Humor

Past Glories Restored

Ryan and Don Roger

10

Past Glories Restored

            What is it about madmen like Don Quixote that they find it hard to live in the present and always want to see themselves restore past glories however impossible it is to do so? The search for the beauty and peacefulness of the past is always with us. Many seek the perfection of the Garden of Eden, but wise men know that Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden by an angel with a fiery sword, never to return.

            Jorge Manrique (1440-1479) begins his Coplas por la Muerte de su padre with the statement that “a nuestro parescer, cualquier tiempo passado fué mejor.” / It seems to us that any past time was better. Why do poets and madmen always look back to the past, all too often with a view to recreating that which can never be recreated?

            François Villon (1431 – 1463?) asks, in his famous refrain to La Ballade des Dames de Jadis – “Mais où sont les neiges d’antan!” / Where are last year’s snows! Indeed, the theme of ubi sunt / where is – where are is a constant throughout literature. And where is last year’s snow? Can you tell me? It certainly isn’t in our aquifer. I didn’t even use the snowblower last year. Tell me, where did the snow go? I live in Canada, and we didn’t see it. So where did it go?

            Marcel Proust (1871-1922) searched for those lost times in his novel À la recherche du temps perdu. This can be translated directly as In Search of Lost Time. It also occurs, more poetically as Remembrance of Things Past. Unfortunately, the word Remembrance rather cancels out the idea of Search, not to mention the twin ideas of recalling and re-establishing. However, in the case of the madman, Don Quixote, it can be argued that all those meanings are correct. But what exactly does Don Quixote want to restore?

            Above all, Don Quixote wishes to restore the lost age of knight errantry. He is besotted by the fantasy tales of these knights errant and believes that he can be one himself and restore their glory with the force of his arm alone.  In DQI, II/2, The knight addresses the ‘ladies of easy virtue’ at the inn in these terms: “I beg you, ladies, not to fly, nor to fear any outrage; for it ill fits or suits the order of chivalry which I profess to injure anyone, least of all maidens of such rank as your appearance proclaims you to be.’ His language, which was unintelligible to them, made them laugh more. So, knights errant protect women, especially damsels in trouble, and women of easy virtue. That is one of their most important tasks.

            In DQI, IV/4, our knight meets the boy, Andrés, who is being whipped by his master, the farmer. Don Quixote stops the thrashing and makes the man promise to pay the boy the wages that are owed him. The farmer promises to do so, but when Don Quixote leaves, he ties Andrés to a tree and whips him so soundly ‘that he laves him for dead.’ Protect the innocent, then, is another task, one at which Don Quixote fails miserably, as we will see later.

            In addition to restoring the high ideals of the ancient order of knights errant, Don Quixote also wishes to keep the words and deeds of the ancient romances / ballads alive, and this he does throughout the book. His constant quoting of passages and deeds from the books of chivalry, those that have driven him mad, serves to keep them alive. As we said earlier, you can burn the individual books, and destroy them, but you cannot destroy the ideas they contain. Don Quixote, in his constant and lively embodiment of those books serves to keep them, and their ideals and ideas, vibrant in the eyes and the minds of the readers.

            Cervantes, perhaps a wiser man than many, restructures the theme by rejecting it – no hay pájaros en los nidos de antaño / there are no birds in last year’s nests. However, as we shall see, it doesn’t stop Don Quixote the madman, from searching for the glories of past times and from fighting for them in an effort to restore them.

And don’t forget Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918), who perished in WWI – “Ni temps passés ni les amours reviennent / sous le Pont Mirabeau coule la Seine.” “Nor past times nor past loves return / beneath Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine.”

Comment:

We don’t need a comment really except that The Olde Order Changeth Lest One Good Custom Should Corrupt the World. Interpret that as you will. And as Moo says to Ryan in the presence of Don Roger – “Hey, Ryan, look at all those changes in my painting.”

