clarityclarence.jpg

you can't lick the words

on the screen of a Kindle

Two unrelated quotes from awesome poets

From Milton, on books and prudent, character-ful reading:

... However, many books,
Wise men have said, are wearisome; who reads
Incessantly, and to his reading brings not
A spirit and judgment equal or superior,
(And what he brings what needs he elsewhere seek?)
Uncertain and unsettled still remains,
Deep-versed in books and shallow in himself,
Crude or intoxicate, collecting toys
And trifles for choice matters, worth a sponge,
As children gathering pebbles on the shore. (Paradise Regained)

From the ever so clever Regina Spektor (nearly a full song, in fact), some technological metaphor for cold hearts:

You went into the kitchen cupboard
Got yourself another hour
And you gave half of it to me.

We sat there looking at the faces
Of the strangers in the pages
Until we knew them mathematically. 

They were in our minds
Until forever,
But we didn't mind
We didn't know better. 

So we made our own computer
Out of macaroni pieces,
And it did our thinking
While we lived our lives. 

It counted up our feelings
And divided them up even
And it called our calculation perfect love.

... 

So we made the hard decision,
And we each made an incision
Past our muscles and our bones,
Saw our hearts were little stones. 

Pulled them out, they weren't beating
And we weren't even bleeding
As we lay them on our granite counter top. 

We beat 'em up against each other.
We beat 'em up against each other.
We struck 'em hard against each other.
We struck 'em so hard, so hard 'til they sparked. 

Hey, this fire, this fire
I'm burning us up.

.... ("The Calculation")

"Would you write on a desert island?"

There has been a nagging recollection, about writing on a desert island with nobody to write to, that has till now eluded me. I knew that I would find some passage of that sort in a book I had read, but I couldn't put my finger down on which book. I did a quick Google search but found nothing. Pulling out David Foster Wallace didn't help; the essays he wrote were sublime but for the most part irrelevant.

Just this morning I finally remembered: Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea.

This excerpt contains a dialogue between the protagonist and narrator, Roquentin, and a "Self-Taught Man", whom I would not characterize as Roquentin's friend, no matter how much the Self-Taught Man might think himself to be so. The subject is brought up on account of Roquentin's writing on a historical figure. The excerpt begins with the Self-Taught Man — who has a penchant for piercing queries (although perhaps with the Self-Taught Man oblivious of his own irritating aquiline insight), astute and incisive enough to draw many a candid "ouch" or an "oof" from me — asking whether Roquentin shares his own sentiments about Socialism:

"Don't you feel as I do, Monsieur?"

"Gracious...."

Under his troubled, somewhat spiteful glance, I regret disappointing him for a second. But he continues amiably:

"I know: you have your research, your books, you serve the same cause [humanistic Socialism] in your own way."

My books, my research: the imbecile. He couldn't have made a worse howler.

"That's not why I'm writing."

At that instant the face of the Self-Taught Man is transformed: as if he had scented the enemy. I had never seen that expression on his face before. Something has died between us.

Feigning surprise, he asks:

"But ... if I'm not being indiscreet, why do you write, Monsieur?"

"I don't know: just to write."

He smiles, he thinks he has put me out:

"Would you write on a desert island? Doesn't one always write to be read?"

He gave this sentence his usual interrogative turn. In reality, he is affirming. His veneer of gentleness and timidity has peeled off; I don't recognize him any more. His features assume an air of heavy obstinacy; a wall of sufficiency. I still haven't got over my astonishment when I hear him say:

"If someone tells me: I write for a certain social class, for a group of friends. Good luck to them. Perhaps you write for posterity.... But, Monsieur, in spite of yourself, you write for someone."

 He waits for an answer. When it doesn't come, he smiles feebly.

"Perhaps you are a misanthrope?" 

Roquentin gives up the discussion after two paragraphs of internal monologue: "I am not a humanist, that's all there is to it."

This passage, or the memory of it, has been hounding me for about a month now, because I've often wondered whether I myself write for an audience, to try to better other people in any way, or merely for myself — and David Foster Wallace has some well-informed things to say on the subject, delivering with singular robustness and oomph.

However, having reread the passages that follow the excerpt above, I found that that question only uncovers a more pressing issue in Roquentin's life; and that issue is personally convicting, as Sartre deals with it using the naive Self-Taught Man's characteristically dazing verbal blows and the vulnerated Roquentin's insipid responses and acrimonious, exasperated thoughts. I am not prepared to cover it in writing yet.

After the Shock, or I Am Going to College

Last week, Wednesday, I woke up earlier than usual, about 6:30 a.m. There would be Latin later at 10:30. For some reason I picked up my phone and — you know what, I'll stop with the narration; I feel terribly inauthentic. (If I were narrating this aloud, the story would be littered with "uh"s and "um"s.)

