Category Archives: Emily Every Day

Woke up at 5:00 this morning. As my grandmother used to say, “Something in my head goes boom! And I’m awake!” The women in my family just don’t sleep after a certain age. I couldn’t sleep either, so I took Lance out for our morning circle of the bayou. At 5:00 in the morning it’s actually borderline pleasant out there. A breeze, almost cool, dries the sweat for a moment or two. Then by 6:30, the air feels like a wet paper towel again. I’m on the porch, coffee and Emily at hand.

#708, c. 1863

I sometimes drop it, for a Quick —
The Thought to be alive —
Anonymous Delight to know —
And Madder — to conceive —

Consoles a Woe so monstrous
That did it tear all Day,
Without an instant’s Respite —
‘Twould look too far — to Die —

Delirium — diverts the Wretch
For whom the scaffold neighs —
The Hammock’s Motion lulls the Heads —
So close on Paradise —

A Reef — crawled easy from the Sea
Eats off the Brittle Line —
The Sailor doesn’t know the Stroke —
Until He’s past the Pain —

I like it when she shows up in her own poem to make an announcement of her own peculiar habits. That assertive “I” tells us what Emily does from time to time, rather than hanging out behind an abstract theme. Bring it down to the particular, Em. The whole universe is there in your thought.

Today she wants to talk about how we obscure our awareness of our own destiny. We divert ourselves. We go to sleep in order to forget what we know. We know what we know, but we’d rather not know.

Emily notices herself doing this, choosing to forget, to look away. To prefer the delightful diversion over contemplating the end. Yet, she acknowledges that these deliriums, the Hammock’s motion, are the only things that get us, even Emily, through. Were it not for the foolish diverting delights, the rude underpinning of existence would be so unbearable that we’d prefer Death to come sooner rather than later. She asserts at once the deceptive nature of life’s pleasures and the absolute necessity of these deceptions.

We get lost in the diversions to make the walk on earth acceptable, more than merely bearable. We’re lying to ourselves about the destination of our walk, but we need those lies. In fact it is our ability to lie convincingly to ourselves about the essential death-ward directed path of our lives that makes any kind of life possible.

I remember a conversation I had with my mother a long time ago. We were talking about someone who was in the end-stage of life. My mother said, “Well, we’re all dying, aren’t we? After the age of 21, that’s when we all begin to die, right?” I don’t know why she chose the age of 21 as the demarcation line when we all begin to die. I think she meant that that’s when the body stops growing, when it has reached the peak of flowering, new cells, etc., and shifts into a decaying process. Or at the very least clings to a losing effort at maintenance. If any of us held onto this thought—that we were dying from the age of 21 onward—we’d probably not bother with the rest of it. That’s why we’ll only “drop it for a quick”, here and gone that thought. For me, the thought returns. I have not been able to forget this conversation.

Fortunately for most of us, it’s a slow death. The point for Emily , because she can’t stand not to think her thoughts, is to notice the machinery of the mind as it tries to direct this heap of frail flesh, this body that definitely won’t last, through the effort it must make to live out the years alloted.

I am caught like a struggling fish in the net of her last lines: “The Sailor doesn’t know the Stroke —/ Until He’s past the Pain —” I hold these lines and wait for them to show themselves. An understanding of the nature of our existence is unknown to us. It lies beyond our grasp while we struggle to exist.

Although at times it is hard to read Emily, oftener it is more difficult to be Emily.

I selected this one from the book days ago and had to come back several times before I found a sliver of light, showing me the way in. Emily sorts through the villagers within her and finds one that needs her attention.

#532, c.1862

I tried to think a lonelier Thing
Than any I had seen —
Some Polar Expiation — An Omen in the Bone
Of Death’s tremendous nearness —

I probed Retrieveless things
My Duplicate — to borrow —
A Haggard Comfort springs

From the belief that Somewhere—
Within the Clutch of Thought —
There dwells one other Creature
Of Heavenly Love — forgot —

I plucked at our Partition
As One should pry the Walls —
Between Himself — and Horror’s Twin —
Within Opposing Cells —

I almost strove to clasp his Hand,
Such Luxury — it grew —
That as Myself — could pity Him —
Perhaps he — pitied me —

The first thing that I notice is that Emily inserted a three-line stanza among the four-line stanzas. Why? Because she can. It’s her poem, and she can do what she wants. Maybe she threw a glitch into her poem, disrupting the flow and our expectations, so we would pay attention. Not fall back to sleep.

