The weather’s changed. Autumn has finally given way to winter. The temperature has plummeted, the trees have stripped themselves of leaves and things have started turning nasty. So I thought I’d post a pic or two of a lovely autumn walk we did a couple of weeks ago.

5.01: What the hell’s got into bullocks lately? First Dimbleby floored by a beast from his own herd, and now Tom Cruise inconvenienced in Cadiz, with seven bulls charging through the set of his latest film – apparently on their way to the beach.

(In fact, neither Tom Cruise nor co-star Cameron Diaz was even faintly inconvenienced by the holiday-making bovines: neither was even in the same city; neither even was in the same country. But two women were “slightly injured,” which will doubtless give rise to a Name-and-Shame campaign in the local red tops, featuring mugshots of bullocks skulking desultorily about public monuments).

And while we’re on animal news, how did I miss this story over the weekend? Breeders have been accused of creating “bizarre mutant cats.” Apparently, in this weird Chernobyl of cat stylists, some of “the animals’ tears do not drain away properly and cause breathing difficulties.”

Is there anything more gratuitously evil than suffocating your cat with its own tears? It’s the sort of thing I imagine Walt Disney getting up to in between torturing Communists and luring children into his gingerbread dungeon.

7.02: “Huge Ocean found on Mars,” The Mirror tells us. “A network of rivers once flowed from the planet’s southern highlands into a massive sea.” This is exciting and makes my 5am noodlings at the keyboard seem tiny and insignificant. But what strikes me is how different newspapers are now from 1957, when Sputnik was launched and the Daily Express ran Keats’ sonnet ‘On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer’ on its cover (really; its cover):

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

I used to know someone who told me that reading that poem on the front of the paper made him decide in 1957 to go and study English literature. Sadly, in spite of winning a scholarship to the college of FR Leavis, circumstance intervened. A girl became pregnant, and he didn’t resume his studies for another four decades. Which was when I met him. I wrote a poem about him once; maybe I’ll drag it out and dust if off sometime. I might write one about the sea on Mars, but the Mirror’s lead today, “A Space Oddysea,” is somehow less motivating.

I’m surprised I let almost a month pass by without adding something else to the blog. Could be a bad thing or a good thing, normally I write a lot when I am really bored or feel like I should write something.

Then again, here I am staring at the work space not knowing what to write about. I could troll and bring up Modern Warfare 2 and talk about how mediocre the game is and how fanboys over-hyped the game so badly that I’m more likely to see cosplayers dressed in U.S. Army gear at the next Comicon. That’s not really anything I care about though, it’s not worth spending my time typing about to an audience of one.

Instead, I’ll bring a short update what’s been going on in the past three weeks and see what topics come from there.

At my new job, BestBuy, my hours have been increasing steadily but irregularly. I’m moreso picking up shifts than getting assigned shifts. It’s really frustrating because I am a great sales person and a huge computer-head but I get put behind people who I hear aren’t as knowledgeable as I am. I am thinking of another job, at least to supplement what hours I do get, but then again, my co-workers say they like me the most out of all the seasonal guys and want to keep me on. This seems to be true, because one of the guys in my department, Craig, had a poker night at his place and invited me. I was the only seasonal guy there out of nine folks. Hopefully this comes through, because despite the uptight policy of BestBuy as an employer, the job isn’t half bad. If any scholarship comes my way to help me pay for my car and phone bill, I’ll say goodbye to the jobs until I need them again.

School is simple. Today I finally got back my third Macro Economics test and I expected a B or so, but nope, I received a nice 98/100. I really didn’t study for this test that much, I felt like I’d do fine without days of refreshing on it and I was right, unfortunately. The class is too easy. In fact, our instructor asked us if the class was too easy and I think I was the only person to raise their hand. I had to though, out of respect for him and for anyone who actually wanted to be pushed to learn this stuff. I hope he makes his next classes tougher. Also, I added a joke to the test. I didn’t know one of the bonus questions (There was three) and so I put this in the answer space: “Q: What bus crossed the ocean? A: Columbus.” My instructor put a “<== Genius” next to it, but no extra credit, probably because I didn’t need it.

When I start putting jokes into my assignments or tests, you know I’m not taking the class very seriously. Case in point, my assignment in Anthropology. I might have already mentioned this in another entry but here’s a quick look on it. I had to do an interview on someone on a subject I wasn’t familiar with so I chose Catholicism and my last question was, “Do you think that Jesus Christ would be 1000x cooler if he were half velociraptor?” And this question received a smiley face. I’m quite proud of myself.

