Every Thought...
Week 44: Thunder To Humanity
To be a human person, a part of humanity, is not always to be humane and personal, yet when called upon to give, it is in our nature to respond and in our hearts to care. This giving and caring is all we can leave behind.
10/28:
TWL, Lines 401-410: Thunder To Humanity
401 Da
402 Datta: what have we given?
403 My friend, blood shaking my heart
404 The awful daring of a moment's surrender
405 Which an age of prudence can never retract
406 By this, and this only, we have existed
407 Which is not to be found in our obituaries
408 Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider
409 Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor
410 In our empty rooms
402. THUNDER’S FIRST DISCIPLINE: Eliot: “'Datta, dayadhvam, damyata' (Give, sympathize, control). The fable of the meaning of the Thunder is found in the Brihadaranyaka– Upanishad, 5, 1. A translation is found in Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, p. 489.” See Paul Deussen’s German translation (1897), and see note 400 for an English translation.
The first discipline of datta, or “Give,” is what humans can hear in the syllable “Da.” Compare Eliot, Portrait of a Lady (1920):
“But what have I, but what have I, my friend,
To give you, what can you receive from me?”
403. PERSONAL POETRY: This line once read, “My friend. My friend, beating in my heart” (see Eliot, F&T). Eliot struggled to keep his poetry impersonal (see note 172.5), and even called the more personal Walt Whitman “pathetic” (see Eliot, American Literature, Athenaeum, 4/25/1919), yet he could not resist occasional turns to friendship and, in this poem and elsewhere, allusions to Whitman. See Eliot, Portrait of a Lady:
“Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks.
‘Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you should hold it in your hands’;
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
‘You let it flow from you, you let it flow...’”
and compare this to the opening lines of Whitman, Memories:
“When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.”
408. THE BENEFICENT SPIDER: Eliot: “Cf. Webster, The White Devil, V, vi: ‘...they'll remarry / Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider / Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.’” This is Flamineo from John Webster’s White Devil (note 44) 5.6.182-190, leading up to his own dying words:
“O men,
That lie upon your death-beds, and are haunted
With howling wives! ne'er trust them; they'll re-marry
Ere the worm pierce your winding-sheet, ere the spider
Make a thin curtain for your epitaphs.
...Trust a woman? never, never; Brachiano
be my precedent. We lay our souls to pawn to the devil
for a little pleasure, and a woman makes the bill of sale.
That ever man should marry! ...”
410. A MOMENT’S SURRENDER: Lines 403-410 answer line 402: That which we have given, that which the thunder would have us give, is ever more than what will be stated in what we leave behind: not in our public obituaries or preserved epitaphs or private wills, beyond the bills of sale, but it is only by this “awful daring” (line 404) of ephemoral surrender that we have existed (line 406).
10/29:
Upon A Time
To my own Vivienne, wherever you are:
... not to be found in my obituary
Or in memories draped
by the beneficent spider
Or under seals broken
by the lean solicitor
In my empty room
Upon a time, once there was
Who took the time —and what is time
But a thin line with hash marks
Conveying us then to now
And from now on, or
dashing predictions
a one time rotation,
Unrepeating, unending.
If history is a cycle of mistakes
time is one long forever,
now and then familiar
but the future never known;
if yesterday was headlines
and today is talking heads
tomorrow is today’s cheap talk,
Just when you thought it wasn’t
Just what you least expected.
10/30:
Far And Away
I look into your eyes
and in them find your heart
full of the sorrow
of far and away.
Far, the color of your eyes
and the story of a journey
stretching out to the horizon
with a word approaching fear
but incomplete:
far, the distance of uncertain,
like measuring a mountain
with the space and separation
between near and disappeared;
far, the feeling
between effort and defeat.
And then away,
another story of
a day after the journey
is over with an order
of divorce:
away, the echo of forever
in the opposite direction,
with the posture and position
of a disconnecting turn;
away, the feeling
of rejection and remorse.
And I can see
the distance and direction,
the echo and order
of fear and always
in your eyes,
telling me their stories,
filling my own heart
with the sorrow
of far and away.
10/31:
Burrowing Owl at Montrose Harbor
You weren’t supposed to be here but the wind
blew hard a thousand miles east of all
your expectations. And the prairie turned
to corn, turned into stubble and the fall
turned to the ways of winter and the ground
came to a giant water edged in steel.
By chance you found a respite set within
an urban field of designated wild,
protected by a roll of a snowdrift fence
with a sign to read and reconcile
(for those who can or those who will)
a tranquil sanctuary for the mind,
a magic fifteen acres for the soul
and for the bird. Until the word went out
in typed staccato, texted with a shout.
It wasn’t supposed to go this way, but you
were not the ordinary beachfront owl
and we were crazy for a better view;
we’d never seen an eastern juvenile
cunicularia migrating through
Chicago; and we meant to wish you well.
Forgive us, then, for rudely rushing to
your resting place, for overlooking rules
and crossing lines, for passions crashing through
the wilderness and wandering off the trail,
(for those who will, and don’t we all?)
for being curious crowds, for flushing you
out of your final makeshift prairie hole,
and pardon most of all our great surprise
to find you at the dawn of your demise.
A Cooper’s hawk, as Cooper’s hawks will do,
descended from its perch above the din
and sank its brutal talons into you
before our eyes, turned yang to darkest yin
spectacularly as your feathers flew
into the autumn air and caught the wind
to fly no more.
And what were we to do?
Your wings had shown the wear of having been
a vagrant far from home, and you were too
exhausted to keep going past the dawn,
(and no one can keep going on)
too young to know exactly what to do
and too vulnerable with your prairie gone.
And here you found us with our feverish smiles,
so pleased to meet you at your final mile.
11/01:
November
We speak of beginnings and ends,
of dawns and setting suns,
Yet we move from day to day,
from rhyme to rhyme
Remembering hours and hours
before our cognizance
And dreaming up new futures
all the time.
We speak of taking time.
November you’re the same
As an early dusk to close
an autumn day:
I want more warmth from you,
more flicker in your flame;
I miss the light of September
and the youth of May.
We speak of tomorrow’s return
to yesterdays; we dream
Of nothing less or more
than what we know,
Imagining that spring
is somewhere down the stream
Replenishing our current
blessings’ flow.
We speak from where we are
to where we want to be;
We want to be where we’ve
already been.
November you’re the source
of this endless reverie
And in your darkness
We reset the scene.
11/02:
Preface: A Race To Run
“Success Is Never Final And Failure Never Fatal. It’s The Courage To Continue That Counts.”
That was printed, without attribution, on the back of a T-shirt in the middle of a pack of runners. There were dozens of similar encouragements, on other T-shirts and hats, on signs along the side of the road, even in the cheers of bystanders along the way. “Best Parade Ever!” one sign said. And another: “Run, Walk, Crawl - Whatever it takes!” People I didn’t know were calling out my name, having only read it off of the tag on my chest: “Go, Jonathan! You can do it!” And in the end, even before I got there, I knew it wouldn’t matter what place I finished in or what time I posted. There would be an even louder crowd at the finish line, and they would be giving out medals to everyone who finished the race.
It was my third half marathon. I was gearing up for an even bigger race one day and I had to smile at that shirt I saw. Success is so relative, and never what we tend to sum it up to be. How disappointing it would be if it were a one time thing, a goal reached - and then what? For those who still have some fight in them there are no final rounds, and to those who look beyond the finish line it’s always on to the next!
And failure... I smiled again. Run, walk, crawl, I might even fall down, but it’s never fatal if I can pick myself up again. Even if I can’t someday, I will not let my spirit be defeated: the parameters may change, but there is still a race to run. And even when my spirit starts to lag, it is so good to know that I am not alone.
Indeed, it was not my own thought that had made me smile, but the shared spirit of another runner. Courage! That’s what it takes for every one of us! That’s what we can do! And if we are to continue, that, more than winning and losing, is the only thing that counts.
It does not really matter who said that saying first. I’ve found so many attributions, each with its own question mark: Was it Winston Churchill? Coach Ditka? Coach Wooden? Coach Paterno? A Congressional Record reporter? Whoever said it first, it was good to see, and good to hear. And yes, I finished the race, and yes, by the spirit within and with the encouragement of many around me and before me, I will keep running.
“Success isn’t permanent, and failure isn’t fatal.”
—attributed to Chicago Bears Football Coach
Mike Ditka, 1990
“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
—UCLA Basketball Coach John Wooden, 1972,
attributed (in error) to Winston Churchill
“Success is never final; failure is never fatal; the only thing that counts is courage.”
—Penn State Football Coach Joe Paterno, 1971,
attributed (in error) to Winston Churchill
“He held to the belief that success is never final ...and failure never fatal.”
—Congressional Record: A tribute to U.S.
Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, 1961
“Success is never final and Failure never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
—George F. Tilton, as cited in Forbes Magazine, 1948
“Men with the spirit of youth pioneered our America…men with vision and sturdy confidence. They found contentment in the thrill of action, knowing that success was never final and failure never fatal. It was courage that counted....”
—Anheuser Busch copywriters, 1938-39 ad campaign
for newspapers/Life Magazine
11/03:
Moleskin 5.7: River Of Twelve
It was a fresh start, and at the end of my thirteenth year of life, the year stubbornly called “twelve,” it had all the makings of a clean slate. Our neighborhood was more than a suburb now: it was incorporated, a city unto itself; the Tribs and Sun Times I delivered were joined by local Heralds and Advocates, and my old job up and down apartment hallways was now a real route along several streets —I could use my bike now! And every weekday morning, after the papers were delivered, I went to Lincoln Junior High, a big kid school with tall ceilings and separate classrooms for each subject and teachers with personalities —Mr. Bolman, who posted daily trivia quizzes and doled out lemondrop prizes, and Mr. Sigg, who had a wall full of brain teaser puzzles to solve. There was an upstairs woodshop and a basement archery field...
Friday, October 28, 2016
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Ballad of Adalbert, Intended
In the very back of our little church,
the visiting nun scrolled her iPhone 7
to recheck some notes, if left in the lurch
(maybe to use a life-line to heaven).
