I Was Going To Say

All men should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

—James Thurber

We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

—e.e. cummings

If I die, survive me with such sheer force

that you waken the furies of the pallid and the cold,

from south to south lift your indelible eyes,

from sun to sun dream through your singing mouth.

I don’t want your laughter or your steps to waver,

I don’t want my heritage of joy to die.

Don’t call up my person. I am absent.

Live in my absence as if in a house.

Absence is a house so vast

that inside you will pass through its walls

and hang pictures on the air.

Absence is a house so transparent

that I, lifeless, will see you, living,

and if you suffer, my love, I will die again.

—Pablo Neruda, “Absence”

Somewhere earlier in the afternoon there was a string of words that seemed almost like a revelation. That is now an old, painfully familiar story, and at the bottom of the day I can no longer recall those words, that revelation. I cannot even truly retrace my steps, or the journey (a laughable term in this instance, as in many instances) of the day behind me.

I do remember thinking at some point, “Look at this fucking place,” referring, I think, to some typical stretch of over-developed suburbia. I also remember thinking, “Why doesn’t the President just decree that henceforth all American flags be displayed at permanent half-staff?”

That wasn’t my revelation, but it does make real sense to me. It would be a rare and honest acknowledgment that this country is in a now constant state of mourning, and so lingering and pervasive is the sense of sorrow that most of us really could use such ubiquitous public reminders of the shame and grief we should be feeling.

As I say, though, that wasn’t my revelation, and so qualifies as little more than a digression and a brief reprieve from my usual preoccupation with words that have gone missing.