The Latest Freed Man

To memorize Wallace Stevens is to be mesmerized.

Back Story. The Latest Freed Man

Wallace Stevens completed the metamorphoses from poet to insurance salesman to poet.

Why he did this is the speculation of critics and scholars, so of what I am about to write is from the color and sound of "The Lastest Freed Man", based on simply what is leftover. Stevens sits on the edge of his bed, relinquishing "the mother" and the "philosopher" but unable to change the behavior of waking without the alarm as his sun is his alarm. Alarming as it is that Stevens is tired of legal consults and oratory defense, or offense, to waltz in the wake of "old descriptions of the world", someone in my past about the same time Stevens passed reminded me that we must make a space, a hole, a place before anything new can come. Perhaps this is what Stevens is doing. Jurisprudence, Truth with a capital T, and a clean getaway for Stevens as he engages with the morning relinquishing all control to the sun. In the full emptiness of the moment, Stevens realizes he needs nothing and contemplates how he thinks. His thoughts reach out to heal from his lofty freed state, a state of how he thinks about want one could do to live. In Stevens thinking, this is how he thinks; much more important to him that what he thinks.

Anthony Hopkins asks a counselor "What are you afraid of losing?" The right answer is required by the counselor to achieve freedom from the pen poked in the vicinity of his jugular. The counselor answers "my freedom." The pen pokes tighter, "No. What are you afraid of losing? You think you have freedom? (pause) Try again!" The counselor answers wrong a second time, "My life," as the pen poke and the position of his bones are transformed into a cowering corner. "Wrong again! Everyone loses their life. What are you afraid of losing?" Short story long, the counselor finally acknowledges, "my illusions, I am afraid of losing my illusions." I am certain that I murdered the correct words as I am citing from memory "Instinct" (1999) Directed by Jon Turteltaub, Writer Gerald Di Pego, starring Anthony Hopkins, Cuba Gooding Jr., Donald Sutherland.

Tired of the old descriptions of the world,

The latest freed man rose at six and sat

On the edge of his bed. He said,

                                    "I suppose there is

A doctrine to this landscape. Yet, having just

Escaped from the truth, the morning is color and mist,

Which is enough: the moment's rain and sea,

The moment's sun (the strong man vaguely seen),

Overtaking the doctrine of this landscape. Of him

And of his works, I am sure. He bathes in the mist

Like a man without a doctrine. The light he gives--

It is how he gives his light. It is how he shines,

Rising upon the doctors in their beds

And on their beds. . . ."

                                    And so the freed man said.

It was how the sun came shining into his room:

To be without a description of to be,

For a moment on rising, at the edge of the bed, to be,

To have the ant of the self changed to an ox

With its organic boomings, to be changed

From a doctor into an ox, before standing up,

To know that the change and that the ox-like struggle

Come from the strength that is the strength of the sun,

Whether it comes directly or from the sun.

It was how he was free. It was how his freedom came.

It was being without description, being an ox.

It was the importance of the trees outdoors,

The freshness of the oak-leaves, not so much

That they were oak-leaves, as the way they looked.

It was everything being more real, himself

At the centre of reality, seeing it.

It was everything bulging and blazing and big in itself,

The blue of the rug, the portrait of Vidal,

Qui fait fi des joliesses banales, the chairs.