For years, most notably between late 2005 and last year sometime – I spent an hour or so nearly every day, talking to the guys, then transcribing what I had gotten, then sending it around to the Explorers list as well as my own private newsnet list, and then here. Out of those conversations came several books, some of which have been published, some which have not yet been.
For some time now, rather than recording new conversations here, I have been reprinting old ones. Friends have asked when, or rather if, I will resume the conversations, and when I have said perhaps never (though one never knows), sometimes they have not seemed to quite understand. It occurs to me, the easiest way to explain is to quote portions of Emerson’s poem “Terminus.” (His son later wrote that when his father read his that newly written poem, he for the first time realized that his father had grown old, and Emerson was only in his early sixties at the time.)
I encourage you to read the poem in its entirety, but for me to reproduce it here would be to dilute my point. So, excerpts:
It is time to be old,
To take in sail:—
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal rounds,
And said: “No more!
No farther shoot
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
…
There’s not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.
…
Talking to the guys in writing, and then transcribing and posting it, has always been a joy and an education, but it takes time and energy, and at this point to do that is to not do other things, including the novel I am about halfway through writing. “Make thy option which of two,” and I am doing that.
But if the first part of the poem is in a sense negative, the final part is pure positive, and I have identified with this sentiment from the first time I came across it:
As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
“Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.”
I don’t know what that says to you. To me it is an almost offhand declaration of faith in life. What the guys apparently came to teach me, Emerson knew long before: All is well, all is always well. There is never the need or excuse for worry.