So, You Want to Be a…

This morning is my birthday. Or, is it Queen Victoria Day? Or, the first day of the summer harvest? I really don’t know. What’s important is that it is some sort of holiday and Sherman loves holidays.

He is actually quite good at them. Besides, he kind of treats every day like it’s a holiday, so maybe this is just some average Tuesday. Regardless, Sherman is always leaving surprises around our make-shift igloo (not made of snow by the way). This morning I opened the cupboard to reach for my morning coffee grinds and was caught in a rain of Hershey’s Kisses cascading from the top shelf—the one where he knew I couldn’t reach them from.

After being initially offended—I believe the raging phrase “What the fuck!!!” may have slipped from my carnal lips—I took a step back and aligned myself with the whimsical kindness I had just experienced. I also aligned myself with the piping fresh coffee Sherman had left out on the counter for me, complete with a love note that read: Your face could freeze like that. Have a good day.

No doubt this was going to be the highlight of the day. Most of the rest of this holiday—whichever one it is—was spent listening to my art students referring to me as a “wannabe” as we looked at my artistic wet-dream, Sir Jackson Pollock. Okay, he is runner-up to Salvador Dali and neither of them looks quite like Serena Williams in a beard, but he is still on the medal stand of my art-heart fantasy, damn it.

“Jackson Pollock did something no one else had done before,” I told them, likely beaming at the thought that I was being paid to recreate a Julia Roberts moment that was not a Pretty Woman discard, complete with herpes. “He changed the definition of what is considered art.”

“Jealous much!” sneered one of my students, in what I must admit was an impressively abstract use of the English language. Clearly I am better suited as a professor of language than an, albeit brilliant, junior art instructor.

“Wannabe,” hollered another.

“Oh, and here I thought no one wanted to go to summer school,” I said, drawing upon my inner-Julia. I believe this is called the method. “My mistake.”

“NEVER!” the class cried in unison. I had been hoping more for a round, but I was willing to take it.

Feeling Dali would not go over any better than Pollock, and not wanting another of my ethereal lovers to be attacked today—I am a very protective partner in this way, just ask Sherman—I decided we could use the term art more abstractly as well and delve into the world of poetry. I picked up a dusty book titled Poetry through the Ages that I had purchased in haste one day while in graduate school, thinking it was a more cerebral version of Poetry for Dummies. When I flipped through ‘the ages’ I realized that the title was tongue-in-cheek meant that it will take you ages to read it. Hence the dusty cover; but, I suppose that all roads tread have inevitably led to Sherman in my own serial, so I was willing to give PTSD PTTA another shot at a place in my life.

“Okay class,” I shouted. When no one responded to this I broke out my bear whistle and went to town on it like I was auditioning for American Idol for the seventh time and had never once made it past the reject episode. That got their attention; but, only because they thought it meant Sherman was coming to visit. He has occasionally made an appearance and they all like him way more than any of them like me. This decision obviously raised my opinion of all of them as well. To be honest, the only one who lost that game was Sherman.

“No, there’s no Sherman,” I said, to a sea of audible groans and snivels. “We are going to do some poetry fun instead!”

“NEVER!” the chorus rang out again. At this point they almost had it honed enough to go on tour in the Ozarks.

“Don’t worry,” I reassured them. “Poetry is the beautiful language of your special sky friend, Jesus. Jesus loves poetry. If you leave a poem under your pillow for him, he will come and leave you a silver dollar in return.”

“That’s the tooth-fairy!”

“Damn, I always confuse those two.” Instead of continuing on with what might have proven to be a logical dialogue, I awkwardly flipped through ‘the ages’, coming across a poem that seemed less sentimental than the ones I was too carefree to interpret back in grad school. “So you want to be a writer…”

“NEVER!” the chorus chimed in.

“So you want to be a writer,” I sang as my mind drifted off to a future where we were all on tour together, not entirely unlike The Rankin Family, “by Charles Bukowski.”

“If it doesn’t come bursting out of you, in spite of everything, don’t do it,” I began, as the chorus chimed in with “NEVER!”

 Yet, with each new line, the chorus became less and less enthused, the synchronicity waned and eventually the voices puttered to a full stop. Of course, this delighted me. I had always known I possessed the enchanting voice of a siren, and had finally been presented with the evidence.

As I flipped the crisp, although not entirely unhandled page, to finish my reading exercise, I noticed that two additional stanzas had been inserted in ink and calligraphic penmanship.

So, you want to be a writer—

don’t give up your day job.

But, if you want to be my lover and my friend—

everything you do is magic; there is nothing left to mend.

You will probably never read this, which is a dozen kinds of good,

since the greatest things in life (and love) are done for reasons not often understood.

For you a thousand kisses are witnessed in the sky, but a million more rise from my heart—

never seen, yet forever uninterrupted.

                                                                                                      —Your Bear

As a piece of poetry, it broke all of the rules. It was touching, romantic and far more endearing than anything I had ever come up with myself. As I sat there, tears welling in my eyes, the class came to a complete stop.

After a moment I composed myself once more. “That was a perfect round everyone—class dismissed!”

“Later, Pollock!”

 As the class peeled out of my dank art studio with more zeal than even the greatest poets ever exhibited in their respective quests to share their visions with the world, I spoke softly, almost inaudibly, to myself. “This was a day for the ages.” Then I closed the dusty book and returned it to the shelf, quietly relishing the secret thought that I know what Sherman does for me without him even knowing that I know it at all.

In itself, that is almost poetic. That we both know that the truth of our story is as alive unsaid as it ever could be told, makes it more than something for the ages—it makes it timeless.