Words, Words, Words . . . And Seasons and Stages

So already, I've been thinking a lot about words--my words, other people's--and the degrees to which they help and hinder, obscure and reveal.  All this while fully understanding my penchant for them, my attraction to them, maybe even my addiction to them. Maybe it's the English teacher in me, but I'm always looking to put experiences into words, to use language to express even those experiences that don't need words, that inherently dramatize language's limitations. Sometimes, it's the desire to communicate those experiences to others--because there's something about them that wants telling, describing; sometimes it's the desire to integrate them into myself and my understandings of the world--as if without words, those experiences and all the associations and meanings they gave rise to will evanesce. I'm not particularly nostalgic, but there are moments that I want to hang on to because there's a quintessential fullness to them. Such moments, somehow preserved and therefore able to revisited, have the power of "over and over announcing your place/In the family of things," as the last lines of Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" put it. Frankly, I like feeling part of the "family of things." And I don't always feel that way.

On March 27 "The Writer's Almanac" featured "Words" by Dana Gioia as its poem of the day.  To the right is the screen shot of the web page that featured that poem. Love the images, the music, the meta- physics, the rever- ence, and the gentle, enlarging irony of the poem's last lines. Words, though not always needed, have a beneficent function in this poem, and "we" are beneficent beings.

But while Gioia's poem says something that I couldn't put into words so well and that I actively feel and think, he's not the only poet in town talking about words, especially the words of poets. I've been reading--and really liking, though I can't say I've completely wrapped my mind around--Frank Bidart's Metaphysical Dog: Poems.*  The following lines from "Writing 'Ellen West'" reveal a poet who knows he doesn't really know what he wants to know, what he needs to know, but who is compelled to write despite, or perhaps because of, his combination of courage, critical self-recognition, hope, and doubt:

"He was grateful he was not impelled to live out the war in his body, hiding in compromise, well wadded with art he adored and with stupidity and distraction."

"After she died his body wanted to die, but his brain, his cunning, didn't.

"Arrogance of the maker."

"One more poem, one more book in which you figure out how to make something out of not knowing enough."


The second section of the book is called "Hunger for the Absolute," but the speaker in "Writing 'Ellen West'" fears that he's not even close to the Absolute--unless perhaps the Hunger, or the vain quest for it, is the Absolute. In one of the comments featured on the back of the book, Stephen Burt of The New York Times Book Review says that "his [Bidart's] poems are doors best opened with cautious attention--behind them you might even see yourself."

Gioia's poem comforts me, establishes "my place/ in the [sunlit] family of things." But Bidart's poems insist that I see the darkness; identify me as "— Hypocrite lecteur, — mon semblable, — mon frère!"**; and caution me about poems, words, and language that claim certainty and sincerity, neither of which they actually have. Not that the writers of these words don't long to be certain and sincere! The intent of each "dishonest" writer is not to deceive others maliciously, but rather to know and speak with certainty (which always soothes to some degree), thus, subconsciously, to deceive him/herself. That's precisely my challenge as a writer: avoiding subtle, partial self-deception; avoiding the sanitation of the difficult in order to make it more palatable, more manageable, more conducive to peaceful sleep; avoiding the terror of too much not knowing, even when not knowing is often so natural. Because I like things tidy, neat.  Because the non-rigid "Absolute" comforts me, especially when it's bathed in light.


But wait! Sunlight and darkness both exist; and language may indeed elevate and illuminate. Idolizing one's own idiosyncratic version of "the family of things" or "the Absolute" would be problematic, but striving with and through language may simply be something very human, very natural--and downright useful. People's language bring people's perspectives on what's possible, probable, actual. Those of us who are inclined to seek avail themselves of whatever tools we have. Language presents us with many of those tools: stories, teachings, words, . . . poems.

Speaking of stories, last week while reading Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs***, I was surprised by the many different righteous Jewish paths that people could follow, paths that reflected their talents and inclinations, as well as the material and spiritual circumstances of their lives, past and present. This didn't mean that every one of these people became a teacher in the sense of transmitting knowledge accrued over the ages, but it did mean that the behavior of every righteous person--the actions and the spirit with which the actions were performed--was potentially instructive. Furthermore, role and appearance did not tell all:  the town cobbler might have as highly developed a life of study and prayer as an acknowledged spiritual leader. Interestingly, some people quite deliberately concealed aspects of their righteousness.