Anyway, I got accepted into my first choice college, Wheaton College! 

"Dear Yuri Ben, It is my deep pleasure to inform you of your selection for admission to Wheaton College as a new freshman." That was great news to wake up to, really the news I'd been hoping for all college-app-season long; and I breathed a heartfelt prayer of thanks to God. I had been getting ready to prepare for college in Manila or even Davao, but along came this.

My goodness, my face, how my face must have looked.

Probably like this. This is as ecstatic as it gets.
He whip his hair back and forth.

As it turns out, I was very nonchalant outwardly ("It later transpired that I had said none of this out loud." - Sherlock). Maybe a sotto voce kettle-like hiss, but nothing more.

But anyway — I, am, going, to, college.

(Hey, cool effect. Jose Garcia Villa, whom I have not read, is famous for sticking a comma in front of every word in some of his poems.

Anywaaaayy...)

It's unreal. The idea of college was previously stuck up in theoretical limbo, and I couldn't feel it in my gut. I simply walked around thinking — knowing, somewhat — that I would be going to college some time in the abstract future. Which when pondered on often dissipates into wisps, and the idea of the future floats imperceptibly away —  but what? no matter. Intangible facts are so much easier to deal with than those that are palpable.

But after the unreality comes, insolently hopping and skipping, the visceral reality. I cried once, realizing that I would have to leave the city I've called home for an on-and-off fourteen years. But that was in a dream (I do my utmost to not appear a sissy in waking life) and I couldn't resist my subconscious in my dream. Thanks for nothing, Freud. At least I will be going to a place just a few miles from another place I have called home. I went to the DFA and picked up a passport renewal form. I never knew a piece of badly photocopied paper could be so intimidating.

Beyond that, I will have to start taking care of stuff. See? Look at that. I call responsibilities "stuff", not some concrete moniker, like cooking, or washing clothes (thank You, Lord, for the staggering technological advancement brought about by the laundromat), or — I shudder — talking to strangers. Ugh. I will have to grow up.

And beyond that, I will have to wear multiple layers of clothing. Because Wheaton is situated in the cold, bleak, flat, and beautiful Midwest. Snow jacket and scarves and snow pants and snow boots.

Because summer avoids the Midwest like the plague, right?

yep

And yet beyond that, I will have to start taking GPA seriously. And the fact that there will nearby be a legit library means that I will have to exercise temperance, because yes, that poetry collection is very enticing but
YOU HAVE A CALCULUS ASSIGNMENT TO FINISH, YOU SHIFTY NON-STEM MAJOR!

I plan to study English at Wheaton, because on the campus lies a collection of Inklings, Sayers, and Chesterton memorabilia, including the selfsame desk on which Tolkien wrote The Hobbit, and because, based on what I've checked of the course offerings, there will be tons of opportunities to study some of the authors I've loved in high school. There's also a chance of me double majoring, and I think I hear Ancient Languages calling my name. There is also a smidgen of a possibility of triple majoring, but that would take a whole lot of work, prayer, and coffee. But that's all tentative. Switching academic plans is quite easy, unlike in the Philippines, where a student will be penalized both financially and in length of study for shifting courses.

.

.

The reality of college is overwhelming at the moment, but I will have to get going.

To close this rambling... thing, I quote the opening of one of e.e. cummings' most famous poems:

"i thank You God for most this amazing"

What started as an experiment in common meter

A mountain hurled onto a fly,
The fly surviving still —
Scarce more than a mere fly am I,
And overwhelmed by hill
                                     Am I.

The psalmist wondered who was he,
God of eternity,
That he of time should know of Thee —
Timeless fidelity
                       Of Thee.

How much less I, the little fly,
Who with not even half
Of David's pious fervency,
That I should ask of why

Why the mountain fell on me —
Who serves* You shamefully —
The mountain of such levity:
That under so heavy

A lightness I should be
Crushed —
               and being crushed, blessed.

_________________

*or treats (I couldn't decide on which)
_________________

I have just finished a collection of Emily Dickinson's poems, and was struck by the skill and ease with which she poetized in common meter. Common meter is one of the most common (duh) rhythm schemes for hymns ("Amazing Grace," for example), and I've been hearing it at least fifteen years now. But Emily Dickinson's made me view it in a refreshed way, and I felt the impulse to try my luck with it. I borrow more than one theme from her poetry. Of course, I cheat: the first two quatrains (or cinqtains, is that what you call them?) both have little addenda. The fourth quatrain doesn't maintain rhythmic consistency. The third has a general iambic beat (not really) but uses off-kilter rhyme. And let's not bother with the quasi-couplet at the end.