The point, after mass, was assigned to us,
a parish most canonized in the land:
we’d have to latch on to the omnibus
rolling, from sources not long ago banned.
The matter? a statue of martyred Saint
Vojtech—yet to be cast, sure to inspire:
the chatter of clergy, beyond complaint,
bets pilgrimage business will catch on fire.
He’s ‘Adalbert’, after all, shining bright,
an upstanding man to have in your fold;
the nun swipes to say our timing is right,
sanctioned by bishops increasingly old.
I had to recall Sienna’s best voice,
buried, at will, beneath altars of prayer,
witnessing Rome and retracting by choice,
knowing it wasn’t much good going there.
She spidered her journey of ‘time will tell’;
Vojtech, I’m sure, would attest to this stance,
acting beyond papists’ heaven or hell,
given a glimmer of staid happenstance.
We’re tethered en
masse to be there again:
Sundays, when golf courses call for a round
and nuns are submerged beyond now and then,
somehow the swing should remain alter-bound,
Catherine beneath, Vojtech above in stone.
Drama’s not left to anyone’s scripting,
especially those who ‘go it alone’,
God truly bless the next texts incoming.
Friday, October 21, 2016
Another invitation
Okay all, I'm adding another post today, for three (or four, or five) reasons.
First, because I had to make one edit in this week's Waste Land section, as I had inadvertently dropped a paragraph about what the devils heard.
Second, to invite you all to read this week's installment especially, even if you have only glazed over some of the previous ones. I'm kinda happy with how this week has turned out!
And third, to announce the invitation of Cara to our Symposia. I have been sharing poems with her for months, and this week, as you will see, is a fitting time to let her be a part of this.
And while I am at it, four, to re-invite more voices to these pages. I know I have monopolized this year's Symposia, as I jumped at Dan's invitation almost a year ago to do a poem a day thing - I already had something 90% ready to go and could not resist! But please, all, consider following my lead now: it doesn't have to be a poem, and it doesn't have to be daily or weekly, but as they occur: a story, a dream, a sermon to share, a thought, a prayer.
And again, while I think of it, five: this Stillwater Symposia, first devised by Dan, was in proper name and substance very much a product of brother Josh's mind. In the year ahead I will hope to (finally) start sharing excerpts of Josh's journals. I may ask for some help in editing and presenting, but I also hope we can have many voices alongside Josh's in the year to come.
Echoing that voice of thunder: Da!
- Jon
First, because I had to make one edit in this week's Waste Land section, as I had inadvertently dropped a paragraph about what the devils heard.
Second, to invite you all to read this week's installment especially, even if you have only glazed over some of the previous ones. I'm kinda happy with how this week has turned out!
And third, to announce the invitation of Cara to our Symposia. I have been sharing poems with her for months, and this week, as you will see, is a fitting time to let her be a part of this.
And while I am at it, four, to re-invite more voices to these pages. I know I have monopolized this year's Symposia, as I jumped at Dan's invitation almost a year ago to do a poem a day thing - I already had something 90% ready to go and could not resist! But please, all, consider following my lead now: it doesn't have to be a poem, and it doesn't have to be daily or weekly, but as they occur: a story, a dream, a sermon to share, a thought, a prayer.
And again, while I think of it, five: this Stillwater Symposia, first devised by Dan, was in proper name and substance very much a product of brother Josh's mind. In the year ahead I will hope to (finally) start sharing excerpts of Josh's journals. I may ask for some help in editing and presenting, but I also hope we can have many voices alongside Josh's in the year to come.
Echoing that voice of thunder: Da!
- Jon
A Ring of Poetry
Every Thought...
Week 43: Waiting For Rain
All my life I have been waiting for rain, and when it comes, as it does regularly, seasonally, necessarily and purposefully, I am renewed. Inevitably I forget this, but by this I know that God is good.
10/21:
TWL, Lines 396-400: Then Spoke The Thunder
396 Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
397 Waited for rain, while the black clouds
398 Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
399 The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400 Then spoke the thunder
396. GANGA is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s population. In Indian legend, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years to bring her down to earth. See Valmiki, Ramayana 1 (Bala Kanda, Book of Youth): 42-43 (ca. 400 BC).
398. HIMAVANT is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally the snowy mountain. Himavant is also the mountain personified, the Hindu God of Snow, father of the river goddess Ganga. See Valmiki, Ramayana (note 396) 1.42.23.
400. THEN SPOKE THE THUNDER: See Upanishads, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2: The Voice of Thunder (tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):
“The threefold offspring of Prajapati—gods (devas), men (manushyas), and devils (asuras) —dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya). Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Restrain yourselves (damyata).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
So then the men said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Give (datta).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
So then the devils said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Be compassionate (dayadhvam).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, compassion.”
The divine voice of “Da da da” is considered further at notes 402, 412, 418, 419 and 434.
The voice of thunder is also considered more broadly, beyond the Upanishads, at note 321.5.
THE UPANISHADS are a key part of the Hindu books of knowledge (the Vedas) that teach about ultimate reality (Brahman) and spiritual self awareness (Atman). Upanishad means “sitting at the feet” and Brihadaranyaka, the name of this upanishad, means “great wilderness.” Thus, one could paraphrase the source of this scriptural passage as coming from the Waste Land lessons of Sitting on the Bank (see note 192).
10/22:
Voices In My Head
from my journals, 1990
Another hotel dream: This time, I went into the hotel while Carrie stayed out in the car.
For some reason, it was in my head this evening that the way to get a hotel room was to find an empty one, claim it and then check in with the front desk. So I walked resolutely down the main hall that cut through the hotel front to back, not even considering any of the rooms being passed as possible vacancies until I got to the hotel’s far side, to a perimeter hallway, really a motel now —where I saw one door that seemed to mystically tell me that it would open to an empty room. I opened it and walked in.
There had been a person walking behind me down the hall —walking nonchalantly, just another patron I thought —until he walked into the same room behind me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was forming the start of a protest on his lips. “Hey! What are you...?” or something like that. But I didn’t give him time for this and didn’t even turn to him and instead walked through the room to where there was another door into an adjacent room.
I opened that door and found a couple on the bed, making self-absorbed love. I closed the door, turned around and walked out of the outer room, lowering my eyes from the man who was, I now realized, this room’s proper occupant. I had made a mistake. And it all came back to me —remembering conventionality and realizing where I had strayed. I walked quickly back to the front desk to start all over.
Carrie was there in the lobby. There was no point in describing where I had been, but she had a wondering look on her face. I went up to her, hugged her affectionately and decided that the best thing to do would be to propose. So I stepped back a formal distance from her. I wanted to do everything just right; I wasn’t on my knees, but I still assumed the air of a man beseechingly proposing to an honorable woman several levels above him.
Someone brought out a textbook —a hymnal —that had proper procedures on how to propose. It started out straightforwardly: Not ”Carrie, will you marry me,” but something as direct but with a few more flowery words —“How grateful would I live if you should be my wedded wife,” or something like that. And then there were a dozen other things to say, all very ceremoniously intended and laid out on the page. Each statement came in threes: I had to make a decision on which option to read out of each trio. The first one was often something in Latin; the second and third differed in their degree of religious or secular tone. The effect of all this was that my perfect proposal lost much of its glamor, and I largely stumbled along.
But I got through it. And she said yes.
And immediately we were in separate hotel rooms. I was in mine with six or seven friends / relatives, and Carrie was in hers. My room had two beds, and I laid down on the bed nearest to the wall. I reached over for the bedside phone and started dialing a number, but someone grabbed the phone, said that’s not right. I don’t know who it was, but he was correct: I had dialed my home number, and though I hadn’t said anything, he knew who I was trying to reach. “You’re both in the hotel, so you don’t have to dial so many numbers,” he explained. This, he said, is how he had known I hadn’t dialed right. And he took the phone and dialed for me and we reached Carrie’s room.
Her brother George answered. Somehow, briefly, I could see the whole room, and I was there, and it was the moment Carrie and I were breaking the news: We’re getting married! No reaction. There was Mr. C and Mrs. C and several others all leaning over something at the kitchen counter, going about their business. But then I was on the phone again, apart from Carrie, and speaking to George. He was concerned —not unhappy, but concerned. “I don’t think you guys should rush it so much. I mean, the seventeenth of this month?” It was a date obviously arrived at in that room only; it was the first I had heard about it.
George was also concerned about our financial standing and our schooling. I assured him that we would be okay. I talked at length, strolling around with a portable phone. I was doing most, if not all, of the talking now.
I talked and walked, and suddenly I found myself walking outside and down a nearby street. Eventually the reception faded. “George? George?” I didn’t have the phone’s antenna all the way out (this was the early days of mobile phones) but even after extending it I could only hear static....
I woke up and fell asleep several times after this, and I tried to finish the dream. It seems that I did get several episodes added, but they were all hazy, and are now completely forgotten, but each had the same positive tone on the same theme —we are getting married, and Carrie’s family wants it all to go smoothly, and somehow I have the feeling that it will.
10/23:
Telling The Story
There wouldn’t be a story
if there wasn’t used to be
Like wrinkles in a poem
stumbling on its own audacity
or textures on a canvas
proving authenticity
or waves upon the sea
resounding their testimony
or the truth of a dream
holding on to mystery.
10/24:
The Path
So far, Cara love, this path we’re on
Has proven to be everything and more
Than anything two travelers alone
Could ever dream. We’re seeing what before
Was far away: the moon, the stars, the sun,
Once distant beacons from another shore,
Wrap heaven’s light around us: Every dawn
Is new and each night finds us wanting more.
And as we walk as one, the sky begins
Expanding and the shadows disappear.
We start to hope our journey never ends,
And then, believing God has led us here,
We put our hands together and we pray
For perfect fires that never burn away.
10/25:
The Dance
I never knew how lucky a man could be
‘Til I met you and asked if you’d dance with me
And you agreed and said with a smile
You’d had your eye on me for a while.
You’ll never see a man as happy as me.
