Joseph Cowley

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The centerpiece (core story) of "Home by Seven." Privately printed in limited, paperback edition of 77 pages. Signed by author. New, but has sticker on title page stating the above and sticker with author's name and address on final page. Order through Amazon.com or email the author, who will send you a signed copy for $20. I can't, however, accept credit cards.

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QUOTATIONS

GOD

Man invents God in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it. - Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition

In all my readings on this subject, I have yet to read someone who points out that we are the sum of all living creation on Earth. I early read, and was taken by, the sentence that "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." Which, of course, basically means that the development of the individual from its development as a fertilized egg to its birth as an individual capable of living outside the womb or egg, repeats the development of that species as a whole.

I'd like to suggest that we carry within us, in the structure of our genes especially, the whole development of the human race. Religion, I believe, is an attempt to retain that early awe of the universe and the need to make sense of it that, I think, is endemic to the human condition.

Of course, it is obvious that Man created God out of need, primarily to answer the question of meaning and morals; and, of course, out of fear of death. The truth, however, is that there are no meaning or morals in the universe (or God, if you will); they are needs of man, which we invented as we invented God, to get out of what is essentially an existential dilemna, namely what I have asserted. Meaning and morals have been of great evolutionary assistance to us, and have, indeed, not only helped us to survive, but to dominate, at least on the Earth. Which, of course, we are now also rapidly destroying.

To put it another way, left-brain activity and emphasis developed so strongly from its initiation by Galeleo and Kepler (that is, the measuring of hypotheses against reality) that we have indeed conquered the world with our thining, until, today (and beginning, actually, a 100 and some years ago) there is an uneasiness with that exclusive dominion.

As a result, there began the efforts to rely more on right-brain activity. A book could be written on all the activies, such as Zen Buddhism (but not exclusive to religion; consider Woodstock, for example, and the proliferations of people on TV and video who are quite prepared to tell us how to live more fulfilling lives and achieve happiness and success), and attempts to get "in touch with" the irrational in life.

Of course, they're right. It's pretty obvious that to believe in complete rationality is in itself pretty irrational. I try to keep in mind what Hamlet said to Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in all your philosophies." And in those days, keep in mind, natural philosophy meant science. I'm a very rational person myself, or so I consider myself, but I've had at least a half dozen experiences that one could call "supernatural." That is to say, strange, or unexplained. Though even there the left brain sets to work in an attempt to explain them. I have theories of my own. But Hamlet is stll right.

MORALITY

"The recognition of the identity of our own nature with that of others is the beginning and foundation of all true morality." - Arthur Schopenhauer, The Wisdom of Life (from the translators preface)

COURAGE

"There is always a parenthesis of fear in courage." Grapevine, April 1977

WRITERS AND WRITING

"The most important quality of a writer is not talent but persistence." Philip Freund

This is from "Mrs. Virginia Woolf" in Cynthia Ozick's What Henry James Knew and Other Essays on Writers. "A writer's heroism is in the act of writing; not in the finished work, but in the work as it goes."

"You have to write every day of your life because, once you stop, it's damned hard to start again." W. Somerset Maugham, as quoted on p.49 of the
Authors Guild Bulletin, Winter, 2007

RELIGION

Most of us are familiar, I'm sure, with the quotation of Karl Marx that religion "is the opium of the people," which I think is true enough; but the sentence that follows it is, perhaps, even more significant: "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness." Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction

RANDOM THOUGHTS

I've concluded that we live in an energy/time continuum, similar to the space/time continuum of relativity. The more energy you have, the more time you have. One of the reasons for this is that we measure time by movement, and the more energy the more movement.

Children, for example, have boundless energy, and time, therefore, moves slowly. Do you remember how, as a child, time seemed to be endless? Those two hours or so after school seemed like endless playtime; and when you were called in to supper, you had been playing forever.

Old folks like myself, on the other hand, have boundless fatigue. Because there is so little energy, and therefore so little movement, time speeds up. It speeds up as we get older, passing faster and faster as our energy gradually depletes.

There is, of course, also the psychological factor: With more time behind us, we take the longer view, so that the present seems less and less by comparison to the lengthening past. It is interesting how time and space shrink. To look back to the time of Christ, for instance, and be able to vizualize how few generations ago that was. I read in estimate recently that all of human history is only 5,000 generations.

