One Tap at a Time.
“ To Converse with the Greats’’ by Vera Pavlova conveys a strong message of self-curiosity and discovery through one’s own means. I find the poem very intriguing, even by the first line, “ To converse with the greats; by trying their blindfolds on”. It hint’s at a persons desire to take the initiative of following the steps that others have taken, to continue what they left unfinished. It’s seeing the world from their eyes or as the word “blindfold” procures, lack of seeing. Vera repeatedly articulates the idea of taking on someone idea and forming it in a different way, where you are able to make it your own. By “ correspond[ing] with books by rewriting them” to “ edit[ing] holy edicts", you are in a way putting a piece of yourself, like a memory, into the pages of the books.
I didn't understand what she meant when she wrote, “to talk with the clock by tapping a wall in the solitary confinement of the universe” until I tried it out myself. By tapping the wall. It creates a ticking sound that sounded identical to that of a clock. In the confinements of my room, the sound echoed through my ears as if I was mimicking an actual clock. It hit me when I thought of it that way. When Vera writes of how people take things and makes them their own, it makes sense with the tapping of a mimicked clock. I didn’t create a clock nor did I in any way have the fundamentals to, but I did make it my own by tapping the wall.
As a whole her poem made me feel a connection with each and every writer and author that I have sampled to create and form my own thoughts and writings. By rewriting them, it made me feel as if our ideas and correlations bring us together as people. In creating and rewriting books and ideas, I have created a bond with the original writer and author. I feel that is what connects us as people, our ability to share our ideas and connections and expand on them. What would we be if we never built on someone else’s idea? From songs, experiments, languages, events cultures have been influenced by one another. So many of the things and revelations that we believe in today are built on each other. To make a story or a thought your own is in your own way, keeping that thought or story alive. And that itself, is good enough. So I myself may not have created a clock, but I did make it my own, one tap at a time.