Posts

Posted on

Chapter 7: A Mad Tea Party

ACT I

A table set out under a tree. A house.
Evening.

The Hatter, sitting on a low mound, is trying to take off his hat. He pulls at it with both hands, panting.
He gives up, exhausted, rests, tries again.
As before.
Enter March Hare.
THE HATTER:
(giving up again). Nothing to be done.
MARCH HARE:
(advancing with short, stiff strides, legs wide apart). I’m beginning to come round to that opinion. All my life I’ve tried to put it from me, saying March Hare, be reasonable, you haven’t yet tried everything. And I resumed the struggle. (He broods, musing on the struggle. Turning to The Hatter.) So there you are again.
THE HATTER:
Am I?
MARCH HARE:
I’m glad to see you back. I thought you were gone forever.
THE HATTER:
Me too.
MARCH HARE:
Together again at last! We’ll have to celebrate this. But how? (He reflects.) Get up till I embrace you.
THE HATTER:
(irritably). Not now, not now.
MARCH HARE:
(hurt, coldly). May one inquire where His Highness spent the night?
THE HATTER:
In a ditch.
MARCH HARE:
(admiringly). A ditch! Where?
THE HATTER:
(without gesture). Over there.

Continue reading “Chapter 7: A Mad Tea Party”
Posted on

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to you nevertheless

Song of Myself

I celebrate myself, and sing myself, And what I assume you shall assume, For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul, I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy.

(2)

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes, I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it, The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless, It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it, I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked, I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath, Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine, My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind, A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms, The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag, The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides, The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much? Have you practis’d so long to learn to read? Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

Continue reading “You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, but I shall be good health to you nevertheless”
Posted on

Catherine’s rules for behavior for all entering these doors

  • Leave all ranks outside, likewise hats, and particularly swords.
  • Orders of precedence and haughtiness, or anything however similar, must be left at the door.
  • Be merry, but neither damage nor break anything, nor gnaw on anything.
  • Be seated, stand, walk, as you see fit, regardless of others.
  • Speak with moderation and not too loudly, that those present not have an earache or headache.
  • Argue without anger or passion.
  • Do not sigh or yawn, and do not bore or fatigue anyone.
  • Others should join in any innocent fun that someone thinks up.
  • Eat well, but drink with moderation, that each can always find his legs upon going out the door.
  • Disputes shall not be taken outside the izba† and what goes in one ear should go out the other before one steps through the doors.
Continue reading “Catherine’s rules for behavior for all entering these doors”
Posted on

独行道, Leið sjálfstæðismanna

時代、時代の道は外さない

Accept things as they are, not what you want them to be

自分の楽しみやトクを考えない

Seek not pleasure for its own sake

どんなことにも依存心を持たない

Avoid likes and dislikes

自分のことより、世のことを深く思う

Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world

生涯、欲望にとらわれない

Detach from desire

自分のしたことは、後悔しない

Avoid regret

善悪の判断に、他人を妬む心は挟まない

Avoid jealousy

違う道を選んだ人との別れや、心離れを悲しまない

Do not be saddened by separation

Continue reading “独行道, Leið sjálfstæðismanna”
Posted on

I am gone for euer. Exit pursued by a Beare.

“Shakespeare was the theatre’s greatest craftsman: he wasted no tortured ratiocination on his plays. Instead he filled them with the gaudy heroes that all of us see ourselves becoming on some bright morrow, and the lowly frauds and clowns we are today.”
H. L. Mencken

People are afraid to merge on the Queen’s Highway in London. This is the first thing I hear when I come back to the city. Juliet picks me up from the docks and mutters this under her breath as her carriage drives up the onramp. She says, “People are afraid to merge on highways in London.” Though that sentence shouldn’t bother me, it stays in my mind for an uncomfortably long time. Nothing else seems to matter. Not the fact that I’m eighteen and it’s December and the ride on the ship had been rough and the couple from Ipswich, who were sitting across from me in first class, had gotten pretty drunk. Not the mud that had splattered the legs of my jeans, which felt kind of cold and loose, earlier that day at a port in France. Not the stain on the arm of the wrinkled, damp shirt I wear, a shirt which had looked fresh and clean this morning. Not the tear on the neck of my gray argyle vest, which seems vaguely more Parisian than before, especially next to Juliet’s clean tight jeans and her pale-blue T-shirt. All of this seems irrelevant next to that one sentence. It seems easier to hear that people are afraid to merge rather than “I’m pretty sure Portia is anorexic” or the singer on the street crying out about aether. Nothing else seems to matter to me but those eleven words. Not the warm winds, which seem to propel the carriage down the empty cobblestone way, or the faded smell of marijuana which still faintly permeates Juliet’s hair. All it comes down to is that I’m a boy coming home for a month and meeting someone whom I haven’t seen for four months and people are afraid to merge. Dude, I haue neither the Schollers melancholy, which is emulation: nor the Musitians, which is fantasticall; nor the Courtiers, which is proud: nor the Souldiers, which is ambitious: nor the Lawiers, which is politick: nor the Ladies, which is nice: nor the Louers, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine owne, compounded of many simples, extracted from many obiects, and indeed the sundrie contemplation of my trauells, in which by often rumination, wraps me in a most humorous sadnesse.

