Kevin's practical paper

Well I seem to have carried a common theme throughout the last few of my blogs, the practical nature of the epiphany. As i read through my past blogs, i notice that as much as I try to impart practical wisdom, my logic and reasoning tends to drift back into the realm of the hypothetical. I want answers, concrete answers, but I don't know if i will get them. But anyway here's to hoping.

Start Small...

So I perused the Intraweb and found that many people have made connections between Hamlet and The Bhagavad Gita. I tried reading one but it was long and unwieldily. I also didn't want it to spoil my thinking.

Where to begin...something small perhaps. Though I hesitate because only a few short weeks ago I wrote "little things are very very big things." Either way I'm the proper number of Big Sky brewery beers to begin my musings on the two works we have been assigned.

I want to back track to Eliot and the "Still Point." I struggled mightily with the concept of the Still Point as it is a place that moves "neither from nor towards" and "at the still point, there the dance is." A seeming paradox, movement in non-movement, warps my tiny brain. That is until i tweaked the nouns ever so slightly to fit a more Gita/Hamlet model. The Still Point is the point of Action within Inaction. Eureka! I've found it.

In both the Gita and Hamlet, time stops while Arjuna and Hamlet speak to their spiritual guides, Krishna and the Ghost. In Arjuna's case, a lone chariot stands in limbo between two blood thirsty armies for an hour or longer yet no emissary comes to ask why he delays the slaughter. In Hamlet, Hamlet follows the Ghost; Horatio and Marcellus chase after him a mere 6 lines later, yet the Ghost and Hamlet have a conversation that lasts over 10 minutes before they catch up to him. In both cases, the timing doesn't make sense, it isn't linear. Both characters leave point A in route to point B yet somehow get lost and end up at point Q before they materialize back at point B. They both pass through a place where "the light is still/ at the still point of a turning world" (Burnt Norton 135). The spiritual revelations of both the Ghost and Krishna are extremely profound but also extremely instantaneous, a point that nearly doesn't exist yet are more moving than any point that does.

This provokes an even more profound question. When the Still point occurs, when the instantaneous revelation sweeps over us, do we even realize it? Or do we simply "have the experience and miss the meaning?" Perhaps this why we struggle with the Epiphanic feeling. As the ghost says "Remember Me." Maybe we must remember the Still Point. The inaction and hesitation that plagues both Arjuna and Hamlet are really just memory glitches. Moments when we forget our Sacred Duty, our Inscape. Eliot says "At the moment which is not of action or inaction/ You can receive this: "on whatever sphere of being/ The mind of a man may be intent/ At the time of death"--that is the one action/ (And the time of death is ever moment)" (Dry Salvages 155-159). To me he is saying we are always focused on our sacred duty. Arjuna is always focused on being a warrior. Hamlet is always focused on his revenge. Kevin is always focused on Kevining. But humans aren't perfect and we forget, especially as we get older. Being forgetful is succumbing to inaction. The Still Point is the instantaneous point of forgetfulness and inaction in which the Self must dance with itSelf to return to the rhythm of Sacred Duty. The Celestial Self Vinyl has skipped a beat, or as Hamlet says "The time is out of joint" (1.5.210). My guess, we need these periods of forgetfulness as reminders to the reality of important things, I think I would call it a reminder of the Ultimate Practical. I read the Gita and I listen in class and I cant help but think that the Ultimate Practical is always within us. Krishna calls it the Sacred Duty of the Self. Hopkins calls it inscape. I might also call it the Cosmic Watermark, always there but only visible in certain light.

Now for some closer to my thoughts. In the introduction to the Gita, Miller says that much confusion surrounds the final lines.

O King, when I keep remembering

this wondrous and holy dialogue

between Krishna and Arjuna

I rejoice again and again.

In my memory I recal again

and again Krishna's wonderous from--

great is my amazement, King;

I rejoice again and again.

Where Krishna is lord of dicipline

and Arjuna is the archer,

there do fortune, victory, abundance,

and morality exist, so I think.

