To the Garden

The day began clear and sunny, then later the clouds rolled in and by now it’s raining. The new Maupassant book arrived yesterday. I haven’t really examined it yet aside from the back cover blurb. It’s very nice of course… The rain is coming down with some force just now. Yesterday I had some interesting thoughts about idealism and a perfect world, and what struck me was being unable to really feel this. The world of Platonic Forms, the ladder of Jacob’s dream, the expectation of Jerusalem and so on just seemed impossible to me. People live with imperfection in this world and we can’t hope for anything better. There’s no such thing as perfect. And I think the words perfect and ideal mean the same thing. Or perhaps it’s just a sign of the times when we abandon our notions of a utopia, whether here on earth or somewhere beyond our immediate world. Life has gotten very hard, and it’s also quite difficult to tell good from evil nowadays. Hamlet said, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” The world has been thrown into confusion— even like in Macbeth with equivocation and the lies like truth. Again it seems that we need to get ourselves back to the Garden. I only wonder if the touchstone for a better life really is the Bible…

I’ve never lived through a Democratic rule without alcohol before. It’s a very strange experience, and looking around me I see much that I missed the last time. It kind of raises the issue of how important religion is. And is there any way to bring it to life again?

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The Stuff of Dreams

Eight thirty five.

Aesop scarfed down his breakfast of Purina Beyond, whereas yesterday he didn’t like Blue Buffalo, so I won’t buy that again. It’s just an ordinary day for me, though Gloria is coming at ten; maybe not so ordinary. One thing that The Tempest makes clear for me is the connection between drunkenness and madness. Prospero, toward the end, is saying that he will restore reason and understanding to everyone, break his staff, drown his book, and habit himself like the Duke of Milan again. Or maybe the drunkenness element is not so obvious, except that Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban all get drunk on the wine they find. The sea imagery and the enchanted isle suggest to my mind alcohol, but perhaps Shakespeare didn’t intend this meaning… In general, sobriety and sanity amount to about the same thing: the dryness of the real and literal world, with no magic or metaphysics or any flavor at all. It’s very dull and boring, and I often long for a holiday from it— like reading Shakespeare. It seems to me that drinking and dreaming share the same essence. How many times do you run into the word “dream” in Edgar Poe? And he was notorious for his alcoholism.

I could be all wet, of course.

Ibsen

Four forty.

I finished reading The Tempest yesterday afternoon, and I figured out why I never really liked Shakespeare. Everything in his plays centers on the noble class, while the illegitimate characters are looked down upon, and they are always outsiders with no place in the Christian world. Personally, my dad was adopted, and his birth was illegitimate. His father took no interest in him or his twin brother, so the mother gave them up. A good man, an attorney named Charles Graden, and his wife Ida Mae, adopted them. But this was in 1925, when adoption was much more scandalous than today. It was similar to divorce in being socially unacceptable.

Shakespeare believed that characters had to be highborn to be interesting. This policy continued in drama until Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen presented A Doll’s House, shattering old conventions and advocating freedom for all individuals, whatever their social status. The production at its first performance caused the audience to riot.

For me, the history of the stage begins with Ibsen.

Snow Business

Five thirty.

It’s still black as ink out, but they tell us it’s snowing just now. By an association, I think of Shakespeare’s romances, and how I enjoyed The Winter’s Tale the last time I read it. I didn’t have very far to go in The Tempest lately: I ought to finish it today.

Eight ten.

Now you can see the weather. From a leaden sky the snow lightly drifts down, tiny particles not even flakes. It’s a bit above freezing. My trip to market can wait a while; maybe this stuff will clear somewhat. At least it’ll be warmer… Until this second I’d forgotten all about church at ten o clock. I wasn’t planning on going anyway, but I wonder how this weather will affect turnout for worship. I imagine that the show must go on, just like classes at the university. I feel a pang of regret that I don’t have church to go to, I guess because of the people. Still, church is not like school: no free thought is encouraged in the first. You have to take the pastor’s word for law and be led along by the nose no matter what he says. It isn’t a healthy intellectual climate for anyone. Debate is discouraged, and things are not an open forum.

Odd weather for the beginning of March… 

Wall Writing

Seven thirty five.

Since last Sunday I’ve thought about “good” and “evil,” due to having gone to church followed by a trip with a friend to the little market on Maxwell Road. Each represents each, respectively. Even weirder to have one foot in virtue and the other in sin, like Prince Henry hanging out with Falstaff in the Shakespeare plays. I don’t know if one devotion is truer than the other. Right now I’ve got Jimi Hendrix doing “All Along the Watchtower” in my brain. I was just at the store, where Lisa’s mouth is getting fouler every day and the customers grow ever rougher and ruder in the mornings during her shift. If I feel like a Jekyll and Hyde duality, I still lean towards Dr Jekyll, and I think maybe I should avoid that place before long. There’s something wrong with that situation, which seems to be getting volatile, and perhaps somebody won’t be working there very much longer. 

Eleven o’clock at night.

