As It Is
by Dorianne Laux

The man I love hates technology, hates
that he's forced to use it: telephones
and microfilm, air conditioning,
car radios and the occasional fax.
He wishes he lived in the old world,
sitting on a stump carving a clothespin
or a spoon. He wants to go back, slip
like lint into his great-great-grandfather’s
pocket, reborn as a pilgrim, a peasant,
a dirt farmer hoeing his uneven rows.
He walks when he can, through the hills
behind his house, his dogs panting beside him
like small steam engines. He's delighted
by the sun's slow and simple
descent, the complicated machinery
of his own body. I would have loved him
in any era, in any dark age, I would take him
into the twilight and unwind him, slide
my fingers through his hair and pull him
to his knees. As it is, this afternoon, late
in the twentieth century, I sit on a chair
in the kitchen with my keys in my lap, pressing
the black button on the answering machine
over and over, listening to his message,
his voice strung along the wires outside my window
where the birds balance themselves
and stare off into the trees, thinking
even in the farthest future, in the most
distant universe, I would have recognized
this voice, refracted, as it would be, like light
from some small, uncharted star.

"As It Is" by Dorianne Laux from Only As the Day Is Long: New and Selected Poems. W. W. Norton & Company © 2019. (buy now)

It's the birthday of the man who wrote the first memoir in Western literature: St. Augustine, (books by this author) born in 354 in Thagaste, which is now in Algeria. He is best known for his Confessions, a 13-book autobiography of his life and conversion.

He wrote, "Wisdom and folly both are like meats that are wholesome and unwholesome, and courtly or simple words are like town-made or rustic vessels — both kinds of food may be served in either kind of dish."

It was on this day in 1789 that Benjamin Franklin (books by this author) wrote a letter to his friend Jean-Baptiste Le Roy and observed: "In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes." 

It's the birthday of novelist Lady Caroline Lamb, (books by this author) famous as one of Lord Byron's lovers, born in London in 1785. She was tall and very skinny, with short blonde hair, and she liked to dress like a boy. At first, Lord Byron thought she was unattractive and wanted nothing to do with her. But she was confident and witty, she wrote poems and fiction, and she was one of the first women he had ever met who would actually argue with him about intellectual ideas. She was married, but she and Lord Byron became lovers and had an open, scandalous affair. It was Lady Caroline who coined what became a famous description of Lord Byron: "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know."

Their affair fell apart, each of them humiliating the other in public. A few years later, she published a Gothic novel called Glenarvon (1816). It was set during the Irish Rebellion of 1798, but all the characters were modeled after the Lady Caroline's acquaintances, including the main character, Ruthven Glenarvon, an unflattering and obvious portrait of Byron. Caroline even used his love letters in the novel, and it became a huge sensation because people in London knew exactly who it was about.

It's the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson, (books by this author) born in Edinburgh, Scotland (1850). He was an only child, sickly, brought up in a very religious household by parents and a nanny who were strict believers in a gloomy brand of Scottish Calvinism. But his nanny was also a storyteller. She told young Robert gruesome stories about Scottish martyrs, and also tales of ghosts and fairies, and read him adventure stories.

His father and his grandfather were well-known lighthouse builders, and it was expected that young Robert would follow in their footsteps, but he had no interest in engineering. He just wanted to write. Finally, his father agreed that he could become a lawyer instead, a compromise that didn't make anyone very happy, and after he passed the bar, he never practiced law. What he did do was move to an artists' colony in the Fontainebleau Forest in northern France, and fall in love with a woman there, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. She was 10 years older than him, recently separated, raising children.

They got married, moved around a lot in Europe and the United States. And he found himself with two young stepchildren. His health was bad, and so physically there wasn't much he could do, but he liked to play indoors with the children. To entertain his stepson, he created an elaborate game, and as part of it, he drew a treasure map and told a story about the island he had drawn, which his stepson named "Treasure Island." And he couldn't get that story out of his head, so he wrote Treasure Island (1883), and his story of pirates and adventure became hugely popular. The prime minister of England stayed up all night reading it, and Henry James said that Treasure Island was "all as perfect as a well-played boy's game." Much as Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) shaped our ideas about Christmas, Treasure Island provided many of the details we now associate with pirates — from the Black Spot to the ditty "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest/ Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Within the next few years, Stevenson published all the books for which he is remembered today: A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), Kidnapped (1886), and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886). He died at age 44.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.^®

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