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.

A-Coming through the ice cream bucket

While searching for a title on the library shelf, I came across one that sounded interesting - How I Became a Nun. I picked up the slender book, and the cover with a young girl eating a bright pink ice cream. My interest peaked, so I read. I was not expecting César Aira, or his unique story.

How I became a nun takes place in Rosario, Argentina. Our protagonist and narrator is a child named César Aira who refers to themself as both a boy and girl at different times. She (or he, though predominately she, so I'll use that pronoun here) exists in her head and only occasionally visits reality. A world of games, streams of description and wonder, and insight far beyond the average 6yr old abounds in her head, even as she sits in stillness listening to the radio. The outside world sees her as dumb and retarded, blind of the landscape she has created for herself. César's thoughts stream past in a manner similar to Salinger, and take on a hue of the other side of the looking glass. It is the surreal world of a little girl.
When the novel begins, the writing is clear and what one expects. César and her father are on an outing to get ice cream, which César has never tried. The excitement of sharing the treat with her father is dashed when the cold substance tastes too fowl to even lie about. Aira's descriptions are thick and wild and perfect. The reader tastes the foulness for themselves. After tears, arguing, and melted pink getting on everything, the father finds that there is something wrong with the ice cream and confronts the chap at the counter about it. This confrontation leads to the ice cream clerk's death - suffocation by strawberry. After, the father goes to jail and César to the hospital - the ice cream was tainted with cyanide, part of an epidemic in the area. The child survives the poisoning, and we are treated to the wild feverish recollections of a 6yr old in a hospital ward.
It is after the poisoning that the child's imaginations and narrations go down the rabbit hole. Cesar's games and observations only flirt with reality. Whether in school or playing with her neighbor she is constantly on the verge of drama and extreme. No emotion exists in the moderate.

Though a bit confusing, and not at all a traditional narrative, How I became a Nun is a worthwhile and interesting read.

Eddings

Reading characters

I began reading David and Leigh Eddings's The Elder Gods after I heard of his death. I was very saddened by his passing. His novels, particularly his large series about Belgarion, have meant a great deal to me. I had read v. little medieval-style fantasy before my best friend sort of forced me to read the Belgariad. Now, I'm hooked. And, of course, sad that it's over.
Reading The Elder Gods has actually made me homesick (booksick?) for the world of the Belgariad, and missing some of the people in it. Eddings built worlds and people that stay with you. I dare you not to crush on Silk, adore Barak, want to bitch slap C'Nedra or fall in love with Durnik and plot to steal him away from the most powerful sorceress in multiple worlds. Dare you. Of course the story is important and well developed, but the characters are the shinging stars. Eddings used archetypes for his characters, so they always feel comfortable and familiar to begin with. From there he makes them lovable. So you keep reading. You want to see more of Barak and his jovial nature, and you wonder about all the mischief Silk can get in to. And you cry a little when they die, and a little more when they fall in love with someone who isn't you (What, besides incomparable beauty, a big heart, and nearly more power than the gods does she have that I don't?! I'm younger, you know!).

So, in the current series there are of course characters written to win you over. One that stands out to me already (about a third of the way in) is Red-Beard. Do they know that I adore the jovial big guy? They smarter than he looks burly one? Is that why they (David Edding's ewife, Leigh, now gets double billing - she's been helping for years!) keep writing this character in to the stories? It's the guy you always want a to have a pint with. That's who Barak is. That's who Red-Beard is. He makes me remember the good times I strike>had read with him. I keep fearing this means he will die when the big war comes. It's good story telling - not everyone you love can live in the end. ::sigh::

After this first Dreamers book, I think I'll go back and finish the Mallorean. I really need to close the door on that story. I need to know how it ends - how they catch Zandramas, how Belgarian gets Ce'Nedra and their son through it. Who dies. Who Belgarath and Beldin insult and how. It makes me laugh and tear up all at once.

Goodbye, Mr. Eddings. You are missed. Perhaps Leigh will write some more on her own.