Discourse Analysis

Book Burnings

Hooded figures holding torches surround a bonfire of burning books and scrolls.
A group of cloaked figures stands in a dimly lit stone courtyard as they burn ancient scrolls and books in a large central fire.

Image generated by AI


Ryan and Don Roger

5

Book Burnings

            In 1492, the Spanish Jews were given the choice of conversion to Catholicism or of being expelled from Spain. Many chose to leave. Those who converted, and remained, were kept under constant supervision. In an effort to stamp out their faith, their books were condemned to the flames by the Spanish Inquisition. A similar burning of the books in Don Quixote’s library occurs in DQI, 6. Is book burning effective? Some people think so. Other people aren’t so sure.

            The Spanish conquest of Mexico, led by Hernán Cortés, concluded on August 13, 1521, when Spanish forces and their native Tlaxcalan allies captured the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan and emperor Cuauhtémoc, marking the end of the Aztec Empire and the beginning of Spanish colonial rule. The country was then called New Spain. 

Mexico is famous for its codices. These are fan-fold picture histories, drawn on vellum covered with gesso, of tribal conquests, social norms, tables of the gods, in fact a whole cultural and historical record of pre-Hispanic Mexico. The Zouche-Nuttal codex, for example, sets out the conquests of Ocho Venado / Eight Deer, nicknamed Garra de Tigre / Tiger Claw, a Mixtec warrior, who lived between 1063 and 1115. Five of the Mixtec codices survive. Many, many more were burned. The cover of the Vindobonensis shows the burn marks where some daring person pulled the codex from the flames and saved it. Without such saved codices, we would have much less knowledge of pre-Hispanic Mexico.

            Why is this anecdote important? Because prior to the invention of printing, in 1474, manuscripts were written by hand. Yes, some were copied, but many copies were single and unique. Burn the manuscript, destroy the knowledge it contains. Post 1474, with the printing of multiple copies of books, the individual book might be destroyed, but some books would survive from the printing sequence. Apply this to Don Quixote’s library and we note several things. First, Don Quixote’s copies are destroyed. Second, other copies of his books survive elsewhere. In addition, although Don Quixote’s books are burned the ideas in those books survive in the knight’s head and he lives by their rules. Those ideas are spread throughout the history of his adventures to everybody with whom he comes in contact. Conclusion – you can destroy the books. You cannot destroy the ideas that those books contained.

            Ray Bradbury, in Farhenheit 451, describes the burning of books in his dystopian novel. 451F incidentally is the temperature at which paper burns. The books are burnt in Bradbury’s world, but the book people survive. The book people are those who memorize their books and are able to quote them from memory and pass them on orally to other people.

            And people protect their books. How? By placing them in small rooms within their houses and walling up those rooms so that the books could not be found. This happens in DQI, VI – 6. Don Quixote awakes, goes to find his library, but it has disappeared. The housekeeper swears that a sage enchanter descended on a dragon and the library vanished in a puff of smoke. Don Quixote believes the metatheatrical lie and acts as if it were the truth. He then bemoans the fact that he is pursued by malignant sorcerers. These evil enchanters will pursue him throughout the novel whenever he wakes up from his illusions and is faced by reality. Clearly, the sage enchanters have robbed him of his moment of glory (illusion) and reduced him to sorry (the truth).

            Curiously enough, a 16th Century walled-up library was found in a house in Barcarrota, Spain not so long ago. The books were hidden, probably from the Inquisition, so that their owner could escape prosecution. The discovery sheds light on how individuals hid literature from the Inquisition during the 16th century in Spain. It also illustrates how closely Cervantes followed the reality of his times when writing the Quixote.

            You can destroy books. But it is very difficult to destroy the ideas they contain. In this fashion, although the burning of that one book ends the life of that particular volume, it rarely ends the life of the ideas contained within its covers. We might not recognize the names of the characters that Don Quixote quotes from his memory of those histories, but many of the people who encounter the knight during his adventures know them and remember them. Amadis of Gaul is never dead, not when his name lives on. The same is true of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. King Arthur is said to fstill be alive and can be seen in the shape of a White Crow, bran gwen, in Welsh. And even Walt Disney knew, and profited from, the legend of the sword in the stone.