So what’s the story here? She describes a willing descent or opening to that “Omen in the Bone”, the end encoded in our DNA, coming for us whether we acknowledge it or not. There is an effort to bring back the past, either to fix it or re-experience it. Memory gives only partial relief or “Haggard Comfort”.

Emily cannot shake the sense that somewhere she has overlooked something important. That her structure of thinking has exiled a part of her that yearns for return, to be enfolded back into the family of her Self. This is her twin. The part of her that she loathes. The weak, vulnerable, death-focused twin. Her brother. The part that gives up and gives over to that downward slide.

She looks across the line that separates them and looks as into a mirror. Compassionate Emily seeks to embrace (or almost seeks) her own despairing aspect of self. She considers herself the benevolent comforter, the larger, the stronger.

In the end, honesty compels her to recognize that they are equals, balanced on either side of a dividing line. Neither is superior to the other. She may accept his pity as he may accept hers. For Emily to consider that her vile twin may pity her is to give some integrity to what he represents, or rather to the knowledge that he holds. That is the awareness of Death, that Omen in the Bone.

The Death-force and the Life-force are twins, partners. Life doesn’t triumph over Death, or the other way around either. It’s not a contest that either can win. They are twin brother and sister. Compatible. They may abhor each other and turn away in horror. Refuse to love or accept each other. But they are born from the same egg. That will never change.

Brave Emily wants to clasp his hand. She softens toward her twin. She can’t turn anyone away from the shelter of her being. It would be dishonest in the end. And folly to presume that she may pity one whose power and integrity is equal to hers. That is the shocking twist at the end.

She sees herself from his point of view. Emily’s unfiltered sight turns on herself. Her relentless, unvarnished curiosity to see a thing from all sides forces her to consider that there is a reality on the other side of the line that separates life and death. A reality that she fears and so demonizes. (As we all do.) But she’s too tough to let that stand. Her mind, in partnership with instinct and spirit, refuses complacency. Emily must look to her dark twin.

The story here is so sad that I almost don’t want to write about it. There is certainly a chapter in Emily’s biography that would explain it, the journalistic description that goes behind the poem. That is a devil on the wall, I don’t feel like sketching in, right now.

#795, c. 1863

Her final Summer was it —
And yet We guessed it not —
If tenderer industriousness
Pervaded Her, We thought

A further force of life
Developed from within —
When Death lit all the shortness up
It made the hurry plain —

We wondered at our blindness
When nothing was to see
But Her Carrara Guide post
At Our Stupidity —

When duller than our dullness
The Busy Darling lay —
So busy was she — finishing —
So Leisurely — were We —

I’d rather respond to the emotional content of the poem than the historical details. Emily’s sense of pure wonderment that Death could sneak up so quickly and without anyone noticing. Not that Death is so sneaky, but that she and everyone else could be so foolish as to forget that Death is ever near. Or so insensitive to the evidence of Death’s approach.

Emily is hard on herself, calls herself Blind and Stupid. The anger leaps out of these lines. No one pays attention to the shortness of life. No matter how many times we witness it, we continue to be astonished when it ends. Yes, Emily, we are idiots.

The last two lines twist into a new idea. “So busy was she — finishing —/ So leisurely — were we —” The one who is dying controls her own passage, it sounds like. She is finishing her own life, as if this was a work she had crafted on her own. Death is not an event or entity that works on her, while she is the passive recipient. She, the dying one, appears to have made the decision to die. She finishes what she had started, and didn’t tell anyone. Or if she did, Emily and the others didn’t pay attention.

The approach of Death progresses beneath conscious scrutiny until it can’t be ignored any longer. The main thing for Emily is the feeling that she wasted valuable time, not seeing and not being aware of the coming end.

The dying are always sharper and more alive than anyone else. The healthy ones are fat with contentment, their senses dulled by too much life. Death is the great clarifier or Teacher. Whatever you don’t know yet, Death will bring it to the foreground so you can’t miss it.

Thunder and lightning. Dark sky. Monday morning.