Things That Go Blog in the Night: Personal

Monday, June 22 would have been our first son Kevin's 16th birthday. These two poems, especially Emerson's "Threnody" helped me cope with his death. Emerson wrote "Threnody" to memorialize his son Waldo, who died at age 7. It's not easy reading, but certainly rewarding.


The south-wind brings
Life, sunshine, and desire,
And on every mount and meadow
Breathes aromatic fire,
But over the dead he has no power,
The lost, the lost he cannot restore,
And, looking over the hills, I mourn
The darling who shall not return.

I see my empty house,
I see my trees repair their boughs,
And he, —the wondrous child,
Whose silver warble wild
Outvalued every pulsing sound
Within the air's cerulean round,
The hyacinthine boy, for whom
Morn well might break, and April bloom,
The gracious boy, who did adorn
The world whereinto he was born,
And by his countenance repay
The favor of the loving Day,
Has disappeared from the Day's eye;
Far and wide she cannot find him,
My hopes pursue, they cannot bind him.
Returned this day the south-wind searches
And finds young pines and budding birches,
But finds not the budding man;
Nature who lost him, cannot remake him;
Fate let him fall, Fate can't retake him;
Nature, Fate, men, him seek in vain.

And whither now, my truant wise and sweet,
Oh, whither tend thy feet?
I had the right, few days ago,
Thy steps to watch, thy place to know;
How have I forfeited the right?
Hast thou forgot me in a new delight?
I hearken for thy household cheer,
O eloquent child!
Whose voice, an equal messenger,
Conveyed thy meaning mild.
What though the pains and joys
Whereof it spoke were toys
Fitting his age and ken;—
Yet fairest dames and bearded men,
Who heard the sweet request
So gentle, wise, and grave,
Bended with joy to his behest,
And let the world's affairs go by,
Awhile to share his cordial game,
Or mend his wicker wagon frame,
Still plotting how their hungry ear
That winsome voice again might hear,
For his lips could well pronounce
Words that were persuasions.

Gentlest guardians marked serene
His early hope, his liberal mien,
Took counsel from his guiding eyes
To make this wisdom earthly wise.
Ah! vainly do these eyes recall
The school-march, each day's festival,
When every morn my bosom glowed
To watch the convoy on the road;—
The babe in willow wagon closed,
With rolling eyes and face composed,
With children forward and behind,
Like Cupids studiously inclined,
And he, the Chieftain, paced beside,
The centre of the troop allied,
With sunny face of sweet repose,
To guard the babe from fancied foes,
The little Captain innocent
Took the eye with him as he went,
Each village senior paused to scan
And speak the lovely caravan.

From the window I look out
To mark thy beautiful parade
Stately marching in cap and coat
To some tune by fairies played;
A music heard by thee alone
To works as noble led thee on.
Now love and pride, alas, in vain,
Up and down their glances strain.
The painted sled stands where it stood,
The kennel by the corded wood,
The gathered sticks to stanch the wall
Of the snow-tower, when snow should fall,
The ominous hole he dug in the sand,
And childhood's castles built or planned.
His daily haunts I well discern,
The poultry yard, the shed, the barn,
And every inch of garden ground
Paced by the blessed feet around,
From the road-side to the brook;
Whereinto he loved to look.
Step the meek birds where erst they ranged,
The wintry garden lies unchanged,
The brook into the stream runs on,
But the deep-eyed Boy is gone.

