[lit-ideas] Autonomical risk
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 20 May 2006 08:30:01 -0700
I'm not sure whether Charles Taylor cares about the "autonomy" of the modern
self, but I was thinking about that this morning & read a bit of Renaut's
The Era of the Individual and looked at some old poems. Here is one I wrote
back in 1988, ten years before I retired. I was often wrestling with
whether something was the right-thing to do or not. Inexperienced managers
were always able to make those decisions more readily than I was. I would
sometimes refuse to cooperate with a manager who was making a wrong
decision. If an employee was old and hoary with experience, it was
difficult for a young manager to fire him, however angry he might be -
fortunately for me. Long Beach was where the McDonnell Douglas plant where
I worked was located. In the poem, I seem to be thinking more about whether
I could tolerate them than whether they were going to tolerate me. I could
have retired in 1988, but with a much reduced pension; which would have made
taking care of a semi-invalid wife even more difficult.
88-042 9-2-88
THE WORLD BEYOND LONG BEACH
Indeed I've shied away, these past few weeks,
Feeling, if nothing comes, they can't go on
Hounding me asking me "what is the harm?"
I've bounded about dodging the thought
And kept to myself in unsettling dreams
That have filled me with heavy portents
Of doom and left me weak with uncertainty.
And so I sat on a ridge high up
And alone except for my dog
Who dozed in the shade at my feet
Where the heat shimmered and glistened
While I listened to a huge vacancy.
They were all driven off as the sun rose
Leaving the mountain to Heidi and me.
And I thought of it, close
To that monstrous metropolis
With its teeming millions
That, had I the vantage,
Would seem like milling ants.
Yet Heidi could sleep undisturbed
By any of this a bare hour away
If one were to hurry which I
Had resolved not to do. I had said
"You don't know what they're like
When their brows are beetled with insect certainties.
I have seen them such and know there is no place
There for me if I am to be free
About these things." Then the wings
Of a hawk shadowed past the sun
And I looked up at it seeing us:
Heidi still sleeping and me squinting up
At its sailing in lazy slow circles
With no one to urge it to haste
Even though some might think it wasteful
When it wasn't hunting, but not me as I watched.
Lawrence
Other related posts:
