The Thing with Feathers

I have just finished the twenty third rewrite of my book and I feel that it is now ready to go (which will remain the case until I commence the twenty fourth rehash) but I don’t have a publisher and, at my age, see very little prospect of getting one given the kind of drivel I tend to write.  Now, I am at a stage in my life when everything about me comes bound with one very simple suffix: ‘for his age’: he’s very fit for his age, he’s quite strong for his age, he’s quite young for his age, he doesn’t smell too bad for his age etc etc, and the positive end of that equation is that I no longer give a flying wosname about things that used to really bother me, e.g. I’ve written a book that no-one outside of the family (who probably couldn’t give a chuff quite frankly, they – rightly – have bigger fish to fry) will ever read.  It’s all ok.  It’s really ok except…

I know that I have written about this before and I remember that at that time I mentioned that flushed with something as close to excitement as this old body ever encounters I had already started to write a follow up which will be destined to exactly the same fate.  This post is, however, not a paean to the sad reality of lost hope, it is about the happy realisation that age provides a welcome super-power, an armour against the slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune: it means that I have ceased to give a shit!  The person for whom such things mattered has long gone.  His replacement continues to give everything his best shot, he has hope, he still gets frustrated when his best is not good enough, but he expects nothing from fate in return for his efforts.  Kismet has its own games to play.

Does this knowledge make me a better person?  I sincerely doubt it although, Lord knows, I realise that there is much room for improvement.  I have many faults and I am on first name terms with most of them.  It is my conviction that, whatever Pandora allowed herself to believe, it was not Hope that she eventually managed to keep confined within her box, it was Self-Knowledge: just as well if you ask me, because that is one king-sized can of worms.  I try to imagine a world full of the self aware: it is a world in which all jokes are at one’s own expense, where all of the poets are Sylvia Plath, all of the songwriters are Leonard Cohen and all of the politicians are Donald Trump.  (Most of us when confronted with our own frailties and flaws wonder how to remedy them – politicians wonder how to gain from them.)

And once again the Shield of Age comes to my rescue: I can see my faults very clearly, but I am aware that I am much too long in the tooth to do much about them.  I addressed (I hope) most of the more objectionable of them decades ago.  The mildly offensive traits have had their corners knocked off in the intervening years and I am left with only the gratingly annoying habits which we will all have to learn to live with.

Outside of the huge, sweeping (and mostly Russian) sagas that I tried (and failed) to read as a youth, most novels are framed within a fairly tight span of time.  Characters are defined and, generally fixed, but life is not like that.  Real people develop and adapt.  Some behaviours may become deeply entrenched and unshakeable (these are the things that – unless they are illegal or deeply unsavoury – they will talk about in your eulogy) but for most of us, our persona is written and rewritten countless times through our allotted span.  The person who dies is not the one who was born and hope, like energy, is never lost, it is just transformed.  You never know, it could be a best seller.  There is always hope…

Hope

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.