The Reincarnation of Edgar Allan Poe

I took a Facebook personality quiz the other day and found out something interesting: I was Edgar Allan Poe in a previous lifetime! My biggest quandary at this point is I've seen several of my friends who were also Poe. I say it's a quandary, but it's probably just a glitch, because it's more likely I'm Poe than any of them. The other choices were Mozart, Darwin, Lincoln, and Jimmy Durante.

According to the quiz, I'm Poe because I tend to be moody, solitary, inner-directed, and decisive. It definitely puts a good spin on my personality; I haven't been much at parties, but now I'll be able to say I'm a famous dead author, a great icebreaker.

One big problem for me in judging all this is I don't know that much about Poe. I do have "my" complete works on the shelf, so that's a start. I've looked through them a few times, then wonder why; they don't look that interesting. Now I know why, because I wrote it all! However, of all the stories in the world "The Tell-Tale Heart" was my favorite story as a kid. I read it in school maybe five, six times. The other stuff, not so much.

I remember one Halloween, they gave us a great treat. We went to a dark room at school and watched "The Raven" from a 16mm projector. That was great fun. The color was really good, and you get a good vibe when you actually hear the projector clacking away. Whatever scary parts there were, kids were making scary noises and laughing, all great fun.

I never actually read "The Raven," though, till I was an adult. So I wasn't familiar with one of my greatest poems till way past childhood. Depriving myself, obviously, since it truly is very creepy. And because they mention it on Jeopardy about 10 times a month, always on the Teen Tournament.

A couple years ago I read a book that tied me in somehow with a murder in New York. My memory never being that good, I can't remember what it was all about. A young woman had gone to an abortion provider, who was another woman in a house, then crossed over the river, and was found dead in New Jersey. Somehow I, Edgar Allan Poe, was connected with that. I wrote a story based on it, changing the names. It's in my Collected Works.

One of the things I'm very proud of is that the Beatles mentioned me in one of their songs, "I Am the Walrus," and that I'm pictured on the Sgt. Pepper album, my big blockhead and huge forehead making me stand out in quite a stark, wonderful way.

Now that I'm back -- or now that I realize I'm me -- it might be worth a little effort to see if I can get some back royalties. I know what everyone's objection will be, the supposed fact that since I'm dead all these years the works have passed into the public domain. Except -- my retort is obvious -- how does that apply if I'm manifestly not dead? Gotcha there. The quiz doesn't lie, and now that I think of it I'm getting back some of memories. A couple biographies from the library and I'll be my old self again.

I'll start with Wikipedia. I was born about a month before Abraham Lincoln, coincidentally one of my current Facebook friends who took the quiz. I died at the ancient age of 40. I'm best known for my tales of mystery and the macabre. I had a financially difficult life and career.

I attended the University of Virginia for one semester, failing all my classes except Creative Writing, in which I excelled. In 1835, I married my 13-year-old cousin. Our first son is presently reincarnated as Jerry Lee Lewis. I died in Baltimore, the cause of my death being variously attributed to alcohol, brain congestion, cholera, drugs, heart disease, rabies, suicide, tuberculosis, and other agents. Obviously I had a hard time avoiding trouble, including the difficulty of getting life insurance.

Please, everyone, help make my life and career better in this present incarnation. Read the Grandma Slump blog faithfully -- I haven't lost my great talent. Send money. And any advice you may have on how to stay well. For any illness or condition, since I've had them all. Whatever goes around, I catch, so I need your help. Just pray it's not Ebola.

My Rant on Ants

Welcome to another rant on ants. Rants on ants are always the go-to essay for all great writers when they have nothing else to say. Because -- and this is where you nod -- we all have the same problem with the little buggers.

Emerson did a rant, as every yawning 8th grader can tell you, in his essay on Self-Reliance:

All men's prayers to be rid of ants are a disease of the will, making a disease of their creeds. You must do it yourself! But they say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let God smite this pestilence, lest we die trying. Heed thou, comfort any man of us, and we will receive thy help.' Everywhere I am hindered of my brother's despair for ants, because simply shutting his own door is no relief; to say otherwise is to believe fables, both against man's ability and of God's desire. Every mind may prove itself a mind of uncommon activity and power, with the innate cleverness to smite ants quite apart from Divinity!

