The Urban Wanderer

[PrinceMyshkin]

There’s a café where he hangs out
where everyone has some different,
fanciful notion of who he is
or of his history.

To one he is a lonely figure
whose family just drained away;
to another he’s a formerly successful financier
brought low in a particularly seedy scandal
or a would-be poet
who could never rise above a level
of fixed mediocrity.

He is the embodiment of all our crippled hopes,
our grandiose desires. We wanted more
but learned, sadly or cheerfully,
to settle for less, much less.

But the truth is simpler than that, the truth
is always a little more simple
and a little more complex than that.

[Sweets America]

Strange poem, intriguing, I would say. Not sure what I think of it.

[phoebelll25]

Are you the abovementioned urban wanderer?
Just guessing

[PrinceMyshkin]

Are you the abovementioned urban wanderer?
Just guessing

I wasn't knowingly, intentionally projecting myself or any of my potential selves, but practically any other one writes about is to some extent drawn from one's self. Indeed, does one ever recognize some characteristic in another unless one had previously identified that characteristic in one's self?

[Sweets America]

Are you the abovementioned urban wanderer?
Just guessing

Actually I wondered about that too.

[Umbilical]

I wasn't knowingly, intentionally projecting myself or any of my potential selves, but practically any other one writes about is to some extent drawn from one's self. Indeed, does one ever recognize some characteristic in another unless one had previously identified that characteristic in one's self?

I don't believe you when you say that you weren't knowingly doing so...

Maybe not to begin with,
but I'm sure you questioned along the way... and wondering whether to write THAT and give THAT away within it.

Either that or you needed to write for yourself, and this came out... so you're right.

[PrinceMyshkin]

I don't believe you when you say that you weren't knowingly doing so...

WHY wouldn't you believe me? Do you lie so much about yourself that you just assume others do as well?

[goldenrod]

I found the piece interesting...as to the meaning, self projection or not, that too is open to question as the admonition to "know thyself" is not an epiphany but an on-going search...even when knowingly engaged in. IMHO???

goldenrod.

[Umbilical]

WHY wouldn't you believe me? Do you lie so much about yourself that you just assume others do as well?

Maybe...
But if I do lie about myself I wouldn't know that I lie about myself.
so, do I?

Anyway...
I was just saying that you probably did pause in between and ask yourself if you should really say 'THAT' because you might give it away...

Maybe I'm wrong. It doesn't bother me. :)

[Sweets America]

But if I do lie about myself I wouldn't know that I lie about myself.

Why not? You can lie and be perfectly conscious of it.

[PrinceMyshkin]

Why not? You can lie and be perfectly conscious of it.

Yes, but the harder lie to see through in someone else (or indeed in oneself) is what, in German, is called a lebenslüge, which one dictionary defines as a "sham existence" but which I've seen elsewhere defined as the lie by which you live, that you need in order to survive...

[ampoule]

There’s a café where he hangs out
where everyone has some different,
fanciful notion of who he is
or of his history.

As I read this again this morning, I stopped with this first stanza and drifted off somewhere thinking how, perhaps, each of us in that cafe has a fanciful notion of who we are and of our histories. Because I watch people so intently, I'm assuming they might be doing the same to me. I become my own movie.

[Pendragon]

"All we ever do or seem, is but a dream within a dream" right? Good poem!