Saturday, November 13, 2010

Killing Pawns

Matthew Arnold -- The Buried Life

"But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us -- to know
When our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves ---
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpressed.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well -- but 'tis not true!
And then we will no more be racked
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothing of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day."

I'm amazed, discouraged, and gladdened all at the same time to hear that Arnold himself aches with that same inadequacy of words to pin down meaning, feeling, expression. I feel that so deep sometimes that it forces silence, laughing like the black night over me. Silence herself isn't so bad. It's only that sometimes, the silence is so rich and pregnant with a meaning she refuses to relinquish. Hateful.

But then when they come, the Words tie strings to my fingers and I feel myself no longer in control. I've got eight puppets attached to my arms that dance across a lettered stage, and somehow meaning stretches herself across this hard computer screen. What a wind, what a rogue is Language - and I, impassioned lover, sit entranced at his feet.

This morning, I woke with the moon beneath my eyelids -- the puppet strings grew taught on my fingers and grasped for their stage to dance.

Writing is therapy. You may quit the audience at any time, but the puppets won't stop dancing on their stage. They don't move for an audience. They move to find breath. Few are invited in to this audience - I try to appear more down to earth, and I've quite mastered the art of pretension until I don't even seem pretentious.

All are pretentious. All strive and push for some appearance that they can't quite master. I try my best to appear not crazy - I fear I am, a bit. And then I wonder what it means to be crazy or to be sane after all. Perhaps the craziest are those who think they are sane.

I was at the zoo this morning with a very close mentor. The zoo is walking distance from my house. I love it. It was a still morning, and cold. I clamped my coffee in moon-arched fingers. I heard the lions wake through moon-arched jaws. I watched the orangutan with his arm slung, moon-arched, just so over rope. I drank in the penguins' moon-arched flippers, bellies, beaks. I see her everywhere today, the moon.

My mentor and I shared our Blacks and Whites. Or perhaps more accurately, shared parallel journeys of relinquishing them for Grays. Blacks and whites are for categories, for controlled understanding, for war. I don't have many of them left. My life is both sides of a colliding chess set, and I've already lost most of my pawns. I sense myself growing far less easily angered and less defensive than I once was. I have little to defend, less that causes offense. I feel smaller. By surface area, I take up no less space in the universe. But in ways beyond mass, I hope to take up less space. My pull is less towards dominating space and more towards relinquishing it. When I was in college, that was quite the opposite. Battle has some good effects, then. (Though now that my desire has shifted, I'm repugnant to discover all the shifting shadow piles where I've hoarded power, like an old bag woman's basement.)

I was with a friend at coffee yesterday who said she's been asking herself in all her relationships, "Where am I taking power?" What a profound thought. I want to emulate her in this. Lord, thank you for the model you provided of one who gives up power -- even power that is rightfully yours. I also would desire to do the same. Give me the grace, Lord, to identify and relinquish power, control. I surrender. Amen.

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