RUDIMENTS 1093.

RUDIMENTS, PT. 1,093

(high hopes for my ropes)

Sometimes - and note that I

say sometimes - in my drifting

and mindless ways, I just

wandered. Who was it,

Wordsworth or someone,

who wrote about wandering

'aimless as a cloud.' Well,

actually, it was 'lonely' as a

cloud, but I never liked that,

and only seldom did I ever

see an unattended, by itself,

cloud. So - Mr. Wordsworth

sir - I change it. My impetus

here was aimless, not lonely.

-

"I wandered lonely as a Cloud

that floats on high o'er vales

and hills, when all at once I

saw a crowd, a host of golden

daffodils; Beside the lake,

beneath the trees, fluttering

and dancing in the breeze..."

It goes on from there, but I did

always see it as really lacking.

What I mean by that is that,

for whatever its value as a

'Wordsworth' poem, it's more

truly just a pile of words. It's just

not the sort of writing one can do

today, representative, as it is, of

nothing at all; certainly not a

reflection of our world today;

which is what I think, that writing

should be about. That goes for all

sorts of writing, including the

drivel that nowadays gets the

Nobel Prize (for rock-lyric schlock

written in rhyming couplets). It

was never anything that could

move or motivate me, this sort

of Wordsworth drivel - some

guy shrouding over flowers and

claiming then to connect all that

with some higher repose. Maybe

back in 1810 all that stuff worked,

but I felt that there had to be a

real delineation point between

that then' and now. We live and

we see differently, and most of

that old tripe means little now.

'Continuous as the stars that shine

and twinkle on the Milky Way...'

None of that works today; it

doesn't add up - for, as I was

learning, we live in a world far

past anything Wordsworth could

have had in mind. Post-destitute

would better describe us. One

World War piled onto another,

and then endless skirmishes and

unending wars of a newer and

blind sort. Atomic and not.

Bombs being glorified. Death

in all the air. With meanings and

references dead. The very idea of

any privacy and meditative

peacefulness, unless for profit,

gone. The rights of man, Mr.

Paine? No more. It's a poor sight

and one far removed from the

essences and feelings of any

cosmic crap about life in the

stars and flowers. He speaks

of those stars in a way we no

longer even understand, with the

companion allusion, conjoined,

of flowers and stars : "Ten

thousand I saw at a glance,

tossing their heads in a sprightly

dance." Above my head, if there

are 12 stars I'm lucky, and any

field of daffodils is most likely

to be paved tomorrow for relief

housing with some long political

litany of bullshit attached to it;

many words, saying nothing at

all. Like mine? Or surely like

Wordsworth's. I may yet turn

out to be Holden Caulfield's

wily brother under a skein of

twinkling stars?

-

That was 1802, April 2nd, to

be exact. Much as I always did,

he and his sister were walking,

and they passed a vibrant field

of daffodils. I don't think we still

allow vibrant fields of daffodils.

They're probably outlawed

somewhere. It's a hard plow

to shoulder, all this. Can you

imagine a member of today's

world now going on in such

a manner? I cannot, and

would not. It seems as if I,

and the rest of the current

day's inhabitants, have

erected a firewall against

all that - a firewall manned

now by irony, angst, anger,

and provocation. Wit, and

double-meaning. In fact, what

I would call 'Depth.' I find little

of 'depth, in any of this old

Wordsworthian work. Sorry.

-

What's even cooler - here's

how he ended the poem, in his

fine, old, pre-20th century,

non-media world. Try and

imagine this today: "For oft

then on my couch I lie in vacant

or in pensive mood, They flash

upon that inward eye which is

the bliss of solitude, and then

my heart with pleasure fills,

and dances with the Daffodils."

Even the cadence and the words'

rhythms now evoke nothing. What's

even weirder? If that's 'Inspiration,'

even Inspiration doesn't look like

that any longer.

-

In the west 50's of NYC, at a

place called DeWitt Clinton

Park, there's a monument to

the WWI soldier, nameless but

representative, and at the base

is a poem, of fame and note,

about that war and its dead and

lost, called 'In Flanders Fields.'

I used to go there and visit that

often too (the statue, not the

field) - it's still there, as is

the park. In its own, later than

Wordsworth's, reverential and

old-timey plodding way, it too

caresses and holds tight an idea

and an image we wouldn't have the

patience for today, in language

and words we'd no longer use

or hold to. Everything is, by

today's parlance, garbled and

sped up now. We are ruled more

by the drum of staccato, and the

rat-tat-tat of stark language. It's

ruinous, yes, but that's the way

it is. It makes it very difficult,

as well, to 'be' a writer today,

one NOT in that minestrone

blend of noise and harsh words

which is so prevalent now. I had to

fight all that in my own reveries.

I don't think Wordsworth ever

faced that, in his slower and

starrier world, a world full

of fields and flowers.