Off the Cliff

 Had to look up a line from Campion's 'When thou must home to shades of underground' which naturally led to a number of webpages discussing the poem, some of which seemed to be talking about, and quoting, some other longer poem entirely, and all of which took the last line, 'Then tell, oh tell, how thou didst murder me' completely literally. Which had never even occurred to me. They want to make this a Long Black Veil scenario, dead lover seeking revenge, and I always assumed it was the usual Catullan griping of a spurned lover complaining about She won't screw me. I'm still not convinced of the other reading, especially since at least one commentator misread tourneys as journeys and warbles on about how the poet is remembering all their good times together presumably before she did him in, and another maintains that the thou is actually an I, and the poet is considering his own future death. Which of course makes nonsense of the last line.

Ill-considered sip of Pepsi last night led to insomnia, so I looked at some of my Japanese grammar books on the uses of mono and koto, and when that failed to send me to sleep, started The Cricket Term. Which turns out to be the origin of that useful phrase, 'she so clearly could if she would, it's past belief the state she gets into.' Cricket Term is the last readable Forest, by me. The Attic Term has an unplaceable edge of hysteria to it-- well, not unplaceable, because a lot has to do with Patrick's reactionary Catholicism, but the Kingscote staff too seem a lot more demented than usual and the whole thing has a lowering atmosphere to it. I haven't read Run Away Home but from what I hear, it sounds like much of the same.

Hanh. Way back in the fall of 2021 I was kvetching about not being able to find the source of my 'early something and wise in season' mental tag, and remarked that my vague recollection was it ended with someone putting a bullet through his head. I must have been paralyzed by pre-op nerves because I can't explain such denseness otherwise but *of course* people putting bullets through their brains is Housman, and there we are, transposed as is my annoying wont, 'early wise and brave in season/ Put the pistol to your head.' So that's settled anyway.

You know, I don't think I've ever seen a copy of Yoshitoshi's Sotoba no Komachi for sale and I probably wouldn't have bought it in my giddy thirties even if I had. But that's really a wonderful picture. This is the great beauty Ono no Komachi, she of the famous hana no iro:

as the color of the blossoms
has lost its luster
to no avail
so I have passed through life
gazing at the rains

'heartless beauty mourns her futile life and her vanished beauty' etc etc.

Yes, well-- *look* at her. In Yoshitoshi's picture she's smiling. Possibly 'I can smile at the old days/ I was beautiful then' but equally possibly 'there's still beauty left around me and it ain't bad at all.'

Kept waking last night because knee was panging-- my 'good' knee, which is distressing. Of course it did that before, but that was thirty pounds ago. It was quiet up until a month or so ago and then started catching at me in bed. And now... gloom doom oh dear. So when I woke up at 10 (after going to bed at 2) I turned over and went back to sleep because I didn't feel like facing the day, and was confident that the garbage trucks with their mastodon roars would wake me soon enough anyway.

But the garbage trucks didn't show up until almost noon and I was gifted with a classic anxiety dream where Ma Bell had changed all the keypads on everyone's phone and computer 'for security reasons' so now there were always two keypads and the numbers weren't in any order, were interspersed with random symbols, and were occasionally only raised metal that had to be held in a certain way under the light to be visible. I wanted to use my phone because somehow it ran on the old system (I think this was influenced by Livejournal's various coding changes in the past) but I couldn't find my phone and my brother wouldn't/ couldn't call from his phone so I could locate it and it might have been in the bedroom but Bossy Blond Friend 1 was sleeping in my bed or maybe it was the Indian gentleman in a turban who was there for some reason I'd forgotten.

Dream hangover stayed with me all day which I wasted doing nothing, not even minimal exercise. Did finish a collection of murder mystery stories, did read a bit more of Zen poetry in translation (which contains the most nearly satisfying rendition of the ato in Basho's 'tsuwamonodomo ga/ yume no ato'-- 'all that remains of warriors' dreams'. That 'ato' has troubled a lot of people- 'mighty warriors' dream traces', for example. I think the rolling tsuwamonodomo is better expressed as 'mighty warriors', instead of just warrior or samurai. And of course it's not a possessive either: the warriors are the subject. Really a stunningly compact treasure box of a poem.)

