Well, what a lot of words. On this thread I mean, when there are so few in the poor little poem.
Much of the problem seems to be with the word “shit”, which surprises me. Nowadays I hear the word used to mean all manner of other things not remotely connected to excrement. All sorts of random “stuff” are now, collectively, “shit”, just as the verbal constructions “to go” , “to be” and “to be like” are now understood to mean “to say”.
It amuses me that when I listened to the recording of the poem, I could not for the life of me hear the word “shit”. I played it again and again, and could only hear “sit”. What a difference an “h” makes!
Over the past few days I’ve considered the poem on several levels. For many years I went everywhere with pockets full of plastic bags so as to remove my dog’s shit from places where people might step in it. I was saddened by the fact that I was taking the world’s most biodegradable substance, the thing that would, theoretically, feed the future, wrapping it in a non-biodegradable membrane and sending it to landfill. I saw that thought in Yoko’s poem.
I am also guilty of shitting in remote rural places, answering what is universally recognised as a “call of nature”. I have proved experientially that one thing you can’t do at the same time is look up at the sky. You fall over backwards and find yourself in… Then I was reminded of a video I posted on Facebook of a two-year-old Asian boy squatting in perfect balance while he fed a twittering group of birds from a dish with a chopstick. I mentioned that I was amazed at his poise and David Wayne Landrum said “People in the east…. know how to squat. They keep perfect poise and balance doing so and can remain in that posture (which we find so difficult and awkward) for long periods of time”. I had a vision of myself sitting in an airport lounge with Yoko, explaining this, and the pair of us falling about in silly woman-laughing.
That airport kept coming back into my thinking. Odd, since I have only flown less than a handful of times. I realised that it was because of a picture I’d seen of Yoko opening it, standing in front of a line of Lennon’s that forms an epigraph below the name of it. LPL (not ACK, which is Nantucket – see how my mind wanders?)
And if you don’t like “shit”, will “fuck” do? We’re in the process of fucking-up the earth while we look romantically towards the bit we haven’t yet shat on. I am put in mind of Oscar’s gutter, and his stars.
If we are dropping dollops of real shit, we nourish the earth and create a paradise for our children. If we cover it with the sort of shit that our lifestyle creates, we leave them a different kind of legacy.
I’ve got all this headshit from those few maligned lines. Even an echo in the uppidowniness of it, “we look up the sky” and “I sat belonely down a tree”
So many head-adventures from such an ugly little thing. The Japanese are good at that. They even have a poetic form that aims to perfect that concept of multum in parvo. What do they call it…?
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