Hughlings Himwich

Stoned

 

Medusa was butch

but wore sunshine

as if it were hair.

Where did the snakes come from?

From men who stared.


(In the earliest descriptions and images of Medusa, there were no snakes. She was just stone-cold beautiful!) 

 

In Memoriam: Pauline Eaton

No Flame But Words

         
                        for Michaela

What’s left to say?
Just this

In the rain
There are sparks

Of dark fire.
Do you see them?

They are like roses.
Do you see them?

Do you see yourself,
Burning shamelessly?

How will you begin
When there is no end

To the night
Or the burning?

Think of a bird
On a branch

With no wings of flame
But words

To set itself on fire
And sing

Of the night
Of the rain

That will not stop.

Without that song
There is no morning light.

 

Hold True

In Memoriam

 

for Nathaniel Bowie

 

When we return there will be an empty space

That we will fill with true memories

Of one devoted to what we devote ourselves:

The life of the school, service to others,

Kindness, a look that says I will

See what I can do

                               And then do it.

Summer Rain

If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain

"That's the face of a man who has seen it all."

 

                                                                                                                                           Photograph by Ber Himwich

“That’s the face of a man who has seen it all.”

Not so. There’s more to come
And it’s not all suffering loss
The mind shedding all

That is not nailed down
Eyes vacant still
Focused on what no one else can see
A sky so blue the light so full

That you can speak only
In single syllables silently
To the coming darkness
As though it were a friend

Passing onto another life
Where there is no sky
But the sky we have become
When at last we have seen it all.

 

Believe in Love

 

 

 

Resources for Discussion: All Quiet on the Western Front: Novel and Film

Blackjack!

                for Halie

Now I sit me down to stay

until I’ve said what I meant to say

when the leaves were green

and the birds perched on my shoulder

(how now the withered leaves look like me

and there’s but a torrent of crows 

that always get the singing wrong).

Enough of that! Say what

you meant to say, your one last wish,

(a benevolent stranger bestowed three on me:

the first I used for a good night’s sleep,

the second that I would see another day)

to see her soon, is about to be

but poor poetic dust that covers all. 

The crows remind me that’s not 

all I want to say (their song may not be 

pretty, but they are wise). 

I cough and tell them to stop 

their cawing or go away.  They say they will

if the twenty-first line of this not a song

says it all. I miss you. And still they caw.

 

PoetryMatters 118

The Song of Songs

 

He thought of her as if she were with him, but the truth was that she was gone and she was not coming back. The last time they spoke on the phone, she had told him. And that was that. Still, he thought he could hear her voice, singing the song she had written for him, her father, though as it turned out, she had been, on that early autumn day, more in need of the song than he. It had been a song of farewell, though it seemed now, as he listened to the light falling around him, a lullaby like the one his own father had sung for him when he was a child and if that mockingbird don’t sing, his daughter’s words now restless and unsettled like that of a mooncast muse or like living with and without regret. He thought if he could just remember the words of her song or snatch their meaning out of the call of birds that had never abandoned him or feel their rhythm in the outflow of his heart or see the flash of her eyes in the flickering of the candle on his desk, she, the singer of the song, would be there for him now. Without knowing where the words were coming from, he began to sing. He sang of all he loved and all that he would be leaving behind when his own time came. Mostly, though, he sang of the sea, the song becoming the gentle rock and slap of the boat, following now only the river’s stream taking him out. He too was not coming back.

 

Love is so strange

Every time he looked at her, he scowled.  She finally had enough and asked him what his problem was.  He said, “You’re so beautiful. I can’t help myself.”  She didn’t understand. “But your face is so ugly when you look at me?” Now he didn’t understand and, of course, all the while he was scowling. Finally, she asked, “Can you smile?” and he answered, “I thought I was.” “No, a smile looks like this,” and she smiled for him. He scowled. Then, for some reason, she kissed him.When people see the two of them together now, hand in hand, scowling and smiling, they say aloud, “What an odd couple.” Love is so strange.