We will also see, as we continue our journey, that in the same way that tall oaks grow out of small acorns, large parts of later events found in the Quixote already have their seeds sown in these early chapters. Metatheatre, illusion and reality, authorship and censorship, truth and falsehood, waking events and dream sequences – and that is just the start.

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.

The Numbers Game

Ryan and Don Roger

3

The Numbers Game

            The numbering of the chapters in Don Quixote is also interesting. While Part I and Part II often retain the Latin numbering, the chapters themselves can be found both with Latin Numbers and standard numbers.

            Latin numbers are based on six letters I, V, X, L, C, D and M. Each has its own value. I = 1, V = 5, X = 10, l = 50, C = 100, D = 500, M = 1000. Most have us have seen Roman numerals on clocks and we are familiar with the numbers from 1-12. I, II, III, IV (4, that is to say one before five), V, VI (6, that is to say one after five), VII, VIII, IX (9, that is to say one before ten), X, XI (11, that is to say one after ten), XII.

            This paradigm governs Latin numbers. XV = 15, XX = 20, XXX = 30, XL (ten before fifty) = 40, L = 50, LX (ten after fifty) = 60, LXX = 70, LXXX = 80, XC (ten before one hundred) = 90, C = 100, CX = 110. The date of my writing this MMXXVI (2026). You will have noticed similar numerical configurations on books and old movies.

            The ancient Celtic numbering system was based on the digits of hands and feet. Counting sheep, for example, or goats, shepherds and goatherds would count up to twenty on their toes and fingers. Then they would carve a notch in a piece of wood. To keep score was to score the notch.

            Something similar happens in Basque jai alai, the happy game.  The scorers score in groups of IIII which they then made into 5 with a line through the numbers IIII. Four groups of 5 made 20 and the 21st notch won the game. That scoring method may have changed, but it is certainly how I learned to score the game in the Basque country (Spain) back in the 1950’s. Curiously, modern French shows the vestigial remains of this – quatre-vingts. Welsh shows a somewhat similar diversity because the Welsh word for twenty is ugain – although it’s technically not the only one, with the alternative dau ddeg (literally two tens) becoming more and more common. A case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

            And we must never forget the old sterling system of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island. £. S. D. aka pounds shillings and pence. 4 farthings = one penny, 12 pennies = one shilling, 20 shillings = one pound.

Our good friends on AI came to our aid with this one. I quote – The pre-decimal British currency system, known as £sd (librae, solidi, denarii), consisted of 12 pence in a shilling and 20 shillings in a pound (£), totaling 240 pence per pound. Used until Decimal Day on February 15, 1971, this system featured various denominations, including farthings, sixpences, florins, half-crowns, and crowns. What about a guinea you ask? Well. That was £1 and 1 shilling. Hence the auctioneer’s delight.

            “What am I bid”?       >         “£20.”             >          “Guineas!”

Our trusted friends on AI sum it up this way – “A guinea was a British gold coin minted between 1663 and 1814, officially valued at 21 shillings (£1.05 in decimal currency) from 1717 onwards. It was the first machine-struck gold coin in Britain, typically worth slightly more than one pound. While no longer in circulation, it is still used in horse racing and some luxury auctions to represent £1.05.”

Luxury auctions – I love that phrase. And here we must leave our luxurious description of, and adventures into, numbers in Don Quixote! Just look where the journey has led us. And remember, in the same way that Cervantes inserted short stories, both spoken and read, that digressed from the main narrative, we can also insert such mental rants and ramblings into our own narrative. And we shall continue to do.

Here’s one, for example. How do you count goats in Wales? Click on these links for two examples. Counting the Goats traditional and Counting the Goats modern. Of course, wrth gwrs, the simplest method of all is to count their legs and divide by four! Try doing that with Latin numerals!

           

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 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.

Rage, Rage 54

Rage, Rage
54

Terminal and terminus,
they both mean nec plus ultra:
the Pillars of Hercules,
the end of the known world,
and my own world’s end.

