Appear at the break of dusk,
Vanish at the fall of dawn.
Throw shooting stars so fast they strike
Like spinning razor meteorites
Twinkling softly, sharply in the night.
Step
step
jump!
Over the wall in a single bound,
A leap of faith tried and tested
Night after moonless night.
Flying faster than a swirling hurricane
But quieter than a summer breeze,
Across the grass and disappear
Amongst the shadows on the wall.
Now wait
1
2
3
and up!
Climb like a gecko
Up to the window,
Hide in the shadow
And then if you know all's clear rush
Into the room,
Your lucky stars
At your fingertips.
Tick
Tock
Time
Is running through your fingers
As fast as you are
Slipping through the door
Sprinting down the hall
Jumping off the wall
To wall to wall to wall
And suddenly you're there,
And no one even notices.
Appear at the break of dusk,
Vanish at the fall of dawn.
Throw shooting stars so fast they strike
Like spinning razor meteorites
Twinkling softly, sharply in the night.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Saturday, October 15, 2011
Concentration
A lens through which to see the world
And focus the light of knowledge upon the brain
Stimulating sparks across a single neuron,
A single circuit, a single mind,
Hoping to spark an illuminating fire,
A passion that strives every day and night
To discover that which is unknown,
To see what has never been seen.
The stronger and deeper the lens
The more focused the point of light,
But the more focused the lens
The narrower the scope and vision,
For breadth is not depth,
And depth is not breadth.
So perhaps instead we might try
A plethora of lenses,
Shaping a multifaceted diamond
Through which we might parse
Every color the world holds,
But the more spread the lenses,
The broader the point of light,
And the broader the focus,
The dimmer the passionate flame,
For depth is not breadth,
And breadth is not depth.
Over and over, and over again,
Perpetually pondering problems
Whose answers are only other inquiries
Yet to be seen or successfully solved:
The recursive howhy? of a child
Struggling to understand the world,
The eternal whoamI? of a mind
Struggling to understand itself.
And focus the light of knowledge upon the brain
Stimulating sparks across a single neuron,
A single circuit, a single mind,
Hoping to spark an illuminating fire,
A passion that strives every day and night
To discover that which is unknown,
To see what has never been seen.
The stronger and deeper the lens
The more focused the point of light,
But the more focused the lens
The narrower the scope and vision,
For breadth is not depth,
And depth is not breadth.
So perhaps instead we might try
A plethora of lenses,
Shaping a multifaceted diamond
Through which we might parse
Every color the world holds,
But the more spread the lenses,
The broader the point of light,
And the broader the focus,
The dimmer the passionate flame,
For depth is not breadth,
And breadth is not depth.
Over and over, and over again,
Perpetually pondering problems
Whose answers are only other inquiries
Yet to be seen or successfully solved:
The recursive howhy? of a child
Struggling to understand the world,
The eternal whoamI? of a mind
Struggling to understand itself.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Writing an Apple
Literary art is an art form. In both art, like visual art for example, and literary art, the goal is to depict, define, describe, capture, characterize. The subject, in general, is life: human life, not any other plant or animal life, because we happen to be interested in humanity. Well, humanity is complicated. Let’s start with something simpler. What if you wanted to draw, depict, paint, visually, on a canvas, an apple?
From one side, it looks like a red, vaguely truncated heart, with maybe a little brown stem on top with a green leaf attached. A stereotypical apple, the Platonic form of an apple, if you will. To get an even better picture, we can paint the apple from several angles, several dimensions, to get the whole apple, because only then can you appreciate the whole 3-D delicious perfection.
However, apples aren’t really like this. There are so many problems here. First of all, this apple is ripe, at its prime, at its peak, but when you think about it, the majority of an apple’s life is not spent at its prime (since a peak is, by definition, one point in time or space), so the majority of the time we encounter apples, in real life, they do not look as delicious and perfect as this. Therefore, we add some blemishes and such to make it more realistic. We just said that it changes in time, so maybe to really capture the apple, we can add in that fourth dimension, time, perhaps using a succession of apple as it progresses through its existence. Finally, apples don’t even really exist like this, on a blank white canvas, anywhere but in our imaginations. How can this be the apple that you are going to eat if it does not exist on your table? To that end, we put it in its context, in a fruit bowl maybe, on a table. Part of the apple’s essence is related to these other things, like the person who’s going to eat it, and the other fruits in the fruit bowl, which itself becomes more aesthetically pleasing than the sum of its fruits of course. Now we proclaim that this, this is a realistic apple!
Yet perhaps, if the goal is to capture the essence of an apple, what we should paint is the inside of the apple, the inner workings. From this picture we have now, you can’t tell anything about the texture, the juiciness, the flavors, the sugars, the biological processes inside the apple. We should draw that instead. However, the chemistry and biology of an apple are horribly complicated, so we run into two problems. First, we have to discard our old canvas and think of a new way to describe the processes, because obviously we don’t have space on our canvas to focus on both. Second, even when we are just describing the inner workings of the apple, we still have to simplify them, because it really is complicated. We just show general mechanisms, and leave much out, because we have to focus on something.
Now, what does all this have to do with literature? Start again with that Platonic apple. It is idealized, romanticized. Think of Classical Romanticism, eighteenth, nineteenth century, pastoral life is perfect, it’s ideal, this is how life should be, you know? Maybe we don’t have flat characters; we might still paint them from multiple perspectives and show that they’re multidimensional and round, but they’re still idealistic.
Now think of the realists saying, “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. This may or may not be how life should be, but it is certainly now how life is.” First of all, life isn’t perfect, so we get the styles that often make people think realist and cynic are synonymous. We put in imperfections; life isn’t all that great after all, it’s just ordinary. We put in the context, the society and surroundings in which life lives, because if we don’t have that we aren’t really describing human life as it exists in the world. We then we put in development, because people change, opinions change, life changes. We get a plethora of bildungsromans, stories of learning, like Pip of Great Expectations and Eugene of Pére Goriot learning about how imperfect society is. This is realism, classical realism. You can call it social or physical or empirical realism, perhaps.
Then the Modernists step in: “What have you done? You spent so much energy and time focusing on what surrounds life that it’s like drawing the house in which a person lives in order to describe the person, as Woolf says. You’ve lost sight of the person here!” What matters is not the surface, the superficial society; what matters is the psychology of the individual. That is the essence of human life. That is what we ought to focus on. Unfortunately, the human mind is even more horribly complicated than an apple, and we can’t write every single thought that flits through the head. We can’t record every atom as it falls upon the mind, so we have to simplify and choose what to include to make it easy for our viewer, in this context our reader, to understand what on earth we’re saying. We have to come up with new modes and experiment, because psychology is a new field, humans are attracted to the superficial, and thus it takes considerable effort and creativity to look inside the mind. Then we can see how the experimental aspect of modernism emerges. Moreover, it’s easy, if you’re lost in the confines of one mind, to end up with solipsism, because you can only see other minds through yours. Suddenly the world seems an existentialist-lonely place. Fortunately, Woolf shows that it is possible to focus on other minds, as long as we link them together; in fact, we gain some insight about society through that interaction. Fantastic! Yet we still don’t have space or time to focus on both this inner psychology and the outside, the society, the physical realism.
