Fiddler Jones

Sometimes it's hard for me to get my work done because I've got too much else to do. Too much FUN stuff to do. I'll sit down to do some work, and then a friend will call to meet for a drink at The Burren, or a classmate will want a slice of pizza at The Upper Crust, or a neighbor wants to go for coffee at the Diesel. Or my roommates will want to carve pumpkins, or the New England leaves are changing colors, or I haven't played my guitar in awhile, or I want to call a friend in Chicago, or a comedian or a band or a play is in Boston that I want to see. What to do? It's easy: always choose them over the studying. Yes I'll study, yes I'll do well enough, but should I ALWAYS choose sitting inside a library and hovering over books, when something is calling right outside the window, just a block away?

Which is why "Fiddler Jones" by Edgar Lee Master's is one of my favorite poems. It's in his book Spoon River Anthology, where every person/character in town gets a page to talk about themselves. Most are petty, greedy, transgressive, or dishonest in some way, but a few tell us how to live. And Fiddler Jones is one (and for my money, the center of the book). He's a farmer who makes enough money to get by, but never gets ahead because, dammit, there's too much fun to be had. And he dies without "a single regret." Here's the end of the poem:


How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill--only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle--
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.