A tip to anyone studying a language on their own, get comfortable! It’s difficult to study for something that isn’t a class, but it’s even more difficult to study a foreign language that you don’t have a class for. Also, bring your book! It’s your motivation! I have Japanese dictionary app on my phone and I thought that would be motivation enough, but it isn’t. The JLPT is just weeks away and I’m not sure if I can get close to passing now. I will definitely make more time to study in the next couple of weeks so I can get familiar with the things I did know when I had a Japanese class. I think if I do that, I’ll pass. I hope I do. The problem I have been having is that I don’t put my Genki I book in my backpack and I am always cold or just uncomfortable in the library. So, for me, this ends now.

As usual, I went to the tennis courts today. Today though, I was dominating! I really got into my serves and eventually had a streak of 7 or 9 serves in a row! I think it continued on to 11 when I picked up a different racquet. I was doing pretty well with the two new racquets and that surprised me. I ended up leaving with a good, confident feeling. I think I’m ready to get some pick up games in, just need to find some people.

I’ve been toying around with doing more Heartbroke Daily like entries, for the fun of creative story telling, but it’s just an idea.

I kind of want to make this blog more meaningful. Maybe some tips for picking up Japanese or other languages. Maybe make it more outspoken, call out those Modern Warfare 2 kids or Twilight people. That’s too easy though, if I was going to tackle debates, I’d rather choose more political or “news worthy” topics. Hit the news reels hard and attack the results made by the media (Like the swine flu scare). I’ve always wanted to write up poetic things, but I’m almost positive that I’d made a fool of myself.

There’s a quote that I love from a poem by John Keats that goes, “A thing of beauty is a joy forever; it’s loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness.” I’m glad that I randomly chose John Keats for my British Literature presentation, he’s such a great poet and his story is romantic and sad. Dying at the age of 25 shortly after a secret engagement to a young woman named Fanny Brawne. The full poem is a beautiful thing in itself, here’s a link. There’s also a movie adaption of his later years when he meets Fanny Brawne, the movie is called “Bright Star” after one of his poems of similar name. Once it hits DVD I am buying it up, supposed to be great.

Here I am, on WordPress typing up nonsense when I have a 750 word paper due on Friday. While not a big deal at all, I just find it funny that I’m on this typing up over 1000 words in the space of less than an hour.

Until I figure out a decent topic for the next entry.. so long.

Today, ‘Bright Star’– the film by award-winning Director Jane Campion depicting the life of romantic poet John Keats – will be shown at a charity screening by the UK Coalition to Stop TB and RESULTS UK at the Hampstead Everyman (8.30 – 10.30pm).

Keats died of tuberculosis aged just 25. The film ‘Bright Star’ tells the story of his love affair with next-door neighbour Fanny Brawne, whom he met while living in Hampstead, nursing his younger brother Tom, who also had tuberculosis.

The UK Coalition to Stop TB and RESULTS UK will host a pre-film reception at Keats House (6.00 – 8.00pm), where Keats was resident from 1818 – 1820, for members of the political, health, media and acting communities.

Glenda Jackson MP will attend as well as actors who have appeared in television adaptations of Jane Austen – who was believed to have died of TB. They will be joined by members of the Department for International Development (DFID) which provides funding for TB, and people working in public health to control and eventually eradicate this ancient disease.

Speaking on behalf of the UK Coalition, RESULTS UK Executive Director Aaron Oxley said: “In 1821, John Keats died of consumption. In 2010 two million people will die from TB. There is more TB in the world today than ever before.

“This modern-day epidemic teams up with HIV – another of the world’s biggest killers – and has emerged in deadly drug-resistant forms, claiming the young lives of millions of men and women every year.

“It doesn’t take a miracle to stop TB. With the right funding and political will we can do it. The UK Coalition to Stop TB, a cross-sector network of NGOs, media, private sector and academia, is working with coordinated actions and one voice so that other ‘bright stars’ do not die prematurely from this disease.”

Much of ‘Bright Star’ is set at Keats House. It was here that Keats wrote some of his most memorable poetry including ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.

I dreamed the teachers

launched a missile at the students

backstreets urban battlefield,

we’d taken a joyride

just around the block, no further,

in the school bus.

.

I dreamed I woke alone in the suburbs

burning eyes and churning stomach

no wars for oceans, and no teachers talk

about it or even really care –

its not here, it’s there

spare the students any confusion.

.

