"Every game ever invented by mankind is a way of making things hard for the fun of it. The great fun, of course, is in making the hard look easy."

-- John Ciardi, How Does a Poem Mean?

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Found an old volume at the library, a jacketed hardcover edition of the above-quoted book, a favorite of Dr. Reist's. Sometimes, going through the text, I feel like I have heard all this before, and that instead of continuing on I merely need to recall a portly old man in sleeve garters offending us all. Scrawled Greek on the chalkboard, or crude etchings, prayerful obscenities.

I really miss those classes.

I sometimes consider going back to school, not for the degree or job security but for the fun of it. There was fun in the playpen, if I remember rightly. And what are my occupation's studies, the things I learn for work, if not the same pen games but with less lofty and more frivolous ends?

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Ciardi suggests that we abandon the easy question, "What does a poem mean?" and substitute for it the difficult one, "How does a poem mean?" It is not a finding of meaning but an understanding of how meaning works, how the pieces fit together a certain way, and why they do not fit together in a different certain way, or in an uncertain way altogether.

Anyways: old hat for English readers, I'm sure, especially from Hillsdale. Still, Ciardi's analysis of Frost, Carroll and (so far) some old lyrical ballads returns me to my studies, and not just of poetry.

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So, for life:

Alas, the Tony Awards are on television tonight, and we've been invited to a friend's apartment for it. The birth of dinner parties. I used to watch and read plays about couples preparing to go to a party or a dinner with friends and hating the preparation, hating the others there. And I always wondered why those couples kept going to these things if they didn't like doing it.

Or, put another way, if you weren't going to watch the Tony Awards until you were invited to do so, why are you doing it?

I'm learning.

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I noticed today how many different bird calls I can hear from my apartment. Maybe it's because I'm up three levels. Elevated to the canopy deck, the sounds of the streets are far away and the sounds of the sky are close at hand: planes sometimes rattle my walls, the wind makes something in the kitchen creak, and birds twitter just outside the windows.

The other night, I took a book out to the fire escape outside the bathroom window. I brought a flashlight because it was dark and a cigarette because I found it. As I smoked and tried to read, a bat flew past my face and my whole body flinched and I hooted in dumb surprise and the thing came back for another go.

And yesterday, smoking another cigarette I found (the remains of a lost habit), I sat on the porch and read. Bees kept pestering me and finally I looked up. There stood a tree, ten feet from the porch, its wide branches petering out to thin twigs and frail leaves. And at the very tips, golden flowers like balls of pixie dust, hundreds of them posted throughout the tree, and some of them caught the sunshine and made a half-halo around the silhouette, and bees latched onto these dust balls and festooned themselves with pollen and flew away. At least thirty bees that I could see, a score and a half of little black and yellow angels sucking on heavenly nectar.

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Those bees make it all look easy, their interpretive dances and free flight. It means that everything will be okay.

How does it mean that?