Arkansas produced another wordsmith to the world in 1949, C. D. Wright.  But she was more than a wordsmith, she wrote poetry and became very successful in the literary world.  She loved words, as do I, and one of her poems is prefaced with the simple prefatory title, “I Love Words.” And please note the very bizarre title of this book of poetry  inclosed in parenthesis at the end.

I love that a handful, a mouthful, gets you by, a satchelful can land you a job, a well-chosen clutch of them could get you laid, and that a solitary word can initiate a stampede, and therefore can be formally outlawed—even by a liberal court bent on defending a constitution guaranteeing  unimpeded utterances. I love that the Argentine gaucho has over 200 words for the coloration of horses and the Sami language of Scandinavia has over a thousand words for reindeer based on age, sex, and appearance, e.g. a “busat” has big balls or only one big ball. More than the pristine, I’ll love the filthy ones for their descriptive talent as well as transgressive nature. I love the dirty ones more than the minced, in that I respect extravagant expression more than reserved. I admire reserve, especially when taken to an nth. I love the particular expressions of particular occupations. The substrate of those activities. The nomenclatures within nomenclatures.  I am of the unaccredited school that believes animals did not exist until Adam assigned them names. My relationship to the word is anything but scientific; it is a matter of faith on my part, that the word endows material substance, by setting the thing named apart from all else. Horse, then, unhorses what is not horse.  (C.D. Wright, “The poet, The Lion, Talking pictures, El Farolito, A wedding in St. Roch, The big box store, The warp in the mirror, Spring, Midnights, Fire and all.)

I just read an article by Finton O’Toole in the Irish Times in which he put on the table what I call a “hunkering down” dimension of politics.  He portrays a political impasse underway in his corner of the world in which diametrically-opposites are “duking it out” on the world stage.  This can best be described as an “us vs them” moment in which one side says to the other, “I got it…and you don’t.” This is the story of Adam and Eve writ large, two voices speaking a primordial word that still reverberates through our world today, two lonely little souls demanding supremacy. Yes, Eve lost that initial skirmish….but not really as “She” is screaming at us today as our political machinery and socio-cultural are being shaken. This is the Feminine dimension Life.

So much “hunkering down” is taking place around our world. People are dug in so deeply to their ideology that they can’t offer even a miniscule of respect to those who have “different” ideas.  “I’ve got it, and you don’t,” they quietly say to themselves.  There is no escape from this predicament unless a bolt of lightning takes place and we are capable of the humility of seeing our arrogance. TS. Eliot summed this up in The Four Quartets:

Do not let me hear

Of the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,

Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,

Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire

Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.”

Here is a cartoon about one of my many hobby horses, division where there could be unity. This cartoonist humorously but pointedly puts on the table our current national…and species-wide death-knell. If we never find the humility to appreciate the wisdom of T.S. Eliot who told us we, “are united by the strife which divided them” or, divides “us” in this occasion, we are doomed. As always I am again frustrated with everyone who sees the world differently than I, when I’m again trying to convince them of the ‘right way” of seeing things. With that last statement I am wryly and ironically admitting that I have the same problem!

With this bit of wisdom that is always teasing me I can admit that it applies everywhere, even with my frustration and anger about the obstinate conservatism of Trump and his minions. Yes, even with that spiritual malady present in our world we all must realize the obstinacy of what seems to us as our “right” way of seeing things. I am learning to see, understand, and experience the extent to which I “hunker down” with my literary and erudite grasp of that fiction we call “reality” and fail to look deeper and see a “Reality” which undergirds the daily life of us all. I am so old-fashioned to call it “god”; and at this moment I’m so free of that intellectual and philosophical rigor that has characterized my life that I will not try to define that term!