The exception is shown by Tolstoy, who was somehow insightful and skillful enough to overlay the two, laying psychological realism over empirical realism to discuss the real world through the eyes of psychologically realistic individuals. That’s the best you can hope for, and even that’s not perfect, really. Tolstoy still has to simplify Anna and Levin’s thoughts are still simplified, just like modernists, and however much focus he puts on Russia, he loses in focus on Anna and Levin.
We can’t paint everything in one picture; we can’t write everything in one book. If we focus on everything we have no focus, because focus implies some kind of specialization, some specificity. However, we still find that neither realism nor modernism is inherently superior. The first painter, with the Platonic apple, might come along again and say that “We’ve become so caught up in the real world that we’ve lost sight of the quintessence of human life! Can you imagine what state we’d be in if Pythagoras had never tried thinking about idealized triangles, and had stuck to imperfect real-world ones?” The realist reply is that “No, we want to describe life as it really is, we want to capture authentic life, and yes, that means imperfections, that means we deal with just shadows of idealized life.” The modernist says “Sure, but remember what’s important is not this superficial physical realism but the psychological realism, the mind. That’s where human life really is.”
They’re just different foci on looking at the same object, Life. It’s not that we’ve made progress from one to the other. Like Woolf says, we just move in circles on the same plain. You can say the relationship between realism and modernism is that realism is, in general, empirical realism while modernism is psychological realism, as well as the authors can manage, because the mind is a difficult thing to read as well as a terrible thing to waste. Moreover, while it may be impossible to account for all of them in one work, one painting, or one book, we can read and study these different ways of describing and understanding human life on so many levels, and learn different insights from each style. Even if every work fails to capture life completely, we are thankfully not limited to choosing only one.
From one side, it looks like a red, vaguely truncated heart, with maybe a little brown stem on top with a green leaf attached. A stereotypical apple, the Platonic form of an apple, if you will. To get an even better picture, we can paint the apple from several angles, several dimensions, to get the whole apple, because only then can you appreciate the whole 3-D delicious perfection.
However, apples aren’t really like this. There are so many problems here. First of all, this apple is ripe, at its prime, at its peak, but when you think about it, the majority of an apple’s life is not spent at its prime (since a peak is, by definition, one point in time or space), so the majority of the time we encounter apples, in real life, they do not look as delicious and perfect as this. Therefore, we add some blemishes and such to make it more realistic. We just said that it changes in time, so maybe to really capture the apple, we can add in that fourth dimension, time, perhaps using a succession of apple as it progresses through its existence. Finally, apples don’t even really exist like this, on a blank white canvas, anywhere but in our imaginations. How can this be the apple that you are going to eat if it does not exist on your table? To that end, we put it in its context, in a fruit bowl maybe, on a table. Part of the apple’s essence is related to these other things, like the person who’s going to eat it, and the other fruits in the fruit bowl, which itself becomes more aesthetically pleasing than the sum of its fruits of course. Now we proclaim that this, this is a realistic apple!
Yet perhaps, if the goal is to capture the essence of an apple, what we should paint is the inside of the apple, the inner workings. From this picture we have now, you can’t tell anything about the texture, the juiciness, the flavors, the sugars, the biological processes inside the apple. We should draw that instead. However, the chemistry and biology of an apple are horribly complicated, so we run into two problems. First, we have to discard our old canvas and think of a new way to describe the processes, because obviously we don’t have space on our canvas to focus on both. Second, even when we are just describing the inner workings of the apple, we still have to simplify them, because it really is complicated. We just show general mechanisms, and leave much out, because we have to focus on something.
Now, what does all this have to do with literature? Start again with that Platonic apple. It is idealized, romanticized. Think of Classical Romanticism, eighteenth, nineteenth century, pastoral life is perfect, it’s ideal, this is how life should be, you know? Maybe we don’t have flat characters; we might still paint them from multiple perspectives and show that they’re multidimensional and round, but they’re still idealistic.
Now think of the realists saying, “No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. This may or may not be how life should be, but it is certainly now how life is.” First of all, life isn’t perfect, so we get the styles that often make people think realist and cynic are synonymous. We put in imperfections; life isn’t all that great after all, it’s just ordinary. We put in the context, the society and surroundings in which life lives, because if we don’t have that we aren’t really describing human life as it exists in the world. We then we put in development, because people change, opinions change, life changes. We get a plethora of bildungsromans, stories of learning, like Pip of Great Expectations and Eugene of Pére Goriot learning about how imperfect society is. This is realism, classical realism. You can call it social or physical or empirical realism, perhaps.
Then the Modernists step in: “What have you done? You spent so much energy and time focusing on what surrounds life that it’s like drawing the house in which a person lives in order to describe the person, as Woolf says. You’ve lost sight of the person here!” What matters is not the surface, the superficial society; what matters is the psychology of the individual. That is the essence of human life. That is what we ought to focus on. Unfortunately, the human mind is even more horribly complicated than an apple, and we can’t write every single thought that flits through the head. We can’t record every atom as it falls upon the mind, so we have to simplify and choose what to include to make it easy for our viewer, in this context our reader, to understand what on earth we’re saying. We have to come up with new modes and experiment, because psychology is a new field, humans are attracted to the superficial, and thus it takes considerable effort and creativity to look inside the mind. Then we can see how the experimental aspect of modernism emerges. Moreover, it’s easy, if you’re lost in the confines of one mind, to end up with solipsism, because you can only see other minds through yours. Suddenly the world seems an existentialist-lonely place. Fortunately, Woolf shows that it is possible to focus on other minds, as long as we link them together; in fact, we gain some insight about society through that interaction. Fantastic! Yet we still don’t have space or time to focus on both this inner psychology and the outside, the society, the physical realism.
The exception is shown by Tolstoy, who was somehow insightful and skillful enough to overlay the two, laying psychological realism over empirical realism to discuss the real world through the eyes of psychologically realistic individuals. That’s the best you can hope for, and even that’s not perfect, really. Tolstoy still has to simplify Anna and Levin’s thoughts are still simplified, just like modernists, and however much focus he puts on Russia, he loses in focus on Anna and Levin.
We can’t paint everything in one picture; we can’t write everything in one book. If we focus on everything we have no focus, because focus implies some kind of specialization, some specificity. However, we still find that neither realism nor modernism is inherently superior. The first painter, with the Platonic apple, might come along again and say that “We’ve become so caught up in the real world that we’ve lost sight of the quintessence of human life! Can you imagine what state we’d be in if Pythagoras had never tried thinking about idealized triangles, and had stuck to imperfect real-world ones?” The realist reply is that “No, we want to describe life as it really is, we want to capture authentic life, and yes, that means imperfections, that means we deal with just shadows of idealized life.” The modernist says “Sure, but remember what’s important is not this superficial physical realism but the psychological realism, the mind. That’s where human life really is.”
They’re just different foci on looking at the same object, Life. It’s not that we’ve made progress from one to the other. Like Woolf says, we just move in circles on the same plain. You can say the relationship between realism and modernism is that realism is, in general, empirical realism while modernism is psychological realism, as well as the authors can manage, because the mind is a difficult thing to read as well as a terrible thing to waste. Moreover, while it may be impossible to account for all of them in one work, one painting, or one book, we can read and study these different ways of describing and understanding human life on so many levels, and learn different insights from each style. Even if every work fails to capture life completely, we are thankfully not limited to choosing only one.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Falling out of Autumn
How the wind whistles a brisk serenade!
