Towel Day Inspiration

For those who are unaware, May 25th is Towel Day. You carry your towel with you. It is in loving tribute to British author Douglas Adams and his book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. wiki entry on Towel Day. Now, being one who has never read Douglas Adams, I don't tend to remember such events until my Twitter feed bombards me with DON'T PANIC entries and pictures of people with towels. This year Towel Day came during a particular shitty time for me. Everything kinda sucks in life right now. A death in my family has caused issues between people Instead of grieving I am cleaning out my loved one's home and coping with relations that I'd like to turn over me knee. I am planning and packing for a long trip this summer that is more than a little intimidation and scary. My home is filling up with my deceased family member's stuff. And reading just hasn't been happening. My reading of Cucuteni information has stagnated, and two books (TWO!) that I began in the last month lie unfinished. They just didn't do it for me. One takes too much thought and the other just isn't written well at all (and I should have realized that before I started, so bad on me). So, inspired by folks going to work with towels over their shoulders I am now reading Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Finally.

This is one of those books that has transcended being a story and become a phenomenon. In the geek world, where I have found myself since college, it is considered a necessity. It's bad enough that I haven't read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. It was sacrilege that I hadn't read Hitchhiker's. Just now, being only a few chapters in, so many phrases and references made by friends make sense!

I am a fool and an idiot for not reading this earlier. Adams's humor is the kind that I adore, that makes me smile no matter what. And right now I need that. The only downside at the moment is that my copy of the book is the Ultimate Guide, including all the related Hitchiker's books. So it's a very large tome-o-funny. Can't really lug it about, so it is a read-at-home book. Not so bad, though. Gives me that break when I need it most.

So, don't panic, folks, and remember your towel.
http://towelday.org/

Considerations of Wordsworth and Death

April came and went, and I got out one post about National Poetry month and one poem. Not my plan in the least. April was a little more hectic than I'd hoped. But one does not need a month honoring the art to share it!

A favorite William Wordsworth poem of mine is "Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood" written between 1802 and 1804 (wiki article). I first read this poem after hearing mention one section (lines 180-191):

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

I have used this portion in notes to friends and colleagues who are coping with recent death in their lives. The poem as a whole deals with death in relation to life andBut this one section is full of hope and positivity about losing someone you love. A co-worker who was coping with the death of her mother came to tell me how much comfort she took in these words.

After thinking of this quote, I sought out the entire work. It is a poignant reflection on life and death, especially with consideration of how a child perceives it. Death for a child can be a very curious event. A family member or friends is there one day, and gone the next. If the death is kept from the child (Grandpa went to sleep. Rover went to live on a farm) it becomes even more mysterious. When I was a small child my family did not lie about death to me. With so many older relatives it was a common enough occurrence. My mother did not often bring me to funerals and wakes unless they were people I knew and were close to. I remember thinking that death was a horrible, dark thing that took grandparents away from me. If only I'd been handed some Wordsworth back then.

I am not an English major, a poetry critic, or a Wordsworth expert. I am a enjoyer of verse. I do read poems for critical and deeper meanings, but I am by no means adept at it. I love this work because of the rolling process of thought it goes through. It is as if we snuck in to the poet's mind while they were lazily thinking.

THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

The rainbow comes and goes,
And lovely is the rose;
The moon doth with delight
Look round her when the heavens are bare;
Waters on a starry night
Are beautiful and fair;
The sunshine is a glorious birth;
But yet I know, where'er I go,
That there hath pass'd away a glory from the earth.

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
And while the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound,
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay;
Land and sea
Give themselves up to jollity,
And with the heart of May
Doth every beast keep holiday;—
Thou Child of Joy,
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
Shepherd-boy!

Ye blessèd creatures, I have heard the call
Ye to each other make; I see
The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
My heart is at your festival,
My head hath its coronal,
The fulness of your bliss, I feel—I feel it all.
O evil day! if I were sullen
While Earth herself is adorning,
This sweet May-morning,
And the children are culling
On every side,
In a thousand valleys far and wide,
Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
And the babe leaps up on his mother's arm:—
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
—But there's a tree, of many, one,
A single field which I have look'd upon,
Both of them speak of something that is gone:
The pansy at my feet
Doth the same tale repeat:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature's priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own;
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind,
And, even with something of a mother's mind,
And no unworthy aim,
The homely nurse doth all she can
To make her foster-child, her Inmate Man,
Forget the glories he hath known,
And that imperial palace whence he came.

