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O Me! O Life! Dear Apple Company!

I am not one to be easily won over by the commercialized advertisements of our society but recently, one caught my eye---should I say, my poetic vision. Any English major or teacher of English is aware of Walt Whitman and his contribution of verse to our nation’s literacy but the Apple Company decided to bring Whitman to the for-front of their new advertising.

O Me! O Life! Dear Apple Company!

Whitman’s 1892 Leaves of Grass contains this often quoted philosophical poem when humans and artists find themselves wallowing in the why of life or the purpose of it. But, when the masses see it visually displayed in front of them on television, laptop, Ipad, phone, I wonder the depth of which it resonates. I am not a literary snob and I rather like the commercial and its enticing message: athletically fit people accomplish extraordinary feats and the child that is forgotten in some small place finds voice to individuality.

I want the masses to know that Whitman accomplished something few in our society today or even in his own time, are ever able to achieve: an answer.

He not only gave thought to the purpose of purpose but he actually gave a response: The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

I am certain that the Apple ad will eventually play itself an unwinding ode to the past but what might happen, as this powerful play goes on, more and more expressions of verse be created???!!!

We don’t build products anymore; we re-purpose and re-imagine its possibilities. We market ourselves as the product in an online, intravenously addicting need for people to know us, see us; explain our thoughts, our locations, our anger, our joy; present pictures that make us popular, pretty, and a representation of what we WANT THE WORLD TO KNOW. We can edit the truth of our appearance, control our likes and dislikes with a click, snap our every mood, capture others mistakes, and contain our attention for a vine of a moment.

Is this our verse? We exist. We are the only ones with this identity. My verse is not sure it wants to come out and see its shadow; it wants more of winter’s silhouette to collect itself. Would Whitman’s vision ever include a mountain biking, action-filled visual display of his verse? A few seconds long? Enough to capture our instant gratification-filled-momentary-philosophies with a click of like or dislike and then discarded among the vast world of delete?

My verse does praise Apple for the fact that they hired someone with knowledge of Whitman and perhaps, a poet’s soul. My hope-filled admiration implores that this was not a fluke of an idea and that this advertisement’s verse wasn't Googled by marketing intern.

Soul Shine

We like to control things.  Think about it: radio as an example.  My family labored on long driving vacations every summer.  Miles and miles of road beneath me and experiences forever en-grained in my memory.  Sounds a bit romantic now but fighting with my little sister in the cab of the Chevy truck squished between my mother and father was anything but glamorous.  We had a pick-up camper; the type of camper that slides into the back of a pick-up ---sounds quite simple but I mentioned that type of camper to a much younger friend of mine and the look on their face was as if I had mentioned a Disc-Man or a Boombox.

We had no control back then.  No control of the radio that is.  I was forced to listen to whatever the gods of the radio in whatever part of the United States chose for that day, that hour, that minute, that moment.  I sang ABBA's Dancing Queen with my father through the Painted Desert.  Glacier National Park's Going to the Sun Road, it was something Neil Diamond (I like to think it was Sweet Caroline but I was so panicked by looking over the ledge).  In Yellowstone, near Mammoth Springs, the radio blared Rhinestone Cowboy.

No choices provided me an internal playlist of songs that are diverse as the different landscapes we crossed.

The other day I tried an experiment:  I wasn't going to control the radio in my car.  I was going to leave it to the radio gods of fate.  There had to be something I needed to listen to; the radio station in a way was a conduit for my wallowing self-pity as of late.  God forbid, the first song was Michael Jackson's Thriller. This song was monumental in another way: big time trouble from my parents.  This new thing called music videos that killed the radio star became a fascination of mine.  My parents warned me over and over again that my sister, who is quite a bit younger, should NOT watch the Thriller video.  I couldn't help it.  My parents were gone.  I was in charge. She wouldn't hang out by herself in another room.  I didn't know when my next chance was to see the video and everyone at school had talked about how scary it was.  Temptation taken. Sister freaked out.  Grounded for what seemed like forever.

I was just about to take control of the radio and then it happened:  The Allman Brothers, Soulshine.  Here are just some of the lyrics:

[Chorus]

He used to say soulshine,

It's better than sunshine,

It's better than moonshine,

Damn sure better than rain.