And then when you began to dance with me
I never knew how lovely the dance could be:
The way you moved, and move me still,
The way it feels you always will,
The way you hold me close and set me free.
I could keep dancing all night long with you.
I want to fall into the song with you.
And I never knew how perfect a song it was
Until the music started to carry us
Across the floor. They may never see
Two lovers more than you and me
In tune, two dancers happier than us.
I want to make you as happy as you make me,
As happy, as lucky and loved and moved and free.
10/26:
Someday (Even Now)
Someday
will be unafraid
of what we’ve dared to say, to hear,
the Proposal beginning to form
of a song singing fears into prayer.
Someday
will know the meaning of every kiss
and the truth in every holding moment,
the Path already turning
from if to when.
Someday, this day,
will see your caring as committing
and my trying as succeeding,
the Premise becoming the Promise
of who we are.
Someday, already, my love,
will live for today
and into tomorrow,
the Projection of our resolve,
the future unfolding, and
Someday, Cara, even now,
will share a better poem
with perfect words to say,
the Plans coming together
in synchronicity.
Someday, my love, is now,
and with this ring of Poetry
you are, if you will be,
my every day.
10/27:
Moleskin 5.6: New Flow River
In the fall of ‘75, the fall of twelve, we moved again, this time to home number ten. It was in the same suburb and same school district as the stepdad home, but this home was a step up: a real house with two stories over the basement, in a neighborhood with curving streets and stone street signs. All the houses were older and less cookie-cuttered: ours had stucco siding with sloped corners and leaded windows. We were miles away from the Des Plaines River now, but we could hear O’Hare a little closer and sense the Kennedy Expressway to the south of us —different kinds of river flows. It seemed to be a “settle in” sort of place, with an easy walk to school, a new set of friends to meet and, once again, a paper route.
Week 43: Waiting For Rain
All my life I have been waiting for rain, and when it comes, as it does regularly, seasonally, necessarily and purposefully, I am renewed. Inevitably I forget this, but by this I know that God is good.
10/21:
TWL, Lines 396-400: Then Spoke The Thunder
396 Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves
397 Waited for rain, while the black clouds
398 Gathered far distant, over Himavant.
399 The jungle crouched, humped in silence.
400 Then spoke the thunder
396. GANGA is India’s River Ganges, said to sustain a tenth of the world’s population. In Indian legend, Ganga, a river goddess, flowed in the mountains of Paradise until King Bhagiratha prayed a thousand years to bring her down to earth. See Valmiki, Ramayana 1 (Bala Kanda, Book of Youth): 42-43 (ca. 400 BC).
398. HIMAVANT is a holy mountain in the Himalayas, literally the snowy mountain. Himavant is also the mountain personified, the Hindu God of Snow, father of the river goddess Ganga. See Valmiki, Ramayana (note 396) 1.42.23.
400. THEN SPOKE THE THUNDER: See Upanishads, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2.2: The Voice of Thunder (tr. Robert Ernest Hume, 1921):
“The threefold offspring of Prajapati—gods (devas), men (manushyas), and devils (asuras) —dwelt with their father Prajapati as students of sacred knowledge (brahmacarya). Having lived the life of a student of sacred knowledge, the gods said: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Restrain yourselves (damyata).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
So then the men said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Give (datta).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
So then the devils said to him: ‘Speak to us, Sir.’ To them then he spoke this syllable, ‘Da.’ ‘Did you understand?’ ‘We did understand,’ said they. ‘You said to us, “Be compassionate (dayadhvam).”’ ‘Yes (Om)!’ said he. ‘You did understand.’
This same thing does the divine voice here, thunder, repeat: Da! Da! Da! that is, restrain yourselves, give, be compassionate. One should practise this same triad: self-restraint, giving, compassion.”
The divine voice of “Da da da” is considered further at notes 402, 412, 418, 419 and 434.
The voice of thunder is also considered more broadly, beyond the Upanishads, at note 321.5.
THE UPANISHADS are a key part of the Hindu books of knowledge (the Vedas) that teach about ultimate reality (Brahman) and spiritual self awareness (Atman). Upanishad means “sitting at the feet” and Brihadaranyaka, the name of this upanishad, means “great wilderness.” Thus, one could paraphrase the source of this scriptural passage as coming from the Waste Land lessons of Sitting on the Bank (see note 192).
10/22:
Voices In My Head
from my journals, 1990
Another hotel dream: This time, I went into the hotel while Carrie stayed out in the car.
For some reason, it was in my head this evening that the way to get a hotel room was to find an empty one, claim it and then check in with the front desk. So I walked resolutely down the main hall that cut through the hotel front to back, not even considering any of the rooms being passed as possible vacancies until I got to the hotel’s far side, to a perimeter hallway, really a motel now —where I saw one door that seemed to mystically tell me that it would open to an empty room. I opened it and walked in.
There had been a person walking behind me down the hall —walking nonchalantly, just another patron I thought —until he walked into the same room behind me. He didn’t say anything, but he looked like he was forming the start of a protest on his lips. “Hey! What are you...?” or something like that. But I didn’t give him time for this and didn’t even turn to him and instead walked through the room to where there was another door into an adjacent room.
I opened that door and found a couple on the bed, making self-absorbed love. I closed the door, turned around and walked out of the outer room, lowering my eyes from the man who was, I now realized, this room’s proper occupant. I had made a mistake. And it all came back to me —remembering conventionality and realizing where I had strayed. I walked quickly back to the front desk to start all over.
Carrie was there in the lobby. There was no point in describing where I had been, but she had a wondering look on her face. I went up to her, hugged her affectionately and decided that the best thing to do would be to propose. So I stepped back a formal distance from her. I wanted to do everything just right; I wasn’t on my knees, but I still assumed the air of a man beseechingly proposing to an honorable woman several levels above him.
Someone brought out a textbook —a hymnal —that had proper procedures on how to propose. It started out straightforwardly: Not ”Carrie, will you marry me,” but something as direct but with a few more flowery words —“How grateful would I live if you should be my wedded wife,” or something like that. And then there were a dozen other things to say, all very ceremoniously intended and laid out on the page. Each statement came in threes: I had to make a decision on which option to read out of each trio. The first one was often something in Latin; the second and third differed in their degree of religious or secular tone. The effect of all this was that my perfect proposal lost much of its glamor, and I largely stumbled along.
But I got through it. And she said yes.
And immediately we were in separate hotel rooms. I was in mine with six or seven friends / relatives, and Carrie was in hers. My room had two beds, and I laid down on the bed nearest to the wall. I reached over for the bedside phone and started dialing a number, but someone grabbed the phone, said that’s not right. I don’t know who it was, but he was correct: I had dialed my home number, and though I hadn’t said anything, he knew who I was trying to reach. “You’re both in the hotel, so you don’t have to dial so many numbers,” he explained. This, he said, is how he had known I hadn’t dialed right. And he took the phone and dialed for me and we reached Carrie’s room.
Her brother George answered. Somehow, briefly, I could see the whole room, and I was there, and it was the moment Carrie and I were breaking the news: We’re getting married! No reaction. There was Mr. C and Mrs. C and several others all leaning over something at the kitchen counter, going about their business. But then I was on the phone again, apart from Carrie, and speaking to George. He was concerned —not unhappy, but concerned. “I don’t think you guys should rush it so much. I mean, the seventeenth of this month?” It was a date obviously arrived at in that room only; it was the first I had heard about it.
George was also concerned about our financial standing and our schooling. I assured him that we would be okay. I talked at length, strolling around with a portable phone. I was doing most, if not all, of the talking now.
I talked and walked, and suddenly I found myself walking outside and down a nearby street. Eventually the reception faded. “George? George?” I didn’t have the phone’s antenna all the way out (this was the early days of mobile phones) but even after extending it I could only hear static....
I woke up and fell asleep several times after this, and I tried to finish the dream. It seems that I did get several episodes added, but they were all hazy, and are now completely forgotten, but each had the same positive tone on the same theme —we are getting married, and Carrie’s family wants it all to go smoothly, and somehow I have the feeling that it will.
10/23:
Telling The Story
There wouldn’t be a story
if there wasn’t used to be
Like wrinkles in a poem
stumbling on its own audacity
or textures on a canvas
proving authenticity
or waves upon the sea
resounding their testimony
or the truth of a dream
holding on to mystery.
10/24:
The Path
So far, Cara love, this path we’re on
Has proven to be everything and more
Than anything two travelers alone
Could ever dream. We’re seeing what before
Was far away: the moon, the stars, the sun,
Once distant beacons from another shore,
Wrap heaven’s light around us: Every dawn
Is new and each night finds us wanting more.
And as we walk as one, the sky begins
Expanding and the shadows disappear.
We start to hope our journey never ends,
And then, believing God has led us here,
We put our hands together and we pray
For perfect fires that never burn away.
10/25:
The Dance
I never knew how lucky a man could be
‘Til I met you and asked if you’d dance with me
And you agreed and said with a smile
You’d had your eye on me for a while.
You’ll never see a man as happy as me.
And then when you began to dance with me
I never knew how lovely the dance could be:
The way you moved, and move me still,
The way it feels you always will,
The way you hold me close and set me free.
I could keep dancing all night long with you.
I want to fall into the song with you.
And I never knew how perfect a song it was
Until the music started to carry us
Across the floor. They may never see
Two lovers more than you and me
In tune, two dancers happier than us.
I want to make you as happy as you make me,
As happy, as lucky and loved and moved and free.
10/26:
Someday (Even Now)
Someday
will be unafraid
of what we’ve dared to say, to hear,
the Proposal beginning to form
of a song singing fears into prayer.
Someday
will know the meaning of every kiss
and the truth in every holding moment,
the Path already turning
from if to when.
Someday, this day,
will see your caring as committing
and my trying as succeeding,
the Premise becoming the Promise
of who we are.
Someday, already, my love,
will live for today
and into tomorrow,
the Projection of our resolve,
the future unfolding, and
Someday, Cara, even now,
will share a better poem
with perfect words to say,
the Plans coming together
in synchronicity.
Someday, my love, is now,
and with this ring of Poetry
you are, if you will be,
my every day.