The Sowing of Acorns

Painting by Moo
PTSD Spatter
aka

The tangled web we weave
when first we practice to deceive

Ryan and Don Roger

9

The Sowing of Acorns

            Metatheatre can be defined as a play within a play. In DQI,7, the priest and the barber decide that one of the easiest ways to cure Don Quixote of his madness will be to wall up his library, so that he can find no trace of the room in which it was contained. They thought it might stop him from thinking about his books. Then they agreed to tell him that an enchanter had taken the books away, room and all.

            When Don Quixote asks the housekeeper about his books, she tells him that there is neither room nor books because the devil has taken them away. The niece joins in and corrects her saying that no, it wasn’t the devil. A sage enchanter descended one night in a cloud, dismounted from his dragon, went into the room, came out through the roof in a puff of smoke, and left no trace of room or books. He called himself Muñaton and said he had a grudge against the books’ owner. Don Quixote corrects her and tells her is must have been Freston. The housekeeper joined in with “Freston or Friton, but it ended in ton.”

            Cervantes has now planted several little acorns in the mind of the reader. Sooner or later, they will grow into large oak trees.

1. Metatheatre is based on a falsehood. The main character does not see the dramatic irony in the situation, but believes the lie that the other characters have spun for him. They write the play within a play, and Don Quixote becomes the actor in that play written specifically for him. This metatheatrical theme will recur throughout the novel and will become dominant in DQII.

2. The correction of speech – Muñaton (housekeeper and niece) becomes Freston (DQ), becomes Freston (the housekeeper), and then Friton, or something ending in -ton. The correction of spoken language will play a much larger role later in the novel.

3. The role of the evil enchanter who dogs Don Quixote’s footsteps and robs him of his greatest triumphs. This will start in the very near future with the adventure of the windmills.

4. The intersection of illusion and reality. This is really important for several reasons. Cervantes, as author, causes his characters to reveal the truth behind any metatheatrical (or other) illusion that concerns Don Quixote. He does not wish to trade, like Lazarillo de Tormes in false miracle. Clearly, he has no wish to be, like Lazarillo, castigado.

The simplest conflict between illusion and reality occurs in the first sortie. Don Quixote sees an inn, a humble country inn. Totally deluded, he believes it is a castle. Nobody contradicts him. Inn – reality / castle / illusion – but nobody really points out the difference. The adventure of the windmills is similar. Don Quixote sees giants. Sancho Panza sees windmills. Now the conflict is supported by a sane and reliable witness aka his squire. When one of the characters reveals the illusion, the author does not need to step in and do so. Throughout part one of the novel (DQI), we will see Don Quixote reacting in different ways to the unmasking of the illusion in which he so strongly believed.  This situation, as we will see, will be presented in very different fashion in DQII. One fictional month between the two parts – but, in reality, ten years in which Cervantes thinks, plans, rewrites, and deepens his plots while polishing his skills.

So many little acorns. So many sown seeds. Hopefully, we will soon be able to watch them grow.

House of Dreams

House of Dreams
(1 & 2)

1

The clematis unfolds
bruised purple on the porch.

Jazz piano:
beneath the black
and white hammers
of ivory keys,
old wounds crack open.

A flight of feathered notes:
this dead heart
sacrificed on the lawn.

I wash fresh stains
from my fingers
with the garden hose.

2

The evening stretches out
a shadow hand.

I feel my heart
squeezed like an orange
by long, dark fingers.

Somewhere,
the whitethroat
trills its guillotine
of vertical notes.

I flap my hands in the air.

They float there,
white butterflies,
amputated
in sunlight’s
net.

Comment:

So, rogermoorepoet.com returns to poetry. Happy days are here again! And Moo is happy too. I need hardly tell you he has been so upset since I started using AI to generate my images for me. Oh dear. He has been very Moo-dy (sic) recently. “But you don’t have a drawing of a clematis,” I told him. “Neither do you,” he replied. “That’s a holly hock.” “At least it’s the right color.” “How about if I find you a purple painting?” He smiled a shy, half smile. “Sure,” I said. “I don’t want to lose the human touch completely.” “I should hope not.”

So he present ed me with this painting. “It’s called u-r-my-sunshine,” his smile lit up the room and we were both happy. Joy to the world – it’s +5C here today and the sun is shining. In my heart. And in Moo’s eyes. We are all glad that joy has not forsaken us!

