"'Only connect.'"

"'Only connect.'"

"Who said that?"

"An English novelist."

"He should not have said it. Fiction is the worst form of connection."-The Magus ch.18

I had to add this quote to my blog because earlier in the semester we talked about how reading can effect empathy. The idea I got from that discussion is that reading, especially reading fiction, will make a person more empathetic- more likely and able to connect. Because isn't that what empathy is? Seeing and understanding the emotions of another person and being to connect to that? 

I would argue that Conchis is wrong about this one. Yes, connecting, relating to others, and  being part of something larger than yourself is important, but fiction is not the worst form of this connection. It may not be the best form of connection (personally I see face to face communication as the best form of connection because it allows for all of the senses to be involved) but it is not bad. It should instead be seen as a way to practice connection.

 As young children most of us were read to. We heard stories that we grew to love (or hate) and immersed ourselves in the the words created by our parents voices. We became a part of the story and the characters became our friends. We were sad when the story was sad and excited when characters were excited. In essence we connected with these stories and mental worlds. In this way we learned how to connect to people more easily. In putting ourselves in the minds of the characters we experienced their feelings first hand and making an important jump from "this hurts me" to "if this hurts me it will probably hurt someone else too."

Here is a video I found below about one study done on children about reading and empathy:

 http://tvoparents.tvo.org/video/162393/connection-between-reading-and-empathy 

 I also think it is really interesting (and a conicidence :-) ) that later on in this video (7:30ish) Ramon talks about the funcition of fairy tales specifically as moral guides.

Contemplations in the form of a sestina

Sooo I'll admit it I'm kinda on a poetry kick right now so I'm going to share something else I wrote for this weeks writing class. We are writing sestinas. For those of you unfamiliar with the form it is usually seven stanzas of which the first six are six lines long and the last is three lines long. In the first six stanzas there are only six words used to end each line. In other words you repeat the same six words, in a different order each stanza, as the end of each line of poetry. The last stanza uses two of the six words in each line.

To preface you reading this poem I just want to say that I am sharing it because I wrote it when I was thinking about finding answers. Annie Dillard's quote "Given things as they are how shall one individual live?" has been stuck in my head since the moment I read it. I think my poem speaks to the confusion in lacking an answer for this question. Just a warning though, one of the end words is fuck so  if that is going to bother you I suggest you stop reading now.

Contemplations 

I sit alone and wonder  

about how we live life. 

Does it have any purpose- 

struggling through the daily grind? 

Sometimes I want to say “Fuck 

it!” and succumb to madness. 

If we let the madness 

in would others wonder 

about us? Call us fucking 

idiots who waste our lives? 

Would they watch us grind 

to beats? If the purpose 

of existence is to find the purpose 

how do we not go insane? The madness 

creeps in like a glacier and grinds 

out the mind’s landscape leaving us wondering 

why… Each man lives his life 

day by day: eating, sleeping, fucking, 

and repeating. No one knows why the fuck 

we do. We may search for a purpose 

but discover only this: that life 

is but a slow decent to madness. 

It is humanities greatest wonder 

that our minds survive the daily grind. 

If we spend the days grinding 

out work that we fucking  

hate how can we wonder 

why we are unhappy? We lack true purpose, 

chasing satisfaction and flirting with madness. 

If only we could live our lives 

as if there was more to life 

than work- more than the grind. 

Maybe what society sees as madness 

is but the contemplations of those who fuckin 

care. Maybe our true purpose 

is just to let ourselves wonder… 

Life should be more than the mind-fuck 

of the daily grind. The purpose should be 

to find the fine line between madness and wonder. 

~Carol Clonan 

Elegy

This is the elegy I ended up writing for my poetry class. I wasn't completely happy with how it came out but I figured I would share it with you anyway. Please feel free to critique, I couldn't get the words and form to say exactly what I wanted to express.

Lost in the Gardens of Adonis 

for Debbie Clonan

Half gold, half silver circles shine- lonely

gathering dust. A gift my father gave

her: once favored but forgotten now. She

loses us- faces confused with names. Now we

just smile- suppressing sorrow, acting brave

but breaking. (Our hearts ache) If only

her life was more than pumping blood and breath.

The body struggles on while flakes of self

fall- like yellow petals of flowers, grown

in shallow earth then thrown to sea. Alone

I sit (full pews surround) remember health’s

gifts fade, leaving inevitable death.

The gift, twice given, now adorns my ears

sparking memories of her in better times:

her smile, our adventures, the smell of Home

cooked meals. She traveled in to the Unknown,

leaving us behind. I thought that sometimes

I should join her; but love lost to my fear.

