Choice Regretted

[gurdonark]

and when the walls of Jericho collapse,
no doubt offended by modern jazz,
will she turn the amplifier down,
or take a good run at Jerusalem?

she always meant to be someone else,
someone quicker to empathize,
someone less affected by empathy,
collecting seashells is less fun
when she's knee deep in discarded shell.

she could have been a capable engineer,
good with graph paper,
quick witted in calculus,
a natural grasp for thermodynamics,

but she wished to map out souls,
one story at a time,
over coffee, late at night,
a tear sometimes dripped
on a personal computer....
an endless array of submissions
and rejections and brilliance
and feelings.

now she sells, when she sells,
rent gets paid,
birkenstocks bought,
but sometimes she wonders

how she became a writer
with the soul of a technician--
she can see inside people,
but sometimes she wishes mainly to look away.

so now she writes and dreams
and cries a lot,
still a strong person,
but isn't strength deceptive?

Comments

[nancyjane.livejournal.com]

wow. that's incredible. is this someone you know or someone you imagine?

you wrote this right? i've read a lot of what you write and i always enjoy it but this one ... i dunno just it was special. i like it very much :)

thanks

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I don't know *the person* about whom this poem is about, but I have known women who are very good at sci/engineering who felt conflicted because they felt they "ought" to be good at more people-oriented things....

I appreciate the kind words.

Re: thanks

[nancyjane.livejournal.com]

soitenly :)

i'm no engineer but i've always enjoyed logical things... i suppose i can identify with the spirit of the poem :) it just struck me and was a really nice surprise to my day to read it :) .

Re: thanks

[nancyjane.livejournal.com]

theo and i have gone the past two years to the davis star party held at the end of august... in addition to telescoping there are lectures and demonstrations and sponsor booths. last year one of the features was something called the Cosmic Cabaret... a production from Sci Girl. apparently a woman who found herself in the sciences but wanted to do entertainment as well.

apparently she's done birthday parties for a variety of theoretical scientists, i think she said once for Stephen Hawking but not sure. lolol anyway. it was a kick, creative, and very accurate. this is the link. for some reason i got a real kick out of the charlie's angels take off, i think it's called einstein's angels lolol

http://www.scientainment.com

[burninggirl.livejournal.com]

That first stanza gave me shivers, and the second stanza has a peculiar poignancy that made me eager to read more, to search for resolution. I really like this poem.

Re: thanks

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

It's funny--my undergrad degree was in physics, but
I am the least engineer-like person to ever gain a physics degree.
With hindsight, though, it might have been fun to learn my math a bit better, and try to discover the universe (grin).

thanks

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much for reading this one, and also very much for taking the time to comment. I don't know "where" that first stanza came from, but I finished typing a bit and there it was....

Re: thanks

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

That scientainment link looks fun.

[mouchette.livejournal.com]

Hmmm ... so now she's a writer who really would have liked to be a technician? Or is it the other way around?

I think I've met quite a few 'conflicted' people in my life, they always stay in my mind. Everyone's conflicted to a degree - that's the horrible side effect of human choice. But some people are more fundamentally conflicted in their very being.

No choice is the final choice. The road always remains forked.

conflicted

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

She's a writer who wishes she was a technician,
although apparently she's a good writer.
I meet a fair number of conflicted people, too.
Sometimes the conflict is really a "fundamental" kind of thing--they really need a shift in what they're doing. Sometimes, though, I suspect that the conflict is merely a search for a way of escape. I think that most of us resolve the conflict by learning to merely live with it,
a choice by non-choice, as you say.

For me, fortunately or unfortunately, being an attorney turned out to be pretty much who I really am, which denies me all the useful angst
to which I feel somehow entitled.

[nacowafer.livejournal.com]

I like this poem very much. "Will she turn the amplifier down" has a certain resonance with me. And she certainly sounds like someone I would like to know.

How do you manage to work everything in?! Poet, philosopher, photographer...lawyer...You, yourself, seem very interested in mapping out souls.

the way to do everything is to try to do nothing well

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the kind words on the poem.
In popular conception, people in non-creative
fields wish to be writers, screenwriters, poets,
archive cataloguers and other glamorous professions.
I thought it would be fun to write about the opposite phenomenon--people who do very emotive and revealing careers, but really wish to be in simple, workable places in their lives.

I am a pretty good lawyer, but at all the other things you list, the secret to "doing them" is that I don't worry much about doing them. You've seen a photo or so
of mine, I believe, and know that I am pretty much a point and shoot photographer. As a poet, I've been published "legitimately" a few times, but now I write what I like and publish it myself (just dropped the
first book off at the copy shop for more copies this morning--thank god for chess players who run the search "chess book" through ebay). I certainly do not consider myself a "good poet", but instead love to write poetry at the spur of the moment about pretty much nothing. I'm not a philosopher at all, but I like to learn as much as I can. As soon as I find the right
boom box or cheap TASCAM 4 track, and an old electric football field, I'll make an ambient album. It won't be any good, but it'll make a fun "mail art" CD or
comic ebay auction for the amusement of myself and a select few.

I guess that I am an advocate for people not being so
caught up in that Inward Critical Eye that they can't do things that are fun to them. I don't think writing or singing or theorizing is the province of the
genius or the specialist exclusively. I think everyone should just do as they wish, revel in bad poetry, bad art, and odd philosophizing, and just learn what matters inside. All my "creative" outlets are "spare time" things, and not to be worried over, but just enjoyed. That's the ticket, that's the secret--just
simple fun.

cheers

[(Anonymous)]

thank you.

Re: cheers

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much.

[kamileon.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the amazing poem... Sends shivers down my spine, and a little quiver of empathy... Understanding people is sometimes much worse than not, and sometimes I wish I could look away too... I'm glad I decided back in college to be a programmer instead of a psychologist, it would have been too much. :)
And, yes, in agreement with others, the first stanza is amazing...

It's my first time reading your LJ, and I like what I see, may I add you to my friends list?

nice to meet you...

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm very grateful for the kind words about the poem. If I spent much time in analysis of my poems, I'd wonder if I should have driven
home the image in the first two stanzas with the more 'plot-like' portions of the remainder.

I would like to have you add me to my friends list, and I'm off to do the same.