the world is what you make it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpSZa00-3eM

Earlier I posted a blog on the poem Gubbinal in which I pointed out the what I understood to be the true essence on the short poem, focusing on the line of "It is just as you say. Have it your way. Rather than the lines "The world is ugly, and people are sad." and that fitting with Steven's lucrition ideals, the meaning of this poem is that the world is what you say it is and that the fact the world is ugly is because people make it that way and thus they are sad. so when I cam across this video, this poem immediately came to mind. the Kiwi in the video being a flightless bird is not satisfied with its lot in life, but rather than seeing that as the poem suggest as an ugly world, it decides to have it his way. he creates a world where he can fly, through the toil of hauling countless trees up that unimaginably high mountain. the kiwi is also demonstrating acceptance of the other lucrtion ideal of not fearing death. it creates for itself this world where it can experience the joy of flight, but this pursuit will certainly result in its untimely demise. but that does not stop it, it runs at that cliff head on.

When I first found this video, it was not placed to this song, Mad world, and it didn't seem right, but this song is perfect. the lyrics of the song rather than explain where the kiwi is at, it explains where it is coming from. the song explains a world full of grey, same, and sad; where people wake everyday to a life that is the same day after day and a life that is truly unlived. It is from this world that we find the kiwi, simply fed up with this life, and reaching for a different on, a better one. to do what the woman whos song is beautiful because she was its creator.

I think that this video will change my life. as inconsequential as it seems being a simple cartoon, in conjunction with this class it has become something more to me. I want to be this kiwi, to show the bravery to not simply except this world, but to make it what I want to to be. I want to have a mind of winter.

A damsel with a dulcimer

When we talked the other day in class about the power of music and the connections it shares with poetry, it tickled some part of my brain from another Sexson class. As Rio so masterfully demonstrated a few weeks ago, last semester in Oral Traditions we were all tasked with giving over a section of our brain the memorization of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan; in which there is a section that speaks to this idea of the power of music. The verse in question is:

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinan maid.
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air
That sunny dome those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle around him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
and drunk thee milk off paradise.

Here we see the same transformative powers of music we were discussing in class, that Kubla could only achieve this fantastical dream of creating this other worldly palace with the aid of her music so beautifully powerful. All of which is presented to us in the most gorgeous opium induced verse of all time.

adagia

"It is the belief not the god that counts" - Wallace Stevens

This quote really hits home with me as an agnostic. I was raised without religion, and such have always thought of it as illogical, but there is something to be said for having faith, for being in this way illogical. In its best form, religion fills people with hope. Whether that hope is for a better life after this one, that people will reap what they sough, or that simply there is someone watching out for us, religion gives hope. People of faith sacrifice logic for hope, which is in a lot of ways stronger, in that logic can be disproved, and thus taken away, but faith is harder to shake. Its for this reason I have always been envious of those with faith because even if they are wrong and I'm right, and we all just go into the ground when we die, they'll still have lived every day of there lives unaware of the great nothing to come, and were able to hope for something more.

Gubbinal

That strange flower, the sun,
Is just what you say.
Have it your way

The world is ugly,
And people are sad.

That tuft of jungle feathers,
That animal eye,
Is just as you say.

That savage of fire,
That seed,
Have it your way.

The world is ugly,
And people are sad.

Wallace Stevens


When I first read this poem it seemed to me to be in direct contrast with what we had learned about Stevens' views on life. In that this poem seemed to be overwhelmingly pessimistic, where as Stevens is usually an idealist. However upon a second look i realized that the truth of the poem, is a comment on exactly how not to live. Before the lines of "the world is ugly, and people are sad", it says "is just as you say. Have it your way." and between these two line we see the classic Stevens battle between reality and imagination. This poem is saying the life is what you make it, but people insist on making life ugly, and there fore they are sad.

Earthly Anecdote

Every time the bucks went clattering
Over Oklahoma
A firecat bristled in the way

Wherever they went,
They went clattering,
Until they swerved
In a swift, circular line
To the right,
Because of the firecat.

Or until they swerved
In a swift, circular line
To the left,
Because of the firecat.

The bucks clattered.
The firecat went leaping,
To the right, to the left,
And
Bristled in the way.

Later, the firecat closed his bright eyes
And slept.

Wallace Stevens