Do Nothing, Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto

Whatever you do, Lily, do nothing." --Edith Wharton, House of Mirth


That is a photo of a stack of journals that were disgorged by the dreaded storage unit. They have been sitting beside my bed for about a month because I'm at a loss as to what to do with them--and I'm loathe to touch them, filled as they are with evidence of a kind of wretched, restless, not-so-distant past. Reading through a handful of entries from my journals makes me realize that burning them would be no great loss, though I am glad to see that there are lessons that I didn't learn the first time around and that are repeating themselves even as I write.

One journal entry reminds me that I love a poem by Pablo Neruda called "Walking Around." Neruda's poem begins like this:

"It so happens that I am tired of being a man."

[Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.]

And ends like this:

I walk around with calm, with eyes, with shoes,
with fury, with forgetfulness,
I pass, I cross by offices and orthopedic shoestores,
and courtyards where clothes are hanging on a wire:
underdrawers, towels and shirts that weep
slow, dirty tears.

[Yo paseo con calma, con ojos, con zapatos,
con furia, con olvido,
paso, cruzo oficinas y tiendas de ortopedia,
y patios donde hay ropas colgadas de un alambre:
calzoncillos, toallas y camisas que lloran
lentas lágrimas sucias.]

I fell in love with that poem the first time I read it. That's happened more than once with me and a Neruda poem. Some of them are pretty raunchy. I can only imagine what that guy was like in real life--though that stuff never plays out the way you want it to; he was probably a total Milquetoast.