Grandfather's Pens
He hugged fiercely.
He did everything fiercely.
I never knew him to do anything half way,
or unintentionally.
Every day, he wrote
a letter, threw a lifeline
to someone treading water
in some not-quite-God-forsaken
city, so far away.
Consequently his pockets were always full
of pens, full to the bursting point
against the unforeseen need
to fling another life preserver.
Hugging him, one encountered
this portcullis of pens
pressing back, a comfortable pain,
this reminder of the thousands of pages
he produced each year --
the journal of the mundane,
so beautiful to anyone
deprived of it.
This one is beautiful - a tribute to a wonderful man.
Quote: the journal of the mundane,
so beautiful to anyone
deprived of it.
Can you explain what you mean by this? I suspect that my interpretation is not what you mean. What it says to me is that your grandfather can't write well. Although he writes all the time to those that don't ever see what he writes it looks like a beautiful thing he is doing.
David,
An interesting interpretation, although in this case, I'm not able to tell how you arrived at it. It's always kind of cool how folks are able to see different meanings in phrases that mean particular things to me.
He wrote very well, and very eloquently. He usually wrote about the events of his life - the mundane. He told us of his trips to the barber shop, and of mowing the yard. They were a wonderful window into a world that we were far away from, being half-way around the world - thus, deprived of it. And, the other meaning is that we are now forever deprived of it by his passing.
I think of him frequently, when my kids hug me, and tell me that my pens are poking them. He was a great man, and is present to me in so many things.
Rich,
I'll tell you how I arrived at it. As I suspected from watching you and your family for *ahem* many years, I suspected that my interpretation was not matching what was in your "mind's eye".
Here is how I interpreted the quoted part. Keep in mind, I have never seen the contents of his writings.
Quote: "the journal of the mundane, so beautiful to anyone deprived of it."
"The journal of the mundane" can be interpreted to mean:
1) The writing was mundane
2) The subject of the writing was mundane.
Your explanation states that you meant #2 and I interpreted it as #1.
"so beautiful to anyone deprived of it"
In my internal dictionary, "deprived" means "to be without and in not having the object being lesser because of it".
For example, being deprived of oxygen to me means that I don't have oxygen, and that by not having the oxygen I am worse off than if I did have the oxygen.
"The journal" (i.e. the writings of your Grandfather) is the object.
Thus, the interpretation is...
the writings of your Grandfather were so beautiful to anyone deprived of knowing its contents.
Like I said, my interpretation did not match what I thought you were trying to say. I know in our conversations (and as you posted in reply) you think highly of your Grandfather's writings.
However, I also thought that perhaps you were employing a rather clever trick. One of the nice things about writing is that it doesn't have to match reality. Writing can be fact or fiction. You could have been saying that your Grandfather's intentions were beautiful, but his actual writing was mundane. Thus, as long as you did not actually read the contents, but saw the effort, time, energy, and love he put into the endeavor, you would see it as a beautiful thing that he was doing.
[ Obviously no disrespect toward your family or your writing, but good conversation on interpreting your art. ]
Very vivid, i particularly like the portcullis of pens.