2017.05.03
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less travelled by, Tripped over a branch, and broke my nose -- I hear America singing, and doggone if someone's not flat. One of the tenors, I think. -- Open here I flung the shutter, when with many a flirt and flutter Traversed that curs'd bird from the week before I shot it dead, and then it drop upon the floor Now, the Raven 'nevermore' -- Two roads diverged, but the one I wanted to take had a detour sign on it, dammit to hell. -- A rock sat in the woods, thinking, for many years, of many things. Realized God and His plan How to perfect life for plant and man but it was a rock, and rocks can't speak so it had to keep it to itself -- an ant crossed the sidewalk in its busy little industry i saw reflected the laws of god and man 'enough of this' I thought and crushed its tiny head--I had been searching through old scanned school papers for these, when I found them in a one of the PalmPilot journal entries I slapped on my website, in a 1997 memo called "Old Poems", so I think they date back to college or high school.
I'd been thinking of the rock poem a lot. One way of framing arguments I have with my conversation sparring partner is that I tend to focus on the surfaces things, or more specifically the interactions they can have, while to me he seems obsessed with how things really are through and through, in a deep interior way. It's interesting that as far back as 25 years ago the idea that interactions and communications are what give interior lives meaning.
That sparring partner also trotted out the psychological figure of the puer aeternus, eternal adolescent. The fact he considers the label absolutely damning while I think it's, I dunno, incomplete but descriptive, and with it's pros and cons, speaks to the other parts of the profound differences in our outlooks.
(Also looking at the latin phrase it reminded me of 1997 The New Yorker reviewed the Blender of Love (there really was a lot less going on on the web back then) and I had to look up what "puerile"meant when describing my editorials. I was mildly offended, but hey, it's The New Yorker and they cut it with "somewhat".)