Crumbling like a Human Cookie

Aunt Emily tells us that "Crumbling is not an instant's act" and I think I believe her. After all, my own "organized decays" are true works of art; just ask Chipotle what it's doing to my blood pressure, one bite at a time. Like a cinder-blocked routine of devastation, I order out for pizza once a week, every week.


Organized, indeed.

And it's all nice and good when we, gentle reader, can apply such literary analysis to our own lives. After all, isn't this the very type of enrichment that great literature begs of us? I believe so. But how in the world do we apply it elsewhere? Is reading great literature only to be an isolated journey of the self, only applying inward? Sounds lonely. The most enlightened man is only still a man if he cannot point his flame outward, right? But then, how in the world are you supposed to take Dickinson's wisdom and make use of it, for someone else? Quote her? Are we supposed to quote poetry at people?

"You know, you should rest easy; your entire relationship didn't just collapse around this one argument. It's been crumbling for years. Methodically, slowly. Slipping, after all, is Crash's Law, just like Emily Dickinson said. Don't get too hung up on today's latest entanglement. You've been doomed for a while now."

Uh huh.

So the question becomes, now that I am wiser for reading Dickinson, do I do anything with it? What do I do with it? Who cares what a weird, introverted poet has to say on the matter. She's dead and poetry is whatever you want it to be.

Right?

Well, it doesn't much matter for me. I am a non-doer, so quoting poetry is right up my actionless alley. You, gentle reader, are probably a different story. You have the opportunity here. You are the one with mountains to climb, with places to go, with people to influence.  All the while better equipped for the mountain, the places, the people because you will be aware of the cuticles of dust forming along the edges, and you may have the chance to stop them, or at least to know about them and not be surprised. If Crash's Law is a law -- like gravity and love and inertia -- then I want to be informed on that one as well.


Squeezing poetry into a busy life is dangerous. You risk squeezing something else out.