I throw my hands skywards
in desperation:
“Is anybody up there?”
There’s no reply,
and I see no ladder
for angels to descend
or ascend.

Only the crows,
those black-winged
monarchs
destined to wear
the survivor’s crown,
cry out their anguish
as they wait for the day
when they’ll pick clean
my unburied bones and
rule this sickening world,
an earthly paradise no more.

Comment:

When I said “I am looking for a picture of a crow,” Moo went wild. “Me,” he said. “I’ve got one.” And indeed he had. Here it is – two crows perched like vultures over the body of a fast melting snowman. Our current world in miniature – and don’t forget the yellow snow and the doggy doing a dump. “Moo,” I said, “That’s not nice.” “True to nature, though,” he replied. “You want reality – you got it.”

Reality – what a strange word. Who knows nowadays what is real? The barber’s basin in Don Quixote – is it a barber’s basin or is it Mambrino’s Helmet? Good question. Relativism – it depends on your point of view. U a barber’s basin – turn it upside down Ω and it’s a helmet. So how do we deal with an object that has two functions and can be seen both as one thing and then another?

Good question. Cervantes solves the problem in his own unique fashion – U – bacía / basin and Ω – yelmo / helmet. Put them together and you get the neologism [newly invented word] baciyelmo – a basin that serves as a helmet and a helmet that serves as a basin. Wonderful – if it weren’t for the snout, I’d swear that was the origin of the pig-faced bassinet.

Some days, I try to understand all this – but I throw my hands skywards in desperation: “Is anybody up there?” Another good question. I often ask myself that question but I despair of an answer.

My friend Francisco de Quevedo voiced the same question in a dream that came to me last night.

¡Ah de la vida! ¿Nadie me responde?

Life ahoy! Will nobody reply?
Is anybody up there?
Will someone reply?

Blas de Otero once made a similar utterance –

“I raise my hands in supplication
– you cut them off at the wrist.”

Tell me, if you know, – what is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. And look at those crows, standing there, staring, waiting … waiting for their turn to come. Patient, eternally patient. Just standing around. Waiting.

Wild Life

Wild Life

I see green grass
Small ponds
Winding roads
Patches of sorrow

Turquoise blues 
Hills to climb
Softness
Strength 

Flowers blooming
A small animal
Covered in feathers 

An eye
Keeping watch
Purity of white

Ekphrastic Poem
©
Yolande Essiembre

Comment:

My good friend Yolande Essiembre sent me her Ekphrastic poem after viewing this morning’s painting by Moo. Wild Life II is a better representation of the colours of the original. However, Moo added in some (what he calls!) helpful touches – the black shapes that reinforce the suggestions of the original. Yolande wrote her poem based on Version I – but with the stronger colors of version II. Magic – oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. And all artists weave their webs of deceit. As Cervantes says – Tanto la mentira es mejor, cuanto más parece verdadera. / The closer it approaches the truth, the better the lie.

Imitatio – imitation – one of the bedrocks of classical rhetoric. “Imitation is the best form of flattery”. Flattery, yes, but what we find, in art above all, is that there exists only one original. However good the copy, the flattery – the imitation, if you prefer – it is never as good as the original. The original of this painting exists in one time and one place. The two deceptions are not the original. In fact, Wild Life I no longer exists because Moo has repainted it. It has turned into Wild Life II.

So many questions – which version do you prefer – I or II? De gustibus non est disputandum. There is no arguing about taste. Which is the better version? Well, each viewer must choose. But remember, each version is a deception, and each deception is a lie. And there is only one original. Oh what a tangled web we weave.

But we can, I hope, agree on one thing – Yolande’s verbal version (which I publish here with her permission) is verbally picture perfect. It is how she sees the painting. It is what the painting means to her.

Thank you so much Yolande. Moo and I hope to publish your words and visions more often. With your permission. we will do so.


Rage, Rage 7

Rage, Rage
7

Blood of my blood,
my daughter’s daughter,
time is not on our side.
 
