Dear World, P.S.
I still hate you.
You cause so much pain, even for those who care about you.
One of my friends told me of psychology experiment she had done in school in which a pair of voles were separated for 14 days and given access to alcohol. Voles mate for life and are normally separated from their partner for only minutes at a time.
14 days must have been an eternity. The experiment was to see how the voles would respond to their isolated situation and the availability of alcohol.
They took it.
After 14 days when they were reunited,
they were individually scrambled and completely dysfunctional together.
I don't know what was gained from the experiment.
World,
what horrible experiment are you conducting with us,
... are we conducting on ourselves?
This drunkenness began in another tavern
I want out of this box.
How are we supposed to help each other when we are isolated voles?
I am sorry.
I have learned to live well in confinement.
I thought it was the best way to live. I practiced.
It is good, but it is not all.
It will be hard to learn otherwise, but I don't want to stay dysfunctional.
I have made much progress.
Help me break out of this prison for drunks.
4 comments:
by Rumi
Trans. Coleman Barks.
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.
Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?
I have no idea.
My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that,
and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.
This poetry. I never know what I'm going to say.
I don't plan it.
When I'm outside the saying of it,
I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.
Tracy, do I get to do anything but give you comliments on this thing? Maybe...
this is so beautiful.
But maybe being drunk isn't the bad thing. Some of us never find anyone and some of us find several and successfully ruin each situation, some of like the voles will find one and only one and nothing will tarnish their happy little vole-perfect-relationship.
I'm sorry that happened to the voles. I'm glad it didn't happen to you or anyone we know. I'm sorry it's lonely like a drunken place. I'm sorry we're not better people, and that we have to die, maybe even at the peak of our imperfection.
Also, I'm sorry I like being drunk. Hopefully it's not because I'm secretly a vole and this is tarnishing my futue vole-perfect love. Ha, ow.
I think though both were useful metaphors, I was considering more the isolation-for-so-long aspect than the potential consequences of drunkenness.
And there are many many ways to cope and adapt to living in isolation besides alcohol. I'm considering that it was the isolation more than the alcohol that damaged the voles.
And I am considering that it is currently happening to all of us.
And as a result, we find it difficult to live together on many levels.
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