I first came across this term while reading my favorite psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. Simply put, he defined it as "the process of making the familiar unfamiliar" , and pretty much dismissed much of what passed for poetry to this realm. I think a lot about expression, that chance to share what is in my mind and heart with others. I also think about George Orwell who admonished me to avoid "pre-packaged phrases." Those trite intersections where we think we connect but do so superficially, perhaps in a premeditated panic preferring the sloppiness of syntax and the gross manipulation of metaphor to a moment's awkwardness and the exposure of a brand new bit of our hearts. I think a lot about expression.
When I struggle to share what is in my heart, Countee Cullen, my favorite poet comes to mind, and his lamentation to poetic irony: "Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!" Being Black in 1925 blessed with talent and passion and cursed by the muting mechanism that gave him the pain to forge his bittersweet melodies of faith and race. I too know irony - after a half century of trying to protect my heart and to stifle the soft nuances of the human pain and ecstasy that I flirted with but never embraced, I now need to open my heart and ask others in, and I know not the language of invitation, the argot of love. I think a lot about expression.
I felt this terrible need long before I understood its calling. And maybe I didn't fully understand until this evening when two young women (whose combined age is about a decade less than mine) asked me a few simple questions. Enas asked me why I converted, and Ayesha wondered aloud how one changes the world. Simple questions from pure hearts - no obfuscation, no cliches - providing a backwards byway to lead me back out of my aphasic angst. I am thinking a little less about expression.
"I saw so much pain and suffering in the world, I no longer wanted a faith to explain it to me, or one that somehow favored me over those others less fortunate than I, but one that taught me how to humble myself and to look to my own heart, my own behaviors to make the changes I so wanted desperately to make in the world" was my response to Enas who is bravely preparing a lecture to give to a group of Christians about 9/11. I want to live this sentiment, not to profess it. To do so, I need to know how to access my heart always, ready to share it without mediation or recompense. I am feeling a little more comfortable with this pulmonary prose.
Ayesha was perhaps the first person to ever hear initially from my heart. I answered her question without the meddling, calculating overcoat of cognition that displaces me and my heart from the human contact I have shunned for so long. I cannot reconstruct the syntax or morphology of the sentences, but I do recall the ardor of the exchange, the warmth of her heart. I am no longer thinking at all.
I have so far to go, so far. I don't need to make the "familiar unfamiliar" as I am not sure there has ever been anything familiar in my heart to contort. I don't need "pre-packaged phrases" to communicate cosmetically at arm's length (forgive me this one time) with my brothers and sisters, pining instead for the elegant romance of risk and disclosure no longer comfortable with the disengaged espial of espionage. I am feeling.
Sadly, this is as close to poetry as I get, but I am ready to sing.
..
When I struggle to share what is in my heart, Countee Cullen, my favorite poet comes to mind, and his lamentation to poetic irony: "Yet do I marvel at this curious thing: To make a poet black, and bid him sing!" Being Black in 1925 blessed with talent and passion and cursed by the muting mechanism that gave him the pain to forge his bittersweet melodies of faith and race. I too know irony - after a half century of trying to protect my heart and to stifle the soft nuances of the human pain and ecstasy that I flirted with but never embraced, I now need to open my heart and ask others in, and I know not the language of invitation, the argot of love. I think a lot about expression.
I felt this terrible need long before I understood its calling. And maybe I didn't fully understand until this evening when two young women (whose combined age is about a decade less than mine) asked me a few simple questions. Enas asked me why I converted, and Ayesha wondered aloud how one changes the world. Simple questions from pure hearts - no obfuscation, no cliches - providing a backwards byway to lead me back out of my aphasic angst. I am thinking a little less about expression.
"I saw so much pain and suffering in the world, I no longer wanted a faith to explain it to me, or one that somehow favored me over those others less fortunate than I, but one that taught me how to humble myself and to look to my own heart, my own behaviors to make the changes I so wanted desperately to make in the world" was my response to Enas who is bravely preparing a lecture to give to a group of Christians about 9/11. I want to live this sentiment, not to profess it. To do so, I need to know how to access my heart always, ready to share it without mediation or recompense. I am feeling a little more comfortable with this pulmonary prose.
Ayesha was perhaps the first person to ever hear initially from my heart. I answered her question without the meddling, calculating overcoat of cognition that displaces me and my heart from the human contact I have shunned for so long. I cannot reconstruct the syntax or morphology of the sentences, but I do recall the ardor of the exchange, the warmth of her heart. I am no longer thinking at all.
I have so far to go, so far. I don't need to make the "familiar unfamiliar" as I am not sure there has ever been anything familiar in my heart to contort. I don't need "pre-packaged phrases" to communicate cosmetically at arm's length (forgive me this one time) with my brothers and sisters, pining instead for the elegant romance of risk and disclosure no longer comfortable with the disengaged espial of espionage. I am feeling.
Sadly, this is as close to poetry as I get, but I am ready to sing.
..
Michael--thanks for setting this down in words on the page. I have never been in your heart so I can't vouch for how closely it conveys what's there, but it sounds pretty naked.
ReplyDelete(I love the phrase "pulmonary prose.")
Thanks Chris, I am flattered but I am also laughing as well - Twenty odd years makes a difference, for I can remember you mentioning another phrase you liked back then, and it was not very esoteric :)
ReplyDelete