 

Somnium

 

Somnium: Out there in the stars a drum is heard and they draw near the soft body and nearer the other one within, softer now, slows, now sleeps. The moon hangs in the sky. We find our way there. First, a hand and only then the eyes. What do they see? The moon hangs in the trees, wind weaving the light. There’s a burst of autumn colors, then the tears come. We dig in the dirt and find seashells, bones, roots. Still, the drumming, leading us on. You close your eyes to listen, then wake to find yourself alone, pawing at all that’s not there, the drumming now too distant to know if it is anything more than a lonely heart.

 

Child's Play

When Selina saw the children at play, she wished that she could tell them and make them understand: Don't grow up. You'll never play like this again. Your feet have roots, your arms branches that reach out for the light. The birds talk to you as friends should, and you give them shelter. They, in turn, give you wings that will take you far away from this time and place. When you return and other children gather around you and ask why you look so sad, you will tell them a story, not yours of course, nor theirs, but of some other children whom time forgot, children whose wings became leaves and whose feet were rooted in the ground and free.  

PoetryMatters 115

Charles Eaton on Memory

. . . all of the reality that is available to us is reflective, subjective, and dynamic. To find a metaphor that might express something of what I feel/think, I would look at memory as this astonishing phenomenon that trails brightly behind us through time. If it were to be cut off within perhaps the first ten minutes of its life, we would be afflicted with the horror of a never-ending present.  As it is, this multi-colored banner streams out behind us with its unique patchwork of successes & failures, defeats & wonderful victories, joys & sorrows, pieces of fabric that have been shredded/ripped/rent & segments repaired by the tender care of healthy recall that knits together frayed strands until they are stronger than woven steel.  

In 1964, Pauline was in the Harrisburg hospital with our one-year-old daughter, Jane, who would die of Leukemia within a day or two.  Pauline picked up Jane and held her closely in her arms—and then began to weep silently.  Suddenly, Jane pressed her little hands against her mother’s collarbones and pushed away so that she could look directly face-to-face. Then, after a quizzical gaze, Jane lowered her head, tucked her head tightly against Pauline’s neck, relaxed her body, and patted her mother on the back.

I was not there.  This is not my memory. It is Pauline’s. But she gave it to me and I am now the designated custodian of its continued life.  Not only that, but my borrowed memory is so strong that with no effort at all I can feel Jane’s questioning gaze, her small head tucked against my own neck, the special perfume of her baby’s breath and head, and the touch of her hand patting my back. The very thought makes my throat ache.  Is that a figment of imagination? Is it the dead strand of confabulated memory?  No, no. This is what reflective, subjective, dynamic consciousness is all about.  Is it a subjective artifact? Well, of course it is. Every human experience and memory is. 

Death is an objective fact, but Death as we experience it is partially a sham.  It truly is. It is a construct of the subjective mind.  That is why the experience varies so dramatically from person to person and event to event. The sharp sting of death is as real as real can be, but there is one opponent which, if invited, always defeats Death with a salve that gently melts the stinger into a lingering ache in the throat, and that is a concoction of Love and Memory. It sounds like a commonplace that is easily gained and cheaply bought, but the price is high and may include the offering of a full heart. 

 

Pauline Eaton's Credo as an Artist

Pauline’s Credo from “CRAWLING TO THE LIGHT”

Only one who has a personal religion, a unique view of the universe,
can be a true artist. -- Friedrich Schlegel

     The purpose of life is spiritual growth.
     We are evolving souls. 
     We participate in the on-goingness of creation. 
     We participate for the purpose of extending opportunities  
         for growth in each other.
     We MUST participate, because this is when we are most in
         God's image--that of creator--that this I why we, in turn,
         were created.
     Life is being born again and again.
     We are meant to evolve into pure love, that love is the
        attractiveness and inter-relationship of all. 
     We are the indwelling of God in matter.
     We are made up of energy participles and soul stuff in the
        same patterns built in all that exists from the atom's core
        to solar/stellar systems and beyond. 
     Joy is experienced in the creative act of birthing being,
        meaning and order out of non-being, meaningless, and
        chaos. 