I sometimes wonder
if I’ll survive,
if you and I
will ever meet again.

When we talk online
I see you trying
to understand, to hold
my image in your mind,
to figure out this shadow
that moves and talks
on the computer screen.

Words, born from old Welsh
melodies, bring poetry
to my heart, place music
on my lips.

But they fall short,
and fail to satisfy
my need to reach out
and hold you.

In spite of that I still survive
and live in hopes to see you
in our realities of flesh and blood.

Commentary:

When I first came to Canada, such a long time ago, I communicated with home by means of air mail letters written on special air mail paper that came in very thin, foldable envelopes. Very rarely I communicated by means of very expensive telephone calls of a limited three minute duration. How times have changed. Now via Skype (as was), Team (as is), Messenger, FaceTime, and other means, we can have unlimited face to face conversations, free of charge, with people on the other side of the world. And yet, face to face and screen to screen, there is still something missing. The cat senses it. She stares at the screen and sniffs – then she bristles and hisses. She fails to understand a known voice that has sound and movement but no smell.

And yet, what we now have is so much better than what we had before. Communication is so much easier. We have generated a generation that works in the audio-visual world, not in my preferred world of written verbalization. How we have changed. I can do so many things, in my head, that the younger generation cannot do, even with pen or pencil and paper. However, when my computer fails me, or my cell phone acts up, it is to that younger generation I go, because they dominate this new world in which we live.

I gave one of my academic articles to a friend the other week. “I can’t read this,” he said. “Tell me, what’s it all about?” I started to explain. “Hold on,” he said. He asked his AI program to read my article and generate, in words a 14 year old could understand, the main contents of my not-so-easy-to-read academic writing and thinking. About thirty seconds later, the analyzed contents appeared on the screen before him. I threw my mind back to when Coles Notes were forbidden. “Anybody caught using Coles Notes will be given an automatic F.” Then I looked at my own article, analyzed perfectly, and set out in the very way I had planned it, albeit with a simplified vocabulary – and the longer words explained in a sort of appendix. Quite simply, I was blown away.

Then my mind went back to my childhood in Wales. No running water, no electricity, no indoor toilets, no telephones, no television, a radio with limited stations and programming … imagine what we have come from – imagine where we are going. My only questions – will we control it or will it control us? And you know what it is. The clarion call goes out across the centuries. – Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Who shall guard the guards? Who shall police the police? Who shall program the programmers? Each generation must find its own answers to those questions. And the sooner you do it, the better because it’s not going to be my problem for much longer!

Carved in Stone 72 & 73

Carved in Stone
72

Is this world I create real?
Of course it isn’t.

It exists only in my head,
and on the page,
but perhaps, one day,
you too will see
the things I have seen.

Yet the world I describe
is as unreal as the words
from which it is woven.

73

Heraclitus once wrote
we can never bathe
in the same river twice.

This is the Catch 22
faced by all poets,
to remember,
and to try to recreate.

Shadow hands on cave walls,
colored pictographs on gesso,
hieroglyphics on papyrus,
ink on paper, raw words,
and in the end,
everything reduced
to these three little letters
carved in stone –

RIP

Commentary:

If you have read this far, we have walked a long journey together – 73 verses that comment on life and the meaning of life. Hard reading in places, easy in others. I trust you have enjoyed the journey and found some stops and resting points along the way in which to contemplate the ways in which the threads of your own life intermingle with mine.

Throughout this journey, I have tried to use a four step process. (1) Verbal – the poems themselves. (2) Visual – photos that intertwine with the verbal. (3) A Commentary – that goes beyond the verbal and visual and opens up the ideas a little more. (4) A Dialog between myself – the poet – and Moo – the visual artist who has so frequently loaned me his paintings when he thinks they illustrate my words.

It’s been a topsy-turvy journey through what Bakhtin calls a world of carnival, where little is at it seems, and the world is turned upside down. That said, we have a clear choice – to slide down the downside of this life, or to scale the upside, to contemplate, with joy and happiness, the world from those heady heights.

Blessings. Pax amorque.
And thank you for travelling with me.