As most of you know, I write something every day and am not afraid to fail since most days that’s exactly what I do. As a modus vivendi I value insouciance, so I shrug and figure I’ll do better next time. Sometimes that’s true. Recently I’ve been writing/re-writing what should be a simple poem or prose poem about someone I went to high school with: Bobby Delmano. He was an interesting guy who took shorthand instead of shop and, after graduation, got a job as secretary to an oilman who went places women, in those days, either wouldn’t or shouldn’t go. Kind of a cool story. But not a cool poem. So recalcitrant and willful.
But it occurs to me that this particular poem doesn’t have to work since once I get warmed up by failing with the Bobby D poem I move onto something else that usually works better. So maybe Bobby is merely my Virgil, leading me through some minor and quotidian Inferno and all I have to do is be grateful. Like Virgil to Dante, Bobby is just a means to an end.
I wonder how many of you have a story or character who is uncooperative. If so, see if you don’t have a Virgil of your own.
Now on a lighter note, Saturday is the Belmont, the last leg of the Triple Crown races. I’ll Have Another (a reference to cookies, not liquor) is poised to be the first Triple Crown winner in decades! I hope he does. At 3-5 he’s not much of a betting opportunity because he may be vulnerable at the distance, but he fooled me in the Preakness and might do so again. A race worth watching though.
See many of you in about a month.
RK
Virgil will teach a lot along the way. But when Virgil disappears suddenly, and you turn around and there's Beatrice standing there in his place, look out, because you are about to pay and pay. But then she'll show you around paradise, which was the whole purpose of Dante's trip in the first place.
*waves laurels madly*