In this sense, we are all artists or called to be such.
As an artist, I believe my role is to continue making connections
and 'real'-izing my place in the FΑΒRIC OF ALL THAT IS. 
I attempt to paint this.  

 

Sea Birds

        for Josh 51

It’s just not true

That birthdays come just once a year

Or that your true birth-day is once and done.

 

As a father

You know better.

 

Your birthday runs 

Like a river to the sea. There

The ever present ever rising

Tides of love teach us

All to sing.

 

Leonora's Photography 154-158

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

The lone surfer

youtu.be/ZkdoeDqBvj0  (The Swingin' Hi-Tones -The Lone Surfer-)

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Peruvian lily 

(Alstroemeria hybrida)

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

It's magic! (Hong-Kong's 36th film awards ceremony)

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Classe d'autrefois

 

 

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Pervenche perlée de pluie

Catharanthus roseus

 

 

Leonora's Photography on flickr

 

My Pick-Up Line

 

Be brave! No more sneaking around, no more affectation!
What great soul said that? Yours, of course! One soul
seeks another, that's how it knows where to go.
You and I the same, same with wings and wind. 
if you keep hiding, you may prove
you aren’t there at all, no hands no feet, 
not those beautiful eyes that catch the sky
(yes, your eyes are beautiful. It's never a lie.)
no joy or grief, just an echo that dims. 
Listen! the ringing in your ear is the tolling of your soul:
it's time, it's time, it's time, it's damn well time already!
Enough of all this hiding only to lose, a soul
only knows itself as the moon,
the one becomes two. 
The less we fear and sooner than now
the more we can dance and dance our own tune.  
Let the kite go and be where it goes.
That's poetry! It's like falling in love . . .

                Hey there, beautiful, where ya goin?
                —I'm going with you. 

 

Ber Himwich: 2 Remixes of Broadway Boogie Boogie

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Analogy

 

If truth is to factual as synonym is to cinnamon,

then the here and the now will nowhere be found.

(Bryce Gordon wrote the protasis and has not yet
expressed an opinion on the apodosis.)

 

Advice to my students on preparing for their first Latin test

Nouns and Verbs, Verbs and Nouns: the Chiasmic Wheels that Turn the Stars

You should know I aced an advanced course in pedagogy in which we learned how to identify what our students don't know or have forgotten or thought too confusing, trivial, or nonsensical to be on the test -- thinking, perhaps, the teacher surely will have mercy. Wrong! The objective of the course was to identify such lacunae and then test the students on them. If your antennae are atwitter and you have the necessary WIQ (Wichian Intelligent Quotient), you already know I will ask you what the heck 'lacunae' are, albeit only on the Mighty Miscellany aka the Real Test. You don't want to be caught lacking or slacking. Thus, it is said, that it is possible to drown in a puddle of water. For those less equipped with WIQ that last sentence relates intimately to 'lacunae'. How do you study for such marginalia? Be curious, be playful, and if you don't know the actual answer, makeup something that will bring a gleam to your teacher's eye. Once when a student (Bryce might not want me to mention his name and would perhaps even protest this preterition), whose performance on a test was otherwise characteristically deplorable (Hilary's word), found an opportunity on the test to write this never-to-be-forgotten gem: Truth is to Factual as Synonym is to Cinnamon. Clearly, He-Who-Is-Not-To-Be-Named's WIQ was exceptionally high and waltzed right into an A+, which is, as we all know, the end all and be all of studentdom. So let it be written! If all this is confusing or disorienting, Welcome To My World.

