(See below for Part 1)
I don't know about vision or sound or language. The hardest part of this assignment for me was just trying to get out of my own head and observe the world around me. I've been taking a lot of walks lately, not so much to enjoy nature, though that's a bonus, but to get away from home. I feel a lot of frustration and so the silence out there helps me become more settled inside. But it generally takes the entire walk before the inner rant subsides.
How relaxed Cardiff sounds, letting her mind wander this way and that, letting sights and sounds take her from one moment to the next--present to past, day to night. How surprised I was to know that she actually took the time to edit in sneezes so that her art more easily speaks to us, drags us in, makes us believe in her--it all sounded so natural.
How enraptured is Emerson, with his disembodied eyes, becoming one with nature. For him, it's all about beauty and communion. He says, "The health of the eye seems to demand a horizon" (14).
But for me...gah! It's all just a blur. Neither sights nor sounds really stick. The health of the mind demands a reprieve from both, so I'm halfway home again before I even start to really see or hear. And then...and then it kind of hits me. The absence of sound, the expanded horizon. Suddenly, I remember once again that there's something in this world beyond me and my petty little resentments. Emerson has an explanation for this one perhaps: "To the body and mind which have been cramped by noxious work or company, nature is medicinal and restores their tone" (14). He says it's the sight of nature in all her beauty. I don't know. For me, I think it's just a matter of being alone with my dog and simply getting out of my apartment, feeling the wind and smelling the open air.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
The Walk Blog
It begins with noise and the cessation of noise.
Touch the back of your tongue to the roof of your mouth, as if you're going to make the sound a "k" makes. Now form your lips to make an "o" sound. Then blow.
Softly and then louder and then softly and then louder...
and so on. It should have a sort of guttural harshness to it.
This is the wind blowing
[The voice fades to memory, even as the irritation lingers on.]
The wind ruffles your hair. The leaves crunch underfoot. [She's going to expect us to rake 'em before they've even finished falling from the tree. I'm just waiting for the snide comments to begin.] Take a deep breath; put everything out of your mind.
Breath in.
Breath out.
Breath in.
Breath out.
See, now isn't that better? [We'll pretend it is, or the weight of this awful life will become too darn much to bear.]
But you've only just stepped out the front door, and Ricky's tugging at the leash. Best get a move on.
So down the steps--one, two--and along the sidewalk and then up the neighbors' drive. [The stack of pizza boxes and other assorted trash has expanded even more just since yesterday. It could be worse, I suppose. At least the cooler weather alleviates the stench. Bastards.]
Now you're heading up the block and Ricky's stopping to pee about every five feet, but it feels too nice out to hurry anyway. They'll be time enough for that later.
But go ahead and cross the street. At least that'll give you a moment or two of uninterrupted locomotion. [Nope, he's stopped again. Ah, there he comes. God knows what he's sniffing at in the middle of the street.]
Oh, fine, let's just skip all this. You were bored anyway, no point in lying.
So you're at the edge of town, heading away from the high school and up the hill behind. The wind's blowing so hard that your hair's standing straight up and all other sound is silenced.
This is the sound of silence--it feels heavy on the ears. [In case you wondered, it sometimes helps to yawn.]
About the silence, though: it isn't really, is it? After all, you can still hear Ricky panting, gasping for breath even as he drags you up the hill. And you can hear your heart pounding in your skull. But how do you describe the sound of blood throbbing through the brain?
Ahhhh, finally! You've reached the top. And the hills surrounding
But focus in. Look at your feet. Okay, not that close. But if you let your eyes wander from the fields to the little patch of weeds right in front of you and then allow your ears to follow, you might notice the slither of wind through the tall, fading grass. Stalk rasping against stalk, multiplied by…well, a lot.
It's not always so dull and lifeless out here, of course; only a month or two ago, the fields were golden and before that a sea of emerald. [I remember the first time I saw this view. It was early summer and the fields were a millio…er, a dozen shades of green. And the smell…. Oh, so hard to describe, but the exact opposite of Vegas with all its asphalt and sand.]
Thursday, October 9, 2008
my 1st draft--okay, really 1st freewrite
Okay, to be honest, I haven’t even done enough reading to refer to any sources. I’m afraid I’m going to end up with a close reading because that’s usually what I end up with, but anyway I’ll start.