I said about Henry IV, Parts One and Two because of the contrast of the courtly world with the tavern life where you find Falstaff. In the end, the Prince has to forsake his old friends to take on his new responsibility. But the other allusion I would make is to “Young Goodman Brown,” a description of a witches’ sabbath held in a wood outside a New England village. Every citizen shows up for it, even Brown’s wife Faith with the innocent pink ribbons in her hair. This is the duality I brought up before, and by which devotion is stronger, I mean the choice between good and evil— if we take the distinction seriously. Up and down Maxwell Road you will see three churches and one convenience store that caters to little sins like alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, and gambling. It’s the difference of the sacred and the profane, though it may sound a bit silly and exaggerated, especially in our time when the distinction is blurred and not so clear. Maybe we need to re-examine these things for the sake of clarity; or then again maybe not. 

Gloom

Nine fifty.

My morning started off lousy, but I managed to motivate myself to go to the store and when I ran into Melissa, my whole day got turned around. I decided I would go to DDA group tomorrow afternoon, so I set up my rides there and back. The weather today is so dark and dreary that it’s hard to get anything done. It rained overnight and will probably rain again at eleven. I wonder if the French verbs for raining and crying are related to each other: pleuvoir and pleurer, respectively. This would make sense from a human point of view, and autumn can be a sad time of the year, though beautiful in its own way.

Last night I thought maybe being honest is foolish; but I think I heard that somewhere; something my brother said about “advantage” and cutting out the Boy Scout stuff. Some people are honest on principle or by upbringing. When honesty is rewarded, the behavior gets reinforced and repeated. Other people have the opposite experience with telling the truth. It’s always a double bind: screwed if you do or don’t. Cordelia told the truth to King Lear and was martyred for it. The cosmos was in an uproar for the tragedy. Events had gone terribly wrong. Is there still a doubt that the truth is a good thing? My brother’s birthday is about ten days away. Seventy big ones. 

Cordelia

Nine twenty five at night.

There is still twilight in the night sky, very slowly fading out. I’ve had a four hour nap this evening. Tomorrow perhaps I can play my bass guitar and make a pleasing sound. There are so many great books I want to experience again or for the first time. Can you go wrong with Shakespeare? I feel like I’ve become some combo of characters in one of his plays. If I’d thought I was like Edmund of King Lear, then there’s as much resemblance to Cordelia the soothsayer. For me, honesty is not so much a principle as an artless mode of coping. It is simple and practical to tell the truth because it avoids trouble and complications down the road if you lie. I’d be honest in saying that honesty doesn’t always pay off short term, but then lying can be a disaster for more than just yourself. In the end, it benefits you to tell the truth. The most unflattering truth ultimately is better than an attractive lie, especially regarding the ecology.

The hardest thing for people to accept is that human beings are biological organisms, and as such, mortal. How does a fact like that help us? Maybe we’ll never get beyond the selfish greed for eternal life. I honestly don’t know the answer, but by accepting responsibility for our ecology, we further the future of the whole species of humankind.

Cordelia was not a flatterer but an honest person. And we are like the old king who doesn’t want to hear it.

Pedigree

One twenty five in the morning.

“Consider yourself one of the family… it’s clear we’re going to get along…”

To use plainer English, I relate to the misfits in Shakespeare because I feel that an outsider cannot buy, beg, borrow, or steal his way into a religious organization, like me trying to find a place in the Lutheran church. A person must have a pedigree in order to fit into the big Christian universe, but I was brought into this world out of wedlock, fathered by a man who had been adopted after being abandoned by his biological parents… It is all well and fine for the human race to organize into Christendom or a Shakespearean aristocracy, yet my heart bleeds for others like myself, the outcast renegades and rebels with all odds against them. A small thing like alcoholism is a drop in the bucket next to the spiritual alienation that people like me experience. Surely the “redeemer” for the elect is different from that for the reprobate? I reckon time will tell. We may not have long to wait.

Edmund (with a Cold)

Seven thirty five at night.

I really didn’t want to be sick, but there’s no bargaining with this circumstance anymore; a fact is a fact. I tried to reason it away as just a mouth infection, but it’s acting like a typical head cold, from the sore throat stage to nasal congestion, etc. Okay, so I was an idiot. Now I just hope I won’t be too wretched the next few days.

How easy it is to blame everyone and everything, including the stars, but yourself for bad luck. Putting responsibility off of yourself is the excellent foppery of the world. And yet Shakespeare puts these words in the mouth of Edmund, the illegitimate son of Gloucester, and the misbegotten miscreant with no place in God’s orderly world. I don’t know whether to agree with the Bard’s opinion or subvert it with his own created character. As the centuries rolled on, dramatists turned the focus away from nobility and towards ordinary individuals: indeed the individual, rather than the group, became the point of interest. So then, heroes like John Proctor of The Crucible were made possible, and even before that, Nora Helmer of A Doll’s House. Still I’m stuck on what to do with Edmund the bastard: perhaps he should have written Shakespeare into existence rather than the reverse. Maybe nobody would’ve known the difference anyhow. Which would be the more foppish today, the cosmic dance or Machiavellian plotting? Maybe we made a wrong turn after Shakespeare… 

Prose Poem

The Drowning Mouse

This is an experiment that scientists have actually done with white mice. They trap the mouse in a jar of liquid oxygen. He resists drowning, fighting desperately to stay alive until he can fight no longer. Then his lungs fill with the fluid and he finds he can breathe, so he lives in this strange new element.

I feel a lot like the white mouse in the experiment. And the scientists are the powers that be, whether god, government, or society more generally.

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.”