How it stands before the traveler,
Soft but frigid, intangible and unyielding!
An unbreakable wall upon the path,
Casting skeleton trees upon the earth,
Stripping to dark bones,
To dark bones.
The blades burn bright as they fall from the sky,
Twisting around the wind’s serpentine path
Point by point, like a starry night,
Raining upon the windswept earth,
Like rain falling down,
Falling down.
How it stands before the traveler,
Soft but frigid, intangible and unyielding!
An unbreakable wall upon the path,
Casting skeleton trees upon the earth,
Stripping to dark bones,
To dark bones.
The blades burn bright as they fall from the sky,
Twisting around the wind’s serpentine path
Point by point, like a starry night,
Raining upon the windswept earth,
Like rain falling down,
Falling down.
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Questions
Why do you always wonder, and
Why do you always doubt?
Why do you want an answer, and
Why do you seek it out?
Why not just blindly follow
Any quest that God may give?
Why not assume that there is
Just no other way to live?
Why must you always speculate
Upon the ifs and coulds?
Why must you second-guess the path
You’ve taken through the woods?
Why question your beliefs about
The world and how it works?
Why open each Pandora’s box
In which a lesson lurks?
Why eat the apple on that tree?
Why hear the snake’s sweet hiss?
Why would you ever want to learn
If ignorance is bliss?
But how can you just walk along
Without taking a look?
How can you wander round the world
But never read a book?
How will you ever write if you
Will never learn to read?
If you can’t learn from past mistakes
Then how will you succeed?
How can you find what you don’t have
If you don’t wish to learn?
Aren’t creation and invention
Fires that you should let burn?
Is it not pride to think that you
Know all there is to know?
Why don’t you want a better world
In which your child can grow?
So why not be a skeptic then,
And why not think and doubt?
If you never ask a question,
How on earth will you find out?
Why do you always doubt?
Why do you want an answer, and
Why do you seek it out?
Why not just blindly follow
Any quest that God may give?
Why not assume that there is
Just no other way to live?
Why must you always speculate
Upon the ifs and coulds?
Why must you second-guess the path
You’ve taken through the woods?
Why question your beliefs about
The world and how it works?
Why open each Pandora’s box
In which a lesson lurks?
Why eat the apple on that tree?
Why hear the snake’s sweet hiss?
Why would you ever want to learn
If ignorance is bliss?
But how can you just walk along
Without taking a look?
How can you wander round the world
But never read a book?
How will you ever write if you
Will never learn to read?
If you can’t learn from past mistakes
Then how will you succeed?
How can you find what you don’t have
If you don’t wish to learn?
Aren’t creation and invention
Fires that you should let burn?
Is it not pride to think that you
Know all there is to know?
Why don’t you want a better world
In which your child can grow?
So why not be a skeptic then,
And why not think and doubt?
If you never ask a question,
How on earth will you find out?
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Perspective and Content
Lukacs states that "the problem of perspective in literature is directly related to the principle of selection." Fair enough. If we look at a book written from a certain individual's perspective then the selection of content we find in the novel is derived from that perspective. So then what options are there?
1) The perspective of an individual, a first person, looking at the world through his or her eyes.
2) The perspective of an omniscient (or even non-omniscient, now that I think of it) narrator who arbitrarily focuses our attention on some fragment of the life story of an individual or a few individuals.
3) The perspectives of many characters, superimposed upon one another.
These are all the perspectives that come to mind at the moment. Clearly not an exhaustive list. The question now arises of how to select, based on each of these criteria, the content, and what intent each of these best suits, with the overriding goal being, presumably to describe "life."
1) The perspective of an individual, a first person, looking at the world through his or her eyes.
a) One option is a traditional (non-modern) narration of a straightforward story, what Ford would no doubt term an overly idealistic and optimistic storyteller, who dictates the story of the narrator's life or another's but focuses on the events and characters rather than his or her own thoughts. Often the narrator's character ends up remaining static by virtue of the author's faculties being concentrated on the story, but this can be overcome through care.
b) The other extreme is what Lukacs describes in Joyce, and what we've seen in Ford: a first person perspective whose content is the individual's thoughts and "impressions," however chaotic they may be. This has the opposite effect of (a), and the story often ends up being rather static while the individual is developed. However, as Lukacs points out, there is a great risk of the character ending up static as well, for attempting to create a panorama of a person's thoughts is much easier when the person isn't changing (in much the same was as a moving target is harder to hit). It could certainly be argued that Dowell, of A Good Soldier, ends up fairly static, as our estimation of him from the beginning to the end of the novel remains fairly constant, if clarified and assured after several confirmations and hints of passivity and unreliability.
Which of these two options is the better? I would argue that the modernist approach (b) is more successful, if harder to execute satisfactorily, because if the purpose of a first person narrative is to paint "life" from the point of view of a single individual with a distinct personality, then attempting to peek into that character's thoughts and emotions as realistically as possible is likely superior than merely dictating his or her perception of the events of the story. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as it presents a challenge), telling another’s thoughts is even harder than telling another’s superficial view of events, and the dangers of a static story and a static person are heavy, though I think not insurmountable. Stream of consciousness often flows fast, and it’s easy to get lost in the rapids.
2) The perspective of an omniscient (or even non-omniscient, now that I think of it) narrator who arbitrarily focuses our attention on some fragment of the life story of an individual or a few individuals.
a) Any story is a fragment (sometimes the whole) of the life of one or more individuals. The first option, then, is to tell the story much as an biography, simply a dictation of the events that happened, straight facts that are hard to misinterpret and question as not objectively real.
b) The other extreme is to focus as much as possible on the emotions and thoughts of the story’s characters, the advantage of omniscience being the relative ease (compared to first person narration) to make several round characters rather than just one. Of course in reality, all individuals are round, but it is difficult to impossible to make every character in a story round, because the author simply doesn’t have time. In first person it’s very easy to make just the one narrator round, but very difficult to keep all the other characters from being flat as paper, because there is only one blind perspective to see from.
c) The final option is to strike some in-between, to tell the story but to interject the character’s thoughts whenever appropriate (though I am conscious of the vagueness there).
I would discount (a) out of hand simply because all the characters almost inevitably end up flat and boring, let alone realistic. Between (b) and (c) there is a hard choice to be made. The first is appealing for the same reasons that the latter option was preferable in the first person narration, but the question that inevitably arises is that if the author cares to take so much effort in describing thought and emotion, why not go the whole way and focus on a single individual’s internal perspective completely? The answer, of course, is the ability to look at many minds at once, and the question of specificity and focus versus range and breadth is a difficult, if not impossible, one to answer.
I believe an excellent example of the success of (b) might be Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, though perhaps it lies somewhere between (b) and (c). Certainly he succeeds in painting the lives of several characters in intimate, round detail, to the extent that our perceptions and opinions of his main characters are actually malleable over time in the strictest sense (do we admire Anna or despise her?). This is an extremely tricky feat to pull off, which is really the whole problem of creating round characters in the first place. In real life, we have an intriguing paradox: on the one hand, our opinions of people are not static—as we continue to interact with them, we may appreciate them more or less, for various aspects of their persona; on the other hand, we are quick to form generalizations and place people into categories. Yet the excitability of a professor in class, for example, may not be a defining trait throughout his life. We simply have a very limited lens through which to view other people unless we interact with them often, in a variety of contexts. The fact that Tolstoy manages to overcome this, without a first person narration, for multiple characters, is awe-inspiring. And he is assuredly a realist rather than a modernist—but perhaps a realist of not only external but also internal complexity.
