Dear Fellow Travelers,
I feel like a drowning man who finally succumbs to the weight of all the life preservers thrown to him. I still imagine myself as one amongst many in an overcrowded lifeboat. Meaning: we're all in this together and therefore are "rescued" by sheer dint of being rescuable.
My teacher Bawa once started a Sunday morning discourse by saying he had been up all night praying to God for his students. When God finally "spoke," it was to say 'He' could do nothing more than what has been done; give nothing more than what has been given. This was Bawa's way of affirming the complete, utter sufficiency of Creation to be the salvation it is intended to be. Besides, for Bawa, the best and highest mercy was wisdom whose source was ourselves. This is a fairly standard message in the America that produced Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman--and which attracted Vivekenanda and D.T. Suzuki to its shores. Yet we keep stubbing our toes in the search for external oracles--or confirmations other than ourselves. I remember hearing a meditation instructor exhort his students to each become a "majority of one"--whether spelled with a small or capital 'o' doesn't matter.
I woke up yesterday morning feeling that my 72 years had been plenty of time to find salvation and wondering why my melancholy persisted. Then I remembered that the first Superman comic had been published in 1938, which would make the superhero roughly 110 Earth-years old, assuming he was about 30 when he moved to Metropolis. Now, granting that aging is done more slowly in Krypton-born bodies, Superman would still have reached a time in his life where he would be looking for heirs. And then I thought of Superman in virtual-reality America where everyday kids can wage genocide in the comfort of their living rooms and make combatting evil a simple matter of disciplined eye-hand coordination. In this world, a real-world Man of Steel is vestigial. Needless to say, I wanted to record my thoughts about Joe Siegel's masterstroke of imagination. Feel free to add your own.
Love,
David
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF
for the Metropolites
1
Suspect is Caucasian male,
5'10", blue eyes, dark hair;
clean-shaven, with thick horn-rimmed glasses;
usually wears wash-and-wear sports jacket
with white dress shirt unbuttoned at top
and loosened striped tie
giving glimpses of blue body stocking.
Last seen in disheveled immobility,
crying in the alleyway
between an Acme check-cashing joint
and the boarded-up Sisters of Mercy abortion clinic.
Suspect, who goes under the alias of Bartleby,
was removed to present spot
after forcible ejection from
the former premises of the Daily Planet
directly across the street.
2
A closetful of red capes
dry-cleaned by the same Chinese laundry
he's been using since he moved to Metropolis.
A closetful of immaculate blue costumes
with red-and-yellow S-letter shields sewn on them.
This is the third anniversary
in which the vestments
have hung unused
sheathed in glistening plastic.
Clark yearns for the days when heroism
needed to unfurl its wings on a daily basis.
Back then the credulous world believed
the costume worn to fight evil
was tattooed to his flesh
or was a latent body part like claws
that appeared with each exercise of power.
Even Lois felt faint when she first saw
battle stains and signs of struggle so stubborn
no bleach or stone could remove them.
Twice a year she helped Clark burn ruined vestments
then accompanied him on visits
to a seamstress code-named "Betsy Ross"
for replacement attire
in the presumably never-ending fight for freedom.
3
No one seems to care or notice
that the Metropolis crime rate is soaring
now that there are no phone booths
where Clark Kent can change to Superman.
"I can use my strength to leap tall buildings,"
he complains to Lois Lane,
"but I am not permitted to shrink my atoms
so that I can fit into a cell phone."
Lois looks with pity at her husband.
"It's a shame," she laments,
"that you can't worm your way into cyberspace.
That's where the worst evil is nowadays."
4
Clark has a drinking problem.
He is not used to needing others
to fix things. Nor are the others.
As problems pile up
Clark gives power to the bottle
he once gave to himself.
5
Lois Lane takes a well-paying job
as a PR flak for a fracking campaign.
She tells Clark it is temporary
but wishes he, too, would heed,
if not bow to, the times.
As an unemployed reporter
Clark has lost his leading excuse
to be at the city's hottest crime scenes.
The only people who might need
his famous nose for news
are the surveillance hacks
at the CIA, FBI and NSA.
But how, he asks,
repressing a desire to pound his fist
on a Donald Deskey dinner table he bought for Lois,
can he work for agencies
run by Lex Luther?
“We all know that the sole purpose
now of the United States
is to stoke the wars
needed for money-laundering,”
Clark says, heaving a sigh
that registers a 6.2 on the Richter Scale.
6
Clark’s former boss Perry White calls
to remind him that his unemployment insurance
runs out in another week.
Has it been that long
since I had a job, he asks himself.
Christie's and Sotheby's have offered
to hold special sales of Superman's belongings.
“No matter what happens,
the Man of Steel’s wardrobe will have value as art,”
an auctioneer assures Lois.
"Why the capes alone will bring more
than the Hope diamond."
7
Maybe, Clark thinks, it is time
to ply his skills on Mars. "I can't live
without this ninja nonsense,"
he confesses to Lois.
"Maybe, just maybe.
there are enough signs
of a life worth defending
left on the Red Planet
to make relocation
worthwhile."
--David Federman, Ardmore, March 14-15, 2014
