Anyplace Away From Here

LEAVING HOME
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Three Little Pigs ~ Slide Show

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation -- a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move. . . . nearly all Americans move away, or want to” (10, emphasis added; 99).

~by John Steinbeck
~from Travels With Charley: In Search of America, 1962

~ Oil Field Girls (1940) ~
Jerry Bywaters
(1906 - 1989)

"Impossible, now, to live your life
in a single place, to call it home."
Del Marie Rogers
(1936 - 2022)

Home-Free

There’s no rhyme for how high the corn should be*
in September, but I can see it, and I’m telling you

it’s up to my chest, maybe even my neck—
it’s hard to tell from the road—and it’s brown,

and judging by the sibilance when the wind
rubs the husks together, it must feel like paper.

I didn’t see myself living among husks. I didn’t
see myself here, not once I’d left my mother

and father’s house. Not Ohio, not round on the ends,
not high in the middle, not where some creeks

are called cricks. I always thought I would leave,
home-free, and go anywhere: land of silver

mesquite branches, land of dry riverbeds
with stones a horse could spark its hooves on.

Not here, not knee-high by July, not in the heart
of it all, not where some cricks are creeks:

Alum, Big Darby, Blacklick. I didn’t see myself
raising children here, raising as if they could

levitate if we focused our attention. I didn’t
see myself dying in my hometown, not a few

miles from where I was born, not surrounded
by my children, their feet planted on the ground.

I can see them. They’ll say they always knew
where to find me. They’ll say I was always here.

~by Maggie Smith
~from Good Bones, 2017

*Actually there IS a rhyme for this:
"The corn is as high / as an elephant's eye"

Last month I was comparing John Steinbeck with novelist Ann Patchett, so alike in their vision of a picture - perfect landscape. This month, I'm contrasting Steinbeck and poet Maggie Smith, so different in their views of leaving home or staying put. Steinbeck is convinced that searching far afield is the one true path, while Smith presents the magic charm of blooming where planted, "a few miles from where I was born."

For Steinbeck, the urge for new vistas is irresistible. His heart aches for the little neighbor boy who sees him getting ready to drive for weeks across the country, and begs: "take me with you." Steinbeck writes: "Unfortunately, I knew his longing. . . . He had the dream I've had all my life, and there is no cure." Or the young man he meets later on who reads The New Yorker and dreams of going there on his own one day: "'One likes to see for one's self,' he said. I swear he said it" (Travels With Charley, 10 - 11; 172)).

For Smith, on the other hand, a familiar circumference is ultimately a gift to her children:
" . . . They’ll say they always knew
where to find me. They’ll say I was always here."
Remember, even Yeats (see blog header way up above) hoped for his daughter to be "Rooted in one dear perpetual place. . . . accustomed, ceremonious."

Is it, or is it not "supposed to be any way"? Is one life choice significantly better than or preferable to the other? Or is it 6 of one, 5 of the other -- as in, yes, there is a difference, but just not much, and not always clear which is which. I can't really imagine my life if my parents had abided perpetually close at hand, or if I had, or if Gerry had. The literary connecions suggest many options: staying forever, going away but returning, striking out on your own and learning something new, leaving and never looking back . . .

1. Shakespeare

ROMEO [upon learning of his banishment]:
"There is no world without Verona walls."

FRIAR LAWRENCE:
"Be patient, for the world is broad and wide."

2. Charlotte Bronte

" . . . my experience had been of [the world's] rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils."(Jane Eyre, Chapter 10)

3. John Denver

" On the eve of his twentyfirst birthday
he set out on his own
He was thirty years and running
when he found his way back home
Riding a storm across the mountains
and an aching in his heart
Said he came to turn the pages
and to make a brand new start . . .

There was something in the city
that he said he couldn't breathe
And there was something in the country
that he said he couldn't leave . . . "

4. Alan Parsons

"The traveler is always leaving town
He never has the time to turn around
And if the road he's taken isn't leading anywhere
He seems to be completely unaware . . .

The traveler awaits the morning tide
He doesn't know what's on the other side
But something deep inside of him
Keeps telling him to go
He hasn't found a reason to say no . . . "

5. David Wagoner

" . . . not from the hustings or the barricades
Or the rickety stage . . .
But from another way out . . . Get out of town."

6. Josephine Tey

"It was typical that Robert's ambition was to go back to the little country town and continue life as it was; while Kevin's was to alter everything that was alterable in the Law and to make as much noise as possible in the doing of it" (The Franchise Affair, 93)

7. Walt Whitman

“Listen! I will be honest with you,
I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes,
These are the days that must happen to you:
You shall not heap up what is call’d riches,
You shall scatter with lavish hand all that you earn or achieve,
You but arrive at the city to which you were destin’d, you hardly settle yourself to satisfaction before you are
call’d by an irresistible call to depart,
You shall be treated to the ironical smiles and mockings of those who remain behind you,
What beckonings of love you receive you shall only answer with passionate kisses of parting,
You shall not allow the hold of those who spread their reach’d hands toward you."
("Song of the Open Road” #11)

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Tuesday, May 28th
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