thoughts on college no. 5

bathed in the crepuscular beauty
of a lamp's lonely dying light

a boy at the piano
sits and sees the last notes on the page


morendo




morendo






morendo





it is the movement's end
but not the end of movement


it is the beginning of another movement
but movement has never ceased for one moment

crescendo






crescendo

not yet



crescend

no!


any louder the boy can
not




but it is the beginning of another movement
although before his eyes a final somber
dance macabre

and it is the beginning of another movement
and the next pages are written

but not yet for him
pages blank without blotches

he must enter the movement
begin the movement

and play
without knowing the blotched end

knowing the theme but not
the end

the beginning but not
the end


"at the still point"


but he must enter the movement
for movement never stops

not even in
stillness


he knows not
the end

but he sees
blotches

he knows not
the end

but he knows he must
begin

Auden's "As I walked out one evening"

Loki reading W.H. Auden's famous poem:

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   ‘Love has no ending.

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

‘I’ll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

‘In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

‘Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

‘O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you’ve missed.

‘The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

‘O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

‘O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on. 

Two poems

Thoughts on college no. 4

In the blinding daylight
Of gilded future,
A boy releases a bird –
Two birds, five birds, and another –

And sits and stares and bathes
In the undulations of the daylight,
Blank-eyed, bleak-eyed, dead-eyed;
And the daylight dims as vision vanishes.

And out! a whirlwind – and a bird
Bearing a branch half-withered,
And another a twig, and another the same,

And another a branch bearing buds –
Almost alive, as though struggling to be alive –
And another a branch which had atrophied
Suspended in purgatorial stagnation –

And a last bird (a dove were it not trite)
Bearing a branch, a bird that told of the
Quiet deluge, that the flood was nearly over,
And that there would soon be dry ground –
For the boy hung in empyreal daylight –

And that the boy must soon descend
And dig his toes into the earth,
And grasp his fear and toss it
As a handful of wet dust,

And taste the fruits of the kingdom
And realize that the kingdom is not yet,

And feel the limestone edifices
And feel the marble, holy columns,
And feel in his heart a half-satisfied longing,

And feel a hand come over his eyes
And feel the earth come into his eyes
And feel the deadness come out of his eyes,

And that he must See
Into the gilded future, and See
Inside the gilded future, and See
Beyond the gilded future –

That he must See
And become a man.
____________________

Why I read fiction

On deep blue bedsheets
I knock on the door of a paper house
And open it, unbidden,
For no one is inside to let me in;

And in I go.

Sometimes I knock
On the door of a house
Not of paper, but of pixels;
I knock –

And in I go –

To Spain, to the gothic South,
To be excited, to get depressed;
In I go
In order to be moved

Without moving.

Coping with my being wait listed

From here:

At super-selective schools, where there are many more qualified applicants than can be accommodated, applicants are wait listed as a consolation. Instead of being turned down for admission, they are put on the wait list, the implication being, “We wish we could have admitted you, but there wasn’t room.” Diplomacy lives.

Regina Spektor's Far

Far is hands down my current favorite album, displacing The Strokes' Is This It. A favorite is "The Genius Next Door," which contains a painful and sprawling examination of human existence, similar to but going beyond the bounds of (another track of Spektor's) "Hero". "Laughing With" would elicit a hearty chuckle from Chesterton.

Ich glaube an die Evolution.

I'm reading a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry. Slant rhymes, obsession with sight and with death, and with nature and with bees.

I am ignorant about the chronological order of these poems, but I am fairly sure I'm witnessing her poetic development.

My own poems are rubbish at the moment, but maybe someday my verse will have evolved.

Maybe. and
Someday

Crucify him!

"Auden once wrote, in explaining why he was a Christian rather than a believer in some other god or great spiritual leader, 'I believe because he fulfills none of my dreams, because He is in every respect the opposite of what He would be if I could have made Him in my own image.... None of the others arouse all sides of my being to cry "Crucify Him."'" (Alan Jacobs, Looking Before and After, 98)

an overly idealistic attempt at a poetic essay

imago mundi

                only a draft

Images and the image

          —for it is only an image—

                                  of man—

                                      grayed out,

                                      corpulent, but

                                      sickly, (as a

                                      corpse)

                                      corpulent with info,

                                      sickly in mind.

Problems will perpetually plague

words—written words—

and they hulk yet larger in

the epoch of today.

Films, films, films.

“The Avengers was awesome.”

“Hey, you watched Divergent?”

No, I watched The Godfather.

But let me talk about films.

They’re the apotheosis of the

Image.

Moving images,

And thrill,

And you know I’m talking about the

Action film that Marvel/Disney has perfected.

The cume of these films are

Staggering

And the extent of their influence

Is enormous,

And, I won’t be a snobbish elitist here,

I love Marvel films (not Divergent, please spare me),

But they do eventually become scratchy disks

(But that metaphor isn’t relevant anymore, is it?)

