Our common denominator has to be love. The most common, love of self. The least, love of others. Here’s where less is really more. The indivisible, the smallest fraction. Reduce ourselves to love of others. So simple. So fulfilling. Yet, the most difficult of choices. It goes against our instinct to survive. But, it is our deepest moral imperative.
I wax philosophic for three reasons. First, J. Cameron Cummings sent me a poem, via his father (a former student of mine), just prior to my departing for a three-day photo foray in New York City. Cummings further peaked my interest with his candid responses to a couple of questions about his interest in poetry.
He writes, “I can remember writing poetry from as early as I could write. I love to read, so I believe my interest in poetry started from there. My first grade teacher introduced poetry to the class and I liked poems so much that I started writing them.” By further stating that he considers poetry “definitely a great way to express yourself,” Cummings shows his love for the word.
My second reason for digging into what is at our basest levels coincides with my vow to take as many people pictures as I could in the city. Usually, I am too distracted by store displays and architecture. This trip I wanted to capture more of humanity in its raw honesty rather than simply the art created by that humanity. Because of this young man’s poem, I had been further inspired to focus on human interaction and engagement.
The third reason for being in a philosophic whirl was a phrase resonating in my head from a couple of the more heated discussions my Dad and I had recently. He kept saying that the main problem with our country, and with the world, is greed. I have always maintained that the only sin is pride. That all the rest of sins center around putting oneself before any other. My father insists it is greed. If one does the math, they’re one and the same.
That Cameron Cummings could have the wisdom of an octogenarian at eleven years old may not surprise any parent of a son. At eleven resides the pinnacle of boyhood where idealism is strongest before the realism of manhood begins its distortion of truth, displacing innocence with desirousness. Poet William Blake composed his “Songs of Innocence and Experience” around this precept.
Just when I believe young people are not paying enough attention to the world at large, I get bushwhacked. Just when I think young people are too engaged in games and gadgets, I find myself on the floor with no rug to comfort me. Cummings wrote in his letter to me that he earned his Junior Black Belt two years ago. He said the exam to earn this belt was very hard, and he “found out how much perseverance one needs to achieve a goal.”
Here in his own poem, another kind of examination is entertained by this young South Carolinian poet. He earns much by his perseverance. Cummings plays with rhetorical questions, perfect metrics, and even risks repeated rhyme to challenge his audience to pursue answers, though they may elude us for a lifetime. He knits his sounds subtly to juxtapose the soft and the harsh, so that his message with its implied admonishment is easy to take in, but leaves the audience with a taste of self-awareness and a sense of gathering strength. Consider for yourself:
Great Greed
Why does everybody have a want for
things they do not need?Why are people so obsessed for money
and great greed?For is it something so unsaid, it tears us
all apart?Or is it something going wrong with
people in their heart?Why can’t we all just want the things we
need?And, not obsess in certain things that
give most people greed?
- J. Cameron Cummings
Having returned from my excursion to the Big Apple, I downloaded about eight hundred pictures and began the arduous task of editing and discarding. Nearly two thirds of the people photographed held cell phones in their hands, even if they were not actively engaged in phone conversations. I didn’t notice this peculiarity while I was taking their pictures.
In a city symbolizing everything that’s right and everything that’s wrong with our country, its life blood, its citizens, pumped along, self absorbed, greedy for attention, connection. Surrounded by materialism and the electromagnet of consumerism, people roamed the streets aimlessly purposeful, ever prepared to be wanted, instead of prepared to serve the moment’s subtlest need. What has gone wrong in our hearts? Why has want replaced need?