"It's Been Two Years" - Part Nine - "The Medicine Spoon" - (B) - "They Chucked It"

"It's Been Two Years"

Part Nine

"The Medicine Spoon"

(B)

"They Chucked It"

            “Why?” did I “suddenly” pledge my allegiance to Louisa May Alcott... AND “LITTLE WOMEN”?

            It was not “suddenly”.

            It was not ...studiously ‘worked out’.

            It was not... ever... ‘done’.

            It was not... or even this morning as I write... “is”...a ... featured... directed...

            Considered...

            Relished... or

            Ever taken to be the “top” of my personal and professional blanket

            Allegiance “I pledge” to

            Concord

            Massachusetts.

            Louisa rose to a ‘divine’... for I... by... being incredibly broke (NO MONEY) in an incredibly mature intellectual setting within an incredibly childish family in an incredibly confined and congested house with

            Incredibly ‘no exit’ that was defined by,

            Incredibly,

            Being completely unaware of her ‘herself’... herself... in such an ‘incredibly’ setting?

            ?.... !

            First I found out she was educated by hunting bird’s nests in local fields with

            Henry David Thoreau (and his brother)

            (At their school).

            Then I found out she was “women’s bread” hack writing.

            Then... I left town with her to ‘be a nurse’ for wounded Union soldiers...

            Just like Walt Whitman:

            (He... grew a beard).

            She... became physically ill...

            And mentally ill...

            From contact with this... national bedside-bedridden-bedpan... horror.

            Both ‘wrote books’ ‘about that’... I ...learned of.

            BUT LONGER IT TOOK TO... find out... “Louisa” was “poisoned”

            By “MERCURY”... deployed to ‘cure her’ ‘illness’.

            Does not... ‘all of this world’ (Civil War America);  be a... ‘it was (NOT) so NICE back then’?

ONCE POISONED and ‘physically therefore’

            ‘A train wreck’ she was

Brought home (to THE “Louisa May Alcott house”)

By her ‘dad’...

Who immediately returned to the household’s childish squabbling about

Proper polished apples and

“NO MONEY”.

            Louisa creeped to her bedroom

            Addicted to prescription

            Opiates;

            Her prescribed cure...

            For everything

            For the rest of her life (died at age fifty-five)***.

            Did you catch it?

            That’s right:  She sat ‘up there’ and:

            “Don’t bug me when I’m high.  I’m writing something down”.

            You can go ...right there.  “There”:

            It’s ...right there... with the window.  And her back to the bedroom door.

            And... Holy Hell downstairs.

            Down the hall.

            In the next room.

            And... a little bottle.

            With a little spoon...

            In the drawer

            Of the (writing) stand.

            She hated LITTLE WOMEN.  
            She hated writing it.  
            She did write it.

            She hated its ‘success’.

            But she took the money.

            And hacked out ‘more’.

            Then she died.

            She did not take her last breath in that room.  I really notice that there...

            And miss that.  But... I understand why...:  That house; the whole package, was a ‘nightmare to work in’.  That’s why LITTLE WOMEN reads the way it does:  It was written in a nightmare.  It was written in a classic... old... New England... nightmare and that makes it

            Pure genius.

            So... “ME?”:  I’m up there in the (“Orchard House Louisa’s”) room and I... want to pull open the writing stand drawer to “SEE” if the “MEDICINE SPOON” is “STILL THERE”. 

            “OK MAYBE IT’S IN THE DRAWER IN THE STAND BY THE BED LOOK THERE”.

            What am I talking about?  My ...MY “Why?”.

            The damn spoon has to be there.

            Was there.

            I mean... where? ...there?... “was there?”

            Someone got it?

            No... they chucked it:  The spoon.  Louisa May Alcott’s... ‘medicine spoon’;

They ‘threw it out’ (chucked it).

            How do I know that?

            BECAUSE

            I

            Know the difference between “cleaning out a drawer” and

“Emptying a drawer”.

            “Some idiot” “chucked out” Louisa May Alcott’s ‘medicine spoon’.

            You have to ‘be there’ to understand this.

            “Be there”... means... “know ‘that is’ a ‘medicine spoon’ when you... in a room ALONE... in an old New England home... YOU... ‘find one’... in a drawer... of a ‘stand’ (OR WHAT EVER)... ‘when’ YOU are ‘cleaning out’ or... OR.. YOU are ‘emptying’ “A DRAWER” (or whatever) and

            “THERE ONE IS!”; a ‘medicine spoon’ that ‘someone’ like ...Louisa May Alcott... “USED” to “take her medicine”... so... “KEPT”... THAT SPOON... THERE “to do that” “WITH”.

            Start with simple understanding:  Clean out the drawer.  Empty the drawer.  THAT’S TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.

            Then ‘advance’ to “a” drawer by

            Starting with “YOUR OWN” drawer; that is YOU there... in there..;

            That drawer there.

            “Clean out?”  “Empty”

            IT?

            YOU?

            EMPTY?  IT IS YOU IN THERE

            All... a clutter.

            Learn from these discoveries.

            Learn the difference.

            Learn to LOOK, see... comprehend.

            What is “LOOK, see”

            Do not clean.

            Do not chuck.

            Do not THINK YOU ARE GOD when YOU have before you the divine creation of someone else’s LIFE STORY in a ‘drawer’ of a ‘writing stand’ where they “don’t bug me when I’m high I’m writing something down”.

            Your not God.  You do not ‘chuck’ (murder) someone else’s LIFE without “LOOK, see... comprehend”

            Using just a little tiny bit of one’s self serving ‘intellectual curiosity”.

            Or...:

            Run away.

            Leave ME ...the old enigma of old New England drawers in old New England homes to be “cleaned out” and... or... “emptied”.

            LEAVE ME!

            MY... “WHY?”... is a ...medicine spoon?

            It’s just one of them.

---

*** :  The best, easy, light and pleasing reference and read about Louisa and Concord I recommend is Susan Cheever AMERICAN BLOOMSBURY, Simon & Shuster, New York, 2006.  Louisa’s ills and opiates pgs. 170-180.  This section, as with all of the book’s word craft, is lightly touched and rolls right along.  The positive is that the whole book, with its rapid read speed and ‘not too’ background-iee, refreshes and expands the reader about ‘American Literature’ in Concord.  I remind that this subject is only a part of historic Concord.