Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I spend the summers and winter holidays in Vermont, on the side of a mountain. It’s the closest I come to living off the grid. I romanticize disconnecting but could never commit. I love modern amenities too much. I'm not a recluse; I really enjoy being around people. Yet, the wild outdoors gives me a perspective on it all that I find hard to gain while in the stream of my city life. One British poet wrote in another century that “There is a pleasure in the pathless woods.”

Here, I encounter bears, wild turkey, great grey owls, foxes and moose. Instead of street noise, the chattering of the red-eyed vireo, nuthatch, chickadee, and many other birds fill the air. I can meditate for days in the quiet of the forest.

But, it is here, too, that a snowstorm and heavy rains have cut me off from the rest of the world. For nearly four days, my off-grid living ramped up. I had no electricity, and my car could not clear the snowbanks. I kept a wood fire going for warmth, and cooked eggs and toast in a cast iron skillet on that fire, just like the pioneering days. Emergency water and bathroom tissue had to be rationed. Gas lamps and candles provided light but not enough. The sound of a neighbor’s generator made me envious that he was riding out the storm watching ESPN.

It took me a day and half to remember that I had never cut off the land line. I pulled the phone out of storage, plugged it into a wall socket and called emergency services. My neighbor visited. He said, our vacation from the world was nothing compared to that time Hurricane Irene washed away bridges on Route 73 and food had to be helicoptered in. With recent floods in Vermont, living in the woods is losing its appeal. I am terrified of a mudslide. I feel defenseless waiting for help to arrive.

Today’s poem strikes that same note of fear of being cut off from the world and the impending feelings of abandonment.

The Big People
by César Vallejo, translated by James Wright

What time are the big people
going to come back?
Blind Santiago is striking six
and already it’s very dark.

Mother said that she wouldn’t be delayed.

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel,
be careful of going over there, where
doubled-up griefs whimpering their memories
have just gone
toward the quiet poultry-yard, where 
the hens are still getting settled,
who have been startled so much.

We’d better just stay here.
Mother said that she wouldn’t be delayed.

And we shouldn’t be sad. Let’s go see
the boats—mine is prettier than anybody’s!—
we were playing with them the whole blessed day,
without fighting among ourselves, as it should be:
they stayed behind in the puddle, all ready, 
loaded with pleasant things for tomorrow.

Let’s wait like this, obedient
and helpless, for the homecoming, the apologies
of the big people, who are always the first
to abandon the rest of us in the house—
as if we couldn’t get away too!

Aguedita, Nativa, Miguel?
I am calling, I am feeling around for you in the darkness. 
Don’t leave me behind by myself, 
to be locked in all alone.

“The Big People” by César Vallejo, translated by James Wright from COLLECTED POEMS: JAMES WRIGHT © 2007 James Wright. Used by permission of Wesleyan University Press.