On Being Useful

5-31-06 Words Contain Potential Dynamite


What is my use to you? It is my psyche. My peculiar storehouse of memories & the odd manner of my recollection of the same. That is my use to you. I often wonder why I am not standing in front of a classroom full of students holding forth & asking piercing questions &, as we say, "Teaching." I did teach school for 6 years. My last class was a group of students at Long Beach State University. I remember breaking open Shakespeare's Hamlet in front of these young college students. It is the only time I ever taught or tried to teach this piece of literature often called Shakespeare's greatest and most profound play. It was a non-event. I do not now see how anyone can teach literature to students though I love it especially American literature. And am frequently surprised at some of the thoughts that overtake me concerning this and that piece of literature. But mainly what gets me is love songs I hear over the radio or very often over the intercom while I am sojourning down the aisles of just any general store buying groceries or just gazing at the merchandise in a department store trying to find my bearings. I'm always looking for that beautiful woman I seem to have missed the last time & at the same time I am looking for My Story. The story of my life.

What else is writing? It is always The Story of My Life. What else could it be? Well, of course it is at the same time the story of Your Life. Otherwise I'm not really nailing it. My only use to you is to narrate to you The Real Story of My Life. Believe you me. You have no idea how hard that is to do. And how easy. How to let it loose from the chains that bind it. We are all in jail in some very literal way. Every one of us. How to experience The Liberation. For there can be no Love without Freedom. Now I realize there is a notion that has been around for a long time that we are all incarcerated and condemned to be in prison simply by virtue of having a body. To own a body is to be relegated to the eternal status of inmate on the planet Earth. We are hostages to the eternal laws of Earth. I am not talking about that particular view presently. That is a view that was especially popular in the Puritan Biblical tradition. It has a certain amount of merit apart from the theology I believe. But that is not what is on my craw at this moment. I am thinking more along the lines of the mores of society that have become so entrenched that we have begun to assume their inevitability and their Necessity. Social customs rule us with an iron hand. We can never have a true love affair if only one of the two partners is Free. We can never have a Free Society if only a few members are genuinely Free.

This is an Experiment. This BLOG is. It is a Thought Experiment. And I have yet to do much actual laboratory work here as you may note. I am presently feeling my way. This is New Ground to me. And of course there is that whole other part of my life that remains totally unresolved. And I mean the whole business of Love. That is completely unresolved for me. What is my purpose on earth I have been asking myself every day for the last 25 years or so. I must have some very particular USE. I believe to purify the American dialect that has become my own language and idiom---and the rhythm of my sight and hearing and my perception of the world---that may be of some use. And how not to squander essence. How not to waste that which is Life-Giving. If I could discover that in my searching and in the Effort I am making then that would be a worthy Revelation. And I suppose it would come without warning. Without a neon sign advertising it. I suppose you could see it in my skin and in the few words I use. I suppose this mystery & miracle---this Glory---I suppose it contains its own means of revealing itself that is totally Independent of me. I am a mere Vessel. The words themselves must hold some secrets that go far beyond me. Why else would I spend my entire life permitting this Experiment to take place?

This Whole Operation is an Experiment I am contending. Not merely this Blog Site. But this Society, this State of California. This country---the USA. This attempted Republic of democratic states and cities. It is an Experiment. An Hypothesis. As is Every Love Affair in the history of Humankind an experiment and an Hypothesis. 'Let's see where this takes us.' Marriage & family are surely Experiments. And I shall go one step farther. I believe the human race itself (Homo Ludens, if you will) is a tremendous experiment. In most respects thus far it appears to be a failure. But there are promising aspects to this prodigious Hypothesis. And I believe the most promising of all remains Love---which we have yet to Experience as a species. There is nothing quite like the true love that may exist between a man and a woman. How is this love so composed as to evolve and become not lessened and deadened but rather enhanced and continuously purified and increased in scope and in surprise? This has to be one of the most salient functions of any artist worth a dime---as it is of every separate human being. To Explore & Discover The Sources of Love and the Renaissance of human being who seems to be beset from the very moment of birth with a Death Wish that exists in the same body as the Desire to Survive---The Libido. I'm not talking magic here. But also I AM. For the truest words contain nothing less than Magic & Miracles. This may be the Ultimate Use of The Poet.


RLG Copyright 2006