Rememberence causes Sanjaya to rejoice. He remembers his Sacred Duty, to be a poet, the mouthpiece of Krishna. He erases his previous moments of forgetfulness. However, the important place in the entire dialogue isn't during the revelation or any one of the teachings, but when "Krishna is lord of dicipline/ and Arjuna is the archer." The important place is the Still Point between two armies bent on destruction. The important place is before any of the teachings are even unfolded or the majesty of Krishna is unveiled. The important place is instantaneous, action within inaction. The important place is where Arjuna forgets and therefore must remember. Because "there do fortune, victory, abundance,/ and morality exist, so I think."

Quick Thoughts about Gita, practical knowledge and Spanish

I'm going to try and keep this short as my last entries were a bit long winded.

I see many reflections in the Bhagavad-Gita in my post on "To the Lighthouse" and the practical knowledge from this class. I think the Sacred Duty in the Bhagavad-Gita is very similar to the concept of personal inscape that I came to in "To the Lighthouse." The Sacred Duty isn't fate but rather the Cosmic purpose for each unique individual on the planet. This cosmic purpose is the "thing" the self was built to do while in existence within the present body. I think finding this "thing" or this "drive" or "reason" or "purpose" (I do not have a perfect english word for it) is the ultimate epiphany. The higher power placed our "self" within a body to achieve dharma. Achieving Dharma is grand epiphany while constrained to the present body. However, these grand epiphanies are not singular. The "self" is unrestrained. As the immortal self jumps from existence to existence, it can find other grand epiphanies within other bodies or containers (whatever they may be). To better explain this I turn to my buddy Hopkins in his poem "The Caged Skylark" where he compares a caged skylark to man's spirit

Both sing sometimes the sweetest, sweetest spells,

Yet both droop deadly sometimes in their cells

Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest--

Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest

But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man's spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,

But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed

For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bones risen.

I think Hopkins is saying that our "self" can be found and controlled "best" when "flesh-bound" and when the caged "self" discovers its Sacred Duty within its prison or body (perhaps through "sweetest spells" or "bursts of fear or rage") the "self" becomes limitless. It can use "rainbow footing" and see krishna in true form so to speak.

I digress, why is this practical? These texts reassures us and points us to the greatest destination in life, the sacred duty or personal inscape or the grand epiphany or whatever you want to call it. More importantly these texts reassure us that through all of the bullshit, this ideal destination exists and is attainable and is the only thing truly worth living for.

Now this is all pretty esoteric so I want to use a real world example. This comes from the Autobiography/Memoir of Gustavo Perez Firmat called "Next year in Cuba" that I read in US Latino Literature Class. It is a work of non-fiction and thus seems a bit more connected to our real "practical" world (at least to the layman). Firmat is a professor of latino literature at Duke University and now Cornell. He is also a Cuban Exile. His wealthy family emigrated to the US shortly after Castro took over. One of the major dynamics of the memoir is an exiles quest to find belonging and place in a country he didn't choose to live in. Much of this struggle is portrayed through Firmat's father Gustavo Sr. In Cuba Gustavo Sr. was a poorly educated but extremely wealthy businessman. He spent his life working in his family's almacen (spanish word for grocery distributor). By the Cuban revolution Gustavo Sr. was middle aged and his almacen was a multimillion dollar business. All of this was taken from him by the communist government and Gustavo Sr. went into Exile in Miami. Firmat writes this about his father

I have no idea what happens when you put your life into something like the almecen and it is taken away. It's not the money, mind you. The issue is not net worth but self-worth. In Spanish the word for soul is alma; Gustavo put his alma into his almacen. Take that away, and you unsoul him. Lose that, and you lose yourself. I write books and I teach young people to speak Spanish and appreciate literature. I view myself as a writer and teacher, meaningful occupations both. It's embarrasssing to admit this, but I didn't always understand the obvious: that selling sacks of rice and boxes of turron are meaningful occupations too. I though that being a professor was the higher calling. But in fact my Ivory tower rises no higher than his hill of beans.

This quote about a simple man, Gustavo, who at one point in his life found and achieved his Sacred Duty selling rice and beans is one of the most hopeful statements I've read, especially considering all that we have read. The hypothetical, esoteric, mystical, and mind numbing epiphany speak exists. As Krishna says:

Better to do one's own duty imperfectly

than to do another man's well;

doing action intrinsic to his being

a man avoids guilt.