10/27:
Moleskin 5.6: New Flow River
In the fall of ‘75, the fall of twelve, we moved again, this time to home number ten. It was in the same suburb and same school district as the stepdad home, but this home was a step up: a real house with two stories over the basement, in a neighborhood with curving streets and stone street signs. All the houses were older and less cookie-cuttered: ours had stucco siding with sloped corners and leaded windows. We were miles away from the Des Plaines River now, but we could hear O’Hare a little closer and sense the Kennedy Expressway to the south of us —different kinds of river flows. It seemed to be a “settle in” sort of place, with an easy walk to school, a new set of friends to meet and, once again, a paper route.
Monday, October 17, 2016
bicentennial
While the nation's added 40 years, I remember 1976 and the patriotic fire hydrants all around Park Ridge, and painting my BMX to match. 200 is an interesting number, more than a little, still less than 2 thirds a year. Part of Jon's project 'Every Thought Is A Prayer' is to span those days of full year, and I've tried to do my bit with a weekly (sometimes very weakly;), this week exceptional due to the Nobel Prize for literature, which compelled its own response.
We hope Stillwater Symposia can have a new challenge for 2017, by the way, with more contributors. Visuals, for instance, can feature in our photos, sketches, Google image grabs--as I've included at the bottom of this 200th Lost Menagerie poem:
We hope Stillwater Symposia can have a new challenge for 2017, by the way, with more contributors. Visuals, for instance, can feature in our photos, sketches, Google image grabs--as I've included at the bottom of this 200th Lost Menagerie poem:
A
Marathon Stone
Hidden in here is a marathon stone,
not ‘Dare’, the pebble that loiters in my shoe
(a friend I couldn’t pace with on my own),
instead, a road-trip made in mind with you.
A colleague defined philology once
as ‘syllable to story’—language play,
measures of life decreed by some dunce
with chisel and slate and time in his day.
Tending, being tended by animal lure,
a jungle of needs in fields to explore,
primates de facto and sphinxes de jure,
we riddle along and wrangle for more.
Now on the look-out of fifty years spanned,
I still want to try courses known and new,
the nexus of woods and villages planned,
the random exponents felt or thought through.
Runestones remind us of words that have been
cherished or left for the moss to enshroud;
turn then a page across oceans again,
and run with the λόγος God has allowed.
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Composite
A bit on purpose, my last poem was 'all over the map'--Dylanesque, one might say! It was my quick homage to a unique event that happens to happen in my favorite month: the Nobel Prize for literature.
There is no Nobel Prize for music. Nor for theology, parenting, sports broadcasting and other things that matter. Alfred Nobel made dynamite, pragmatically or otherwise. It's good to think he wanted more of a legacy, beyond the 'breaking down'.
So here is a more serious poem on the Nobel Prize for literature, crafted around my favorite poet, 1996 laureate Wislawa Szymborska, whom I quote here and there:
There is no Nobel Prize for music. Nor for theology, parenting, sports broadcasting and other things that matter. Alfred Nobel made dynamite, pragmatically or otherwise. It's good to think he wanted more of a legacy, beyond the 'breaking down'.
So here is a more serious poem on the Nobel Prize for literature, crafted around my favorite poet, 1996 laureate Wislawa Szymborska, whom I quote here and there:
Composite
Because somebody wins
our shutters open and close,
almost instinctively (a question
for nature/nurture) but surely
beyond deliberately, allowing
time to contemplate and cry.
I learned from literature
the number π—what can’t be
comprehended by composite
means or prime, squirreling
through the world and “all the
bottomless bloated heavens”
of icebergs twice imagined
(being there maybe once); I
couldn’t be Lot’s wife, whose
voice depends on witness long
since dead, yet she says “I could
have” lots of ways to be self.
Because somebody wins
we rearrange our past and
wonder why it is or isn’t test-
wise. What’s Dylan off the mic?
Toni Morrison makes music;
where’s Cohen, for God’s sake?
We crave to view things
certain ways and grant each
grain of salt a sense of worth:
for some it’s Matthew 5:13,
a pinch, a march of Gandhi’s
vision, a high colesterol count.
Szymborska wins because
“The world is never ready for
the birth of a child”, most gently
said, and when that child sews
a button on her sleeve, the
world nods off and angels leap.
Friday, October 14, 2016
Holding To My Place...
Every Thought...
Week 42: The Chapel Of The Wind
12:30 is a late night poem, perhaps my darkest:“My heart is heavy, ...my soul is sad, ...my mind is numb...,” but it alludes to a gospel commandment, called our greatest instruction, to give it all to God.
10/14:
TWL, lines 386-395: The Chapel Of The Wind
386 In this decayed hole among the mountains
387 In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
388 Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
389 There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
390 It has no windows, and the door swings,
391 Dry bones can harm no one.
392 Only a cock stood on the rooftree
393 Co co rico co co rico
394 In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
395 Bringing rain
388. THE CHAPEL PERILOUS , a term first used in Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) 6.14-15, is where a weeping Hellawes the Sorceress sends Sir Lancelot to retrieve a magical sword and cloth that will heal her brother. Her ulterior motive is to seduce Lancelot, but when he refuses to kiss her upon his return then rides off to heal the wounded soldier, she despairs and kills herself. Compare the story of Queen Dido and Aeneas (note 92).
The chapel itself, meanwhile, is a legend unto itself. See Weston, From Ritual to Romance 13:
“Students of the Grail romances will remember that in many of the versions the hero--sometimes it is a heroine--meets with a strange and terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which, we are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, forces are engaged. Such an adventure befalls Gawain on his way to the Grail Castle. He is overtaken by a terrible storm, and coming to a Chapel, standing at a crossways in the middle of a forest, enters for shelter. The altar is bare, with no cloth, or covering, nothing is thereon but a great golden candlestick with a tall taper burning within it. Behind the altar is a window, and as Gawain looks a Hand, black and hideous, comes through the window, and extinguishes the taper, while a voice makes lamentation loud and dire, beneath which the very building rocks. Gawain's horse shies for terror, and the knight, making the sign of the Cross, rides out of the Chapel, to find the storm abated, and the great wind fallen. Thereafter the night was calm and clear.”
389. THE WIND’S HOME: See the “wind under the door” at line 118. The chapel in this passage is empty and windowless; likewise the bones, not yet brought to life (see line 186), are dry and harmless. The chapel remains the wind’s home, however, and the scene quickly changes: the door swings, a damp gust brings rain (see lines 394-395) and what was once a dry, sterile thunder (see line 342) will become full of meaning (see line 399 and following).
PUTTING OFF SENSE AND NOTION: Compare the allegorical English chapel of Eliot, Little Gidding (1943):
“...If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying...”
For a list of other church references in The Waste Land, see note 67.
393. THE COCK CROWS: Co co rico is the rooster’s cry in French, the language of Leman (see line 182) and, demotically, of Mr Eugenides (see line 212).
The cock also crows in Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.385-387, as part of Ariel’s song (note 26):
“Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock a diddle dow”
See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.1.156, as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, just about to speak, suddenly departs at dawn:
“BARNARDO
It was about to speak when the cock crew.
HORATIO
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine, and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
MARCELUS
It faded on the crowing of the cock.”
See also Matthew 26: 31-35, 69-75:
“Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. ...Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech betrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.”
395. BRINGING RAIN: See Conrad*, An Outcast of the Islands 4.5:
“Then the heavy air round him was pierced by a sharp gust of wind, bringing with it the fresh, damp feel of the falling rain...”
10/15:
12:30
“...and with all your strength...”
My heart is heavy: if heaviness were
a bundle I would set it down and leave
it on the roadside bloody there to throb
and die alone. Then newly spirited I
by the substitute beat of wings would learn to fly
and rise to heaven all heaviness defied,
by invisible will of winds sustained
and carried, no more burdens to abide.
But let my heart beat on inseparable, strong
against the grievous push of reality,
steady as the ground on which I stand,
constantly attending, the sergeant’s song
at the center of my march to victory
and the core of my pain.
My soul is sad: and if it were a rope
around my neck I would struggle to untie
the knots of my existence, to escape
the tangles of my personhood, to be
unfettered from my sorrows, free at last:
viva la dolce vita joie de vivre
translated to the gates of God
and welcomed in, all weariness relieved.
But let my soul run certainty within
the intricate schematic of my veins,
cause of all effect, the unseen force
of every muscle’s movement, every wind
and spark and charge, the rattle in my chains
and the source of my sadness.
My mind is numb: if heaven is a dream
unproven, laughable, a fool’s goal I
must dream it and believe it anyway:
upon these wings imagined life becomes
more bearable, the suffering recedes;
but prove there is no heaven, clip my dreams
and pain abounds and weighs me down;
my heart becomes a heavy ticking bomb;
my soul starts strangling me.
But let it be:
let my heart beat on, my soul remain within
to stubbornly endure; let time instruct
the vital weave of heaviness and heaven
and let me learn how pain is not a parcel
to reject or a cord to be cut.
10/16:
Zenaida, born of Zeus
Killdeers call with perpetual fear,
Nothing but fear, fear, fear, look here, look here!
Owls stand guard with the moods of moonlight,
Calling who, who, who casts their shadows at night?
Each bird sings with a different style,
And somehow the mourning dove lost its smile.
Nobody knows their trouble and strain:
Woe is woe, woe, woe.
Pain is pain, pain, pain.
Nuthatches ha-ha-ha nervous as clowns
Dancing on branches and making their rounds;
Gulls have a child-like exuberant noise,
A playground of high-pitched girls and boys;
A distant hawk telegraphs its fairest warning,
And then there’s the dove, quietly mourning.
I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Crows are all arrogance, breaking the law,
Disturbing the peace with their caw, caw, caw;
Jays cop an attitude, ringing their name
From the tops of trees, all jay and no shame;
Cardinals share their clear cheer cheer
But the doves keep it personal, muted, austere
With hints of a story that nobody knows:
No one feels their pain.
No one knows their woes.
