As I attempted to begin today's posting I was horrified to find that my mind kept blanking instead of opening up to its usual panorama of brilliant thoughts, original ideas, and miscellaneous memoranda stored in long-term memory for use at times like these.
So I visited some of my usual haunts, Language Log, - Rensselaer Adventures,- Delancey Place, etc. But even these old favorites yielded none of their normal inspirations to stimulate me to remark upon, or enhance, or bring to mind a personal memory to shamelessly reveal.
What was I to do?
Then it struck me that I could use Blogger's "Next Blog" feature and visit some brand new sites. Surely that would solve my dilemma of mindlessly drifting through the doldrums and melancholy humdrums.
But, no. After clicking through more than 20 blogs I gave up in bleak despair. Not a one of them stirred my emotions nor my imagination. Most were a lot like this blog of mine: stiff, stilted, overly-personalized and boring as all-get-out.
Then I turned to poetry. A last resort.
I read By Dark a poem by W.S. Merwin in today's Writer's Almanack that did a good job of scaring the Be-Jesus out of me, although I don't think that was the poet's intention. It reinforced my belief that a poem has multitudes of meanings more than was perhaps visualized by its creator.
A reader can analyze only the skeletal structure of a poem through intellect, not its essence which is somehow absorbed by some mysterious emotional connection, and this absorption is colored by the total life-to-date of the hearer or reader of the poem.
That's how I see it, anyway.
Why am I now so sadly fallen down here into the depths of the dumps?
Ah well . . .
Not all of my days can be filled with wonderment and the thrill of discovery.
It is such a secret place,
the land of tears.
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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