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 |   Tales from real life |
| Well, if they're not true, they oughta be! |
John Donne wrote No Man Is an Island, yet many people feel isolated and cut off from the main. Paradoxically, Thoreau chose to live alone in the woods for two years to escape a life of quiet desperation. Simon & Garfunkel sang I Am a Rock. H. G. Wells (and many others) said that we are all one. Sartre said that hell is other people. So, humanity. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. We're trapped in a continuous dance of reaching out and being rebuffed, coming together and drawing apart. It's an endless comedic tragedy and nobody gets out alive. I'll offer up an opinion that the pain we inflict on others becomes our own personal hell, and the love we give is our only glimpse of heaven. My recent poem, Introvert, deals with these themes:
Some reviewers expressed concern for my state of mind after reading the poem. I suppose that's the risk of stating one's mind. Here's a multiple-choice clarification: A. Poetry allows us to express truth without necessarily using facts. B. Living in my own head is a lonely existence, but where else can I go? C. At my age, I have to look in the mirror and say, "Maybe it's me." D. Self-pity is a bore, but almost impossible to resist. E. All of the above. I didn't write Introvert out of deep depression, but from existential doubt. At age 66 I find myself wondering if there is any meaning to my life. I've done the things that people do: college, marriage, church, family, career, and now retirement. I've attained a measure of success in all of these, but what's the point? We haven't been blessed with grandchildren and it doesn't look like there will ever be any. My grandfather was the only male Fisher of his generation and I'm the last male Fisher of my generation. I don't have any nieces or nephews, and not even any cousins named Fisher. In 60 years or so, my kids will be gone, and it will be as though I never existed. There won't even be anyone interested in their family tree who might look me up in the census. Does this matter? Of course not. I'll join billions who have lived and died and been forgotten. And it won't make the slightest difference after I'm gone. But it still hurts. |
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