Distancing and Narrative Layers

Winding dirt path through misty forested mountains with conifer trees
A winding dirt path stretches through mist-covered forested mountains at dawn.

Image generated by AI

Ryan and Don Roger

8

Distancing and Narrative Layers

            In DQI, VIII/8, the author suspends the narration, leaving Don Quixote and the Basque with their swords in the air, frozen in time. The cliff-hanger, as it is often called, is not unknown in literary fiction, and yes, most normal human beings will want to know how this battle ends. However, read on – “But the unfortunate thing is that the author of this history left the battle in suspense at this critical point, with the excuse that he could find no more records of Don Quixote’s exploits than those recorded here.” Enter the second author – “It is true that the second author of this work would not believe that such a curious history could have been consigned to oblivion …” Would you believe it? We now have two authors a first one and a second one. So, would the real author stand up please?”

            Before he does, we have another little diversion. DQI, I-VIII/8 is only the first part of Don Quixote. We read at the beginning of DQI, IX/9 that “In the first part of this history, we left the valiant Basque and the famous Don Quixote with naked swords aloft …” So, logically, DQI now has two parts – DQI, Part One and DQI Part Two. Clearly, we are dealing with a novel that is writing itself, constructing itself, and changing itself as it creates, re-creates, and rethinks itself. More, “our delightful history stopped short and remained mutilated, our author [singular] failing to inform us where to find the missing part. This caused me great annoyance.” Fascinating. Please tell me, if you know, who is this me? It is a me who cannot understand the lack of a conclusion to the story he is reading. Indeed, he must now go seeking the sage who wrote this story, for all of these stories – historical records – chronicles – archives – journals – registers now forgotten – must have had a sage enchanter who recorded them.

            And this is how that sage was found. The first-person narrator “I” visited the Alcana in Toledo. There he bought a parchment book written in Arabic. He finds a translator who, on reading the book, starts to laugh at the mention of Lady Dulcinea, “the gest hand at salting pork in La Mancha.” This parchment becomes these books, and at the beginning he found the following: “History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Cide Hamete Benengeli, Arabic historian.” The first-person narrator then took the Arabic translator to his own house and there, in less than six weeks, he translated the history from Arabic into Spanish.

            The Ariadne’s thread that will lead us through this labyrinth goes like this. Cervantes (author), becomes Cervantes (first-person narrator), becomes Cervantes (commentator), who offers us the translator’s version, of the History of Don Quixote that was originally written in Arabic. Clearly a series of barriers between the author and his creation have been built. Everything is now deniable. And doubly so, since “if any objection can be made against the truth of this history, it can only be that its narrator was an Arab – men of that nation being ready liars.” And note that both Cide Hamete and the translator are Arabs – a double dose of distancing to protect our noble author from the long arm of the Inquisition.  

Hunt the Author

Open book with labyrinthine paper structure and calligraphy designs
A fascinating labyrinth constructed from the pages of an old book, showcasing delicate calligraphy and illustrations.

Image generated by AI

Ryan and Don Roger

7

Hunt the Author

            We have already seen what type of games can be played with numbers. Now we shall look at a different type of party game – hunt the thimble or the slipper turned into hunt the author. Where is the best place to hide a tree? In a forest. What is the best place in which to hide a book? In a library. What is the best place to hide a needle? In a haystack. What is the best place to hide an author? In a book, of course.

How does this affect our understanding of Don Quixote? Well, we are about to find out. But first we must ask the question, why would we want to hide an author in the first place? The answer to this is quite simple – to avoid punishment from the Spanish Inquisition, or any other authoritarian institution that wishes to ban books and punish authors for writing them. The best way to do this is to not put the author’s name on the book. Thus, Lazarillo de Tormes, said to be the first picaresque novel, was written by Anonymous. And when you check your history of literature, you will find that a great many books and poems have been written by that gentle person. Person, because being anonymous, we have no idea if he was a he or she was a she!

