The Sound of Me

One of the things that I love about my life in New York City, is that my (sometimes very) long commute to work on the subway gives me a lot of time to read. I've got a stack of NYPL books next to my bed that I'm working steadily through and I'm actually reading the New Yorker cover to cover almost every week. In this past week's New Yorker, there was a poem by Jack Gilbert--a poet who writes simple but often astounding poetry and who I was turned on to by a very close friend. I was reading the poem on the train, and at first I wasn't impressed. But once I got to the 10th line, then finished the poem, and then re-read it, I was stuck by how wonderful it actually is. It's short so here it is:

Summer at Blue Creek, North Carolina
by Jack Gilbert

There was no water at my grandfather's
when I was a kid and would go for it
with two zinc buckets. Down the path,
past the cow by the foundation where
the fine people's house was before
they arranged to have it burned down.
To the neighbor's cool well. Would
come back with pails too heavy,
so my mouth pulled out of shape.
I see myself, but from the outside.
I keep trying to feel who I was,
and cannot. Hear clearly the sound
the bucket made hitting the sides
of the stone well going down,
but never the sound of me.


The thoughts that this poem ends with really resonated with me and once I had re-read the poem, I realized how well the whole thing works. In the initial reading of the first few lines I had been struck by how un-poetic they seem to be--so full of specifics, but lacking a feeling or emotion which gives a good poem it's power. But when combined with this idea at the end that when we look back at our lives it is the specifics we remember, the moments and the details or even general sensations, and not the way that we felt or thought in those moments, not the person we were at that time, then the whole poem came together.

The final lines of the poem came back to me the other night as I was sitting with Alex and Liz (who was up for a break from medschool and for what turned out to be a fantastic weekend) in a park along the water between the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges and looking at the NYC skyline all lit up. Living in New York this year, it is easy for me to make memories of the places that I visit and of the things that I do. Everything seems new and I have little doubt that some of the experiences--like spending the evening staring at the city--will be ones which I'll look back on in many years and remember fondly as representing my first year in New York. But I wonder if I too will eventually be unable to feel this person that I am today. Perhaps it is inevitable. And maybe there is even some beauty in the fact that as we grow older, although we always carry our experiences and memories, we leave behind previous versions of ourselves that can never exist again. But I guess I hope that when I look back at everything which will define this year--a new apartment, a new city, a new job, a new president, new friends, new distance from old friends, new distance from family, new goals, new plans--when I look back, if only to offer perspective and to help me understand whoever it is I become, I hope I can still hear myself as I am today.