The Road to Poetry and the Road to Law

I've always been good with words. Good with words. And it seems people who are good with words are shepherded at that tender age, that formative juncture, towards one of two diverging, forking roads. The Road to Poetry and the Road to Law. I could have gone either way but like in all great stories, mine is one where the protagonist is subject to forces of nature and heredity that are outside his control. My grandfather was an immigrant and a product of the Great Depression and he could never escape from the gravitational pull of these two anxiety-ridden, desperate mindsets. And my parents, well, they came of age in the 60's, and completely missed Woodstock. They missed the Civil Rights Movement, the March on Washington, they missed Dylan and the Beatles. To paraphrase that great line from from Field of Dreams, they "experienced two 50's and went right to the 70's." My father voted for Goldwater and Nixon twice. And my mother, well, while her contemporaries were out fighting for their wings, she never cared to fight for anything. She loved and that was enough for her.

I can't tell you how many times in those early gangly years, in those impressionable, imprintive winters, springs, and falls, I would hear various relatives and family acquaintances tell me what a fine lawyer I would make. What a sublime lawyer I would make. I could argue anything back then (I still can but I don't have that particular inclination anymore). I could take both sides of a debate and earn my money without conceding a point from heads or tails. Those voices of my youth, coming from the wise elders of my tribe, were strong and assertive and refused to be doubted. And for a while, I believed them. Poised to become the next Senator from the Great State of New Jersey, I looked the part. Nice clean side part, not to be seen with more than a day's facial hair, firm grip, solid eye contact, polite banter, respect to elders, respect to power. I knew the game but inside, did I hate it. Did I fucking hate it. I hated these people in their slick armor. I hated myself in that role and I didn't play it for very long. Yes, I took the Law School Aptitude Test without a cup of coffee in my hand and earned my acceptance.

I was in Law School for seven weeks. The time it takes, I think for some animals to give birth to a litter of offspring. The time it takes for the greatest hitter to escape out of his longest slump. That semester, I was pregnant with bayonettes and gunpowder, with the embryo of a revolutionary taking hold in my gut.

Seven weeks looking around me, saying, "What the fuck am I doing here?" Seven weeks of doodling during Property Law class and looking around and drifting off on the clouds of my escaping thoughts. I drew spaceships and women's breasts, and got pretty good at doing crossword puzzles during that time. I left after seven weeks, without much ado or fanfare. I just said, or at least felt, "This don't quite fit." For the first time in my life, I couldn't find the words to fit the sentiment. It was just all wrong. In the way something tells you not to buy that particular used yellow truck from the discount lot. In the way that you know someone has been messing around with your woman. Wrong in that kind of way. Without a backup plan, without a "Plan B," I just threw my books down and left.

Now, to be honest, I had a little assistance in hastening my departure and making that fateful decision. A divine wind at my back per se. Rather a full-body sledgehammer. The summer before that first and only semester in law school, I was to fall in love for the first time. Really fall in love where someone loved me back in the same way. Making out on rooftops, spontaneous nighttime picnics in intersection lawns masquerading as parks, and crazy vows of foreverness after only weeks together. I was taught two important lessons from those first weeks: First, how to properly go down on a woman (invaluable!). Second, that when you are in love, deep in the shrouding darkness of love, nothing else, no other power in the world, even the one of a loaded, trembling gun in another's hands pointing at your temple, could compete for your attention. I went into law school that fall with a tired tongue and a distracted mind. Even the voice of my own gut wasn't loud enough; I doubt had enough attention to keep up any kinds of studies. I was in love and that was pretty much all that mattered.

I left Law School and I didn't really look back. And I have not worn a necktie to any office since the day I walked out of the Dean of Admisssion's office to offer my own admission that me and his particular profession would not suffice as a match. Gone were any aspirations of the Senator from the Great State of New Jersey. Gone was the sidepart, gone was the rigid decorum, gone was that mask, that parasite of a mask that my grandfather had welded to my face in an immigrants hope of creating a new homeland superstar. I began the journey of living from my own center, out of my own idea of what a "good life" could be. I would learn later that Jung called this the process of "indivudation." I set about to individuate.

Individuation is no easy process. It requires an appetite for self-destruction. Cutting off parts of yourself that are not yours, and hoping you don't lop off parts that are yours in the process. Your system of beliefs, adopted at an age when you are too young to truly make conscious choice, must then be revisited. One by one as they come up. You must ask yourself, "Is this mine? Where did it come from? What were the motives of the person or persons who endowed me with it?" And then move on from there. Individuation. Becoming a free-thinking, expanding individual.

No, I don't really talk about my foray into law school much. Just like I won't really talk about my relationship I'm in or my thoughts on God unless I really trust you. Or unless I don't know you at all. If you fall in between, I will remain somewhat of an enigma to you. But this particular theme bubbled up today. Bubbled up today on this gray wintry day, under a prototypical Upstate sky. And I found myself backpeddlling.

I hit the VCR rewind button back past the graduations, past the drunken sex, past the complete-game shutouts, past those many lonely nights, past the self-immoliation, past the the smoky nights, past the days on the beach, past the intoxication, to that formative juncture, back to that fork in the road. A lone young man standing there with his bare soul and with his gift for words. To the right I see the Road of Law. I see structure, I see boxes of different shapes, of wood and cardboard and titanium. I see money, lots of it. Hanging from tree branches, suspended by fishing hooks waiting to pierce the flesh of uncalloused hands. I see grey faces, grey as this wintry sky above me. Prematurely greying. I see expanding waistlines and bulging necks trying to button collars. I see firm handshakes and nods of approval. I see automation. I see facts and figures and a desert of details. I see T.S Eliot venturing in doing his research on his theme of a "buried life." I see T.S. Eliot writing that if he doesn't get back soon, "All will be lost."

And to the left of me, I see the Road of Poetry. I don't see flowers, I don't see musicians with laurel leaves and lyres, I don't see wet and willing women, I don't see David writing psalms. I don't see David losing his mind looking down at Bathsheba's bare back on that fateful moonlit rooftop. I don't see a Burning Bush. I don't see candlewax or oil paint. I don't see wine grapeskins or dark chocolate. It's just a void. A black. A great unknown. Uncharted, unmapped, black and boundless.