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Thoughts in a Garden

What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that Ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that's made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Andrew Marvell, from Thoughts in a Garden

I THINK DIFFERENT ALOT

Does it bug you that the "Kwik Stop" spells "quick" that way?

Do you ask shopkeepers, who, exactly, pronounced the word "open" quoted on the doorway placard? And how come the "we're" isn't in quotes, too?

When you get a note saying "Thanks alot!" do you feel even the slightest urge to remind the author that "a lot" is always two words?

Well, I do, although I've learned it's dangerous to express such literary concerns in public.

"Dumbing down" the language bothers me, though, and it bothers me, too, that some people are bothered by the fact that I'm bothered about it.

It hit me again this week when an author sent me his self–published book to review. "There are grammar mistakes & it is not the best book written," he declared in the cover letter, but he said it would be unfair to hold that against him because the book was heartfelt and "honest."

Which, in an amazing coincidence, is exactly the reason I should be allowed to play in the NFL – not because I have the skills or have even taken the time to learn them, but because I really, really want to. Honest.

In my writing classes, too, I'd say at least half my students consider grammar unimportant, and exhibit a shockingly practiced ignorance of it. Usually, a majority doesn't know how to punctuate a quote. Many don't know the difference between "their" and "there," or "too" and "to." When I correct their misuse of "it's," as in the sentence "The unicorn returned to it's UFO," I am often sullenly accused of missing the point.

Maybe I am. I suspected as much, anyway, when I reviewed a novel by Dorothy Allison last spring. It was a highly anticipated book, and given a great deal of publicity. It was also riddled with every type of grammatical and syntactical error imaginable, and I took the author and her editors to task.

Of course, that wasn't the only reason to give it a bad review. But it does seem to me that one of the givens of getting published is at least a slight familiarity with the fundamentals of our language.

Nonetheless, Allison's book got rave reviews across the country, and of the many I saw, none mentioned the stupefying assault of grammatical errors. Instead, Allison was hailed as an amazing "prose stylist." Well, that's one term for it, I guess.

In the meantime, back on my lofty perch, it makes me talk to myself — not about true issues of style, honest mistakes, stray and occasional mistakes, or mistakes on obscure grammatical issues.

No, what I'm mumbling about up here is something perniciously consistent and deliberate, a general trend that's become more and more pervasive: The belief that simplified or even incorrect language is legitimate because the average American is dumb as a rock.

You think this doesn't apply to you? It has a lot to do with the editing of newspapers, magazines and books, to name one way it might.

Take magazines – don't most of the big ones seem as if they're written for cretins? Even at highbrow, literary outlets, such as The New Yorker, say, the language is getting simpler, and the articles are getting shorter. (Their ads, meanwhile, get longer and longer – they now often run multipage supplements.)

At some of the schools I've taught at, professors are subtly encouraged to overlook "little problems" such as complete grammatical ignorance. Students often collude by buying into the bigger cultural marketing subterfuge that grammar isn't hip 4 you. Meanwhile, standards are lowered so more applicants get in, and stay in — so the school makes more money.

And that's what it's about, ultimately: taking advantage of an audience to make the filthy lucre. "Kwik Stop" means to sell an image of casualness — we're simple ignorami like you, it seems to say. We even save on letters, so our prices couldn't possibly be considered gouging.

But I don't buy it. When I see an ad for Apple computers, say, telling me to "Think Different," I see a coded message saying "Grammar's hard! Stupid's easier! Validate that! Give us your money and you won't be different at all – you'll be part of the big, secure, Stupid Club, just like, er, Einstein and the Dalai Lama!"

Breaking the rules of language, simply, is not the same thing as breaking spiritual, intellectual, or cultural bounds. Quite the opposite – those goals are rarely achieved without a rigorous and thorough knowledge of the appropriate fundamentals.

Just ask the Dalai Lama, who requested that Apple stop using his photograph in their ads. You think he doesn't know the fundamentals of his faith inside and out? He not only knows them, he believes in them so profoundly he'll probably never be allowed to go home again.

Breaking the rules of grammar doesn't make you a rebel. It just makes you stupid. Which is exactly how the bad guys want you — complacent, easy–to–manipulate, and ready to exploit.

Be fearless, dear reader. Be demanding. Declare your lack of stupidity. Be different — think differently!

November 1, 1998. MOBYlives

What Are Years

WHAT ARE YEARS

What is our innocence,
what is our guilt? All are
naked, none is safe. And whence
is courage; the unanswered question,
the resolute doubt —
dumbly calling, deafly listening — that
in misfortune, even death,
           encourages others
           and in its defeat, stirs

the soul to be strong? He
sees deep and is glad, who
accedes to mortality
and in his imprisonment rises
upon himself as
the sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be,
           in its surrendering
           finds its continuing.