Taking all of this in the context of this class I find this the most practical knowledge of all. Sacred Duty doesn't have to be fancy. It doesn't have to be a warrior, or a king, or a priest, scholar, philosopher, or judge. Realizing one's "self" and one's Sacred Duty in Rice and Beans offers a feeling of fulfillment no less amazing than any number of "Noble" professions in the world.

However, this practical knowledge is both relieving and terrifying. I think of all of the people who slave away every day at stuff they hate, shitty jobs and shitty lives. I think, hey this is cool I'm doing something I like...I just hope it's my Sacred Duty. Nothing more terrifying than that.

(darn it, my post got long again)

Practical knowledge from To the Lighthouse

Since it’s extra credit I’m going to try to take a stab at the practical knowledge in To the Lighthouse. This is my attempt to answer Lily’s great question at the beginning of the last section “What is the meaning?”

I want to preface this with the following: I received a copy of Oxford 4^th edition of The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins in the mail yesterday. I haven’t gotten a chance to dive into it yet but it sits right next to my desk staring me in the face. I think its influence has gotten to me without me even opening the book.

A seemingly insignificant line from the book stuck out to me as I finished reading tonight and it largely provides the basis for my interpretation of “the stuff that matters.” Twice near the end of the novel, as Lily sits at her easel switching her gaze between the canvas and the bay, she remarks as follows:

“The Lighthouse looked this morning to be at an immense distance” (156 & 182)

Northrop Frye said that the Lighthouse is a common metaphor for an epiphany. I think the lighthouse is more than just the epiphany, it represents some combination of purpose, destiny, goal, desire, and any number of other nouns that reassure humans that life is worth living. The lighthouse however, isn’t just some petty reassurance of life like a good round of golf, or a complimentary dinner. The lighthouse represents the thing in life that fills the gaping hole of uncertainty that occurs in everyone’s soul as they go from point A to point B. Reaching the lighthouse is when you become in tune with your ultimate purpose on this earth. (sorry this all sounds so cheesy but I am a bit too lazy to find more eloquent words to describe my thoughts). And like the quote suggests some times that thing seems at an immense distance.

This purpose is unique to each and every individual; it is why there can be 6 billion unique people on the planet. I hesitate to call it fate because while everyone meets their fate, some people never find this unique thing in life; they die first (like Andrew who was supposed to be a great mathematician) or they look in the wrong place (Mr. Ramsay pretends to be a philosopher but is really just an asshole) or they just don’t care (Minta loves to act stupid and party).

As for Lily, she constantly struggles to find this purpose. Throughout the book she is lost at different points of the journey. She wonders “Where to begin?—that was the question at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run; the mark made” (157). Lily comprehends what she must do, she must start, she must begin her search for her purpose, she must find her inscape.

It’s funny, I never thought to connect Hopkins’ theory of inscape with the self. I thought inscape was left for those things outside of us, that inscape was used to understand the world around us not within us. I don’t know why I didn’t connect this idea but To the Lighthouse worked it out of me.

First Practical lesson: To find our inscape, our uniqueness, our god given cosmic purpose, we must take a risk and begin looking.

For nearly 50 pages after Lily begins, she struggles. She has crises of faith. She screams out God’s name…or rather Mrs. Ramsay’s name. Finding personal inscape is no easy task. Much of the time “the urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up: the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension” (178). Early failure creates emptiness. For Lily “to want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain” (176).

Second Practical Lesson: Finding personal inscape is difficult. Sometimes the struggles will fill the soul with such emptiness and despair that quitting feels like the only option. But quitting is not an option. As an old football coach once told me, “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it.”

But Lily keeps trying. Little things keep her going like reflecting on the boat Cam, James, and Mr. Ramsey took to the lighthouse. It is the little things that keep her motivated. It’s the little things that make her ask “Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?—startling, unexpected, unknown?

Third Practical Lesson: Little things are Very Very Big Things

Ultimately Lily finds her “vision.” She paints her masterpiece. Ultimately James receives affection from his father. Ultimately Carmichael the Sea Monster writes his book of poems. Ultimately Mrs. Ramsay is stared upon as she ascends the stairs and all the people recognize her for her true self, the life giver, mother earth, God.