Half an ativan unaccountably failed to put me to sleep but did loosen the muscles up so that I awoke relatively limber. Two hours in the dentist's chair took care of that, but it was nice while it lasted.

OTOH I swear there's a special feature cab drivers use that renders one's phone mute because this is the second time this week a cabby has called me from precisely the wrong location, and though I had my phone in my pocket on 'ring and vibrate' I registered nothing. But when I say I'm at 2 Carleton there's no point you sitting in front of 8 Carleton behind a truck so I can't see you, calling me up to demand where I am in cellphone garbled blabbidyblah. Equally, when I say King and University on the University side, why are you sitting a block away at York St? Why, because that's the main entrance for the building at King and University and the dispatcher said nothing about 'waiting on the University side.' This is why cabbing it is such a fraught activity and I hope I'm done with it for a bit. Though with the gales of March/ April being as they are, there's no guarantee.

Finished?

Nghi Vo, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain
-- still have a hold on the first volume but this novella is fun.

Pratchett, Reaper Man
-- not intentionally, but read on the fifth anniversary of his death

Plutarch, On Friendship
-- or whatever its title is. Mostly about false friends/ flatterers which, as I say, is a breed the common person is not likely to encounter. Two more essays and I'm done with this, and a good thing too because the book is falling apart *and* smells strange.

Mabinogion, The Lady of the Fountain and Peredur
-- oogie. Then started Culhwch and Olwen and dear god you if thought the Catalogue of Ships was bad... Can't see me going farther with this.

Reading now?

Gardner, ed, The Metaphysical Poets
-- let's get this straight: I do not like the metaphysical poets, those clever-clog snots. By me they write the most unpoetical poetry it's possible to write. As Gardner says, "...the constant complaint of its critics is that it confuses the pleasures of poetry with the pleasure of puzzles. ...its lovers have always a certain sense of being a privileged class, able to enjoy what is beyond the reach of vulgar wits." Of course Peter Wimsey always has a volume of Donne about him, just to demonstrate how superior he is.

But I read this to have it read after umm 45 years maybe? and as I'm slogging along through the earlier metaphysicals I suddenly find myself in very familiar territory. It says it's Southwell, Mary Magdalens Complaint at Christ's Death, but here in the middle:

O true life, since thou hast left me,
Mortell life is tedious,
Death it is to live without thee, 
Death of all most odious.
Turne againe, or take me with thee,
Let me dye or live thou with mee.

This and the next two verses I know as  a song by Thomas Morley that actually reverses the order of the stanzas. And works very well as such, but the rest of Southwell's poem doesn't fit the tune at all. I mean, maybe all the metaphysicals need is a musical setting to render them palatable?

Next up?

Many things on hold in both e- and paper format, and I could make some of the latter active. Or I could go on rereading Pratchett.

 I must have been channeling zeitgeist, because I was awake at 7 a.m., irrevocably dry-eyed awake a mere six hours after going to bed. To bed, note, not to sleep, because it takes me 45 minutes to fall asleep. So I did double the usual number of exercises and had breakfast at a normal hour. And the day's Event passed off without fuss. I'm not used to living in Normal any more. It feels most peculiar. And of course, it's only superficially normal. Abnormal is still around, still screaming that their führer wuz robbed. But for now, some things are getting yanked back on track.

Finished?

Raverat, Period Piece
-- growing up in Cambridge in the 1890s. And whatever was happening in the haute and demi monde, Raverat (née Darwin) makes it clear to me that the middle classes were still bound by a stifling puritanism. Maybe not the Darwin sons, per se, but their wives, yes indeed.

Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and other travel sketches
-- now must go look at another translation to see what his poems really say, because Yuasa's four line expansions really annoy me.

Reading now?

