#247

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“Henry walked as if he were ashamed / of being in the body.” I remember being young, in my 20s, tall, slim and fit, and being happy with my body more or less, except for the recurring bouts of pancreatitis which made me want to wound it with a railroad spike in someplace other than my upper belly just to distract my attention. So bodies are the foundation of the being’s superstructure, and when it’s sound we may be proud, and when it hurts it can be an emotional and existential ball and chain. Pancreas pain is bad pain, trust me, but the experience of it was not my active fault. I learned to cope, learned what not to eat, looked warily at acidic foods and knew that a pre-meal wine-cooler—sweet bubbly acidic alcoholic froth of the 70s, in a 12 oz. bottle—was a torture sentence. It wasn’t till 20+ years later, when I had my gall bladder out, learned of pancreas divisum, had a pre-cancerous cyst removed, and became aware of my of bad sensitivity to opiates, that this pancreatic Sword of Damocles was finally taken down from its poise over my physical well-being. Even the people closest to me didn’t really know what it was costing me. It’s going on five years now without an attack, and that is a very real blessing. But one thing I had going for me: I was confused and scared, often, with a background anxiety that it could strike unawares any time, but I knew I wasn’t to blame. You’re supposed to be able to eat an apple! I had to be very, very careful about apples. I learned to feel when I could eat one and when to keep my distance. My body had a problem, but it wasn’t due to bad decisions, stupid behavior, wrong choices, neglect, arrogance, contempt. You’re supposed to be able to eat an apple anytime. Something far beyond my choice was born in me wrongly. If that’s the case, you live with it and play the hand your ancestry and environment deals you. If you have to fold—crawl under your bed and cry—you eventually reemerge and go on about your business. It’s not your fault. Sometimes the cards are bad and you throw in your hand for that round. Henry, on the other hand, isn’t so much ashamed of being in his body as he is ashamed of how he treated it. That’s a serious difference. He doesn’t say so, but I know so. “He rooted in our past, / his future shrinking slim.” Everyone’s futures shrink. That’s life. But you also know—aside from getting hit by a truck or a snakebite or cancer—that you can extend or shrink it further depending on how you treat your body. If addiction triggers shame, then there is always a sadness about that. In B.’s case, he compensated for his bodily abuse with emotional intensity—great teacher, great writer, great lover (I guess), great socializer, great drinker. Oops…there’s the problem. Some things—teachering, artifying, friendshipping—they fill your life with joy and fulfillment and lifelong contentment. Other things feel like they might, but they lie, then you get hooked and they rob you of your choice. Drink, smoke, the rest. Emotional turmoils rob your vitality, and that’s what the excitement of an affair promises. When you’re worn out in your 40s, through your own bad excesses, then, sure, you’re going to write a poem about shame at “being in the body.” Appealing to Kafka is a red-herring, tigers and Kings as metaphors for bad behavior is bullshit. The poem ends on a great, honest oxymoron, though: “while viruses in the back seat clamour / for the whole man glowing black.” That’s just lovely: Black is the opposite of glow, but it works. He glowed, he was black (no blackface reference this time, though I wonder if there’s a connection? That’s for later...). He means simply that while on one hand he was the very opposite of light and health, on the other, things were happening, amazing things. So, is this the metaphor for the twentieth century man, as so many competing critics have competed to claim? Not a chance. I think that’s hogwash. It’s the sucking black hole at the center of the addict’s galaxy, swallowing up matter and light, and radiating out some bizarre neutrino energy that isn’t affected by gravity. No wonder Henry is always crawling into a hole. B. is in a kind of barely ambulatory hole now, still radiating that energy inexplicable to Newtonian physics. One day it will fizzle, though. He feels it coming, and it makes him ashamed.

Yoga knows: When you do a sun salutation, you remember in doing it that you’re one with the sun—and it’s because you are. Awareness of the light and health that surround everyone, for the ashamed, is distant as the galaxy’s violent blackly glowing, but dimming, center.