We, who have lived 50 or more years (in my case, 84) gain more and more perspective. Everything seems so much smaller (the earth especially), and we (I am) are amazed at how far we have developed as a species. Is it any wonder that we are still savages, with all their traits? Only social development (which depends upon individual development) will unltimately make wars less probable, initially through a world federation of some kind.

To control violence, the savage in us, it will be many eons beyond that before it will have lost any possible evolutionary value it might have had. One of the problems with the Middle East is that they are still so tribal, and haven't yet evolved beyond that. Anyhow, that's just a few thoughts on this matter.

The awful thing about death is its finality; the awful thing about aging is its inexorability.

WIFE DIED

My wife Ruth died at 5:05 in the morning on Tuesday, August 29, 2006 of respiratory failure. She had terrible cancer at the end but had had heart failure for almost four years, and I believe it was the heart failure that finally filled her lungs with water. My son Joe was with her at the end; she called out twice, he held her hand, and that was it. She was 90% of my reason for living, so it's going to be tough to continue; I have so little will to live left. But I shall take it a day at a time, believing that it will gradually get better.

It has been a full year since my wife Ruth died, and suddenly I have begun working on my writing again. The grieving must be physiological as well as mental and emotional, for why would it be exactly a year, as many cultures predict? For example, the Jews wait until after a full year of mourning before erecting a headstone; in many societies the woman is required to wear black for a year; and it is recommended that the bereaved one does not remarry until a year has passed. I had faith that I would write again, and just waited patiently for the time to come. I was willing to accept the fact that I might never write again; for every time I tried, the will, the motivation, and the ability were not there. Thank God I feel whole again.

The above statement proved to be false. Until the weekend of Feb. 24, 2008, when I, finally, was able o add four pages to my mss. of John Adams. I hope, this time, it was not a hoax. I expect this weekend following to be able to write. We'll see.

One thing I'd like to mention in connection with Ruth's death: the absolute absence of fear. In fact, she almost embraced death. And she, like myself, had no expectation of an after-life (in facts that is one of the sillier aspects of many religions, and an obvious reason, or one of the reasons, for their invention.

In pondering her fearless death, over four years of heart failure, with the addiion of cancer of the tongue and jaw in her last 6 months, I have come to the conclusion that it is the ego that is afraid to die. Ruth had low ego and high self-esteem. We made a good match because I was just the reverse. Fortnately, as my ego came down and my self-esteem rose (not too much in both cases), her ego rose and her self-esteem dipped a little (but not too much).

Socrates said, "If you would discourse with me, define your terms." So let me define mine. As I have used them, ego is what we think of ourselves; self-esteem is how we feel about ourselves. To put it in more vulgar terminology, what I sometimes tell others is that, when younger, "I thought I was hot shit, but I felt like plain shit." There, are you satisfied?

There were three death scenes before Ruth finally died. If you wish, I shall comment on them the next time I decide to edit this column.

By the way, Ruth donated her body to the Medical School at Stony Brook University, and I have done the same. Her ashes were returned in April of last year, and they now sit on a low bookcase outside what was her bedroom. I am thinking of buying an urn for them.

A FEW ODD BOOKS I HAVE ENJOYED

THE TRUE BELIEVER by Eric Hoffer. What a wonderful little book. It's about the fanatic. Hoffer was a stevedore, I understand, who published this one book when he was in his sixties. But I would guess he had made notes on the subject for years, and finally, after much reflection, finally published them.

VALUES IN A UNIVERSE OF CHANCE: Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914), Edited by Philip P. Wiener and published by DoubledayAnchor in 1958 is an important book for me in as much as the philosophical values and beliefs it contains are pretty much those I also have come to after much reading of philosophy.

The first 50 pages of A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes, the part that takes place on the island before the kids leave withs the pirates.

A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. Such a marvelous sense of humor. Too bad that, turned down by 8 publishers, he committed suicide. His mother, who is marvelously caricatured in the novel, persisted and got it published after his death.

CARDS OF IDENTITY by Nigel Dennis. Wonderful spoof on Communism and the Church of England in the 50s. Probably out of date now.

THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND by Julian Jaynes. Such a seminal book for me! I always wondered why history only began about 4000 BC; this book answers the question -- at least to my satisfaction.

HUNGER

It's a strange thing about hunger when you're old; you don't really feel hunger, you just feel sick, and know it is time to eat, to relieve that sick feeling.