Sparrows are whistling Dixie, with calls
Of teakettles, peabodies, bounced rubber balls;
Thrushes are pipers that play heaven for us,
Ethereally luring us into the forest;
Most birds are easy to characterize,
But who is to say why the mourning dove cries?
I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
10/17:
Creed and Confession
from Walled Gardens
I have been bound to imagery and form,
without regard to their source and eternity;
I have taken scripture at its word,
and found God’s essence in chapter and verse; and yet
I have bowed down to devils wearing the rings of kings.
“He sat upon the throne” was all I needed.
I have praised the images in my church,
never thinking of God as the artist;
I have followed the form of the worship service
never considering the contingencies.
I have come to believe that God will send
the devils on their way, but
I have never dared to move beyond
“He sat” to “He has no place.”
I have been bound to the image of a throne
and the form of one who wears a fitting crown;
I have let the scriptures tell me what is true,
as even “he that sat upon the throne revealed...”
I have proudly worn my Christianity
and celebrated God’s descendancy;
I have put this at the center of my creed,
believing that my God will come again, even as
I have known my God’s been with me all along,
every time, forever everywhere, even as
I have looked and still I look for a direction
to bow down to, traditions to cling to, even as
I have needed, always needed, something new,
something certain, something true.
10/18:
The Grand Design
from Walled Gardens
This is how you are to bless....
- Numbers 6:23 (NIV)
The grand design of the universe proceeds
regardless of apologies and creeds,
no matter what’s believed or not believed:
that God exists precedes how God’s perceived
and all the universe thus far perfected
is God’s reality on us reflected.
What good, then, if we separate the light
into a thousand rays of wrong and right
when there is truth in each ray we receive?
I may not always know what to believe,
but I believe that God’s expecting me
to keep reflecting everything I see
without distortion, judgment or rejection
and faithful to the source of my reflection.
God bless thee, wolf or Joseph, small or great,
and keep thee all the same by wrath or mercy
unbiased by thy aid or opposition,
no matter what thy rank or reputation;
God shine His face upon thee for thy favor
and turn His face toward thee for thy peace
regardless of thy service or rebellion,
uncolored by thy honor or thy shame.
By grace thy soul is given understanding
just as by God the sky is given lightning
and as the force that first did cause the heavens
is still creating every force within:
so bless thee, as the miller turns the millstone,
and keep thee, as the tender feeds the flame.
The grand design of the universe is carved
and I am but a sliver in the carving:
all I know is shaped by the designer
and all I am, a part of the design.
I am an ant with perpetual movement
around me, earth and heaven ever moving
like a mindless dragon: I am but a mote
within its mouth, and yet for all the motion
I am never swallowed as the dragon
sleeps and stirs. And even this great dragon
is given its own task upon the millwheel,
unmindful of the fires and misfortunes
of time, and I’m an atom on this millwheel,
holding to my place in the design.
10/19:
What Brings Us Here
from Walled Gardens
“Lose thyself...”
We do not come to the doors of God
nor stir the dust of the chapel road
assured that we should feel proud
of what the journey was
It wasn’t strength of will that brought
us here, or that our debts were paid
ahead of time and left behind:
this is no place for cause
And we may think ourselves well dressed
and breakfasted with our own houses
put in order, as if by this
we’re ready to be blessed,
But this is not a place where we are sought;
we are the seekers, here for what we’re not.
10/20:
Moleskin 5.5: Sweet Maple River
I have to recognize what rivers I’ve been given, though. Chicago, I barely knew your green river, but I liked that nameless creek full of crayfish and that make-do hockey pond down the street, and as I got older I enjoyed discovering the sweet maple river of Des Plaines, groomed with urban forest preserves just a bike ride away. When we were young Dad would drive us to a nature preserve just off of Milwaukee Avenue, with caged raccoons and animal prints cast in clay and miles of trails with markers describing the different trees. Eventually I would find my own way to the Des Plaines riverbanks, and even now, and I am still here, too —that river gives me peace. I did not —do not —need to contemplate its continuum to be a part of it, and I am a part of it and one with every river I have ever known.
Week 42: The Chapel Of The Wind
12:30 is a late night poem, perhaps my darkest:“My heart is heavy, ...my soul is sad, ...my mind is numb...,” but it alludes to a gospel commandment, called our greatest instruction, to give it all to God.
10/14:
TWL, lines 386-395: The Chapel Of The Wind
386 In this decayed hole among the mountains
387 In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing
388 Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel
389 There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.
390 It has no windows, and the door swings,
391 Dry bones can harm no one.
392 Only a cock stood on the rooftree
393 Co co rico co co rico
394 In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust
395 Bringing rain
388. THE CHAPEL PERILOUS , a term first used in Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485) 6.14-15, is where a weeping Hellawes the Sorceress sends Sir Lancelot to retrieve a magical sword and cloth that will heal her brother. Her ulterior motive is to seduce Lancelot, but when he refuses to kiss her upon his return then rides off to heal the wounded soldier, she despairs and kills herself. Compare the story of Queen Dido and Aeneas (note 92).
The chapel itself, meanwhile, is a legend unto itself. See Weston, From Ritual to Romance 13:
“Students of the Grail romances will remember that in many of the versions the hero--sometimes it is a heroine--meets with a strange and terrifying adventure in a mysterious Chapel, an adventure which, we are given to understand, is fraught with extreme peril to life. The details vary: sometimes there is a Dead Body laid on the altar; sometimes a Black Hand extinguishes the tapers; there are strange and threatening voices, and the general impression is that this is an adventure in which supernatural, and evil, forces are engaged. Such an adventure befalls Gawain on his way to the Grail Castle. He is overtaken by a terrible storm, and coming to a Chapel, standing at a crossways in the middle of a forest, enters for shelter. The altar is bare, with no cloth, or covering, nothing is thereon but a great golden candlestick with a tall taper burning within it. Behind the altar is a window, and as Gawain looks a Hand, black and hideous, comes through the window, and extinguishes the taper, while a voice makes lamentation loud and dire, beneath which the very building rocks. Gawain's horse shies for terror, and the knight, making the sign of the Cross, rides out of the Chapel, to find the storm abated, and the great wind fallen. Thereafter the night was calm and clear.”
389. THE WIND’S HOME: See the “wind under the door” at line 118. The chapel in this passage is empty and windowless; likewise the bones, not yet brought to life (see line 186), are dry and harmless. The chapel remains the wind’s home, however, and the scene quickly changes: the door swings, a damp gust brings rain (see lines 394-395) and what was once a dry, sterile thunder (see line 342) will become full of meaning (see line 399 and following).
PUTTING OFF SENSE AND NOTION: Compare the allegorical English chapel of Eliot, Little Gidding (1943):
“...If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying...”
For a list of other church references in The Waste Land, see note 67.
393. THE COCK CROWS: Co co rico is the rooster’s cry in French, the language of Leman (see line 182) and, demotically, of Mr Eugenides (see line 212).
The cock also crows in Shakespeare, The Tempest 1.2.385-387, as part of Ariel’s song (note 26):
“Hark, hark! I hear
The strain of strutting chanticleer
Cry, Cock a diddle dow”
See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 1.1.156, as the ghost of Hamlet’s father, just about to speak, suddenly departs at dawn:
“BARNARDO
It was about to speak when the cock crew.
HORATIO
And then it started like a guilty thing
Upon a fearful summons. I have heard
The cock, that is the trumpet to the morn,
Doth with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat
Awake the god of day, and, at his warning,
Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air,
Th' extravagant and erring spirit hies
To his confine, and of the truth herein
This present object made probation.
MARCELUS
It faded on the crowing of the cock.”
See also Matthew 26: 31-35, 69-75:
“Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee. Peter answered and said unto him, Though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will I never be offended. Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. Peter said unto him, Though I should die with thee, yet will I not deny thee. ...Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee. But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest. And when he was gone out into the porch, another maid saw him, and said unto them that were there, This fellow was also with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied with an oath, I do not know the man. And after a while came unto him they that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou also art one of them; for thy speech betrayeth thee. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. And Peter remembered the word of Jesus, which said unto him, Before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice. And he went out, and wept bitterly.”
395. BRINGING RAIN: See Conrad*, An Outcast of the Islands 4.5:
“Then the heavy air round him was pierced by a sharp gust of wind, bringing with it the fresh, damp feel of the falling rain...”
10/15:
12:30
“...and with all your strength...”
My heart is heavy: if heaviness were
a bundle I would set it down and leave
it on the roadside bloody there to throb
and die alone. Then newly spirited I
by the substitute beat of wings would learn to fly
and rise to heaven all heaviness defied,
by invisible will of winds sustained
and carried, no more burdens to abide.
But let my heart beat on inseparable, strong
against the grievous push of reality,
steady as the ground on which I stand,
constantly attending, the sergeant’s song
at the center of my march to victory
and the core of my pain.
My soul is sad: and if it were a rope
around my neck I would struggle to untie
the knots of my existence, to escape
the tangles of my personhood, to be
unfettered from my sorrows, free at last:
viva la dolce vita joie de vivre
translated to the gates of God
and welcomed in, all weariness relieved.
But let my soul run certainty within
the intricate schematic of my veins,
cause of all effect, the unseen force
of every muscle’s movement, every wind
and spark and charge, the rattle in my chains
and the source of my sadness.
My mind is numb: if heaven is a dream
unproven, laughable, a fool’s goal I
must dream it and believe it anyway:
upon these wings imagined life becomes
more bearable, the suffering recedes;
but prove there is no heaven, clip my dreams
and pain abounds and weighs me down;
my heart becomes a heavy ticking bomb;
my soul starts strangling me.
But let it be:
let my heart beat on, my soul remain within
to stubbornly endure; let time instruct
the vital weave of heaviness and heaven
and let me learn how pain is not a parcel
to reject or a cord to be cut.
10/16:
Zenaida, born of Zeus
Killdeers call with perpetual fear,
Nothing but fear, fear, fear, look here, look here!
Owls stand guard with the moods of moonlight,
Calling who, who, who casts their shadows at night?
Each bird sings with a different style,
And somehow the mourning dove lost its smile.