Fourth Practical Lesson: Our personal Inscape exists and though difficult, it is attainable.

How can we be sure about this fourth practical lesson? Cam says it best while crossing the ocean… “Small as it was, and shaped something like a leaf stood on its end with the gold-sprinkled waters flowing in and about it, it had…a place in the universe—even that little island” (189). I’d like to think I’m just as much or more significant than that little island; I must have a place in the universe too.

Funny, Frye also says an island is often the representation of an epiphany. However I think Cam is referring to herself and James and Lily and Mrs. Ramsay and Mr. Ramsay and Carmichael and the rest of humanity when she refers to the “Island.” Perhaps we are our own epiphany?

Finally, where does Mrs. Ramsay fit in? I have alluded to it earlier in this blog. Mrs. Ramsay is the mother goddess or perhaps God herself. When the characters reflect on the divine (especially Lily) they are reflecting on Mrs. Ramsay. She is a giver, a charity worker, a creator of order, a mother, a wife, a writer, a reader, and a lover. She is the embodiment of a Deity. She has completely instressed her inscape. As Mr. Ramsay put it, she has reached Z.

Post Script: I may not love this book, but I respect the hell out of it. I probably respect it enough to read it again sometime. Dr. S says if a book disgusts you, there is either something wrong with you or something wrong with the book. Needless to say I was not disgusted and by the end, nor was I bored.

A quick addition to the Tide Epiphany Theory

I thought of this right before I fell asleep tonight. I'm not going to go into much detail but I think the High Tide Epiphany that fits my previous post is involves both Poem spoken by Carmichael and the sonnet Mrs. Ramsey reads before bed. Like a wave at high tide (perhaps like a wave coming into a Bore Tide) the poem and the sonnet keep coming and coming into the beach (i.e. Mrs. Ramsey). They are equally profound but less violent and of much longer duration because they act similar to a wave breaking at high tide, long and slow. Too tired to go much deeper into it than that

The Tide and the Cyclical Epiphany in To The Lighthouse

Thwack!! The three-foot wooden metric/standard ruler slammed down on the pink knuckles of the little boy’s left hand. “This is Geometry not Art Class,” scolded the wiry bespectacled teacher. “You must see the patterns inherent in figures on a plane, not doodle frivolous curly cues.” The boy scowled and rubbed his tender knuckles one at a time. He rather liked his scribblings. It was almost Spring Break and they reminded him of palm fronds whipping to the rhythm of the cool onshore breeze.

I don’t know what to make of To the Lighthouse. I want to hate it…and I do…ish. It seems quite the agonizing punishment to read tediously slow inner monologues of mostly unhappy people on what seems to be an unhappy vacation. Especially since my vacation, my spring sabbatical draws so near. But none-the-less, I suffer and I read, slowly, painfully, and with much indignation. My inner academic battles with my inner party animal who seems oh so close to winning the fight. As I read, however boring the text seems to rest on the page, I see glimpses of something faint, a ripple, so to speak, through the pages. Then… the echo resonates, the ripple grows. I hear voices more clearly and see (sea) waves break. Patterns emerge and repetitions, well repeat, both hiding in the story. Though patterns not in the Geometric sense but more like the palm fronds. They are not linear or quadratic, they are probably not quantifiable with the most advanced algorithm, rather, they exist as Waves (oceanic and rhythmic).

Dr. Sexson keeps saying that epiphanies litter this book. I have found a few, though nowhere near the 500 he claims exist. But I think I have found something somewhat interesting relating to these epiphanies. (I hope this isn't too much of a stretch, this discovery is the only reason I continue reading the book, to see if it holds true throughout). The most apparent epiphanies come in a rush, out of the seemingly bland; they are a tumultuous mix of myth and reverence. They crash over the characters wiping them clean in their frothy wake. What I’m trying to say is the Epiphanies feel like Waves crashing upon the shore. They come at rhythmic intervals, just as you are almost lulled to sleep a new crest appears. They are brief, sometimes no more than a few sentences. And almost all of them end with the sea.

