Poetry & Blindfolds

“Are you going to Rachel’s thing next Friday?” a co-worker asked me today.  Rachel and I have been friends at work for over ten years, so it was logical that I would be asked.

“Oh,” I said, having not heard of the event,  “isn’t that for Rachel’s…?”  I trailed off, hoping my co-worker would fill in the blank.

“Her pre-wedding party,” said my co-worker.

“Right,” I said, nodding enthusiastically.  “I think so.  I may have something else that night, but I think so.”

I better work on that Something Else, I thought.  I’m not invited to Rachel’s event at all. 

Rachel and I were “war buddies” for a while.  We came to know each other when both her and I were battling a couple of addictions and a couple of bad romantic cul-de-sacs.  Like good buddies sharing a foxhole during enemy bombardment, we looked out for each other, encouraged each other, gave advice, asked for advice, and occasionally indulged in our love of alcohol, safe in the knowledge that each of us looked out for the other.

Somewhere along the way, we got healthy.  I don’t recall if I got healthy first or she got healthy first, but there came a time when we both were healthy - and didn’t look out for each other anymore.   There was a time when seeing the two of us in the hallway would make people say, in all seriousness, ‘here comes trouble’.  We kicked ass as a team.  Nowadays, when the two of us are walking down the hall, it’s just coincidence and timing.   We do the slight dance of social niceties and then spin off into our respective directions.

When I see Rachel, I am reminded of our time as exceptionally close friends (never sexual, it should be noted).  It’s possible that she sees the same when she sees me.  And perhaps she sees me like a photograph from a really bad time in her life, as that’s how I see her.  Her finacee, who also works at the same place, wasn’t really keen on her and I being friends; whether that added to the end result of Rachel and I not seeing each other for months on end and not talking ever, I’m not sure.   But, like sodium stearol lactylate in a Twinkie, it is but an ingredient.

She doesn’t mention her engagement to me when she has seen me.  I don’t mention that I know when I see her.  Instead, we say “how are you?”.  Somewhere in those three words can be detected an acknowledgement of the days when we were in the same foxhole.   And now fill our lives with Something Else.

*

Word came over today that Nicholas Hughes, one of two children of famed poet Sylvia Plath, committed suicide in Fairbanks, Alaska.  Hughes, 47, unmarried and without children yet a brilliant professor, hanged himself in his own home.   And my first thought was, oh come on. 

Nicholas’ mother, of course, famously committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven, ironically making her an icon for feminists throughout the 1960s and 1970s.  Sylvia Plath’s husband, Ted Hughes, ever the good judge of character, was screwing another woman at the time, Assia Wevill, whom he wound up marrying.  Of course, she committed suicide as well a few years later as well, going the extra mile by taking their daughter with her.

Nicholas strove to break free from the Hughes/Plath literary dynasty, not only moving to the US but moving as far from the UK as he could within the confines of the US: Alaska.  Instead of the poetry of language, Nicholas found his calling studying the poetry of fish and ecology. 

And then he commits suicide! 

Nicholas Hughes commits suicide,  instantly discrediting all of his efforts to make a name for himself and instantly regulating himself to a footnote of one of the most famously suicidal family in history.   If you search out stories on the suicide, you’ll find a paragraph about Nicholas and the rest a retread of Sylvia Plath’s stunted career.

What does a Hughes/Plath family reunion look like these days?  One person and a caterer.

Why did Nicholas Hughes hang himself?  It’s so hard to get a stove lit in Alaska.

So, with Ted Hughes having lost a battle with cancer over ten years ago, the remaining Hughes/Plath offspring, the poet Frida Hughes, is the winner of Survivor: Plath.  But at the same time, we cannot blame the world if it puts her on some sort of public suicide watch for the rest of her days.  Another dismal legacy of Nicholas’ rope trick.

Which brings this to mind: what do you buy a Hughes/Plath kid for birthdays or other holidays?  Better not get them anything in a plastic bag: they’ll just put it on their head.  Better not get them cutlery: they’ll walk down the road, not across the street.  Better not get them toys with small pieces: they’ll just eat the things.  And forget about pots and pans: they might want to cook something.

Call it Plathology. 

Disappointing.

*

Many people I know say they wish they had been born in another era, and I am no exception.  I, too, wish they had been born in another era.  So I wouldn’t have to hear about it.

I am pleased to have been alive in a time when computers were big, mythic devices, twice the size of their white-coated masters, with reel-to-reel tapes spinning and buttons all a-flashin’.   You’d see such a monolith in only two venues: on the news and in movies (either sci-fi or disaster films, and the computers would be hooked up to monitors that had rounded edges).  It was in those days that I cultivated an imagination, which is one of the few possessions of mine that, these days, doesn’t hurt when bent.

If there’s one thing I’m not fond of in this era is the slang.

The slang of the 1950’s was oddly poetic and evocative of not only the birth of rock and roll but the Beat Generation.  Back then, you didn’t drive off in your car, you “agitated the gravel.”  A woman didn’t have a good body, she had a “classy chassis.”  It was in this era that farewells were embodied in the couplet, “see ya later alligator / after a while, crocidile.”

The 1960’s, the Beat Generation still reverberated through the world of slang, but the terms became more feeling-based and less poetic.  Something wasn’t great, it was “far out.”  Someone wasn’t sad, they were “bummed out.”  You weren’t asked to leave, you were asked to “flake off.”  If a story droned on too long, someone might interject with “meanwhile, back at the ranch.”

Back to computers for a second.  The big difference between me then and me now is I don’t really know how the things work.  In high school, I learned the two big computer programming languages - BASIC and FORTRAN, which fell out of favor eventually.   My greatest computer skill in 2009 is to ask my girlfriend if she has a moment to figure out why my laptop froze.

There’s been a drop-off in intelligence. 

And now we can get back to today’s slang.

Things are not definite, they are “fo sho.”   Things are not certain, they are “mos def.”  Things are not attractive, they are “hawt.”  You are not you, you are “u.”  You are not alright, you are “aiight.”  If you are agreed with, you are asked, “I know - right?”, as if the other person is requesting agreement with agreeing with you.  You do not address people, you address “bitchezzzz”.

Color me 43, but I can gauge a slight downward trend in slang from the 1959 to 2009.  As a script writer, I would only use such words and phrases if I was writing dialogue for a mentally challenged person - and wanted to be very obvious about it. 

Nurse: Tommy, it’s 10am.  Time for your walk around the grounds.
Mentally Challenged Patient: I know - right?

Since all slang is evocative of the society that produces it, I fear that being lazy - or more accurately, being perceived as being lazy - has become far too important.  That, somehow, having enough disrespect for language makes one an embodiment of confidence, or “gangsta.”   I confess that my first thought, whenever I come across such people, is that of job security.  Because today’s slang is so immersive, there’s no chance that anyone who uses it seriously could take my job. 

Of course, the main reason I don’t like the current slang comes down to one thing: the incredulous looks I get when I try.  I said “mos def” once to my friend Melissa, and it’s a story we still recount today.  “I remember when you said that,” she will say, “and I was, like, what the fuck are you doing?”  I was only trying to be a hep cat.  Kthxbai.