The unregarded river of my life...: Cliches

Monday, March 29, 2010

Cliches

Time flies. They grow up so fast. Seems like just yesterday.

It's a strange business realizing that all the old cliches that your parents used so frequently that you tuned them out are in fact true. Not just true in an abstract sense, but true as in their truthfulness is suddenly being played out in my life day by day, moment by moment.

It's like Africa. I knew it existed. But I never gave it much thought--it wasn't part of MY existence. Then I went there, and everything about it changed. It was real in its extremities, visceral. It had smells, tastes, weather, people with names and real lives that suddenly were part of my real life. I relished every trip to Africa for many reasons, not the least of which is that I knew it wouldn't last long--that I had a ticket with a return date on it.

That's about as good a comparison as I can make I guess. As a husband and father, time is flying. Too fast. I'm not so caught up in the moment that I can't see what's happening and where all this is going. I don't know what the date is on the return ticket, but there's a date.

Last night I put Sahara down to sleep. We said her prayers and I looked at her and had one of those moments that come so often when things calm down at the end of the day. I realized how absolutely in love I am with my little girl and how fast she's growing--slipping away from me. The little girl that I see today will be, in a very real sense, transformed and changed a year from now. And there will be some things, some aspects of the way she is now, that I'll miss deeply.

As she lay there, I told Sahara the story of when she was born. About how the nurses took her out of the room to clean here up and how I went with her. She was so tiny, laying there in that little cart under the heat lamp. I reached out my pinky finger and she took it with her little hand and held on as she looked at me. That's a memory that I'll treasure forever. But the moment is gone, and I miss it. I miss those first sleep-deprived weeks as a brand new father looking at his first born child in wonder.

But days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years. Time flies and they grow up so fast.

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The Buried Life

Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,
Behold, with tears mine eyes are wet!
I feel a nameless sadness o'er me roll.
Yes, yes, we know that we can jest,
We know, we know that we can smile!
But there's a something in this breast,
To which thy light words bring no rest,
And thy gay smiles no anodyne.
Give me thy hand, and hush awhile,
And turn those limpid eyes on mine,
And let me read there, love! thy inmost soul.

Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
I knew the mass of men conceal'd
Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd
They would by other men be met
With blank indifference, or with blame reproved;
I knew they lived and moved
Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest
Of men, and alien to themselves--and yet
The same heart beats in every human breast!

But we, my love!--doth a like spell benumb
Our hearts, our voices?--must we too be dumb?

Ah! well for us, if even we,
Even for a moment, can get free
Our heart, and have our lips unchain'd;
For that which seals them hath been deep-ordain'd!

Fate, which foresaw
How frivolous a baby man would be--
By what distractions he would be possess'd,
How he would pour himself in every strife,
And well-nigh change his own identity--
That it might keep from his capricious play
His genuine self, and force him to obey
Even in his own despite his being's law,
Bade through the deep recesses of our breast
The unregarded river of our life
Pursue with indiscernible flow its way;
And that we should not see
The buried stream, and seem to be
Eddying at large in blind uncertainty,
Though driving on with it eternally.

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;
A longing to inquire
Into the mystery of this heart which beats
So wild, so deep in us--to know
Whence our lives come and where they go.
And many a man in his own breast then delves,
But deep enough, alas! none ever mines.
And we have been on many thousand lines,
And we have shown, on each, spirit and power;
But hardly have we, for one little hour,
Been on our own line, have we been ourselves--
Hardly had skill to utter one of all
The nameless feelings that course through our breast,
But they course on for ever unexpress'd.
And long we try in vain to speak and act
Our hidden self, and what we say and do
Is eloquent, is well--but 'tis not true!
And then we will no more be rack'd
With inward striving, and demand
Of all the thousand nothings of the hour
Their stupefying power;
Ah yes, and they benumb us at our call!
Yet still, from time to time, vague and forlorn,
From the soul's subterranean depth upborne
As from an infinitely distant land,
Come airs, and floating echoes, and convey
A melancholy into all our day.

Only--but this is rare--
When a beloved hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear,
When our world-deafen'd ear
Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd--
A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast,
And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.
The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life's flow,
And hears its winding murmur; and he sees
The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze.

And there arrives a lull in the hot race
Wherein he doth for ever chase
That flying and elusive shadow, rest.
An air of coolness plays upon his face,
And an unwonted calm pervades his breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.