Reflections on "Song of Myself"

I had to look up the word "kelson" because I didn't know it.  Turns out it is a beam in a wooden boat that runs the length of the vessel and holds the boards of the hull in place.

Yes, I think, Love does hold all the pieces in place.  Self love, and the love we give to others, and the love we receive from others.

Before I read this poem, I thought that in essence, we are in fact the sum of our parts.  All my life experiences, everything that has happened to me in my forty years, all the people I have loved, lost, hated, barely known - I thought, and still do think to some extent, that these things made me who I am.  I have been thinking a lot lately about my marriage, my long relationship with my husband, how we grew into adults together, made each other into the people we are now.  How we have made our daughter into the person she is now.  That's a lot of responsibility, to think that you have such an important role in the formation of the self of another.  I can't help but wonder how I would be different if I had made different choices, how my daughter would be different, how Husband would be different, how my life and our lives would be different.  Is there something inside me that deserves the recrimination I feel for shuffling us all into the current disarray?

Who is my true self?  What is the entity which

Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,

Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,

Looks with its sidecurved head, curious what will come next,

Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it. 

Whitman says in his poem

The other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.

 I wonder if I have been letting that Other me, the one that is made of my relationships with the world, drive my life, and I have not been listening to my True Self, the one that whispers to me when I am walking in the woods or sitting quietly in contemplation.  Do we all ignore our True Selves in favor of the masks, the separate identities we wear?  Is that why after years and years of being The Wife, The Mother, The Daughter, I finally found myself flailing about completely unmoored, drowning in an ocean of shoulds that I can't even remember jumping into?  I had to go on medicine to keep from killing myself.  It was awful, for me, for Husband, for Daughter... For everyone. And then it got better. And then ...

I'm learning to be human, one day at a time.  Walt Whitman clearly knew the depths of his own humanity, and his poem is one shrine on the faneway of self discovery.

Song of Myself

Excerpt from the 1855 edition

Trippers and askers surround me,

People I meet….the effect upon me of my early life….the ward and city I live in…of the nation,

The latest news…. Discoveries, inventions, societies…. Authors old and new,

My dinner, dress, associates, looks, business, compliments, dues,

The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,

The sickness of one of my folks - or of myself…. Or ill-doing…. Or loss or lack of money….or depressions or exaltations,

These come to me days and nights and go from me again,

But they are not the Me myself.

Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,

Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,

Looks down, is erect, bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,

Looks with its sidecurved head, curious what will come next,

Both in and out of the game, and watching and wondering at it.

I believe in you my soul…. The other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.

Loafe with me in the grass….loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want…. Not custom or lecture, not even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning;

You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my barestript heart,

And reached till you felt my head, and reached till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of earth;

And I know that the hand of God is the elderhand of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born are also my brothers…. And the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love.