Coupla doorstoppers as a months-long reading project

Montaigne, Essays, and Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium

Sacks, Hallucinations
-- because an acrostic I did was an excerpt in which he once saw the colour indigo in the Egyptian collection at the Met as a result of hearing Monteverdi there, but never saw it again. Sacks is an easy author: goes down easily, even on a tablet

Kipling, A Selection of His Stories and Poems
-- vol 2, bought 2nd hand years back. I've probably read at least half of these before but he's good dipping reading. Though not nearly as easy as Sacks.

Next?

I think I have enough to be going on with.

Ordered dinner in Monday and groceries in Tuesday and then got my Visa bill for the last month. Opened it with trepidation, because I've done a lot of online shopping since November, but discovered that mid-session I topped my account up by several hundred dollars and so my credits more than covered my debits. But really should start keeping track of what I buy since we're in this for the long haul.

Last finished?

Greene, ed, Further Rivals of Sherlock Holmes: the Crooked Counties
-- I have an omnibus edition of all three Rivals books, but it's succumbed to the drying effects of time. Not only come loose from the cover but also split into two parts. Seems I never read vol 3 and now I have. Pleasant and undemanding but dear lord I can do without that smug oaf Arsene Lupin.

Hume, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab
-- which Greene thinks to be the best detective story ever written. Wouldn't go that far, but it's good enough. I note that everyone calls Hume an Australian writer even though he says distinctly and short-temperedly in his foreward that he's from New Zealand. No one listens to him, then or now. If the story's set in Australia the writer must be Australian.

Lewis, The Magician's Nephew
-- I'm sure the Suck Fairy has been at most of the Narnia books but this one is still bearable enough.

Reading now?

Cogman, The Burning Page
-- vol 3 being where I start losing track of What Happens When, so rereading to refresh the memory.

Yuasa trans, Basho, Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches
-- I have several texts and translations of Oku no Hosomichi, and ought to get them read finally, before tackling that behemoth, Miner's Japanese Linked Poetry

And next?

More Library, probably. In the new year I may regain my ambition and tackle something meaty, but at the moment Dead Days weather (grey, dank, cold) has me in a constant state of Ow where I feel the need to coddle myself.

Feeling meh. World situation finally getting me down. May go back to drinking gin.

Books finished?

Cartmel, Flip Back
-- more Vinyl Detective. Entertaining except for his girlfriend's wine snobbery. Wine snobs are bores.

Edith Shiffert, Kyoto Dwelling
-- collection of seasonal haiku by an American who lived in Kyoto from 1963 until her death three years ago, aged 101. She's also the person who did those appalling translations in the Anthology of Modern Japanese Poetry. Fortunately her own poems are more to my taste. She's especially good with February, which in Tokyo is the month of clear dry skies and plum blossoms. I expect Kyoto to be a bit mistier and wetter, given its bonchi setting, but not always:

Inside the plum grove
only one tree with blossoms.
blue, blue winter sky!

Bringing in the quilts
still warm with sunshine, shall I
take a noon-time nap?

As they are so few, 
the plum blossoms excite us
this cold winter day.

A few snowflakes
caught in plum-tree crevices,
scent of white blossoms.

Reading now?

Through Murasaki's diary and its copious notes, about to start in on her poetic diary.

Ovidia Yu, The Frangipani Tree Mystery
-- so far, not as fun as Aunty Lee, but modern Singapore is more congenial than 1930s protectorate Singapore with the Japanese in the offing.

Next? 

Err- the sequel to the Frangipani Tree, since I have it from the library.

Need to find something Japanese, but nothing excites me among the volumes available. Should I put a counter-hold on Kafuka in order to finish it, or let Whoever Has It Now have more than three weeks to read it in? Whoever may be Japanese and not need three weeks. OTOH there was a distinct relief in not having to deal with Murakami's hinkiness for a bit.

Ascription of a poem: 'the poetess Ono no Komachi.' This following a biographical note about 'Ono no Komachi' and followed by another poem* ascribed to 'Komachi', period. Yes, 1955, I know: but if you can do the last two you can just easily not do the first. Especially as no other woman in the collection is called a poetess.

