the limitations of my experience and education to that point (the word dents, for example, used in a psychological sense), but I think of it from time to time because, in some way, I think it really does point out what I am sort of about (and was probably about back then, although I’m not at all sure I intended the verse as a bit of autobiography: in fact, it may have been a teacher who suggested that it was). So here’s the little bit of really bad verse:
“He came and passed
With utter smoothness.
He made no dents,
Nor did he wish it so.
No one noticed
When he had gone.
There was only
A quiet space
He left
When he left.”
PS: I should mention that, even as India didn’t believe in moonlight, I still have trouble believing that arches and keystones really work the way they are said to: and I keep seeing them over here.
comments
Cooper, if your high school poem does not look so great when held up against the Great Works, consider how it stands compared to the stuff that floods poetry workshops. Spend fifteen minutes on Edit Red or even PFFA and that bit doesn’t look so bad.
Hey, are you going to hell for committing such a shocking sacrilege in that church or did you self-baptize and are therefore fast-tracking to heaven?
Coop–I love this. And that is an amazing tale of skinny dipping in a dark baptistry. It seems like the sort of thing Jesus would have approved of, while church leaders would scowl. Hide and seek in the waters of life: you spoke for all of creation without a word. Seems like that ritual could be improved, doesn’t it?
And I think your old poem is splendid work for a young person–given the usual level, as Michael points out. Yours seems better than a similar poem by Mark Strand–”Keeping Things Whole”–that starts with the lines:
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
And I hadn’t thought of it, but you are indeed Borgesian: you move across time better than anybody I know.
Cooper, your high school poem reveals an appreciation for subtlety and substance remarkable for a teenager. No wonder you developed into you.
I think Sheila should write your cluster bomb.
Bryan, you are ANYTHING but boring, and I dare say, you’re too close to the trees to see the actual, amazing forest of you — but those words coming from that woods are delicious. Have a great trip. LB
What the heck is a Borges?
I think that a Borges is some weird kind of Euro-car that maybe Alek Lindus might drive.
I think Sheila should write your cluster bomb.
I expect I will, Cindy. Cooper has, after all, designated me his ‘official unauthorized biographer’.
sheila, any time you want to ‘thelma and louise’ in a euro-borges just give me a call. It might not be pink and it might not be convertable but its got 5 wheels that turn 360 independantly; commonly known in these parts as a ‘borgette coupe’.
there’s also a 3 wheeler in the range known as ‘the gaucho’.
Is the ‘borgette coupe’ Buenos Aires-conditioned?
Buenos Aires-conditioned! Hehehecacklecacklesnort. Hehe. (Gulp of air.)
You folks are too kind about my old poem.
And don’t forget this, when Sheila issues my official unauthorized biography: it’s unauthorized to be as fictional as possible, beginning with my birth in an Icelandic snowstorm in 953 CE.
ah! so thats why you have such an aversion to the cold.
Definately, sheila, is that where we are going? I think i’ll take the slow boat from here though, one of those freight ships that will accomodate a few passengers and a car; that cruise ship of Cooper’s has given me a taste for travel.
[...] already humiliated myself with “He came and went / with utter smoothness,” I’ll contribute this as [...]