LETTERSby David Eide |
In his idle moments the writer expressed hope to
no one in particular. This usually occurred on summer
days when the kites were flying high above the greensward
in the Marina. Kids were out and playing. Windsurfers
made their wonderful poetic gesture through the wet blue
afternoon. The writer always chastised himself when he
saw others enjoying themselves. They are living the way it
was intended writer! They are doing what all people should
do. During a period of self-castigation the writer would
mount a rock and peer out into the Bay. Dogs would come up
and sniff him. He watched the couples walk the promenade.
He did not want to talk to himself. He knew, invariably,
he would start muttering outloud and didn't want anyone
to notice. Well, after all, where am I? In this town everything
is permissible! Here I might mumble outloud and be hired by
a client to defend him in some lawsuit. Or, some cult will
try to recruit me. Convinced that nothing would happen if he
let loose with his peculiar habit he relaxed and thought
of the most hopeful things he could. He hoped that at
the limit at which he felt and knew things, he had trust. And that
the trust was both personal and social. He hoped no matter how
many times he'd been burned by human nature he still had
a filament of trust.
He hoped that from the proliferation of works and feelings
he could find significant forms.
He hoped that what he felt and experienced was sufficient
good for reality.
He hoped any mediocrity he found in himself would be turned
underground and used as a particular type of human fertilizer.
He hoped the world was coming to a greater understanding of
itself.
He hoped the future did not belong to techniques and slavish
mentalities but to the adventuresome and creative who leap
as the spirit moves them.
He hoped the imagination rode along every deep probe into space.
He hoped that value was akin to a photon.
He hoped his energy would be released outward in the form of
work, life, beauty, and thought.
In a moment the writer found himself standing up on the rock
just as a huge sailboat floated past him with two or three old
fellows enjoying themselves and hoisting glasses to the writer
who stood, on the rock, facing the sun over the city and proclaimed,
He saluted the old fellows and went his way.
'Standing under the stars
to feel desire itself strain
toward light of a million years.'
David Eide
August 30, 1999
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