I dreamed vividly of suburban decay

syringes on footpaths melting in 40 degrees

when the kids go barefoot to the park

flattened house-pets on the road

walking through a winter heat-wave

to the university – I arrive sobering,

.

it was no dream, this is my classroom.

The student reads Keats aloud

stumbling over words like “fever” and “steed”

he improvises and nobody notices

a phone buzzes at a pulse

two laptops tap softly away,

someone has to leave early for work.

.

I dream of a new generation of students

too young to recall television visions of

planes crashing into buildings

crude wars waged and fear of reading

or engaging in talks outside of

an internet chat engine.

Sorry, not much blogging going on here at the moment. And right now I have to get out of the house. I’ll do something tomorrow, but in the meantime you might like to check out these other very interesting things:

Meryl Pugh has a blog! A blog all about writing poetry, and being interested in things. Who knew. Not for nothing is it entitled Skulking in the Corners…

“At the heart of every galaxy is a black hole and at the heart of every black hole is a paradox; a point of infinite tininess and infinite gravity.  They call it a singularity.

A handsome, white-haired academic makes infinity signs proliferate across his blackboard….”

Also, my town-twinned blog friend Meredith has started a new blog, far away in Australia, with a title from Emily Dickinson. (I thought I was being  clever there, but when I opened the blog she had said so in her first sentence! “The title is from an Emily Dickinson poem. I’m sure you know it: Because I Could Not Stop for Death. I chose it because of how it expresses stasis & momentum tugging at each other.” Damn. Well, bookmark it anyway, because I know Meredith of old and she writes a good blog.)

Caleb Crain in the New York Times wrote a great piece about Keats’ speech – that is, how did he speak? Well worth reading this. And no, I haven’t seen the movie yet. Reach the article via Caleb’s entertaining blog, Steamboats Are Ruining Everything.

And also, Salt Publishing – as many of you may know – has consolidated its blogs into one big Salt blog, the cunningly named blog.saltpublishing.com. Well worth checking out for their special offers etc.

Last but not least, there’s my very own Text Pixels blog: for the fairy way of solving all your copywriting and PR problems. Back after a short absence with three posts in a row.

Worried you can’t read any of these links properly? Well, get some Readability!

And just don’t get me started on our little plagiarism kerfuffle. I’ve probably missed the boat on it but might try to say something tomorrow.

I know: crap.

School has a tannoy system that can be heard across the road and leaks into every corner of the orphanage campus. Every morning there is a song sung acapella by a different pupil, who serenades  us (usually out of tune) with songs from “camp rock” or any of the “high school musicals”, in fact someone is singing now as i type and then there is a recitation of the lords prayer…Much earlier in the day and even louder comes a different tannoy from a nearby Hindu temple again this can be heard all over the campus. Chanting/prayers/music usually start at around 4.30am and go on for around an hour.

school windows: KORAN BIBLE GITA KIPLING ELLIOT KEATS DICKENS DANTE FROST NEHRU TAGORE GANDHI

school mornings, of course the one day i decide to film is the one day they decide not to sing, but i will film again, and there will be a song…

shakespeare was but a mortal, marlowe did die

donne remins only of the occassioned bone, perhaps two

raleigh lives only in extravagant and glorified parchment

so does the blind seer, milton, – librarians have taken after him

pope still awakens primordial passions of the burning sort

yet his is not the land of the living – neither is johnson, nor hawthorne

and certainly not whitman – that poet of the body

what of the blessed keats or the amorous byron

yet how it stands that in death they yet speak with such vehemence and certainty

how that in death they all become into glorified instructors – even those spurned in their day

for we all be but the attending caretakers in natures vast burrial ground – even the library

for in reading pope, am at once transported into such glories that i dont count it strange to

find myself sitting by his bedside or rather grave

thus in return for elegant companionship – i offer my services even attending to their graves

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun
Let’s get out the Jupiter
And take it for a run

So might John Keats (poet) have written had he access to a Jowett Jupiter. Instead he wrote..
Ode to Autumn Click here

Off we went in bright sunlight to travel the eight or so miles to the body shop and see how the Javelin was progressing. It’s having some serious bodywork and respraying done, and now we have the undercoat on, so it might not be long before we have it back. The outward journey was sunny; the roads dry; (plagiarism alert)the trees golden; the heavy fruit bending the boughs; While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touched the stubble-plains with rosy hue. But by the time we were on the return lap, the mists had come down and it was really cold. Keats, in his fragile consumptive condition wouldn’t have made it there and back. Let’s face it, if he couldn’t survive Rome in February, which isn’t the coldest dampest place on the planet, he wouldnt have made the round trip in Cheshire today.

