The atmosphere on campus has been especially soap opera-y lately. I'm lucky enough to be mostly uninvolved in the drama, but people wind up telling me most of it anyhow. Strange times.
Feb. 3 2023So I wound up doing both things, kind of. That wasn't the plan, but once I finished my book I had to get off-campus just so I could get my head screwed back on. So I went for a walk.
Once my classes for the day were done with, I found a chair in the dorm basement and pulled out the book I've been meaning to finish:
Memorial by Alice Oswald. It's a single cohesive poem, 81 pages in length. It is, at least in theory, an abridged translation of the Iliad. The poem opens with a list of names: Protesilaus. Echepolus. Elephenor. Simoisius. Leukos. On and on and on - eight pages of nothing but names. They are the people who died in the Iliad. Oswald visits every one of them in her translation. The poem is about their deaths. This is its purpose.
...There's a short story by Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," that feels relevant here. It's a story about the sudden illness, suffering, and passing of its titular character. Ivan is a well-bred, shortsighted cog in some legal institution or other. He's lived all his days in stubborn ignorance of death - when his own illness becomes serious, his initial reaction is disbelief. He recalls a syllogism from Kieswetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal." The maxim feels like it shouldn't apply to him. Caius is only an abstraction, a non-entity.
Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Illych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.
Memorial's basic structure crushes this kind of disbelief to the ground. Over and over again, a name is mentioned, and a human life attached to it. The son of a shepherdess, who birthed him as she was following her flock. A prince among the Myrmidons, generous and reliable, until he murdered his cousin in a fit of rage and fled to the Trojan field. Over and over again a person's life is told, just enough of it to call up their personhood - and then they die. A spear through the jaw, the throat, the sternum. Life after life after life: an inductive proof of the mortal syllogism. The poet is relentless.
She doesn't stop there.
Each life is followed by a death. Each death is followed by something more difficult: a metaphor from life.
He kept killing and killing
Until the crack of his spear splintering
And the hush of his helmet spinning through the air
And the rare and immediate light
Of Apollo with one hand
Stopped him
Like moonlight
Or the light of a bonfire
Burning on the cliffs
When sailors get blown along
Homesick over the sea
They notice that far-off fire
And think of their wives
Like moonlight
Or the light of a bonfire
Burning on the cliffs
When sailors get blown along
Homesick over the sea
They notice that far-off fire
And think of their wives
Like snow falling like snow
When the living winds shake the clouds into pieces
Like flutters of silence hurrying down
To put a stop to the earth at her leafwork
And this is the thing that makes me want to cry.
Beanie. Hoodie. Coat. Gloves. It takes you maybe fifteen, twenty minutes to gather all your things. Once you're dressed warm enough, you trade pleasantries with the folks downstairs and plunge into the chill New England air.
February rolls through you like a wave. It's cold. It's ten degrees Fahrenheit plus wind chill cold. It's breathe-clouds-without-a-cigarette, freeze-the-moisture-to-your-mustache cold. You rub your cheeks, jam your hands into your pockets, and slog around the pond as best you can. The water's been above freezing for weeks, and now ragged plates of ice cluster around the shore.
Somehow there are still geese swimming in the water. Absolute maniacs.
Your mustache has frozen stiff. You grin a little, take a selfie on your phone, and send it off to your ma for a laugh. Today is a good day.
I ducked into a nearby milliner's to buy a scarf, so the walk back should be ok. Grabbed a white hot chocolate for good measure, to sip while I typed this. They put marshmallows in it and everything
1d4=4
Action unlocked!
Reading -> Extend: Keep going for another half hour.
You can use up to one Action per turn. It might work, or it might not.Reading->Extend: Keep going for another half hour.
A) Music. There's an open mic night coming up, so I'll probably find the chords for a song I like and try to figure it out on my guitar.
B) Art. I might draw something in pencil, start an iconography project, or mess around in Krita some more.
C) Exercise. Today was cold, so I'll probably just do something indoors.
D) Reading. Now that Memorial's out of the way, I just have my Bible and that psyche book. And Moby Dick, I guess.
Author
Topic: SUPERSPAMDORF (spring break, 2023) (Read 2809 times)