Posted by:
Cold-Dodger
(
)
Date: May 27, 2020 02:28AM
I Am!
By John Clare
I am—yet what I am none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes—
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes
And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest that I loved the best
Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.
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This is one of my favorite poems. I discovered it at a class poetry reading in Rexburg. I was mildly depressed and antisocial at the time. I was full of pathos at the idea that sooner or later people would know what I was and would forsake me.
From what I know of John Clare -- don't make me look it up, that isn't the point; the point is for me to convey what this poem means to me presently -- he suffered some mental breakdown and spent the last years of his life in an eighteenth century mental asylum. His poetry to me speaks of a mind that is sane but in torment. He is thoroughly misunderstood by others and feels cast aside, because he is. I don't know what he was going through emotionally, but his loved ones clearly gave up on trying to help him figure it out. Asylums back then were places to dump people that no one had any idea how to help. They were just written off as lunatics and given a place to exist out of sight.
This poem depicts a kind of sad loneliness. The speaker longs for childhood innocence, or at least for conditions that existed before his present social complications. It is definitely a Victorian male speaking when he says he longs for scenes where woman never smiled or wept. Throughout the Bible, throughout most of Christian literature, and especially in Victorian thought, women are spoken of as objects that once the speaker became aquainted with them, they took the speaker's innocence. This is repressed male sexuality talking, and as a Mormon I think I know what sentiment he trying to convey as thus: his society has conditioned him to value the asexual state of his own prepubescence as innocence, and to seek to mimic it as often as possible in adulthood. But that effort is always a disappointment, because men are men and they have sexual thoughts often enough for it to be annoying, which to a Victorian mind obsessed with asexual purity is torture. So, what he's really saying, then, is he sadly opines for conditions where his society is off of his back, to feel the quiet peace like he felt in childhood, and actual women have little to do with what he's feeling.
I am. I exist. I am a person worth humanizing, but few of the people whose names and faces populate my mental landscape are interested in spending the time and energy anymore. I know I have become complicated and difficult to digest for a Mormon mind, but I wish people cared enough to try. I am left to myself to consume my own woes and wonder alone at how my life which seemed to start out so promising and full of energy and destined for great Mormony things landed itself on these rocks. I am like a memory which a person loses in the tossing surf of other thoughts and concerns which never leave one alone. People simply moved on without me, edited out of their own mental landscapes as it were. It's not hard. Real life calls, and it's easy to forget about someone like me. But I still exist as inconvenient as that is for everyone.
This new social reality can feel like being a vapor tossed into the nothingness of scorn and noise. Imagine if being alive, doing your daily routine, felt as distant to you as though you were a disembodied eye watching a waking dream, day after day after day, and you were just a smoke of vapor hanging there for a moment in the air between things happening all around you. There is no sense of life or joys when you think about your real life, just the vast shipwreck of your life's esteems. So you try not to think about real life anymore and try to lose yourself in fantasies or other distractions. Those closest to you have become strange to relate to -- no, actually, stranger than strangers at times.
What was the point of all this drama? You were seeking peace and truth to be true to it. That is all. They won't believe it, but it doesn't matter what they believe. All that ever mattered to you was to seize that feeling and abide in it as often as possible. For John Clare that feeling is best described as a childhood innocence, before the complication of sexual interest, basking in the presence of God, in other words -- the ability to sleep like a baby, untroubling and untroubled where it lie, in the serenity of nature untouched by man. For me, I no longer believe in God, but I know that feeling of which Clare speaks. It's the feeling that both motivates Mormons to read the Book of Mormon like it really contains the fullness of the everlasting gospel and motivates exmormons to tell the whole world about their faith journey when they might have kept it a secret. Who doesn't want to to feel innocent, to be seen as honest, so they can go about their existence untroubling to others and untroubled by others? Perhaps all zealotry of any kind, whether religious or secular, boils down to is troubled souls looking for catharsis or people trying to be faithful to what they perceive to be true and/or moral to maintain a state of innocence so they can sleep at night. We're all just trying to be honest and/or moral enough to sleep at night. We all want inner peace and for the good parts of our lives to remain in repose.
Hi. I am, and live.