a last.

“And the clash of our cries till we spring to be free” F.W.

I’d just like to preface that what I’ve posted bellow is not easy for me to share, I am not the kind that readily speaks of such issues, or in any way seeks comfort through confession. But purging myself is part of the ritual. And I am so overcome with jubilation--now that the colossus that so long eclipsed my world, has fallen and now lies asunder-- that I'm free of inhibitions.

This is sort of a personal cacophony, poorly written in places and important probably only to me, but it was brought on by this class, by Shakespeare and Dr. Sexson,

 I have felt entombed in dark depths, poured over by the grey still cement of loss.

I’ve buried more family and friends in the past year than I’ve made in the past decade.

I await the turnaround—my re-birth.

But birth never comes, I’m stuck in the: my re. myre. mire.

This bad poem is evidence of my stagnation.

I feel sealed in an early sarcophagus;  adorned with a painted smile.
.
I recede into books, but the solace is superficial and I spend more time watching my hair fall

making parenthetical paragraphs I forget to read.


I sing a song of metamorphosis


and wait.


This coffin is no cocoon.

-          It is no easy thing to feel so lonesome. And I have for some time.

-          I’m reminded of a song by Jackson Browne, (covered by many) entitled These Days

The lyric in minds that has seemed to consume my past year or so, goes thusly:

“Now if I seem to be afraid to live the life that I have made in songs… it’s just that I’ve been losing so long.”

******************************************************************************

Today though, is a happy day. The spell has been lifted.

I have awoken.

"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed O my dear"

Now that i've made my way back up those cilffs of fall I realize that mountain peaks are shaped by the voids around them. In order to find myself full again I had to first empty out.

---Phall if you but will, rise you must - F.W. ----

I owe this awakening to the material discussed in class: renewal, redemption.

I have been flooded lately with torrents of happenings, I have for sometime been entirely at the mercy of these elements, yet they show no forbearance. I have felt like Camus' stranger: adrift and exposed, affected by the world.  Often I have thought as Ariel did, "hell is empty and the devils are here." (1.2 Tempest)

Today however I was subjected to an epiphanic tempest. an unveiling of my world that has lifted the weight of woe. Let me attempt to recount:

As I have said, for some time this hollow solitude has left a husk of me—dried, cracked, and sans seed. This is due in large part to the passing of many people quite close to me, two good friends, a lover (my first), a grandmother and most painfully my grandfather.

Perhaps it’s wrong to quantify the hurt, but the passing of my grandfather not only left me devoid of person, but it severed that intangible thread, damned that river of remembrance.

 My ancient cistern has dried.

 The drought had left me feeling barren, and those ceaseless waves of loss seemed to wash away all my castles made of sand.

I endured this erosion.

 I know not how.

I shared Leadbelly’s great notion,

But when I jumped in that river, I instead felt baptized anew.

After class today, I walked with the idea of Shakespeare’s redemption.  

I felt like Prospero, my neglected Milan usurped by the world during a momentary lapse of reason.

My inattention.

I got into my car and put on some tunes that began my metamorphosis.

The power of song induced in me a synesthesia of the emotions.

The first, Here comes the Sun, by the Beatles

And the second, Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen .

And as hallelujah came through my crackling speakers, I witnessed the perfect visage of liberation: a once tangled kite, ripping free from a dying tree, then it soared, soared, skyward.

No words can accurately describe the transformation that I experienced, I felt the overwhelming urge to weep but found my self incapable. Instead I gasped, not short of breath, Instead as if I was breathing for the first time.




This may seem a bit contrived to my readers, but the difference in me is night and day.
It's really not easy to discuss a bought of the blues, but once you rise out of that mire, it is so exalting to experience a new found freedom.


The power of song can be so influential and transformative.
The awe inspired in me at that moment by Cohen truly deserves the so common Keanu colloquialism


It is very easy to be dismissive over the power of music. "it's just a song" is as commonly uttered as "it's just a story".


As with the Tempest, the storm is a farce. Prospero conducts a bewitching upon us all through the aid of Ariel. Prospero admits this, he lifts the curtain as it were,
"These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And, like the baseless fabric of vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with sleep."
though a performance, there is still no doubting the power of influence it has over the characters. Further, there is no doubting the power of influence it has had over us.




Caliban's famous soliloquy is most readily cited as apex example of this poetic power. He describes most eloquently the awe of illusion.
He like myself is affected by song, by the strange noises of the island. They are no more real than Leonard Cohen was for me. The question of "reality" should heed little regard, instead we must allow our selves to succumb to the sweet song.


Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.




In order to dream we must first submit to sleep.




It is that willing suspension of disbelief that unties our moorings and sends us swiftly adrift upon the moon taut tide.




If we follow Proseros redemption, we see the true moment of liberation comes not from the effect of his pageantry. Though through his tempest he regains and restore all, the climactic culmination of all restorative power is initiated by his letting go. By burring his staff and drowning his book.




It is as Lao Tzu said, "When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be."






It is a delicate waltz, a stasis between enchantment and exposure, that the true power of Shakespeare's work radiates.


PROSPERO

Now my charms are all o'erthrown,

And what strength I have’s mine own,

Which is most faint. Now, ’tis true,

I must be here confined by you,

Or sent to Naples. Let me not,

Since I have my dukedom got

And pardoned the deceiver, dwell

In this bare island by your spell,

But release me from my bands

With the help of your good hands.

Gentle breath of yours my sails

Mustfill, or else my project fails,

Which was to please. Now I want

Spirits to enforce, art to enchant,

And my ending is despair,

Unless I be relieved by prayer,

Which pierces so that it assaults

Mercy itself and frees all faults.

As you from crimes would pardoned be,

Let your indulgence set me free.

We must simultaneously loose ourselves, while maintaining focus.

This stasis has been popularized by such films as waking life, with the practice of lucid dreaming.

But it is a far more ancient ritual than that,

its thematics can be traced to the Egyptian and Tibetan Book of the Dead,
My synopsis is quite a hack job, but essentially these books describe the trials one must undergo once dead to pass on peacefully into the afterlife. During the death trial experience, the dead must be entirely awash and enthralled into the experience, but they must maintain a sense of focus, they must remember the way.

To connect all this takes one of those mysterious mental maneuvers. Shakespeare is simultaneously and Enchanter, and Educator and a Dismantler. Like gazing into the many mouths of Krishna we see the world created and destroyed in an instant.

Shakespeare creates these entire vast worlds, which delight and inspire. But a clever curtain is lifted as it falls.

once the play comes to a close, the plays significance is extrapolated exponentially. As in The Wizard of Oz (which I finally have seen) we are meant to see the man behind the curtain. Our doors of perception have been cleansed and we begin to see the world in its infinite self. 
to discover this path we must venture deep, leaving behind only the faintest bread crumb trail.

it is as in finnegans wake, while rushing back to sea of her mad feary father, entirely at the will of the water, yet still and solid in remembrance, "my leaves have drifted from me. All. But one still clings. I'll bear it to me. To remind me of. Lff!" - Finnegans Wake