tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3580247703206240142.post557186122276618611..comments2023-05-16T02:08:42.858-07:00Comments on Degringolade: On a HolidayDegringoladehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11893964959960977677noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3580247703206240142.post-43354085797614347962015-11-10T04:13:00.689-08:002015-11-10T04:13:00.689-08:00Congratulations on beginning the next phase of you...Congratulations on beginning the next phase of your life. I enjoyed reading this, and found it thought-provoking. Looking at your earlier entries, I was reminded of Ugo Bardi, whom I've read in years past, and found the resilience.org website.<br /><br />Maybe you'd enjoy the following poem by James Tate, which also deals with leaving stuff behind. The last line here approximates, to humorous effect, the ending of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken". Tate's narrator has a visionary dream outside a Nova Scotia village - just as Frost's line is ALMOST quoted, there is ALMOST an internal rhyme in the poem's title - the town's name is pronounced <i>goosh.</i><br /><br /><b>I Left My Couch in Tatamagouche</b><br /><br />I desired lemonade—it was hot and I had been walking for hours—<br />but after much wrestling, pushing and shoving, I simply could not get my<br />couch through the restaurant door. Several customers and the owner and<br />the owner's son were kinder than they should have been, but finally<br />it was time to close and I urged them to return to their homes, their<br />families needed them (the question of who needs what was hardly my field<br />of expertise). That night, while sleeping peacefully outside the train<br />station on my little green couch, I met a giantess by the name of Anna<br />Swan. She knelt beside my couch and stroked my brow with tenderness. She<br />was like a mother to me for a few moments there under the night sky. In<br />the morning, I left my couch in Tatamagouche, and that has made a big difference.<br /><br />——James Tate<br /><br />Tate could have titled this poem “The Couch Not Taken”, but that would have been too obvious.<br /><br />What are we told of the events that led our narrator to this life-changing decision? First, the restaurant customers and the proprietors make large efforts to attempt to include him, to help him get the couch into the restaurant. At last our narrator urges them to return to their homes and families — a recognition that their concerns are as important as his own.<br /><br />The train station the narrator sleeps outside is now, in real life, a bed-and-breakfast. Anna Swan, the giantess who extends maternal affection to him in his dream, is a historical person who was seven feet five and a half inches tall when fully grown. She was born in 1846. She and her husband, similarly statured Confederate veteran Martin Van Buren Bates, met when a circus he was appearing in came to Halifax, NS. They toured Europe and the United States and settled in Ohio.<br /><br />The turning point is when Anna Swan's giant hand caresses his brow while he sleeps. In her largeness she stands for the maternal archetype, all our foremothers. The narrator is then able to feel his connection with the rest of humanity — note that this issue of connection with the human family, and the narrator's alienation from it, has already been raised by the line “their families needed them (the question of who needs what was hardly my field of expertise)”. He leaves his literal couch behind — in other words, begins to live a new life, no longer burdened with the events of his past.<br /><br />In an analysis of Frost's <i>The Road Not Taken, </i> David C. Ward points out the emphasis of that poem on individuality. Tate's protagonist, however, is liberated by his realization of his participation in our common humanity. As the Preacher said ages ago, "to everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven."mistah charley, ph.d.https://www.blogger.com/profile/06303695341246058680noreply@blogger.com