To see the Good Bones

I heard this poem on a podcast recently.

And it has taken up prime real estate, living rent free in my head ever since.

Not just because it’s beautiful work, which it is, but because as I listened it was working its way through the cracks and pores of my mind, casting out lines and linking islands previously remote and untethered. It transformed some disparate and troubling ideas that have sat in the ocean of my brain pan and converted them into a archipelago that I could suddenly see as a trail from beginning to end.

The beginning was our past and the end was my children.

But let’s start with the poem - Good Bones by Maggie Smith;

Good Bones

BY MAGGIE SMITH

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children.

The world is at least fifty percent terrible,

and that’s a conservative estimate,

though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children.

I am trying to sell them the world.

Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole,

chirps on about good bones:

This place could be beautiful, right?

You could make this place beautiful.

I’m not much of a poetry guy per se, we had to study Athol Fugard in high school, recite excruciating (to me at least) French works of prose and navigate through no small amount of Shakespearean Gordian english knots. But as I’ve ‘increased in year’ I’ve had a few pieces turn up from time to time that have really upended my view of the medium. So begrudgingly I’m now beginning to come around to 'Camp Poet’ as a medium of true beauty.

Anyway - I said it linked some islands for me so here’s how it went.

Island 1 - Tragic Optimist.

I’m a tragic optimist. I hope for the best but kinda expect the worst. I’m singularly unimpressed with the overall behaviour of the generational cohort from boomers to roughly Gen Z - fairly inclusively, and yes I’m in that bunch.

I think we’ve somewhat dudded our kids and future generations - we started off well but dropped the ball in the second half. And no I’m not about to go all Greta Thunberg on you but short termism and the ever powerful drive to ‘get yours’ while you can has left us operating under a system that is inherently flawed at best and nefariously evil at worst.

The world is at least fifty percent terrible,

and that’s a conservative estimate,

To save you a thesis sized dissertation on what’s going on just know that as a civilisation we have reached a pinnacle where we can no longer agree on anything from how to calculate CPI, what a woman ‘is’ or why defining ethnic cleansing requires a colour chart. We have politicians and corporates who will perform astounding feats of mental, verbal and mathematical gymnastics to justify the blatantly insane whilst bleeding the public coffers dry.

Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children.

So that was the first island - the world is somewhat a dumpster fire at the moment, entirely of our own making. I’ve all but given up seeking out any sort of news due to the dual dilemma that it’s all based on outrage and most of it is immediately falsifiable or thrown into question.

It’s all post-truth and the volume knob is stuck on 11.

But it’s only half terrible.

So, by powers of incredible deduction, there’s half that is not.

That leads me to Island No.2

Island 2 - The Infinite Timeline

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

Life is short but my timeline is infinite.

Life is short - for me, in the traditional sense. I’m approaching fifty, I’m keen to see if I can hit triple digits. So ‘short’ in a traditional, non-cosmic time scale kinda way.

Whilst I don’t think I’ve especially shortened mine, I’m pretty sure I’ve pushed the boundaries and waved at fate in a few thousand delicious ways too. I’ve scaled mountains that regularly claim lives, I’ve spent multiple seasons trudging across the Arctic and the Antarctic, run enough miles to get the odometer to ‘car or man?’ status. I’ve eaten in six star restaurants and had meals in the jungle where the food is best described as ‘don’t ask’

I think you have to do that - look for delicious ways, some ill-advised, to spend many of your precious years. otherwise - what’s the damn point?

The mere act of being alive comes with a certain amount of risk. So live. By default you’re risk-on anyway, so play accordingly.

A life of low risk is a life of low reward.

So what’s this stuff about your timeline being infinite.

I have two sons. (well ‘we’ do, my amazing Wife had quite a roll to play in the entire production)

My timeline isn’t triple digits if I can make it - it’s infinite.

It will, hopefully, extend far beyond my mere mortal existence - just as it extends far behind me.

When you start to think of yourself not just as a player of your innings, but a custodian of all the innings that are yet to be played - you think differently. You act differently.

And I’m not saying you go all conservative - far from it. If you knew you had all the time in the world, you’d play some longer games, build for timescales that extend beyond your reach. You’d build, set foundations, carry on traditions, set up the play as best you could.

And more importantly, you would not burn the house down. You would not strip the fields and spend it all. You would not bend and break all the rules that you don’t like and then turn around and enforce them again when it suits, leaving nothing but confusion and damage in your wake.

I am trying to sell them the world.

Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole,

chirps on about good bones:

Island 3 - Good Bones.

I know I’m starting to sound a little like a cynical ageing fart and maybe I am but we have two sons and I need them to see the footholds and ledges amongst the rubble of the mountains we leave behind.

It’s not time to sell them a fixer-upper, it’s time to find a way to teach them to see the good bones in those often neglected or worn out shells for themselves. To spot the hidden opportunities lying in plain sight.

And for all the curmudgeonly mutterings about ‘the kids’ these days, when you step back and look for their capacity to see the good bones, there’s much to be impressed with.

We gave them a rigged and exhausted financial system and they took concepts and instruments like crypto and are running with it. Hell they MacGyver’d together a game stock, a few reddit posts and an anonymous cat avatar on X and gave Wall St a belting. They didn’t win, because we rigged the system as always, but they made their point.

They took the concoction of algos plus social media and leveraged it to create personal brands and businesses that Don Draper would be seriously impressed with.

Potentially they, or most likely their kids, will leave this planet never to return as they begin our stretch into the universe.

This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

Beyond the horizon.

We got some stuff right.

In 67 years we went from the Wright Brothers to Neil Armstrong. We built amazing industries, leapt from Nicolas Tesla to just ‘Tesla’, put the world in our pockets and mapped the genome.

We seem to have gotten greedy and lazy of late but hopefully our children can see the good bones, the former glory, strong foundations and classical heritage waiting to be reborn and reimagined.

That’s what I hope for my boys.

Our timeline is infinite and they will one day become the custodians of that longest of arcs. Build well.

You could make this place beautiful.

Maggie’s last line gives me hope.

(originally posted on my substack , you can find it plus some of my other writings, for free, at paulwatkins.substack )