By me William Shakspeare,
William Shaksper, William Shakspere,
Willm Shakp, Willm Shakspere,
Wm Shakspe

Posted on

Argued by Signs; Ha, my masters, a great secret!

SECOND BOOK, PANTAGRUEL

Foreword, Prelude, Beginning, Exordium, Explanation, Introduction, Opening, Overture, Preamble …

Most illustrious and thrice valorous champions, gentlemen and others, who willingly apply your minds to the entertainment of pretty conceits and honest harmless knacks of wit; you have not long ago seen, read, and understood the great and inestimable Chronicle of the huge and mighty giant Gargantua, and, like upright faithfullists, have firmly believed all to be true that is contained in them, and have very often passed your time with them amongst honourable ladies and gentlewomen, telling them fair long stories, when you were out of all other talk, for which you are worthy of great praise and sempiternal memory. And I do heartily wish that every man would lay aside his own business, meddle no more with his profession nor trade, and throw all affairs concerning himself behind his back, to attend this wholly, without distracting or troubling his mind with anything else, until he have learned them without book; that if by chance the art of printing should cease, or in case that in time to come all books should perish, every man might truly teach them unto his children, and deliver them over to his successors and survivors from hand to hand as a religious cabal; for there is in it more profit than a rabble of great pocky loggerheads are able to discern, who surely understand far less in these little merriments than the fool Raclet did in the Institutions of Justinian.

Continue reading “Argued by Signs; Ha, my masters, a great secret!”
Posted on

Satyricon, I need not go to the poets for evidence

Pars quarta

Then we all three swore the most solemn oaths the horrid secret should die with us

Operi modo oculos, et finge te non humana viscera, sed centies sestertium comesse. Accedit huc, quod aliqua inveniemus blandimenta, quibus saporem mutemus. Neque enim ulla caro per se placet, sed arte quadam corrumpitur, et stomacho conciliatur averso.

At this crisis amazement and consternation quite broke our spirit, certain death seeming to stare us miserably in the face. “I beseech you, lady,” I cried, “if you have any sinister design, put us out of our misery at once; we have done nothing so heinous as to deserve torturing to death.” The maid, whose name was Psyche, now carefully spread a rug on the marble floor, and endeavored to rouse my member into activity, but it lay cold as a thousand deaths could make it. Ascyltos had muffled his head in his mantle, having doubtless learned from experience the peril of meddling with other people’s secrets. Meantime Psyche produced two ribbons from her bosom, and proceeded to tie our hands with one and our feet with the other. Finding myself thus fettered, “This is not the way,” I protested, “for your mistress to get what she wants.” “Granted,” replied the maid; “but I have other remedies to my hand, and surer ones.”

So saying, she brought me a goblet full of satyrion, and with quips and cranks and a host of wonderful tales of its virtues, induced me to drain off nearly the whole of the liquor. Then, because he had slighted her overtures a little before, she poured what was left of the stuff over Ascyltos’s back without his noticing. The latter, seeing the stream of her eloquence dried up, exclaimed, “Well! and am I not thought worthy to have a drink too?” Betrayed by my laughter, the girl clapped her hands and cried, “Why! I’ve given it you already, young man; you’ve had the whole draft all to yourself.” “What!” put in Quartilla, “has Encolpius drunk up all our stock of satyrion?” and her sides shook with pretty merriment. Eventually not even Giton could contain his mirth, particularly when the little girl threw her arms round his neck, and gave the boy, who showed no signs of reluctance, a thousand kisses.

We should have cried out for help in our unhappy plight, but there was no one to hear us and besides Psyche pricked my cheeks with her hair pin every time I tried to call upon my fellow countrymen for succor, while at the same time the other girl threatened Ascyltos with a brush dipped in satyrion. Finally there entered a catamite, tricked out in a coat of chestnut frieze, and wearing a sash, who would alternately writhe his buttocks and bump against us, and beslaver us with the most evil-smelling kisses, until Quartilla, holding a whalebone wand in her hand and with skirts tucked up, ordered him to give the poor fellows quarter. Then we all three swore the most solemn oaths the horrid secret should die with us.

Continue reading “Satyricon, I need not go to the poets for evidence”