Locke, Lavoisier, Hutton, Bentham, and Fourier, each one took up mental arms and successfully killed ants, for the most part. The system one chooses will be in proportion to the depth of the thought, and so the disposal of ants is within the reach of each pupil, if not for complacency. Exercising self-reliance, the pupil shares the delight of the learned in subordinating them to man's greater will, as a girl who has just learned botany enjoys seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby.

And yet how many will not learn, will not act! They do not yet perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own, until they're overrun with ants! Yet, if they are honest and do well, presently their problem, common to all, will die away and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning, before the first ant darkened this sod. 

And I believe it was De Quincey, in Confessions of an English Opium Eater, who observed:

If a man “whose talk is of ants” should become an opium-eater, the probability is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about ants.

Heh, that's a good advertisement for opium! I'd love to see some before and after pictures of opium-eaters! I'll bet they about scratch themselves to death in their sleep! Then they wake up, eat some more, go back to sleep and finish the job. All thanks to ants.

--BEGINNING OF MY ANT RANT: "Everything's Little, Everything's Big" --

I've been killing ants. I hate killing, but sometimes I just have to do it. Like when I'm overrun with them.

Thinking of ants, I observe that they seem to be very tribal. At least that's what I imagine about them. Queen ants, drones, sort of similar to bees. One of the weird things about ants is how much weight they can carry in relation to themselves. Like me trying to carry all the groceries in at once. That's why I choose plastic, although it's a killer on the hands.

That said, ants are also the ultimate punctual being, showing up at the butt crack of midnight the first day of spring. Somehow -- planned obsolescence -- the poison from last year expired yesterday and is ineffectual! Weird, because I know when I hit obsolescence it only made me bigger and better.

So that leaves me trying to kill them one by one, a hopeless task only presenting a tiny glimmer of hope by the certain knowledge that though they're numerous, they're not infinite. Were they infinite, I'd have to step up the pace of killing to keep up. Although, strictly, anything infinite necessarily tramples itself to death.

Falling short of that, it's up to me to kill them, even if it's against my conscience. I feel sad for the Queen, back in the nest, going, "WTF's going on with the drones? Either a revolt or some guy killed them." She has other worries too. The last few drones, seeing she offers no protection, might quickly evolve a patriarchal society, arming up for mutual protection. Leaving her to submit, accept a ceremonial role, and occasionally dress as a humble nurse to console the wounded in battle.

The thing that freaks me out about killing ants is how they must look under a microscope. Because I know if I had better eyes, they'd look immense and a horror. Then I'd see the true terror of the whole thing. I'm already thinking of it and feeling sick. This also goes for any truly microscopic being, but I have to say it's not sentimentality; I just prefer living and letting live, but, you know, you hate to be overrun. Too much mercy's a thankless thing.

Still, think of how big an ant is compared to a truly microscopic being. They're like a redwood! Now imagine the downside of that. Ants have to poop. Can you picture the droppings from something the size of a redwood all over your Formica counter? Not to mention the food on your counter, bananas, etc.

But here's the killer to the whole thing. Regardless of what we do, the future is wide open for ants and other vermin. Because, friends, I hate to break it to you, but I don't see the human species making it literally millions of years. But ants no doubt will...

Something like this is happening: We're macro but live in micro time. They're micro but live in macro time. We think we're "so bad" because our country's a little over 200 years old. Big deal. The creatures in macro time don't even think about celebrating till it's been a million years. So we destroy our environment, stupidly, because of this micro time thinking. But ants -- all they need is air, water, and whatever food happens to be handy, so macro time is theirs.