During Mrs. Ramsey’s Lighthouse epiphany she tries to grab “hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight.” But “there was only the sound of the sea.” (64) At the height of her epiphany the light from the lighthouse shines on her, then the beam makes its long sweep out to sea, circles, and “rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!” (65) As exposed rock feels the frothy foam of a wave break on its rigid body, Mrs. Ramsey felt the delight of the epiphany on the floor of her mind. But the moment recedes like a wave, the ecstasy is over and Mr. Ramsey once again sees her “sadness” (65)

In another instance, ten pages later, Nancy finds a small tidal pool, and brings “darkness and desolation, like God himself, to the millions of ignorant and innocent creatures” (75) by blocking the sunlight from the pool. She feels this incredible power but then lets “her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on the wavering line of sea and sky” (75). This experience fills her with dread, she becomes “bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, here own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness” (76). Like Mrs. Ramsey, the feeling rushes over Nancy in a violent paralyzing wave. Her only release is to sit “listening to the waves,” brooding. Her reaction is different; her epiphany is a different kind of wave. She broods as the epiphany lingers within her much like a wave of a rising tide lingers on a beach. Low and behold, “the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashing through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach” (76). Unlike Mrs. Ramsey, whose epiphany is like a wave at low tide crashing into exposed rock, Nancy’s is an epiphany of a rising tide.

I don’t know what this all means but I am trying to establish a metaphoric method for comparing these epiphanies. Like I said they seem to be rhythmic and they seem to be patterned in the way tides and the ocean are patterned. Why, I don’t really know.

Then we arrive at the “Time Passes” section. Where as the rest of the book moves incredibly slowly, this section speeds through the future of the Ramsey family. To me this entire section is an Epiphany, not for any one particular character but for the reader. It is a repetitive cycle of dark bone-chilling winds, clouds, the creaking house, and turbulent waters, contrasted with mirrors, silence and Mrs. McNabb. It’s an epiphany of the storm cycle, crashing waves and dawn calms. Or maybe an epiphany of the seasonal cycle, violent winters mixed with still summers. Either way Mrs. McNabb arrives as turbulence recedes to calm or vise versa. Meanwhile the Ramsey family withers and the house falls into such disrepair that “one feather and the house, sinking, falling, would have turned and pitched downwards to the depths of darkness” (138). Throughout this section everything is moved, destroyed, rotted, moldy, repainted, repaired, rebuilt, or cleaned. But one constant always remains…the sea and the patterned and rhythmic crashing of waves.

Once again I struggle for the anagogic in this epiphany. I see glimpses of Eliot and the brevity of man. I see the futility of experience as Mrs. McNabbs memories, her experiences, do nothing to resurrect the house, rather the somewhat blurry image of the “lady in the grey cloak” only increase the homes aloneness. But I also see hope, that “all shall be well” perhaps. As Mrs. Bast, “stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them” (139). (Interestingly, Bast is the lioness goddess in Ancient Egypt. She was goddess of the Sun, protector of lower Egypt, and her temple was surrounded by man-made channels from the Nile River. They were probably calm bodies of water compared to the Nile. Food for thought)

As of right now, I haven’t finished the book. I am only done with “time passes.” But I would be willing to bet that many of the other epiphanies to come follow a similar pattern. I also would imagine that if we went through others found in class other similarities might emerge.

I find this discovery fascinating because one of the only things constant in this world (let alone the book) is the sea. Every 24 hours the tide rises and it falls. Storm cycles come in and calm cycles follow. The sea is like a natural metronome tuned to different beats for each different time in the cycle.

When I think of the sea in relation to To the Lighthouse. I can’t help but remember a sound so familiar from my childhood. I used to sleep on the beach at my families lake cabin. The sun would wake me each morning as it peaked over the Selkirk Mountains to the east. Before I opened my eyes fully awake, I would hear a sound quite similar and no louder than the sound water makes when it’s slowly swished through the teeth of a closed mouth. The sound repeated itself over and over and seemed to coincide with first rays of the morning light. They weren’t waves, they weren’t even ripples. The sound, I think, was the lake, while glassy calm from the dawn, expanding and contracting almost like a breath. The water sounded alive.

