Ovid's Café on the eastern side of the Young Library was closed. Had it not been summertime the dining area outside the café would have been abuzz with students–freshmen rushing frats and sororities, exchange students speaking English more fluently than I can, and the humanities undergrad with daddy issues just asking a few questions from the young professor she doesn't have any romantic designs on whatsoever.
As it was, my only companions were the call of birds and the midmorning light on red brick. I sat at one of the tables, scribbling the first draft of a moderately long poem. After an hour or two–one of the blessings of inspired writing is that you become so engaged in the words that you forget the flow of time–a man in a black jacket sat at one of the tables far off to my right.
Probably a professor. He pulled out a newspaper. Quaint.
After some more time passed he appeared to accept that no humanities undergrads with daddy issues were forthcoming that particular morning. He folded up the gazette and left, offering me a curt nod which I returned in kind.
I continued writing, certain of the success of my absurd plan. A plan that nonetheless seemed to me as iron and certain as the Cartesian cogito or the rigidity of a mathematical formula.
Probably I should explain the reasons for my certainty, at least as far as they can be explained and as far as I can understand them. Earlier I briefly mentioned my profound faith in "the magical power of the poetic art." The simplest explanation for my certainty is to say I meant that quite literally: I believed in the magical power of the poetic art.
God or Satan only knows why. Maybe I wrote a poem about a butterfly one day and saw a real life butterfly the next day. Of course my writing had summoned the butterfly out of the primordial ooze of nonexistence and made it appear to me the next day. It's the only possible explanation for seeing a butterfly.
There were times in those days when I would consider writing a poem where I won a million dollars in the lottery–so I could buy a single lottery ticket and be assured of winning a million dollars.
I was pretty sure John Milton had determined in advance the whole course of modern history by writing Paradise Lost. Later that summer, in fact, I would bore a poor girl who knew nothing of Milton for hours, detailing every aspect of my magical-poetical theory. I imagined poetry was the hidden power that moved all of history, with poets being something like godlike wizards secretly waging feuds with one another that only happened to be reflected in the real life wars, the real life convulsions, and the real life blood of nations.
So a morning's work would be more than enough to prevent a marriage and retroactively block myself from ever being spat into existence. I was an initiate. I knew the Truth. I had knowledge of things hidden since the Dawn of Time.
You'll say I had a radically underdeveloped sense of reality and delusions of grandeur.
Well… yeah. Show me one person who writes poetry who doesn't have any unusual or downright bizarre ideas.
Anyway, it's not like I dreamed up the whole thing all on my lonesome. I'd been reading Robert Graves' The White Goddess, and like any good reader I paid extra special close attention to whatever flattered my preconceptions while ignoring the rest of the book.
Things I took away from the book:
Rational philosophy in service of sky God bad, inspired poetry in service of earth Goddess good.
Robert Graves knows more about trees than any human being has any business to know.
If you write like you know what you're talking about and cite mystical poetic insight you can get taken more seriously than some jerk with a measly Ph.D.
Poets, AKA druids, were mystical wizards with arcane powers who could put their curses in verses and literally kill people to death in the middle of the street by the power of their spoken poetry.
Only a dark-haired man of Celtic descent stands any chance of becoming a True Poet. 😊
Robert Graves was a mystical wizard with arcane powers who literally murdered two dudes who wrote negative reviews of The White Goddess by means of his magical poetic potency.
Weird book. Fascinating. I'm sure I'll finish it someday.
So with a head full of Robert Graves, mystical insight, and whatever remained of last night's acid trip I composed a first draft of "An Offering." In hindsight it's a confused piece of work, a little shrill, a little dubitable in its symbolism. But for all its considerable flaws it has the virtue of sincerity on its side. Now and then it even manages a striking image or phrase.
Plus you could say the poem birthed me as a writer. I never wrote seriously or fully devoted myself to writing as a vocation before writing it. Afterward I would (gradually, hesitantly, with frequent backsliding, but nonetheless steadily) apply myself to the task. So despite all its warts and its ridiculous origin, "An Offering" represents a turn in my life and is for that reason sacred to me. I must love it and I cannot reject it.
Eventually the efforts ended and I headed across campus. Westward from the Young Library, down the lane splendid with tulips at that time of year. Past the parking garage with the astronomical observatory on top. From there you either head straight through campus or make a left on Rose and end up at the hospital.
The area around the hospital is noisy and crowded even in the summer, but you have to pass it to get across South Upper and onto Virginia Avenue. When you see the Dairy Queen on Virginia you turn left onto Simpson. And then it's just a few more steps past the hotel till you see the apartment complex on the left.
My plan was to handwrite a copy of the poem for Kaitlyn and deliver it to her at her apartment. Because why else would God or the Devil or Fate just happen to let me know that she just happened to live in the next building over? Revelations like that didn't just occur meaninglessly, no, I was being guided along a set path to a glorious destiny.
Anyway, I had to give the paper a nice, aged look, so it would appear suitably nautical. Like something a pirate captain would keep in his desk to remind him of gentler days on land. So I took a few sheets of computer paper and immersed them in water with a few teabags. This had the effect of giving the paper an aged, yellowed look, rippling it here and there to give it an interesting texture. After dyeing the paper and drying it out for a few days I took a lighter and burned along the edges, browning them and giving them a picturesque unevenness.
I had my worries that the poem would surpass its intended effect. The hope was simply that the magical power of the poem would force Kaitlyn to realize she couldn't marry Larry and that giving birth to a person was the cruellest act one could conceivably commit. (Really, why they don't teach the basic tenets of antinatalism in schools is beyond me. You'd think they wanted people to reproduce!)
But I wasn't naive. I knew women were softhearted creatures and apt to fall in love with anyone at all, especially inspired poets sealed with the inspiration of the Divine Muse. So I had to prepare myself to let Kaitlyn down gently. Things like:
You're great and all, but I'm just super busy these days.
It's not you, it's my poetico-mythical vocation to lead the festering mass of humanity to a higher level of Being.
It's really much more satisfying to idealize the hell out of a woman and never ever ever be subjected to the inevitably disappointing reality of her actually-existing humanity. I mean haven't you read Petrarch? I swear I'm not gay I just hate reality.
Once the paper had dried out and I'd burned along the edges, I hand wrote the poem in a suitably old-style cursive script.
Then all I needed was the red ribbon to tie it all together in. Because it was in the poem.
The red ribbon proved pretty easy to procure. My green-eyed companion from the acid trip that inspired all this had a crafting streak, so I let her know I needed a piece of red ribbon.
"Just come by my place, I have a box full of ribbons and you can find the one you need," she said, without asking what I needed it for.
After a minute's search I found a length of blood red ribbon with a fine lace fringe on both sides. Just what I needed.
When I got home I rolled up the sheets of paper into something resembling a scroll and tied them together with the ribbon.
It looked just right. Now I just had to deliver it.
Eek! You and Kaitlyn is like you and your mum. What are you, Marty McFly?