(*a really feeble translation of Hana no iro wa, by the way)

Unexpected unexplained delivery from Amazon yesterday, a 'memorial bracelet' with a note from no one I know commiserating the death of the recipient's father. Cannot blame the overworked, underpaid Anatev- uhh Amazon workers for misaddressing this, but obviously had to alert and send back to Nevada. I mean, it's not that many hoops to jump through since I actually have both padded envelopes and stamps to hand, but still.

More happily, on my way to mail the above, stopped by the local cafe and had a latte sitting out in the warm sun amidst the last of the golden leaves, all so very reminiscent of sitting in certain European cafes back in the globe-trottting 80s. Weather page said it was 24C today, upper 70sF, which you can't prove by me. Still needed a light jacket. Whereas back in 2015 on the Sunday of the Santa Claus Parade, Nov 15, I distinctly remember biking and sweating in a tshirt, but Environment Canada is adamant it was only 16 that day. Temperatures in this town are never absolute. Rain and cold return tomorrow. I should rake leaves today but I hurt too much, sorry.

Since peanuts in whatever form pack on the calories, as does even 90% chocolate, I need another snacky thing to indulge in in the evening. May have found it: air popped popcorn. Feels indulgent, and because I'm slightly corn intolerant, is not something I can eat too much of. Also comes in various seasonings, to combat sense of 'same old'.

A very mild tum upset yesterday gets me to the weight I'd gloomily figured I might hit in four weeks, just before surgery. It won't last, but in celebration I ordered in Indian food and wisely ate only a third of it. My cheekbones are shyly beginning to emerge amid the squirrel face, so vanity is satisfied as well. And of course it would be nice to drop another two kilos if possible, just for neatness' sake.That would be 16 pounds less pressure on the joints. Of course, by that calculation, I've lost 60 pounds  of pressure since January but you can't prove it by my mobility.

Last finished?

Introduction to Court Poetry and Hamabe no Kafuka part 1.
-- don't know what to do about Kafka. Couldn't wait to finish the Japanese so I could go back to the translation, and now the translation feels off and I want the Japanese, but I won't get it any time soon even if I were to buy it from honto.jp. Dou shiyou, dou shiyou.

Coupla Hazel Holts, easily swallowed mysteries

Reading now?

Still with Piranesi, not liking where it's going at all.

Miner, Japanese Poetic Diaries
-- next up in the classical Japanese litrachure back reading

Robert Lowell, Imitations
-- next up in the 'get it off the shelf' poetry purge. Lowell was a git and his Introduction shows it.

Next?

No idea. I'm beginning to have deer in the headlights reaction to impending surgery, which rather shortens the attention span. Console myself that there's even odds it won't happen, as Covid cases keep on mounting and the hospital continues not to have its act together.

An oddity I noticed many years ago when I was making meringues (so long ago that I forgot what those things are called and had to google 'egg white sugar'.)  Ordinary eggs held a stiff peak just fine but free run/ organic eggs were much more sensitive, liable to deflate at a moment's notice and especially if you added even a hint of vanilla. And now hardboiling them, no matter how much I bring them to room temperature before cooking, no matter if I let them heat with the water, no matter if I whisk them away after five minutes and plunge them mmediately into cold water, they're impossible to peel without removing chunks of egg as well. Worth it to have happy hens, I suppose, but still annoying.

Last finished?

Carter, Waiting for the Wind
-- and now need to go back through and note the poems that resonated when I was reading through. Also to see if certain of Earl Miner's poets are there because I don't remember these Princess So-and-so's turning up There was a Tameko and a Chikako I noted in passing, who might be one of the princesses, given how names worked back then.

Yokomizo, The Inugami Curse
-- translated Japanese detective story. Has annoying bits like the detective immediately sussing out everyone's character from their expressions. 'Take sat with a taciturn haughty expression that revealed his disdain for all while Tomo, looking somehow cunning and insincere, shifted his eyes ceaselessly from place to place.' 'Kokichi ... had what at first looked like a mild-mannered air, but the restless eyes, identical to his son, revealed the evil in his mind.'  'Of the three half-sisters, she was the most attractive, but she looked the most  venomous of the three as well.' I know Christie and others do this too, but it grates less in one's own language. And hell, the Japanese do at times seem psychic in their evaluations of foreigners at least, so maybe they can do it with each other in spite of their seemingly (to us) expressionless expressions. But otherwise quite the twisty page turner, and I have Yokomizo's other book on hold at the library, 84th of 84.

