by Harvey Lillywhite
An accidental life. An intentional life. I weigh these propositions. I find myself, a man of 56, palms turned to heaven, shoulders shrugging, at the heart of me, bewildered.
Morning asks for an end to melancholy. It's amazing, already the roots Tap further down like white canes In their clear jars of water. To the sun lifting from the dark, The quiet miracle ignored, recoloring the earth, Our winter lot responds: a choir of weed stalks,
Bricks scattered near a crumbled foundation. This rummaging light is what we mean by hope. But even in illumination there is longing, A desire for the underside of things. I remember a slough, bald cypress And tupelo gum lifting from water Green with duckweed, sphagnum moss closing slowly Around the shrinking body of open water,
The beds of flocculent peat. In that darkness My childhood burned off. Every day now
I go to work, rising like the sun, With the brute momentum that comes with age, I still dream of the cinnamon fern, Leatherleaf, cotton sedge, the only place Where the wild calla still survives. Last night, I was exhausted when I got home. I saw the moon, warm and huge At the horizon, dredge the twilight Until every detail disappeared from the day. Stars came out as the moon rolled away. Now this morning, my dream effaced, I notice that the cuttings are ready For potting; the pale roots track down.
“The road taken/not taken” implies choice. But how did I get here and where, exactly, am I? Accident: born of two parents with careening lives of their own. Accident: in tow, dragged about for years as I grew up, an appendage to their lives, to their breaking marriage, to their divorce, to the eventual marriage of my mother and step-father, to my father’s sad life alone until death did him part. Accident: all the opportunities and circumstances that fell in front of me, like moving through a dense thicket, stepping here and not there, then another step, and another. Did I intend these steps?
My son, interning for a U.S. congressman, got a tour of Baltimore harbor by the Association of Maryland Pilots (boat pilots), and, afterward, was given the Association’s official coffee mug. It features a painting by Captain Brian Hope (I’m not making up this name) called “Christmas at the Pilot Station” from 1932. It depicts two apprentices rowing what’s called a beach boat (small boat with three slats for sitting, and two sets of oars), which is caught in the furious December surf at Cape Henry. At one end of the boat is a Christmas tree, which the two rowers are mightily struggling to deliver at great peril to the Pilot Boat, a rugged 75-foot boat that stands like an unmovable rock in the distance, just beyond the troubled waters.
This is intention. Captain Hope. Two small men risking their lives to bring a Christmas tree to the mother ship.
Has the road I’ve taken been planned? Have I set a goal against which I’ve worked against all odds? What did I want from my life?
Two different days float In the firmament this morning: Gaps of summer’s rich Azure with brightest September sun set beside the billowing ascended cotton From my pill bottles, backlit, celestial-white Around the edges with dramatic black Bottoms aimed right at us, and then The thin, wispy shroud of gray That has concealed most of heaven’s Arch, that sprinkles us with blesséd water, Fallout from a hurricane That’s destroyed several islands In paradise—it soaks us with fortune-cookie Wisdom: “Summer over today. You die soon. Better get serious.” All this I take under advisement. A long run on the beach to get back in shape? A remote possibility; My stamina misplaced somewhere in the kram. An umbrella’d walk through the suburbs? Too windy. I decide on morning dessert On the porch, and offer a quick prayer: “God, while I’m eating your peach pie, Let it receive my full attention.”
Each step of the way has been guided more by my sense of values moment by moment than by any desired long-term goal, which I might pursue, like Captain Hope, blithely rowing against the surf, largely unaware of what my oars are chopping up as I progress. I sense that I’ve “fallen into” my life. And now, having passed the middle-point of my life, I can look back and wonder what I’ve accomplished and look forward and wonder what I want to accomplish still in this huge expanse of time.
My “bucket list.” (The Urban Dictionary defines this as “1)A list of things you think you might need to accomplish because you feel your own mortality closing the door on you. 2)You feel insecure about your life and therefore make a list of things to get busy on.”) To see my sons secure in their adult lives. Grandchildren? (none of my business, really) Travel? (actually no place I’m dying to see—China, Japan, the moon???)
As you can see, I’m goal-challenged. It could be laziness. (Walt Whitman: I loafe and invite my soul, / I lean and loafe at my ease observing. . . .) Maybe it’s an accident of birth, i.e., my family never instilled in me the proper desire to accomplish certain goals. In fact, they were happy if I generally stayed out of jail, took care of myself, and found my way (any way) in the world. Maybe it’s an accident of my generation? Turn on. Tune in. Drop out. This kind of made sense to me.
Timothy Leary, urged by Marshall McLuhan to write a motto for his “sensibility,” explained, “Like every great religion of the past we seek to find the divinity within and to express this revelation in a life of glorification and the worship of God. These ancient goals we define in the metaphor of the present — turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Later, Leary defined these steps in his autobiography: “'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you – externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity'.”
Yes. This kind of made sense to me when I was 14. A pure accident of my time and my culture. “A graceful process of detachment . . . from commitments.” Detachment. Commitments. All this conjures the word “responsibility.” I consider myself, on the one hand, a fairly responsible person. This is a road I’ve taken. But I could be far more responsible, couldn’t I?
