My Shadow Knows Nothing

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

At once sarcastic and tender, W.H. Auden’s “The More Loving One” asks us to imagine a night sky empty of stars:

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
 
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
 
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
 
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.— “The More Loving One,” W.H. Auden, 1957

I might very well like a starless sky and call it sublime or subtle in its black-on-black nuance, the poet declares, and not mourn the sight of a supernova, which is after all the explosive death of a star, and I may not notice the absence of one should it simply blink out, but in all matters, “If equal affection cannot be,/Let the more loving one be me.”

In all matters attracting my human attention, be it the night sky or my beloved’s face, let the more loving one be me.
Read More

Today in History: May 6

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Orson Welles was born on this date in 1915. If he had not been born, America would have needed to invent someone like him. He left a mark on radio, theater, and film history, and he helped push each one of those forms forward into the future; and his public persona—a charming rogue, self-serious yet self-deprecating—is still missed 30-plus years after he left.

To the day he died, at age 70 in October 1985, he was scrambling for support, for the finances to back his film projects. Hollywood’s powers decided in the late 1940s, as a group, that he had decided to go it alone as a filmmaker. So he decided to go it alone as a filmmaker. At this Hollywood’s powers decided, as a group, that Welles could not be trusted, because he had kept his word.
Read More

Life’s a Reach

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

The Atlantic Ocean. Each one of those tiny dots in the photo above is a person with a life, a voice, loved ones, losses. Sunburns.

We are standing, you and I, in front of the “Beach Hut” at Smith Point County Park on the South Shore of Long Island. It is 2014, one of the more recent years in history. For much of my adult life, I have sat here internally convinced that I do not like “the beach.” I do not remember when I convinced myself of this. I do not remember an unpleasant beach incident that convinced me that I possessed this piece of self-knowledge about my … self.
Read More