"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need know.
Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn. I heard this quoted recently in the movie The Order, a fantastic movie which I can't believed I hadn't seen until now. It's always cute when movies try to work in something a little more literary, with a little more gravitas...I just wish the writers would at least look it up first and get an interpretation, if not the best one. The pronoun in these lines is deliberately ambiguous, but I believe this is an expression of the Urn's understanding: this is the limitation of art. Art makes truth seem so simple, almost within our grasp, and if the world shared art's understanding, then perhaps things would be simpler, and the world and I would get along better.
I think in poetry. I can only hope that there is truth in Heidegger's belief that art in its various splendid modes is a way of worldmaking, the practice of living. What is dangerous about art, Keats tells us, is that it is misleading; it makes dark pathways into gardens, the apparent the real. And yet I find that my life is far more fictional than my words: it is more carefully crafted and scripted; futures are planned like endings, giving shape to the narrative, even though they might be changed at a moment's notice; and events, people, they arrive like inspiration, to rearrange and wreak havoc on my designs, "thicken the plot."
My story has had some intriguing plot-twists of late. New Years...Better than I could have imagined. Of late, it seems, I'm always brought something new for the new year, like a reward for having survived the winter of my despair. What do I call you, this lovely invasion, this welcome disruption? "Ash is ash, and lust is lust." (A line from a poem I'm toying with.) I will call you Ash, because you are already too fictional to need another name. My new year was broken into islands of bliss, a succession of fantastic weekends. So good I no longer felt any hurry to leave the country. For the first time in an eternity, I felt things start to come together, and I began to reconnect with humanity. My humanity, the collection of faces I find lovely and worthy of existence. Not that they hadn't been there all the time: I hadn't.
Then came the interview. Three intense days, which were almost more training than interview. Sunday is the big presentation: teach a mock session, thirty minutes, lesson plan, the whole act. Driving back from Saturday, my car breaks down. I've driven to San Francisco for this interview: my transmission goes out driving up Geary and a bum helps me back my car into a spot out of the way. Hours pass trying to fix it, figure out what to do. I do half my lesson plan sitting in the middle of the City while vagrants clamor for my attention (read: money). I have the car towed and finish my lesson plan around two in the morning. Luckily, I'm staying at Adam's place, and he helps me figure a lot of this stuff out. And if I were paying for a hotel right now, I'd have to shoot myself. Sunday could have gone better, but it went well, and Monday I have the job. Yay me. However, no one fixes cars on Sunday, because people simply don't break down on the weekends...or something. So my car is in the shop...still...and I am currently a) not working, b) spending almost two thousand on my car, c) stuck in San Francisco, d) not allowed into Canada, because I'm a criminal or something (not important, just throwing that in), e) not going to Dark Pink tonight, or seeing Ash until this weekend. I should limp back to SoCal by Friday, once more in poverty and stressed to the max, only to rush back out to L.A. for some RnR. This whole enforced vacation thing is quite stressful, especially since I don't even have money for food until my next paycheck. Have to see about getting a bottle of vodka somehow, though. Priorities, priorities.
It's not easy having a good time. Even smiling makes my face ache.
Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn. I heard this quoted recently in the movie The Order, a fantastic movie which I can't believed I hadn't seen until now. It's always cute when movies try to work in something a little more literary, with a little more gravitas...I just wish the writers would at least look it up first and get an interpretation, if not the best one. The pronoun in these lines is deliberately ambiguous, but I believe this is an expression of the Urn's understanding: this is the limitation of art. Art makes truth seem so simple, almost within our grasp, and if the world shared art's understanding, then perhaps things would be simpler, and the world and I would get along better.
I think in poetry. I can only hope that there is truth in Heidegger's belief that art in its various splendid modes is a way of worldmaking, the practice of living. What is dangerous about art, Keats tells us, is that it is misleading; it makes dark pathways into gardens, the apparent the real. And yet I find that my life is far more fictional than my words: it is more carefully crafted and scripted; futures are planned like endings, giving shape to the narrative, even though they might be changed at a moment's notice; and events, people, they arrive like inspiration, to rearrange and wreak havoc on my designs, "thicken the plot."
My story has had some intriguing plot-twists of late. New Years...Better than I could have imagined. Of late, it seems, I'm always brought something new for the new year, like a reward for having survived the winter of my despair. What do I call you, this lovely invasion, this welcome disruption? "Ash is ash, and lust is lust." (A line from a poem I'm toying with.) I will call you Ash, because you are already too fictional to need another name. My new year was broken into islands of bliss, a succession of fantastic weekends. So good I no longer felt any hurry to leave the country. For the first time in an eternity, I felt things start to come together, and I began to reconnect with humanity. My humanity, the collection of faces I find lovely and worthy of existence. Not that they hadn't been there all the time: I hadn't.
Then came the interview. Three intense days, which were almost more training than interview. Sunday is the big presentation: teach a mock session, thirty minutes, lesson plan, the whole act. Driving back from Saturday, my car breaks down. I've driven to San Francisco for this interview: my transmission goes out driving up Geary and a bum helps me back my car into a spot out of the way. Hours pass trying to fix it, figure out what to do. I do half my lesson plan sitting in the middle of the City while vagrants clamor for my attention (read: money). I have the car towed and finish my lesson plan around two in the morning. Luckily, I'm staying at Adam's place, and he helps me figure a lot of this stuff out. And if I were paying for a hotel right now, I'd have to shoot myself. Sunday could have gone better, but it went well, and Monday I have the job. Yay me. However, no one fixes cars on Sunday, because people simply don't break down on the weekends...or something. So my car is in the shop...still...and I am currently a) not working, b) spending almost two thousand on my car, c) stuck in San Francisco, d) not allowed into Canada, because I'm a criminal or something (not important, just throwing that in), e) not going to Dark Pink tonight, or seeing Ash until this weekend. I should limp back to SoCal by Friday, once more in poverty and stressed to the max, only to rush back out to L.A. for some RnR. This whole enforced vacation thing is quite stressful, especially since I don't even have money for food until my next paycheck. Have to see about getting a bottle of vodka somehow, though. Priorities, priorities.
It's not easy having a good time. Even smiling makes my face ache.