I’m surprised that it has taken me this long to get onto this subject…Before I start…I have read this through and it is somewhat rambling. It makes sense to me, so just go with it!

Why is it that we always want what we can’t have? I think I am more or less over it, but for some time I had been wanting something, actually for probably quite a long time now, that it has become more of an obsession to get. I probably wouldn’t even want it once I had it…although in that sentence it looks like I may have had a chance in getting my hands on said thing. The chances of this, I think, were getting slimmer every day. I probably won’t end up ever having it, so its probably a good job that I have realised this and I have been thinking less about it recently, which can only be a good thing! I think its bad as I have had it before and when I did I wasn’t sure I wanted it…but then it was taken from me and all of a sudden, I was left wanting. There’s that song, Yellow Taxi is it?

‘Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone…’

I think that must be it. Actually, to tell the truth, I know that it probably won’t be worth it at all, but when there is nothing better coming along…you keep getting dud experience after dud experience, it makes you think back and although as time goes on, the want drifts away, you still compare it. Its silly, it really is. I am over it, but if the opportunity arose, I can’t say that I wouldn’t go for it, just out of curiosity. But before I was fooling myself with the fact that if I pursued and chased hard enough, it would come to me. But now I know, that was just ridiculous thinking that. Deep down, I knew this…but I’m sure I didn’t want to believe it.

I read an article today on a feature film, I think, called Bright Star, its about John Keats and Fanny Brawne. They had a love so intense, a whirlwind romance, that was cut short when Keats died, aged only 25. He was so enamoured with her, it inspired some of his greatest poems. Keats was like a rock star of his time, he was the most unsuitable of lovers, but Brawne was so drawn to him. Their love so intense that when he went to the Isle of White for a holiday, she didn’t get out of bed for five days…After 3 years together, Keats contracted tuberculosis and was sent to Italy by his supporters – having to leave Brawne behind – where he later died. She spent the next three years wearing only black dresses, mourning the loss of her soulmate.

Their love takes my breath away. Imagine having something like that…I’m not sure I could handle something so intense! I don’t even know if love like that exists any more…maybe it was just the period of time, everything was so much more extreme, as there was little more to do. With today’s distractions of the television, music on tap and the computer generation, there may not be room for such heightened feelings. I just hope I can find something half as good, then I will be happy.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCİ

“Seni ne üzebilir, ey gücü-pek bahadır!
Yalnız dolaşıyorsun, benzinde solgunluk var.
Sazlar kurudu artık gölün kıyılarında.
Ötüşmez oldu kuşlar.

“Seni ne üzebilir, ey gücü-pek bahadır!
Ne kadar da bitkinsin, terketmiş seni rahat,
Sincap doldurdu artık kışlık ambarlarını,
Yapıldı bitti hasat.

“Bir zambak görüyorum senin alnında açmış
Istırap nemi ile humma çığı taşıyan,
Ve solan bir gül gibi yanağının üstünde
Son demini yaşayan.”

“Bir hatuna rastladım kırlarda dolaşırken,
En güzelden de güzel – gerçek bir perikızı,
Topuklarında saçı, keklik gibi sekişli,
Vahşi – ürkek bakışlı.

“Çiçeklerden bir çelenk ördüm onun başına,
Sonra bileziklerle bir kemer hoş kokulu;
Gözlerime baktı da sevdalı gözleriyle,
İnledi arzu dolu.

“Tuttum, onu bindirdim rahvan giden atıma
Ondan sonra bütün gün bilmedim gördüğümü,
Eğilerek bir yana çünkü çağırdı durdu
Bir peri türküsünü.

“Bayan hazlar verici kökler çıkardı bana,
Yaban balı topladı, kudret çiği içirdi,
Ve sonunda dedi ki kendi peri dilinde
‘Çok seviyorum seni.’

“Sonra götürdü beni büyülü mağrasına,
Orda gözyaşı döktü, bir ah çekti kederle,
Orda kuruttum ben de o vahşi gözlerini
Yanan öpücüklerle.

“Orda uyuttu beni tatlı ninnileriyle,
Bir rüya gördüm orda – Ah! bahtım ne de kara,
Biraz önce gördüğüm pek taze bir rüya bu
Bu ürperten yamaçta.

