Wretched Reflection

  Clumsy thumbs
   are clasping pencil,

  Slurring ink
   on scrappy paper,

  Paltry letters
   form puerile palaver…

  Wretched reflection;
   Pierces Soul Cleanly!

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[Please note: The piece, though short, is quite densely imbued with meaning and structure. As such, the description is quite long-winded, and if you have enough time to read it, then may I suggest that you first spend a bit of time contemplating the piece to see what aspects you can glean for yourself :) ]

 This piece is about how my speech, thoughts and writings, in their attempting to resolve or master some issue, are in hindsight overshadowed by their revealing the wretched nature of my person – its pride, callousness, juvenility and foolishness – and that this unintended aspect of such discourse speaks with far more strength and succinctness than the words themselves do.

 I spent a bit of time thinking about and playing around with the overall structure of the piece – something I tend not to bother too much about – and was surprised by the amount of geometry I was able to build into it.

 The whole piece pivots on the seventh line, “Wretched reflection”, in both its meaning and its structure. The word “reflection” primarily refers to how the writing thus far reflects the wretched state of the writer. It secondarily refers to the contemplation of the writer, and how the contemplation has resulted in the revelation of wretchedness. Finally, the word refers to its line acting as a literal point of symmetry in the structure of the piece.

 The first six lines (first three sentences) are the first “half” of the piece. They bumble along tediously and repetitively, and reach no satisfactory conclusion in themselves. The second “half” is the eighth and last line. It achieves what the first half could not; it is concise, clear, and is the conclusion. This contradictory nature between the two is represented in the reversed reflection between the first sentence and the last word; the second sentence and the second-to-last word; and the third sentence and third-to-last word. That is, the clumsy ungainliness verses the clean simplicity; the shallow and immediate nature versus the deep and profound nature; and the tedious ineptness verses the sharp effectiveness.

 This symmetry between the two halves is structurally represented by the C-S-P/P-S-C reflection (C-S-P is the first letter of each of the first three sentences; P-S-C is the first letter of each word of the last line). In the first half, repetition is represented within each sentence by alliteration with “c”, “s” or “p”, and in all three sentences by alliteration with “p” in the last word of each.

 The overall repetition/reflection structure is subtly foreshadowed in each of the first three sentences:
   Clumsy thumbs / clasping pencil
   Slurring ink / scrappy paper
   Paltry letters / puerile palaver

 In achieving this, it might be asked why a pencil is producing ink. Though initially unintended, it turns out to be an apt metaphor for the contradictions I struggle with in much of my thinking; and (in the structure of the piece) is an apt foreshadowing of the nature of the first half in contradiction to the nature of the second.

 It might also be noted the irony that this description is itself a tedious discourse, and that the piece is itself, for all its intricacies, little more than a simple blurb trying to “box above its own weight”.

 And so finally, the piece acts as a commentary on all of my thoughts and endeavors, and more generally, on the thoughts and endeavors of all humanity. In the ultimate sense, they are both puerile and futile, and the best that we can hope to (ultimately) achieve ourselves is to understand this, and furthermore, to then either in pride become truly nothing, or in humility become truly something through that which is beyond ourselves – a challenge to myself as much as it is a challenge to anyone else.

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