This article really strikes a chord. Even though I am not in the same situation as Emily White. I live at home with my parents and daughter. Except for when I am chatting with my daughter, I usually feel lonely. This is probably due to the alien culture I live in. A culture that I find impossible to identify with. Eventually, as in the case of Emily you lose yourself.
I wrote this poem a while back. I think it goes someway to describe this feeling.
Did you say you know me?
Then perhaps you can tell me who I am.
I knew who I was before
But now when I pass myself on the street
I pass me by without recognizing myself.
Some stranger who happened to walk past.
No I don’t think you know me.
Perhaps you knew me once
But no one knows me now.
No one can remember who I am.
Am I me or someone else?
I can’t even remember my name.
Yet you look very familiar
But I doubt we’ve ever met.
I would have remembered if we had.
If you know me then I must know you
But I don’t remember you or me
So perhaps you could introduce us both.
22 August 2000
Hi Incy,
ReplyDeleteWow!! You´ve been weaving away over here. It´s looking great.
That article about lonliness was sad. Does being alone always have to be like That?!
I´m really sorry that you are lonely over there Tanwir. Lucky you have your daughter over there (and surely a handful of friends?) and us, your virtual friends. It´s really interesting. A friend is in hospital at the moment, and he took his laptop with him. An interesting idea. If I were in hospital, I would want my laptop too.
I´ve just read this poem, but I don´t know what to say. I don´t feel like I should say anything. For to do so would be to impose something upon it. Yet there it sits, physically in front of me, waiting maybe for a response of some kind. So, do I comment directly upon it and challenge its certain incertainty? Actually I´ll go ahead now:
The part that really strikes me most upon first reading is the last line:
¨so perhaps you could introduce us both¨.
It really screams out the word void for me. There seems also to be some kind of physical recognition of the self without the mental recognition. This also indicates to me, a state of change possibly. There is a void, a period of rest for one to gain the energy and inner strength needed for whatever evolution that is about to occur. This sense of wondering in the streets, of searching. The person in this poem is not without purpose. Maybe they are wondering the streets of uncertainty. There is also willing. ¨perhaps you could introduce us¨. A challenge to really look at oneself. A challenge that is not being taken up. I don´t know. These are my imposed views upon this poem. These are my projections maybe. These are my thoughts as provoked by it.
Otherwise I shall take back all these words, and just offer it a physical single nod.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis response has been a long time coming but better late than never, as they say.
ReplyDeleteYou are right Siri, there is a void. It is as though the person in the poem has amnesia. He has forgotten who he is. Or a better explanation is that the situation that he is in has changed him so much that he cannot believe that the person he has become is indeed himself. He fails to recognise himself.
Perhaps it is a form of self denial. It's like stepping outside your body and taking a good look at yourself and discovering that the person you thought you were doesn't actually exist (or doesn't exist anymore) and you find yourself looking at someone as he is seen by others around him and you think, "that's not me!" in a kind of panic because you find that you can't return to your body until you do recognise it and you are suddenly in a state of limbo.
You're lost and it's kind of like a 'catch 22' situation because you have to go back but you have to recognise yourself first but you can't and everyone else around you can't help because they see the person you are now, not the person you want to recognise, the person you think you are.
It's a terrible situation to be in.