Both Exquisite and Mundane

Tonight as I sat in the big chair (Dad thinks it's his chair, but it's Dosey's now), our puppy Dosey and I struggled for control of her favorite toy, Bear. Bear is grey with a Teddy Bear face and a long, crinkly body. He ends in a bulb for his bottom, a bulb that I squeeze so that he squeaks when I’ve won him, always temporarily, from Dosey.

As we wrestled for control of Bear, Dosey was getting the best of me, holding Bear in her sharp puppy teeth by his crinkly throat. Then a moth, one of many in our home these days, flew by, and she lost her concentration, so I won the advantage. Dosey forgot Bear and continued to follow the moth. Out loud, though neither Dosey nor Bear knew the allusions, I said, “And then it was, there interposed a moth.” Amused with myself, I chuckled and then went to my computer to read again Emily Dickinson’s poem, “I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died” and Virginia Woolf’s very short essay, “The Death of the Moth.”

“I Heard a Fly Buzz when I Died” is Dickinson’s poem from the perspective of a dying narrator, and all the pomp involved in human death, until the narrator notices a fly that no one else probably notices, but perhaps a reminder of the earthiness and the commonness of death (I write “probably” and “perhaps” because I don’t think anyone ever knows for sure what Dickinson is saying, even when they—or I—think we do.) A key line in the poem is “And then it was there interposed a fly.” (I love the language’s formality ending with the thudding fly.)

In Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth,” Woolf also writes about death. She describes watching a moth die, its elegance and its powerlessness, as she learns about death. The moth’s dying, perhaps like ours Woolf seems to suggest, is both exquisite and mundane.

Because neither Dosey nor my partner Ann majored in English Literature in college, it’s highly unlikely that they think about this essay when they chase moths in the house, both with a kind of crazed and intense focus like Bill Murray in the movie Caddy Shack. (For this reason, I shared the movie with Ann, but I’m pretty sure she didn’t relish the similarities between herself and Bill Murray’s character that warred against gophers on a golf course.)

There are so many literary references to creepy, crawly things. Of course, there’s the spider in Charlotte’s Web. Though I love the fictional character, I cannot abide (as my Southern mother would say), these creatures. In fact, when there’s one in my house, I go in the other room and yell for Ann to take it away.

There are great poems about even creepier and crawlier things. There’s “Snake” by D.H. Lawrence, an encounter recalled by a narrator who missed out on one of the “lords of life” because he listened to the voices of an education that taught him to fear poisonous snakes. (Though I appreciate the idea that we should not fear all that we have been taught to fear, I still think it’s a good idea to fear poisonous snakes, no matter how kingly they may seem.)

How lucky for me that I’ve learned through literature to appreciate the exquisite in the mundane. I supposed many people see my life of losses from my brain tumors, watch me struggle with my balance as I traverse a Seattle sidewalk despite its cracks, or notice that I am too tired to finish my beer (As 45 might tweet: (“So sad.”)

As William Wordsworth wrote in “Intimations of Immortality:

Though nothing can bring back the hour 

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; 

We will grieve not, rather find 

Strength in what remains behind; 

Though Wordworth’s losses were from age (I think he was a melancholy 34 when he wrote this poem) and mine from brain tumors, the sentiment buoys me. I do find strength in what remains behind: a life worth living, the love of my partner and family, puppy and friends, a lovely walk around Gold Creek Pond (though in my head I remember the movie and call it, “Golden Pond.”)

Along with the aged Wordsworth, I am grateful for the life after loss. As Wordsworth concludes this poem:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.