Chapter 7 -6

THE REVOLUTION OF THE PAST GENERATION IN THE RELIGIOUS SCIENCES HAS SCARCELY PENETRATED POPULAR CONSCIOUSNESS AND HAS YET TO SIGNIFICANTLY INFLUENCE PUBLIC ATTITUDES THAT REST UPON TOTALLY OUTMODED CONCEPTIONS. PAUL sat in his baff, wondering what to do next. "Well, what shall I do next? What is the next thing demanded of me by history?" If you know who it is they are whispering about, then you usually dont like it . If Paul wants to become a monk, thats his affair entirely. Of course we had hoped that he would take up his sword as part of the Presidents war on poetry. The time is ripe for that. The root causes of poetry have been studied and studied. And now that we know that pockets of poetry still exist in our great country, especially in the large urban centers, we ought to be able to wash it out totally in one generation, if we put our backs into it. But we were prepared to hide our disappointment. The decision is Pauls finally. "Are those broken veins in my left cheek, above the cheekbone there? No, thank God, they are only tiny whiskers not yet whisked away. Missed in yesterdays scrape, but vulnerable to the scrape of today." Besides, most people are not very well informed about the clo istered life. Certainly they can have light bulbs if they want them, and their rivers and mountains are not inferior to our own. "They make interesting jam," Hank said. "But its his choice, in the final analysis. Anyhow, we have his typewriter. That much of him is ours, now." People were caring each other under Pauls window. "Why are all these people existing under my window? It is as if they were as palpable as me -- as bloody, as firm, as well-read." Monkish business will carry him to town sometimes; perhaps we will be able to see him then.

"MOTHER can I go over to Hogos and play?" "No Jane Hogo is not the right type of young man for you to play with. He is thirty-five now and that is too old for innocent play. I am afraid he knows some kind of play that is not innocent, and will want you to play it with him, and then you will agree in your ignorance, and then the fat will be in the fire. That is the way I have the situation figured out anyhow. That is my reading of it. That is the way it looks from where I stand." "Mother all this false humility does not become you any more than that mucky old poor little match-girl dress you are wearing." "This dress Ill have you know cost two hundred and forty dollars when it was new." "When was it new?" "It was new in 1918, the year your father and I were in the trenches together, in the Great War. That was a war all right. Oh I know there have been other wars since, better-publicized ones, more expensive ones perhaps, but our war is the one Ill always remember. Our war is the one tha t means war to me." "Mother I know Hogo is thirty-five and thoroughly bad through and through but still there is something drawing me to him. To his house. To the unnnocence I know awaits me there." "Simmer down child . There is a method in my meanness. By refusing to allow you to go to Hogos house, I will draw Hogo here, to your house, where we can smother him in blueberry flan and other kindnesses, and generally work on him, and beat the life out of him, in one way or another." "That's shrewd mother."

THE poem remained between us like an enormous, wrecked railroad car. "Touching the poem," we said, "is it rhymed or free?" "Free," Snow White said, "free, free, free." "And the theme ?" "One of the great themes," she said, "that is all I can reveal at this time." "Could you tell us the first word?" "The first word," she said, "is bandaged and wounded. " "But. . ." "Run together," she said. We mentally reviewed the great themes in the light of the word or words, "bandaged and wounded." "How is it that bandage precedes wound?" "A metaphor of the self armoring itself against the gaze of The Other." "The theme is loss, we take it." "What," she said, "else?" "Are you specific as to what is lost?" "Brutally." " Snow White," we said, "why do you remain with us? here? in this house?" There was a silence. Then she said: "It must be laid, I suppose, to a failure of the imagination. I have not been able to imagine anything better." I have not been able to imagine anything better. We were pleased by this powerful statement of our essential mutuality, which can never be undered or torn, or broken apart, dissipated, diluted, corrupted or finally severed, not even by art in its manifold and dreadful guises. "But my imagination is stirring," Snow White said. "Like the long-sleeping stock certificate suddenly alive in its green safety-deposit box because of new investor interest, my imagination is stirring. Be warned." Something was certainly wrong, we felt.