A couple of years ago I found myself in Monterey for Shabbos. Walking back from a favorite spot by the water, I heard the first lines of the following poem.
A walk with you Is overdue And though it's been long since We poured words freely from our lips (We sip them now in little sips) While yet the eucalyptus plays Its windy jig, let our two ways Join in the song For not too long Below.
A little dance Of look-and-glance And we'd be on our way Have you--it's been--does he--long dead Look up, and we've gone far ahead To places we'd not been before The birds are quiet as they soar And circle round We, on the ground Below.
The bluffs are blue The blue is you And me, and now the words We brought along are running low We'll fashion new ones as we go And, set aflutter on their wings Dare the distant glimmerings Or gently die In sweet good-bye Below.
It had been some time since I was last in Monterey, and returning to that place and those things was something akin to rediscovering an old letter or photograph. The sea has long been a favorite subject of anthropomorphism across cultures and in my family in particular, and in this instance it seemed to me to be a repository of all those people and things that one comes across and absorbs into oneself (also a known image in poetry and art). As the conscious mind develops and turns its energies in one direction or another, it loses immediate contact with those impressions but they by no means disappear, receding instead into the ever-growing ocean of being contained in the individual. When one is somehow brought back to the edge of this ocean, the churning mass of images, sensations, and notions overwhelms the conscious mind and can even bring about a period of loss of temporal orientation as our humble vessel goes suddenly from navigating a small lake to floating in an endless sea. Standing before the actual sea with its sights and smells brought about this experience for me.
Thus, the "you" above is a companion of many possible faces, not necessarily human, that may be recalled from the background hum of the person and spoken to again, whether with or without the aid of an external manifestation.
I have something to say regarding the central problem of Wordsworth's Ode in light of the above, but that will have to be for a different time.
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