Mistakes were made

I should be frantically putting together a presentation on Critical Theory and Literary Criticism but am clearly not. Really, the biggest challenge with an assignment like this is editing the thing down to the time limit. One time, I gave a presentation on Charles Stewart Parnell that was supposed to be 20 minutes and lasted for 55. There's a stopwatch this time.

Earlier today, on the way to the store I was listening to the end ofThis American Life. The show this week riffed off the phrase "mistakes were made" and focused on people who, after fucking up royally, made performative apologies without actually saying "I'm sorry." An e-mail I got from Walt early this year and subsequently deleted (but not before drafting a response I never got around to sending) comes to mind.

At the very end, Ira Glass talked about discussing the show's topic with a colleague at NPR (one of the writers for Market Place whose name escapes me) and the writer mentioned a poem by William Carlos Williams. When he read it on air, I mouthed along because I've had this poem quasi-memorized for a couple years now. He noted that when he first read it in grade school his teacher told him it was an actual note Williams left his wife one day. Lou taught us that Williams had affairs and the plums in the icebox aren't plums at all. But he isn't sorry either way...

THIS IS JUST TO SAY
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-William Carlos Williams

The writer, after all these years, is still infuriated by the line "you were probably/saving/for breakfast". He knew they were being saved. He knew her. And to him the "Forgive me" isn't so much mea culpa as it is a demand. I love this poem. I loved it when Lou first read it, the way he read every poem, slow and lingering. Lou, I think, had experience with plums. It's devious and beautiful in how it much it asks and how little is has to say. After the poem, a series of regular AL contributors read their own. Some were better than others. Some more in keeping with Williams winking simplicity. Others, well just one really, were too malicious to be really good.

Lately, this poem reminds me of Jason. That might not be fair because I do feel bad about how things ended. They again, look at that last sentence. How things ended? Mistakes were made. Maybe I didn't give him the benefit of the doubt. Lord knows I haven't given anyone much lately. I guess in watching other people wind up with someone just because they couldn't stand to be alone, I decided the opposite of that is probably better. I can't always stand to be alone either. When things start going inexplicably down the tube it's nice to able to just call someone whose job it is to help make it better. That's nice. But at what cost? I don't have time to really care about someone else. I don't even have time not to find unforgivable fault in them. I can't find fault in the plums though. The plums are always sweet. It's what comes after plums or the things you have to do to get to plums that seems to be most problematic lately. I don't know if I want the plums that badly. However sweet they taste.