BODIES LIKE LEAD

Their bodies are like lead. (Line from "Old Folks," one of the songs in Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, translated by Eric Blau)

This heaviness of the body is a true phonomemon of aging. The body, indeed, does feel like lead. It is so hard to move it at times; I suppose because all our muscles are atrophying. You might have wished at times when you were young, that you could be so relaxed. But this is strange. I have reached the "Help me, I can't get up stage." Need something to cling to to pull myself up, or need someone to lift me. It happened the other evening. The younger person was truly surprised that I was so heavy (because I couldn't use my own muscles to help him lift). Ah, well...aging! And lately, because the blood pressure sometimes gets too low (either that or too high), and I collapse, like the twin towers in NYC. The legs just won't hold me up and I go down. Faint only for a second just before my head hits the ground. So far, no damage.

THE ACADEMIC

The academic parades his knowledge as thought;
but of course it isn't.

WAITING

They sit at a table in the shadows at the edge of the woods waiting for me, Socrates, Freud, Tolstoy, and Mann - and a few others I can't quite make out.

WORK IN PROGRESS

John Adams, Architect of Freedom. A Brief Life for the Busy Reader. Should run about 45,000 words; expect to have it published by the end of 2007, or early in the new year (unfortunately, the death of my wife made it impossible for me to write for a year and a half), in time to capitalize on any interest generated by the NMO 6-part series on John Adams, based on McCullough's book, which now has been sechuled to begin on March 16, 2008. Too bad; the earliest I could possibly have my book out would probably be in June.

OLD AGE

This long decay and dying we call old age can, at times, be quite depressing. The world we knew dissociates from us, and we, it is becoming quite apparent, must die alone. No one can do it for us; each of our dyings, for that reason, is quite unique.

SMELLY OLD FOLKS

I've discovered why the faeces and urine of old folks stinks so much. It's because the kidney loses its capacity to excrude all the toxins in the body. I have been able to correct this by using Verseo Foot Patches, which removes toxins through the soles of your feet while you sleep. Lightens color of faeces and urine, and eliminates the awful odor. Pass it on.

I happen to be rereading the Collected Poems of C.P. Cavafy, a poet I remember admiring very much, and came upon this, a poem of his youth, which, seeing the old from the outside, illustrates my axiom below that no one can understand the old except the old.

THE SOULS OF OLD MEN

Inside their worn, tattered bodies
dwell the souls of old men.
How unhappy the poor things are
and how bored by the pathetic life they live.
How they tremble for fear of losing that life, and how much
they love it, those befuffled and contradictory souls, sitting -- half comic and half tragic --
inside their old, threadbare skins.

(He's projecting, of course. But nice anyhow, isn't it?)

Old age is something else. A whole new country. Until you get there, you will not understand it. Too many books about old age are written by people in their 60s; and they ain't seen nothing yet. The central key to old age, and its understanding, is energy, the lack thereof. From that pretty much all else ensues. Most writers about old age focus on the symptons, the loss of sexuality, of appetite (not everyone loses this), the ills that flow from the body's inabiliy to fight germs. Old age is a time of decay, but most people focus on the physical, and either ignore, are not ware of, the mental decay. We are like old machines that are wearing out. The wonder is that the body was able to repair itself for so many years. And so the end comes, not with a bang (in most cases), but with a whimper. And that's what old age is, a preparation for dying. And the final acceptance, the final letting go. As Bette Davis said at 92, though I'm sure it was not original with her, "Old age ain't for sissies." And what is most frightening is its inexorability. There is no cure for old age, but death. I don't believe in a life after death (certainly not the survival of the ego), but I agree with Socrates, when he said, in essence, If there is a life after death, why worry? If there is no life after death, why worry?

Old age, basically, is just a slow dying. The nice thing about it is that it gives you a chance to adjust to the idea of your obliteration.

The major sympton of old age is fatigue (loss of energy), but another major sympton is chronic pain. Due mainly, I assume, to the fact that the body is just wearing out, especially the joints.

RANDOM THOUGHTS

The most important thing is this moment, not some day in the future. -- Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

The truth is, this moment is all there is; everything else, including the past and the future, is a mental construct.

There is no "them"; there is only "us".

The real battle in this country is between the idealists and the materialists. Between the people who want to live in a better world, and those who just want to live in a better gated community. Between the universalists and the fundamentalists.

