[To quote the "insecurity guard" from Mike Leigh's staggering 1993 film Naked, "There's truth in a cliche. Otherwise it wouldn't be a cliche." Having established that, allow me to point out that you can't keep a good man down. Here's proof ...]

Mitch: We have to start with truth, because if we don’t agree on the nature of truth and how it is identified, we won’t get very far. Let me give an example that deals with the nature of truth. Let’s say that after all these years, suddenly you got it in your head that you wanted to find Mitch Christensen and pay him a visit. You start asking around and find 3 different views. The most popular (highest number of people with the highest degree of confidence) view is Kansas. The second most popular view is Oregon, and the far and away least popular view is Georgia. So you start reflecting on what you know about Mitch Christensen and weigh that against the evidence and find that Kansas “massages your truth nerve.” After spending some time trying to track Mitch down in Kansas, you discover that I am actually living several states away in Georgia. You then confirm that by coming to my address and locating me in Buford, GA. In this case, the true answer was the least popular answer and could in no way be harmonized with the other views as being equally true. So truth is discoverable, unchanging and absolute. Even if everyone in their hearts believes otherwise, it does not change the reality that I live in Georgia. It will always be true for all people at all times, even if I move to Kansas in the future. Truth is not impacted by consensus or feelings. This goes for both physical as well as metaphysical realities. Truth is quite simply that which corresponds to reality.

Now let me play devil’s advocate. Let’s say, you turn around and say that is not what truth really is, because it is really the way you have already described it. By taking that opposing view, you automatically invoke the most basic first principle of logic and all knowledge, the law of non-contradiction, because you know that your position is not the same as my position. That position is also saying that your view is true because it corresponds to the way things really are, and that my view is false and does not correspond to the way things really are. In other words, people often argue against correspondence and the law of non-contradiction, but by doing so, they use the correspondence definition of truth and the law of non-contradiction to frame the argument. One cannot argue against first principles which are assumed to be true. To argue against them, one has to use them in the process. Therefore, truth by its very nature is inescapable.

[Even in a hurry I couldn't resist addressing some of what Mitch had brought up. That's what this kind of thinking can do to you. It's like a drug, first teasing you with hope that it might be your guide to a fuller understanding of the way of things, but finally leaving you with little more than a hangover.]

Me: Just a quick note, cuz I really am in a rush, but your thoughtful reply begs a response. I think there is common ground here, actually. Do you believe there are different levels or types of truth? It seems to me that some truths are more easily proved or disproved than others. Your example is of something easily proved or disproved. But what about a question like, Does God exist? Presumably there's a true answer, but it may lie beyond our ability to discern it. Yet we try. Here's another one that I suspect you're very familiar with: Do we have free will? We don't need to have a philosophical discussion to learn where you live, but the more mysterious questions have to be rolled around on the mind's tongue, perhaps because that's as close as we can get to understanding their answers. It's more these "deeper" truths that I've been concerned with in our discussion. I don't read Wordsworth to learn the truth of how to build a house, for instance. I read him to feel closer to universal wisdom. I like that truth can have layered meanings. This points back to my notion that we very well may not have the faculties to draw hard-and-fast conclusions about certain things. I'm typing these words with my fingers. Everyone would agree on that. But am I doing so of my own volition, or is my every activity determined by an infinite chain of previous cause-and-effect relationships? Which hearkens back to my number-line view of time ...

Boy, I really didn't mean to bring the free will debate into this!

[That last line may have been a bit disingenuous. I'm always looking for a way to bring free will into the picture. It's a favorite topic of mine. I don't think there's a better example of man's tendency toward the irrational than our universal belief in free will. And I do consider it to be a universal belief. I called myself a hard determinist for a number of years, but was I? Can a hard determinist ever take on a political cause? Can he be moved to help others, to make a difference? All reasonable thought leads to the nonexistence of free will, and yet it feels as though we can do as we please. We function as though we have free will, just as we rely on the sun to rise and bring a new day. I just wish someone could explain to me the mechanism by which a thought with no cause can form in the brain, because I can think of no better definition of free will than that. This series of exchanges between Mitch and me may not satisfy your curiosity regarding the free will debate, but in the remaining two rounds you're likely to find something of comparable interest to exercise the gray matter. Besides, you've come too far to give up on this now. See you next time.]

I've wanted to hear Jane Hirshfield read her poetry for a number of years. Last night I got my chance. I can't hope to comment on her work or performance with anything like her eloquence—her candid, wise, and unafraid manner—yet how do I avoid saying something about the experience? Hirshfield is among my favorite living poets. Last night was like going to church, but fun.

