A disheveled life

          
                                              
is a sad life.  Or is it?  Here at the beginning   
of my 69th year as an Earth-alive human, I have   
set upon this rumination meaning to bemoan many    
of the choices I have made, believing them to be    
deleterious, and yet I know that had I not made   
them I would not be here as I now am: physically
(i.e., bodily), geographically (i.e., in this    
bedroom in this apartment in this city, et, et,   
et), mentally (i.e., the locatable but intangible 
me, the "I am thought" as Rimbaud wrote), and/    
spiritually.  So:  Were my sometimes outright    
hurtful choices necessarily without-redeeming-  
value choices?  This morning while combing my   
hair, I broke my habit of always trying to make   
a straight part, and sought out how my hair     
wanted to part--I have a nasty cowlick.  Voila!
Odd, but: much better.                           
                                                 
A truly wise human--it could be asserted--is   
one who is able to learn quickly and thereby    
structure his/her life diligently.  Were I to    
detail my life journeys/ it would be evident I    
am not a truly wise human.  So what kind of    
human am I?  I am a well,-that-didn't-work;-
so-let's-try-this-approach guy.  Result?  A   
vast unevenness in antithetical disciplines.         
A hiatus of twenty years (approximately 1987   
into 2007) from the realms of poetry.  And   
what of my constant buying and moving and  
general fiscal irresponsibility?  But Brian,
how often must you go over these?  Do you   
think you are a tragic hero?  Were there no   
joys amid your so-called errors?  Get a fife.
                                             
Nonetheless, my major regrets: --  Stop!  I        
just recalled an incident where I should have
raised a question, but didn't; and recalling   
this incident has made me realize I cannot     
have any regrets/ because I would not have    
done anything other than what I did.  I am a   
flawed being, and the flaws I had and have/  
always impact my judgments/ positively, nega-
tively, inconsequentially.  So: where to/ then?
                                                 
There were the many relevance and categorization   
discussions.  Now there are Don Share's
recent posts on a variety of topics in the air;
Joseph Hutchison's openness/closure conversation 
with Adam Fieled; the new multiplicities 
conversation about younger authors between 
Mark Wallace and Joseph Mosconi.
All such--and there are like others--are good
for the communities of poets.  
                                
                                 
                                    
                                   
                                  
                                         
                                    
kh00014