Nobody knows their trouble and strain:
Woe is woe, woe, woe.
Pain is pain, pain, pain.
Nuthatches ha-ha-ha nervous as clowns
Dancing on branches and making their rounds;
Gulls have a child-like exuberant noise,
A playground of high-pitched girls and boys;
A distant hawk telegraphs its fairest warning,
And then there’s the dove, quietly mourning.
I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Crows are all arrogance, breaking the law,
Disturbing the peace with their caw, caw, caw;
Jays cop an attitude, ringing their name
From the tops of trees, all jay and no shame;
Cardinals share their clear cheer cheer
But the doves keep it personal, muted, austere
With hints of a story that nobody knows:
No one feels their pain.
No one knows their woes.
Sparrows are whistling Dixie, with calls
Of teakettles, peabodies, bounced rubber balls;
Thrushes are pipers that play heaven for us,
Ethereally luring us into the forest;
Most birds are easy to characterize,
But who is to say why the mourning dove cries?
I cannot explain the mourning dove’s pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
Can’t explain pain, pain.
10/17:
Creed and Confession
from Walled Gardens
I have been bound to imagery and form,
without regard to their source and eternity;
I have taken scripture at its word,
and found God’s essence in chapter and verse; and yet
I have bowed down to devils wearing the rings of kings.
“He sat upon the throne” was all I needed.
I have praised the images in my church,
never thinking of God as the artist;
I have followed the form of the worship service
never considering the contingencies.
I have come to believe that God will send
the devils on their way, but
I have never dared to move beyond
“He sat” to “He has no place.”
I have been bound to the image of a throne
and the form of one who wears a fitting crown;
I have let the scriptures tell me what is true,
as even “he that sat upon the throne revealed...”
I have proudly worn my Christianity
and celebrated God’s descendancy;
I have put this at the center of my creed,
believing that my God will come again, even as
I have known my God’s been with me all along,
every time, forever everywhere, even as
I have looked and still I look for a direction
to bow down to, traditions to cling to, even as
I have needed, always needed, something new,
something certain, something true.
10/18:
The Grand Design
from Walled Gardens
This is how you are to bless....
- Numbers 6:23 (NIV)
The grand design of the universe proceeds
regardless of apologies and creeds,
no matter what’s believed or not believed:
that God exists precedes how God’s perceived
and all the universe thus far perfected
is God’s reality on us reflected.
What good, then, if we separate the light
into a thousand rays of wrong and right
when there is truth in each ray we receive?
I may not always know what to believe,
but I believe that God’s expecting me
to keep reflecting everything I see
without distortion, judgment or rejection
and faithful to the source of my reflection.
God bless thee, wolf or Joseph, small or great,
and keep thee all the same by wrath or mercy
unbiased by thy aid or opposition,
no matter what thy rank or reputation;
God shine His face upon thee for thy favor
and turn His face toward thee for thy peace
regardless of thy service or rebellion,
uncolored by thy honor or thy shame.
By grace thy soul is given understanding
just as by God the sky is given lightning
and as the force that first did cause the heavens
is still creating every force within:
so bless thee, as the miller turns the millstone,
and keep thee, as the tender feeds the flame.
The grand design of the universe is carved
and I am but a sliver in the carving:
all I know is shaped by the designer
and all I am, a part of the design.
I am an ant with perpetual movement
around me, earth and heaven ever moving
like a mindless dragon: I am but a mote
within its mouth, and yet for all the motion
I am never swallowed as the dragon
sleeps and stirs. And even this great dragon
is given its own task upon the millwheel,
unmindful of the fires and misfortunes
of time, and I’m an atom on this millwheel,
holding to my place in the design.
10/19:
What Brings Us Here
from Walled Gardens
“Lose thyself...”
We do not come to the doors of God
nor stir the dust of the chapel road
assured that we should feel proud
of what the journey was
It wasn’t strength of will that brought
us here, or that our debts were paid
ahead of time and left behind:
this is no place for cause
And we may think ourselves well dressed
and breakfasted with our own houses
put in order, as if by this
we’re ready to be blessed,
But this is not a place where we are sought;
we are the seekers, here for what we’re not.
10/20:
Moleskin 5.5: Sweet Maple River
I have to recognize what rivers I’ve been given, though. Chicago, I barely knew your green river, but I liked that nameless creek full of crayfish and that make-do hockey pond down the street, and as I got older I enjoyed discovering the sweet maple river of Des Plaines, groomed with urban forest preserves just a bike ride away. When we were young Dad would drive us to a nature preserve just off of Milwaukee Avenue, with caged raccoons and animal prints cast in clay and miles of trails with markers describing the different trees. Eventually I would find my own way to the Des Plaines riverbanks, and even now, and I am still here, too —that river gives me peace. I did not —do not —need to contemplate its continuum to be a part of it, and I am a part of it and one with every river I have ever known.
Thursday, October 13, 2016
So, you probably know: Minnesota is on the map...
you who philosophize disgrace
this is my memo, October twelfth:
mono* the minutes of
one Donald
Trump [means
*monitor surely: yet
then my mind leaps to Twin Cities’
man-of-Major Leagues Molitor, who
(heaven forfend) has nothing to do
with memes (meaning memo) and
frankly (Viola?) should not intervene
with matters of import (most likely
from China.., as meanderings go)]…
thank God, then, for more days a
month: Dylan has entered a ten-
thousandth time [today codified
with the blessing of he who made
thunder (in dynamite form—the
jury
is more than just out (Oliver
Holmes
had cleared that town hall)) and
one
wonders why any on anyone’s side
(Judas or justice) would hobo on in,
save for some Lorax strain,
innate]…
go ahead, then, and figure out fate,
you and others off-white: say who
auditions to play [tambourines and
other such reels of rhyme (while
senses are stripped beyond tapping
in time); I’ve always sojourned
to
bohemian minds, full of non-spite
(if
touches of spit on stage never
hurt):
that’s Amleth (the jester and
crown
prince that’s named here tonight)]…
to Northern Light disparates now
on your own, I tottle this sentient
rolling stone [nothing you haven’t
hewn fast and far-strewn (Soho to
Stockholm and rust-belts between):
you got well enough the crux of the
cross (Rubin’s trigger hanging there
still), no hurricane stifles our will
(and rather reminds what dreams
are at stake), lone(ly) and our’n]…
Friday, October 7, 2016
Tolling Reminiscent Bells...
Every Thought...
Week 41: Modern Times
Call this a delayed reaction, sparked a month late by the timing of annotations. For fifteen years we have paused on the day of 9/11, remembering what we cannot forget, forgetting sometimes that the story has not ended.
10/07:
TWL, lines 367-385: Falling Towers
367 What is that sound high in the air
368 Murmur of maternal lamentation
369 Who are those hooded hordes swarming
370 Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
371 Ringed by the flat horizon only
372 What is the city over the mountains
373 Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
374 Falling towers
375 Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
376 Vienna London
377 Unreal
378 A woman drew her long black hair out tight
379 And fiddled whisper music on those strings
380 And bats with baby faces in the violet light
381 Whistled, and beat their wings
382 And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
383 And upside down in air were towers
384 Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
385 And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
367. A DRUNKEN HYMN: Eliot: “Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”
See Hesse, A Glimpse of Chaos (note 298), with reference to Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (note 248):
“Already half Europe, at all events half Eastern Europe, is on the road to Chaos. In a state of drunken illusion she is reeling into the abyss and, as she reels, she sings a drunken hymn such as Dmitri Karamazov sang. The insulted citizen laughs that song to scorn, the saint and seer hear it with tears.”
Compare St. Augustine’s point of conversion, leaving behind influences of drunkenness and lust, at note 307.
Meanwhile, the incognizance of lines 366 and 367 continues at lines 369 and 372. Compare lines 54-56, where Madame Sosostris could not find the Hanged Man (which Eliot associated with the hooded figure of Christ (see note 46 and line 364)) and saw only “crowds (now hooded hordes) of people, walking round in a ring.”
374. FALLING TOWERS: The unreal city (see note 60), previously seen at dawn and at noon (see lines 61 and 208), is now in Tiresias’s violet hour (see lines 215 and 220 and note 380); it is also a city at war with bombs bursting, planes whistling and towers falling.
Towers will appear throughout section five, and while the only towers mentioned previously were white with pealing bells (line 289), they are now falling (line 374), upside down in air (line 383), horrible (note 412) and destroyed (line 430). Compare the tale of the Tower of Babel reaching vainly to God, at Genesis 11:4-9:
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men [built].... And the LORD said, Behold, the people ...have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth...”
376. FALLING CITIES: London is now placed in context with Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria and Vienna, all centers of empires and cultural hubs for their time, but here they are cracking, falling apart and reforming into something unreal. Babylon (note 209) and Carthage (note 307) may be added to this list. See also Joyce’s Dublin at note 111.
378. THE LONG-HAIRED WOMAN, fiddling whisper music on her hair, can be compared to the hyacinth girl, found with “arms full, and ...hair wet” (line 38); the woman on talking walls whose “hair / Spread out in fiery points / Glowed into words” (line 108); the woman who walked the street with “hair down” (line 133); and the woman who “smoothes her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramophone” (line 255). See also hair’s tie to fertility in both Frazer, The Golden Bough 3:5.6, and Weston, From Ritual to Romance 4.
380. THE VIOLET HOUR, previously introduced at lines 215 and 220 as the evening hour at the end of the workday (see note 221), also alludes to the liturgical color of repentance and baptism; see Brooks (note 330). See also note 68 and Luke* 23:44 for the noon darkness that fell over the earth on Good Friday. Elsewhere, violet or purple, appearing here as light, describes air (line 373), sails (note 77) and trenches (note 331). See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.177 (Ophelia’s violets withered when her father died) and 5.1.229 (Laertes wishing violets would spring from Ophelia’s grave). See also the “violet and purple morn” in Whitman, Memories 12. Violet also relates to Phoenicia, the “land of purple”; see note 312.
BATS WITH BABY FACES: See Pierre Leyris, Poémes, 1910-1930, 155 (1947), relating this passage to Hieronymus Bosch paintings, perhaps alluding to the baby faced bat in Bosch, Hell (1504).
