What We Are, We Are

 What We Are, We Are

By Bobby Neal Winters

When I was in high school, the father of a friend of mine had heart disease.  He was a good man, as is his son, and the community circled round them in love.  There was an event to help defray expenses, and a part of that was an auction and a cake walk.

One of the prizes was a poster of a setting sun with a cutting from Tennyson’s poem Ulysses in the background.

I am not a poet, nor do I read much poetry; I get my fix on poetry through song lyrics; but Ulysses captured me. I either bid on the poster and bought it or I won it at the cakewalk, and the poem has been my boon companion since that night. 

For those of you who may have grown up as an ignorant Okie like me, Ulysses was a hero of the Trojan War.  There is an ancient poem called the Odyssey which recounts his adventures/misadventures on his voyage home.  I don’t know any more about this than the Classic Comics that Mr. Gantt kept in his English Classroom, but that stuck with me. I often recite the portions I’ve memorized in my head, and I revisit the poem itself from time to time.

It has been a companion on my journey. There are days when I alternate between it and Reba McIntire singing Bobbie Gentry’s “Fancy.”

I’ve not been as bold a soul as Ulysses. My adventures have been of a different sort.  I have gone many more places than that Okie boy at the cakewalk would’ve believed, but most of my adventures have been of a different sort.

I like to learn things. I’ve learned how to calculate the positions of planets in the sky. In doing that, I got started on learning the Python computing language.   In learning the Python computing language, I discovered that when computer programs get big, they become hard to keep up with so I began learning how to organize them better.

At some point, I wanted to learn about robots and electronics. In doing the deepdive on that, I learned about the Maker Movement and all of the associated free resources on the internet to learn how to do things. 

Connected with that, I learned how to set up a simple home solar charging system.  Connected with that I began a project to set up a homemade, backyard weather station which is now on hold because of...weather.

Now I am learning woodworking.

None of this is like spending time with the Lotus Eaters or being captured by Cyclops, but, as Bobbie Gentry would say, “I ain’t done bad.”

Looking back on it, it seems kind of random because, well, it is.  But this is a connection. That connection is me.  I’ve learned things; I know the things; I think about the things; I share them with you.

The poet Dante I am told put Ulysses in hell, and I am sure he had his reasons. But this one fragment of a poem by an English aristocrat inspired by an ancient poem about a character from the Trojan war--which may never have happened--has had an effect.  It has been a chord in a string of random colored stones that has brought them together in a necklace.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )