16,004. YOUNG DAYS

YOUNG DAYS

'That nuthatch is a spitfire', my wife said,

after feeding the birds their suet. I said it

can't be two things at once, but I guess the

bird didn't hear it. It was too busy just being

a bird.

-

I realized in an instant that Humans ought to

be the same way : Instead of shimmering with

all that gossip and junk and sports and games,

they should just hunker down and do what's

natural. Except that I don't think that's possible.

- 

One time, in about 1972, outside of those Elmira

College buildings by the Mark Twain Study, at

the benches that ringed the grass, I was waiting

between classes and some guy got my ear. He

was enthused and caught up, and went on and

on about 'The Secret Sharer' by Joseph Conrad.

-

It was OK, but I was never really bowled over 

by it, but to each his own  -  in thinking about

this the other day, I re-read it the next two nights.

That's some 30 years since I, back then, had read

it for this class; but this guy had the minutiae of

it all down pat. It's sort of about a double, but it's

not  -  the secret sharing if of a fugitive escaped

from another boat (the Phaedra) and the new

Captain of The Phaedra, who finds him and hides

him  -  all a sort of internalized doppelganger tale

of two men. The tension is in the close-calls of

being almost found out, and, I guess too, maybe

the descriptions of the men, the crew, the crew's

activities, and then the escape again.

-

It was all nothing special to me and almost came

across as trite. Conrad was a Pole, whose native

 language was Polish but who wrote in English.

Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but this guy

was enthralled. He was so caught up it got

painful to watch : maybe one could be two

things at once.