Reading now?

As above, Earl Miner, Japanese Court Poetry

Kafuka draws near a close, or rather, vol 1 of Kafuka draws near its close, and I don't have vol 2. Shall treat myself to the English translation.

Have given up on Villon and started La Dame de Kyoto by Gabriella Magrini, which is translated from the Italian and hence an easier read than a French French book.

Next up?

Piranesi, which I keep forgetting I have. Must put it out where I can see it or I shall go on forgetting I have it.

Cholesterol meds are famous for causing muscle aches, also for having a nocebo effect ie if you think they're going to hurt you they're more likely to/ One day may be a little early for the effect to, well, take effect, but boy was last night an owie night, as today is an owie day. I haven't had alcohol for two weeks and I haven't had sugar for ten days, but I took my last bottle of lemon tonic and had a g&t this afternoon. No matter what I think, gin really doesn't ease the pain, but oh that sugar rush was so nice. I'm actually ok doing without pastries but I do jones for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
( Reading Wednesday )

Found this poem on the blog of someone I no longer follow because, though rather younger than I, they've gone curmudgeonly old: forgetting our glorious Boomer past to carp about People These Days pulling down statues and breaking windows and telling Curmudgeon how he should think which, because he's still a Boomer, he takes exception to. Oh well. At least he finds neat poems:

Crofter

Last thing at night
he steps outside to breathe
the smell of winter.

The stars, so shy in summer,
glare down
from a huge emptiness.

In a huge silence he listens
for small sounds.  His eyes
are filled with friendliness.

What's history to him?
He's an emblem of it
in its pure state.

And proves it.  He goes inside.
The door closes and the light
dies in the window.

Norman MacCaig

Have been reading an ancient paperback, The Medieval Myths, summaries of Beowulf and Roland, Prince Igor and the Cid. But also Peredur, the ur-form of Percival, or possibly the other way around. I thought I'd read the Mabnogion but I must have skipped this one. And it's weird in that very Welsh way that makes Jungians very happy and has the editor of this compilation citing Jessie Weston, that muse of T S Eliot's. That whiff of 19th century anthropology is choking, but the images in Peredur are dreamlike (meaning brilliant and unexplained, not misty) and suggestive of things not graspable. If I were feeling more grounded I'd go back to Tim Powers' Last Call which, Gaiman-like, puts the Fisher King in America. But I'm caught in September Ghost Tide with no infants to counter the unsettling, creeping tendrils of the past, so I won't.

Only you know what? The Fisher King is De Troyes or someone misreading a French source of le roi pécheur  (sinful king) as le roi  pêcheur (fishing king). So the Mabinogion has to be later because it keeps the misreading. If it is a misreading and not what the original, possibly not-Christian source had in the first place. I mean, a wounded fisher king is much more resonant than a wounded sinner, but the latter is much more likely,

I have to be the most 'upon compulsion!?' person I know, bar a few of my sibs maybe. But by dint of staying inside for the last week- a first during this ostensible quarantine- I've succeeded in at least three things I put off forever because, well, I had to do them and therefore I wouldn't. Washed the older shower curtain and hung it in the sun to bleach; unplugged the now unused answering machine from the phone jack, thus freeing up a metre of extension cord so I no longer trip over it; and tied up two stacks of Animages from the basement for recycle come Thursday. But I haven't rehung the shower curtain, relying on the liner instead, which lets far too much light into the bathroom. Nor have I removed the plug from the answering machine, because it's behind a book case. And there are still dozens more Animages in the basement and dear lord but those magazines weigh a ton. But I've also been a little better about reviewing kanji, reading Japanese, and exercising more than once a day, which are the things that really count.

