Perfectly Mistaken

[Image: “D1 / typo incident,” by Zoolette Des Bois on Flickr.com. Used under a Creative Commons license. Edit to add: the sign seems to be a marker at this location in London, on a particularly bad day I guess.]

From whiskey river (italicized portion):

if i have made, my lady, intricate

if i have made, my lady, intricate
imperfect various things chiefly which wrong
your eyes (frailer than most deep dreams are frail)
songs less firm than your body’s whitest song
upon my mind—if i have failed to snare
the glance too shy—if through my singing slips
the very skillful strangeness of your smile
the keen primeval silence of your hair

—let the world say “his most wise music stole
nothing from death”—
you will only create
(who are so perfectly alive) my shame:
lady whose profound and fragile lips
the sweet small clumsy feet of April came

into the ragged meadow of my soul.

(E.E. Cummings [source])

…and:

Based on my experience of life, which I have not exactly hit out of the park, I tend to agree with that thing about, If it’s not broke, don’t fix it. And would go even further, to: Even if it is broke, leave it alone, you’ll probably make it worse.

(George Saunders [source])

…and:

Descriptions of Heaven and Hell

The wave breaks
And I’m carried into it.
This is hell, I know,
Yet my father laughs,
Chest-deep, proving I’m wrong.
We’re safely rooted,
Rocked on his toes.

Nothing irked him more
Than asking, “What is there
Beyond death?”
His theory once was
That love greets you,
And the loveless
Don’t know what to say.

(Mark Jarman [source])

…and:

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self…

I wind my experiences around myself and cover myself with glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed, I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me I am my own mistake.

(Thomas Merton [source])

Not from whiskey river:

There was a disciple who was incredibly dense. His master would host a tea gathering, and while the tea was being served people would engage in small talk, guessing one another’s ages. But the disciple was likely to mistake someone who was thirty or forty for being fifty or sixty, and be laughed at.

The master couldn’t stand this anymore, so he confronted the disciple. “I suppose there really is no cure for stupidity,” he said, “but listen: no one wants to take on years, so the thing to do is always say people look younger—and take care never to say that someone has gotten old.”

The next day, the disciple was sent on an errand. When he met the lady of the house, who was holding an infant in her arms, he asked, “And how old is the child?”

“Not even a full year yet,” she replied. “He’s a newborn.”

“Oh,” the disciple said, “I must say, though—he looks even younger than that!”

(Anrakuan Sakuden [source])

…and:

Once, long ago, I worked with a woman who was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. She had six months to live, people said. I did not know her well, but I watched her at work: young, vivacious, doomed. In her eyes lurked a new knowledge, a searing awareness that was almost tangible in its intensity. And then, suddenly, the tumor disappeared without a trace. Her death sentence had been erroneous.

Perhaps she thinks about that diagnosis still; perhaps she is haunted by memories of the days and nights when she thought she was dying. I can imagine that the light looked different during that time, that her senses were sharpened and heightened by the knowledge of death. I can imagine how every moment might cause panic; I can feel the bitterness of her sorrow. The careless indifference to life you enjoy when you are not haunted by death’s specter—you can probably never feel that again once you have contemplated death.

Or perhaps you can just leave it behind, gleefully, once the threat is gone: not dead yet. It seems to me that the latter response would be preferable—easier, lighter. I wouldn’t know, though. I have not had to confront these issues.

(Meenakshi Gigi Durham [source])

…and:

The Whole Mess… Almost

I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide… OUT!”
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”
Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
“You always end up a bummer!”
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
“Without us you’ll surely die!”
“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”

Then Beauty… ah, Beauty—
As I led her to the window
I told her: “You I loved best in life
… but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
“You saved me!” she cried
I put her down and told her: “Move on.”

Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
“I’m not real!” It cried
“I’m just a rumor spread by life… ”
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left—
All I could do with Humor was to say:
“Out the window with the window!”

(Gregory Corso [source])