Empathy And Abstraction: Morning Traffic Moving Under The Bridge, Crossing The Interstate Poem by Dennis Ryan

Monday morning, November 26,2018 at 6: 22 a.m., then at9: 48 a.m.;
Thursday morning, November 29 at 10: 21 a.m., then at 8: 20 p.m.;
Wednesday morning, December 5 at 10: 57 a.m.

"Theresa May's campaign to sell her Brexit deal to sceptical MPs and a divided country ran into further difficulties when a string of official economic forecasts concluded that the UK would be better off remaining in the European Union. The Bank of England said on Wednesday that GDP would have been at least 1% higher in five years' time if the UK had voted to remain, while an official Whitehall analysis concluded that in all Brexit scenarios, including May's final deal, the UK would be worse off.Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, added that in the worst scenario, an unlikely "disorderly no-deal" Brexit, the economy would contract by 8%, house prices would tumble by 30% and interest rates would rise to combat inflation. ‘Our job is not to hope for the best,
but to prepare for the worst' Carney said..."
- "Economic Forecasts Strike Blow to Theresa May's Brexit Deal",
The Guardian, Thursday morning, Nov.29,2018

"A little too abstract, a little too wise..."
- Robinson Jeffers, from "Return"

I(Early Morning Traffic)

Traffic on the bridge this morning—as we pass over
at 6: 22 a.m.,long lines of dual headlights are passing under,
streamingin opposite directions through the morning darkness—
empathy followed by abstraction, followed by empathy
again, the lines intersecting, criss-crossing right here.
Everything I see is close-up and frontal: horizontals,
verticals, movement up to the point of intersection—
here and under the bridge.The lights below move
slowly, not stopping, not jamming,no, not yet; no
distancing of emotion yet, no stoppages of feeling
experienced yet.(Just give me a bit.) We passed
over.(Past tense.) Now, later, I pause, take time
to consider my experience of earlier this morning
in conjunction with a second poem I am composing
on the poet's tools—imagination, memory—that
crossing, this outlook.This outlook based upon that.


II(George Oppen's City Poems)

One's perspective, point of view is everything:
all experience is filtered by it.My view, outlook
from the bridge this morning, for example—
the sights that entered my mind upon seeing them,
that filtering of—my body and my body's mind
at work.I have been crossing over this bridge
now for many years; I always look down at traffic
crossing under on Interstate 40,night and day,
and wonder about the drivers, their patience,
the economy as city poems by George Oppen
come to mind, "A Language of New York",
for instance, And one may honorably keep...
and"Population": the moments' populace,
sea-borne and violent... The drivers are glassed-in—
as to them, their goals, motivations, intents, etc.,
I have not been able to write anything until now.


III (Piet Mondrian's Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow)

Men, it is said, are extremely visual.They sense
direction with their eyes. Their eyes are road maps—
they don't need maps, direction finders, GPSs.
They look at what's right in front of them,
then to the left and the right, and down
and up if necessary.Almost from the beginning,
Piet Mondrian defined space this way using
the right angle, the horizontal and vertical
in his paintings, moving into abstraction
farther and farther to achieve a purity
of line, color, shape—finally lines
moved through rectangles as happens
in Tableau IIin 1921-1925, followed by
Composition with Red, Blue and Yellow
in 1930, his simplest, purest statement—
the thing itself, the painting itself, and not


IV (Empathy and Abstraction)

representation!Yet Mondrian checks himself
in the end, combines empathy and abstraction
in Broadway Boogie-Woogie in 1942-1943.
Mondrian, like me, finds himself on the street—
the streets of New York this time (Oppen's city) —
paints the streets at right angles in relations to buildings
using the same basic hues as before: reds, blues,
blacks, grays and yellows.Seemingly orderly.
Harmonic.Symmetrical.Not quite.Something's off.
Somethingnot quite right from before—a tension—
the black lines passingthrough rectangles in those...
Not quite symmetrical now.Unequal opposites.
No black lines now—and what to do?What to think?
Do opposing styles, both fundamental to us,
reflect opposing psychologies? —vide Worringer.
The will to abstraction—we are as lost now as


V (The Present, Early Morning Traffic Again, the Future...?)

we were in prehistory, as fearful and confused,
still faced by a hostile world, a world with which
we have failed to enter into a relation of confidence.
A world of appearances—the dual headlights of the cars
passing in opposite directions, to work and back—
criss-crossing the road above, the bridge, in total darkness—
the drivers earning their daily bread as most governments
have already, at corporate urgings, written business plans
for taking care ofthe earth.This fatal mistake has been
repeated since Antiquity—Athenians, Spartans, Persians,
their allies involved in territorial disputes, the Romans taking
full advantage only to fall themselves—then total anarchy.
Today it is us, China, Russia, their allies, ours, similarly
engaged—in Syria, Yemen, the Crimea, the Sea of Azov—
various lines of engagement are drawn, jumbled.Just
consider Theresa May today, her dilemma—Brexit, No Exit.