Yeah now people don't mind,

We all get this way sometime,

Got to let your soul shine, shine till the break of day.

[Partial Lyrics]

A woman too, God knows, she can feel like this.

And when your world seems cold, you got to let your spirit take control.

My dad might say this whole thing---the experiment, the writing, the contemplation, and self-pity wallowing are all nonsense.  The world works in a bigger function than what one's emotions dictate on any given day. Some guy sitting in a radio station doesn't care if some chick in a Toyota Corolla is using her radio as a conduit to something greater.  

I'm not talking religion here.  I am not some hippie as my dad might say that is all flaked out on some who knows what. I just have to think that when an artist, as in this case, a musician, writes a song about a moment in their life, that can't be it.  That moment makes that Art because that moment happens again and again as each person who hears the song or reads the book or looks at the painting or cries at the end of the movie relates it to their own moments.  

I imagine Keith Richards and Mick Jagger perhaps understood a bit of this too.  You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.

Four Letter Words

Hurt. Pain. Ache. These are the four letter words that have encircled my thoughts for the past few weeks.  It is almost the proverbial "circling the wagons". I want to feel safe in this shield of wagons; I need to know if I have to fight my way out or if I need to surrender and move on.  There is a difference, you know, between surrender and defeat.  Chief Joseph, after seeing all of his people---women, children, a few warriors that were left in that Montana cold field only miles from the Canadian border, surrendered not because of his hurt but the pain his people felt.  

That's the essence of hurt.  It isn't a solitary being. It's a ripple in a pond that leads to a river that rushes to another river and eventually there is a lake of hurt, a lake of pain where it sinks to the bottom. 

If it were Easter time instead of Christmas, there might be some sort of relief to know that the pain I feel is nothing compared to the pain of sacrifice. All the great leaders, movers and shakers, justice fighters, people savers, warriors KNOW that sacrifice is not a definition in some book; it is a scar beneath another scar that has weaken the tissue below it and is so vulnerable to infection.  

I am not that noble.  I am not that brave.  

I want to use other four letters words like......kill my pain.....take it away....damn it upon the person that hurt me....numb myself with distractions......burn it down with all my anger. 

Why is it when we are at our lowest or at our angriest we want those four letter words.  The streets are full of people using a dirtied display of those words at any given moment. The driver in front of you is too slow, out of nowhere a car pulls out in front of you, someone knocks into you spilling your coffee, you slip and fall, the wireless loses its connection, the boss asks you to do one more thing before you leave for the weekend.  At those moments we do not remember the vocabulary lessons of our school days; we do not remember the words our mothers washed with soap out of our mouths. We don't remember; we act. 

There are no rose colored glasses on this writer---in fact, I am blind without my prescription thick looking glasses that try to see a perspective other than what I feel.  My mother once told me to never count on emotions because they betray you; they are fleeting and changing. I know she is right.....I guess the older I get, I finally SEE that there are some truths that others have learned before me.  It still doesn't make it easy---there's a four letter word I don't often say. 

Here's another principle that my mother also shared with me: LOVE is often considered an emotion but since emotions cannot be relied on, it has to be more than that.  Love is Hope it is Hard it takes Time but it can Heal.  Don't let hurt Take your Joy. Release the wagons that encircle you and surrender to the Fact that we can choose Love.  Romantic poets had it all wrong. I want to let Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and the others know, that love is not fleeting nor beautiful nor something that is lost and regained.  Those are simple concepts of Love.  Love is a shield dented by hurt, tarnished by pain but worn day in and day out.  Sometimes we have the energy to polish it, take care of it.  The other times, well, it waits for us.  It is always there.  

Where are the Warriors?

I heard a story about a woman who worked at an event in which the Queen of England attended.  The worker opened the door for all of the dignitaries, royalty, famous writers, actors, etc., and lead them into the ballroom.  The Queen passed and did not acknowledge this worker.  To be expected, I might guess.  Then, a man came up and the woman showed him to a chair.  He looked her in the eyes and said something like Oh, so you think you can take my chair or are you afraid I am going to steal it?  I do not remember the exact words but he said so in a teasing, light-hear-ted way. They shared the small talk laugh and the worker soon went on to her other business.

