"Why do we wake 'up'?" he said. He's the one at the coffee shop always skims through the West Hawaii Today and pops his head over the broadsheets to make an announcement or ask a question. That morning, the topic was 'up' and its usage.
The few in our corner happily generated instances of up's peculiarities. Yes, wake up. Also, shut up, put up, hang up, get it up——knowing smiles all 'round——and smarten up, or dress up. Show up, up and at 'em, up and leave, up country, up land...I can hardly do justice to the long list...
Later on my walk up mauka from Upolu, I thought of earlier times when lexicons were built upon incantations uttered across steaming cups of tea or coffee, and Dr Johnson came to mind. I'd always associated the great man of letters and his Club with tea shops but now I find I can't substantiate that myth, for they met at the Turk's Head around beer time. And then I thought of Newton, his preoccupation with what goes up must come down...I wanted to squeeze his calculus for a drop of common blood, the sort shed by those who nursed cups of tea or coffee shortly upon rising, the sort who mused upon the reason for all things, including the force of nature. But I find no evidence other than my own gut feeling that the ordinary mortal did indeed discuss the nature of 'up' if for no other reason than the nature of 'down' weighed so heavily upon them.
One only has to enter into the great rotunda of the room once called the British Reading Room to understand how 'up' holds infinite appeal. 'Up' is our legacy, though it requires a great deal of stretching or yoga, since standing up strains our frames, sitting up even more so, and looking up...just think of the weight of the head balanced by the organization of the skeleton, muscles, tendons, neural network, the miraculous lot that has been given us.
Think too, how the primitive syllable is formed by emitting a sound from the throat and then, sealing it with the lips as it escapes the mouth...it's a noble word, 'up', and I am heartened by its treatment at the coffee shop the other day.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Shelley
I look into the mirror this morning as I shave and wonder about Shelley. He was born 218 years ago today. I wondered if he watched his dad, Tim, take the open razor to his face over a steaming bowl of water straight from the hob. That's how my grandfather Tom started his day, only he carried the water from the bog himself the day before. I helped him do it, so I know. How quiet was the mouth of the shiny steel pail as it drank the surface water, careful to avoid bits of moss and peat. My grandfathers were born a hundred years after Shelley and I doubt they'd heard of him, but they would have liked him I feel, as long as we didn't bring up the atheism and a few essays written to the Irish people when the poet was 19, visiting the country.
Unless you're utterly focused on leprechauns and tweed jackets, it's hard not to notice how fresh the blood shed for Ireland's liberty. Right there in Dublin's Sráid Uí Chonaill, or O'Connell Street, one of the widest streets in all of Europe, you can see where the bullets chipped away at the columns of the GPO. From Parnell to Larkin, the politicos are well represented in granite or bronze. And the Nelson Pillar blown up by radicals 44 years ago? It was replaced with The Spire of Dublin, said to be the world's largest sculpture. When I visited Kilmainham Gaol at our youngest daughter's insistence a few years ago, we were both struck by the prison's sense of monument or memorial to Irish rebels.
Shelley was convinced you could do this without bloodshed. This is unusual. His friend Byron thought otherwise, which is why Byron's pistols now occupy a place of honor in Greece's Benaki Museum.
I was visiting my cousin Annette and her husband Rodney in Eastbourne, back in 1970, and came across Shelley for the first time. I liberated a 1907 Complete Poetical Works for 15 shillings or 75 pence. England's currency being in transition that year, both prices are still penciled inside the cover. When I first started researching at the British Museum's Reading Room, I was tickled to see some of the books delivered wore a ribbon to keep the book intact. Now there's a red ribbon holding my old Shelley together, the cover having come adrift who knows when, during one of our moves between England and Hawai'i. Only this morning does the ribbon's color leap out at me.
The thing is, my dear, dear Shelley, sometimes we cut ourselves shaving.
Even today, many people think of Shelley as a lyric poet, when he was in truth a radical thinker who was not afraid to speak out. He was suppressed, if anything. Poets like Matthew Arnold called him a minor poet with no influence. Meanwhile the list of devotees is long and formidable, among them Karl Marx, Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Krishnamurti. His behavior, the way he abandoned Harriet and kept Mary pregnant while apparently diddling Claire, etc., etc., is reprehensible but as my mentor once said, forgivable in a poet.
"Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry."
My compassion for those around him, especially his families, grows as I grow older. But I have no patience with those who would keep him a trivial fancifier of words. I find myself siding with those who feel Shelley was assassinated. He was dangerous.
"Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay."
"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."
His "Defence of Poetry" should be mandatory reading.
