Dearest
reader,
I have said
time and again, to you specifically, that the happiest things in life are
unbounded by words: specifically mine. So it happens that I am putting virtual
ink-to-page for your enjoyment two weeks and two days after the most joyous day
of my life. I am sitting in my wingback
armchair listening to Brahms, and watching my lovely bride read a book on
philosophy on my right. I don’t have
much more to say in this respect, not because I am indifferent; rather, I am,
to be sure, one of the happiest men alive at the present moment.
I find that
being married has occupied my mind in ways that have diverted my attention from
my inspiration as no other. Or perhaps I
should say, it has changed the form of my inspiration for the time being. In the last few days I have been divulging my
lunch-hour to Rilke, Bastiat, and Fitzgerald, and so it happens that my
Scarlequain is merely simmering in the rear of my mind. Like the Music, my poetry is always present in
the recesses of my cognizance, but as of late it has resigned itself to an
ironic:
Crawling, parched
Month-long march.
Dry and barren,
Take me, Charon:
Silent Muse.
And while I
in no way feel that the Ferry Man of Hades is pulling my inspirational muse to
hell by his boney grasp, I am well aware of my tenure in the desert of noninspiration,
if I may coin a rather unoriginal term.
My job has
felt new and daunting to me for some time now, until, as it happened, an
employee newer than I asked helplessly for directions on a simple task. “I told [her]. And as I walked on I was lonely no
longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an
original settler. [S]he had casually
conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood,” which was, in this case, my
workplace. Ah, Fitzgerald. Even in the third or fourth read-through
(honestly, who is counting?), Gatsby
still fails to disappoint.
I have also
been spending time reading The Poet’s
Guide to Life: The Wisdom of Rilke
in my spare time, and if you know anything about me you’ll know I cling to
every word this literary giant saw fit to pen.
As it turns out, Rilke hand-wrote thousands of letters during his
lifetime – mostly as a distraction from his “work” – poetry writing. I stumbled across a passage where Rilke
describes these letters, on all topics and to all demographics, as an escape
from the desert of noninspiration. An
oasis, if you will. Indeed, it has often
been said that Rilke has done more good for the literary community through his
letters than he did through his poetry.
I daresay Rilke was beginning to suspect the same as he approached his
final stroll towards Charon’s ferry-house, as he gave permission for them all
to be published. At any rate, it made me
smile, because I realized there is no ear more open than the blank page
intended for some distant recipient.
And so, dear
reader, this is where I bid you farewell for the time being. This is where I take my last sip at the oasis
and hope with a smile that the desert ends just over that hill. For, you are my open ear: my addressee that
gives my poetic halt a respite. I
sincerely wish that I, like Rilke to me, have conveyed some measure of hope and
happiness to your daily walk.
May the sand
quickly leave your shoes.