3) The perspectives of many characters, superimposed upon one another.
We basically have the same options as (1), but multiplied by however many characters there are. We could tell a story from person A’s interior thoughts but person B’s simple view of events, and so on and so forth. This is almost what I saw in The Dew Breaker, although admittedly that was a mixed third person/first person narration-almost a mix of all 3 of the perspectives I’ve listed. I think the value of having multiple perspectives is that with skill, a web of interactions and interdependencies (so like real life) can be drawn amongst the various characters, and that ultimately grants an awesome insight into the human being as zoon politikon, as Lukacs puts it. Society really is an integral part of what separates humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom, for a host of reasons including innovation, culture, and synergy. This facet of human life, then, is perhaps best depicted from multiple lenses, multiple perspectives. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf does an admirable job of not only employing stream of consciousness as more than a mere stylistic technique but also jumping from one character’s perspective to another, with intricate threads linking them all.
So what do you think is the best perspective from which to depict life, and given that perspective, what content should be put in it?
Reference:
George Lukács' "The Ideology of Modernism" in Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle.
Books/authors mentioned:
Mrs. Dalloway/Virginia Woolf
The Dew Breaker/Edwidge Danticat
Anna Karenina/Leo Tolstoy
The Good Soldier/Ford Madox Ford
1) The perspective of an individual, a first person, looking at the world through his or her eyes.
2) The perspective of an omniscient (or even non-omniscient, now that I think of it) narrator who arbitrarily focuses our attention on some fragment of the life story of an individual or a few individuals.
3) The perspectives of many characters, superimposed upon one another.
These are all the perspectives that come to mind at the moment. Clearly not an exhaustive list. The question now arises of how to select, based on each of these criteria, the content, and what intent each of these best suits, with the overriding goal being, presumably to describe "life."
1) The perspective of an individual, a first person, looking at the world through his or her eyes.
a) One option is a traditional (non-modern) narration of a straightforward story, what Ford would no doubt term an overly idealistic and optimistic storyteller, who dictates the story of the narrator's life or another's but focuses on the events and characters rather than his or her own thoughts. Often the narrator's character ends up remaining static by virtue of the author's faculties being concentrated on the story, but this can be overcome through care.
b) The other extreme is what Lukacs describes in Joyce, and what we've seen in Ford: a first person perspective whose content is the individual's thoughts and "impressions," however chaotic they may be. This has the opposite effect of (a), and the story often ends up being rather static while the individual is developed. However, as Lukacs points out, there is a great risk of the character ending up static as well, for attempting to create a panorama of a person's thoughts is much easier when the person isn't changing (in much the same was as a moving target is harder to hit). It could certainly be argued that Dowell, of A Good Soldier, ends up fairly static, as our estimation of him from the beginning to the end of the novel remains fairly constant, if clarified and assured after several confirmations and hints of passivity and unreliability.
Which of these two options is the better? I would argue that the modernist approach (b) is more successful, if harder to execute satisfactorily, because if the purpose of a first person narrative is to paint "life" from the point of view of a single individual with a distinct personality, then attempting to peek into that character's thoughts and emotions as realistically as possible is likely superior than merely dictating his or her perception of the events of the story. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, as it presents a challenge), telling another’s thoughts is even harder than telling another’s superficial view of events, and the dangers of a static story and a static person are heavy, though I think not insurmountable. Stream of consciousness often flows fast, and it’s easy to get lost in the rapids.
2) The perspective of an omniscient (or even non-omniscient, now that I think of it) narrator who arbitrarily focuses our attention on some fragment of the life story of an individual or a few individuals.
a) Any story is a fragment (sometimes the whole) of the life of one or more individuals. The first option, then, is to tell the story much as an biography, simply a dictation of the events that happened, straight facts that are hard to misinterpret and question as not objectively real.
b) The other extreme is to focus as much as possible on the emotions and thoughts of the story’s characters, the advantage of omniscience being the relative ease (compared to first person narration) to make several round characters rather than just one. Of course in reality, all individuals are round, but it is difficult to impossible to make every character in a story round, because the author simply doesn’t have time. In first person it’s very easy to make just the one narrator round, but very difficult to keep all the other characters from being flat as paper, because there is only one blind perspective to see from.
c) The final option is to strike some in-between, to tell the story but to interject the character’s thoughts whenever appropriate (though I am conscious of the vagueness there).
I would discount (a) out of hand simply because all the characters almost inevitably end up flat and boring, let alone realistic. Between (b) and (c) there is a hard choice to be made. The first is appealing for the same reasons that the latter option was preferable in the first person narration, but the question that inevitably arises is that if the author cares to take so much effort in describing thought and emotion, why not go the whole way and focus on a single individual’s internal perspective completely? The answer, of course, is the ability to look at many minds at once, and the question of specificity and focus versus range and breadth is a difficult, if not impossible, one to answer.
I believe an excellent example of the success of (b) might be Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, though perhaps it lies somewhere between (b) and (c). Certainly he succeeds in painting the lives of several characters in intimate, round detail, to the extent that our perceptions and opinions of his main characters are actually malleable over time in the strictest sense (do we admire Anna or despise her?). This is an extremely tricky feat to pull off, which is really the whole problem of creating round characters in the first place. In real life, we have an intriguing paradox: on the one hand, our opinions of people are not static—as we continue to interact with them, we may appreciate them more or less, for various aspects of their persona; on the other hand, we are quick to form generalizations and place people into categories. Yet the excitability of a professor in class, for example, may not be a defining trait throughout his life. We simply have a very limited lens through which to view other people unless we interact with them often, in a variety of contexts. The fact that Tolstoy manages to overcome this, without a first person narration, for multiple characters, is awe-inspiring. And he is assuredly a realist rather than a modernist—but perhaps a realist of not only external but also internal complexity.
3) The perspectives of many characters, superimposed upon one another.
We basically have the same options as (1), but multiplied by however many characters there are. We could tell a story from person A’s interior thoughts but person B’s simple view of events, and so on and so forth. This is almost what I saw in The Dew Breaker, although admittedly that was a mixed third person/first person narration-almost a mix of all 3 of the perspectives I’ve listed. I think the value of having multiple perspectives is that with skill, a web of interactions and interdependencies (so like real life) can be drawn amongst the various characters, and that ultimately grants an awesome insight into the human being as zoon politikon, as Lukacs puts it. Society really is an integral part of what separates humanity from the rest of the animal kingdom, for a host of reasons including innovation, culture, and synergy. This facet of human life, then, is perhaps best depicted from multiple lenses, multiple perspectives. In Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf does an admirable job of not only employing stream of consciousness as more than a mere stylistic technique but also jumping from one character’s perspective to another, with intricate threads linking them all.
So what do you think is the best perspective from which to depict life, and given that perspective, what content should be put in it?
Reference:
George Lukács' "The Ideology of Modernism" in Realism in Our Time: Literature and the Class Struggle.
Books/authors mentioned:
Mrs. Dalloway/Virginia Woolf
The Dew Breaker/Edwidge Danticat
Anna Karenina/Leo Tolstoy
The Good Soldier/Ford Madox Ford
Friday, September 17, 2010
The Jewel of Life
The fall of fire
Speckles every twilight
With swirling, sparkling stars,
Golden diamonds twinkling in the sky.