V.Woolf is the quintessential modernist, and yet she, like any other modernist (or most any other writer, for that matter), is drawing on a long literary tradition. In the past, I’ve looked at woolf’s engagement with classical antiquity to see how she incorporates elements of Greek lyric poetry, philosophy, and drama along with Latin neoteric poetry and the atomic theory of Lucretius into her work, with an emphasis on the Waves. I called this incorporation an appropriation and was especially thinking of it in terms of her using predominately male traditions—and one enthusiastically used by men in later literary periods—to create a new modernist (feminist?) aesthetic.
When I come to Orlando, then, I’m already looking at it through this lens of appropriation and re-creation. Orlando, however, seems to me a book almost entirely informed by romanticism/romantic principles. Of particular interest to me is the author’s depiction of the artist as a romantic figure inspired by nature and motivated by high passions. At one point, the narrator follows the lead of one of the writers we’ve encountered in this class (keats?) in saying that Orlando is in love with death (great, I’ve forgotten my book).
From what little I’ve been able to gather from my sources (having looked at them only cursorily), others have also noted the romantic temperament of this protagonist. What I thought I might do to go beyond that is to look at how nature itself is so intimately tied to that same temperament and to the temperament of people in general in this novel. Woolf seems to suggest either that the weather/environment is creating the character of the age or that the character of the age is influencing the weather/environment. If possible, I’d like to know in which direction this influence flows. Or is it perhaps a mutual thing? Are the two—the character of the people and the natural world—so intimately intertwined in this novel that the influence goes both ways?
What part, if any, does gender play in this system of interconnectedness?
Another aspect I’d like to explore, which may perhaps be closely related to the question concerning (wo)man/nature’s interconnectedness, is the definite tension between the sublime and the beautiful I see in this piece. To me, it seems that the novel highlights this tension, but mainly to disrupt the traditional masculine/feminine dynamic given to us by Burke. I guess it’s not really all that surprising that she should do this in a novel all about gender slippage.
V.Woolf is the quintessential modernist, and yet she, like any other modernist (or most any other writer, for that matter), is drawing on a long literary tradition. In the past, I’ve looked at woolf’s engagement with classical antiquity to see how she incorporates elements of Greek lyric poetry, philosophy, and drama along with Latin neoteric poetry and the atomic theory of Lucretius into her work, with an emphasis on the Waves. I called this incorporation an appropriation and was especially thinking of it in terms of her using predominately male traditions—and one enthusiastically used by men in later literary periods—to create a new modernist (feminist?) aesthetic.
When I come to Orlando, then, I’m already looking at it through this lens of appropriation and re-creation. Orlando, however, seems to me a book almost entirely informed by romanticism/romantic principles. Of particular interest to me is the author’s depiction of the artist as a romantic figure inspired by nature and motivated by high passions. At one point, the narrator follows the lead of one of the writers we’ve encountered in this class (keats?) in saying that Orlando is in love with death (great, I’ve forgotten my book).
From what little I’ve been able to gather from my sources (having looked at them only cursorily), others have also noted the romantic temperament of this protagonist. What I thought I might do to go beyond that is to look at how nature itself is so intimately tied to that same temperament and to the temperament of people in general in this novel. Woolf seems to suggest either that the weather/environment is creating the character of the age or that the character of the age is influencing the weather/environment. If possible, I’d like to know in which direction this influence flows. Or is it perhaps a mutual thing? Are the two—the character of the people and the natural world—so intimately intertwined in this novel that the influence goes both ways?
What part, if any, does gender play in this system of interconnectedness?
Another aspect I’d like to explore, which may perhaps be closely related to the question concerning (wo)man/nature’s interconnectedness, is the definite tension between the sublime and the beautiful I see in this piece. To me, it seems that the novel highlights this tension, but mainly to disrupt the traditional masculine/feminine dynamic given to us by Burke. I guess it’s not really all that surprising that she should do this in a novel all about gender slippage.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
amare est lacrimare
Truly it sets
my heart to pounding in my breast,
for the moment I glance at you, I can
no longer speak;
my tongue grows numb; at once a subtle
fire runs stealthily beneath my skin;
my eyes see nothing, my ears
ring and buzz,
the sweat pours down, a trembling
seizes the whole of me, I turn paler
than grass, and I seem to myself
not far from dying.
But everything can be endured, because….
~*~
No, Sappho, I’d have to disagree: not everything can be endured.
~*~
The love Sappho describes, the one I’ve felt myself at least once before is…
Agony.
But it is an agony that we both desire and rebel against throughout our lives.
Longinus and Burke would like to tie sublimity to greatness in art or to the majestic in nature, but I think that what we seek in literature and nature is simply the agony that we feel while in the heights and depths of love and sorrow—that pure, delicious agony that lets us know we’re alive…however unfortunately.
