Pete’s Woods in Arcadia Dunes, Michigan
I knew a faculty member at the University of Delaware who had a perfect memory. She could watch Othello, for example, tell you which edition it was, recite the variation from other editions, and tell you which edition those missing or altered lines first appeared. She forgot nothing. She said one time she worried that she remembered so much that she was missing out on other things as they passed.
I sometimes think I write because I can’t remember anything, otherwise. If I put it down, I can hold onto it better. I go back to my early books and think, oh yes, that’s how it was. I wonder if having a blank-slate mind, or a blank page, or at least the constant insecurity that you can’t hold onto things, is a prerequisite to being a writer. You’re always telling yourself, and others, to hold onto the epiphanies as they fly past.
Of course, you can’t hold on. Last week I went on a hike sponsored by the Club where we live to a natural area full of spring wildflowers—trillium, somewhat rare celandine poppies, violets, hairy Solomon’s seal, foamflowers, and so on. We had our guide sheets. One man complained to me, “I just want to appreciate things as they arise, not pin them down.” Names do that, of course. They’re our invention, not the flower’s. The flower is a bare blooming; it’s not its name.
On the other hand, when we name something, we develop a relationship with it. My name is Fleda. The name has become part of the complex combination that I call Me, and you call Me. Try not inventing a name for your beloved pet. It would be almost impossible. It’s a large part of the way we connect.
I used to tell my students that words/names are like pixels on a screen. The more you have, the larger your vocabulary, the better the resolution.
But I understand my former colleague’s worry. We can’t strip our minds of what they know, nor would we want to. She was afraid she was so full of words, so cerebral, that she would float across the surface of what actually exists. There’s the danger of being left with a desert of concepts, the actual moist earth lost to you. You become a propagandist, a purveyor of what’s already been labeled.
This is in my collection of notes. I don’t know where it came from— “The empire is interested in dull language. It is interested in reporting that “collateral damage has occurred” instead of plainly stating that “a helicopter has bombed a wedding with 347 guests, including children.” The empire is interested in normative speech. The poet is interested in exactly the opposite, in the language of the senses.
“A poet must be a professor of the five senses,” says Federico García Lorca.
One remedy is meditation. The mind can be slowly trained not to always float over the surface of names. Another remedy is writing. To find the precise way to see on paper, you have to see beyond the easy names. The lazy, consequently poor, writer stops with the cliché. So there’s no real seeing.
By the way, I’ve discovered Trekking sticks! My physical therapist had suggested I buy some several years ago, but I wasn’t using them. I thought they made me feel old. Then my daughter sent me some for Mother’s Day, which reminded me I had mine in our storage unit. I sent hers back and started using mine. I suppose I am old, now, so I can use them! It’s amazing how much better I feel when I’m walking. They take the pressure off my poor, deteriorating lower back. I come home with less pain. I can walk farther.
I’m writing a series of walking poems. When I think I have nothing more to say, something arises every time. It’s like my walking buddy said, I just appreciate what arises.