It lights up the ground and leaves the land
Rich as black onyx with hidden silver veins.
The fall of rain
Paints every surface
With a glassy, glossy glaze,
That grows into a coat of imperial jade.
It raises topaz towers anointed with emerald
With the ease of a sweet spring's susurrus.
The fall of sunlight
Blesses every shadow
With an effervescent efflorescence
Of opal and amethyst, ruby and sapphire.
It bestows a lustrous brilliance on the Earth,
More precious than a world of gems and jewels.
Speckles every twilight
With swirling, sparkling stars,
Golden diamonds twinkling in the sky.
It lights up the ground and leaves the land
Rich as black onyx with hidden silver veins.
The fall of rain
Paints every surface
With a glassy, glossy glaze,
That grows into a coat of imperial jade.
It raises topaz towers anointed with emerald
With the ease of a sweet spring's susurrus.
The fall of sunlight
Blesses every shadow
With an effervescent efflorescence
Of opal and amethyst, ruby and sapphire.
It bestows a lustrous brilliance on the Earth,
More precious than a world of gems and jewels.
Escape to Reality
Smoky snakes and twilight spiders
Sliding, stalking, crawling, walking
Up a hollowed strangler
Figure out of time
With no escape
The last light
Is only fire
Burning
Blazing
So learn
To fly away
Let snakes be
Dragons, and spiders
Dragonflies swooping out
Into the frigid air above the flames
Above the sea, above the clouds
Above Olympus, for our flight, our wings
Are true and sincere, stretching over the sky.
Sliding, stalking, crawling, walking
Up a hollowed strangler
Figure out of time
With no escape
The last light
Is only fire
Burning
Blazing
So learn
To fly away
Let snakes be
Dragons, and spiders
Dragonflies swooping out
Into the frigid air above the flames
Above the sea, above the clouds
Above Olympus, for our flight, our wings
Are true and sincere, stretching over the sky.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Life's Too Big to Tell
If every story has a storyteller
Just how real can a story be?
If you’re looking through a single lens
There’s only so much you can see.
So take a break and look around,
Feel the touch and hear the sound.
Stop to smell the orchids and
Taste the water filled with sand
And dive into a global ocean
Bask in all of life’s commotion
Don’t be scared and stay on land
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming on
The twilight dawn will follow you along
Your plunge into the dazzling deeps
And if your silver silence keeps
You’ll see that life outshines the stars.
Just how real can a story be?
If you’re looking through a single lens
There’s only so much you can see.
So take a break and look around,
Feel the touch and hear the sound.
Stop to smell the orchids and
Taste the water filled with sand
And dive into a global ocean
Bask in all of life’s commotion
Don’t be scared and stay on land
Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming on
The twilight dawn will follow you along
Your plunge into the dazzling deeps
And if your silver silence keeps
You’ll see that life outshines the stars.
See the Sunlight Shining
Shatter chains to everything you know
catch trains to where you want to go
fly free but watch those silver lines
run away while the sunlight shines
see the cat smile at his joke
the caterpillar wrapped in smoke
break into your wonderland
the little dream that you command
and soar with wings as light as birds'
duel your foes with stinging words
run as fast as light and then
run backwards all the way again
and dance into the hurricane
spinning round in pouring rain
fall to earth and stare up high
right at the sparkling starry sky
swinging playing crashing laying
down with people watching saying
just how crazy are you anyway?
catch trains to where you want to go
fly free but watch those silver lines
run away while the sunlight shines
see the cat smile at his joke
the caterpillar wrapped in smoke
break into your wonderland
the little dream that you command
and soar with wings as light as birds'
duel your foes with stinging words
run as fast as light and then
run backwards all the way again
and dance into the hurricane
spinning round in pouring rain
fall to earth and stare up high
right at the sparkling starry sky
swinging playing crashing laying
down with people watching saying
just how crazy are you anyway?
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Once More, Once Again
Once more,
Once again,
I will see that the stars
Shine
Bright over the waves,
And the trees,
And the clouds.
I will see the rocky coast,
I will see the barren beach,
Filled with life, far from an empty ghost,
Now dry and barren by a two-legged leech.
I will see the forest vast,
I will see the jungle green,
Grown to prosper, flourish, thrive, and last,
Now petrified into a grayer sheen.
I will see the morning sun,
I will see the starry night,
Shining far before our world begun,
Now darkly hidden by a duller light.
The dark scythe will be joined
By the glistening hoe.
Apollo shall shine,
And Zephyrus blow.
The angels fierce of lighting and rain
Of crystalline streams
Of bright moonlit dreams
Shall blow into life once again.
The swallows will circle,
The frogs sing like kings,
The robins will soar
With their flame-colored wings.
Fall will spring forward
To Spring’s sweet romance.
Summer and Winter
Will share a quick glance.
Gaia in glory
Shall spin through her dance.
Once more,
Once again,
I will see that the stars
Shine
Bright over oceans
And mountains
And skies.
Skies that shall open
Till the swift robin flies.
Once again,
I will see that the stars
Shine
Bright over the waves,
And the trees,
And the clouds.
I will see the rocky coast,
I will see the barren beach,
Filled with life, far from an empty ghost,
Now dry and barren by a two-legged leech.
I will see the forest vast,
I will see the jungle green,
Grown to prosper, flourish, thrive, and last,
Now petrified into a grayer sheen.
I will see the morning sun,
I will see the starry night,
Shining far before our world begun,
Now darkly hidden by a duller light.
The dark scythe will be joined
By the glistening hoe.
Apollo shall shine,
And Zephyrus blow.
The angels fierce of lighting and rain
Of crystalline streams
Of bright moonlit dreams
Shall blow into life once again.
The swallows will circle,
The frogs sing like kings,
The robins will soar
With their flame-colored wings.
Fall will spring forward
To Spring’s sweet romance.
Summer and Winter
Will share a quick glance.
Gaia in glory
Shall spin through her dance.
Once more,
Once again,
I will see that the stars
Shine
Bright over oceans
And mountains
And skies.
Skies that shall open
Till the swift robin flies.
A Moment's Choice
This is an explication of the depressing poem "A Moment's Stay," transcribed below.
While the Italian epigraph of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” hints that Prufrock’s unresolved indecisiveness is a universal characteristic of man, choices can only be made through initial indecision. In “A Moment’s Stay,” Vishesh Jain paints a relationship plagued by infidelity as the speaker lies by his love’s deathbed, unsure of whether to feel vengeful glee or heartbroken grief. Through the narrator’s interaction with farewell and depiction of his love, Jain crystallizes the uncertainty of the speaker’s slowly deteriorating relationship and ultimately contrasts this indecision with the determination of death.
Although the use of farewell initially seems clear from the first line of the poem, its complex personification and characterization reveals the uncertainty and hesitation in the speaker’s mind. The use of the capitalized “Farewell, Farewell, Farewell” combined with the metonymy of the “scythe” with death immediately evoke the image of the grim reaper. However, rather than sending people to their afterlife, the speaker’s first statement is a plea to “free me from this hell,” and this paradoxical portrait of death is solidified when the speaker goes so far as to beg death to be compassionate “like an angel.” The notion of asking a grim reaper figure to be “an angel” is almost ridiculous, but Jain’s utilization of the paradox in conjunction with the request to “Take me from hell!” mirrors the unnatural chaos in the speaker’s heart. While these conflicting images illustrate the speaker’s indecision, his hesitation is demonstrated by the repetition of “stay your scythe” from moments to years, prolonging the climactic decision until the end of the poem. The speaker’s complex interactions with farewell and death thus illustrate the magnitude of his love’s uncertainty.