Burke denies this. He says, in fact, “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modification, they may be, and they are delightful…” (1.7). I agree with the idea that pain and danger pressing too closely are simply terrible, not delightful; what I disagree with is Burke’s definition of the sublime: that it is something that is full of delight and, worse yet, that it is something that must be experienced at, at least, some distance. For, as Burke himself says, feelings of “…pain and danger…are the most powerful of all the passions” (1.6), and, as with any passions, they are most easily felt not by proxy, but in the flesh.
No, I feel that the most truly sublime is generally also the most truly terrible. It is nothing more or less than the ecstasy of pure agony.
And it can only be known firsthand.
When we sense the sublime in nature or in a piece of literature, we sense it with…well, we sense it with our senses—and in the painful tingling of our nerves. Like poor Sappho’s speaker up above, we are indeed overpowered by a certain awful “Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror” (Burke 2.1). The juxtaposition of images and sensations that Longinus celebrates in this poem has the power to stop me and, yes, to cause me pain. Not because my mind says, “Wow, what a great poem,” but because my body reacts in sympathy with the speaker. And, independent of that, it reacts to the overload of ideas that are being desperately processed by my mind. It’s a pleasant pain, but painful all the same.
But that pleasurable pain is numbness compared to the pain of love I once (not so very long ago) experienced firsthand.
And that, in turn, was less than nothing to the ecstasy of agony I felt after losing a friend to suicide about a month after I turned 22.
Was it pleasant? No. But it sure as heck was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt. In the days and weeks that followed, sometimes I felt like my heart would burst from all the anguish inside it. In fact, I was so full of feeling—a horrible passion of despair—that it was one of the few times in my life that the words actually poured out of me. I, who have struggled with writer’s block, couldn’t stop writing. I’m not claiming any of it was good, but it certainly reflects the tumultuousness that was inside of me at the time, the anger, the bewilderment, the desperation, and the despair. At the risk of being laughed at, I’m going to share a couple of the works that resulted—though, again, with the disclaimer that I know it’s pretty embarrassing poetically speaking, and I’m definitely NOT saying that the poems themselves are sublime, but I do think they quite honestly capture something of the sublime agony I was feeling back then:
Do you love me / now that I’m dead? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m gone? / Or does the game go on / one more player down? / Was it all for nothing? / Did you even learn one thing? / Did you learn how to love? / Do you know how to care? / Will you ever see / how much it meant to me / just to be held / just to be touched? / Couldn’t you even give me a smile? / But now that I’m gone / do you cry for me? / And now that I’m dead / do you love me? / You played me a fool / treated me like a dog / kicked me aside / when you found another pup / I could have survived / tried to move on / but you couldn’t let it be / You had to have me / on a string / like a puppet / to be played with / when you were bored / Now who’s your toy? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m dead? / Do you love me / now that I’m gone? / And in the night / do you long for my touch? / When you’re all alone / do you remember my kiss? / Do you care? / Did you ever care? / Now that it’s too fucking late / Do you finally care?
Remember me
(Note: Yeah, his wife left him for another man. Needless to say, we were all looking for someone to blame, and she was an easy target.)
~*~
Blue sky above me,
dark clouds surround me,
heartache engulfs me,
a nightmare that just won’t end.
I hear your voice in my head,
see your smile in my dreams,
hold you in my memory.
Tomorrow if I can just go on—
and the next day once again—
I can take it day by day,
and eventually the pain will fade.
But when I’m alone
with all my defenses down,
every memory comes back to me:
I hear you in a song,
see you in the sky;
driving down the road,
I wonder if you’ll pass me by.
And so little to hold onto,
so much I had to miss.
I just got to treasure
every minute,
remember every look,
and
memorize every word
I ever heard you speak.
And the tears inside me,
fighting to be free…
I’m so afraid I’ll forget you,
but it hurts almost as bad
to remember.
I love you—
“Been there, did that!”
I miss you—
“What’s up with that?”
I won’t forget you—
“Keep knocking and someday I’ll answer!”
Someday, I hope to see you again….
In memory of you
Feb. 25, 1993
25 days in Hell
my heart to pounding in my breast,
for the moment I glance at you, I can
no longer speak;
my tongue grows numb; at once a subtle
fire runs stealthily beneath my skin;
my eyes see nothing, my ears
ring and buzz,
the sweat pours down, a trembling
seizes the whole of me, I turn paler
than grass, and I seem to myself
not far from dying.
But everything can be endured, because….
~*~
No, Sappho, I’d have to disagree: not everything can be endured.
~*~
The love Sappho describes, the one I’ve felt myself at least once before is…
Agony.