The fact that I'd forked out 15 bob for Shelley's poems, sacrificing a few meals in the process, made an early impression on my mentor. We had Shelley in common and decades of friendship were founded on Shelley's work. My mentor's favorite was "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," particularly the fifth and sixth stanzas,
"V
...When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,——
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
VI
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine——have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night——
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou——O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express."
Unless you're utterly focused on leprechauns and tweed jackets, it's hard not to notice how fresh the blood shed for Ireland's liberty. Right there in Dublin's Sráid Uí Chonaill, or O'Connell Street, one of the widest streets in all of Europe, you can see where the bullets chipped away at the columns of the GPO. From Parnell to Larkin, the politicos are well represented in granite or bronze. And the Nelson Pillar blown up by radicals 44 years ago? It was replaced with The Spire of Dublin, said to be the world's largest sculpture. When I visited Kilmainham Gaol at our youngest daughter's insistence a few years ago, we were both struck by the prison's sense of monument or memorial to Irish rebels.
Shelley was convinced you could do this without bloodshed. This is unusual. His friend Byron thought otherwise, which is why Byron's pistols now occupy a place of honor in Greece's Benaki Museum.
I was visiting my cousin Annette and her husband Rodney in Eastbourne, back in 1970, and came across Shelley for the first time. I liberated a 1907 Complete Poetical Works for 15 shillings or 75 pence. England's currency being in transition that year, both prices are still penciled inside the cover. When I first started researching at the British Museum's Reading Room, I was tickled to see some of the books delivered wore a ribbon to keep the book intact. Now there's a red ribbon holding my old Shelley together, the cover having come adrift who knows when, during one of our moves between England and Hawai'i. Only this morning does the ribbon's color leap out at me.
The thing is, my dear, dear Shelley, sometimes we cut ourselves shaving.
Even today, many people think of Shelley as a lyric poet, when he was in truth a radical thinker who was not afraid to speak out. He was suppressed, if anything. Poets like Matthew Arnold called him a minor poet with no influence. Meanwhile the list of devotees is long and formidable, among them Karl Marx, Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell and Krishnamurti. His behavior, the way he abandoned Harriet and kept Mary pregnant while apparently diddling Claire, etc., etc., is reprehensible but as my mentor once said, forgivable in a poet.
"Love is free; to promise for ever to love the same woman is not less absurd than to promise to believe the same creed; such a vow in both cases excludes us from all inquiry."
My compassion for those around him, especially his families, grows as I grow older. But I have no patience with those who would keep him a trivial fancifier of words. I find myself siding with those who feel Shelley was assassinated. He was dangerous.
"Government is an evil; it is only the thoughtlessness and vices of men that make it a necessary evil. When all men are good and wise, government will of itself decay."
"Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it."
His "Defence of Poetry" should be mandatory reading.
The fact that I'd forked out 15 bob for Shelley's poems, sacrificing a few meals in the process, made an early impression on my mentor. We had Shelley in common and decades of friendship were founded on Shelley's work. My mentor's favorite was "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty," particularly the fifth and sixth stanzas,
"V
...When musing deeply on the lot
Of life, at that sweet time when winds are wooing
All vital things that wake to bring
News of birds and blossoming,——
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me;
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!
VI
I vowed that I would dedicate my powers
To thee and thine——have I not kept the vow?
With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours
Each from his voiceless grave: they have in visioned bowers
Of studious zeal or love's delight
Outwatched with me the envious night——
They know that never joy illumed my brow
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free
This world from its dark slavery,
That thou——O awful LOVELINESS,
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express."
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
August
Named for an emperor, these days have a round, plump, dry summer taste in the mouth. Sun shifts its course more clearly overhead, bearing down with its arc. I note our tendergreen snap beans crane their necks into it, into the arc of the sun, into the emperor days. In the next room, ukelele strums, words with half our alphabet missing, a voice reaching through the walls with stories of Hualalai, Kawaihae, Kona, wind, flowers and sweethearts. Soon other sounds come in from New York. They've been up a while. The world feels like a boxing match to them. The crowd cheers and boos for this cause or that cause, truth vs evil, weighing in at 800 million barrels of crude, it's slick, it's bad for jobs, great for the military, Pakistan Taliban Floodwaters Islam, not to mention cohabitating politicos in Australia explaining what goes on behind closed doors, privacy no longer personal property, take Niger they're too hungry and beat up to care, somebody's down, somebody's up, the ref's on his knees, slapping the canvas with his left hand while the talking heads discuss how it's going to go, how it went last time, how the statistics managed to leak out before the truth had a chance, how the national discussion revolves around disclosure...then all that is muted, the wind comes in, the ukelele rings out, the walls feel more how shall I say? calm. Time for breakfast on this third day of August.
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