Losing My Mind

Donald A. Windsor

I used to wonder; when people lose their minds -- how would they know?

The famous statement by Rene' Descartes, "I think, therefore I am", seems to apply as: Since I can no longer think, therefore, I am not.

But, it does not seem to work that way.  The thinking process remains functional (or so I think).  It is the storehouse of facts that disappear.  I reach for the name of someone or something, and it is simply not there.  It is as if I reached into my refrigerator for a bottle of milk and, to my surprise, did not find it.  Yet, I am sure I just bought one.

then, sometimes, often just after a few minutes, the fact appears, again to my surprise.  More puzzling is when it takes several days.  What goes on during this time?  Are my facts so buried in informational clutter, that it takes that long for my mind to find them?  Or does my brain lapse into a slow-motion mode?  I am 77 years old; have I accumulated too many facts for my inadequate mind to file and retrieve?

Facts and names disappear first.  Then the concepts disintegrate.  Mathematical operations seemed so logical when I first learned them; I never thought I would ever lose them.  But it has already happened.  Thus, some of my basic thought process has been eroded.

However, often to my astonishment, I am able to open a textbook for the first time in decades and go right to the place where what I am looking for is located.  Thus, my memory for the place I learned something persists longer than the memory of the thing itself.  This is why I love souvenirs; they help me to remember.  Souvenirs are my outsourced memory. 

Saying Nothing

Donald A. Windsor

As a scientist, I try to describe reality.

As a poet, I try to describe my reactions toward reality.

Sometimes reality baffles me, because it appears to be full of meaning -- and yet, I dread reality because it may actually be devoid of meaning. 

Humanity has developed marvelous languages to describe reality and everything about it.  But, if reality has no meaning, then everything based on reality will be meaningless.

Inspired by that gloomy conclusion, I have been trying to write poems that sound meaningful, but mean nothing.

Here is an example of a poem which sounds as if it is delivering a meaningful message -- but says nothing.  It was written on 15 September 1958, 53 years ago,  and appears in my book:

          From the Green Shingle to the Romine Ailanthus. 
          New York, NY: Vantage.  1969.  Page 11.

The Infusion of Sublimity

What dastardly whim of pernicious vigor
Would so maliciously deign to enthrall
The copious magnanimity of some futile concretion
So as to thwart the immutable misdirection
That eternally remains so gruesomely entrenched
In the very bowels of the unyielded transcendency
Which we so cautiously and audaciously refer to as
The "inter-periodical caprice of martyred altruism"?

Is it in search of this alleged degree of parsimonious vigor
That prompts me to plunge into the strange abyss of mirth
And to leave the hallowed crypt of sacrosanct alacrity?

For herein lies the scramble of truth coalesced
With the shameful usurping of righteous marvels,
Purified from the common pillar
And rectified by the incandescent mystery
That no forced exigency can dare to ever approach.

The result will, therefore,
Be entangled with the minute fragments of glee
And saturated with moribund towers of fascination.

This, unfortunately, cannot be helped,
For the entwining labyrinth can never hope
To exist devoid of its mosaic tones
Or its intrinsic chaos.

The only solution to the ineffable drama before us
Is then to be located where it never was,
Because the misdirection can thereby assume new grandeur
And will promptly align itself to the new shreds
Of chronological debris so evenly distributed
Among the weary, but loyal, transits.

But this is not a solution!
It is only the unruffled dogma of irony
Coupled with the crucial pangs of profundity.

A solution will, however, be sought --
Not by problematical speculation into some unknown realm
Or by some mystic reaction --
No, but by the clear, precise method of manufacture
Wherein the very horizon of frivolity
Can be hopelessly incorporated
Into some equally fantastic structure
Of shapeless spindles and revolving forms,
Cemented together only by the multifarious canon of ecstasy!

If this is approved,
The reign of subjectivity will crumble Beneath the couch of agony
And the vestigial removal of shadow
Will allow the inevitable permeation of dichotomous tactility.

Therefore, let us expedite the rostrum of dubious magnitude
And we will have stumbled upon the continued success
Of the forgotten treasure we never knew.