So he who strongly feels
behaves. The very bird,
grown taller as he sings, steels
his form straight up. Though he is captive,
his mighty singing
says, satisfaction is a lowly
thing, how pure a thing is joy.
           This is mortality,
           this is eternity.

Marianne Moore

This Shining Moment In The Now

THIS SHINING MOMENT IN THE NOW

When I work outdoors all day, every day, as I do now, in the fall,
getting ready for winter, tearing up the garden, digging potatoes,
gathering the squash, cutting firewood, making kindling, repairing
bridges over the brook, clearing trails in the woods, doing the last of
the fall mowing, pruning apple trees, taking down the screens,
putting up the storm windows, banking the house - all these things,
as preparation for the coming cold...

when I am every day all day all body and no mind, when I am
physically, wholly and completely, in this world with the birds,
the deer, the sky, the wind, the trees...

when day after day I think of nothing but what the next chore is,
when I go from clearing woods roads, to sharpening a chain saw,
to changing the oil in a mower, to stacking wood, when I am
all body and no mind...

when I am only here and now and nowhere else - then, and only
then, do I see the crippling power of mind, the curse of thought,
and I pause and wonder why I so seldom find
this shining moment in the now.

Poem: "This Shining Moment in the Now" by David Budbill.

An Ex-Husband

I saw my ex-husband in the street. I was sitting on the steps of the new library.


Hello, my life, I said. We had once been married for twenty-seven years, so I felt justified.


He said, What? What life? No life of mine.


I said, O.K. I don't argue when there's real disagreement. I got up and went into the library to see how much I owed them.


The librarian said $32 even and you've owed it for eighteen years. I didn't deny anything. Because I don't understand how time passes. I have had those books. I have often thought of them. The library is only two blocks away.


My ex-husband followed me to the Books Returned desk. He interrupted the librarian, who had more to tell. In many ways, he said, as I look back, I attribute the dissolution of our marriage to the fact that you never invited the Bertrams to dinner.


That's possible, I said. But really, if you remember: first, my father was sick that Friday, then the children were born, then I had those Tuesday-night meetings, then the war began. Then we didn't seem to know them any more. But you're right. I should have had them to dinner.

I gave the librarian a check for $32. Immediately she trusted me, put my past behind her, wiped the record clean, which is just what most other municipal and/or state bureaucracies will not do.


I checked out the two Edith Wharton books I had just returned because I'd read them so long ago and they are more apropos now than ever. They were The House of Mirth and The Children, which is about how life in the United States in New York changed in twenty-seven years fifty years ago.


A nice thing I do remember is breakfast, my ex-husband said. I was surprised. All we ever had was coffee. Then I remembered there was a hole in the back of the kitchen closet which opened into the apartment next door. There, they always ate sugar-cured smoked bacon. It gave us a very grand feeling about breakfast, but we never got stuffed and sluggish.


That was when we were poor, I said.


When were we ever rich? he asked.


Oh, as time went on, as our responsibilities increased, we didn't go in need. You took adequate financial care, I reminded him. The children went to camp four weeks a year and in decent ponchos with sleeping bags and boots, just like everyone else. They looked very nice. Our place was warm in winter, and we had nice red pillows and things


I wanted a sailboat, he said. But you didn't want anything.


Don't be bitter, I said. It's never too late.


No, he said with a great deal of bitterness. I may get a sailboat. As a matter of fact I have money down on an eighteen-foot two-rigger. I'm doing well this year and can look forward to better. But as for you, it's too late. You'll always want nothing. 


He had had a habit throughout the twenty-seven years of making a narrow remark which, like a plumber's snake, could work its way through the ear down the throat, half-way to my heart. He would then disappear, leaving me choking with equipment. What I mean is, I sat down on the library steps and he went away.


I looked through The House of Mirth, but lost interest. I felt extremely accused. Now, it's true, I'm short of requests and absolute requirements. But I do want something.
I want, for instance, to be a different person. I want to be the woman who brings these two books back in two weeks. I want to be the effective citizen who changes the school system and addresses the Board of Estimate on the troubles of this dear urban center.

I had promised my children to end the war before they grew up.


I wanted to have been married forever to one person, my ex-husband or my present one. Either has enough character for a whole life, which as it turns out is really not such a long time. You couldn't exhaust either man's qualities or get under the rock of his reasons in one short life.


Just this morning I looked out the window to watch the street for a while and saw that the little sycamores the city had dreamily planted a couple of years before the kids were born had come that day to the prime of their lives.


Well! I decided to bring those two books back to the library. Which proves that when a person or an event comes along to jolt or appraise me I can take some appropriate action, although I am better known for my hospitable remarks.

Grace Paley, Wants