And the thrill is gone away.

But I’m off on a rabbit trail

(Notice the inordinate amount of beginning conjunctions).

The reader will be alienated—

The serious reader I mean

(But what delineates “seriousness” in a reader, huh?)—

Because the reader doesn’t get the image pre-fab.

The reader has to create,

Become a co-creator of the image,

Has to actually use the faculty of

Imagination.

Imagination is usually lost after childhood,

But the reader who has read from five,

Who has read under covers with a flashlight,

In the car, in the bathroom,

Retains some of that imagination, no matter how vestigial.

I, for one, associate imagination with books,

Old musty books—

Wardrobes to Narnia, private portals to god-littered Greece—

Books which jump from thought to thought now,

Because the pages are like the hairs of my dad’s head,

Stressed out.

The book demands use of image-ing,

And children don’t mind,

And hence the teen, the grown-up who carries in the pockets of the heart

Some residue of child-ness,

Doesn’t mind, at least not as much as the non-reader.

But the pervasive pull of the image that requires

Minimal work

Affects even the reader.

                                        I mean,

Look at the state of the novel.

The Hunger Games, film-adaptable?

Yes. Divergent, Maze Runner, and what have you,

All adaptable for the silver screen?

You betcha.

Not that the popular novel hasn’t been perennially full of schmaltz,

But that it is now losing the one commendable quality it carried:

The impetus for imagination.

But now, how does the literary novel react?

Murakami and Rushdie both

Seem to think that the response apposite is to

Hie to the Weird Cave.

Franzen et the disaffected al. will not deign to use commonplace vocab.

But the power of evocative imagination is very much within the grasps

Of these, but what?
Filmability? 
Franzen has it, a bit.
But go back half a century. The 
Southern Gothic pack. 
Adapt Walker Percy's novels, Faulkner's.
Can't, huh
?

Rabbit trail again.

                             (I’m tired, can’t think.)

not a poem, but a play

"God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play; a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage-managers, who had since made a great mess of it." ~ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Good thing the play isn't left to the embarassingly incompetent actors.

i. can't. read

went to Booksale two days ago and bought
    a translation of Gilgamesh,
    a book by Alan Jacobs (Wheaton professor at time of publishing, now at
   Baylor - surprising find)
       on testimony: narrative theology but focused on the
                  individual contra
                         Hauerwas (heh);
      and a book on Spanish
            (embarassing, but I did
             just read Pablo Neruda
             and it doesn't seem a huge
             stretch: Tagalog, Bisaya, Latin, what could possibly
              go wrong? [Dunno, maybe
                  the fact that you might
                  not actually read it?!])

- and added a few poetry books to my incessantly expanding hoard of ebooks:
      Robert Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins
GERARD. MANLEY. HOPKINS.
Who in the world is
                              this guy?
What the heck is he trying
                                        to do?
Not only unconventional English,
   but also
      baffling, almost Greeky-Latiny word order (and if you've made acquaintance with either you know
       the struggle, the labyrinthine mud-miasma glare blur slap-facey struggle
[and such constructions as this are not beyond Gerard])
        baffling poems with the exception of
        "God's Grandeur" and a couple others
         striking evocative lines
              but only two and then
                  "let me revert to
                  nebulosity again plox.
                  thx."
Twenty poems in and I'm still all
      Wuuuuuuuu
          uuuuuuuuu
            uuuuuuuuu
              uuuuuuuuu
                uuuuuuuuu
                                t

- but
             anyway -
      
      Browning, Gerard Butler Leonidas Hopkins,
      Andrew George's translation of Gilgamesh (heh)
         [and this Alan Jacobs fellow has piqued
           my interest in Auden]

and I bought Jonathan Franzen's
     The Corrections
           500 pp.
   and do I have the time?
        Yes yes nope yes

But
         I
             Can't
                        Reeeeeead

The distractions
                                    T.V.

       Keyboard (BACH BACH BACH BACH)

               the Interwebs
                                     
                .                        Mooar books

(you ever get the feeling that you want to read something anything so bad you end up reading nothing and instead find yourself retreading the saccharine staircase down into the depressing dregs of the internet
     horrid
              feeling)

I read a chapter and it's still
  wuuuuuu(u-jollywell-near-infinity up-up-up the y-axis)t

    And mp3 music (muzak?)
        on my phoan

"I hear in my miiiind
all this muuuuusic
and it breaks my heart
and it breaks my heart
And it breaks my he-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-eart..."
              ~ Regina
                     Spektor

Interestingly, I read best when listening to Bach or to Mahler or
to Jack White's weird croons
   and Meg White's brutal beats,
"but that ain't whatchu wanna hear
  but that's what I'll do."

Frustrating frustrating
Frust
                                        
                     ra

                                         ting.