The Magnetic Poetry Kit

     That year was the year from Hades. I got the big idea that I would change my major from Plain English to Biology in order to have a better chance at really getting that technical writing job at the end of school. Easier said than done. For two-and-a-half semesters, I toiled at algebra and chemistry. I was like a salmon, swimming upstream, against a never-ending current of acids and bases, sodium-gated channels, and ionic solutions. To what end? I toiled and struggled every day and there was no reward. My very lungs had wilted flatter than five earthworm hearts in a row. I lost levity. My life had become a long string of problems. Linear equations and titrations. Derivations of the quadratic equation and acid-base reactions.
     Then I found solace for only $18.95, when I was introduced to the magnetic poetry kit. Words again! I tore apart all the words and arranged them in no special order in a big block on the refrigerator door, where I saw them at least twice a day. My mind was so fragmented by its exercise in that foreign language of mathematics, that the mere presence of words was a supreme comfort.
     One day as I opened the refrigerator door, a single line in the block of text jumped out at me. The words were meant for me alone. And best of all, they had complete clarity for my situation:

All so scream.
Leave Grey.
Me true ly springing puppy,
Mist through after life.
Stop:
Cool chant.

     After two long semesters where every day was like a thousand years, the alveoli of my spirit had become numbed by word problems and formaldehyde. But the magnetic poetry kit was to me like the light and fluffy noble-gas words rolling off my tongue: argon, crypton, and zenon. The dreaded weight of gold, copper, sodium, and nickel from the periodic table was lifted occasionally by the succinct yet comforting words wafted toward me from my refrigerator door.
     One day in chemistry class, halfway through the semester, ding! went a bell. Not a lsb-strewn kitchen timer but an epiphany. I could leave this unrewarding life! I could choose to have a new life where the small niceties of living, no longer ruled by timers, could take precedence. Hello again backyard sunshine, sweet honeysuckle from the hammock, and savored coffee with the feet propped up.
     Within twenty-four hours, I was officially an English Student again. I would have nothing but English courses from now on. That day, a thousand years became a day. There was, however, one glitch.
     You may sympathize with my being in that rusty netherland between the two halves of my brain, the Right and the Left. The problem was that although I had begun to think in the Left brain, I had just unplugged it when I yanked myself out of chemistry class, before it had time to finish developing. At the same time, my Right Brain had deteriorated from lack of use.
     However, when my car broke down on the side of the road that week, I was ready to think my way through it. I had had two-and-a-half semesters of hard science; of course I could be investigative and scientific. So I started using what I had learned of the scientific method. I checked the radiator overfill. It was so full that a little bit of water dribbled out when I took off the lid. That meant, of course, that the radiator would not have a water deficit, since the radiator is supposed to suck water from the reservoir whenever it runs short. I could touch the radiator with my bare hands and it was cool as a cucumber, so I knew that everything was okay. Then engine seemed a tad too hot, but engines get hot in just a block or two, don’t they?
     Just to be sure, I decided to get a little help. I called all my autophile friends. He wasn’t home in the middle of the day.  So I called the first person I found in the yellow pages of my abridged car phone book who sounded remotely autophile. I got Tommy from Tommy’s Transmissions. He listened to my list of symptoms and said, “It sounds like your thermostat is stuck.” First of all, I thought about the meaning of the word, “thermostat.” A thermostat is something on the wall in your house that tells you how hot the house is, right? I could visualize a stuck thermostat. So I smacked the dashboard to unstick it, but it held its place a good bit past HOT. “But,” Tommy from Tommy’s Transmissions continued, “it should be all right to drive a little ways, to the first service station you come to.”
     Okay, so a thermostat is a little valve that, by regulating the water flow, cools down the engine. And the radiator reservoir was full because the thermostat had gotten stuck in the off position and when the temperature mounted in the waterless engine, it exploded the water back into the reservoir. Meanwhile the radiator was cool as a cucumber because there was not a speck of water in it.
     Somewhere along the line of events, the radiator had developed a hole and all the water leaked out, except for the water that got spurted into the reservoir. But how was I to know? I had been thinking. Or maybe I had merely pondered. There is a distinct difference. Scientists think. English majors ponder. At any rate, “A sadder and wiser (wo)man (s)he rose the morrow morn” is true.
     In order to get my money’s worth from the lesson I learned, I am going to pass along what I have learned from this experience.
     First of all, if you’re an English major, don’t try to reason with a car. English majors are ill equipped to deal with cars. Period. We ponder too much. And there is nothing in the realm of English degree that has anything to do with cars. Car talk is a foreign language where words take on a drastically different meaning than they do in English class. Cars do not participate in symbolism, plot, theme, or interpretation. Thermostats, for instance, are not interpretive. They are hardware. The only two things that English majors can take from their arsenal of tools for understanding a car are irony and onomatopoeia: you think you are doing what is best for the car and then it makes a wretched noise and dies.
     Second of all, even with the best of intentions, never trust an over-the-phone Tommy from Tommy’s Transmissions to diagnose your thermostat and radiator problems. I drove that “few more miles to the nearest service station.” Yep. And do you know what they gave me there? A pretty bill for $800.00. A new head gasket was only $20, but they charged $600 for the labor. I was able to replace the timing belt, which had melted, for only $40, but the labor was twice that.
     Third and most important, before you even get to the point of trying to reason with a car or calling Tommy from Tommy’s Transmissions, don’t do like I did. Beware “crossing over.” If you were born an English major, stay an English major. Don’t try to fight it. If you’re a true English major, you won’t be successful in the Left Brain. Ever. Just rest assured that those who have gone before, who have tried and failed, have done so for you, so you don’t have to suffer needlessly. Just call Triple A from the beginning.
     If you heed not this tale and try crossing over, you will lose a good bit of your natural English major-ness without gaining anything remotely scientific or logical. In fact, what you think is logical and scientific is only a cheap imitation. In the meantime, you will lose all ability to spell, all ability to connect words into complete sentences, all ability to speak coherently, and what was once familiar will start to look French.
     Even those who cross back into the English-major realm are ruined. For example, I had been out of all Left-Brained classes for almost a full semester when I took my first English course after re-conversion. We were ruminating about the history of poetry and had come to the ballad stanza. The professor was cheerfully acquainting us with the elements of this poetic style. One of the elements was rhyme scheme, which I copied from what the professor was writing on the board: abab or abcb.
A couple of days later, while reviewing my notes, I was completely befuddled:

“Ballad stanza rhyme scheme: a²b² or ab²c”

If you won’t believe me about what crossing over can do to your mind, believe the magnetic poetry kit. The stanza I am about to give you is, on one level, about trying to repair your own car on the side of the road. On a much deeper level, it is about the certain-to-fail journey out from the warm embrace of poetry and prose into the cold world of numbers and logic:

Deliberate (verb) trip of road.
Rip breast.
Put moan behind;
To always feel shine,
You have to language.


Copyright 2002 by Renee Britt