Questions without answers

"We shall not cease from exploration, and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time." -T.S. Eliott

I think I've type this quote for just about every other blog I've written this semester but I feel like it fits yet again. It's been a couple weeks since I finished The Magus so sifting though its pages again tonight has brought be back to exactly where I started- confused and desperately grasping for something that is just out of my understanding. This is a feeling that I have gotten for quite a while now in this class. Its a lot like the sensation of having a word on the tip of your tongue that you just can't remember except on deeper level. I feel like I am reaching out in to a cloud of mist and there is something- a big, important, possibly omnipotent idea or answer- right beyond my intellectual fingertips. I can guess what it is too- the answer to the question posed during one of our first classes together:

"Given things as they are how shall one individual live?"- Annie Dillard

The problem is (as much as I don't I don't want to believe it) I don't think there is a definite answer. I fear that the answer I am reaching for is nothing more than a wisp of smoke- translucent and insubstantial. My questions have no answers.

Central to The Magus are the subjects of questions, answers, truths, fiction, and reality. Throughout the novel the reader (and Nicholas for that mater) are lead to believe many things which are later discovered to be fictions. I use the word fiction here instead of lies because, though I know that the majority of the novel was characters acting instead of behaving "honestly," I feel that the line between "truth" and "lies" has been blurred.

"Human truths are always complex" (Fowles 231)

The idea that truths (specifically designated as human truths here) can be complex seems like a contradiction. If its true then (logically) there should be no complexity... but yet there is. Humanity isn't simple; neither is understanding what is true. Is there such a thing as absolute truth? What is truth? A dictionary will tell you that truth is the quality of being true and the definition of true is that it agrees with reality. The etymology of truth (here) links the word back to the Mercian word "treowd" meaning "faithfulness, quality of being true" and from "triewe, treowe" which means "faithful." So if truth is linked with faith... well that is a mind bender.

 "Never take another human being literally." (Fowles 231)

 Ahh the literal. As we already know the literal is linked with the anagogical. What I think this particular quote is talking about falls more alone the lines of a person being more than the sum of it's parts. What they are is more than you can understand from your usual surface view. In reality, though we have shared a class twice a week for almost two months now none of you really "know" me. That's ok of course because there is more to people than the literal; so of what they portray is lies other things just never come up. The Billy Joel song The Stranger comes to mind as a good example of this. (For those of you unfamiliar it is linked here.)

"Nothing is true;everything is permitted" (Fowles 529)

Great. Now even if I could understand exactly what truth is now there is no truth...

 "But in the godgame we start from the premise that in reality all is fiction, yet no single fiction is necessary." (Fowles 627)

If reality is actually fiction in the "godgame" then what is real? Is anything real? Or because there is no truth then there is no reality? Can there be reality if there is no truth?

"And the one common feature of all the gods he has said it to is that not one of them has ever returned an answer."
"Gods don't exist to answer. You do."
"I am not going to venture where even the gods are powerless. You must think that I know every answer. I do not." (Fowles 185)


Even the gods and the "Magician" doesn't know the answers. I've asked quite a few questions in the post but doubt greatly if I will come to any answers. This irks me slightly. I want to know the answers; that's why I asked the questions. I want to believe in truth and reality and that someday my questions will be answered.

"An answer is always a form of death... I think questions are a form of life." (Fowles 626)


If life is questions and death is answers, then do we die because we know the answers? We talked earlier about answers being a death to possibility and knowledge. When we get the answer we no longer think about it or learn about it any more.
What if in death do we find all the answers? I hope this one is true. I am ok with spending my life asking questions. Would I like the answers? Of course. But I can hold off a while on finding the answers to my big questions if understanding them means the end of this journey.

Startled by the Connections...

It startled me to read in Annie Dillard's For the Time Being:

They also see, moments before birth, all the mingled vastness of the universe, and its volumes of time, and its multitudes of peoples trampling the generations under. These unborn children are in a holy state. An angel comes to each one, however, just before he is born, and taps his lips so he forgets all he knows and joins the bewildered human race. "This 'forgetting' desanctifies him, of course," Lis Harris notes, so to "console" him, his "fellow fallible mortals" throw him a party. (Dillard, 96)

Doesn't this sound familiar?? I highlighted this passage late last week while curled up in bed with a box of tissues and chicken soup. In my cold medicine haze I recognized that it was significant but now, flipping back through to remember what I had been reading, I see how much it connects to a discussion we had earlier in the semester.

We have talked about "Illo Tempore" or the Great Time, the Before Time, or the "good old days" as they are some times referred to,  as being a time that humanity wants to get back to. It was a time of mythologies and innocence; a time before the fall. In the Bible it was when Man and God could walk together in the Garden of Eden before sin entered the world. But just as it says in the Four Quartets "Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind Cannot bear very much reality" I would argue that human kind cannot bear very much perfection either. Eve takes the fruit, shares it with Adam, and human kind gains knowledge of good and evil, making themselves like God and losing their all access pass to the Garden. This is one example of the loss of "illo temore" or a loss of innocence. 