The first thing you notice about Hirshfield is that she can smile over the top of anything. She can discuss death, war, and sickness with an almost constant smile on her face. It's a part of her features, not just something she does occasionally. I should hate that about her. Smiley people can drive me nuts. But with Hirshfield the emotion behind the smile is honest and true. This we know from her poetry, which forces the breath from our bodies—often in the last line—as though some of what she gives us can't quite be contained in the mind so turns to air and leaves.

I'm not trying to be cute about this. There really is an audible collective exhalation from the audience after each of her poems. No applause, no cheers. Just breath indicating a sudden awareness of some forgotten but known truth.

What did I learn last night? Many things, some already forgotten but more deeply known. Others linger, like the idea that exile is a perfectly suitable replacement for pain. I may not know some of what I learned for months or years. But even though Hirshfield continued to inspire with a Q&A session after her reading, it isn't the scholarly talk that matters most at an event like last night's, it seems to me. It's being moved, entertained into wisdom, that really counts.

Does that mean I'm wise now? No. But I was last night for a time. Kind of like how I'm a devout Catholic whenever I watch The Exorcist. The imagination is a powerful instrument, and Jane Hirshfield a virtuoso.

In late 2006, the Metropolitan Museum of Art published an enormous coffee table tome called Glitter and Doom: German Portraits from the 1920s. It's a beautiful and terrifying book, and it inspired me to write a series of poems, each based on one of the portraits. Glitter and Doom is worth checking out for a number of reasons. In case you get serious about doing so, I'm including the page numbers that correspond with each of the following poems (there are no titles). Enjoy!


Page 4

The German bourgeoisie
Sit two, three, four at a table,
Using lunch as an excuse
To gossip and ogle
In the Romanisches Café.
The tables are small—
Good for leaning in
And sharing secrets.
Hat racks bow under the weight of fedoras.
Apparently not only the Jews
Were interested in keeping their heads covered
During the Weimar interval.


Page 8

Mischievous nymph in her mannish attire,
Hair pulled tight like a boy’s.
Shifty match strike,
Eager to light the cigarette
That suffers between gritted teeth.
Her femininity hides within
The high-collared shirt,
Slender necktie,
Pantalooned bottom half
And theater shoes.
But nothing hints at why
She cocks her knee so jauntily.


Page 11

Ms. Riefenstahl,
How pretty and calm you appear,
Staring daggers
But with a nervous rubbing of the hands.
Your grin wants to turn into something
That better matches your low neckline
And playful necklace of spheres.
But the belt that hangs at your midsection
Keeps you in.


Page 51

“Moi?”
He seems to be saying
As he lays the fingers of his right hand
Against his right shoulder;
But he doesn’t allow the distraction
To separate his other hand
From a flute of champagne.
His close-cropped widow’s peak is half of his charm
And almost makes his satanic features okay.
The man lurking over his shoulder, however,
Has no widow’s peak to hide the truth of him.


Page 58

Veterans with missing appendages
March down the streets of Berlin:
A sea of crutches
And earnest defiance,
Too late.


Page 63

The papier-mâché whore
Tries to be coquettish
But her spent tits hang unevenly
And her smile lacks teeth.
The strap of her girlish dress
Hanging off the arm would be sad
Even if it weren’t posed.
The mangy mink stole
And the blue-patterned veil
Seem a masochistic jest,
Self-fulfilling proof of ugliness.
The red in her cheeks
Might be heavy rouge
Or liquor induced
But surely not the blush of embarrassment
At this advanced stage!


Page 67

Oh, Margot!
What gave you that heavy-lidded glare?
Your short hair has an attractive flair
But the rest of you is impregnable.
Are you catering to a type of john
With a fetish for matronly sternness?
If so, hurrah!
You’ve pinned it down.
Now, can I light that cigarette for you?


Page 75

His nipples are softened
By the gauzy green swatch of sheerness
He wears instead of a shirt.
His chest hair must feel like a paddock of cool grass
Through the gauze.
He would feel soft for a man,
Just as the female behind him
Would feel hard for a woman.
Her breasts hang a little low
But the nipples ramp up at the last possible moment.
They were made to be devoured, those breasts,
As this man has presumably finished doing,
Though it doesn’t seem to have done much
For either of them.
Maybe the long scar on her cheek
Is the only reason
Either of them is here.