But who is the author of Don Quixote? Miguel de Cervantes, obviously. Who, then, is the narrator of the story? In the first sentence of the book, this first-person narrator reveals himself ‘in a village in la Mancha that I do not wish to name – de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme / whose name I don’t want to remember – in the original Spanish. A little later, DQI, II / 2, in an effort to distance himself from the text, our first-person narrator states that ‘There are authors who say that the first adventure he met was that of the pass of Lapice. Others say it was the windmills. But what I have been able to discover of the matter and what I have found written in the annals of La Mancha …”

So, we have our first-person narrator, but he is not creating this story, not at all. We know from 4 – Stage to Page, that our narrator borrowed the idea for this first sortie from El Entremés de los Romances. Now he tells us that multiple authors have written about Don Quixote and his adventures and that there are some discrepancies about what was his first adventure. Our narrator also tells us that he has researched the matter and found his account in the annals of La Mancha. Interesting. Annals, multiple writers, and our narrator is a historian who has researched the matter. What do we find when we hunt the author? Not one author, but multiple authors and a reference to accounts of the matter contained in the annals of La Mancha. Once again, AI comes to my rescue – “Synonyms for annals include historical records, chronicles, archives, journals, and registers. These terms refer to chronological accounts or records of events, often in yearly order, documenting the history of a person, organization, or era.”

            Curiouser and curiouser! Historical records – chronicles – archives – journals – registers -documenting the history of a person – what price creativity? No single slipper, then, at this hunt the slipper party, but a multiplicity of slippers, just like the Easter Bunny lays a multiplicity of eggs at Easter and hides them round the house. So much for the needle in the haystack – some haystack this.

From Stage to Page

An unrolled parchment scroll showing a sunset windmill sketch on a wooden desk with a quill and inkwell.
A beautifully detailed scroll depicting windmills at sunset rests on a classic wooden desk alongside traditional writing tools.

Image generated by AI.

Ryan and Don Roger

4

Stage to Page

            So many questions – so much to say. Let us begin by stating that Cervantes is one of the most original novelists the world has known. Then we can continue by stating that, in spite of that, like Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, aka Molière, he is not above borrowing his material from other writers. When Molière was asked where he found sources for his plays, he replied “Je les prends où je les trouve.” Cervantes might well have said the same thing.

            The source of the first sortie of Don Quixote is a short play, an entremés, called El Entremés de los Romances. These short, entertaining pieces were often installed between acts of a longer pay to keep the audience amused during the breaks. In this particular one, an old man thinks he is a knight and travels forth quoting the old border ballads and ballads of chivalry as if they were historical truth. Mind you, some of them were, or pretty close to it, especially those that carried news of the reconquest, but not all of them were true by a long way. The old man goes too far with his chivalry, gets a beating, and comes back home, draped over his horse which is led by a neighbor. Sound familiar?

            In classical rhetoric, imitation – imitatio in Latin – was the highest compliment one could pay to another author as it meant he was worth imitating. Today, imitation is considered more a scourge to be avoided, although if you follow the crime and spy shows on TV you will know that the same, or very similar, incidents recur again and again, played out in different stories by different actors.

            So, Cervantes starts out by imitating an older stage play and turning it from a play into a short story. This is creativity, beyond imitation, in itself. In this theory, the first story is in fact a short story, meant originally to stand on its own. This is not my theory, incidentally, I have borrowed it from my own teacher, Geoffrey L. Stagg, the man who introduced me to the scientific study of the Quixote. Stagg took as his evidence the first edition of the book in which he discovered an anomaly. The last sentence of Chapter Five ends in a comma (in the original, and certainly not in my translation by J. M. Cohen. I first read this book in 1965 – 61 years later, it is held together by glue and Scotch tape, a bit like Don Quixote’s helmet and armour!). To continue, the first word of Chapter Six begins with a lower-case letter, as if that word were joined to the last in the previous chapter. The heading of Chapter Six also runs smoothly into that first word as if they were joined. This suggested that in fact the two chapters had been united in a single story and had later been separated as the idea of turning the story into a novel dawned on the author.