Hieronymus Bosch, Hell (detail) (1504)
382. CRAWLING DOWN A WALL: See Bram Stoker, Dracula 3 (1897): “I saw the whole man... begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.”
384. TOLLING BELLS: See note 291 for the peal of bells in general, and see line 67, “where St. Mary Woolnoth kept the hours.” See also Whitman, Memories 6:
“With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang.”
385. VOICES ...OUT OF EMPTY CISTERNS recalls the “children’s voices in the dome” at line 202. See also Jeremiah 2:13,14:
“For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. ...The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste...”
10/08:
Sealed
To put face to feathery form, the nation...
An eagle, on the wing and rising to
the sky, a field prevailing azure, blue
revealed by golden glory breaking through
the argent ring of clouds aligned anew
above the bird: a halo made of stars
now taking place and rank among the powers,
the power of peace before the power of wars,
all sovereignties reordered after ours,
a nation reckoned by a blazing sun:
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
The eagle tips the balance towards peace:
its dexter talon rightly won’t release
the olive branch; and peaceward does it face
forever to its honorable embrace,
and yet the raptor holds its arrows fast
within its eastward talon to avast
what sinister designs may come to pass;
it clings this bundle, ready to the last
to stave all threats before they are begun
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
Behold the eagle’s shield, the chief and pale
held front and center by their own avail,
the two most honored ordinaries hailed
to mark the great escutcheon unassailed,
a symbol for the way the eagle rules:
the azure chief a congress for the whole
above a pale of stripes, argent and gules
kept closely unified: so speaks the scroll
of our perpetual creed: “Of many, one,”
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
Within the eagle’s beak this Latin pun
becomes our purpose and criterion,
our everlasting oath beneath the sun:
E pluribus, of many, unum, one,
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
10/09:
Silence
Silence is an empty peace;
Violence is a pointless war.
No one ever dies for silence,
No one ever wins with violence,
But there is peace worth fighting for
As there are wars that fires may cease.
Fires that blaze leave deathly silence,
None to claim the spoils of violence
And the pointlessness increases
When the battlefield releases
No one to pick up the pieces,
No one to put up the score,
No one fighting anymore.
No one wins an empty war.
10/10:
Beyond Speech and Silence
from Walled Gardens
How can one describe God?
What wins the argument?
Speech is limited to comparison,
Silence is sworn to dereliction,
Reason travels far to reach amazement,
Zeal arrives at self-enrichment,
Imagination cannot find the truth, and
Understanding turns to vanity.
The prophets are confused by God,
the saints are stupefied.
God is the mind’s desire
and master of the soul,
the devotee’s commitment,
the disciple’s goal,
but all of this is beyond where reason goes,
exists above existence, acts
without regard to the usual bounds:
There is no “in” or “out”, “how” or “why”.
10/11:
In Progress
As argument tries to take over,
What is being taken?
Everything, it seems,
Yet nothing more than this:
You cannot take what you do not want.
I cannot have what is never mine.
My hope remains.
Your faith is your own to find.
As argument tries to win the day,
What is there to lose?
Nothing, it seems,
Yet everything comes down to this:
Your victory and my defeat,
Or my win to your loss,
Is the death of the conversation
And the end of us.
As argument tries to make its point,
Who gets the final word?
What is there left to say?
10/12:
Dreams From September
September 26, 1990
Quick dream (I should give this more time): Dan and I are in my car, Dan is driving. We are stopped and backed up by several cars at the corner of Prospect and Touhy; we are south of the intersection. I take the opportunity to jump out of the car to quickly run an errand in one of the Prospect shops. I have some film to turn in and some old record albums I want to sell. There is a one-stop shop that can take care of both of my needs.
I turn in the film quickly, but they have to assess the record albums one at a time, and there are about fifteen of them. I wonder if it will take too long, but I decide Dan will have the sense to pull the car over to the side if the light turns green.
The shopkeeper looks at the albums. They are worth 5¢ ...15¢ ...10¢ ...etc., depending on the newness, popularity, size —all the obvious factors. The total comes to $1.75. It’s too small an amount, really, but I am ready to concede, wanting to collect the money and get out of the shop quickly. But then the shopkeeper convinces me that I ought to hold off on selling them until they increase in value. As a consolation he gives me a punch card which, when filled, will allow me to redeem a given number of records at a higher price.
I leave the shop ...and outside I find my car sitting sideways, perpendicular to Prospect Avenue with its nose in the middle of the right hand lane and its rear almost right up against the parked cars on the side of the street. Traffic is slowed down even more now, as cars have to drive around mine now. Dan is asleep in the passenger seat. I go over to the driver’s side —and it is crushed, beyond just a scrape, bashed in all along the side. I am able to open the door and I determine the car will be driveable, but Dan still doesn’t wake up.
I shout, in a panic. Dan wakes up groggily and continues to be only half awake for the rest of the dream... The cops come... We look the car over... I calm down a little... and Dan goes back to sleep.
Approximately September, 2013
He stood outside a Shell station in the warm part of fall, wearing scuffed black leather, studded and chained, heavy calf-high boots, fat dark glasses and a nervousness that made me look away. I didn’t notice his hair, except that it must have completed the grey-black head-to-toe theme he had going, not goth or Johnny Cash but relic all the same. And I didn’t see if he was smoking a cigarette, either, but he had all the gestures: one hand always going to his mouth, a jitteriness about him and a general haziness. I wasn’t close enough to smell him, but there was no point. He seemed to be waiting for someone or something, adding to the nervousness, but he stayed close to the side of the building as though what he wanted was right there. Maybe he just wanted to be noticed. I imagined him getting up in the morning, putting the whole costume on one piece at a time in front of a mirror, trying to look cool, but that wouldn’t explain why he was here, standing on the alley side of a gas station. Everything about him was out of alignment: he wore biker gear but there wasn’t a bike around; he might have been waiting for a bus, bu this wasn’t on a bus route. He looked like there should have been a pay phone next to him and he was waiting for it to ring, except that they took out all the pay phones years ago. He might have been waiting for someone to come out of the bathroom, or waiting for his turn, except that this particular Shell station didn’t have a side-entrance john. There was an air pump with a few loops of hose next to him, but this was probably just a coincidence, signifying nothing.
All of this I gathered in a glance, before the nervousness turned me away.
Inside, the attendant was a chubby faced hispanic named Alexa, according to her name tag. She was on the afternoon shift, the same shift for enough years to know all the regulars or at least what they wanted. I never bought gas here, too expensive, but this was a regular stop of mine for a pop on the way home, to get me through the rush hour. One 20 oz. Diet Coke with one Grandma’s oatmeal cookie pack. Neither the caffeine or the sugar are good for me but I will not begrudge the routine and I’m sure I spend much less here than most. Alexa spends more time dispensing cigarettes and lottery tickets than she does my $2.61. But she knows me, knows my purchase, and we exchange one verison or another of how do you do. One day I’ll stop for a moment, if there’s no line behind me, and ask her what she thinks of the weather, but even if this ever happens it will probably not go further. She has customers to attend, I have a forty five minute drive ahead of me and we live in different worlds.
10/13:
Moleskin 5.4: Backyard River
And then my family moved, and I moved. Homes seven, eight and nine were those transitional places between the drainage ditch and the Des Plaines River into which it dumped: the townhome, the apartment, the stepdad’s parent’s home: places I wanted to romanticize as being in the big city and not so far away from the old Chicago River and the great Lake Michigan, but homes I tend to remember and realize in more cynical shades. Our prior dwellings had never been big or glamorous, and we had lived in an urban apartment and even a trailer home before, but I missed the Buffalo River parsonage and everything about it: the neighbors, the space around us, the sense of “us” living in one place, one family with a river in our back yard, just down the hill.
Week 41: Modern Times
Call this a delayed reaction, sparked a month late by the timing of annotations. For fifteen years we have paused on the day of 9/11, remembering what we cannot forget, forgetting sometimes that the story has not ended.
10/07:
TWL, lines 367-385: Falling Towers
367 What is that sound high in the air
368 Murmur of maternal lamentation
369 Who are those hooded hordes swarming
370 Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
371 Ringed by the flat horizon only
372 What is the city over the mountains
373 Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
374 Falling towers
375 Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
376 Vienna London
377 Unreal
378 A woman drew her long black hair out tight
379 And fiddled whisper music on those strings
380 And bats with baby faces in the violet light
381 Whistled, and beat their wings
382 And crawled head downward down a blackened wall
383 And upside down in air were towers
384 Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours
385 And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.
367. A DRUNKEN HYMN: Eliot: “Cf. Hermann Hesse, Blick ins Chaos: Schon ist halb Europa, schon ist zumindest der halbe Osten Europas auf dem Wege zum Chaos, fährt betrunken im heiligen Wahn am Abgrund entlang und singt dazu, singt betrunken und hymnisch wie Dmitri Karamasoff sang. Ueber diese Lieder lacht der Bürger beleidigt, der Heilige und Seher hört sie mit Tränen.”
See Hesse, A Glimpse of Chaos (note 298), with reference to Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (note 248):
“Already half Europe, at all events half Eastern Europe, is on the road to Chaos. In a state of drunken illusion she is reeling into the abyss and, as she reels, she sings a drunken hymn such as Dmitri Karamazov sang. The insulted citizen laughs that song to scorn, the saint and seer hear it with tears.”
Compare St. Augustine’s point of conversion, leaving behind influences of drunkenness and lust, at note 307.
Meanwhile, the incognizance of lines 366 and 367 continues at lines 369 and 372. Compare lines 54-56, where Madame Sosostris could not find the Hanged Man (which Eliot associated with the hooded figure of Christ (see note 46 and line 364)) and saw only “crowds (now hooded hordes) of people, walking round in a ring.”
374. FALLING TOWERS: The unreal city (see note 60), previously seen at dawn and at noon (see lines 61 and 208), is now in Tiresias’s violet hour (see lines 215 and 220 and note 380); it is also a city at war with bombs bursting, planes whistling and towers falling.
