I suppose belated congratulations might be in order because this little blog of mine celebrated its very first birthday yesterday, and as such I did write something down about it, but I still felt it wasn't quite enough. In my constant obsession with time, its oddly deformed circularity and its inherent synchronicity, or so I like to imagine, I started thinking about how my life was like in those days. They were weird times indeed, and though my life was and still is kinda stuck, so was everyone else's. However, for the first time in a long while I now had some business to attend to, I now had a place on which to impulsively write all of my many ideas. Of note I wrote something that can't quite be called an essay on Robert Frost's My November Guest, a poem I've been fascinated by for a long while now, and thus it's my personal favorite. I published said something on the first of may but I can't quite recall what kind of day it was. I do distinctly remember writing it however, probably a few days before actually publishing it, and when taking a short break to walk my dog, I remember it was so cold and rainy, and the world was so barren I thought everyone had left it forever... It is what it is, I suppose. I just know that now, in what I can tentatively call a celebration, and in what might be one of my many forced moments of synchronicity, I felt like doing something similar, and so it seemed quite right to return to Robert Frost, though this time I return to what is perhaps my second favorite poem of all time.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
This is the quintessential poem for a fork in the road, and all the references to it when our paths in life diverge, though a bit cliché, ring very true. The poet finds himself in one of his many travels through nature until the known trailed path, or maybe the path he was on was unknown as well, splits in two. The road he was on now came to an end only to continue in two different new beginnings, and I for one quite like how sudden that revelation is, how the very first verse presents that division in the road as a simple fact. We aren't taken for a ride before the poet arrives at the fork in the yellow woods and hesitates about where to go on. Instead we are there immediately, having no knowledge of the poet's past because it kinda doesn't even matter. We know his first reaction is to feel sorry, to feel an almost bittersweet regret for not being able to be everywhere at the end of time, and that regret manifests itself as he stands and looks at the path he will not take, simply admiring it there, undisturbed in the distance, as much distance as his eyes would allow.
As for me, perhaps for this reason, I was struck by the fact that the woods are yellow, evoking themes of a quiet and calm autumn, keeping in mind that autumn and winter landscapes have always been close to Frost's heart and beautifully depicted in his poetry. And the last two verses, if I don't think of them often, though I think I do, I at least somewhat live them because it's quite common for me to stand on a known road, one that leads home or school or church or just to the birthplace of a nice memory, and I can't help imagining the missed chance that was not having taken that road on that day, or yesterday, or the day before, or that I won't take it tomorrow nor the next day... So the least we can do is stare, wondering what expected us there, and feeling almost sorrowful that our limits in this world are freedom and slavery, and the possibilities of what could have been are so endless it's almost scary. And other times still I imagine I'm not the one who's meant to walk those roads but that someone else is, and then, after a chance encounter whereon we meet halfway, life carries on, as it always does.
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
When that moment of contemplation ends, a moment that could last a second just as easily as it could last a whole year, the poet makes his decision and takes the other road, reasoning it is more in want since it's grassy and therefore less traveled by, even by himself. In his travels he has now taken a new road, a strange one for the mere fact he doesn't know where it leads and, though it's well within the same forest, it can still feel completely strange. But much to his disappointment it doesn't quite lead to much, it's not exactly a staggering discovery, it's just a slightly different path in the same old place, a somewhat sad thing to discover when the poet realizes that having taken that path didn't make much of a difference, it didn't amount to anything really. The path remained the same, unfazed by his presence, almost like the walk didn't even happen.
In my walks I think of something similar, that is to say, I often find myself standing before two roads diverged in a gray city and, fearfully uncertain of which one to take, I begin to wonder if the new one expects me, if there's something waiting for me at the end of it, or if it even makes sense to go down there at all... It seldom does, and whenever I do gain the courage to explore, because such a thing somehow requires courage for a guy like me, I find it disappointing to reach the end and to realize there was nothing new to see, or to find it was a dead-end all along and that now I have to very awkwardly turn back, or maybe that it was just a meaningless place that other people traverse every day of their lives without so much as a second thought. But I do have a thought, a question in fact – at which point does the strange become familiar?