            But who is the author of Don Quixote? Miguel de Cervantes, obviously. But who is the narrator of the story? In the first sentence, this first person narrator states ‘a village in la Mancha that I do not wish to name – de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme in the original Spanish. AI helps us out here. I quote – “Miguel de Cervantes was likely imprisoned in Argamasilla de Alba (specifically in the Cueva de Medrano) around the turn of the 17th century due to disputes arising from his work as a tax collector, or potentially a local dispute with a nobleman. This confinement, stemming from financial irregularities or local drama, is traditionally believed to be where he began writing Don Quixote.”

No wonder Cervantes, the initial narrator, does not wish to name that particular town. A little later, in an effort to embrace the readers and draw them into the text, the narrator uses the first-person plural- our text, followed by we make take it … we do not depart.

We will return to the narrative structure of the novel on many occasions. For the moment, we will leave the matter there. In narrative structure, the real Cervantes is the author. Cervantes, named or unnamed, is the narrator and becomes a part of the narration. I should add that the 1605 version of Don Quixote contains many short stories, that have nothing, or very little to do, with Don Quixote himself. We will return to these intercalated novels, as they are called, when we meet them later in the text.

What’s in a Name?

Ryan and Don Roger

2

What’s in a name?

            Don Quixote was first published in Spain in 1605. In 1609, Thomas Shelton translated it into English. By 1611 / 1612 the adjective quixotic, was already in use within English society. An AI search tells us that “In the 17th century, the term quixotic was used to describe a person who does not distinguish between reality and imagination. The etymology of the word began after the publication of Don Quixote in 1605.”

But what does quixotic mean exactly? Another AI search reveals that “Quixotism (adj. quixotic) is impracticality in pursuit of ideals, especially those ideals manifested by rash, lofty and romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality.”

            Why is this important? Quite simply because in English we say Don Quixote / Quick-sot, not Don Key-hoe-tay a bastardized version of the Spanish. Please note that the adjective, in English, is quixotic not “key-hoe-tay-ic” which is too chaotic to be practical. Note too that the French translators offer us Don Quichotte, while the Italians suggest Don Chisciotte. Both these languages conserve the original pronunciation – a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/, which is the same sound as the English “sh” in “ship”. This is clear evidence that the X of the original had a different pronunciation in the seventeenth century than it does today.

            My wonderful friends on AI confirm this as follows, and I quote:

In 17th-century Spain, the letter ‘X’ primarily represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/, which is the same sound as the English “sh” in “ship”. During this period, which coincided with the Spanish Golden Age and the “readjustment of the sibilants,” this sound underwent a transformation, shifting from the “sh” sound to the modern velar fricative /x/ (similar to the German ch in loch or the modern Spanish ‘j’). 

Here are the key details about the pronunciation of ‘X’ during that era:

Initial “Sh” Sound: Early in the 17th century (and before), words that are now spelled with ‘j’ or ‘g’ were spelled with ‘x’ and pronounced as “sh.” For example, Don Quixote was pronounced “Don Keesh-o-teh”.

The Sibilant Shift: During the 16th and 17th centuries, the sound /ʃ/ (written as ‘x’) and the voiced /ʒ/ (written as ‘j’) merged into a single voiceless sound /ʃ/. Later in the 17th century, this sound moved backward in the mouth, evolving into the modern velar /x/ (the modern ‘jota’).

And this is just the beginning and what’s in a name? For example, what is the real name of Sancho Panza? Is it Sancho Panza or Sancho Zancas [DQI,9]? How about his wife? Is it Juana Gutierrez or Mary Gutierrez [DQI, 7]? In the same chapter she is called Teresa Panza, the name that stays with her throughout the novel.

And what about Don Quixote himself? Is his real surname Quixada, Quesada, Quexana [DQI,1] or Alonso Quijano el Bueno [DQII,74]? Don Quixada de la Mancha aka Don Quesada de la Mancha aka Don Quexana de la Mancha – and we won’t mention the alternate names he takes – the Knight of the Sad Countenance or the Knight of the Lions!

Fascinating, eh? So, after all that, tell me – what’s in a name?