Here are the more mundane live-or-die minutiae that will allow you to reach the longed-for Hinterlands:

1. Know the noun chart perfectly!
2. Be able to demonstrate an understanding of the 'uses' of each of the cases! (Question: (If the verb do or narro or demonstro is in the sentence, what case should you watch out for?)
3. Know the ProScadies perfectly! Don't let your 'ex' be your downfall. Such an 'aberration' would be 'atypical' of your otherwise excellent preparation. 
4. Know the PAIN words perfectly and be able to explain why they are a pain in painstaking details. Ouch!
5. Know not only the 'official' vocabulary of Chapters I and II, but also the additional words in the Sententiae of each chapter! You won't want to be caught eating 'biscuits' in the commissary. You will not be 'exonerated'!
6. Be able to translate the principal parts of a verb!
7. Know how to write out the principal parts of any regular but otherwise unfamiliar 1st and 2nd conjugation verb.
8. Be able to conjugate a 1st or 2nd conjugation verb in the present tense.
9. Is it 'essential' to know 'amo is to amare' as 'sum' is to '_________'?
10. Know the rule for forming singular and plural imperatives, positive and negative! (Are there other possibilities to these seemingly binary categories? WIQ Alert)
11. Know whether 'is' or 'are' is a linking or helping verb and the difference it makes in Latin! What's wrong with, Cur est magister currit in circulis? (i.e., not what is wrong with your magister but with the sententia ipsa).
12. Know how to change an adjective to an adverb in Latin.( I was laetus/laeta, Mr. HImwich, until I saw how laetēyou were running circles around us.) 
13. Know how to use the two enclitics you have learned, -que and -ne? (Theoretically, could there be others? Are there such enclitics in English? Anyone's guess is as good as another's) (Love these double parentheses!)).

What else can you do to prepare?

1. Translate the English sentences back into Latin in the answers for the self-tutorial exercises for Chapters I and II. 
2. Be resourceful! Often on a test, a detail you can't remember may be found waving a red flag elsewhere on the test. 
3. The way to OZ is paved in macrons.
4. Know what you don't know and study that! It's useless to tell me you don't know what you don't know just as it is pointless to study over and over what you already know. It may be comforting to do so, but it won't get you where you want to go even if you don't know where that is (that was the motto of the aforementioned graduate course called 'Not Knowing Is Not An Option' (unless, of course, you have some playfulness in you like these double parentheses )), (better yet, now triple!))). It was also in that same course I learned the life-defying dicta, "Memorization is a socially accepted form of cheating' and the never to be forgotten but oft-repeated like some backward Ave Maria, "Anything less than perfection is complete and utter failure', which has as its derivative, “The only A’s you’ll get in this course are the A’s in your name'.
   
   
   There is a pluraplenty (Is that a neologism?!) of MM on this page. On Tuesday, I'll lend you Tristen, that Know-It-All, for 15 short minutes. After three years with me, she has learned how to live with this nonsense and knows the byways round and about what may euphemistically be called my mind-brain.

PoetryMatters 111

PoetryMatters 110

Ber Himwich Photography 381-385

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Translation and Catullus 85

Catullus 85

Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
         nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

(literal: I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask?
         I don't know, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.)

My translation

Hates she I love. Don't ask!
My tongue's ripped out.

This will hardly seem a translation. What I have tried to do is to preserve the emotion.

1.  In the Latin, odi et becomes through elision odet, creating a semantic confusion, the -t identifying a 3rd person subject. Thus, the "she" in my translation. The words themselves become jumbled, suggesting turbulent emotions.  'hates she I love' - is arranged as a chiasmus (A B B A - think of the Greek letter χ), and may be represented as a cross. For the relevance see the 3rd comment.

2. Again, by ellison quare id (why it) becomes quarid, suggesting that the question itself is an additional source of pain.

3. In the second line of my translation, I was attempting to convey in a single image both the anguish and the poet's inability to speak about it. The verb excrucior (I am tortured) suggests a crucifixion (crux: cross), a punishment reserved for slaves in Catullus's time. 

All well and good, I say to myself, but is it a translation of Catullus's poem or is the original so changed in translation as to become something else? If something else, what would we call it? It's not really an original poem. Perhaps, a creative translation. It may or not be creative, but in my judgment, it is in fact a translation, one that tries to convey the emotion of the original as opposed to the dictionary meaning of the words themselves. Think: how does anyone but God join a soul to a body? With less fanfare, a translator is trying to transfer the soul or emotion of a poem in one language into the body of another. 

 

Pauline Eaton: artist / dear friend

 

Pauline Eaton, American artist, educator. License instructor California. Recipient award, Hollywood (California) Form Arts, 1986, Grumbacker award, Conference 96 Hill Country Art Center, 2d award, Texas Friends and Neighbors, Irving, 2000, award of excellence, Arizona Aqueous, 2002, Originals award, New Mexico Women in Arts, Albuquerque Museum, 2003, Water United States award, 2008.

PoetryMatters 107

PoetryMatters 106

Charles & All

 

Hugh,

Yesterday was very busy.  I drove alone to Manistee to get a prescription for Pauline and a variety of things needed at the hardware store (mousetraps, a garden kneeling pad, lids for 5-gallon buckets, specific sizes of screws, ballpoint pens, paper plates, and groceries).  It took a long time and was tiring.  

I thought about your De Anima reflections but didn’t get farther than concluding that the Latin is preferable to the Greek (Peri Psyches) in that casual English usage would stimulate overtones of Life in Latin rather than of Mind in Greek.  Happily, neither would immediately connote “soul” in common parlance.

As usual, the problem is the fundamental poverty of language itself. You probably will have to gin up some poetry if we are to proceed further!

I have been sleeping well, and this morning I woke fairly early and was able to have more than an hour of reflective thought before getting out of bed. That luxury is counterbalanced by constraints on my writing time this morning. So, although my thoughts will have some semblance of order, my writing will not probe as deeply as it might.  I had probably better start with my comments because the pressure of time is increasing.

After we began reflecting on Julian Jayne’s take on Consciousness (when was that?), we came upon some agreement on the utility of the phrase: “subjective reflective self-consciousness”. (Did we hack that phrase together or did we incorporate it from someone else?) Without going further in that direction at the moment, I would also like to add the concept of “personhood”.  

I believe I sent you an article (tell me if I didn’t) on Aphantasia––the inability to form mental images of remembered persons, places, things, and experiences.  This rare phenomenon draws our attention to the fact that most people are able to form and be conscious of these images.  There are also some who cannot mentally “hear” remembered tunes. At one time I was curious about the fact that it is quite possible to vocalize pitches indicated on printed musical notation with surprising accuracy. As I reflected on this, I noticed that my vocal cords physically changed their tension as I thought of various pitches. [Just think of the bugle call “reveille”. You will be surprised at how dramatic and clear this sensation is]

FULL STOP!! A Great Blue Heron, the first we have seen this year, just flew up from the water under the “Yellow Iris Cedar” about 30 feet from me!  WOW!  What a spot!  What a life!

At any rate, “personhood”, although it can veer off and dive deeply into various realms, can be hijacked into being a stand-in for that element of De Anima that is limited to the idea of an essential human element that you allude to.

My, my.  I had no idea that I could reduce the deep waters of thought that I had this morning into something that would have any coherence at all––much less that it would relate  to the subject you are addressing.

I do hope that I can dip into the prospectus you sent, but I must warn you that I am also following the trail of the common elements of “the good Life & the good Death”––as well as living an otherwise ordinary life. 

Something will have to give;

It always does.       

                                Charles

 

                                                                    Charles & All

                                                                              (June 9, 2021)

                                                                This morning's herald: 

                                                                Rising from the water

                                                                Beneath the cedar

                                                                And yellow iris,

                                                                A Great Blue Heron

                                                                Welcomes us home. 

 

 

 

When you wake,

for Charles

It will be only then

That the sun will rise.  

The light sleeps with you.

May you rest well.

PoetryMatters 105

Demolition Video by Ber Himwich

 

 

The Poet's Voice

 

Poetry is what is missing
When you wake in the morning
And don’t listen for the silence
That will always be with you.

