Is it not amusing that a man might have enough to survive for the rest of his life, just enough to putter in the garden, to write poetry and prose, and to play his accordion, yet his competitive instinct rages on and the pathetic fellow is bedeviled and haunted by the craving for fame and fortune?

I wonder if a moose would in preparation for the usual long winter eat itself to death if summer suddenly became the only season. I think not, but a man might consume himself to death somewhat like that humungous man in Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life" who gorged himself until he exploded, leaving a terrible mess in the public dining room.

But let us give our fellow the benefit of the doubt and examine the record. Here it is. He puttered around in his garden this morning, labored for three hours over one line of his poetry, had lunch, then played a few polkas on his accordion. While playing, a great idea for a article on practical gardening came to his mind. Excited, he put his accordion in its case and began to write furiously. But his enthusiasm soon waned, for he began to think, Why bother to write this if I don't sell it?

Well, our poor writer went to his bookshelf and pulled out his old writer's guides and searched for gimmicks to impress editors with. Then he threw away what he had just written and started all over again with the gimmicks in mind. After a week of painstaking work, which he did not enjoy at all, his article was completed.

The man submitted his article to The Gardener's Digest. It was accepted; he received a $500 check; he was thrilled. However, just between us, few people besides the editor read past the first paragraph. It was the usual boring piece on gardening accepted by editors who think they know what the public really wants; many of them are frustrated writers who write articles about how to write and how to get articles accepted by editors like themselves. Our gardener knew that, and he had proven his point: he was for once a professional writer.

To make this story short, the man died immediately thereafter. He left his daughter his cottage and a trunk of poems he had been writing over the past fifty years. Many of the poems found therein were the transcendental ones that had grown from his mundane gardening experiences. As you have probably surmised by now, I speak of one of the finest poets the modern world has ever known.

Fortunately for our careening world, our humble poet had curbed his greed. Furthermore, only once in his life had he succumbed to gimmickry, for a measly $500 to prove his point. But what was the secret of his big success, if not a gimmick? Well, he left a note in his diary, the diary auctioned off last week for three-million, two-hundred-thousand dollars, wherein he declared he had been struck by something John Ruskin had said at Cambridge about the creation of fine art:

“The very primary motive with which we set about the business makes the business impossible. The first and absolute condition of a thing's ever becoming saleable is that we shall make it without wanting to sell it. Nay, rather with a determination not to sell it at any price if once we get a hold of it.”

Honolulu 1999