The following quote is from The Gospel of Thomas, as translated by George McRae. It can be found on p.32 of Pagels' "Beyond Belief." At my stage of development, I find it quite interesting and profound. Any comments?

"Jesus said: 'If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

Here's another quote from the Pagel's book, p. 57, from "the Book of Thomas the Contender, another ancient book belonging to Syrian Thomas tradition discovered at Nag Hammadi."

"Whoever has not known himself knows nothing, but whoever has known himself has simultaneously come to know the depth of all things."

Socrates, of course, said the highest wisdom is to know thyself. I have always believed this.

Socrates also said:

He is wise who knows he knows not.

If you would discourse with me, define your terms.

Tolstoy said:

In me is the germ of all human qualities.

This, too, I believe.

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These novellas were later included in "The Night Billy Was Born and Other Love Stories." Privately printed by author in limited edition. Few copies available. Paperback, 102 pages. Signed by author. Order from Amazon.com, books, Joseph Cowley, used copy that says signed by author. Price, $20, which includes shipping and handling if ordered from author via email. No credit cards if ordered from author.

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Signed copies of any of the author's books in print are available at Amazon.com. Click on the Signed Copies Link in the column to the right and, after you get to Amazon.com, click on "Books," type in Joseph Cowley, and hit "Go." When you find the book you want, click on "Used Copies" and then on the copy that is marked as "Signed by Author." Amazon.com will then inform me of your desire for an autographed copy of the book. If you'd like me to inscribe a short message (though my handwriting's unreadable), let me know what it is via email.

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In the words of a classical music performance, a "lollypop" is a short bit of fluff played to close out a concert. In this case, it's an unpublished story and an article, a bit of a spoof called "Understanding Poetry." First, the story:

THY WILL BE DONE

It would be the perfect crime. The perfect murder. An act of nature, of God, really. Perfectly divine punishment. Guilty, she glanced at her father in the passenger seat, wondering if he could sense her thoughts.
He was hunched forward, oblivious, studying the Amish countryside. They had turned off the highway some miles back, the lowering sun glinting for a moment in her rear view mirror as she made the turn southward toward the Appalachian hills where she and Cecil had established a homestead.
Maybe “homestead” was too fancy a word for it. “Research station” might be better. They had purchased the twenty acres two years before, mainly for Cecil, who taught scientific farming at the University in Athens, in southeast Ohio. His doctoral thesis was on hardscrabble farming--that is, how to improve the productivity of poor soils in the poverty regions of the world, and Appalachia was an excellent place to test some of his ideas.
The sun, still above the trees, shone through the side window of the car, giving her father an aura of “saintliness.” Though she knew better. Almost eighty, he looked frail. He hadn’t been a good father. Doting if he had his way, brutal, even cruel, if not. But always dominating, her whole life long, her mother, her sister, all of them. Whether he had forgiven her for marrying Cecil she didn’t know. She hated and loved him.
At the small crossroads hamlet of Unity, where the small general store that served the local Amish was the only sign the hamlet even existed, she made a sharp, ninety-degree left turn on the narrow, macadam road. In the rearview mirror she saw the sun settling into the trees. Soon they would reach the dirt road that ran south into the hills. Passing the occasional farm, her father, rapt, studied them, swiveling his head as each disappeared.
“You can tell which ones are the Amish,” she said, her voice startling them after the miles of silence. “There are no cars in their drive, and they don’t use electricity.” Her father was silent. “They don’t believe in them.”
“Jesus,” he said. “In this day and age.”
He himself had always used the latest scientific advances to advance his business, injection molding. He got a job in plastics shortly after high school and, after ten years of experience, came up with an idea of his own and started his own firm. He had made a fortune. Today it was almost completely computerized. Except for a handful in administration, marketing, finance, and engineering, all it required was cheap labor to watch the dials.
That was where the bind was. His competitors were moving their plants overseas and he was caught in an increasing cost-price squeeze. Unable to let go of the business (he had never had sons and neither her older sister Beth nor she wanted anything to do with it), he worried the problem to death, like a bulldog that can’t let go of something once it has sunk its teeth into it. That was his strength--and his weakness.
She could read him like a book, using the lure of cheap labor to get him to make his first visit since they had moved here some two years before. Something Beth said when she was home this last time made it necessary. Their father was always their major topic of conversation. Beth lived for him, had dropped out of college to take care of him after their mother died. What Beth said was that their father was thinking of changing his will.
The panic she felt surprised her. It was then she knew something had to be done; she had put up with too much of his abuse over the years to lose her inheritance now. The thought of the dysentery a friend from college had suffered when he visited them the year they moved to Appalachia popped into her head. He had made the mistake of drinking the tap water in the barn; they should have warned him but forgot. He almost died.
They thought it was a stomach virus. When it hadn’t cleared up after four days they took him to the doctor, who said it was most likely dysentery. He had them rush him to the hospital in Cincinnati. Their friend was severely dehydrated, his blood pressure dangerously low, and his renal system had shut down. The build-up of toxins in his system might have killed a lesser man, someone older or frailer, or not in the best of health.
Her father said something, but she hadn’t been listening. Whatever it was, he didn’t seem to need a response. She turned south onto the dirt road that led into the hills, the land still relatively flat, still good for farming. In another mile the road would drop steeply into a tunnel of trees, and they would be in Appalachia, a land of green, rolling hills and dark valleys, land too poor for farming and only sparsely inhabited.
“Dumb asses,” her father added. “No wonder they’re so poor.”
“Not all of them are poor,” she said. “Some are quite wealthy.”
He swiveled his head to look at her, not sure he should believe her.
“Then where is all this cheap labor you’ve been telling me about?”
“Adams County is one of the three poorest counties in the state. The unemployment rate has been running above twenty percent for years. You can get all the labor you want for minimum wage. Add a dollar or two and you’ll have the cream of the crop. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
His eyes glinted. He didn’t like anyone telling him what was in his mind, especially his daughters, and especially this one. Beth was more submissive, like her mother; this one too much like himself. A thorn in his side she was, always willful and disobedient. They had been at odds ever since she was a child. At fifteen she ran away from home; after that she made it clear she couldn’t wait to get away to college.
But not the college he chose for her. He had wanted his daughters to become cultured, and ladies, and to marry well. Beth went to Swarthmore, but this one insisted on Cornell. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she majored in political science, a useless kind of subject, then switched to sociology, an even more useless field of study, when she stayed on for the PhD. Her dissertation was on rural poverty, a subject she chose, he was sure, to spite him and show her contempt for the values he had tried to imbue her with.
Their common interest in poverty made it inevitable that she and Cecil should meet. He was enrolled in the School of Agriculture, working for a PhD in scientific farming. Having grown up on a small farm outside of Albany that never provided more than a hard-scrabble living for his parents, his interest in poverty was understandable. But hers? It made no sense.