Dr. Sexson brought up an idea last week that has been ruminating in my mind about how language relates to "illo tempore." The idea was that as a baby or a small child, before you learn to speak, you are still in "illo tempore." It is the process of learning language that kicks you out of the metaphorical garden. Language is a ridiculously powerful tool. Once we learn a language it becomes the filter though which we see the world, think, and express ourselves. There is some controversy over if language actually controls thought. A valid argument can be made for this idea. It is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to fully understand things we have no words for. For example, when learning a second language there are words and phrases that have no direct translation and, if you were to directly translate them, it would come out illogically. Also we think in words most of the time (yes, there are thoughts that are visual or just feelings but these are less common). George Orwell's novel 1984 controls the thoughts of the masses by simply making certain words illegal so that eventually they do not exist at all. In "Newspeak," the fictional language used to control thought by Big Brother, words like "freedom" "rebellion" and "love" would all be illegal or a "thoughtcrime" because they are not ideas that Big Brother wants to exist. The punishment for thinking, or saying these things is death. Though an extreme (and fictional) example, it shows how important language is. 

I seem to have gone off on several tangents here but let me try to get back to my original point. The quote from Annie Dillard is about how babies, before they are born, know everything and then are forced to forget. This connects to the idea of "illo tempore" because when the baby is forced to forget he or she is forced out of the garden, out of "illo tempore." It also connects to a discussion we had about how nothing is ever learned, it is only ever remembered. I think this means I have a lot more to remember...

Too Close - More on The Fall of Icarus

  

  

I had write an ekphrastic poem for my writing class last week. I really liked the W. H. Auden poem we talked about that was based on the painting by Pieter Brueghel called The Fall of Icarus so I also picked that painting. I thought since we talked about that particular painting I would share it. 

Too Close 

  

Her white sails swell; venture on past 

shores where old men fish, never noticing 

between each cast: 

the flapping arms and falling feathers. 

  

A tired horse with plow pulls on. 

Its blinders confine sight. 

The farmer sees scant more… 

But did he hear? A splash? A sob? 

  

The pale legs thrash, consumed by water green- 

A miracle that was never seen. 

Physics, Mazes, and Authors

Today in class we talked a lot about some hard-core physics topics that, as an English major, are a little out of the normal realm of discussions I usually come across in my classes. Things like Schrödinger's cat and multiple universes rarely, if ever, come up in classes based around the criticism of literature or writing poetry but then again this isn’t my average class. My first encounter in to the realm of quantum physics (I hope I’m using this term correctly) was actually in a book I had to read for BOB. (For those of you unfamiliar with BOB it stands for Battle of the Books and is a competition in Alaska for students elementary to high school where you read a number of books and are quizzed over them with questions that begin “in which book…” did something happen and are answered with the title and author.) The particular book I read was called The Last Universe by William Sleator and was a Sifi teen novel about a girl and her brother, who is confined to a wheel chair due to some unknown illness. They discover a maze with odd qualities in their back yard. The abnormality in the maze is that after each turn the world is altered slightly. What the siblings soon discover is that each turn in the maze brings them to a different universe entirely. In an attempt to find a universe where her bother is not sick the girl ventures through the maze in to various alternative universes.

To me this story, which I read back in middle school, seems to be just another coincidence relating,or connection to the topics we have been discussing in class. I was reminded of it after re-reading the quote by Northrop Frye in The Secular Scripture:

“Romance, I think, is not only central to literature as a whole, but the area where we can see most clearly that the maze without a plan and the maze not without a plan are two aspects of the same thing.”   

As I mentioned in class the quote seems to parallel (parallel universes anyone?) a discussion earlier in the semester about myth being written through an author instead of the author writing the myth. Just as the author has little intention of putting myth in his writing so the maze has no plan, but simultaneously the maze is not without a plan just as the writing produced is not without myth. 

Side Note- Mazes in themselves are a mythological reference. One only needs to recall the story of the minotaur housed in a great maze built by Daedalus (Icarus' Dad, remember him?) to see the significance.

On a slightly tangent note I think the idea of myth being written through and author brings up an interesting topic about the writer himself (or herself). If myth is really just written through an author, and an author is merely re-writing the great myths instead of producing something original (note the common use of the word original instead of the mythological one meaning to go back to the origin) then isn’t the author not all that important? Doesn’t this mean, in a sense that all authors fail at writing? The author who means to write a simple, literal, tale but actually unknowingly makes many mythological references that border on displacement did not do what they intended. But then again maybe they did. If the literal interpretation and the anagogical interpretation are linked and potentially the same thing (“The road up and the road down are the same thing.” –Hippolytus) then maybe the author did both mean to create a literally simple tale and a mythologically rich one as well. I do wonder though as a reader and potential writer the degree to which authors intentionally make mythological references and the degree which those references are made through them.