Page 77

The left and right halves of our faces
Are not identical.
Often, one side’s benevolence
Is challenged
By the other’s malicious intent.
Not so with this cross-armed, pinstriped gentleman,
Whose facial halves
Come together in completion
Of mischief.
Even as I judge him
He sums me up.
And I can tell his assessment of me
Would be without error
So I am glad he does not speak.
I have no stomach for my own truth.
I only have eyes for the truth of how
His crooked nose is the perfect counterbalance
To his slender green cravat.


Page 78

No mask lacks judgment altogether,
But these human masks,
Standing before the demon masks on the wall,
Are less keen than the imposters.
The long black face on the wall
Misses nothing.
His colleague,
A swine-faced imp,
Is forever hungry
And therefore also watchful.
But the young man
With the buck-toothed overbite
Can only see the object of his desire
Across the room.
The short fellow
Trapped in the middle
Sees only into his own crimes.
The oily man on the right,
All skepticism and brash certitude,
Possesses far-reaching vision, but only
For that which is not present.
A wise choice,
It seems to me,
Would be to emulate the demons
Or no one.


Page 85

The man is a contour;
No difference between his back
And his front.
He blends into almost any background,
As long as it is florid and bent.
He wants to come across as
Unapologetically queer,
But his eyes are full of I’m sorry’s.
The raised veins of his bald head
Hint at un-redressed flares of temper.
And his claw-like fingernails
Are ready for anything.


Page 87

If you don’t believe in the walking dead,
You haven’t met Heinrich.
The jaundiced and bloodshot eyes
Are the least of his ailments.
The bags that don’t end
But rather give way to sallow jowls
Openly tell all passersby
That he is partnered with agony.
Only in the mostly gray mop of hair
Do we get a taste of the man
Heinrich once was.
He might have been a lady-killer
With an oceanic coiffure like that,
But even this is mostly receded now,
With a tiny forest of wiry stubble
Closer to the brow.
If you ever meet him
You’ll wonder what he yearns to tell you,
But you won’t find out.


Page 97

The way she stood there with her hands on her hips
I thought at first she was admonishing me for looking.
Then I got to wondering if it was an invitation—
You know how women can be.
Haunting, luminous eyes;
Tenacious poise.
God, I wanted to take her
Right there in the hallway.
She must have spent hours piling her hair,
Getting just the right shades with her makeup.
“Forty bucks for the works,” she blurted out.
“Twenty’ll get you sucked.”
I’ve preferred fantasy to reality ever since.


Page 100

When words fail,
They fail disastrously.
Even the poet must leave some things alone.


Page 111

She’s seen it all from her black Victorian dress.
All the little transgressions
Her children and grandchildren
Thought escaped her notice
Were recorded with an unerring commitment
To detail.
Her arthritis made it difficult
To count her fingers,
She’d overheard Gregor say recently.
Might have been six or seven on each hand,
He’d commented.
But she knew how many fingers she had,
And a great deal more besides.
Her wisdom had not reduced her love,
But it had taken a toll on the esteem
In which she held the people of the world.


Page 117

With simian apathy
He awaits your deal-closing signature.
So much tweed for one man!
The ring on his little finger
Is shockingly red
Against the gray of his being,
A lurid touch
That must remind him
Of a past accomplishment.


Page 125

He has but newly struck a bargain,
And the streaking clouds seem to know
All about it, through the window.
His world is at an angle
And his suit hangs on him.
He must go now,
Out into the windy late afternoon.
She’ll need the yellow roses
He’s placed in an empty vinegar bottle
When he tells her
He’s lost his soul.


Page 131

He sat in the chair,
All crumpled patience
And dictatorial wisdom,
Eyeing me through
Perfectly round spectacle lenses.
He’d sunk low in the chair,
So his elbows rested awkwardly
On the arms.
His fingers lay half laced
On his crossed lap.
He might have been less intimidating
Without the crew cut,
But not by much.
I wished I could tell him
To take another drink of sherry
Or pick up the cigarette
He’d left tilted in the ashtray.
Anything to take his gaze and attention
Away from me for a moment.


Page 143

Deep red and voluptuous,
The dress may have been poured over her
And left traces of its hue in her magenta mop.
Who but Uriah Heep could love this crippled viper?
Who but another reddened snake
Could adore her failed mimicry of youth?
There is little her poised physique hasn’t experienced
And if we look closely enough
We see every line of that experience
In the ghost-pale obstinacy of her face,
In the severe pencil-drawn stand-ins for eyebrows,
In the darkly outlined almonds she has instead of eyes,
The pursed sneer she has painted onto her sad lips.