Similarly, the opposing perspectives on his relationship and his lover throughout the first four stanzas suggest the speaker’s uncertainty and their bond’s deterioration. Jain utilizes a simile within a simile to elaborate upon the thinning ties between the lovers: “I remain anchored like a vessel to its mooring/Though it be shredded/As thin as a lonely thread of silk.” While at first their love is shown to be as strong as a “mooring” anchoring a ship to shore, the second simile causes this link to be “shredded” to a mere “thread” of connection. Furthermore, the diction of “lonely” reminds the reader that silk threads are not meant to be alone in nature or civilization, whether in a spider’s sturdy web or in a lady’s beautiful garment. The slow death of a flower whose “petals fall/From years into decades” mirrors this powerful emphasis on the devastating extent of their love’s deterioration. Just as he juxtaposes two opposing perspectives of death, Jain contrasts the “soft” image of innocence and the peacefully alliterative “soft smile of sweet sleep” with suggestive “red lips/Of sin, of Prynne, of Karenin.” The metaphor comparing hair to white lamb’s wool alludes to the purity of Jesus while the following allusions call forth the adulteresses Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina, rendering a stark contrast that epitomizes the speaker’s conflict between love and hate.
At last, Jain concludes his poem with the resolution of indecision, augmented by a shift in style and sound that parallels the speaker’s determination. In contrast to the anaphora of “And the soft” in the earlier stanza which contributes to the sense of hesitation, the final stanza instead repeats “Farewell” to the hell of cuckoldry in which he is entrapped. This foreshadows the speaker’s suicide, as he asks death to “stay your scythe” one last time, not to prolong his lover’s life but to end his own: “another stalk of wheat/Ready for your dread harvest.” This metaphor comparing himself to a “stalk of wheat” not only implies that he is only one man in a field of lost souls but also suggests the inevitability of death and the meaninglessness of life, as wheat and grain are grown only in order to be cut down. As all conflicting thoughts of indecision disappear, the final stanza thus echoes the speaker’s loss of hope and determination of death.
As Jain himself once stated, “Let happiness be good and sadness be bad. Then when choosing between good and bad, choose well.” While Eliot’s Prufrock remains mired in a swamp of indecision, this poem’s speaker resolves his indecision with an irrational choice of emotion that ends his life along with his wife. Although both poems expound upon the human plight of uncertainty, neither offers a solution; perhaps the answer surprisingly lies not in the feelings of the heart but in the reason of the mind: choose well.
While the Italian epigraph of T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” hints that Prufrock’s unresolved indecisiveness is a universal characteristic of man, choices can only be made through initial indecision. In “A Moment’s Stay,” Vishesh Jain paints a relationship plagued by infidelity as the speaker lies by his love’s deathbed, unsure of whether to feel vengeful glee or heartbroken grief. Through the narrator’s interaction with farewell and depiction of his love, Jain crystallizes the uncertainty of the speaker’s slowly deteriorating relationship and ultimately contrasts this indecision with the determination of death.
Although the use of farewell initially seems clear from the first line of the poem, its complex personification and characterization reveals the uncertainty and hesitation in the speaker’s mind. The use of the capitalized “Farewell, Farewell, Farewell” combined with the metonymy of the “scythe” with death immediately evoke the image of the grim reaper. However, rather than sending people to their afterlife, the speaker’s first statement is a plea to “free me from this hell,” and this paradoxical portrait of death is solidified when the speaker goes so far as to beg death to be compassionate “like an angel.” The notion of asking a grim reaper figure to be “an angel” is almost ridiculous, but Jain’s utilization of the paradox in conjunction with the request to “Take me from hell!” mirrors the unnatural chaos in the speaker’s heart. While these conflicting images illustrate the speaker’s indecision, his hesitation is demonstrated by the repetition of “stay your scythe” from moments to years, prolonging the climactic decision until the end of the poem. The speaker’s complex interactions with farewell and death thus illustrate the magnitude of his love’s uncertainty.
Similarly, the opposing perspectives on his relationship and his lover throughout the first four stanzas suggest the speaker’s uncertainty and their bond’s deterioration. Jain utilizes a simile within a simile to elaborate upon the thinning ties between the lovers: “I remain anchored like a vessel to its mooring/Though it be shredded/As thin as a lonely thread of silk.” While at first their love is shown to be as strong as a “mooring” anchoring a ship to shore, the second simile causes this link to be “shredded” to a mere “thread” of connection. Furthermore, the diction of “lonely” reminds the reader that silk threads are not meant to be alone in nature or civilization, whether in a spider’s sturdy web or in a lady’s beautiful garment. The slow death of a flower whose “petals fall/From years into decades” mirrors this powerful emphasis on the devastating extent of their love’s deterioration. Just as he juxtaposes two opposing perspectives of death, Jain contrasts the “soft” image of innocence and the peacefully alliterative “soft smile of sweet sleep” with suggestive “red lips/Of sin, of Prynne, of Karenin.” The metaphor comparing hair to white lamb’s wool alludes to the purity of Jesus while the following allusions call forth the adulteresses Hester Prynne and Anna Karenina, rendering a stark contrast that epitomizes the speaker’s conflict between love and hate.
At last, Jain concludes his poem with the resolution of indecision, augmented by a shift in style and sound that parallels the speaker’s determination. In contrast to the anaphora of “And the soft” in the earlier stanza which contributes to the sense of hesitation, the final stanza instead repeats “Farewell” to the hell of cuckoldry in which he is entrapped. This foreshadows the speaker’s suicide, as he asks death to “stay your scythe” one last time, not to prolong his lover’s life but to end his own: “another stalk of wheat/Ready for your dread harvest.” This metaphor comparing himself to a “stalk of wheat” not only implies that he is only one man in a field of lost souls but also suggests the inevitability of death and the meaninglessness of life, as wheat and grain are grown only in order to be cut down. As all conflicting thoughts of indecision disappear, the final stanza thus echoes the speaker’s loss of hope and determination of death.
As Jain himself once stated, “Let happiness be good and sadness be bad. Then when choosing between good and bad, choose well.” While Eliot’s Prufrock remains mired in a swamp of indecision, this poem’s speaker resolves his indecision with an irrational choice of emotion that ends his life along with his wife. Although both poems expound upon the human plight of uncertainty, neither offers a solution; perhaps the answer surprisingly lies not in the feelings of the heart but in the reason of the mind: choose well.
A Moment's Stay
Ok so this is an uncharacteristically sad and morbid poem, but it was for English, and the things we read in English are similarly often rather depressing. Hence the poem. I will post a self-explication of it shortly. (so weird referring to myself as "Jain"...)
"A Moment's Stay"
Farewell, Farewell, Farewell,
Please free me from this hell.
But stay your scythe a moment,
A second, a minute, a year,
For I remain anchored like a vessel to its mooring
Though it be shredded
As thin as a lonely thread of silk.