“Jesus!” he said. “Where’s the money to be made in poverty. Study the wealthy if you want to get rich. Who gives a shit about the poor?”
When she announced that she and Cecil were getting married, it was the last straw. That’s when he gave up on her. Disgusted, he said, “Do whatever the hell you want. You always have. But don’t think you’re going to do it on my money! I’ll be damned if I’ll subsidize your poverty.”
He had worked too hard to earn his money. His first wife cleaned houses for a living while he toiled in the plastics plant sixty hours a week to save enough to climb out of poverty. Unfortunately, she died two years after they started the business. From overwork, it was said, though others have hinted he drove her to her death. Two years later he married a woman from the moneyed class who divorced him after little more than a year.
Their mother was his third wife. She was twenty years younger than he, a meek woman in her thirties at the time he married her, who suffered his abuse without ever saying a word against him for the more than two decades they were married. She developed pancreatic cancer in her fifties. Beth dropped out of Swarthmore to take care of her, and when she died six months later never went back. She said their father needed her. He agreed.
Coming to the end of the farm land, she pointed to some cleared land on their right and said, “Those seven acres are ours. The building in the middle is a kiln for curing lumber. The large barn’s for storing the lumber, the small one’s a tool shed. Cecil keeps his tractor there. We may try lumbering again after he finishes some of his other projects.”
Before her father could reply, the car dropped precipitously into the tunnel of trees. After a hundred feet or so, she turned sharply up a steep drive and stopped the car near a large corrugated steel building that hung over the hill on the left. She said it was their garage. Ahead of them a ranch house, with a picture window and a screened-in porch, was dug into the side of the hill. In front of them the hills of Appalachia stretched to the horizon.
“That last hill you can see on the horizon is Kentucky,” she said.
“It’s a gorgeous view,” he said. “Too bad you can’t package and sell it. It’s the only way you’ll ever make any money out of a place like this.”
When they got out, Cecil, a small, frail-looking figure at the base of the hill, looked up and waved. He was filling a small pond he had carved out at the base of the hill with water from a hose. She waved back.
“He’s going to try growing rice in that pond,” she said. “We have two larger ponds, back in the woods, stocked with fish. Bass, mostly.”
Pointing to the terraces along the side of the hill, her father said, “Jesus, it must have been some job building those.”
“We had someone do those for us,” she said. “It took heavy equipment. Cecil’s growing fruit trees on some of the terraces, and grape vines. We hope to make our own wine in a few years. I have a small garden behind the house. I’ll show you around the place tomorrow.”
“When are we going to see the real estate agents?”
“I thought we might do that Tuesday. The nearest mall is twenty miles away, but I’m sure there’ll be real estate agents there who can tell you about possible plant sites, taxes, the employment situation, that sort of thing.”
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at a building beyond the house.
“Our barn,” she said. “I’ve fixed it up as a studio for myself, with a computer and bookshelves, a small kitchenette, and a lounge area for TV. We don’t keep a set in the house. There’s a bedroom in the back we use for guests. I thought you might sleep there. It will give you more privacy.”
She took his bag and he followed her into the barn.
II
It turned out, of course, exactly as she had planned. As she showed him about the barn, she opened the refrigerator to make sure Cecil had removed the bottled water. She also put a glass in the bathroom, for his toothbrush she said, but actually to make sure he drank from the tap when he got up during the night, as Beth said he did, his mouth dry from snoring.
She sat watching television with him for an hour that evening after supper, and the next day showed him around their twenty acres--the two fish ponds, the garden where she grew vegetables and flowers for the house, and the seven acres and kiln on the flat land above the trees behind them. It was the next morning, after midnight, that he got sick. She could smell the mess when she went in that morning. It had been coming out both ends.
“I thought it was food poisoning at first,” he said weakly. He was lying on the sofa near the bathroom, his face white. “I could taste the piece of fat from one of the pork chops Cecil cooked when I first felt nauseous. Then I remembered that food poisoning always occurs within the first two hours of eating, and at least four or five hours had gone by since I ate. That’s when I knew it must be a virus. Sorry about the mess I’ve made.”
“That’s all right, Dad,” she said. “I’ll clean it up. No problem. But I think we’d better get you to the doctor. What do you say?”
“No, no,” he said. “It’s just a stomach virus. I must have picked it up on the plane. One of those twenty-four hour things. I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
He, of course, had no interest in food, and she left him alone most of the day, only looking in on occasion to see if he needed anything. But he hated her fussing over him and waved her away. Suggesting he see the doctor only got his back up. She knew he wouldn’t take advice from her. By the fourth day he was pretty weak and finally let her and Cecil bundled him into the car and drive him to the hospital in Cincinnati.
It was, of course, too late. He died shortly after admission. They told the doctors about his diarrhea and said they thought it was dysentery, though they kept bottled water in the refrigerator and told him not to drink water from the tap. Her father never would do anything she told him to do, she explained. The doctors agreed that it was dysentery, but said the actual cause of death was failure of the heart, due to the stress of the toxins.
Later, when she called her sister, Beth wept inconsolably. Finally calm, but still sniffling, she said, “He was going to change his will.”
“I know,” she said coolly. “You told me.”
“Yes,” Beth said, “he was going to put you back in.”
And she began again to sob uncontrollably.

