IT'S THE HAVING, NOT THE KEEPING

Cour de Rohan (1922)
Photo by Eugène Atget

Heraclitus famously asserted that we can never step in the same river twice, for the river is constantly changing and so are we.  In short, everything is transitory, and no experience, however beautiful or transformational, can ever be truly replicated.  All that remains is the memory, but that alone, as the poet Jack Gilbert reminds us, may be more than enough.

                                        THE LOST HOTELS OF PARIS
                                                       By Jack Gilbert

                                   The Lord gives everything and charges
                                   by taking it back.  What a bargain.
                                   Like being young for a while.  We are
                                   allowed to visit hearts of women,
                                   to go into their bodies so we feel
                                   no longer alone.  We are permitted
                                   romantic love with its bounty and half-life
                                   of two years.  It is right to mourn
                                   for the small hotels of Paris that used to be
                                   when we used to be.  My mansard looking
                                   down on Notre Dame every morning is gone,
                                   and me listening to the bell at night.
                                   Venice is no more.  The best Greek islands
                                   have drowned in acceleration.  But it's the having,
                                   not the keeping that is the treasure.
                                   Ginsburg came to my house one afternoon
                                   and said he was giving up poetry
                                   because it told lies, that language distorts.
                                   I agreed, but asked what we have
                                   that gets it right even that much.
                                   We look up at the stars and they are
                                   not there.  We see the memory
                                   of when they were, once upon a time.
                                   And that too is more than enough.

THINGS THAT SLIP AWAY IN TIME

It's been said that the two keys to happiness are a good appetite and a bad memory.  I have never failed to meet the first requirement, and as I proceed into my seventies, I am assured that nature itself will take care of the second.  Indeed, as I read the following poem by Billy Collins last night, I felt myself smiling in recognition of the man who is stirred emotionally by a moon that seems to have drifted out of a love poem that he once knew by heart.

                                        Forgetfulness

                 The name of the author is the first to go
                 followed obediently by the title, the plot,
                 the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
                 which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of.

                 It is as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
                 decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
                 to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

                 Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
                 and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
                 and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

                 something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
                 the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

                 Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
                 it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
                 not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

                 It has floated away down the dark mythological river
                 whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
                 well on your way to oblivion where you will join those
                 who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

                 No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
                 to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
                 No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
                 out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

There is no need to fret, of course; indeed, for most of us, there are many things that are perhaps best forgotten.  As for the other things, it's well to remember (if we can) what Nietzsche said:  "The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time."