"YOUR LIFE IS YOUR OWN LIFE..."
VARIATIONS ON A THEME BY JAMES WRIGHT
1.
Your Life is your own Life & not just a compendium of debts;
No, never just a mosaic of owings, whether
real or imagined
--A life like the latter would be no life, surely, but only an excuse for
not living,
& for existing
as if continuously inside someone else's skin;
Nor can anyone develop "A Life Of One's Own"
in the opposite way, I think,
& by looking at the world with eyes merely
of creditor, or predator,
--I.e., like someone who thinks that
the balance of the world is out there
just simply to
owe him or her a living
For our Lives are surely our own Lives, are
they not;
--& Not just a compendium of debts.
2.
Some day I'd like to understand why even the
very idea of the existence of individuals
so bold or foolhardy as to attempt to think &
live independently
& Who have therefore only themselves to
blame if something happens to go wrong,
Should alarm so many people & even scare some almost half to
death!
--Apparently producing in the average mind,
quasi- apocalyptic visions
of the whole world falling apart,
with the heavens falling down
& seas rising
up; & with volcanoes erupting underfoot with every step;
With entire governments collapsing & institutions crumbling; &--still
worse yet!--with
even such leading
members of The Community At Large
As bankers & brokers & accountants
Throwing clawing, despairing hands up to the heavens, as if revenues might
yet be found there
As con-men & parasites of all kinds, having
bitten their fingernails to the bone
& torn out
all their hair, climb out onto lofty window-ledges & prepare to end it
all,
By throwing themselves as hard as possible
onto the smoking ground
--While churchbells around the world toll out ominously, to warn the faithful of impending doom.
3.
However, show most regimented people some
really sleazy, two-bit miserable weasel
Whose External Life consists solely of various
semi-balletic attempts to
keep in step, toe
the mark, or somehow fall back in line,
& Whose so-called Personal Life is a
crazy-quilt woven of casual, highly unreliable,
or forced &
fraying connections
& Whose Inner Life is either virtually
non-existent--or else some miserably shabby collection
of endless,
self-perpetuated ruses as to his or her own unique worth
& It's then that people start nodding
& smiling to themselves as if understandingly
--& suddenly
start to show some real respect!
4.
It's refreshing, I find, to speak every now
& then with people ready to take responsibility
for their own
actions,
I.e., People who are really genuinely
present, even as they're standing there right in front of
you!
& Whose existences aren't merely contingent
upon ruses or excuses as they go through life,
struggling daily
under the shadow of endlessly-evoked mysterious, frightful injunctions
or secret, invisible,
awful obligations,
I.e., People who aren’t either
suffering from the dread disease of too much Noblesse Oblige
or else, just plain Helpless, Hungry, or Hard
Up.
5.
--Not that I think that I myself have achieved
so exquisitely liberated a state quite yet,
despite my frequent,
indeed constant efforts! Still, sometime at least,
I’d just love to encounter a whole playful
day's-worth of people
fit for freedom at least by
temperament
& Who since they’ve gained relatively
firm control over their own lives
Can refuse flat out to make excuses for the
Lives they're living
--If only just to provide a welcome sense
of reliefm at least briefly, from the way things too often
are;
& if only just
as a form of experiment!
"'Your Life Is Your Own Life...' (Variations On A Theme By James Wright)" is a poem about self-directed people, & distinguishes them from people who are, as Sociologists say, "Other Directed." And whose thinking, even, is so controlled by circumstance that there's some question as to whether they are doing much thinking or are capable of thinking independently, at all. Subtext: Poem also praises freedom which it defines in passing as gaining control over one‘s own life to the extent possible. An earlier version of poem first appeared in 2000 in Lips magazine, © 2000 Michael Benedikt. Webversion © 2004 by Michael Benedikt.
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