Bitched from the Start

That’s the hard part, becoming objective. That’s why Dr. Evans made me write in third person. He said I was self-indulgent when I wrote in first person, overly charmed by my own voice and words. I’m also guilty of wanting to tell a story because it’s mine.

Like W. H. Auden beautifully tells us in “Musee des Beaux Arts,” the world doesn’t care about our problems:

“But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.”

As you see in my poetry and postmodern pieces, I haven’t learned yet to be fully objective. And I’ve been through some shit, currently navigating a named shitstorm and trying to learn from all of it.

A months or so ago, feeling all of my hurt, I went to dinner with my husband to our favorite restaurant, Constantine’s.

When we arrived, he took the dog for a short walk (weather was fine to leave him in the car while we were in the restaurant), I genuinely asked why all of this was happening to me, and the universe or God or a THC gummy answered, a simple five-word answer, clear as ice from Walden Pond: because you have to know.

Well, I guess that explains it. When I combine that simple answer with this letter from Hemingway to Fitzgerald, Faulkner’s Nobel Banquet Speech,

and Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet

maybe all I need to do is take myself out of it and tell these stories of the human spirit at war with itself simply so that others can feel understood and better understand themselves. It’s a noble and daunting task, and I hope I can do it justice. Forgive me if I take performative breaks of self-indulgence. Maybe that helps me find the right words to tell the stories that need to be told.