Because my current reading doesn't excite me greatly, I started working my way through the slim volumes of poetry I've only dipped into. First was The Imagist Poem that my mother gave me in my early teens. This time I read the Introduction. It was largely uninformative and certainly dated, but the poems are- some of them- still lapidary and beautiful. Though I could have done with less D.H. Lawrence, and possibly I'm the only person who thinks the second half-line in Pound's

'Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes'

is a flatfooted comedown. (Also, what the hell are you doing with arsenic, Ezra?)

But then I started The Book Cellar Anthology. The Book Cellar began life in the early 60s as a bookstore in a cellar, but in short order moved to a crowded two storey house on Bay St. Crammed with books, difficult of passage, it was where I bought my British ballet magazines and discovered C S Lewis' Perelandra trilogy. It was also a hangout for literary types, and the anthology was put out in the early 70s to showcase various Toronto poets. And oh did it fantod me in spades, being so extremely early 70s in its ethos. So very many young men wanting sex or not getting sex or having sex and feeling ambivalent about it, all in the flattest of free verse, and so very sure that they're not merely the centre of the universe but effectively the only people in it. Their lovers and wives are present only as bodies and have no existence otherwise. No wonder I was confused by and mistrustful of the arty guys I knew at university. They didn't think like human beings.

So far the only poem I like was written by a woman whose collection I already have. Though because I knew her personally, I'm still a tad ambivalent about her myself: Penny basically thought the same way the guys did and was therefore quite at home in a world that made no sense to me. It took me decades to realize that naturally it made no sense to a gay woman: its underlying principle- the primacy of sexual attraction to the Other- was simply foreign to my experience.

 Somewhere on ao3 is fanfic for Kipling's poem Tomlinson, in the same metre and rhyming scheme, which involves Satan/ St. Peter slash.

Sorry, didn't save the link. Found it while googling the poem in hopes of learning what the significance of Berkeley Square was. It seems that maybe Kipling was having a go at the arties of his time, but given how upscale the place has always been (Clive of India cut his throat there; Walpole and William Pitt the Younger and William Waldorf Astor lived there) it hardly sounds like a hotbed of conformist middle-class thinking.

Otherwise- I vaguely recall that when I read LotR in '02 my Ballantine copy of the middle volume gave up the ghost and I had to buy a new one. But I was sure I had vol. 3 intact. Only it's vanished as well, and of the original set only vol. 1 remains. I mean yes I have a duplicate RotK, but the typeface is tiny, and anyway I want my colourful covers back.

And of course, now that libraries have reopened for curbside pickup, two of my holds have come in. Am afraid to put RotK on hold while I read them in case I lose the momentum, but maybe I have to. Which of course is why I started a Kinsey Millhone mystery tonight.

 Oh, here it is. Rather where I expected it to be, in the Chinese poetry collection Huajian ji xu (among the flowers), edited by Ouyang Jiong. This one is by Wen Tingyun.

The moon rises on high, shining in the sky at midnight
It is quiet in the screens, there is no one to talk to
In the deep recesses, incense still lingers
As she sleeps, she wears a trace of make-up.

Long ago she held her flowering beauty dear
But how can she endure memories of the past?
The flowers wither, and the moonlight fades
Under the quilts she feels the cold of days.

The collection is all qi poetry, verses written to set tunes. As if a whole bunch of people had written new lyrics to Greensleeves, as the translator says. The theme of Wen's poetry at least seems close to Kipling's Queen Elizabth

The Queen was in her chamber, and she was middling old.
Her petticoat was satin, and her stomacher was gold.
Backwards and forwards and sideways did she pass,
Making up her mind to face the cruel looking-glass.
The cruel looking-glass that will never show a lass
As comely or as kindly or as young as what she was!

Beauties faded by time and abandoned by their lovers, mainly.
The poem that has qingming day in it is the previous one in the series; I was conflating them.

The chestnut casts his flambeaux, and the flowers
Stream from the hawthorn on the wind away,
The doors clap to, the pane is blind with showers.
Pass me the can, lad; there's an end of May.

