Starting A New Life
John Berryman was a writer and poet, just incredibly beautiful at both. He died the year I was born, and right before his death he started a fairytale with his young daughter. There’s almost no one who has heard it (I got it from author Leslie Jamison’s Book The Recovering), so I wanted to share. Give it time; the ending is meaningful, I believe, for anyone about to start a new part of their life. For many who read this, that means going off to law school or college. But it is universally applicable.
The parable they wrote was to be titled “The Hunter In The Forest,” and the draft was written in his daughter Martha’s child-like handwriting.
In the story, a hunter gets lost in a forest where two bears live, both named Hungry, “because they were always hungry, every single second” (think about life today with our phones, streaming, social media, etc.). They steal the hunter’s food, hide his gun, and take his pants(!), then they put him in a cage and lock the door.
Berryman and his daughter wrote four possible endings, the first three in Berryman’s cursive:
“He fixed the lock, got out of the cage, and conquered all animals.”
“And they said, ‘There!’ That’s what you do to us. You’re lucky we didn't kill you! Moral: Be kind to animals and they will be kind to you.”
“He awakened, and they fed him nothing but hay.”
One ending offered victory over life. Another offered a moral: If you are good to the world, it will be good to you. A third offered disappointment: in this case just hay.
But Martha wrote the fourth ending in her childish scribble. She labeled it “Real Ending:”
The hunter awakened and said, “Well?”
What does this all mean? It’s my personal opinion that Martha got it right. I think she was probably a pretty brilliant child. The hunter doesn’t know what to make of the world he finds himself in. “Well?” There is always the question of what comes next for us. if you are leaving a person, place, or thing. If you are starting college or law school. If you are starting a new life. “Well?” we all will ask. What life might lie beyond the life you’ve left behind? There’s no answer, of course, just the question. Until you leave the cage.
Mike Spivey 1/29/2022
We are our own griefs. We are our own happinesses. We are our own remedies.