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
Even if I personally think of this poem on sunny afternoons it's funny to notice it actually takes place on a morning, presumably, as previously mentioned, a autumn morning. You can almost see the dirt road, you can almost sense the cold, smoky air, and you can almost hear the poet's steps over the golden leaves... In painting such a picture, the poet reiterates his unfelt presence as his steps blackened no leaves, he simply left no trace, almost as if passing there didn't matter at all which, on that day, was true. Sometimes the world feels so big that no individual person can claim to exist in it... Yet in praising the thought of one day returning to that forest and on that future day taking the other road, he wallows in doubt, wondering if life will ever lead him down such roads again, because if we take life's unpredictability seriously we'll never again be able to make such predictions. Nothing ever stays the same, to make plans is foolish, and tomorrow is always much too uncertain.
And even by completely avoiding any discussion of mortality, which the poem doesn't appear to allude to very directly, we can still think a little bit about about that last verse... I for one find it fascinating to think of all the places I've visited and that I'll never return to again, and I don't mean any special ones, much to the contrary. For instance, I very vaguely recall a vacation when I was eleven and, at the end of one specific day, I happened to go with my cousins to a local supermarket. In every single immediate way there was no strangeness at all, it was just a supermarket like any other, with the same shelves and products, the same tills and buttons and beeps. I couldn't even describe it now and it really wouldn't matter, I can just distinctly remember feeling like an outsider going in and a thief going out, almost as if the purchased goods didn't belong to me because I wasn't from around there, and then we just ran away with our groceries towards camp, with the summer sunset drying our chlorine-scented skin... Thus I had been to a strange place, a place I only ever visited once, never to return again. And the same thing happens with similar everyday places, like gas stations, hotel lobbies, park benches, souvenir shops and so on. Indeed, at every point in our lives we have to wonder if that one visit to that specific place might be the last, which is kind of a sad thought, even if we happened to be immortal, because our return there is prevented by a force even more unseen than death. And if today I were to return to that very same, oddly unchanged supermarket, I wouldn't recognize it.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
This ending has got to be one of the most fondly, if slightly wrongly, remembered stanza in the history of poetry. I for one always misremember it as repeating the word “yellow” when describing the woods, but oh well... The poet closes his meditation with the distinct and confident idea that all throughout his life, no matter what the years may bring, on that day when two roads diverged he took the one less traveled by, he took a chance and went on to find something inherently new, and in doing so he became someone he wouldn't have become otherwise. Because though the path remains unchanged, though the leaves are wholly indifferent, the poet isn't. It's not always us who have to change the world, it is often the world who changes us. Obviously we make decisions like that in our lives all the time, and the fork in the road is often thought of when faced with an important decision, a decision that will change the rest of our lives, but in all honesty I think the poem refers more to the little moments. I for one like to think the difference this discovery made in our poet's life is one very intimately tied with the poet himself, and one that inevitably becomes part of him, forever.
I think it all goes back to the continuity of memory, an old idea I often return to in almost all of my writing. It's essentially the thought that the person we are is a collection of all we've done and all that's ever happened to us, but not only in the big moments because in fairness those don't often come by, and when they do come they are brief. Most of us, even the loftiest among us, really find ourselves in the little moments, and it's every little decision we've made that slowly shapes us. In a nutshell, it's not so much that you happened to meet your loved one on a train, it's more that you just so happened to arrive at the train station at the exact minute when you'd just so happen to run into her, and that you just so happened to take that one specific seat on that one specific day... On the day you met your loved one, all of your seemingly random little decisions made all the difference, and on the day you didn't meet her it likewise made all the difference because what we've never done, though it can be a source of infinite regret, is also a source of infinite everything. Because in truth our lives could have been completely different had we taken a different road whenever we chose to take any road at all. And because life is never stagnant, the only wrong choice might be to not choose anything at all.
As for me, for the longest time I chose nothing, but when I realized that roads diverge no matter what, when I realized the world wouldn't wait for me, when I realized time didn't have time for me, I tried changing. And though I don't always see what difference it made, I'm still trying.
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