I was also surprised--and then comforted by the fact--that even the renowned mystics and spiritual leaders sometimes needed to reroute themselves in order to develop over time. It seemed to me their recognition of the need for some kind of change of course**** was the result of a combination of developmental forces, growing wisdom, effort, and intentionality. In various tales, important characters recognized the need to make changes in their lives, for example, marrying after having assiduously avoided marriage, participating more actively in community after having embraced and protected predominantly isolated lives of prayer and study, exiling themselves from the community after having been a participant in it, or returning to the community after a period of religious exile. Spiritual evolution came with joyful persistence and the understanding that further spiritual evolution was always possible. Absolute certainty, but always distance--understood and accepted--between oneself and "the Absolute." And always the effort to minimize that distance.

As much as these lives and stories diverge from my own, they inspire me with their variety, their non-linearity, and their centeredness-in-God. Personally, I'm not feeling centered, though centeredness is tremendously appealing, and I thank God and think about God a lot. As I look ahead to the next phase of life, feel some real yearning to plan for my next stage, I have this great privilege of choice and time--for work, for play, for study, for music, for walking outside. I want to use my my privilege, wisely and well. I'd like to experience it emotionally as less of a burden/challenge, and as more of a gift/opportunity. I know my yearning is not only about "what to do" and "what to be," though these are most often what people ask me about. I have to be authentic, aspirational and actual. And I'd really like to feel centered.

So can words--my own words, in conjunction with the words of others--lead to authentic centeredness? I continue to hope so. There's no question that writing with relative ease can lead to the kind of cunning and inauthenticity that Frank Bidart talks about: formulating and expressing in order to have "something" to say that, by its very written existence, speaks with personal authority, genuine or not. I want to avoid writing "one more . . . [blog post] in which you figure out how to make something out of not knowing enough." But I believe writing moves me forward: I feel like I get something right every time I write, even if it's a very little something. 

The theme of the meditations for this week in Day by Day***** is "Finding Our Way" because Numbers 1:1-4:20 takes up the Israelites' wilderness wandering experience.  Tomorrow's meditation is particularly apt, given this blog's topic:  "The biggest lie I tell myself is . . . For a moment I thought I could complete that sentence, and that would have been the biggest lie of all! But I do understand what is the great struggle of my life: to know the inside of me better, to examine what I'm about to do, as well as what I have already done" (229).  

Frank Bidart and I could both be naturally tempted to complete that sentence about the lie. But it's the last part of the meditation that has the potential to help me find my center in a context that views the quest and desire to find "a center" as natural. Looking inward, looking back, looking forward: sounds right to me. It's exactly what we teachers at Pilot School asked all of our students to do in conjunction with their reading and writing portfolios so that they could move forward as learners and people. I realize I've been looking inward and looking forward, but have been neglecting looking backward as much as may be useful.

Last week as I was contemplating the development of particular Chasidic spiritual leaders and mystics over time, I remembered that Hinduism recognizes various life stages and that one of the later stages relates to redefining oneself in retirement.  As Huston Smith explains in The World's Religions******, "Retirement looks beyond the stars, not to the village streets. It is the time for working out a philosophy, and then working that philosophy into a way of life; . . .." (53). If the retiree can, s/he actually physically departs from the socially organized world of the village in which s/he has been active as a "householder," becoming a "forest-dweller" liberated from the responsibilities and expectations of the second stage of life in order to fulfill third-stage purposes. Smith goes on to assert that if, upon completing this stage, the retiree returns to the village streets, s/he is a "different person" (54) even if s/he pursues a life that appears identical to the one s/he led before.

Working out a philosophy, not merely choosing a new career in the old ways, or an old career in the old ways. "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Lots of good words from many places, and some warnings about the seduction of words, too. They're not always truth. But sometimes they are, or can lead there.

* Bidart, Frank. Metaphysical Dog: Poems. S.l.: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014. Print.
**Jacques LeClercq translates this line from "Au Lecteur" (To the Reader) by Charles Baudelaire as "Reader, O hypocrite — my like! — my brother!" <http://fleursdumal.org/poem/099>
*** Schneersohn, Joseph Isaac. Lubavitcher Rabbi's Memoirs: The Memoirs of Rabbi Yosef Y. Schneersohn of Lubavitch. Trans. Nissan Mindel. Brooklyn, NY: Otzar Hachasidim, 2004. Print.
**** Screen shot from <http://kavirunner.blogspot.com/2009/08/watchung-reservation-trail-run.html> 
***** Stern, Chaim. Day by Day: Reflections on the Themes of the Torah from Literature, Philosophy, and Religious Thought. Boston: Beacon, 1998. Print.  
****** Smith, Huston. The World's Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991. Print.