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses,
A six years' darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learnèd art;
A wedding or a festival,
A mourning or a funeral;
And this hath now his heart,
And unto this he frames his song:
Then will he fit his tongue
To dialogues of business, love, or strife;
But it will not be long
Ere this be thrown aside,
And with new joy and pride
The little actor cons another part;
Filling from time to time his 'humorous stage'
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age,
That Life brings with her in her equipage;
As if his whole vocation
Were endless imitation.

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie
Thy soul's immensity;
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind,
That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,
Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,—
Mighty prophet! Seer blest!
On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a master o'er a slave,
A presence which is not to be put by;
To whom the grave
Is but a lonely bed without the sense or sight
Of day or the warm light,
A place of thought where we in waiting lie;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!
The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed
For that which is most worthy to be blest—
Delight and liberty, the simple creed
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest,
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast:—
Not for these I raise
The song of thanks and praise;
But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;
Blank misgivings of a Creature
Moving about in worlds not realized,
High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain-light of all our day,
Are yet a master-light of all our seeing;
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,
To perish never:
Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
Nor Man nor Boy,
Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
Can utterly abolish or destroy!
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

Then sing, ye birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!
We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!
What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

And O ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquish'd one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day
Is lovely yet;
The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
(via Bartleby.com - Complete Poetical works 1880; Oxford Book of English Verse)

До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья

До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья.
Милый мой, ты у меня в груди.
Предназначенное расставанье
Обещает встречу впереди.

До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова,
Не грусти и не печаль бровей,-
В этой жизни умирать не ново,
Но и жить, конечно, не новей.
Сергей Александрович Есенин (1925)

Transliteration:
Do svidan'ya, drug moi, do svidan'ya.
Milyi moi, ty u menya v grudi.
Prednaznachennoe rasstavan'e
Obeshaet vstrechu vperedi.

Do svidan'ya, drug moi, bez ruki,
bez slova, Ne grusti i ne pechal' brovei,-
V etoi zhizni umirat' ne novo,
No i zhit', konechno, ne novei.


Translation (by myself):
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My dearest, I keep yyou in my heart
Our preordained parting
Promises future meeting.

Goodbye, my friend, no holding hands, no words spoken
Do not grieve and do not frown
In this life, to die is not new
But also to live, of course, is no novelty.


This was the first poem I ever learned and recited in Russian class. It is dark and depressing, yes, and at the time that truly matched my personality. But it is also beautiful and poignant.
Sergei Esenin was a fragile artist. He was an alcoholic and depressed. Some say this poem was his farewell, a suicide note. It holds a special place in my heart, as an introduction to the Russian literature I love so much.

April is National Poetry Month. I shall post poetry. I love poetry.

In high school I got involved with our literary club. Meetings were fun - we all wrote on some topic the club leaders came up with and then shared. I met the creative people, the weirdos, the folks far smarter and more talented than me. I wanted to write like that. I tried, and failed. Even though I eventually became Editor-in-Chief (I'm that person that rises to responsibility because no one else will) I never became a good writer in the creative arts (I can rock a research paper, though). I had fun, though, creating weird short stories about a sleepwalker and books that fought back. I wrote poems about coffee and heroin overdose that were actually published in the magazine.
Being an editor for two years exposed me to the core of high school lit mag hell - bad teen love poems. Really. We'd meet at someone's house to go through the piles of submissions, sorting poetry, prose, and art into piles of great, good, please burn. These were fun times - reading the worst we could find out loud so everyone could share in the torturous pain, pointing out how many were written in some neon gel pen. Forced awkward weir rhymes flowed like cottage cheese over rocks. Piles of them. Like American Idol, we tossed the middle bad early and kept the worst to share with friends. Cruel to the writers? Perhaps. But I like to think that those people grew up, laughed at themselves, and vowed never to write poetry ever again.


http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

I owe too many books back to too many libraries.
I have research to do for an upcoming trip, so I really need to finish reading about the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture. No fiction lately. Last thing I read was on bird bones and seasonality in Alaska two thousand years ago.

