Can I just say, blogging is a tool for the weak-minded?
God bless my poor husband. Yes, I'm drunk. ... I'm rarely anything but when I sign into one of my blogs these days. But there was champagne and gin and lemon and enough to make amazing French 75s, and why would I say "no" when things are so good?
Yes
I spent three hours longer than my husband wanted discussing all the things that excite me. That's right: Shakespeare, identity, politics, Joyce, Faulkner, characterization, story themes, sexuality, and more. How could I resist?!?! I felt so old discussing such subjects with a student just graduated from high school and yet I was infected by his enthusiasm for the subject. I realized I graduated from the same subjects over a decade ago ... and yet the emotions I feel for the subject are no less diminished. We dashed back and forth between Iago and Falstaff, Hamlet and Quentin, that I felt no drag from the twelve years since I've discussed these subjects in earnest.
Does High School stick with you so much? Everything I experienced then and, (I can recall with same alacrity) despite the fact that I have had some amazing college experiences. (I just took a few minutes to address my many college experiences and I just remembered that 8-10 years later, no one cares what you did in college...) no one cares what you did in High School or Grad School for how many years in pursuit of that ridiculous degree....All that matters of your life is what you do now. (Shit! My life's blood suddenly counts???) I gave up a PhD in light of the 7 yr commitment to do a dissertation on anything I didn't care about to fit a professor's identity .....and decided to get married, live my life, and .....raise a family....
I need a drink. Seriously, has it been so many years since I left academia? ..... Am I really that old? I"m looking at eleven years of squandered research potential???
I feel I have nothing left to add to the conversation at this age, and yet I feel I've just begun. Shit. I'm one of them. One of those who think all experience begins beyond 30 or 40.... And yet, here I am, staring down 30, with years of education to offer and some life experiences, and yet ... memories are a mist.
Nope. That's not what I have to offer. Guess what?
You know nothing. I don't care if you're 20 or 50. We know nothing. We may have some glimpse of what Shakespeare insinuated in his works, but we know nothing. I'm looking for rebuttals.
About Me
- SaraMuse
- I'm a woman, a wife, a writer, a philosopher, and a dreamer. I procrastinate and then get obsessed over the same thing I was avoiding. I believe in freedom, love, God, and the power of art, and not always in that order.
Forgive me for laughing at your first paragraph or two. It had an entertaining lyrical flow to it that I couldn't help but enjoy.
ReplyDeleteI would contend that not only do we know more than you think we do, but that those you seek to respect/idolize/pedestalize/etc. know less than you give credit for.
I have always found it to be interesting, when discussing writings - poetry, philosophy, the greats, that we always hope for (and generally assume) that there are intended deeper meanings in writing, in speech, in communication.
Sure, some poets write at 2, 5, maybe 10 intended levels. Their words are carefully crafted to have subtle and varied meanings, their imagery complex and multifaceted.
Some philosophers ask intriguing questions, and venture an attempt at an answer to the question(s) that they have asked, or that their predecessors have asked. They carefully architect a thousand page masterpiece of thought that, to the best of their ability, explains or at the very least lays a foundation for further thought.
They are only human. They are not writers with IQs upwards of 1,000. They are of the same flesh as we are, and in oh so many cases just as flawed and ignorant (perhaps in different ways) as you are on your worst days.
It is unreasonable to assume that Shakespeare was writing on levels that we will never grasp. That sonnet that makes sense on 2-3 levels was probably intended and written on 2-3 levels, not two hundred. The philosopher that asked the most brilliant question of all time was simply asking the most brilliant question of all time. S/he did not know the answer. S/he ventured their best thought based on the collection of life experiences that s/he had at the time.
Life is experiential. You progress through the experiences, deeper understanding ensues. Sometimes you forget and the understanding fades. That is life. A poem with 4 levels may make sense all at once, or it may take 40 years to fully comprehend. Not because you are too stupid to understand it, but the mind needs to be in a certain place and sometimes that place requires a progression of experience.
You have the significant advantage: You have thousands of years of writings to build upon. You can read thoughts over the centuries and form your own thoughts that follow, in many ways putting you drastically ahead of a person born 500 years, 1000 years, or 1500 years ago.
You also have the crushing disadvantage that what has already been written is done. You must climb to the summit of written thought before even beginning to write something of "Meaning", to rival the greats. That is a daunting task for the best among us, and a crushing weight for anyone attempting the climb.
Everest is viewed not as the accomplishment, it is merely the start of the journey. You have to drag your boulder all the way up the damned mountain in order to make it taller -- then society will view you as accomplished. Useful. Valuable.
Don't underestimate your own worth just because the mountain is tall, and you fear that you are slipping or that the summit is too high. Don't assume that Shakespeare climbed the same mountain that you face, and don't judge yourself lacking because others before you have made it. The mountain grows with every additional thought in our collective universe.
I would also argue that many that you hold in high esteem never made it to the top of their mountains. They wrote of their failures, and the daily progress towards the summit. They wrote of the times they fell back down the mountain, when their boulder crushed their leg, or what the gripping cold was like. These are the makings of great literature, as well as intriguing contemplative thought.
Case in point: this is one of your best posts yet. It is interesting, thought provoking, and conveys emotion deeply. And it sure sounds like you were writing it while being trapped under your own boulder.
Hopefully this wasn't too disorganized and chaotic, and it made more sense than a rambling lunatic.