In DS 1 Henry remembers climbing a tree as a child and
singing, so tree climbing is a personal symbol of a moment of happiness. The
other symbol of a sort of happiness comes from climbing “other people’s wives”
with their "vivacious littles" and all that. Ah, jeez, I don’t even know what to say about that. Ha ha, I guess. LOL, or no,
here: LMFAO. Except I’m really not in the mood for it. My wife’s in the
hospital tonight after an operation scheduled for 1½ hours stretched into 4½ due
to unforeseen complications. She’s okay but exhausted, and so am I, and I’m not
particularly in the mood for such stuff. Some days your mood matches a Dream
Song, and other days it doesn’t. Today it doesn’t.
But, I’ve got a job to do and I’m a professional. I have
commitments. So in the poem speaks up this kind of imaginary decency-enforcement
tribunal led by the Sherriff, where plans are laid to keep this maniac under
control and stop him from getting laid so outrageously. Boy, I sure hope this
is all from a dream, because only in dreams is such a self-centered fantasy
permissible. We all have dreams that make us look like fools, don’t we?
Sometimes we even share dreams if we suspect a friend might find their stories
interesting, though here’s a solid social tip: A little dream-spice goes a
long, long way in the relationship bakery. Dreams are like cloves: You fuck up
the whole batch of cookies if you overdo the cloves. In B.’s case, either he’s
so far gone he doesn’t give a damn, or he has no conception of how embarrassing
this all should be. Of course, this is the guy who got fired from the
University of Iowa for—ahem—accomplishing
the deposition of something unspeakable on his landlord’s porch, just because
he was angry at him. So who am I kidding?
Mlle Choinais is the beautiful French woman he met on a
ship, who livened his passage, and who being smart, experienced, French,
gorgeous, and far from star-struck, probably saw right through him and
nevertheless was able generate a measure of sympathy and interest in someone
who must have seemed an oddly unique character. I have no doubt that he would
have been interesting to talk to, especially if you’re trapped on a ship for a
week with a bunch of boring normal people. I can’t imagine that she took him
seriously as a potential amour for a moment, however. As he admits, age changes
a man. Enough other women did see him that way once, apparently, since his “loins”
as he said in some other long-ago Dream Song, “were the scenes of stupendous
achievement.” Sheesh. I think I might have liked Mlle Choinais myself, though.
We’d have shared a glass of wine or two, and I would have told her what I
thought of Thoreau and Wordsworth, and she would have countered with Balzac and
Zola, and the cold Atlantic would have rolled on beneath us. But she’s his
fantasy in the end. I’m betting that when she got back to Lyons or Chartres or
Paris or wherever, she told her boyfriend, “J’ai
rencontré un type extraordinaire sur le bateau, un vieux poète Americain, avec
un air de lui d'être la moitié mort jusqu'à ce qu'il a commencé à parler. Il buvait
sans arête, mais il savait beaucoup de la poésie quand même.”
This DS: um, ick.
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