On that shaded day,
Dark with more clouds than tempests are,
When thou didst yield thy innocent breath
In bird-like heavings unto death,
Night came, and Nature had not thee,—
I said, we are mates in misery.
The morrow dawned with needless glow,
Each snow-bird chirped, each fowl must crow,
Each tramper started,— but the feet
Of the most beautiful and sweet
Of human youth had left the hill
And garden,—they were bound and still,
There's not a sparrow or a wren,
There's not a blade of autumn grain,
Which the four seasons do not tend,
And tides of life and increase lend,
And every chick of every bird,
And weed and rock-moss is preferred.
O ostriches' forgetfulness!
O loss of larger in the less!
Was there no star that could be sent,
No watcher in the firmament,
No angel from the countless host,
That loiters round the crystal coast,
Could stoop to heal that only child,
Nature's sweet marvel undefiled,
And keep the blossom of the earth,
Which all her harvests were not worth?
Not mine, I never called thee mine,
But nature's heir,— if I repine,
And, seeing rashly torn and moved,
Not what I made, but what I loved.
Grow early old with grief that then
Must to the wastes of nature go,—
'Tis because a general hope
Was quenched, and all must doubt and grope
For flattering planets seemed to say,
This child should ills of ages stay,—
By wondrous tongue and guided pen
Bring the flown muses back to men. —
Perchance, not he, but nature ailed,
The world, and not the infant failed,
It was not ripe yet, to sustain
A genius of so fine a strain,
Who gazed upon the sun and moon
As if he came unto his own,
And pregnant with his grander thought,
Brought the old order into doubt.
Awhile his beauty their beauty tried,
They could not feed him, and he died,
And wandered backward as in scorn
To wait an Æon to be born.
Ill day which made this beauty waste;
Plight broken, this high face defaced!
Some went and came about the dead,
And some in books of solace read,
Some to their friends the tidings say,
Some went to write, some went to pray,
One tarried here, there hurried one,
But their heart abode with none.
Covetous death bereaved us all
To aggrandize one funeral.
The eager Fate which carried thee
Took the largest part of me.
For this losing is true dying,
This is lordly man's down-lying,
This is slow but sure reclining,
Star by star his world resigning.

O child of Paradise!
Boy who made dear his father's home
In whose deep eyes
Men read the welfare of the times to come;
I am too much bereft;
The world dishonored thou hast left;
O truths and natures costly lie;
O trusted, broken prophecy!
O richest fortune sourly crossed;
Born for the future, to the future lost!

The deep Heart answered, Weepest thou?
Worthier cause for passion wild,
If I had not taken the child.
And deemest thou as those who pore
With aged eyes short way before?
Think'st Beauty vanished from the coast
Of matter, and thy darling lost?
Taught he not thee, — the man of eld,
Whose eyes within his eyes beheld
Heaven's numerous hierarchy span
The mystic gulf from God to man?
To be alone wilt thou begin,
When worlds of lovers hem thee in?
To-morrow, when the masks shall fall
That dizen nature's carnival,
The pure shall see, by their own will,
Which overflowing love shall fill,—
'Tis not within the force of Fate
The fate-conjoined to separate.
But thou, my votary, weepest thou?
I gave thee sight, where is it now?
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech;
Wrote in thy mind's transparent table
As far as the incommunicable;
Taught thee each private sign to raise
Lit by the supersolar blaze.
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of nature's heart,—
And though no muse can these impart,
Throb thine with nature's throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.

I came to thee as to a friend,
Dearest, to thee I did not send
Tutors, but a joyful eye,
Innocence that matched the sky,
Lovely locks a form of wonder,
Laughter rich as woodland thunder;
That thou might'st entertain apart
The richest flowering of all art;
And, as the great all-loving Day
Through smallest chambers takes its way,
That thou might'st break thy daily bread
With Prophet, Saviour, and head;
That thou might'st cherish for thine own
The riches of sweet Mary's Son,
Boy-Rabbi, Israel's Paragon:
And thoughtest thou such guest
Would in thy hall take up his rest?
Would rushing life forget its laws,
Fate's glowing revolution pause?
High omens ask diviner guess,
Not to be conned to tediousness.
And know, my higher gifts unbind
The zone that girds the incarnate mind,
When the scanty shores are full
With Thought's perilous whirling pool,
When frail Nature can no more,—
Then the spirit strikes the hour,
My servant Death with solving rite
Pours finite into infinite.
Wilt thou freeze love's tidal flow,
Whose streams through nature circling go?
Nail the star struggling to its track
On the half-climbed Zodiack?
Light is light which radiates,
Blood is blood which circulates,
Life is life which generates,
And many-seeming life is one,—
Wilt thou transfix and make it none,
Its onward stream too starkly pent
In figure, bone, and lineament?