Someday, though---- Someday, long after we're gone, maybe they'll be like us. Maybe the little will become big, the size of dinosaurs, and demand too much from their environment. Until a meteor, the ultimate ant poison, comes blasting from the distant reaches of outer space, and finally gives them their comeuppance. And who knows? This is a great thought, who knows if it's one of our own space probes, arranged by our smartest scientists 100 million years in the past, that is the very thing to tilt that meteor toward earth! Isn't that great? That ants become complacent, being rid of us for 100 million years, and yet we still manage to kill them in the end.

Me and Wordsworth's Dogs

At the end of William Wordsworth's huge poem, "The Prelude," in the Modern Library edition being almost 220 pages, longer than any poem I'm ever going to write, he says, "Oh! yet a few short years of useful life, And all will be complete..." That tells me he was an old man at that point; he lived to be 80. Which is only 20 years older than me!

All this matters today for my blog because of one passage I want to celebrate, from Book Four, lines 93-190, which has some good stuff about his dog. I have lots of thoughts about dogs. One, I'm glad a great poet like Wordsworth took time to write about his dog. He's all right.

Of course, when I read it, I have to think of my own beloved dog. Who would've made a great dog for the great poet, had she not been born in the wrong time and place for it. On the positive side, she was born in exactly the right time and place to be my dog. So that's equally cool. She beat the odds. Because I'm happy to say, If you're not going to be Wordsworth's dog, you may as well be mine. Not second best, mind you, but equal or better. When it comes to poems, Wordsworth has me beat, but not at dogs.

I want to lift out some bits from Wordsworth's poem about his dog. Wordsworth had been away from his home and stomping grounds, at school, far enough away he had to stay there most of the year. Then he's back for summer vacation, then he goes up in the heights, the rocky crags around there, thinking up poetry and getting the inspiration from a favorite romantic locale.

At lines 93ff, he says his dog, a rough terrier, was among his favorites "whom it pleased me well / To see again..." I bet! Who wouldn't want to get home and see his dog? But this is more. Wordsworth was out there kindling "with the stir, / The fermentation, and the vernal heat / Of poesy, affecting private shades..." In other words, his poetic impulses were sizzling hot. But what of his dog? He continues, "Like a sick Lover, then this dog was used / To watch me, an attendant and a friend..." And this even though Wordsworth was so absorbed in his poetic inspirations that he had to halt walking a hundred times, making the dog somewhat tired and uneasy.

LOL. Of course I can relate to the dog's faithful presence. My dog's right here as I write, watching me with concern as I virtually tear my hair out, what's left of it, trying to get every word just right. I have very demanding readers and a very easy-going dog, which means if the situation were reversed, I'd be taking the dog for a walk with a constant lash at my back, or any number of other means of goading someone along. But my dog's very patient.

I'm running long, so I'll summarize the rest of Wordsworth's section on his dog. I like it how he celebrates an especially good burst of poetic inspiration by darting toward his dog and caressing him repeatedly "with stormy joy..." Then they'd be walking along and he'd give Wordsworth advance notice of anyone they'd be meeting on the way. The alert meant Wordsworth hushed his voice, since he was thinking out loud. The dog saved Wordsworth's reputation! Lines 129f, he says people would've started "piteous rumors" about him, saying that he was "crazed in brain."

My dog tries to help me like that, a little. Say I'm writing a blog, she barks anytime I'm about to hit the "Publish" button, knowing I'm only digging my hole deeper. You only see the crap that gets through, you should see what she prevents!

Back to Mr. W. In lines 131-190, he doesn't mention the dog much. Here, though, he's writing as the old man in the present time, not so much remembering past memories. So in lines 182ff, he sat in "the sheltered coppice" and heard "the straggling wind" in the hazel leaves, and it reminded him of his dog: "a breath-like sound, / Quick as the pantings of the faithful dog, / The off and on companion of my walk..." That gets me! How wistful! The straggling wind reminds him of his dog's panting. But of course the dog is now long gone.

I know my dog's getting up there, 14 years old and in failing health. Years from now -- let's say I survive another 20 years -- I'm going to be looking at photos of my dog and ... whatever. But at least I have pictures. Wordsworth had what? The straggling wind. And a great memory.