“Solgun kırallar gördüm, prensler, savaşçılar
Ölüm solgunluğuydu hepsinin yüzündeki;
Haykırarak dediler ki – ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Beni de tutsak etti!’

“Kavruk dudaklar gördüm akşam alacasında
Büyük büyük açılmış müthiş bir uyarmayla.
Birden uyanıverdim, burda buldum kendimi
Bu ürperten yamaçta.

“İşte bundan dolayı buradayım şimdi ben
Yalnız dolaşıyorum, benzimde solgunluk var,
Kurumuş da olsalar sazlar göl kıyısında
Susmuş da olsa kuşlar.”

John KEATS

(Mete Ataç)

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever

By John Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
‘Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast
That, whether there be shine or gloom o’ercast,
They always must be with us, or we die.

Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Endymion.
The very music of the name has gone
Into my being, and each pleasant scene
Is growing fresh before me as the green
Of our own valleys: so I will begin
Now while I cannot hear the city’s din;
Now while the early budders are just new,
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests; while the willow trails
Its delicate amber; and the dairy pails
Bring home increase of milk. And, as the year
Grows lush in juicy stalks, I’ll smoothly steer
My little boat, for many quiet hours,
With streams that deepen freshly into bowers.
Many and many a verse I hope to write,
Before the daisies, vermeil rimmed and white,
Hide in deep herbage; and ere yet the bees
Hum about globes of clover and sweet peas,
I must be near the middle of my story.
O may no wintry season, bare and hoary,
See it half finished: but let Autumn bold,
With universal tinge of sober gold,
Be all about me when I make an end!
And now at once, adventuresome, I send
My herald thought into a wilderness:
There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress
My uncertain path with green, that I may speed
Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed.

Ode to a Nightingale

By John Keats

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thy happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth.
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim
And purple-stained mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known,
The weariness, the fever, and the fret
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond tomorrow.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Clustered around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast-fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain -
To thy high requiem become a sod.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the selfsame song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: -do I wake or sleep?

photo copyright Misera e stupenda città. 2009

*

We with our bodily eyes see but the fashion
and Manners of one country for one age –
and then we die –

John Keats, December 31, 1818

Anne Wullschlager has some important information about the publishing history of Keats’s Nightingale and how it relates to the meaning of the poem.

Some of the translations on Carmelo Mangano’s Blog might be of help to you. He includes line-by-line translations of Tintern Abbey, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Ode to a Nightingale, and Ode to the west Wind. There is some Blake here as well. Please be aware that only part of Tintern Abbey is translated here.

Basil. The royal herb. The aromatic genius of the kitchen. The leaf of choice, the taste most lovely.

The painting portrays Isabella, unable to sleep, dressed in a semi-transparent nightgown, having just left her bed, which is visible with the cover turned over in the background. She drapes herself over an altar she has created to Lorenzo from an elaborately inlaid prie-dieu over which a richly embroidered cloth has been placed. On the cloth is the majolica pot, decorated with skulls, in which Lorenzo’s head is interred. Her abundant hair flows over the pot and around the flourishing plant, reflecting Keats’s words that Isabella “hung over her sweet Basil evermore,/And moistened it with tears unto the core.”

Lovely leg stretching out there. At first I thought it was a hopeful caress. But no, they tell me, no. This is the banquet that preludes the deed!

The painting illustrates an episode from John Keats’s poem, Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, which describes the relationship between Isabella, the sister of wealthy medieval merchants, and Lorenzo, an employee of Isabella’s brothers. It depicts the moment at which Isabella’s brothers realise that there is a romance between the two young people, and plot to murder Lorenzo so they can marry Isabella to a wealthy nobleman. Isabella, wearing grey at the right, is being handed a blood orange on a plate by the doomed Lorenzo. A cut blood orange is symbolic of the neck of someone who has just been decapitated, which is a sign of how Lorenzo will be killed by Isabella’s brothers. One of her brothers violently kicks a frightened dog while cracking a nut.

wiki, yes wiki source

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I swear to God these are, word for word, the three spam messages sitting in my spam inbox right now (bold is the title, with the thumbnail bit following):*

Lloyd returned when she had gone – when I awoke, ‘I don’t know if you’ll be able to do anything with her,’ said the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bo!** ‘It all starts again.’

It’s a new genre: spam flash fiction. You heard it here first. And this.

* N.b., punctuated by me.

** okay, and Edward Lear.

Coming soon, probably: some kind of a rant about Bright Star.

