Jousting at windmills? Sept. 29, 2012

 

A whole month after posting her last poem, she posts one that truly reflects some of the issues she is dealing with.

There is almost a Christ-like quality in her description of her struggles, the falling to the ground, her determination to get up again, carrying her cross even when aided by those who would encourage her to carry on with a touch of shoulder or whisper in her ear.

Who these good Samaritans are, she doesn’t say, or even if they are good Samaritans at all, or if they are even real.

This comes at a time when there is serious conflict in her life, questions about what she is doing and who is supporting her activities, and whether these people can be trusted or not.

The poem opens with an observation about the string of endless days that all seem the same, part of an equally endless struggle and some inner resource urging her to keep fighting – even when she is face down in the dirt.

She has fallen, again Christ-like, from exhaustion, and how she has gotten used to the smell of dirt.

She describes her body as “torn and bleeding,” but stubbornly “hurls” itself up, not so much by conscious thought, but by instinct, from the adrenaline that rushes through her with her need to survive, her body telling her she is not finished yet – even as parts of her protest against her trying to stand again.

She is forced ahead against her will, into a clearly hostile world, a world she clearly does not understand, a world as puzzled as she is about her ability to go on, “jerking one foot, then the next, something automatic, like breathing, which she is surprised she can do that as well.

At this point, helping hands appear like Saint Simon, touching her elbow briefly, just enough to stead her, just enough to “lend momentum” to her advance -- and here, we get the sense that the hands might not be friendly at all when she refers to them as having the “gall to feed off the quest,” she knows is right.

I suspect this is a reference to me and my attempt to undermine her “big scoop” in my column this week, when she clearly believes in the validity of what RR has told her.

Again, we get some Christian symbolism, she as a noble knight on some crusade, believing in her cause when I tell her she is jousting with windmills.

She is determined to move forward when faint voices she does not completely believe are real encourage her to keep going.

The duality of this passage said she is aided by others that she does not completely trust, or perhaps is motivated by opposition that makes her even more determined to prove herself right, alluding to the “gall” of some to feed off her quest, me perhaps, but also perhaps other people with their own agendas, while she remains pure and faithful to her goals.

 As said earlier, the speaker is portrayed as a Christ-like figure, someone noble, a knight who has been wounded, yet not defeated, struggling to advance, inspired, driven even by her need to survive.

As in some of her previous poems, the speaker seems to be offering counsel to herself, using “you” as if the person struggling was somebody other than herself, and the speaker’s purpose is to act as guide, perhaps like those voices she thinks she hears, telling herself she must still achieve her purpose.

The poem creates a sense of the monotony of the struggle, the endless string of days, one no different from the other, perhaps even alluding to the Sisyphus myth, which many scholars compare to Christ’s carrying the cross. Sisyphus is punished in the underworld by the god Zeus, who forces him to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. Every time he nears the top of the hill, the boulder rolls back down.

Yet out of this she finds if not an ember of hope, then determination not to be defeated, even at that moment when she believes she can do no more. Her “stubborn body” forces her to rise up, even after exhaustion caused her to fall in the first place.

She is not done, even as her nerves complain after she has tried to rest. Here she clearly refers to the tensions that plague her daily life.

We only get a vague sense of who the villains are who keep her from fulfilling her quest, and she does not define what the quest, except that she knows it is “right.”

This may well allude to her efforts to unseat the local congressman, and her absolute faith that RR is telling her the truth, and the “gall” some people (such as me) to stand in her way, to feed off her potential glory.

 

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