UNDERSTANDING POETRY

Symolism in Mother Goose


One of the difficulies in reading poetry, especially modern poetry, it is generally agreed, lies in its rich use of symolism. Each line, each word, is made to carry a weiht of meaning that goes for beyond the obvious. But this should not deter the serious seeker after beauty.

A good poem is meant not only to be read, but to be re-read. "Meaning lies layered in petals of beauty," as the famous line from Wordsworth has it. With each reading a good poem unveils itself like a shy woman, until we are to the inner core of her beauty and meaning.

Symbolism, however, is not a new phenomenon, as we shall see in the exegesis that follows. In it we will attempt to heighten (perhaps even arouse for the first time) your awareness and appreciation of the time-honored grace (in the largest sense of that word) that can be found in a few simple lines, beauteously wrought, penned by the world's greatest lyric poets.

The selection we have chosen is from the collected works of Mother Goose. It is entitled:

LITTLE MISS MUFFIT

Little Miss Muffit
Sat on a tuffit
Eating her curds and whey.
Along came a spider
And sat down beside her,
And frightened Miss Muffit away.

There is, of course, much that is obvious in this little poem. The author has cleverly made us aware, right from the start, by means of his (or rather, her) title and first line, that we are dealing with a woman -- a shy, frightened, little woman, who is single and alone. Like the opening of a Beethoven symphony, the Freudian overtones go ringing down the corridors of time right from the start.

Who is this mysterious woman? Why should she be eating alone? Why should a mere spider frighten her? These are significant questions, as we shall see as we undertake, line by line, our textual exegesis. Or, to quote Shakespeare, "there is more her than meets the eye." (Whether Shakespeare or Bacon wrote that line is another question which we won't get into right now. Mainly because some of our readers might not feel Bacon is kosher). Instead...let us reason together over that first line:

"Little Miss Muffit"

As we mentioned (cf. pp. 4, or maybe 5), this opening line highlights one of the main points of the poem: we are dealing with a "little" woman. Some critics have tried to claim this is a steal from Louisa May Alcott, others that it's merely a slip of the pen (but very Freudian), still others that it's a translator's error. But however it's translated, we become aware, very quickly, that the poem deals with a sex-starved, ultimately rather prim (it turns out) young lady who is not married.

Could it be, as the line so generously suggests, that she missed "it"? You may want to quarrel with this interpretation, but what is it a young lady coming into full flower is most likely to miss? And to miss it means she must have known it, which casts doubt on her virginity. However, the line goes on to hint, via her very name, that, somehow, she "muffed" it. Is she doomed to miss out on it, to continually muff it? As readers, our sympathies are immediately aroused. A male reader will want to soothe and comfort her, a female reader to straighten her out. The big question is, was this poem written before the days of the pill? If so, doesn't the whole question become anachronistic? Perhaps. But we can'be be sure. Let's go on to the second line...
"Sat on a tuffit"

The first question what is likely to spring to mind when you read this line is: What is a tuffit? But, then, there are secondary questions. Why did she sit on it? Is it customary to sit on tuffits? Or, if you will glance for a moment at the third line, should "curds" have been spelled with a "t" and "tuffit" with a "c"? This would reduce it to the level of a simple printer's error and indicate that the author was too cheap to pay for an AA (Author's Alteration). If so, do we see sother evidence of cheapness in the poem?

Next, of course, we become aware of the very obvious play on words. The author is saying that the "it", whatever it is, is tough -- perhaps too tough for a frightened, shy, little girl. And in a secondary sense, he is also expressing his sympathy fo her by implying that what happened to her is "tough titty".

Immediately, we want to cry out: Is that the clue to the entire poem? There is no question that some childhood trauma is behind it all -- the frightened bedhaviork the pervading sense of anomie, etc. However, the plain truth is that we don't know what happened to her when she was a child, and we shouldn't jump to a conclusion too soon. Instead, let's go on to the third line, which is also wrought with an overpowering symbolism.

"Eating her curds and whey"

We are dealing here, as we at last find out, with a compulsive eater. And this bolsters, of course, our theory o the childhood trauma. It also tells us why she is eating alone. She is ingesting food on the sly because, unconsciously, food has sexual significance for her. It is not only a mother substitute, a cry for love, but in particular it is a cry for sexual love. In Freudian terms, to quote from "The State of Anxiety," she wished she were pregnant.

She is, therefore, a poor, love-starved, sex-starved girl -- little (and also a little fat which the author doesn't come right out and tell us, but which we can guess from the circumstances of the activity) and lonely. Again, our sympathies are aroused. We wonder, is this poem to be a tragedy or a comedy? Our interest has been heightened and we wonder what will happen next. But before we go on, let's take a look at wha she is eating -- "curds and whey."

Like most readers, your reaction is likely to be one of disgust. Even if you don't know what "curds" are, the very sound of the word indicates the level to which this poor, unfortunate girl has sunk ("whey" down, as the author makes explicit). She is also poor, it is clear, if she is reduced to eating such food -- perhaps desperately poor, which not only adds to her plight, but increases our understanding and sympathy.