I’ve been reading a lot more recently, much about Bob Dylan. What I don’t understand is why every song the man wrote must be dissected to the point that there are classes that are meant to figure out the meanings of his songs? Dylan is a brilliant writer. He is the seminal poet of our parents generation & for that matter ours as well. It is not a far off distinction to compare him to Keats or Dylan Thomas. However, does that mean that every word he writes should mean something? I’ve read numerous articles & books extolling his life as one big mystery for us to solve. Perhaps, it’s time to let the man be. Perhaps, it’s time to just enjoy the music without trying to make it fit something.

This is a major theme when it comes to music. Does a song become worthless if it does not suit your purpose of meaning? For instance, what if you loved the song, “Martha, My Dear” from the Beatles’ White Album until you found out that Paul McCartney wrote it about his Old English Sheepdog & not Jane Asher as everyone suspected? Would that change your opinion of the song? I’m guilty of this as well & I’m not saying there aren’t some songs that are directly related to an event or person. Sometimes, though, songs are just good writing about nothing in particular.

Often people need a song to mean something so that they can relate it to their own life & their own personal struggles. It’s a coping mechanism that makes the music so much more personal. Good music is supposed to be personal & much like life itself the search for meaning is essential to our evolution. It’s why people turn to religion, higher knowledge & in some instances drugs. We are all yearning for a higher ethereal plain to find that intricate thing that separates us from the animals so that we don’t feel like this life is just some cosmic clusterfuck in which we just meander through.

Music & writing lends to us others feelings & brilliance so that we may equate that to our own personal experiences. It is in these experiences that we turn to the artist & try to figure out his/her meaning. It is what drove Dylan to create the Motorcycle crash mythology that led to a 7 year touring hiatus. It is what pushed J.D. Salinger underground. That feeling that says I’m just a writer/musician don’t look to me for guidance, look to yourself.

Today is John Keats’ birthday, and it has been a splendid, achingly beautiful autumn day.  So I can’t help myself:

TO AUTUMN

1.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

2.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

3.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

It’s worth noting that To Autumn has the reputation of being the most anthologized poem in the English language.  It was written September 19, 1819, and published the following year.  And I love it. And I love, love, love John Keats.

Keats said autumn is a time of ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’, but it seems to me it’s more masquerades and fruity madness.  From Halloween to Christmas it’s the done thing to don a disguise, over do it and carve faces into your cucurbita pepo.  With the long dark evenings providing ample time for reflection and getting some Hitchcock action I got to thinking about the masks we wear day to day. 

Vertigo:  Kim Novak plays a woman (Judy), playing another woman (Madeleine), who falls in love with the guy (James (Scottie) Stewart) she’s stringing along.  Unfortunately he’s developed an infatuation with the faux Madeleine, portrayed by Judy as an elegantly disturbed, icy blonde with a penchant for staring wistfully into whirlpools; and twisting her hair into knots tighter than the tangled web of lies Judy has conspired to create with the genuine Madeleine’s wife-murdering husband.  Pant pant. Phew. Anyone feeling dizzy yet?

Anyway… the real Judy is actually a brash brunette with a line in big brassy earrings and even bigger eyebrows; and however relieved we might feel that scatty Scottie has taken it upon himself to give his girl a Gok over, when Judy-as-Madeleine-part-deux steps out of the bathroom, bathed in a ghostly green glow, it’s obvious this weird menage a trois is a menage gone mad… 

Scatty Scottie is driving both himself and Judy crazy by insisting Judy agree to be Mad-eleine (again).  And more to the point, what the hell is Judy thinking, if she is ‘thinking’ at all?! Even if Kim-Judy-Madeleine-Novak hadn’t unwittingly given the game away and pushed James (Scottie) Stewart even further to the brink of insanity, by waving that necklace around, you just know that either Madeleine-Judy will be forever reminded that her real brash brunette self is not good enough for James (Scottie) Stewart, or eventually he won’t believe in the make-believe-Madeleine any more.

Vertigo is always a film conoisseur’s fave, and I wonder partly whether it’s because we’ve probably all played one or other of the characters ourselves in real life.  We are often bewitched, bothered and bewildered by beloveds who are Frankenstein-phantasms we’ve fashioned from fairy tales.  Or, perhaps worse still, we try to squeeze our proverbial foot into the glass slipper of a guy’s imagination, and are destined to forever feel like the ugly sister. Compromising some je-ne-sais-quois-ish intangible part of us we thought we could live without can only ever end badly because two’s company but bringing along your masked alter ego for comfort ends up being a bit of a crowd.

Just a thought…