But it is an agony that we both desire and rebel against throughout our lives.
Longinus and Burke would like to tie sublimity to greatness in art or to the majestic in nature, but I think that what we seek in literature and nature is simply the agony that we feel while in the heights and depths of love and sorrow—that pure, delicious agony that lets us know we’re alive…however unfortunately.
Burke denies this. He says, in fact, “When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modification, they may be, and they are delightful…” (1.7). I agree with the idea that pain and danger pressing too closely are simply terrible, not delightful; what I disagree with is Burke’s definition of the sublime: that it is something that is full of delight and, worse yet, that it is something that must be experienced at, at least, some distance. For, as Burke himself says, feelings of “…pain and danger…are the most powerful of all the passions” (1.6), and, as with any passions, they are most easily felt not by proxy, but in the flesh.
No, I feel that the most truly sublime is generally also the most truly terrible. It is nothing more or less than the ecstasy of pure agony.
And it can only be known firsthand.
When we sense the sublime in nature or in a piece of literature, we sense it with…well, we sense it with our senses—and in the painful tingling of our nerves. Like poor Sappho’s speaker up above, we are indeed overpowered by a certain awful “Astonishment; and astonishment is that state of the soul, in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror” (Burke 2.1). The juxtaposition of images and sensations that Longinus celebrates in this poem has the power to stop me and, yes, to cause me pain. Not because my mind says, “Wow, what a great poem,” but because my body reacts in sympathy with the speaker. And, independent of that, it reacts to the overload of ideas that are being desperately processed by my mind. It’s a pleasant pain, but painful all the same.
But that pleasurable pain is numbness compared to the pain of love I once (not so very long ago) experienced firsthand.
And that, in turn, was less than nothing to the ecstasy of agony I felt after losing a friend to suicide about a month after I turned 22.
Was it pleasant? No. But it sure as heck was the most powerful thing I’ve ever felt. In the days and weeks that followed, sometimes I felt like my heart would burst from all the anguish inside it. In fact, I was so full of feeling—a horrible passion of despair—that it was one of the few times in my life that the words actually poured out of me. I, who have struggled with writer’s block, couldn’t stop writing. I’m not claiming any of it was good, but it certainly reflects the tumultuousness that was inside of me at the time, the anger, the bewilderment, the desperation, and the despair. At the risk of being laughed at, I’m going to share a couple of the works that resulted—though, again, with the disclaimer that I know it’s pretty embarrassing poetically speaking, and I’m definitely NOT saying that the poems themselves are sublime, but I do think they quite honestly capture something of the sublime agony I was feeling back then:
Do you love me / now that I’m dead? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m gone? / Or does the game go on / one more player down? / Was it all for nothing? / Did you even learn one thing? / Did you learn how to love? / Do you know how to care? / Will you ever see / how much it meant to me / just to be held / just to be touched? / Couldn’t you even give me a smile? / But now that I’m gone / do you cry for me? / And now that I’m dead / do you love me? / You played me a fool / treated me like a dog / kicked me aside / when you found another pup / I could have survived / tried to move on / but you couldn’t let it be / You had to have me / on a string / like a puppet / to be played with / when you were bored / Now who’s your toy? / Do you cry for me / now that I’m dead? / Do you love me / now that I’m gone? / And in the night / do you long for my touch? / When you’re all alone / do you remember my kiss? / Do you care? / Did you ever care? / Now that it’s too fucking late / Do you finally care?
Remember me
(Note: Yeah, his wife left him for another man. Needless to say, we were all looking for someone to blame, and she was an easy target.)
~*~
Blue sky above me,
dark clouds surround me,
heartache engulfs me,
a nightmare that just won’t end.
I hear your voice in my head,
see your smile in my dreams,
hold you in my memory.
Tomorrow if I can just go on—
and the next day once again—
I can take it day by day,
and eventually the pain will fade.
But when I’m alone
with all my defenses down,
every memory comes back to me:
I hear you in a song,
see you in the sky;
driving down the road,
I wonder if you’ll pass me by.
And so little to hold onto,
so much I had to miss.
I just got to treasure
every minute,
remember every look,
and
memorize every word
I ever heard you speak.
And the tears inside me,
fighting to be free…
I’m so afraid I’ll forget you,
but it hurts almost as bad
to remember.
I love you—
“Been there, did that!”
I miss you—
“What’s up with that?”
I won’t forget you—
“Keep knocking and someday I’ll answer!”
Someday, I hope to see you again….
In memory of you
Feb. 25, 1993
25 days in Hell
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