the wandering one
dreamer of dreams, the eternal
asker of answers

The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.

And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.

‘I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .’
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.

From The House of Dust: A Symphony (Part One) by Conrad Aiken, (Boston, The Four Seas Press, 1920).

I was checking some dates on Conrad Aiken and saw that I had missed something on his Wikipedia page.

Mr. Aiken was born and lived in Savannah until he was 11.

Mr. Aiken wrote of his childhood, “Born in that most magical of cities, Savannah, I was allowed to run wild in that earthly paradise until I was nine; ideal for the boy who early decided he wanted to write.“

Mr. Aiken is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah and there is a bench by his grave with the words, Cosmos Mariner – Destination Unknown carved in it.

Legend has it that Mr. Aiken saw those words while reading a Savannah Newspaper’s daily list of port activity.

Cosmos Mariner – Destination Unknown.

Mr. Aiken left Savannah when he was 11 after a murder suicide took his parents.

I knew all that.

Then I read the line that I had missed.

After their parents’ deaths, the four children were adopted by Frederick Winslow Taylor and his wife Louise, their great-aunt.

Not just any Frederick Winslow Taylor but THE Frederick Winslow Taylor.

The man who invented the D handled 19 1/2 pound shovel.

The man who held a stop watch to workers and told them how hard they had to work.

The man who invented time motion studies.

The man who said, “In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first.”

Mr. Aiken went from,” … that most magical of cities, Savannah, I was allowed to run wild in that earthly paradise until I was nine; ideal for the boy who early decided he wanted to write … to It is only through enforced standardization of methods, enforced adoption of the best implements and working conditions, and enforced cooperation that this faster work can be assured. “

And in the end came down to Cosmos Mariner – Destination Unknown.

‘I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .’

Fabulously fascinating.

still, how strangely still
water is today, not good
to be still that way

Adapted from the poem, Sea Calm by Langston Hughes as it appeared in The Weary Blues (Alfred A. Knopf, 1926) .

How still,
How strangely still
The water is today.
It is not good
For water
To be so still that way

Langston Hughes was just twenty-four years old when his debut poetry collection The Weary Blues was published in 1926.

The first line of the introduction to The Weary Blues reads, “At the moment I cannot recall the name of any other person whatever who, at the age of twenty -three, has enjoyed so picturesque and rambling an existence as Langston Hughes.“

Back in the day when I worked at WZZM13 TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, I remember a newsroom discussion about travel and places to go and places gone to and plans to go to other places.

I looked up and said in what my wife calls ‘My Hoffman Voice’, you know, the voice you develop in a family of 11 kids if you ever want anyone to hear you – my kids say it cuts through concrete – my Mom said it was just like my brother Bobby’s (who was a baseball coach for 20 years), “I live in house 1 mile from where I grew up, 1 mile from the hospital where I was born and 1 mile from the cemetery where I will be buried.”

Then I said, “Oh am I depressed!”

At the time it was all true.

I lived near Kent Country Club on the North End of Grand Rapids.

It was less than a mile from my childhood home on Sligh Blvd.

It was about a mile to Butterworth Hospital where I was born.

And it was less than a mile from Fairplains Cemetery where my grand parents and parents are buried and where, most likely, I would end up one day.

I was about to turn 50.

Since then, I can say that I have enjoyed a picturesque and rambling existence.

Someone looked at my life and said it was still, too still.

And then that someone decided that it was not good for my life to be still that way.

I am reminded of a silly movie starring Steve Martin named Parenthood.

Mr. Martin watches his life come apart at the seams with the flu, bills, car accidents, kids fighting, job loss and everything else and is ready to lose it.

When his Grandma comes by and kind of in passing says:

You know, when I was 19, Grandpa took me on a roller coaster
Up, down, up, down. Oh, what a ride.
I always wanted to go again.
You know, it was just interesting to me that a ride could make me so frightened,
so scared,
so sick,
so excited
and so thrilled,
all together.
Some didn’t like it.
They went on the merry-go-round.
That just goes around … Nothing.
I like the roller coaster.
You get more out of it.

The movie was written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel.

These two guys wrote a lot of movies.

One of those was, A League of Their Own where baseball manager Jimmy Dugan, played by Tom Hanks, says:

It’s supposed to be hard.

If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it.

The hard… is what makes it great.

It is not good
For water
To be so still that way

independence and
irresponsibility
cannot co-exist

Adapted from a scene in the book, Commodore Hornblower, by C.S. Forester who writes that Hornblower:

Recalling himself to reality, he forced himself to remember with what a bubble of excitement he had received his orders back to active service, the light heart with which he had left his child, the feeling of – there was no blinking the matter – emancipation with which he had parted from his wife.

The prospect of once more being entirely his own master, of not having to defer to Barbara’s wishes, of not being discommoded by Richard’s teeth, had seemed most attractive then.

And here he was complaining to himself about the burden of responsibility, when responsibility was the inevitable price one had to pay for independence; irresponsibility was something which, in the very nature of things, could not co-exist with independence.

It is part of the Hornblower lore that when Gene Roddenberry created the Star Trek character of Captain James T. Kirk, he used Hornblower and the Hornblower books as a model.

sometimes a crumb falls
from the tables of joy some
times a bone is flung

Pretty cheeky of me but this is adapted from the poem, Luck, by Langston Hughes, word for word.

Sometimes a crumb falls

From the tables of joy

Sometimes a bone

Is flung

To some people

Love is given

To others

Only heaven.

Angst?

Despair?

Some times for some people things fall, are flung, are given or found.

How can so much be packed into so few words?

I wonder what others might have made of this.

I also wanted a further attribution so I put the phrase, Sometimes a crumb falls in the google and was rewarded with a story that appeared in the New York Times on March 2, 1994.

In the article by Joe Sexton, Mr. Sexton reports on the New York City Transit authority was using ad space in the New York Subway system to display poetry in a program called Poetry in Motion.

On that day, March 2nd, in 1994, this poem was on display and Mr. Sexton rode along on the subway to ask commuters if they had noticed the poem, if they would read it, and want they thought it meant.

It is a fascinating read and a fabulous snapshot of a moment in the lives of several people who I am sure never once thought they might be talking to a reporter about Langston Hughes on the New York Subway.

For me, the poem might have its roots in the Bible story in Matthew 15:

The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.

He [Jesus] replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”

“Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.”

I could go one with this thought of crumbs that fall, a bone that is flung, love found on earth or in Heaven but I won’t.

That thought of Biblical roots does not show up in the thoughts listed by the reporter as he interviewed commuters.

“I can’t express it, but I get it,” Ms. McNeil says of the poem.

“A crumb? A bone?” she [another commuter] asked. “What’s it got to do with heaven?”

“… To me, the poem means that you are lucky if you even find just some happiness.”

The story was headlined, Langston Hughes On the IRT; A Poem Arouses Many Feelings.

Whatever the feelings, I have to feel that Mr. Hughes would have been happy to learn that his poem, posted in the subway, where people might have a few seconds to ponder its message, had many feelings.

One more thing.

Those tables of joy.

Simple phrase you can consider in your mind and find it is 20 minutes later in your day.