May ends as it began, grey and rainy but without the wild winds of either May 1 or Housman's poem. I had the heat on until mid-month at least, and would have had it on longer but for sheer bloody mindedness. Would like to have my space heater on now, in fact, but will do the 'hot bath, beanbags, and bundle' thing instead. My house holds the cold well enough that highs of 20 don't affect it much. And as I'm usually into open windows and fans at this time of year, instead of flannel and bedsocks, I should be grateful.

It rained much of the month as well. The lake has surpassed its 2017 record height. So much for those condos down by the waterfront...

The lilacs are still kicking around a week after the Glorious 25th, which is nice, and I have what is for me a bumper crop of lily of the valley that I have picked to scent my kitchen. While we had a lot of 'November with flowers' in this chilly month, we didn't get my other favourite May topos, warm sunny evenings when the blossoms scent everything sweetly. Ah well: one rarely gets to complain these days about things not being warm enough.

It is in truth iniquity on high
To cheat our sentenced souls of aught they crave,
And mar the merriment as you and I
Fare on our long fool's-errand to the grave.

Iniquity it is; but pass the can.
My lad, no pair of kings our mothers bore;
Our only portion is the estate of man:
We want the moon, but we shall get no more.

There's a corollary to 'if solitary, be not idle', which is, 'if solitary, do not waste time talking to people who aren't there' ie the ones in your head. Recently I started noticing exactly how much I do this, and it's a lot. And now I remember why fandom came as such a relief to me in Japan. Instead of yelling at the folk who cause me pains, as D Parker put it, I was meditating on the motivations and emotions of various anime characters. I mean, they were quite as non-corporeal as those various roommates, classmates, coworkers, and Japanese businessmen who smoked under the No Smoking signs whom I was mentally castigating, but at least I wasn't *angry* anymore. Being no longer fannish, I don't have that recourse now when I'm arguing with my mother (dead these forty years) about something she said in 1972, but I think I should try to find one.

(Didn't realize there were three verses to Parker's Frustration:

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of fun
Speeding bullets through the brains
Of the folk who give me pains;

Or had I some poison gas,
I could make the moments pass
Bumping off a number of
People whom I do not love.

But I have no lethal weapon-
Thus does Fate our pleasure step on!
So they still are quick and well
Who should be, by rights, in hell. )

So the King William's College annual 'who the hell knows *that*?' quiz is now up with its very few 'oh of course' questions- What word was uttered from atop the bust of Pallas? Who is remembered, with her brother, in Dorlcote churchyard? What, according to the hookah-smoking larva, can variably influence height?- and a plethora of 'I could tell you the work it's from but no more'- Which island or island group saw the surgeon accidentally marooned and obliged to survive on avian-polluted water and sulid blood? Aubrey/Maturin; Which pupil was, with one exception, the vilest manufacturer of “barbarous hexameters” that King had ever dealt with? Stalky and Co; Over what was the good fellow, Bob, to be offered a pay rise during the festive season? Christmas Carol; Which periodical likened the death of Tom Robinson to the senseless killing of songbirds by hunters and children? To Kill a Mockingbird; even, Which pupil when writing home, reported a 9-0 defeat by porridge court and requested a “bakterial gun”? Because I'm not sure if it's Molesworth or Molesworth 2.

But then there was this OMG I *know* that what *is* it? 'Who was seen as a ghost, dripping along in a bathing dress to the Congregational Hall?' Way back in the mists of time a poem showed up in, I'm prepared to swear, my grade 9 reader about someone swimming along, swimming along, swimming along to... Yawley? Rawley? My nun-trained poetry memory balked at proper names. The poem appeared without any explanation and struck me with the same sense of weirdness as The Dancing Cabman:
( Cut for verse )
It took some googling, but I found the swimming poem, along with an explanation of the weirdness. "John Betjeman's song A Shropshire Lad is about the English Channel swimmer Matthew Webb... Captain Matthew Webb caught the public imagination when he first swam the English Channel in 1875. After performing no end of feats of endurance and prowess in the water, he finally drowned while attempting a conquest of the rapids below the Niagara Falls. This story of the Captain's ghost returning to his home town in industrial Shropshire was devised by Sir John Betjeman..."
( Cut for more verse )
The only problem being that I can't find a date for this. The internet says it's a song that Betjeman recorded in 1972, a decade after I was in grade 9.

