(Photo by James Owen on Unsplash)
The Slithering Salesmen of Salience
I Hope the Ending Is a Little Disappointing — In a Good Way
I’ve decided that salience might be the word of the decade, so there needs to be a poem, clearly.
I’m not saying we’ve got it all figured out, or ever will, but it does kinda look like the Cognitive Revolution of the 1950’s, mistakes along the way in Postmodernism, smart phones and other addictions, the failings and flailings of Pornucopia, and other opiates and Opias, presumed palliatives, so to speak, might actually lead indirectly to an intellectual and imaginative legacy that we don’t have to merely feel “slimily authentic” about, potentially.
By “slimily authentic” I’m referring to the half-truths about our individual human nature(s). Half-truths are emphasized, cheered on, adopted as identities and remedies, but we struggle with the slime factor in knowing they’re not more than half true. It’s a form of cognitive dissonance, to use a trendier term, and those percolate through us in weird unhelpful ways.
Slytherine and Re-Beginning The Beguine
(The title is a nod to Bush’s “Glycerine,” a 1930’s Cole Porter hit, a reference to heartbreak, song, romances of different kinds and meanings, and re-thinking, in a setting and with extensions that might be unexpected because of the context here: a grandmother with her 4-year-old granddaughter and 14-year-old grandson sitting around a campfire. It’s 1995. She plays a mandolin, known as a strange guitar to her grandson, and she makes up her own songs, which are a bit more philosophical than what she could find. Of course, if you know the story that’s brewing here, it’s Grandma Dorie, Britton, and Rhettie in the following poem.)
Somewhere in their atom suits
they knew there was a star.
“A Star Eye” is what Grandma sang.
A fire, her strange guitar…
They watched as ashes piled above
the embers, little suns,
sunrise suns she’d always love.
She’d tell them, “You’re the ones.”
They’d seen the farm.
They’d seen pond mists
They’d seen their parents’ bucket lists,
then heard their grandma’s sweet voice sing,
“Slithering Salience…what do you bring?”
She’d pause so frogs could play their part
and crickets and the sky.
She’d first gaze up and then look down.
Her song would tell them why.
One so young she couldn’t know
the meaning of the song,
but she would watch the embers glow
and sweetly sing along.
The other had just reached the age
where Love would help him see
a different kind of love
and how he could be swept to sea.
“Neptune of the storms and sea…”
Grandma would explain,
could finally douse the ember,
star, with wind and waves and rain.
“It’s not that Neptune’s evil,
and he doesn’t want your soul.
It’s just…his world of wind and waves
can take you in…and whole.
And then there’ll be no Star Eye
to return and tell the rest
how to care for Earthlings
and prepare to love them best.”
“Sing about the atom suits!”
the little girl would say,
and Grandma would repeat the verse
on “Star Eyes and The Clay.”
“The Clay, the skin, the atom suit,
surrounds your bright Star Eye.
Not eye of storms, nor eye of newt,
but magic, deep within the pie.
‘And everything is pie, my dears,
if you can look,
and shelve your fears,’
the Owl and Beetle sang.
Look beyond the crust, you must,
to when the first Spring sprang!’”
And on the on the song would go,
about what is and makes it so,
what makes the Star Eyes fade and glow,
and Grandma showed them how things grow.
She didn’t dwell on common sense,
and how things work or don’t.
She spoke of Slithering Salience
and how thoughts work — or won’t.
The Slithering Salesmen of Salience,
was probably her favorite song.
I’m not sure it’s quite time for it,
but I swear it won’t be long.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
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