A poem by Stan Raines
The hill’s intolerably long and steep;
I think myself a goat.
Perhaps it’s a mountain
Without the slenderest hoofhold.
I don’t look long for the top:
Pebbles, brown and brown,
Strike my eyes
Loosened by my crabbing hands.
From time to time I imagine
I am merely crawling,
All fours flat on the land,
Unable to raise myself-
That the mist alone, shining white,
Touching intimately
Deludes me to think
My ground is inclined.
But the mist breaks; I see
The light, the sun,
Rocks gleaming greyly,
The blue beyond;
Still and calm.
I don’t look long.
From the side (still smothered in mist)
Sounds the breath of beasts,
The padding of paws
Moving easily up the slope.
This poem may be the very definition of solipsimo, a term and possibly a philosophic school that may have determined the whole path of my life. I wrote is some time in the neighborhood of reading Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead. Well, I didn’t rush off into Ms. Rand’s brand, but, because of the isolation that the wreckage of my childhood dictated that I sought at the time, I was in yet another period of hermitage. Solipsismo comes about as one begins to define that state and especially when one determines that it is a sufficient state for living and most especially when one begins to find hermitage entertaining has one most assuredly found solipsismo, even if one has not discovered the term. I believe I was also reading Samuel Becket’s novels about then, too.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Gene Novo // May 19, 2008 at 11:32 am
Nunnayerbizness: …and I write my weekly lines for the site …and before I move to my lines, do consider, please, a public reading of all who have sent items to the site …. Now my piece …. Call it, “Sideline Romantic.”
…in a local club, two women and eight men sit around a table, drinking a lot of beer, all college people, some with Greek fraternity letters on caps; they’re part of the academic world, or were very recently. Friends all.
Then, in come two scruffy men, and one woman; they draw stares from the ten, even some hard stares.
The two men are welders, working on a new rig at the port, those 80-90-hour work weeks; the woman, very white, very blonde, is with the taller and scruffier of the men. The men drink beer, she a Margarita; they speak an East Texas/Louisiana drawl - English. The 10 at the other table are speaking English and Spanish.
I’m in the middle.
The East Texans, strangers to the Lower Valley, ask more about The Wall and Brownsville. They don’t stare at the ten, and the ten’s stares are gone; all, three and ten, are into their beer, some nacho chips, tacos, the lone Margarita..
…am glad the ten’s stares didn’t translate into words/fists, …and the ten, their sports cars, pickups, cars …all drinking that gas that the welders helped make possible … are outside, ready for more night stops ….
A big big country is the US, and it is realistically too much to expect the East Texans to speak with the academics, and how would a table of ten East Texans on the edge of oil and gas and ‘gators and Cajun music and country music react if three student types speaking English and Spanish - some with Greek letter fraternity caps - came into a cafe way up on the Upper Gulf …?
Confession! Not a surprise! I prefer the oil-stained shirts of the welders to the fraternity caps …and so what does that mean? A sideline romantic, that’s me, a sideline romantic ….
But I’m not a welder, don’t have an East Texas blonde girlfriend and can’t knock down beers and smokes, and I’m also not a fraternity guy with a five-speed sports car …. Now, to that table in the middle ….
Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky
Brownsville
2 Stan // May 19, 2008 at 2:22 pm
thanks for posting, Gene. I’ve put it up and hope you approve the presentation.
And I’ve put up a call for discussion on the reading/meeting idea. Do comment there.
-Stan
You must log in to post a comment.