NEW POST!

Cathy wants a NEW POST!, and she's not alone.

So I sit here, looking at the blank New Post screen, wondering why it's been blank for so long. At the same time, I'm watching the news, and it occurs to me that the difficulty is that reality has become too amorphous for me to write about. The world has become, if not unreal, surreal.

How does a poet tell the truth, when truth becomes so elusive; so apparently insignificant?

I know this is not new. I've seen a lot of politics in my life. I remember watching, with my Grandad, the McCarthy hearings, and the Democratic convention that nominated John F. Kennedy.  A tiny television; a technological marvel bringing us the (North American) world in black & white.

My Grandma, near the end of her life, told me that one of her greatest regrets in life was the vote she cast for Richard Nixon. A life-long Democrat, she was frightened; she was afraid; she believed the lies.

So it's not that the obfuscation of politics is new to me. I've even noted the current version here, and here.

Perhaps my tolerance has diminished.

But this era of sanctimonious prevarication seems so much worse. Our tolerance of it, as citizens, seems so much higher. Our Fourth Estate, now seemingly recovered from its post-Katrina outrage, has once again retreated into referee mode.

Well, not entirely.  But I still see "reporters" "interviewing"  this side, then that side, as if totally conflicting -- and clearly verifiable, or not -- facts have equal weight.  Fact-checking, alas, continues to be rare.

This is the scary part. The unnamed White House aide (could it have been Scooter Libby?) told  Ron Suskind of The New York Times:

"...when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

And he (I'm assuming a he) was right. They have created their own reality. They can do what they like, and they do.

I can study what they do. I can try to discern the actual reality beneath the created one.

But I cannot write.

Comments

[Cathy]

OMG!!!!! Sharon posted something today :)

But seriously, I'm going to comment on your post tomorrow,(which is very good.) I want to write it out first and it's going 10pm here too.

See you tomorrow!

[Cathy]

How does a poet tell the truth, when truth becomes so elusive; so apparently insignificant?

Simply tell as you see it. Only history in the end, will decide who was right and who was wrong. Beside Anna Akhmatova said in a poem about poets,

Our lot is to wear the hair shirt,
To walk with a candle and to wail.

By being silent you in the way, is letting that side win. Even a simple poem about a simple day, is a protest. Yes there is all this craziness going on but there's a life still to live and write about.

That is one thing I learn from reading Anna Akhmatova. A simple poem can be protest and can bring comfort to those who are suffering. Also, they records of what was going on.

The Great Purges were going on in Russia in the 30s. Anna's son Lev was a victim of it. Despite the risk of being sent to the Gulag herslf or worse getting shot. Anna wrote a cycle of poems call Requiem. It was no protest poems, just the simple act of being a witness of those times. But from that cycle of poems, you feel the terror and fear of a mother. What happend in her life, show up in her poems. That's her record of truth. Sure there was times when the Party had tried to silence her but in the end. Anna still kept on writing the poems.

I too have been facing "I cannot write" because of what going on my life. Though it's more for personally reason. But know I can't just stand and watch anymore, then remain silent. Because you are just letting them win.

So no more of that for me. If I have to go to the "darkside" and become Ms Vader, I will.

Tired of the damn white page. Despite what is going on my life. A simple poem will be remembrance of this time. Good or Bad, something has to recorded.

Just remember one thing, history will be the judge of these times. The only we can do is just record what we saw, what we felt and heard. For this will the evidence which they will judge us by.