Lucky Life

Well that's the title of a poem by Gerald Stern and a darned good poem it is, but I'm not thinking of Gerry Stern--though now that I've paused I can remember him telling a very entertaining story in Iowa City about how he deflected aggressive telephone calls from the credit bureau by telling them he wasn't Mr. Stern, but the piano tuner. Imagination is sometimes the old tin pail one puts under the leaking roof. As for me, I am in the mind of a lucky life because I have friends in the blogosphere and some of them actually take time out of their works and days to have dinner with me. I had dinner with Blue Girl (In a Red State) the other night, and I've had many a lively conversation over many a curious repast with my friend Lance Mannion (who met me in Iowa City when Reagan was fleecing the country the first time around). Ah, those were the days! I actually believed the nation would be smart enough to vote for Walter Mondale. 

Blue Girl told me she doesn't think people get wiser as they age--she used to think so, but now, well, look at the world. I mumbled something about emotional intelligence--if you have the capacity to see yourself, as though you're a character in a play--that is, see outside your subjective responses, then you have the type of irony that allows for wisdom. We got into a great conversation which veered toward post-industrial capitalism (which I believe is far more destructive than its predecessor since it demands buying as a principle of citizenship--George Bush after 9-11: "Just go out and shop.")

In order to be a citizen in PI Cap you have to spend. If you can't spend you belong in prison. Or else you should borrow from your parents, as Mitt Romney said yesterday, right here in Columbus, Ohio.  The heartlessness of Mitt Romney is only exceeded by his cluelessness. He's a good example of someone who doesn't get wiser as he gets older. He's also an example of someone who didn't inherit his father's compassion. Where did George Romney's compassion disappear to? It's a good question because it's the question that covers the entire GOP. Now we're back to PI Cap, since our current heartlessness (GOP style) has to do with the marriage of racism (disdain for LBJ's embrace of civil rights--packaged first by Nixon, then Reagan, and now wildly out of the can) with the disappearance of blue collar manufacturing jobs. George Romney could march for civil rights because he understood implicitly that minority workers were terrific, he saw them every day in the auto industry. George Romney wasn't threatened by people of color. PI Cap says that every person of color is dangerous, needs to be "dealt with" --hence the wild hatred of the GOP for Obama who is, after all, a Republican.

It's amazing to see the heartlessness bubbling over in this proud nation. I heard a Catholic priest talking about the same thing on one of the cable networks just the other day--I was jogging on a treadmill in the hotel here in Columbus and I heard a priest--a PRIEST--say that the GOP is pushing social darwinism on the nation.

We're living in creepy times.  I'm beginning to think I should rename my blog "Creepy Times" but someone has probably taken the title already. 

 

Here are the opening lines from Gerald Stern's poem:

 

Lucky life isn't one long string of horrors 
and there are moments of peace, and pleasure, as I lie in between the blows. 
Lucky I don't have to wake up in Phillipsburg, New Jersey, 
on the hill overlooking Union Square or the hill overlooking 
Kuebler Brewery or the hill overlooking SS. Philip and James 
but have my own hills and my own vistas to come back to. 


Each year I go down to the island I add 
one more year to the darkness; 
and though I sit up with my dear friends 
trying to separate the one year from the other, 
this one from the last, that one from the former, 
another from another, 
after a while they all get lumped together, 
the year we walked to Holgate, 
the year our shoes got washed away, 
the year it rained, 
the year my tooth brought misery to us all. 

 

Thanks to Blue Girl and Lance Mannion for posting me!

 

Comments

[Elizabeth]

Sobering, but beautiful, beautiful post.

[blue girl]

I wised up! Those I like to discuss ideas with might be getting tired of me talking about that light bulb moment of mine, but I was spectacularly wrong. And it fascinates me.

"A moment of peace and pleasure between the blows"

Helps me to understand life a bit better.

Thanks for this great post, Professor. And I hope to meet with you again soon. We have so many more mysteries to solve!

[Leslie B.]

Oh yeah, the beatings! Very Godot:

ESTRAGON:
I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
Then why did they beat you?
ESTRAGON:
I don't know.
VLADIMIR:
Ah no, Gogo, the truth is there are things that escape you that don't escape me, you must feel it yourself.
ESTRAGON:
I tell you I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
Perhaps you weren't. But it's the way of doing it that counts, the way of doing it, if you want to go on living.
ESTRAGON:
I wasn't doing anything.
VLADIMIR:
You must be happy too, deep down, if you only knew it.
ESTRAGON:
Happy about what?
VLADIMIR:
To be back with me again.
ESTRAGON:
Would you say so?
VLADIMIR:
Say you are, even if it's not true.
ESTRAGON:
What am I to say?
VLADIMIR:
Say, I am happy.
ESTRAGON:
I am happy.
VLADIMIR:
So am I.
ESTRAGON:
So am I.
VLADIMIR:
We are happy.
ESTRAGON:
We are happy. (Silence.) What do we do now, now that we are happy?
VLADIMIR:
Wait for Godot.

The beatings will continue until morale improves, right?