It’s a good image, pleasing in some way, you wandering up and across an active volcano, teetering on vertiginous ledges, peering into smoke holes, awaiting a tragedy or perhaps an epiphany. Isn’t it wonderful how we normally experience a sense of solidity on this magic bit of rock whirling and spinning through what we refer to as space; uncaring as to the molten core, the leaky crust with its grinding plates – a bit like an ancient doctor (medicine or philosophy?) grinding his teeth with dream soaked rage – and billions of light years of emptiness out there.
Us lot – the ‘human’ race, as we call ourselves – are perhaps the embodiment of optimistic madness. Though, it has to be said, we do, at times, fall into deep smoke holes of terminal pessimism. But the fact is we are such high energy creatures that surely our intention is to animate the rest of the universe – what other purpose do we have!! Once we’ve sorted out how to travel faster than light, getting rid of distance, the universe will be our oyster – to slip down with a squeeze of lemon. Always providing (as ever) that we don’t blow ourselves up in the endeavour.
Then again, as I try to get my feet back on the ground and my mind back to retirement, it occurs to me that the blindingly obvious thing about retirement is the absence of work, in other words the absence of purpose, real purpose. What else am I but a worker without work? Though I do try to ‘work’ to a schedule to give myself the illusion of work and purpose – there is no getting away from the fact that it is a pretence, a con.
And here we are sadly arriving at the final stanza of Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird:
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.