Tag Archives: the Void

Mary Trump, “Too Much and Never Enough

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The Trump maelstrom is teetering on that abyss of darkness that gave rise to it in the first place.  His niece, Mary Trump, has just released her tell-all book (“Too Much and Never Enough”) about this uncle that she describes as “the most dangerous man in America.”  I’ve read excerpts from her book, and watched a powerful interview of her by Stephen Colbert on “The Late Show” in which she described the “currency” of the intimate dynamics of that modern “Robber Baron” family as being money rather than anything near love and respect for others.

The title of her book immediately triggered the Shakespearean dimension of my brain with a line from one of his sonnets, “mad in pursuit and more in possession so.” Shakespeare had his pulse on the human soul and revealed in this sonnet 129 the voracious appetite, one spawn of which is capitalism itself and that spawn’s offspring with characters such as individuals like Trump, the personal “toy of some great pain.”  Shakespeare in this sonnet explored this bottomless pit very elegantly and concluded that it leads to hell itself:

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,

Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight,

Past reason hunted; and, no sooner had

Past reason hated as a swallowed bait

On purpose laid to make the taker mad;

Mad in pursuit and in possession so,

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

The heaven that leads men to this hell.

I’m Hearing, “That Giant Sucking Sound” This Morning!

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Step outside this morning and, if you listen carefully, you will hear that “giant sucking sound” of Trumpism and its abysmal ugliness returning to the void from which it emerged.  That experience, which inspired Edvard Munch to paint “The Scream” is a human tragedy. Donnie is just a little boy like I am, fumbling about on the “granite skirt” (W. H. Auden) of this lovely little speck of cosmic dust.  But, in his early childhood his soul suffered irreparable damage, leaving him without the ability to “play well with others” on the beautiful playground that we call home. He can’t handle the anguish of “I, too, will pass” as in the famous advice of an African-American radical from the 1960’s, “This too shall pass.” (I can’t remember his name.”)  I take hope in the astute wisdom of Voltaire, as the day breaks here in Taos, New Mexico, “Gentlemen, tend your own garden; or as” Eckhart Tolle put it more recently, “Be Here Now.”

Emily Dickinson and Consciousness

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‘Twas such a little—little boat 
That toddled down the bay!
‘Twas such a gallant—gallant sea
That beckoned it away!

‘Twas such a greedy, greedy wave
That licked it from the Coast—
Nor ever guessed the stately sails
My little craft was lost! 

This little ditty by Emily Dickinson was one of my first imbibations of this delightful New England poet of 19th century America.  The poem reveals the vulnerability of Dickinson which in turn gave her the perspective which allowed her to offer such a wry glimpse into the human enterprise, a glimpse that is so relevant to any generation.

Dickinson was herself a “little boat” on the “gallant sea” of life and her poetry reveals that she frequently feared she was going to be swept away by the current.  And the second stanza vividly conveyed the fear that any of us have of getting “swept away,” the fear of being “lost” and having no awareness of it.

Consciousness is a perilous adventure and as Hamlet told us it does make “cowards of us all.”  To be conscious is to realize, cognitively and emotionally, that we live our life strung out on a narrow precipice above an unabiding void.  It is fear of this void, i.e. “Void,” that makes us “cling to these ills that we have, (rather) than fly to others that we know not of,” borrowing from Hamlet again.  Dickinson spent her adult life on one of these narrow precipices, ensconced in the attic of her father’s house, where she explored the vast riches of her tender heart and shared her findings with posterity.