To His Coy Mistress, by Andrew Marvell

I know this piece is a staple for all high school english classes but I have been rereading and re-experiencing it a lot lately. Because regardless, its a masterpiece. One book I finished this Winter Break was A Time Traveler's Wife, (I didn't pick it out, it was given as a gift, but I'm making no excuses here.) and it referenced this poem a lot. I might even say that To His Coy Mistress provided a part of the emotional backbone for the entire story. And what an expansive, well-character-crafted story it was. I would recommend reading it if you want to spend time in a book sans a dictionary, yet without sacrificing any intellectual rigor. (and with a kick-ass love story, yeah that too.) I'll probably talk about it more on here. 

Anyways, read this piece, let it sink in and fill your corners like rising water. 

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.

        But at my back I always hear
Time's winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.

        Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run. 

Merry Christmas Eve, From T.S Eliot

Journey of the Magi - 

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times when we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities dirty and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

(Christmas is here and I'm happy to be in my living room with my sisters and mother and father playing risk and watching the fire. We are about to leave for the Mt. Angel Abbey for midnight mass, I am looking forward to clearing my mind in the holiness of it all. I can't help but think about future christmases from now, and I hope they will retain some of the good fortune and broken love that is now and unfold new healing and new relationships on all of us in the Field house. I am happy to have this brain that, although its inclined to melancholy and sadder thoughts, loves to read itself to sleep in Eliot and Blake and Donne. And loves people. Thank you all for such a year as this. Here is to 2011 and 20. God, thank you for manifesting your self in my hearts and those around me. Thank you for the love.. not for the fate. you know what I mean? Merry christmas.)    

marvelling, and after the butcher shop.

Thousands of worlds
inhabiting only One

barred to every would-be explorer
due to a lack

of understanding
of underseeing

Frankly speaking, we cry.
and no one feels it too

currents moving a single ship
leaving ones sent out by the same hands untouched

in the harbor.

World enough and time world enoughand timeworldenoughandtime

This is, going to be,

Such an amazing piece of work:

ct>


Oh, Terrence Malick!

Sparrow

Wednesday Morning, 3 AM
Thats not the time now, its simply a great album.
Really really. I miss talking/listening old music with people. Simon and Garfunkel, The Carpenters, Carole King, Allman Brothers, Stevie Nicks, whatever.
Sometimes I want to venture into a purgatory of only listening to this specific era of music. A fasting, except I'd be lacking the altruistic sense of the usual fasts.

I would like to fast from a lot of things.
A lot of things namely being:
85% of my wardrobe
pointless sugary substances
conversational babble
making mistakes.

Now that I have that listed, I just have to find the key to achieving those things. Except that's going to be impossible. The key has been lost, swallowed by some proverbial urban legend.

All thats left is the sense that something is too much. Something is not enough. On the streets, in the classroom, outside my apartment, people ask me how I am ("sup?") as they walk/move/run to their next engagement. It all happens so fast - One is inclined to care and also inclined to keep moving ("uhfinethxbye). It's a dichotomy that I don't have the stomach for anymore.

Next time someone nonchalantly asks how I am, I am going to throw up in their face.

This all sounds very pessimistic. But I'm listening to Sparrow, remember? I feel great.

Things Flitting Around in my Brain

A couple weeks ago Bob Zurinsky said that every evening, for two years, he spent two hours in quiet. Quiet of the body, first. I imagine little to no movement: no drawing, reading, knitting. Just a person and a balcony and a man-made canal with a view of city lights. Of course, the quieting and stilling of the physical senses does not immediately conduce a brain to the state of quietness.

You and I both know this. We've tried one with out the other -- hard to acheive.

Bob said that, "At first your brain goes over all your interactions in a day; what you did "wrong" or 'right,' what you said to the last person you talked to. It buzzes and circles and then, that just slowly fades out." (Bob, forgive me, I'm paraphrasing now.) "It was in those moments that I learned the most - that all people are simply broken." Maybe he said he learned the most about himself in those evening-moments too. I don't remember.

All people are broken.
Most kids in college don't like themselves.
Maybe most people everywhere don't like themselves, but I can't speak for people everywhere.

Because, Unluckily, I have only been alloted a finite view in life. Unluckily, I'm not God.
No wait... That is Luck. Blessed Luck for Humanity.

I look at myself alot. In the mirror in my apartment bedroom, in the mirror in my apartment bathroom, in the mirror in my rear-view window, in windows on my way to school, in clear pools of water after hunting in the forests.. (oh wait. That last one is someone else.. oh the long upholding tradition of literature.)

But if I was around pools of clear, reflective water on a daily basis, who's to say I wouldn't be eternally captivated by a peek or two, you know? God, give Narcissus a break. At least he loved himself.

Who reaches that point anymore?

This summer I drove to Chicago with my friends in a car. It was beautiful and sweaty and summer in the first degree. We didn't have to stop to think about the emotions of it at all; we just had to look at each other to know. One rest stop in Eastern Montana we tumbled out of the car and sprawled out on the grass. Babies on a blanket of green. I was by Brittany, (She's a sister friend, I've known her for moments and sometimes for years) I looked at her closely. I realized that I've looked at Brittany alot too. There are things I notice about her face now.

Annie Dillard, in her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, talks about Love, and Seeing. She says Lovers are the only ones who truly See. They notice the difference that makes morning and day, evening and night. Mmm, Annie.

Then, I read in Luke 12:7 --
"Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows." Regardless of human termed issues of predestination, selective salvation, and free will, God Sees particular things about my face. Has seen every hair on my head. I know that at this point in the Western Tradition that is a cliched maxim... but C'MON. Tell me one person who has seen/known/remembered every hair that belongs to you. Name one person.

I think loving is Seeing. And you can give to all the charities you want to but not really See. See people. Call me an idealist but I'm okay with that right now: I'm nineteen.

At first I thought that was my Lucky own idea too, but no. Ideas are all collective, anymore. Thank you Bob, Narcissus, Brittany and Annie.

Sincerely,
Lyndsay
.