I began ready Michael Pollen's In defense of food. It's a book of common sense regarding food that every food-lover should read. He goes in to some history of the food business and how we became a culture of feux-nutrition. We chemically synthesized crap and pretend it's food because it claims to be healthy. Time and general life mischigas got in the way of my finishing it and it had to go back to the library. Don't make my mistake. Read the book. Listen to man, America. EAT FOOD.

I haven't been reading.
Isn't that most horrible thing ever?
There's some Shakespeare - more on that later.
Tis it.
Will change this.
Have a Michael Pollan book coming soon.

Bardic Reading

I love William Shakespeare. Have I said that here before? It sounds cliche, but I care not.
It began as a child. My mom would take me to plays, often performed at the local liberal arts college (with the great drama department). Then in the third grade I was in a production of Romeo and Juliet at school. The following year it was A Comedy of Errors. I fell in love with the poetry of his writing. Also, this is what induced the acting bug in me.
Over the years I have seen and read a number of the Bard's plays and sonnets, though admittedly not as many as I'd like. Unlike many of my classmates back in high school, I have never had trouble enjoying or understanding these plays. I think it is because my introduction was through watching performances, and performing it myself. In my household it was not treated as something high an mighty and beyond me. It was a part of life, and one that should be embraced.

In a college writing class, with a teacher I did NOT get on well with, I defended the Bard and teaching it in schools. My teacher felt that teaching Shakespeare in schools made kids hate writing, and therefore should not be done. I only, begrudgingly, agreed with him in part. I think the way in which Shakespeare is taught can turn kids off writing. Too often teachers put it forth in the most boring way imaginable. They make the students read it on their own and translate line by line. I recall having to do this and wanting to strangle my teachers. And this from someone who, at the age of 11, begged her parents for the complete works (I should note that, though impressive, a monstrous tome such as the Yale Shakespeare is not very conducive to actually reading the works, esp. if you are a small child). They get so wrapped up in comprehending the language that you never get to really reading a play until maybe senior year, if you're lucky. Perhaps there is just such a cultural complex surrounding him that makes people think it is complicated. I have had classes where the play was read out loud, which may work a little better, because it engages the students more. I've had to act out scenes. Then there were the ones that had the students read the play and watch clips from a popular Hollywood film. Not even one of those good BBC recordings, but Mel Gibson's Hamlet (which I guess is better than Ken Branagh's 4-hr epic, which I will get all the way through one day! I swear!).

People are often struck with a moment of stunned silence when I say that the Bard hooked me so young. Let me explain. Two teachers in my elementary school had 3rd and 4th grade mixed classes. They shared teaching - sometimes all the 3rd graders had lessons together, etc. These two teachers put on a Shakespearean play each year. When my older sister was in 4th grade it was Hamlet (incidentally, one of the girls who played Hamlet went on to become a v. successful actress). In addition to working on the play in the usual way - learning lines, blocking - we worked on understanding the action. There were no deep readings in to the psychology of Hamlet, but getting a knowledge of what the words that were saying meant. Being able to act them out made the language less of a barrier. We also went to see local productions of the play we were working on (often at the local college, which has a Shakespeare troupe). We could see the play as a whole, and then could have an idea at who our characters were supposed to be, and what happened. Along with this came learning stage fighting, and using the ubiquitous lists of Shakespearian insults in organized verbal duels. One year we even had a Renaissance fair after learning more about the time period. The process was a part of the school year, and it was FUN! We had so much fun working on it all, so that there was nothing daunting, scary, or lofty about Shakespeare's words and works.

I honestly don't have the answers to this issue, except to start the little ones on his work long before high school. Though I am highly against teaching edited versions in schools (I conveniently "lost" my textbook when we read Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations from it freshman year) using a slightly reduced version for third graders seems fair. Our Romeo never made it up the balcony, and was happy with the kiss Juliet blew him from above. And I think that's ok for eight year olds. What's not okay is this ridiculous idea that the language has to be a barrier to the text and that Shakespeare is hard. His work is fun, and should be treated as such.