Towers will appear throughout section five, and while the only towers mentioned previously were white with pealing bells (line 289), they are now falling (line 374), upside down in air (line 383), horrible (note 412) and destroyed (line 430). Compare the tale of the Tower of Babel reaching vainly to God, at Genesis 11:4-9:
“And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men [built].... And the LORD said, Behold, the people ...have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth...”
376. FALLING CITIES: London is now placed in context with Jerusalem, Athens, Alexandria and Vienna, all centers of empires and cultural hubs for their time, but here they are cracking, falling apart and reforming into something unreal. Babylon (note 209) and Carthage (note 307) may be added to this list. See also Joyce’s Dublin at note 111.
378. THE LONG-HAIRED WOMAN, fiddling whisper music on her hair, can be compared to the hyacinth girl, found with “arms full, and ...hair wet” (line 38); the woman on talking walls whose “hair / Spread out in fiery points / Glowed into words” (line 108); the woman who walked the street with “hair down” (line 133); and the woman who “smoothes her hair with automatic hand, / And puts a record on the gramophone” (line 255). See also hair’s tie to fertility in both Frazer, The Golden Bough 3:5.6, and Weston, From Ritual to Romance 4.
380. THE VIOLET HOUR, previously introduced at lines 215 and 220 as the evening hour at the end of the workday (see note 221), also alludes to the liturgical color of repentance and baptism; see Brooks (note 330). See also note 68 and Luke* 23:44 for the noon darkness that fell over the earth on Good Friday. Elsewhere, violet or purple, appearing here as light, describes air (line 373), sails (note 77) and trenches (note 331). See also Shakespeare, Hamlet 4.5.177 (Ophelia’s violets withered when her father died) and 5.1.229 (Laertes wishing violets would spring from Ophelia’s grave). See also the “violet and purple morn” in Whitman, Memories 12. Violet also relates to Phoenicia, the “land of purple”; see note 312.
BATS WITH BABY FACES: See Pierre Leyris, Poémes, 1910-1930, 155 (1947), relating this passage to Hieronymus Bosch paintings, perhaps alluding to the baby faced bat in Bosch, Hell (1504).
Hieronymus Bosch, Hell (detail) (1504)
382. CRAWLING DOWN A WALL: See Bram Stoker, Dracula 3 (1897): “I saw the whole man... begin to crawl down the castle wall over the dreadful abyss, face down, with his cloak spreading out around him like great wings.”
384. TOLLING BELLS: See note 291 for the peal of bells in general, and see line 67, “where St. Mary Woolnoth kept the hours.” See also Whitman, Memories 6:
“With the tolling tolling bells’ perpetual clang.”
385. VOICES ...OUT OF EMPTY CISTERNS recalls the “children’s voices in the dome” at line 202. See also Jeremiah 2:13,14:
“For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. ...The young lions roared upon him, and yelled, and they made his land waste...”
10/08:
Sealed
To put face to feathery form, the nation...
An eagle, on the wing and rising to
the sky, a field prevailing azure, blue
revealed by golden glory breaking through
the argent ring of clouds aligned anew
above the bird: a halo made of stars
now taking place and rank among the powers,
the power of peace before the power of wars,
all sovereignties reordered after ours,
a nation reckoned by a blazing sun:
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
The eagle tips the balance towards peace:
its dexter talon rightly won’t release
the olive branch; and peaceward does it face
forever to its honorable embrace,
and yet the raptor holds its arrows fast
within its eastward talon to avast
what sinister designs may come to pass;
it clings this bundle, ready to the last
to stave all threats before they are begun
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
Behold the eagle’s shield, the chief and pale
held front and center by their own avail,
the two most honored ordinaries hailed
to mark the great escutcheon unassailed,
a symbol for the way the eagle rules:
the azure chief a congress for the whole
above a pale of stripes, argent and gules
kept closely unified: so speaks the scroll
of our perpetual creed: “Of many, one,”
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
Within the eagle’s beak this Latin pun
becomes our purpose and criterion,
our everlasting oath beneath the sun:
E pluribus, of many, unum, one,
and thus our fate is sealed, all battles won.
10/09:
Silence
Silence is an empty peace;
Violence is a pointless war.
No one ever dies for silence,
No one ever wins with violence,
But there is peace worth fighting for
As there are wars that fires may cease.
Fires that blaze leave deathly silence,
None to claim the spoils of violence
And the pointlessness increases
When the battlefield releases
No one to pick up the pieces,
No one to put up the score,
No one fighting anymore.
No one wins an empty war.
10/10:
Beyond Speech and Silence
from Walled Gardens
How can one describe God?
What wins the argument?
Speech is limited to comparison,
Silence is sworn to dereliction,
Reason travels far to reach amazement,
Zeal arrives at self-enrichment,
Imagination cannot find the truth, and
Understanding turns to vanity.
The prophets are confused by God,
the saints are stupefied.
God is the mind’s desire
and master of the soul,
the devotee’s commitment,
the disciple’s goal,
but all of this is beyond where reason goes,
exists above existence, acts
without regard to the usual bounds:
There is no “in” or “out”, “how” or “why”.
10/11:
In Progress
As argument tries to take over,
What is being taken?
Everything, it seems,
Yet nothing more than this:
You cannot take what you do not want.
I cannot have what is never mine.
My hope remains.
Your faith is your own to find.
As argument tries to win the day,
What is there to lose?
Nothing, it seems,
Yet everything comes down to this:
Your victory and my defeat,
Or my win to your loss,
Is the death of the conversation
And the end of us.
As argument tries to make its point,
Who gets the final word?
What is there left to say?
10/12:
Dreams From September
September 26, 1990
Quick dream (I should give this more time): Dan and I are in my car, Dan is driving. We are stopped and backed up by several cars at the corner of Prospect and Touhy; we are south of the intersection. I take the opportunity to jump out of the car to quickly run an errand in one of the Prospect shops. I have some film to turn in and some old record albums I want to sell. There is a one-stop shop that can take care of both of my needs.
I turn in the film quickly, but they have to assess the record albums one at a time, and there are about fifteen of them. I wonder if it will take too long, but I decide Dan will have the sense to pull the car over to the side if the light turns green.
The shopkeeper looks at the albums. They are worth 5¢ ...15¢ ...10¢ ...etc., depending on the newness, popularity, size —all the obvious factors. The total comes to $1.75. It’s too small an amount, really, but I am ready to concede, wanting to collect the money and get out of the shop quickly. But then the shopkeeper convinces me that I ought to hold off on selling them until they increase in value. As a consolation he gives me a punch card which, when filled, will allow me to redeem a given number of records at a higher price.
I leave the shop ...and outside I find my car sitting sideways, perpendicular to Prospect Avenue with its nose in the middle of the right hand lane and its rear almost right up against the parked cars on the side of the street. Traffic is slowed down even more now, as cars have to drive around mine now. Dan is asleep in the passenger seat. I go over to the driver’s side —and it is crushed, beyond just a scrape, bashed in all along the side. I am able to open the door and I determine the car will be driveable, but Dan still doesn’t wake up.
I shout, in a panic. Dan wakes up groggily and continues to be only half awake for the rest of the dream... The cops come... We look the car over... I calm down a little... and Dan goes back to sleep.
Approximately September, 2013
He stood outside a Shell station in the warm part of fall, wearing scuffed black leather, studded and chained, heavy calf-high boots, fat dark glasses and a nervousness that made me look away. I didn’t notice his hair, except that it must have completed the grey-black head-to-toe theme he had going, not goth or Johnny Cash but relic all the same. And I didn’t see if he was smoking a cigarette, either, but he had all the gestures: one hand always going to his mouth, a jitteriness about him and a general haziness. I wasn’t close enough to smell him, but there was no point. He seemed to be waiting for someone or something, adding to the nervousness, but he stayed close to the side of the building as though what he wanted was right there. Maybe he just wanted to be noticed. I imagined him getting up in the morning, putting the whole costume on one piece at a time in front of a mirror, trying to look cool, but that wouldn’t explain why he was here, standing on the alley side of a gas station. Everything about him was out of alignment: he wore biker gear but there wasn’t a bike around; he might have been waiting for a bus, bu this wasn’t on a bus route. He looked like there should have been a pay phone next to him and he was waiting for it to ring, except that they took out all the pay phones years ago. He might have been waiting for someone to come out of the bathroom, or waiting for his turn, except that this particular Shell station didn’t have a side-entrance john. There was an air pump with a few loops of hose next to him, but this was probably just a coincidence, signifying nothing.
All of this I gathered in a glance, before the nervousness turned me away.
Inside, the attendant was a chubby faced hispanic named Alexa, according to her name tag. She was on the afternoon shift, the same shift for enough years to know all the regulars or at least what they wanted. I never bought gas here, too expensive, but this was a regular stop of mine for a pop on the way home, to get me through the rush hour. One 20 oz. Diet Coke with one Grandma’s oatmeal cookie pack. Neither the caffeine or the sugar are good for me but I will not begrudge the routine and I’m sure I spend much less here than most. Alexa spends more time dispensing cigarettes and lottery tickets than she does my $2.61. But she knows me, knows my purchase, and we exchange one verison or another of how do you do. One day I’ll stop for a moment, if there’s no line behind me, and ask her what she thinks of the weather, but even if this ever happens it will probably not go further. She has customers to attend, I have a forty five minute drive ahead of me and we live in different worlds.
10/13:
Moleskin 5.4: Backyard River
And then my family moved, and I moved. Homes seven, eight and nine were those transitional places between the drainage ditch and the Des Plaines River into which it dumped: the townhome, the apartment, the stepdad’s parent’s home: places I wanted to romanticize as being in the big city and not so far away from the old Chicago River and the great Lake Michigan, but homes I tend to remember and realize in more cynical shades. Our prior dwellings had never been big or glamorous, and we had lived in an urban apartment and even a trailer home before, but I missed the Buffalo River parsonage and everything about it: the neighbors, the space around us, the sense of “us” living in one place, one family with a river in our back yard, just down the hill.
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