Thursday, January 26, 2012

Next Play II

Seamus Heaney has ability to find meaning in something otherwise overlooked. 

One of my favorite's of his is Field of Vision, which ends with these two stanzas:

Face to face with her was an education
Of the sort you got across a well-braced gate--
One of those lean, clean, iron, roadside ones
Between two whitewashed pillars, where you could see


Deeper into the country than you expected
And discovered that the field behind the hedge
Grew more distinctly strange as you kept standing
Focused and drawn in by what barred the way.

There are two distinct things going on here as the narrator stands and studies his nearly catatonic aunt.  He sees a life well-lived in his aunt's face--a life full of experience.

He also realizes that he, too, is becoming catatonic through his pensive examination of this field that expands out further and further and becomes more strange and unusual.  

What the narrator needs to do is get on up over this gate.  The fear, uncertainty, introspection, and hesitation he feels is all just part of living, but only if he is actually living. 

This is his turn to make the Next Play and educate himself. 

Go ahead.

Get out there.

See what this field has to offer. 

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