She needs help, and not just psychiatric help (the rule is the body first, then the mind). For we must first feel those we would help (I meant, of course, "feed," not "feel" -- that was a slip. But I will not expunge the error, for it was suggested by the poem itself, which is a point I want to make at the end of this article: If we expose ourselves to pornographic filth, we can't help but be corrupted by it.).

Before we leave the second line of the poem, I would be remiss if I did not point out the hippie-Marxist overtones of the word "whey." This girl is obviously "whey" out, as the author makes fairly explicit. The question left unanswered, however, is this: Is she a member of the radical left, or merely a dupe? We are never told, for example, what clothes she is wearing: could it be she is stark naked? But perhaps the thought of a naked fat woman is too weighty an idea for this simple poem to bare (another slip, of course).

Egad, with slips like that you might think I'm going to pot! Actually, of course, as any who knows me can testify, I haven't had any pot. The question is, has Miss Muffit? One certainly can wonder. Certainly that would put her "whey" out. Though we can never be sure, it is these little doubts and ambiguities that lend richness to the writing that is of the first magnitude. The author is demanding that we throw ourselves into the poem, bring something of our own to it. This, therefore, is a question you, the reader, must decide. But, then, no great work is necessarily easy to read. However, the rewards are great for those who struggle through, as we must now do.

"Along came a spider"

We know right off the bat, of course, that this is no spider. For spiders don't "come along." They drop down on silken skeins (gossamer, usually). But if not a spider, what? Do the many legs symbolize the many arms of love thast Miss Muffit cries out for? And yet can't accept when they finally arrive (because they are hairy, perhaps?). The meaning here is particularly difficult to unravel. Like Miss Muffit, we find ourselves in a frightening jungle, a nightmare world of menacing creatures who symbolize our childhood terrors.

The question is, did Miss Muffit, as a baby in her crib, actually see something hairy (her mother and father making love, perhaps) that frightened her? Critics have argued this point, some of them unkind enough to suggest that Miss Muffit didn't have parents (in the normal sense of the word). But that's neither here nor there, and certainly doesn't negate ou central point -- mainly, that we're dealing with a very serious case of arrested development.

Miss Muffit may have all the accoutrements of a normal, well-developed young lady, but her emotions (especially her sexual feelings) are obviously those of a child. Our own pity for her at this point is probably excruciatingly painful. We wish her the best, we would like to reach out and help her, but we don't know how. It is this feeling which prepares us for the sad, the tragic, ending, we now realize is in store for her -- and for us as readers of this enthralling poem.

But, like the fake spider, let's "come along" to the next line, where the nightmarish terror finally erupts into a plangent expression of hopeless despair as this hairy, outwardly sexy (fiendishly so) beast moves in for what we anticipate will be the rape scene (but which our author mercifully spares us). Many women of faint heart have been known to put the poem down at this point, unable, understandably, to go on.

"And sat down beside her"

This, of course, was very clever of the spider (but as older, more mature we immediately sense what he is up to and what he has on his mind). "Thank God," we exclaim, that Miss Muffit, for all her tender years, comes to her senses in time to avoid the catastrophe. I could not, in all consciousness, recommend this poem to you, regardly of how great it might be, if it were otherwise. But, as I've indicated (see paragraph above), the author spares us, and the spider merely "sits" (in some adult versions of the poem this is not the case) beside her...

"And frightened Miss Muffit away."

The sense of relief we feel as readers is overhwhelming. This, at last, is the denouement. Miss Muffit, despite all her hang-ups (or perhaps because of them), has been saved. And yet (and this is where much of the greatness of the poem lies), at the same time, we feel sad, because we know that while Miss Muffit's maidenhead may have been spared, her maindenhood has not, and she will go on -- lonely, alone, pure, but eating her heart out (and her cupboard), waiting for a not-quite-so-hairy prince to come along and sweep her off her feet (or "tuffit," as we may say in Old English), and wondering, in the deepest sense, whether the spider might not have been her white knight in disguise.

As readers, we are left wondering whether the spider doesn't symbolize all of us -- the beast in us, that is? Are we all as pure as we might like to think we are? Or does there lurk ominously in our dark souls our own spidering beasts, waiting to ravish us (and any young maidens who might be handy)? But, of course, this we will never know, because the author herself never provides the answer. Which is what makes poetry great, and this particular poem a sheer joy to read.