Kmluby's response to the letter

From Tai’s Blog:

“In his melancholy and half thoughts and sadness, the narrator finds a sense of rejuvenation in this sublime act. This is divinely hopeful to me. In the existential quandaries found in aging: the fear of death, the fear of age, the fear of Michael Bay films, there is mind reviving. There is not hope, this is bigger than that, there is the act of experience in all moments that go by. We just gotta notice and learn to read them. At least I think this is what the Wordsworth and Kevin L are getting at.

This is separate from the idea that one can derive pleasure from pain and more so that pain is, in itself, a path to pleasure. That fear and death are components to a certain type of beauty. It's just a matter of recognition. And recognition is a part of epiphany.”

Well I’m not sure if that’s what I meant (do I ever know what I mean?) but I’m rather fond of your interpretation and your ideas Tai, I think I will steal a bit and roll with it.

If I am following your logic, a true Aesthete can exist beyond the constant threat of aging, death, and Michael Bay films by experiencing, recognizing, or reflecting on

“These beauteous forms,

Through a long absence, have not been to me

As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:

But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;

And passing even into my purer mind,

With tranquil restoration” (Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey)

Alright! I will buy that Tai. By living among “beauteous forms” we forget “lonely rooms” and “the din of towns and cities” and death and growing old. These “beauteous forms” if recognized by an Aesthetic Hero (or just any old “right thinking” hero) will course thorough our veins, will resurrect us. But why death? Why Pain? Why do we have to live with these terrible emotions, terrible thoughts in order to be rejuvenated, to find, as you put it Tai, the “mind reviving?” We continuously read things like Eliot where we must trust in hope amongst the hopeless; or St. John of the Cross, who said we must experience “a dark night of the soul” before salvation; or Hopkins, who believes we must suffer as the poor rabbit did in the talons of The Windhover. Why must we always have a spear prodding our ribs or nails through our hands in order to be happy? I don’t think I have read one thing in my life, besides the Nike slogan, that tells me how to be unconditionally happy… sans peripherals.

Well I think I may have started to understand a bit why while reading “Deutschland,” (the dark epiphany is Man’s creation). I also think it may have something to do with the arguable “Hero” of Paradise Lost, Satan (Though I know far to little about Milton to explore this avenue and it might be a bit of a stretch). But I think have found a bit of help for the both of us. It comes out of the section of Edmund Burke’s “Philosophical Enquiry” entitled “Of the Sublime.”

“But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death: nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful, is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors.”

Sadly what I’m about to say comes from the Worlds Largest Emporium of the Cliché, Country Music: “Live like you were dying” –Tim McGraw *see authors note

In seriousness, Burke says that the emissary of Death is pain, thus we need pain to remind us of death. The pain, whether associated with physical, mental, spiritual, pain of loss, pain of brevity, etc., written into the connotation of Sublime or Epiphany gives us reason to notice these phenomena. And because the pain also reminds us of death, it reminds us to enjoy the shit out of it because, Epiphany might strictly belong to this earthly, and mortal, existence.

According to many religious ideologies, we live, we die, and we go either someplace really bloody horrible to suffer for eternity, really indescribably nice to live perfectly and happily, or someplace right in the middle where we spend the rest of eternity trying to hit the red ball off the wooden paddle. I’m not trying to contradict that these places won’t be horrible or wonderful or boring as hell, in fact I think we can expect that, but they certainly wont be as invigorating, interesting, injuring, intimidating, or emancipating as right here on earth. I think of that Hindu line we talked about on Monday. “Atman is Brahman” means: “Self is God” or “Self is Divine” or better yet, “I am Divine.” It’s cosmic assurance that the present matters and may be the only thing that matters, the ultimate boost to insecurity or self-consciousness. I might even be inclined to desire my consciousness, soul, or what-have-you to completely end at my time death, but that conflicts a bit with my mild religious inclinations. I just hope whatever comes next isn’t boring.

This is what I love so much about the Aesthetic hero. An Aesthetic hero gets to enjoy the heck out of the only thing worth enjoying…everything. The Aesthetic Hero doesn’t fret over not making it from A to Z. If the Aesthetic hero makes it to Q, he pats himself on the back for a job well done and tries like hell to stumble upon R, regardless of the pain and terror that may be involved. Pain and Terror and Death don’t scare an Aesthetic Hero nearly as much as a life of monotony, whether it be in horror, bliss, or boredom.