This story has been "rattlin around" in my writing brain.  The Queen did not acknowledge her or in all probability even notice her.  Okay, so she is Queen and I get that.  The man who ended up being John Wayne, treated her as if she might be some relative racing him to the Thanksgiving table where one wants to sit next to the turkey or grandma's homemade mashed potatoes.

I like this story.  It says something about our American beginnings.  Our rebellious spirit.  Our warrior mentality.  In today's politically correct world, there have been some that marked John Wayne as a sexist or a racist based on his movies.  I wonder if those politically correct people realize that John Wayne doesn't exist in this world.  Literally, folks, he did in 1979.  Even us forty--somethings may not know who he was unless we were our family's first remote control and had to stand next to the television and crank the dial to the next channel searching for dad's favorite westerns.

Society today cannot understand the past's zeitgeist (spirit of the times).  We can only understand our own.  Yet, we judge what has happened in the past.  Our time is coming.  What will they say about this time, our actions, our societal judgments?

I wonder if they will ask who our warriors were?  Where are the people that are fighting injustices?  Are they too afraid of political fallout, being accused of some sort of ism, or not having the strength to battle ambiguity?

Is there enough of a warrior spirit to have a hunger strike for 25 days like Cesar Chavez which some say more than likely contributed to his death.  Enough spirit to know you are defeated but fight on anyway like Ellen Moves Camp, founder of the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization when she called for action in removing a repressive tribal leader.  The warrior in her organized a public protest that lead to deeper actions such as 1970's Wounded Knee standoff.

John Wayne was just a man.  He wasn't a warrior like the Chavez or Moves Camp.  He played one in the movies.  Sometimes he was a good warrior and sometimes he was a bad warrior.  I never knew him but I sense he knew this.  He understood that he was playing a role.  That day when he walked in to the fancy event with royalty and other important people, he was a warrior---a simple man who remembered his original zip code which was based in humble beginnings.  He did not save a human from peril that night, he did not rescue a little child from danger, he did not even do anything heroic to be asked to attend the event, but he did warrior on.....he did that old trick that has been around since mankind remembers, that darn old Golden Rule.

Writers

Written after a week in Iowa City at the University of Iowa for a writer's workshop.

Writer’s Workshop

Dale sits across from me

in our Iowa City pow wow

deep in the wounds of the river.

He’s a mountain man Mark Twain

here for therapy

but, we all are.

The currents stop for him this week

his raft safely tethered.

Sherry’s next to me

trying to wean off her medication. 

If Sherry weren’t a writer,

she might be a trucker

with that kind of vocabulary.

Twelve souls scratch the wooden table

of our minds within this writing room. 

We search for words never put together before

and struggle.

But this isn’t Scrabble, 

this is the soul’s integrity

it reaches out beneath layers of skin 

toughened and hard-bitten till the first drop of ink hits the veins

of our loss, our memories, our hurt, our weaknesses.

I don’t want to know these people outside

of this room.

buy groceries with them

cash our checks or balance our debts.

I can’t sit with them in church 

can’t see their sins played out before me

can’t take their pain.

These mythical creatures---

These writers

Titans buried in the earth

Are best left suspended between the here

And the future now

And the place where memories script themselves on a long ride home.

German Girls

Big Mid-Western German Girls

My Scandinavian friends

don’t understand

us. 

Size 11 feet

no one under 175

weight spread out

broad shoulders.

No saunas for us---

we sweat without it,

winter cold

grandma, in just her housecoat,

grandpas big boots untied

putting out bird seed

in the feeder

for those that remain.

Wine made in basements for holidays,

but drink beer

unless medicine needed

whiskey in a small jelly glass.

Workers and drinkers,

Loud, hard laughs, face red

music playing

self taught musicians

crowded together in small houses

Saturday night,

Sunday morning coming soon.

Lutheran or Catholic

doesn’t matter,

raised the same

between brick and mortar----

prattled with discipline.

Big Mid-Western German Girls stand a foot taller in church

slump at dances,

work hard in fields,

in homes with husbands and babies

so next generations can have it better.    

Looking at those like myself in grandma’s photo box

black and white likeness shifting between my fingers

I imagine my kind’s past

and try to shape our future.