Can you hear me, Mayor Tom? Oct. 17, 2012

  

On the last day working at the office, she posts a poem that continues the theme she started with her poem a few days ago, a kind of David Bowie “Space Oddity” with the main character as a kind of Mayor Tom, daring to step out of his space capsule.

We have taken a giant leap from her previous poem in which she is poised on a roof or cliff with her wings spread in anticipation of flight to a much more ambitious poem of her leaping into orbit.

In this poem, however, we get more than a hint of the anxiety leading up to lift off, and the amazement at lack of drama it entailed, a pleasant surprise at the ease of departure when she clearly expected something more, how it “passes gently and with grace.”

The launch into space turned out to be less traumatic than she expected as she slips into that limbo of weightlessness, free of the encumbrances, a Mayor Tom kind of illusion in which he thinks his space ship knows which way to go.

She talks about slipping out of the harness, which has several potential meanings, the straps that keep the astronaut in his or her seat during takeoff, unneeded once beyond the reach of earth’s heavy gravity, but also the harness of a beast of burden, who has been so used to hard labor and the grind of everyday work as to be unaware of what it feels like finally to be set free.

Like Mayor Tom in the Bowie song, her destination isn’t clear, although like Mayor Tom, when set free she floats forward almost naturally, free of constraints (no doubt of the past) and with no clearly indicating yet of the future, the past is left behind, her mind “skips lazily behind” the rest of her, carefree, happy to have this brief period of time before it catches up with her.

The agony of anticipation is over, and perhaps for the first time since being in her current incarnation, she is truly at ease, no longer needing to worry about what is going to happen, because it has happened already. She had let go of the world behind as she floats forward into some new adventure yet to be determined.

The poem opens with her reaction to a moment that she did not believe would actually happen – though she should have anticipated it because it has happened before – but unlike previous times, the event passed without the conflict, and she finds herself drifting in an odd space, engines humming steadily, and she released her constraints and drifts onward, her mind – bearing all of the weight of gravity – lagging behind, taking its time to catch up.

She clearly expected drama on her last day at the office, and it did not occur, except perhaps for the tears of our former temporary boss.

She has clearly come to terms with her (forced) decision to resign, and the poem suggests that she now feels free to move on, out of the harness, floating free to explore new opportunities, or perhaps just drifting, no longer encumbered by all the painful thoughts and feelings that so frequently dragged her out of sleep in the early morning.

It is the sort of feeling a kid might get skipping school and knowing he or she can’t get caught.

In this case, it is the feeling of leaving a job that has underpaid you and yet you were scared to let go of, and finally when forced to resign, realizing just how pleasant it feels to be free of it. The fear of repercussions lagging behind with the mind lazily skipping along with all the hamster wheel baggage she no longer needs or wants.

While it will all eventually catch up with her, she basks in those moments before it does, those moments of release and relief, those moments of utter freedom beyond even the influence of earth’s weighty gravity.

Where as her previous poem had her perched for flight, wings spread in anticipation of the leap, this poem has her in flight, the elation of it, nor yet concerned as to where she might land.

 

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