Riding Buddies – Reading Buddies

Ryan and Don Roger

1

Riding Buddies – Reading Buddies

            Don Quixote makes three sorties. The first is very brief, about five chapters. The second is much longer. And the third is 74 chapters in length. Each sortie is different. For now, I would like to take a brief glance the difference between Sortie 1 and Sortie 2.

            Sortie 1 – Don Quixote sets out on his own. He travels to an inn, has adventures there, gets knighted by the inn-keeper, albeit falsely, and after an unequal combat in which he is bruised and battered, he is brought back home by a neighbor.

            When the inn-keeper asks Don Quixote for payment, the knight replies that knights errant do not carry money with them, nor do they pay for their food and lodging. The inn-keeper recommends that Don Quixote find a squire to attend, one who can carry the money and the other things that a knight needs. Our knight takes this recommendation to heart.

            Sortie 2 – In this second sortie, Don Quixote has a companion. One of the main differences between the first and second sorties is that the knight now has a squire with whom he can talk. This dialog between knight and squire, master and servant, is key to the understanding of the novel.

            Their contrasting points of view, Don Quixote literate, a believer in reading, with a firm belief that all books of chivalry are true, contrasts immediately with the illiterate Sancho, his squire. Where Sancho sees reality – the windmills are windmills – Don Quixote sees illusion – the windmills are giants, waving their arms, and threatening to attack. This is a simplistic summary, but we will leave it there for now.

            Graham Green understood the nature of dialog when he penned his novel, Monsignor Quixote. In the film, available free of charge on YouTube, the Catholic Priest (now a Monsignor) and his friend, the Communist Mayor (now defeated in an election and unemployed) leave the little town in which they live, and set out on a journey of adventures, much in the same way that Monsignor Quixote’s namesake sets out in Cervantes’s novel.

They do not have a horse and a donkey. However, they do have Monsignor Quixote’s car, nicknamed, of course, Rocinante, in which to travel. The key to Green’s novel is the constant dialog between the mayor, knowledgeable in the ways of the world, and Monsignor Quixote, innocent of the world outside his church and full of illusions about the reality of that world. It is easy to think of them as riding buddies who converse.

            So, what is a reading buddy? Well, Don Quixote is a long book, over 1000 pages, with 127 chapters. Many readers set out in search of adventure, but do not keep reading. However, a wise reader will set out on that journey with a reading buddy, who will travel with him, step by step, chapter by chapter. Each will keep the other company, and one of the delights of the journey will be the constant conversation between the reading buddies.

            I am Don Roger. My reading buddy is Ryan. I am short and stout. Ryan is tall and thin. We have reversed the Sancho / Quixote image, but we are both equally insatiable in our search for knowledge. The curious thing is that I have read Don Quixote 28 items, mainly in Spanish, but also in English and French. Ryan is reading it for the first time, but he is an expert in AI access and is helping me to understand the wily ways of that electronic world of short cuts. Of course, it helps you to sort the chaff from the grain when you know what you are looking for and just use AI to refresh your fading memory!

            I am full of the illusions of the academy. Ryan reads with a sharp mind, a keen wit, and no illusions at all. He sees only the reality of what is there. Together we have embarked on a journey that is in the process of opening our eyes to two different realities his and mine – Ryan’s and Don Roger’s. The conversations that we are having along the way, will be the subject of this little discourse on Cervantes’s novel.

Rage, Rage 58

Rage, Rage
58

“What is this sound?”
It is your own death sighing,
groaning, growing
while you wait for it
to devour you.

“What is this feeling”
It is the itch of your own skin
wrinkling and shrinking,
preparing to wrap you
in the last clothes you’ll wear.

“What is this taste?”
It is the taste of your life,
bottled like summer wine
once sweet tasting,
now turning to vinegar.

“What is this smell?”
It is waste and decay,
the loss of all you knew
and of all that knew you.

“That carriage outside?”
It is the dark hearse
come to carry you
to your everlasting home.

