In Back Of The Real
railroad yard in San Jose
I wandered desolate
in front of a tank factory
and sat on a bench
near the switchman's shack.
A flower lay on the hay on
the asphalt highway
--the dread hay flower
I thought--It had a
brittle black stem and
corolla of yellowish dirty
spikes like Jesus' inchlong
crown, and a soiled
dry center cotton tuft
like a used shaving brush
that's been lying under
the garage for a year.
Yellow, yellow flower, and
flower of industry,
tough spiky ugly flower,
flower nonetheless,
with the form of the great yellow
Rose in your brain!
This is the flower of the World.
--Allen Ginsberg
What has me thinking about this poem right now is the delight and terror, the cosmic meaning Ginsberg finds in a homely, even horrid, little object: a foreboding, ugly flower in a forgotten scrap of land, a flower that just about nobody else but the desolate wanderer speaking the lines would happen to find. This poem exemplifies one of the most powerful and compelling traits of creative work: finding deep meaning in the mundane. Art is at its best when it’s heavily laced with the everyday.
This is both an artistic standpoint for me and a coping mechanism. In recovering from a major depressive episode nearly 20 years ago, I found myself drawn to those small moments and images that tied me to the world: a tree blazing orange on a crisp, fall day; the bruised gray-blue of a Kansas thundercloud; the pitch and roll of my old Mustang when she cleared a curve, the V8 pushing me back as we sped away.
If we get entirely too caught up in purity and perfection, we set ourselves up for continual disappointment and eternal frustration. The more “pure” a poem is, the more it trends toward a glossy sort of dullness. We know that Anne-Sophie Mutter has suffered as we have by the rough edge she puts on an otherwise sweet Brahms violin concerto.
An oyster without an irritant will yield no pearl.
Unless we are able to abide with the small, inglorious steps we need to take to reach our goals, we’re unlikely to even begin, whether that goal is finishing the great American novel or merely getting out of bed in the morning. At my lowest, I made my goal taking a walk every day, rain or shine, snow or ripping prairie wind. Walking, I found gnarled hedge-apple trees and the scent of their decaying fruit. I found the tickle of the night’s cobwebs as their spiders ambitiously blocked my path. I found in the sandpiper’s cry the courage to keep on going.
The power of peer support is to have another who is there with you and has been where you are, reminding you that this glorious, ugly moment leads to another and another, and in those, too, there will be flowers, tough and spiky, resilient and industrious—and ready to be rediscovered in the moment after. I found a supportive peer in Ginsberg. Now, I’m helping others be supporting peers in the flesh.
And recovery, then, is an art, one that takes place moment-to-moment—an art that looks a lot like life.
Photo courtesy of Francesco Pappalardo