Now I will divulge a bit from Wordsworth. I think a true Aesthetic hero, while in tune with all of the little “lofty cliffs,” “unripe fruit” and “hermit Hollows,” notices these as little blips of “oh! How lovely.” But true Aesthetic Hero saves him/herself for the bigger revelations in the world about him/her. The ones, as I have said before, that shake the inner guts of a person. The Epiphanies that occur “When the tongues of flame are infolded/ Into the crowned knot of fire/ And the fire and the rose are one.”

Thanks Tai for getting me rolling. I rather like our discussion.

Authors Note: I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Inscape and Instress but the answer is a Mystery.

So in trying to describe Inscape and Instress on Friday as well as writing about it in my past blogs, I don't think I really clearly understood or explained the two words. Like I said, these words are made up...you can't find them in Webster's or even Oxford for that matter, the only true definition of Inscape and Instress comes from Hopkins' own poetry.

First I want to thank Lisa for finding "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" for class. Wicked excellent poem. It goes great with "The Wreck of the Deutschland" and is a hell of a lot easier to begin to understand than "Deutschland."

First the title and the first line "As Kingfishers Catch Fire, Dragonflies Draw Flame" has to be one of my favorite lines of poetry and according to me, one of the best lines of poetry ever written...so there. The best part, I couldn't even begin to tell you why, it just is, end of discussion.

Anyway, for those (myself included) a bit confused on the two terms Instress and Inscape. Read the poem on Lisa's blog or here.

Dr. S made the meaning of Inscape pretty clear is but I will reiterate from the poem:

"Each mortal thing does one thing and the same ...

Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came...

Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is"

These three lines completely define Inscape. The "purpose" or the "uniqueness" or the "thingness" of something is the Inscape of that thing. Important to realize with a devoutly religious Hopkins however, is that that "purpose," "uniqueness," and "thingness" come directly from God, it "acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is." The "purpose," "uniqueness" and "thingness," as created, spoken and instilled by the Great Maker of Things, is the Inscape, meaning there is an answer to the question, a one and only Inscape exists. The tricky part of Inscape is understanding Inscape. And understanding Inscape, is Instress.

Luckily since we are the supremely made being on earth, made in his likeness, with more than a few of his tricks, (a super slick brain with the power to remember all that we have forgotten...which is everything) we can hear what

each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Every object exists with it's Inscape emblazoned on itself (like the fiery Kingfishers or the Flaming Dragonflies) or ringing from itself (like the ringing stone, telling string, or name flinging Bow). All we have to do is hear it, see it, experience it, whatever. To Instress (because I think it both a noun and verb) is to hear the inscape, the one answer. Seeing and understanding this Great Cosmic Watermark on something is "finding the instress of the inscape."

How you ask? How do All Sentient Beings reach Instress through all of the "distracting distractions?" I'm not entirely sure but I would imagine may have something to do with the following (though sadly not Optimus Prime):

The figure of capable imagination-Stevens

Negative Capability- Keats

One on whom nothing is lost- Henry James

Seeing into the life of things- Wordsworth

Aesthetic Hero- Pater

And why? Why you ask, Why discover Instress? Why become empty so that you can be filled? Why be so perceptive nothing is lost? Why strain imagination to it's capability? Why peer into the life of things? Why not act like Gabriel Conroy? Why be an Aesthetic Hero? It all seems like such work. Work that as Tai said "requires energy, energy requires food, and food requires money." Why fall into debt (or maybe depth?) with ourselves? Once again I don't rightly know but this line from "Wreck of the Deutschland" may help.

Since, tho’ he is under the world’s splendour and wonder,
His mystery must be instressed, stressed;
For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand

We pursue this knowledge, this instress, because as it all stands right now, it is a mystery. Mysteries are meant to be fun. Mysteries are meant to be exciting. Mysteries are meant to be painful. But most importantly, mysteries are meant to be solved.

Ask the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew, they never met a mystery they didn't like and neither should we (they may also have a few mystery solving tricks to share). Besides wouldn't you love to hear God say in the most benevolent way possible, "And I would've gotten away with it, if it weren't for you meddling kids."