Comment:

Moo thinks that his portrait of me is perfectly good for this poem. He told me not to rage, rage against the accuracy of the portrait, but he did tell me to rage, rage against the lack of paper. Où est le papier, indeed. As for the rest of it, he said it’s the same for everyone, so stop making a fuss about it. “You’ve got one last bottle of mescal on the shelf,” he told me. “I know. I’ve seen it. Just swig it down, worm and all, and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

Oh dear. The worm in the bottle. They used to sell the gusanos in Oaxaca’s mescal street at a price of five for ten pesos. I used to buy a two litre coke bottle, filled with mescal from a barrel, and drop ten worms in it. They made yellow streaks as they descended through the liquid. Sweet dreams when you chewed on that lot – and an end to your worries. El brujo, the witch doctor, told me to stick a marijuana plant in the bottle of mescal and when the leaves turned white to rub the liquid into my arthritic knees. “Which doctor was that?” one of the tourists in my apartment block asked me. But I didn’t tell her. Nor did I do it. A waste of good mescal. And to think I now have one last half bottle left. And one little squirmy, crunchy, chewy worm.

Speaking of chewy, crunchy – I had never eaten chapulines, fried grasshoppers, until I went to Oaxaca. I didn’t like the look of them. At the first party I attended was confronted by the host who demanded I eat some. I told him they were taboo, against my religion. He shrugged. When he, and the other guests lost interest in my presence, I tried a couple. They were delicious. A real delicacy. I loved their crunchy little legs.

I guess one is always afraid of the unknown – the gusano in the mescal, the chapulines on the plate, that first plate of calamares en su tinta – squid in its own ink. I love bara lawr – Welsh laver bread – or Welsh caviar, as Richard Burton used to call it. I also know that people who have never eaten bara lawr won’t go near it – it looks like cow pats – but luckily doesn’t taste like them. Don’t ask me how I know. Some people get over their fear of the unknown, others don’t. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

Rage, Rage 55

Rage, Rage
55

I walk on thin ice
at the frayed edge
of my life.

I search for the key
that will re-wind me,
but I fail to find it.

Who will winch up
the pendulums on
my grandfather clock,
resetting it
in spring and fall?

Who will watch
time’s sharp black arrows
as they point the path
of moon change
and the fleeting hours?

Each hour wounds,
or so they say.
Who will tend me
when that last one kills?

Comment:

Omnia vulnerant, ultima necat. / Each one wounds, the last one kills. That’s how the Romans thought about the collection of hours that make up a day. An interesting way of putting it. In lapidarian fashion. Four words that are worth a whole book of philosophical thought.

What is this thing called time? Good question, and one which is being asked more and more. Clearly time does not flow evenly within the human mind, though it is remarkably regular on the clocks we have invented to mark time for us. And remember, there are many types of time – seasonal time – spring time, summer time, autumn time, winter time. Strange that autumn – or fall as I have now learned to call it – is the only one that doesn’t have the word time attached to it.

And what about time changes – spring forward, fall back – when we change our clocks in order to make the most of daylight hours. A tedious process for many of us. I see some provinces are rejecting those changes and sticking to the same time, all the year round, from season to season. Personally, I would prefer life without those time changes, as would many of my friends.

Celestial time also known as sidereal time – the time as showed by the planets as they seem to march around the earth in the terra-centric universe. Rephrased, the positions of the planets as the earth turns slowly round the sun in the helio-centric universe.

Then there is the personal time of individual experience. An hour watching football or rugby on the tv set passes much more quickly than an hour passed in the doctor’s waiting room or the dentist’s chair. Of course, an hour watching a five day cricket test can also be a slow process, unless England are playing Australia in the Ashes. As one friend of mine commented, a long time ago, “I thought those English cricketers were unfit. But I’ve never seen anyone go out to bat and come back to the pavilion so quickly. They must be super-fit.” Alas, their cricketing problem, as usual, was centered on the three cants – can’t bowl, can’t bat, can’t catch.

En fuga irrevocable huye la hora.
La que el mejor cálculo cuenta
en lectura y lección nos mejora.

Irrevocable is the hour’s flight.
The one that counts the most
in learning or reading improves us.

Francisco de Quevedo
(1580-1645)

And remember – the hours fly by and your time is limited – spend it wisely and enjoy each and every day to the full limits of your abilities.