Wesley Mcnair
I'm still formulating my entry about the imagination and the creative life. In the meanwhile, I was quite taken by this poem that came to me from NPR's Writer's Almanac. My first impression of the poem was that it must have felt very good to write. Secondly, it felt very good to read, because more and more lately I have entertained thoughts (fantasies?!) of bringing about a great change in my life. I've been on a job search the last year; last year I interviewed for a teaching position in creative writing at Fairbanks, Alaska. Someone else got the position, but if the committee had chosen me, I would have been there. I would have left family (children--the husband goes where I go!), home, cats, and almost all of my possessions.
A college lecturer, I certainly identify with the lines about the "sadness of rooms" where family slept while I graded mounds of papers. And about not fitting in, not wanting to fit in, at some of the colleges where I taught (I won't name those colleges). I identify with the speaker's feelings about missed opportunities, a lost life. Perhaps that, the feeling of loss, is what my need for change is all about.
Poem: "Goodbye to the Old Life" by Wesley McNair, from Fire.
Goodbye to the Old Life
Goodbye to the old life,
to the sadness of rooms
where my family slept as I sat
late at night on my island
of light among papers.
Goodbye to the papers
and to the school for the rich
where I drove them, dressed up
in a tie to declare who I was.
Goodbye to all the ties
and to the life I lost
by declaring, and a fond goodbye
to the two junk cars that lurched
and banged through the campus
making sure I would never fit in.
Goodbye to the finest campus
money could buy, and one
final goodbye to the paycheck
that was always gone
before it got home.
Farewell to the home,
and a heartfelt goodbye
to all the tenants who rented
the upstairs apartment,
particularly Mrs. Doucette,
whose washer overflowed
down the walls of our bathroom
every other week, and Mr. Green,
determined in spite of the evidence
to learn the electric guitar.
And to you there, the young man
on the roof turning the antenna
and trying not to look down
on how far love has taken you,
and to the faithful wife
in the downstairs window
shouting, "That's as good
as we're going to get it,"
and to the four hopeful children
staying with the whole program
despite the rolling picture
and the snow - goodbye,
wealth and joy to us all
in the new life, goodbye!
3 comments:
The feeling of loss is what has motivated me to make changes in my life. Part of my ongoing struggle has been how to make those changes without losing other things which are dear to me. One of the things that I've found though is the stuff the stuff that I thought I had lost were dreams, which are only really lost when you give up on them. So, in making my changes, I'm not really getting rid of anything essential, but getting down to what is my truest self. I admit there are days when I feel like some antique cabinet that's been painted and refinished many times, and the layers of what must be stripped away before I really emerge seem endless.
This entry made me want to cry. I so deeply understand, and never would have put it into those words....loss.....but I so understand.
Well, I have just spent most of my life to this point trying to fit in, and you know what? I just don't. The harder I try, the farther I get away from myself. Maybe the most I can get is congruent with my own life. For a long while, it seemed like my life was "over there," a parallel line to which I could point, but which was separate from me. Now I seem to be getting closer. But I still don't fit with most others. Good-bye to fitting in. Hello to fitting in with myself.
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