It helps to look at your bookcases occasionally, especially in rooms one doesn't ordinarily read in where the flotsam ends up. And so I am happily reunited with my childhood copy of The Divine Comedy, the one with the Doré engravings. (Well, not actually *mine*- it was my parents'. But the one I read in childhood, yes.)

I don't know how good the translation is, but I've bounced off both the Ciardi and the Pinsky, both in verse form, so a nice unrhymed version might work better.

And aside from that, if it's so bleeding cold, why are there still mosquitoes in my house and why are they still biting me?,

The way my mind works: I remember Valery's

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville

always as

Il pleut dans les rues
Comme il pleut dans mon coeur

With no one crying at all, just a gentle melancholy and nostalgia. Why is rain associated with those two emotions? Even in Ono no Komachi's Nagame seshi ma ni, all resignwd mono no aware. Sun is a sign of happiness, thunder a sign of passion, rain a sign of melancholy, but the emotions aren't inherent in the phenomena at all.

On a sunny blue and white autumn afternoon I rode over to Yonge St to buy a tablet. Which I did, but technology never excites me. More to the point, I rode along the Famous Helen's old street with its jewel houses under yellow leaves, like some image of happiness. And I have been weepy and woeful ever since, which I put down to Rat fallout, not anything metaphysical or 'To think that two and two make four/ And neither five nor three/ The heart of man has long been sore/ And long is like to be.' (Housman is a medicine for melancholy: homeopathic, but effective.)

The fact is, I have always held a fallacious belief that certain past times were Perfect, and the perfection is gone and will never come back. This is why one keeps diaries, to record the grim actuality. The fall of 2001, whose Saturday nights were delightfully spent with Baby Helen, had its moments; but it wasn't an overwhelmingly happy time at all.

Poems of the Late Tang sat on the bedroom shelf for years, known but undisturbed. And then I read it last December and put it-- uhh, in with the Chinese poetry books in the study? No. With the older Chinese poetry books downstairs? No. Back on the shelf? No. This is the trouble with shelving by usage. But now someone is asking for Li He's poetry for yuletide and recommends the introduction to his section in Graham's work, and I don't have it. Of course it might just be hiding somewhere. The combination of 'slim volume with black spine' and Johnson Spot Blindness means it could well be in any of the places I already looked.

Otherwise they promised us rain and thunder and sun and wind today, and we got all of it. Is coldish evening that tempts to turn on the heat but I will not will not, since the day before yesterday I was sitting outside with pants legs rolled up in sleeveless top, sopping in the 30C mug, and it will be 25 again this week.

Possibly rousting about dusty shelves has reignited my allergies, or possibly the sudden temperature change has brought a sudden onset cold, but I have a sore throat and runny nose and think some hot lemon and honey might be just the thing.

And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
      Not shaking the grass

Ezra Pound

Onto a Vast Plain

Rainer Maria Rilke
translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

You are not surprised at the force of the storm—
you have seen it growing.
The trees flee. Their flight
sets the boulevards streaming. And you know:
he whom they flee is the one
you move toward. All your senses
sing him, as you stand at the window.

The weeks stood still in summer.
The trees’ blood rose. Now you feel
it wants to sink back
into the source of everything. You thought
you could trust that power
when you plucked the fruit:
now it becomes a riddle again
and you again a stranger.

Summer was like your house: you know
where each thing stood.
Now you must go out into your heart
as onto a vast plain. Now
the immense loneliness begins.

The days go numb, the wind
sucks the world from your senses like withered leaves.

Through the empty branches the sky remains.
It is what you have.
Be earth now, and evensong.
Be the ground lying under that sky.
Be modest now, like a thing
ripened until it is real,
so that he who began it all
can feel you when he reaches for you.

Book of Hours, II 1
( Cut for German )