Farewell, Farewell,
Take me from hell!
But stay your scythe a moment,
A second, a minute, a year,
As I watch all the petals fall
Through years into decades,
And like an angel be kind
And stay your scythe a moment,
For passion, and worship, and dear,
For the soft wool on your head
And the soft skin on your face
And the soft smile of sweet sleep
On your red lips
Of sin, of Prynne, of Karenin.
Farewell.
But stay, stay your scythe a moment,
For anguish, and hatred, and fear,
And you will receive for your pains
Yet another stalk of wheat
Ready for your dread harvest.
"A Moment's Stay"
Farewell, Farewell, Farewell,
Please free me from this hell.
But stay your scythe a moment,
A second, a minute, a year,
For I remain anchored like a vessel to its mooring
Though it be shredded
As thin as a lonely thread of silk.
Farewell, Farewell,
Take me from hell!
But stay your scythe a moment,
A second, a minute, a year,
As I watch all the petals fall
Through years into decades,
And like an angel be kind
And stay your scythe a moment,
For passion, and worship, and dear,
For the soft wool on your head
And the soft skin on your face
And the soft smile of sweet sleep
On your red lips
Of sin, of Prynne, of Karenin.
Farewell.
But stay, stay your scythe a moment,
For anguish, and hatred, and fear,
And you will receive for your pains
Yet another stalk of wheat
Ready for your dread harvest.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Think About It Another Way
Perspective isn't everything. But it's important. At least, that's what everyone and everything seems to be saying:
A talk with my dad --> Think about things from his perspective...
A talk with my mom --> Think about things from her perspective...
A talk with my sister --> Think about things from her perspective...
...
In Mathematics--> Is a 10% error good or bad? Quantum scientists would laugh with scorn. Astronomers would laugh with glee.
In History--> Or should we consider it as Herstory? Were the battle of Bunker Hill, the March on Washington, and World War II victories or defeats?
In English--> Consider the incident involving Raymond, Mersault, and two Arabs from Raymond's perspective. Now consider it from Mersault's perspective. Now consider it from the law/society's perspective. Now consider it from an existentialist's perspective. Now WRITE!
In Chemistry--> Is ice lighter than water because the water molecule is polar, because it can use hydrogen bonds, because hydrogen bonds can usually break, or because the crystalline structure of water molecules as ice has holes in it? The answer: all of the above.
In Physics --> If I'm sitting on a moving train, eating my dinner, am I eating my main course and my dessert in the same spot in my cabin, in points thousands of feet away on the Earth, or in points hundreds of thousands of feet away in space? The answer: all of the above.
In Biology --> Consider life. Ok. Life in the universe? Life in our galaxy? Life on Earth? Life in an ecosystem? Life in a community? Life in a population? The Life of an organism? The Life in an organ? The Life of a tissue? The Life of a cell? The contribution to life of every protein, carbohydrate, nucleic acid, lipid and molecule or atom? The answer: all of the above.
In Psychology --> Is a baby crying because it's evolutionarily engineered to cry for attention, because the neurons in it's head are getting signals of sadness and sending signals to the mouth, or because it's figured out by now that crying is going to get it what it wants? The answer: all of the above.
...
When you are driving a car and swearing, mentally or otherwise, at a car trying to merge in front of you onto a freeway, consider that driver's perspective.
When you curse at referees who make stupid decisions, consider their perspective.
When you are furious with a friend, a sibling, a parent, consider their perspective.
When you don't understand what people mean, consider their perspective.
When you think you're the worst person on earth, or the unluckiest person on earth, or the most miserable person on earth, consider everyone's perspective.
Because things are sometimes not as they seem to you, and sometimes, you might be pleasantly surprised when you think about things another way. But never, ever forget to consider things through your own eyes first.
A talk with my dad --> Think about things from his perspective...
A talk with my mom --> Think about things from her perspective...
A talk with my sister --> Think about things from her perspective...
...
In Mathematics--> Is a 10% error good or bad? Quantum scientists would laugh with scorn. Astronomers would laugh with glee.
In History--> Or should we consider it as Herstory? Were the battle of Bunker Hill, the March on Washington, and World War II victories or defeats?
In English--> Consider the incident involving Raymond, Mersault, and two Arabs from Raymond's perspective. Now consider it from Mersault's perspective. Now consider it from the law/society's perspective. Now consider it from an existentialist's perspective. Now WRITE!
In Chemistry--> Is ice lighter than water because the water molecule is polar, because it can use hydrogen bonds, because hydrogen bonds can usually break, or because the crystalline structure of water molecules as ice has holes in it? The answer: all of the above.
In Physics --> If I'm sitting on a moving train, eating my dinner, am I eating my main course and my dessert in the same spot in my cabin, in points thousands of feet away on the Earth, or in points hundreds of thousands of feet away in space? The answer: all of the above.
In Biology --> Consider life. Ok. Life in the universe? Life in our galaxy? Life on Earth? Life in an ecosystem? Life in a community? Life in a population? The Life of an organism? The Life in an organ? The Life of a tissue? The Life of a cell? The contribution to life of every protein, carbohydrate, nucleic acid, lipid and molecule or atom? The answer: all of the above.
In Psychology --> Is a baby crying because it's evolutionarily engineered to cry for attention, because the neurons in it's head are getting signals of sadness and sending signals to the mouth, or because it's figured out by now that crying is going to get it what it wants? The answer: all of the above.
...
When you are driving a car and swearing, mentally or otherwise, at a car trying to merge in front of you onto a freeway, consider that driver's perspective.
When you curse at referees who make stupid decisions, consider their perspective.
When you are furious with a friend, a sibling, a parent, consider their perspective.
When you don't understand what people mean, consider their perspective.
When you think you're the worst person on earth, or the unluckiest person on earth, or the most miserable person on earth, consider everyone's perspective.
Because things are sometimes not as they seem to you, and sometimes, you might be pleasantly surprised when you think about things another way. But never, ever forget to consider things through your own eyes first.
Fly to the Sun
Twirling away on a weatherblown wing,
Hearing the wish of the whistling wind,
As the sun reaches her summit of sky,
Never again will I fall to the ground.
Kingfishers dive, and the hummingbirds sing
Yet I'll soar with swallows and seagulls up high.
Over the oceans I keep climbing high,
Up through the air slicing clouds with a wing.
Sensing my presence the birds start to sing
Over the notes of the whispering wind,
Mingling in harmony far from the ground
Under the watch of the sun in her sky.
Circling and soaring way up to the sky,
Happy to join my long flight far and high
Far from the pains of the earth's troubled ground,
Over my head they all stretch out a wing.
Rotating quickly, a spiral of wind,
Their blistering pace makes the air start to sing.
Every eagle and egret do sing,
Atoms in chorus all over the sky.
Chords of the birds join the sibilant wind,
Harmonies fill with sweet sounds low and high.
In every feather and in every wing,
Notes form a symphony over the ground.
Gently I drift up away from the ground.
Up through the whirlwind, I too start to sing.
Struggling to match the birds taking each wing,
Dragging me up to the sun in the sky.
Round and around, I keep twirling up high,
Piercing the air with each strike of the wind.
Air heating up as the sun holds the wind,
Shrouds of white clouds closing over the ground,
Kindly she takes me to heaven so high,
Asking me why all the birds and air sing.