Wilt thou uncalled interrogate
Talker! the unreplying fate?
Nor see the Genius of the whole
Ascendant in the private soul,
Beckon it when to go and come,
Self-announced its hour of doom.
Fair the soul's recess and shrine,
Magic-built, to last a season,
Masterpiece of love benign!
Fairer than expansive reason
Whose omen 'tis, and sign.
Wilt thou not ope this heart to know
What rainbows teach and sunsets show,
Verdict which accumulates
From lengthened scroll of human fates,
Voice of earth to earth returned,
Prayers of heart that inly burned;
Saying, what is excellent,
As God lives, is permanent
Hearts are dust, hearts' loves remain,
Heart's love will meet thee again.
Revere the Maker; fetch thine eye
Up to His style, and manners of the sky.
Not of adamant and gold
Built He heaven stark and cold,
No, but a nest of bending reeds,
Flowering grass and scented weeds,
Or like a traveller's fleeting tent,
Or bow above the tempest pent,
Built of tears and sacred flames,
And virtue reaching to its aims;
Built of furtherance and pursuing,
Not of spent deeds, but of doing.
Silent rushes the swift Lord
Through ruined systems still restored,
Broad-sowing, bleak and void to bless,
Plants with worlds the wilderness,
Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow;
House and tenant go to ground,
Lost in God, in Godhead found.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson


Death is ugly? Oh, my children. No.
If only you knew the beauty that begins where your sight fails,
You would run, run, run, and leap into the open arms of eternity.
But sad is a harvest of green wheat.
And, so you would feverishly cling to earth and finish your mortal task,
I merely gave death an ugly mask.

— Carol Lynne Pearson

At some point, under normal circumstances, children leave their parents and enter the world on their own, often forever. For some parents, such as Edie in Joanna Trollope's "Second Honeymoon" (as heard on Wisconsin Public Radio's To The Best of Our Knowledge), this is an occasion for trauma;. "My children don't need me any more!", such parents sob... For others, it is cause for celebration: "My children don't need me any more!", such parents cheer.

If your role as a parent as to be needed by your children, you'll probably pine with the first group of parents when your kids take off: your identity is bound to a stage of your child's life that is gone, so you may feel bereft, adrift, not sure what comes next.

If your role as a parent as to prepare your children so they won't need you, you'll likely rejoice with the second group: you've fulfilled your parental responsibilities and are free to enjoy what comes next.

I suppose it comes down to whether parenthood is a permanent assignment or a process that grows and changes as your child matures.

Peggy and I are solidly in the second group: we view our job as taking that mewling and puking infant who popped out one day in 1997 and helping him become whoever it is that he will be, keeping him safe as we can while seeing that he has chances to succeed and to fail and to learn to do both with equal grace. So far, so good: he's eleven years old, knows how to make friends or be by himself, can stand in front of a crowd and tell a joke or be in the audience and show appreciation for someone else's talent.

Our perspective came at a price. Ryan is our only child, but not our first: 13 years ago, we said good-bye to our first only child, Kevin.

Diagnosed at 20 months with an aggressive pediatric brain tumor that we were told would "almost certainly take your son's life," Kevin survived surgery and months of chemo that apparently only killed the weak ones. Six months later, the strong ones came back with a vengeance and he died in our arms, on his grandmother's birthday.

But that's not the end of the story.

Some weeks later, Peggy dreamt about one of those round-the-clock days of care that made up Kevin's last weeks. She and Kevin were in our bedroom, he with the two fluffy Mickey Mouse blankets that were in his hands 24 hours a day during his entire illness: Always two. If we needed to wash one, we'd wait until he was sound asleep and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y bring the far corner of the other up to try to slip it into his hand in place of the blanket needing a wash. It rarely worked: even sick and sound asleep, he knew he'd been tricked and would testily toss away the "fake" second blanket.

In the dream, one of his precious blankets fell to the floor and he fussed for her to retrieve it. Peering over the side of the bed, she saw nothing but blackness: no floor, no blanket. She flailed around, knowing how important those two blankets were to him. After a few minutes of fumbling in the void, she turned back to Kevin and said, "I'm sorry, I can't find your other blanket."

Kevin answered her, calmly and clearly, "It's OK. I don't need my blanket any more."

Suddenly awake, Peggy knew that Kevin really didn't need his blanket any more. She awoke knowing that wherever he was, his time for needing blankets was past. Whether Kevin spoke through the dream to reassure her or Peggy's own spirit gave her a story to help heal her grief is not important: the fact is, there comes a time when your kid doesn't need his blanket any more.

While he was alive, Kevin's parents didn't have that perspective. Born 18 months after Kevin's death, Ryan's do.

He's 11 years old now, so obviously, he doesn't need his blanket any more. In fact, he was never much of a "favorite-blanket" kind of kid, but in a metaphorical sense, there have been — and will continue to be — any number of blankets that Ryan "doesn't need any more".

Eventually, he'll toss aside the biggest blanket of them all: living with us, being dependent on us.

And it will be OK.

