The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. 

Randall Jarrell 

That said...

My birthday fell on Friday.  And about the only thing that distinguished it from previous ones was the influence of that diabolically clever and overcrowded digital detention camp for the chronically affable known as Facebook.  (Hey, I'm here to have fun, especially with words, not pander to the partisan mainstream or more tolerant and well-adjusted) 

I know there're many happy campers who frolic in this  happy valley of virtual conviviality, and I spent a good part of my morning genuinely pleased to find so many well-wishers waiting at my digital doorstep. But I also felt overwhelmed by a sense of obligation to respond to each and every one of them (which I discovered I didn't know how to do ) with something more than a mere "Thanks."


Is it just me or is there  something strangely alienating in this new-age model of pseudo socialization?  As much as I know that all my well wishers were sincere, there is that nagging little issue of the fact that this sudden avalanche of affectionate acknowledgement was triggered by a bit of programming that embedded  an alert to those who otherwise would have gone happily and appropriately unconcerned about any connection between the day's date and me.   I wonder too, if for people with many hundreds of Facebook friends accumulated over the years by dint of the endless exponential expansion of "friends" (that today is responsible for my having more friends on my page that I don't know than I do) it has become an almost daily duty (or chore) to respond to the inevitable rash of constant message alerts about multiple Birthdays, anniversaries, assorted milestones etc.  Okay, I guess all I've really done here is confirm the suspicions that I am too stubbornly sensitive and damaged to appreciate the value of life's little (and therefore, finest) pleasures--so on to more compelling content from my betters.

 Poet Jack Gilbert died Tuesday. NY Times (Bruce Weber ) gave him a long and laudatory obit.  I knew little about him other than the association with the "Beats" and was pretty sure  I hadn't ever read anything.  So I've been catching up.  Some great stuff.  He's all direct, no nonsense, no pretense, no tricks, no literary acrobatics--just straightforward concision and compression of plain language.  Most read like short essays trimmed to the bone.  So I turn the balance of today's post (except for the mandatory vocabulary list at the end) over to him in tribute to a lifetime of honest good work--done mostly in humble and self-imposed obscurity, which may be the reason he was able to maintain such clarity of heart and soul. Here's one of many I found particularly affecting, and perhaps it seemed even more so in light of recent events in middle east (and far too many other places) where one wonders how anyone can resist regarding the human condition as anything but a constant sorrow. 

A Brief for the Defense

Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

We stand at the prow again of a small ship

anchored late at night in the tiny port

looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront

is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.

To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat

comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth

all the years of sorrow that are to come. 

T is for:
tachyphagia	Fast eating
tarantism	An urge to overcome melancholy by dancing
tetrapyloctomy	The act of splitting a hair four ways
thelemic	Permitting people to do as they like
tibialoconcupiscent	Having a lascivious interest in watching a woman put on stockings