Thursday, May 21, 2015

May 21: Directionally Challenged, Gregory Pardlo, "Boethius"

I am directionally challenged.  Always have been.  If I have to travel some place new, I print out maps (I don't have an iPhone, so Siri is not a friend of mine).  One of my biggest fears in life is getting lost.  I hate not knowing how to get where I need to go.

I've gotten lost driving to my sister-in-law's house, and I've been there many, many times.  I've gotten lost on Oahu, trying to get back to my hotel in Waikiki.  In Walt Disney World.  In California and Wisconsin.  In Detroit.

It's a terrible affliction.  I have literally gotten lost in hotels and shopping malls.  If I had an iPhone, it wouldn't matter.  I don't know how to get Siri to work.  I'm a little technologically challenged, as well.

So, basically, Saint Marty is doomed to wander the world, hopelessly lost.  Or stay in his house, watching reruns of Mike & Molly.

Boethius:  The creator moves the slowest bodies and halts those that are too fast, brings back to the right path those which have strayed.

by:  Gregory Pardlo

Even Virgin Mary couldn't compete with the miracles
performed on dashboards by GPS devices that summon
the heavens for guidance instead of forgiveness.  Instead of
blessing we want clairvoyance and the dust bursts of angels
and demons appearing on our shoulders, though we know
they may only goad us into leading some high- or low-speed
chase while America tunes in at home, their eyes in the skies.
Used to be the battle of getting there was indeed a tortoise and
hare propositions full of K-turns in strangers' driveways, but our
omniscient technology has made speed obsolete.  Who needs to
hurry when we have a hivemind of newfeeds, can discern death's
thumbprint in the marrow of a bone and engineer children who
are elegant and fleet?  In the end, James Dean couldn't outrun
a glacier.  Just as the slowest floes preyed timelessly on dinosaurs
and shat their bones, our rockets now fold the speckled
firmament to take orbit on the shoulders of eternity where they
may fill the creator's ears with our mortal doubts and provocations.

The TV show based on my life...

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