Sink or swim? May 2013

 

 

I keep meaning to move onto her new posted poems, but get distracted by revisiting previous poems in which I think I might have missed something.

This is true of the poem in which she talks about Acing it, which means accomplishing something with success, in a way that is so significant nobody can top it. It is a term that comes out of tennis when a player hits an unreturnable serve against an opponent.

The impression I get considering the context is that she has decided to go down with the sinking ship if indeed the ship sinks. Perhaps because she likes the company she keeps, something she did not have during the previous disaster.

 In an earlier interpretation, I called her a good soldier.

She talks about the current disaster and how she needs to “suck it up,” an attitude she has maintained, not just in reaction to this disaster, but throughout her life, forced to accept roles that are beneath her, and yet critical roles that with this current den of thieves are required of her.

Better to drown on a ship of fools than to drift aimlessly in a hostile ocean waiting for some savior that will never come.

She seems to be struggling to find a place in some society where she actually feels important, serving some purpose, and even though the ship may be on the verge of hitting an iceberg, she seems to think she has landed in such a society – if only the ship doesn’t sink after all.

She clearly still sees herself as a player.

And yet, she may suspect deep down, as she has in other circumstances such as with the chef in New York, this gig isn’t taking her where she needs to go, even when she does everything she is told, such as spying on the Virgin Mayor’s political enemies.

The shifts in mood feel a bit like desperation: what if I try this or try that?

She must have had high hopes with the Virgin Mayor, a man whom she clearly saw as attractive, almost a father figure to her – even though her real bread and butter guy was RR, perhaps leaning more and more to RR as the Virgin Mayor self-destructed.

The whole thing is a series of moving pieces. Since she was hooked up with RR at least since she started at our office, perhaps even the June before that, the blessing of Virgin Mayor’s victory seemed to promise great opportunity for RR and her, suggesting that our office was never really the end game, but a tool for another purpose – one she appears to blame me for side tracking, and may explain the more recent poems of resentment as the Virgin Mayor’s ship struggles to stay afloat.

For the moment, that den of thieves is all she has and must cling to them as if to a life preserver.

In some ways, she has been far too honest in her poems, saying things most people might have kept secret, hoping I suppose that her use of metaphor can defuse some of the message for people unwilling to fully engage them.

All this, of course, will be resolved when the court case concludes, and she will have the choice to sink or swim.



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