Beauty, Poetry and Projection

Struck by Beauty

One night when I was in the U.S. Navy in Virginia, I took the jitney bus into Virginia Beach after work. I found an all-night restaurant, sat down and ordered a cup of coffee from this beautiful, soft-spoken brunette. Her name tag said “Kathy,” and my heart said, “YES!” I think I had enough self-control not to drool or hang my mouth open, but the feelings were there. This was 80% lust, 20% fantasy. I had no idea who this person was, but I endowed her with all truth and beauty.

I missed the last jitney bus back to the base at about 1 AM, and decided to stay the night at the beach. I left and had a couple of beers at a bar. The beer was really weak. Virginia Beach had a lot of young people visiting, so they lowered the drinking age for beer to 18, but only allowed the bars to sell 3.2% alcohol beer instead of the usual 6% stuff. Naturally, this meant the students had to drink twice as much to get drunk, which they, and we sailors, did. It made the bar owners happy, but did little to decrease drunkenness. Finally, the bars closed about 2 AM, so I went back to the restaurant.

Kathy was still there. I took a booth and ordered another cup of coffee. We exchanged a few words, but my old paralysis in the face of sexual attraction seized me. I couldn’t make a move to flirt, try to get to know her better, ask her out, or anything. I was aware of the sexual attraction and wanted to hide it. I’m not sure why I could function with some women who were beautiful and with average-looking women, but not with some strange, beautiful women. I believe now because I was hiding the sexual attraction, women like Kathy picked up on it and distrusted me, rightfully so--I was hiding.

I read for awhile, then began to write in a notebook. Poetry flowed. Over the next year I would write quite a few poems, usually in this restaurant with Kathy somewhere around. Was she my Muse?

Alienation

Many of these poems were angry, lonely, filled with the hurt of an idealist seeing the real world. I had thrown myself out of the mainstream of the culture. All around me the Sixties were blossoming--people had long hair down to their asses and sandals on their feet; drugs were everywhere; the war in VietNam was increasingly unpopular, as was anything to do with the military. There I was with short hair, black military shoes, and old-fashioned ideas.

It’s not that I didn’t accept some of the ideas of the Sixties--I did; but I didn’t automatically swallow every new idea or trend that came along. Many people, more or less, did. The Sixties had begun with the high ideals of the Civil Right Movement, which I joined wholeheartedly. In a way, this movement asked America to live up to her highest ideals of freedom and justice in the liberal tradition of Western civilization.

By 1968, Sixties thinking, or, more accurately, Sixties feeling rejected Western civilization, including Christianity, logic, rule of law, capitalism, civil order, and the stable family. A central tenet of many people was to tear down all institutions of “The Establishment,” the established order, and somehow a new, better order would arise.

I thought this view naive in the extreme and ignorant of the many examples of chaos in history. I thought the most likely outcome of the destruction of all institutions would be tyranny--the rise of a strong leader who would promise order in exchange for power. All of the Greek democracies ended in just this way. But the leftists of the Sixties thought that past history (experience) was irrelevant.

There was even a saying among the young leftists, “Don’t trust anyone over thirty.” But all of them grew older themselves. Maybe, they were right. No one over thirty can still be so rampantly irrational and at the same time so certain of themselves.

I eventually wrote a poem to Kathy that expressed my longing for beauty, my emotional impotence, and my despair with the times.

To a Gentle Lady

The light became her grace and dwelt among
Blind eyes and shadows that are formed as men;
Lo how the light doth melt us into song;
—Ezra Pound, "Ballatetta."

It is of little use, this gift for song,
It is of little use.
A timid heart
Received it from the Muse and flew away:
Like some sequestered bird let out to play,
Among the sheltered gardens, soon deceived.

Art is easy in the shade.
Artifice glistens in the glade on dews of grass
That human feet have never trod.
Let pass a light footfall in this quaint habitat,
Our heart will seek the forest's deeper part.

Yet we can call the ocean winds to blow,
And mount a swirling chaos in the main
To lash the thousand ships that boldly sail,
Or to some Grecian hero give his fame
Who in his pride and strength laid Hector low.
But Helen's face will make our tempest fail,
And she who is this war's most graceful root
Will scorn a city lost, its hero mute.
Old heart, in a young breast in younger times,
We will not call it genius if it rhymes;
You are Anachronism when you sing:
Gods are dead, "the world is too much with us"
—Paper diapers, Singer sowing machines,
The Holy Mary plastic, Jesus rock,
Our generation grown too dead to shock,
Too dead to sing,
Hope—a guided missile.

We scream for peace;
We who've known little else
But outward calm have robbed ourselves
Of God, of Hope in life or life to come,
This "long disease" prolong-- and "peace" we hum.

Gentle lady, graceful one.
Pardon if my Muse is mute;
She does not envy you,
But would protect her son;
For she well knows
That when he breaks his rhythm, loses time,
That when his song has ceased to rhyme,
He who was timid, shy in the wood,
Breaks forth a roar and fury,
Calls the sea to foam and dash
The liquid marrow from his drying bones.
Or he would brave Olympian heights
To steal the flame right from the gods
And feel their fury dash him home,
As still he clasps the spark he stole
For some fair creature that he loves,
To lay his weary head upon her breast
And sink into an earthly rest to dream...

This song is ended.
May its singer find his peace,
With his gentle lady find his rest.
May his song distill
Some sweetness from her face,
Or, if to no avail,
Lie mute upon her desk.

MDO '68

I wrote the poem in one night, and took it to her the next morning. I just handed it to her saying, “I wrote this for you,” and left. A couple of days later I came back and asked her how she liked it. She said, “It was beautiful. It made me cry.” I didn’t have a clue how to follow up with her, so I said, “I’m glad you liked it,” and left. I wrote one other poem to express my longing.

Cathy

These eyes fall upon you
As if they had no hope
Or will but in your features
Earthly haven to find.
Saints at a shrine, they gaze
To see themselves imparadised
In Heaven's open arms.

MDO ‘ 68

I felt unable to translate the strong feeling I had for her into action to get her. The truth that I can see now is that I did not know her at all. I was in love with the image of her in my head, and it may have had nothing to do with who she really was.

Projection

Gestalt psychologists believe that everything we think we see and understand in the external world is a projection of our own mental and emotional state. I saw Kathy and projected my internal image of ideal femininity onto her and fell in love with this image. I had no idea what music she liked, what her philosophy of life was, what values she lived by, how she made love, but I was in love with her? I believe many young men (and women) do this same thing at a certain age. Relating to a real person, of course, is a different matter.

Learning lessons like this is called growing up. It’s probably good that we don’t know everything we think we do when we are young, otherwise we would never learn humility. Age teaches that God and the Universe conspire to humble us, like it or not.