Town muse April 15, 2013

 

Once again, the synchronicity of poetry posts pops up, feeding my illusion of a conversation where none exists.

I post things and then when she posts something, I seem to read into it a response – knowing perfectly well in my conscious mind I would be the last person on earth she would be trying to communicate, even secretly, and yet I enjoy the fantasy on some very primal level.

Yet there is more than a little coincidence between my posting and her posting, warranting an examination.

“I never wanted to live my life as a ghost, haunting the edges of things I love to watch, unable to touch, to fell, but not felt, except as a remote presence,” I wrote in my posting,

I referred to Homer singing to his muses, and like that I am inspired by the thought of connection that reaches beyond the edges of the world, defying life or death or any of the petty details we get saddled with.

“To inspire and be inspired, to go on to become something greater than I could ever be alone,” I wrote. “I hear its songs each time I stroll the riverside, filling my lungs with its breath, nostrils with its scent, letting its thoughts fill my head until I no longer know which part is me and which is the muse, nor do I care.”

Her post is infinitely more complex, less hopeful and tinged with darkness, pain and bitterness, and perhaps a sense of betrayal, especially in the opening line which appears to connect my poem with hers: “This is the office of the town muse,” she wrote, speaking about how her fingers bled when she touched the door knob that led to the “world beyond,” to a door that held what led “to possibility and to wanting” and to an unexpected darkness which strangely was combined with light that is extremely attractive.

She seems to be saying that she had come into an underworld of dark spirits, full of power and is attracted to it, a potent force upon which she feeds, changing her perception of how she thought she would live her life.

But her life hadn’t panned out the way she thought, and yet, oddly, it had.

This again reminds me of that poem with the old lady from 2003 who thought her to change her priorities, and suggests she is attracted to this dark path she has stumbled upon.

She does on to say she had regained “what once had fled from her … huge grasp.”

Something she once saw as remarkable, feeding on what she thought she could become and failed, and yet now has gone beyond “her darkest and lightest dreams.”

Are the two poems connected?

Mine makes reference to my voyeuristic approach, alluding to my reading her poetry from safety, being inspired by what she writes, but have no way to express it other than as an observer, a ghostly spirit lingering on the edge of the world, inspired to go on to seek something greater.

Her poem is not a hopeful poem and suggests what she once thought of as possible has failed and it’s not possible to go back to that more innocent point where she believed in mentor or muse. Possibly even meaning me and how difficult I am to work with, a legitimate criticism (if that’s what she means at all) even if painful to hear.

Her poem is much darker, figuratively and literally, almost mocking my muse metaphor, talking about her struggle to find what she has lost, and how she has come to embrace darkness for her inspiration and her way to recover what she lost over the long years.

The similarities between my post and hers again inspires this idea that there is a vague communication, even if her response is somewhat bitter, maybe mocking, but painfully honest the way her poem about trickling up was, and her changed priorities. I walk about being lost at sea, alluding to her music and poetry and a siren that inspires me, but like the mighty Odysseus I must be restrained from responding to. Her poem is full of darkness, more like that dark god Athena, an inspiration and protector of Homer’s hero, yet someone whose path takes her Hades, where she embraces the dark gods as her pathway to personal salvation.

If these are part of a conversation, her side of it is brutally honest, saying that she has found a path to get what she wants, dark as it may seem – attractive in that it may not be the path of first choice, but one that will bring her what she wants, and needs.

If this is a conversation, then perhaps I might need to look back at other posts by both of us to see what I sensed might be but ignored as not possible.

Are we conversing here? Or am I again reveling in fantasy of my own making?

In either case, this last post says something important about the life choices she’s made, about the darkness she feels she needs to embrace.

 

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