If we've done our job right, he doesn't need that blanket any more, and what's more, we won't need him to need that blanket any more.

What strange irony that this past week featured both an attack on photosensitive visitors to the Epilepsy Foundation web site and the release of Speed Racer.

First off, the movie is a blast: completely different from the original Japanimation that I grew up with, yet true to its cheesy boy-saves-world-by-driving-a-race-car core. It doesn't try to be serious, it tries—and succeeds in a big, big way—at being way too much fun in an utterly original, extremely manic, totally overstimulating way.

With influences as far from 60s proto-anime as motion photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge and photographic artist David LaChapelle (I hadn't heard of him, either), colors as bright and saturated as it is possible to put on film, a plot simple enough for the youngest audience member to grasp and the most intense flashing psychodelic imagery I've ever seen on screen, Speed Racer is like nothing you've ever seen before. The Wachowski brothers—as they did with "bullet time" in The Matrix—have created a new visual style that I'm sure we'll be seeing in ads for years to come.

As much as I liked the movie (and I'm old enough to have been a fan of the original as a 9-year-old in 1967), I have to wonder if some of the effects won't send some photosensitive epileptics out of the theater with headaches or in an ictal state. My 11-year-old son, who plays plenty of video games and has never shown the slightest sign of sensitivity to flashing or flickering images, said that he felt slightly queasy and had a headache after the movie. I'm happy to report that it was not due to an overdose of movie snacks, either: we had a proper meal of Lasagne before we went to the theater.

 This was originally just a test-post to see if blogging-by-email worked from Blackberry devices, but some people expressed interest in its contents, so here it is, now that the post-by-email thing is working:

1. Respect and worship any deity within your faith tradition, if you follow one, and support the right of others to do the same.
   
2. Enjoy and support legal guarantees of freedom of religious belief, practice, assembly and speech for all.
   
   
3. Do not use obscene speech in the name of the deities of any religion.
   
   
4. Follow the guidance of your faith or secular tradition every day of the week: every day is important.
   
   
5. Help to establish social safety nets so that the very young, the elderly, the sick, mentally ill, physically disabled, unemployed, poor and broken will receive adequate medical attention and enjoy at least a minimum standard of living.
   
   
6. Minimize the harm you do to others and yourself. Treat others as you would wish to be treated.
   
   
7. Do not engage in sexual activity with another person that is coercive, unsafe, manipulative, public or outside of a committed monogamous relationship.
   
   
8. Do not steal the property of others, except in case of emergency (and then only if you attempt to replace or pay for it later).
   
   
9. Do not lie, either in or out of court. Be honest and truthful at all times.
   
   
10. Attempt to be satisfied with your current standard of living; do not obsess over the possessions of others: that path leads to unhappiness.

“My favorite thing about the Internet is that you get to go into the private world of real creeps without having to smell them.” — Penn Jillette

That's how the British ex-anarchist-punk-turned-acoustic-folk group Chumbawamba introduces themselves on their MySpace page, where they've featured "Add Me", a hilarious send-up of MySpace and the creepy types that you sometimes meet there.

The song is infectious as heck: a hilarious send-up of scary Social-Networking encounters with a bouncy folk-pop sound that completely belies its creepy lyrics:

I'm a loner alone with neuroses and hate.
Anger is a permanent character trait.
My letter bombs are primed and they're ready to send.
Would you like to add me as a friend?

I'm a wound-up whiner with a fetish for guns.
I'm almost fifty and I live with my mum.
I hope my nude picture doesn't offend.
Would you like to add me as a friend?

Chorus:
Add me, add me,
Me mother says she wish she never had me.
Add me, add me,
Would you like to add me as a friend?
Would you like to add me as a friend?

I'm a recovering alcoholic; I rarely leave my room,
Peeping through the curtains in my dark costume.
The voices in my head, god they'll get me in the end.
Would you like to add me as a friend?

I'd really like to mail you the picture that I drew,
It's Kylie's body, but the head is you.
I've asked you fifty times before, I'm asking you again,
Would you like to add me as a friend?

Chorus

Here's a picture of me in my Nazi uniform
Doing a trick with an egg that I like to perform
At a monster truck rally that my mom and me attend.
Would you like to add me as a friend?

I've added Britney, and Paris, and you and Tom,
I'm gonna find your address so I can visit you at home.
I don't like people, but I like to pretend.
Would you like to add me as a friend?

Chorus