The Purpose of Blogging and Ginsberg's "A Supermarket in California"

As most of you know, I teach at a school that follows a year-round track. Although this is likely the last year I'll enjoy Novembers off due to the fact that I'm looking for a new job and the school district is going to change the calendar anyway, for now I have more time with the family and more time in general. Since I enjoy writing, you'll notice the blog posts are a lot more wordy. I know many people read blogs like dilettantes, perusing for photos and sound bytes, I prefer to think of blogs as something more. So, venture further only if you read for pleasure and like to exercise that vastly underused muscle we call the brain. Well, it's not a muscle, but...never mind.

This post started out with a desire to express my love for life. My initial thought was to simply catalog some of the people and things in life I love, such as my family, friends, hobbies, etc. but, somewhere in that thought process, an image of green electricity was elicited from my brain, an image that I immediately connected to a poem I once read which used language to educe the power and passion associated with nature and youthful zeal. I was unable to remember the poem and author, but I connected the poem to my modern poetry class from 2003, a strange and conflicted year in my life. Anyhow, the next connection was to the beat movement and then the name Allen Ginsberg. A cursory Google search did not reveal the poem I was looking for, but it did lead me to the poem you'll read below which I like to think of as an ode to the forces of nature and youth.

Now, I am often torn between two aspects of myself (ha!) one which says, "Hey, post some of your real thoughts," while the other says, "Hey, people don't want to think when they blog hop, they just want to..." So, what do they want? Well, at the risk of sounding rude, I decided some time ago I don't care what people want, the blog is mine, or rather ours, so I am going to post whatever floats my proverbial boat. Perhaps a post might just be some vacation photos with no explanatory text. Maybe I'll post a bunch of pictures of some terrible cakes. I might decide to dissect some beatnik poetry. Although I love the various species of blogs that crawl the hallways of the wild world wide web (personal narratives, news, tech, sports, photo, etc.) I personally refuse to just post endless pictures of our kids because frankly I think that eventually gets a bit boring, BUT if one's blog is dedicated to family and friends who live far away and want to see a photo blog of children, then it's serving it's purpose. Speaking of the purpose of the blog, I think many who explore blogs in the "Mormon" blogosphere think of blogs as personal of familial vehicles to share pictures and tidbits, but I think limiting ourselves to that is a sort of depressingly representative of how the average modern citizen has lost the ability to think critically. As we know, the unexamined life is not worth living. I truly and deeply agree with that statement. My close friends know how frustrating I find the sleepy state of modern society in terms of spirituality and intellectualism and I am not referring the false or pseudo-intellectuals that spew forth their venom on television and from the ivory towers of academia. I thirst for the times when the "average" Joes and Janes wrote lengthy letters and poetry and sang and wrote their own music (not that I can do either of the latter...well, I can sing, but I can't sing). So, now that I've gone off on a tirade that could potentially make me look like an egoist or an overtly critical person, which I vehemently deny since I love nearly everyone I meet from the get go, you can read what will surely be a let down after all of this hooplah I've just created. But isn't stream of consciousness fun? Also, it's in the beat spirit...although I can't say I've done so from the outset in a rhetorical fashion.

Despite the fact that the two of us would surely disagree on most fundamental aspects of metaphysics--mostly those of an ethical nature, to be sure--and although I might have been tempted to punch him in the face, I generally enjoy Ginsberg's poetry and find the Beat movement fascinating, at least from a cultural perspective, especially regarding the various ways it influenced society both negatively and positively.

Although I was exposed to it the Beat poetry as a teenager, I really discovered it, along with most modern poetry, later in college during my undergraduate studies in English at the University of California at Riverside. As one who passionately loves this life (I think you must distinguish), I can see what I think Ginsberg saw in this world and, although my vision of the world continues to depart from his as I grow older and more mature, I can remember seeing the world as "vividly" as Ginsberg did at various times, and for various reasons, as a younger man. I can't say the colors have faded, indeed they have intensified in many respects as I have borne children and begin to see the world anew, but after becoming a husband and father, and realizing this world is not the end goal, my perspective has shifted greatly and I am no longer interested in experiential sensationalism. In fact, I now see sensation and desire as huge obstacles to certain states that I now desire to attain. Regardless, I respect poets like Whitman and Ginsberg, despite their inherently hedonistic and sensational tendencies, in that they enumerate-- to steal Ginsberg's verb--the endless beauty and joys of nature, that object which has been praised since the beginning of time and lies closest to God...naturally! As a Latter-day Saint I proudly embrace the natural world and physical body while simultaneously and ecstatically proclaiming the virtues of a higher order, a spiritual order, for this is the truth we have which is that the soul of man is the body AND the spirit.

*The formatting of the poem got messed up in the copy and paste transition, sorry!

A Supermarket in California

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon. In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neonfruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons? I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys. I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price bananas? Are you my Angel? I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,and followed in my imagination by the store detective. We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the cashier. Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.Which way does your beard point tonight? (I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.) Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely. Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage? Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
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A couple of the major impressions and images that come to mind while reading this:

A little supermarket Sarah and I, along with her family, frequented while visiting Jake up in Central Cali on a water skiing trip a couple of years ago.

The market in Steinbeck's Cannery Row.

Old Whitman, with his tangled white beard, shuffling through a grocery store fingering the various fruits and caught up in the ecstacy of sight and sound. Man, would I love to drive him around LA or NYC today on a busy night in a car just to watch his face. I have some ideas as to where he is now actually, but that's a metaphysical discussion in and of itself! (;