Detachment!
56. A little more than halfway home myself, Though I wouldn't really know it if I saw it, And it's true the body does start breaking down some, And it is strange how the slower you go the faster time flies; Late, but still in daylight, early February, An almost full moon through the branches of an old birch, The fenced-in pond beside me is glass. And actually Just having thought to myself last night as I slid the garbage to the curb That all the geese have finally gone, today One Canadian goose is sitting by itself in the middle of the thin ice Honking. I can't explain why he's there Or how he came to be alone. Miles away and a couple of years back now My mother was walking across an old bridge Over a tumbling little river on her way to a famous garden Of orchids, swarms of butterflies. Children from a village not far from Machu Picchu Held her hand and coaxed her to where she was headed. And then a plank, so covered in moss that it had become the moss, Collapsed. And she fell. And though the water was only ten or fifteen feet below, I imagine her falling a long way and for a long time. Falling through her life and falling out of mine, Falling past the little hospital in Cuzco With the medicos who thought they had remedies, And pretty soon falling to her death. I wasn't there, where it was the middle of the summer. I can only imagine the incessant flutes just beyond her sickbed And the bright, hot colors the old women wore As they led their llamas up the red dirt road in that country With no air. I was simply here looking at the moon again. And really what can the moon do for anyone. I listened to the goose, lost and indignant.
Let me explain that my parents fought loudly and dangerously from the first times I can remember until their divorce when I was seven. It was not a safe place for me. So, quite by (this) accident, I learned to detach myself, to take care of myself. As my wife tells me continuously, “you never learned to accept love.” Is this the path I’ve taken?
Commitment!
Wrapping myself up in my many responsibilities as father, husband, teacher, etc., allows me to ignore or fend off much of what I must feel deep down. (Being busy pads my ignorance.) But I’m learning to honor my own bedrock sense of sadness. A cleansing cry. An honest acknowledgement of my prodigal limitations. Sitting here, open, looking out this window at a winter landscape that seems as bereft and empty as I am, but which, upon further review, is exactly what it is, miraculous, accidental, speaking of the great mystery that, as they say, began from a great emptiness, from a big bang.
There is a sadness stretched out across the sky. The explosion bearing everything into the world Has left us too far apart. Even at midnight you hear all the horses And all the men trying to subdue That distance again. A heaven full of stars Swears that light's sweet music Can fill our empty shoes forever. But every star by now has a name, is a word—
The universe a darkness full of language—and every word Is a memory, a loved one, a little history book, And speaking gives the illusion of caressing, as though Someone could be close enough, and to be touched Our holy faith. There is a sadness stretched out across the sky. The explosion bearing everything into the world Has left a wind that rushes through the giant poplars and tulip trees Like an ocean, a whole orchestra of weeping, A delicate matter whispered in our ear, the possibility Of love—the love of what is possible—circling Endlessly around. Even the indivisible atom, Once crushed, is made of this twang, This music that has left us too far apart. There is a sadness stretched out across the sky. The explosion bearing everything into the world Has blasted the quiet, first heart to the far edge of space Where the beginning ends. Climbing to his cold chair,
The aging astronomer high in his huge telescopic eye Sees all the way back to the radiance of everything Come together, unsounded, just before that first word Exploded what each of us is made of into the night. You could say he sees love for the last time,
A love that has left us too far apart.
What I am and what my life is (the road taken/not taken) out of the blast furnace of accident has been forged on the anvil of …? Hmm. Intention? Well, let’s just face it, EVERYTHING is a choice. (And when I say everything, I mean most of what we do.)
Okay, though it make me feel a little filthy and bored, I should own up to my intentions—no matter how pitiful and how far short I’ve fallen from where I might like to be—and to my regrets. (I would love to say that I regret nothing and never will. But it’s not exactly true—yet.) MONEY? want more. LOVE? want more. HEALTH? want better. SOCIAL STATUS? want more. More choices, more opportunities, etc. I admit these selfish ambitions, how selfishly I go around. I find myself endlessly wanting. There are so many virtues I should seek. . . .
But here and now is the road taken and not taken. And in great humility I celebrate where I’ve gotten—no further than I’ve ever been! And I celebrate who I am—nearly the same as when I was born. I celebrate even as I denounce. I salute Captain Hope and delivering the Christmas tree against the impossible winter surf. But I am reducing my need to be uplifted. Every new accident is a marvel to me. And I intend to keep on going—my true ambition—whatever may come.
The cotton bolls swelling out Outside Bakersfield clamor For the wind's heat, the chafing rain. How they want to be touched! My wife is waiting at the mirror Gathering her hair to a knot, Waiting for me to get back, open the screen door Late in the morning heat. Our pasture is alive with children Squatting in a rusted watering trough—They sail through the broomgrass, playing ocarinas, Headed for the schoolhouse. When I arrive, we pull our bed from the wall Into long slats of sunlight. Outside the cottonwoods are shedding, The wisps jibbing off to sea.