Laughing and smiling, admiring the sky,
I tell her they carried me here on their wing.
Valiant, bringing me high as they sing.
Jubilant wind, far away from the ground,
Surrounds my sweet sky as I watch them take wing.
Hearing the wish of the whistling wind,
As the sun reaches her summit of sky,
Never again will I fall to the ground.
Kingfishers dive, and the hummingbirds sing
Yet I'll soar with swallows and seagulls up high.
Over the oceans I keep climbing high,
Up through the air slicing clouds with a wing.
Sensing my presence the birds start to sing
Over the notes of the whispering wind,
Mingling in harmony far from the ground
Under the watch of the sun in her sky.
Circling and soaring way up to the sky,
Happy to join my long flight far and high
Far from the pains of the earth's troubled ground,
Over my head they all stretch out a wing.
Rotating quickly, a spiral of wind,
Their blistering pace makes the air start to sing.
Every eagle and egret do sing,
Atoms in chorus all over the sky.
Chords of the birds join the sibilant wind,
Harmonies fill with sweet sounds low and high.
In every feather and in every wing,
Notes form a symphony over the ground.
Gently I drift up away from the ground.
Up through the whirlwind, I too start to sing.
Struggling to match the birds taking each wing,
Dragging me up to the sun in the sky.
Round and around, I keep twirling up high,
Piercing the air with each strike of the wind.
Air heating up as the sun holds the wind,
Shrouds of white clouds closing over the ground,
Kindly she takes me to heaven so high,
Asking me why all the birds and air sing.
Laughing and smiling, admiring the sky,
I tell her they carried me here on their wing.
Valiant, bringing me high as they sing.
Jubilant wind, far away from the ground,
Surrounds my sweet sky as I watch them take wing.
Saturday, November 08, 2008
The Radiant Light
As the silver moon rose up so high above the shimmering sea,The stars began to reappear as the night looked down at me.
As more continued to arrive, a pleasant party in the sky
Commenced as sunlights came alive and shooting stars began to fly.
Oh how I wished that I could join them, that gravity I could deny!
The moon, unheeded and unheeding, floated high into the air,
Disregarding busy balls of gas exploding everywhere.
Yet as breathtaking Artemis at last concluded her long climb,
The stars calmed down and watched her step into the heavens so sublime,
Quiet as they'd never been till now and since the dawn of time.
And then the night, having seen the stars hush up as never heard before,
Made silent all its creatures then, while nightingales did sing and soar.
My sacrilegious breaths of sound I feared would scare their song away,
But as I listened on the ground, they let me watch their moonlit play
As melody and harmony were twined into a rich bouquet.
Yet now the birds were joined in song by animals of every kind.
And songs of babbling brook and whistling wind and rippling rain combined,
And met the songbirds' happy tune and imbued it with a glistening sheen.
The symphony of the silver moon, a dragon born like none had seen!
An undulating line of notes that crowned the Moon into a queen.
For as the serpent rose up high and circled quickly round her head,
I gazed into the twilight sky and nestled wondering in my bed.
No king or queen had ever worn an aura of the bright moonbeam,
But such a halo did adorn great Artemis with brilliant gleam.
I'd never seen such majesty but for the light of which I dream,
But for that brilliant, radiant, perfect light of whom I always dream.
The World Is Mine
As I stroll along this street,
Stopping to greet the people I meet,
I notice the nooks and no-ones
Hiding small along the dismal wall.
As I lay me down to sleep,
The dreams I keep begin to seep
Out into my brain, and then
Who knows what I’ll find inside my mind.
As I blink at bright sunrise,
To my surprise, my sleepy eyes
Abruptly become so lucid and clear
And I simply gaze into that brilliant blaze.
As I wander round and round
The sun hits the ground without a sound.
The flowers, the plants, the earth do shine,
And suddenly, the world’s all mine.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Ode to Music
Piano fingers white and dead,
Piano fingers lying still,
Piano fingers smooth and cold,
Without dream or wish or will.
Ebony and ivory,
Standing silent in a row,
Start to jump and bounce for me.
Notes and tunes begin to grow.
Piano fingers in my head,
Piano fingers black and white,
Piano fingers in the day,
And in the dreams of dark twilight.
Melodies and symphonies,
Spinning round inside my head.
People dancing everywhere,
Until they have to go to bed.
Piano fingers on my neck,
Piano fingers just for me,
Piano fingers sweetly touch
The chords of blissful harmony.
Pouring music in the earth,
Stamping, stomping on the stones.
Even kings don’t have such joy,
Sitting on their golden thrones.
Piano fingers on my face,
Piano fingers dancing there.
Piano fingers playing fast,
Sending notes into the air.
Rests are dying; notes are flying.
Everything just starts to flow.
I don’t know where we are going;
I just know we’ve got to go.
Piano fingers lying still,
Piano fingers smooth and cold,
Without dream or wish or will.
Ebony and ivory,
Standing silent in a row,
Start to jump and bounce for me.
Notes and tunes begin to grow.
Piano fingers in my head,
Piano fingers black and white,
Piano fingers in the day,
And in the dreams of dark twilight.
Melodies and symphonies,
Spinning round inside my head.
People dancing everywhere,
Until they have to go to bed.
Piano fingers on my neck,
Piano fingers just for me,
Piano fingers sweetly touch
The chords of blissful harmony.
Pouring music in the earth,
Stamping, stomping on the stones.
Even kings don’t have such joy,
Sitting on their golden thrones.
Piano fingers on my face,
Piano fingers dancing there.
Piano fingers playing fast,
Sending notes into the air.
Rests are dying; notes are flying.
Everything just starts to flow.
I don’t know where we are going;
I just know we’ve got to go.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
The World As We Know It
Planes let us fly through the sky.
Asian carp jump in the air.
Asian carp jump in the air.
Everything is up so high,
So why are we in such despair?
Fannie, Freddie, Merrill Lynch:
Barely saved without a sound.
But Lehman Brothers, AIG
Are falling fast toward the ground.
Terrorism's on the rise
In spite of progress in Iraq,
Pakistan, Afghanistan,
We don't know what to attack.
Burma's full of soldiers and monks.
Russia's killing Georgia dead.
Darfur souls can't stop to rest.
Zimbabwe's bills can't buy the bread.
Mugabe's going nowhere fast
Though he's up at eighty-four.
Compared to that, old John McCain
Still has time to rise and soar.
Palin's nothing but a dog
With makeup on to let her smile.
Biden's poking poor McCain
But karma's gonna take a while.
Obama's something of a star,
But no one knows a single thing.
The press is crazy, filled with glee.
As politicians scratch and sting,
How we wish the globe was cool,
And that our finance would be hot,
How we've tried to save the world,
Thinking we're the best it's got.
Perhaps we are, and that's just great.
But then we'd best start thinking well
And if we don't, we'll lose these wars
Because our experts just can't tell.
Economy is in the sack,
Corruption spreading everywhere,
Afghanistan and then Iraq,
Greenhouse gases in the air.
Save the banks, we need to lend.
Help the decent to the throne.
Make friends with the blahistans.
Use nukes, shocks, wind to save ozone.
Research and development;
Businesses, just take the blow.
Politics, diplomacy,
Stop the war and let us grow.
Pigs don't fly into the sky.
Dragons don’t soar up so high.
But since we can't just fall and die,
I guess we'll simply have to try.
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