Monday

24 April 2017

— a full dozen wood-doves pecking up the seeds in the interstices between our patio bricks

Good Morning All,

I subscribe to the e-version of the Boston Globe. One of the fringe benefits therein includes the invitation to post a response to any of the articles, excluding the obituaries. I sometimes read these postings, which are often wonderfully entertaining in their wackiness. And there are always one or two good ones that either extend or provide further insight into the article’s topic.

But I have also discovered that a good half of the people posting comments do not seem to have read the same article as I. Granted, there is probably among the posters a larger proportion of nut-cases and cockamaimies than in the general population, but the apparent misreadings are still of concern to me.

And not least because occasionally one or two of you respond to one of these Day Book ruminations in surprising ways. I ask myself: Is that what he thought I wrote? Or: How can she possibly think I meant that?” I tell myself: Jeeze, I guess people just do not know how to read, any more. 

But then, when I go back, and look and am slightly more honest with myself, I usually see where I haven't been clear or precise enough.

Now, nearing the end of April, four months along, I have come to appreciate that written communication—or at least my attempts at it—is fraught with far more unintended ambiguity than I’d ever realized.

And, presumably, oral communication would be the same. Such that, to what extent did my students of thirty odd years hear what I said the way I hoped they’d hear it?

Such questions, surely, are enough to give me pause.

That said, my humble apologies to one of you (and quite possibly to more than one of you!) for “disemboweling" Hardy’s Snow in the Suburbs. Honest, that was not my intention! I like the poem a lot. I did not like it when I first met it within the panicky atmosphere of that midyear exam. But I do now. That’s all I was trying to say.

And that said, thanks for letting me know you were not pleased, not to mention your wonderfully succinct observation: “The poem means what you feel.” 

So, now I am saying: “Okay, Bheka, will readers conclude you are just griping and calling them a bunch of cockamaimies?” I hope not. I don’t think I am. (Which is not to say, necessarily, that you are not a bunch of cockamaimies.)

I’m only trying to say that in the course of putting together these Day Book entries, I’m actually learning more about the complexities and subtleties involved in writing and successful communication. It’s one of the reasons I’m having such a good time doing them.

Plus getting to share the poems and the quotes and the photos—the two of which today being particularly pleasing.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bhekaron