Dancing With Mosquitoes

I ran across a poem published on my blog in 2008 that so thoroughly reminded me of Theo Grutter’s voice and style, that I thought, “Surely, this is Theo’s and not mine.” I searched hopelessly for a pdf of his book, Dancing with Mosquitoes, but finally turned back to the source. I pulled Theo’s book off the shelf and tried at first to find the poem by the table of contents, then thumbed through the whole book looking for his words to match the ones from my blog. I’m surprised to report that they were not there, but the more I’ve thought, the more this all makes sense.

Dancing with Mosquitoes is subtitled “To Liberate the Mind from Humanism-A Way to Green the Mind.” It’s a 350 page book filled with poem-prose of Theo’s reflections on how to live a life. Theo was a fisherman and a writer and a traveler, but clear to anyone who’s read his work, he was a brilliant, sparkling and playful thinker. Pry open any page of his book and you’ll find a man who is hard at play with who he is and what the world is like. Every sentence is a tart sip of lemonade and a spicy gingersnap. Every essay is a snapshot into a complex idea that is twisting within Theo and winding its way out of the “wildlife refuge” of his mind. He’s the man who first taught me that it was not only necessary but right that we embrace being both the sunshine and hailstones, the moss and the mosquitoes. All those ways of being are in us and so much richer and more redolent than we can know.

His book is also a nothing book, because he’s a nothing poet. The Amazon page for the book has 6 reviews and his 2013 book also has 6 reviews. He is not the great writer of our time. I’m one of the only people in the world besides his family that knows of him, and when me and my ilk pass, he’ll be gone.

But he changed the way I write forever. He made me think about beauty, He taught me to be baroque and playful in my descriptions, to embrace the mismatch of emotions and tone, to throw off the mantle of “or” and put on the fuzzy scarf of “and”.

Despite the poem that follows that might be mine, Theo Grutter is a hero of mine. My life and craft would be worse without him.
—
When I pour weed killer over the thistles of my self, I have anchored my soul in the harbor of self-realization

We make a grave mistake when we allow ourselves to emulate the lives of our heroes, to look at these wise or courageous people, and begin to change ourselves to be like them. In doing so, we commit the subtle error of imitation and fail to live genuine and candid lives as ourselves. Instead, we mimic the traits and thoughts of others whom we feel are greater than ourselves, hoping that through the donning of a persona, we can make ourselves to be like our champions. What great havoc we must reap upon our individuality through this impersonation! We crush the growing petals of our soul’s tulips, daffodils, and posies, shade our growing sapling selves beneath tall oaks of those who have come before. Yet who is to say our own branches could not reach higher than Alexander's, our passions ring more intensely than Martin Luther King's, and our kindness dwells deeper than Gandhi's? Have we traded all the potential of our unique and mighty spirits, for the known outcome of another's journey? I am myself and I can be no other. I need no more look to other's for a description of how to live my life, than I need talk in a particular style. I may admire those I think beautiful, or kind, or noble, but I must never mistakenly wish to be them. This odyssey of life is my own to explore and I fear so many of us wish to have a guide to tell us how.

Abandon these guides, trips, tricks, and dive in! Wander these unexamined paths of dandelions and thistle thorns, dare to walk off the beaten, blacktop highways of societal expectation and self-esteem and discover the hidden deserts and mountain air within your soul. You may find you are far closer to achieving the heights your heroes reached before you.