But for that unheard song,
There would be no call
Of bird, no sigh,
No laughter, no word

Beyond the word
To call you home.

When your love speaks,
Listen for that silent singalong,
For the truth that cries out
For life and to live

Beyond life itself. 
Do you know that voice?
There are children playing
In the rain. There’s one

Who stops and listens, his heart
Beating wildly with your own. 

 

Memorial Service for Pauline Eaton will take place on Tuesday, August 2 at 6:00 pm ET

 

PoetryMatters 104

Guadalupe Box Canyon / Guadalupe River / Below the Gilman Tunnels / Jemez Mountains

 

 

The Gathering

The window talks to me,
I open and listen:
.
In the moonlight shadows
gather, beckoning
me to follow.
                      This time
the moon smiles upon me
and holds me in its light.

PoetryMatters 103

A Madrigal: Bembo and Cervantes

Don Quijote (II, 68):

Amor, cuando yo pienso
En el mal que me das terrible y fuerte, 
Voy corriendoa la muerte,
Pensando asi acabar mi mal inmenso.
Mas en Ilegandoa l paso,
Que es puerto en este mar de mi tormento,
Tanta alegria siento,
Que la vida se esfuerza, y no le paso.
Asi el vivir me mata,
Que la muerte me torna a dar la vida.
iOh condici6n no oidal
La que conmigo muerte y vida trata!

https://youtu.be/5q8G1PSCKyg

O Love, when my thoughts turn
to the suffering, dread and fierce, you bring,
I swiftly run toward death,
hoping to end forever the pain I feel;
but when I reach that place,
the port in this rough ocean of my torment,
I feel such joy and gladness
that life grows strong and does not let me pass.
And so my living kills me,
and death insists and gives me back my life.
Mine is a novel state:
I go on living, and constantly die.

(Cervantes, Miguel de; Edith Grossman (2009-01-29). Don Quixote (p. 905). Harper Perennial.)

Bembo: Gli Asolani, o Los Asolanos (1515)

Quand'io penso al martire,
Amor, che tu mi dai gravoso e forte,
Corro per gir a morte,
Cost sperando i miei danni finire.
Ma poi ch'io giungo al passo Ch'?
porto in questo mar d'ogni tormento,
Tanto piacer mi sento,
Che l'almas i rinforza,o nd'ion ol passo.
Cost il viver m'ancide:
Cosi la morte mi ritorna in vita.
O miseria infinita,
Che l'uno apporta e l'altra non recide.

Mignarda - Quand'io penso al martire by Jacques Arcadelt (c.1507 –1568)

When I think of the suffering 
That love has so grievously forced upon me 
I hasten toward death 
Therefore hoping to end mine own damnation. 

But then to add to the suffering 
I stand at the port of this same sea of affliction. 
Senseless in the face of such delight. 
Why the ship of my soul braces a waterless wave. 

Thus, living kills me; 
Thus dying, life returns. 
O endless misery 
One gives, and the other takes away. 

Here is my own take on this theme in Latin and then in English.

Amor

Amor, mori velim 
abesseque ab asperis vitae
sed mors me a litore tuo repellit
donatque mi tantum gaudium 
ut mare meo in corde tuum inveniam. 

Love, I would wish to die
and be far from the harshness of life
but death drives me from your shore
and grants me such great joy
that I find your sea in my heart. 

 

Remembering

    

Photo by Ber Himwich

Remembering

How like the river this scattering

Of ash. It takes our tears to heart, 

And every sorrow flows through love.

 

The river reminds us of tomorrow.

The river runs through every sorrow. 

 

PoetryMatters 102: Alejandra Pizarnik

But For Song

for Eve

If the world were round
And night had its way,
Then words would mean
just what we say.

But the world plays false,
Sometimes flat, sometimes hoarse
And sometimes singing
Like a tuning fork.

And sometimes night
Shines with loving eyes
And says what we mean
with joyful sighs.

 

"The Creative Process" by James Baldwin

https://openspaceofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/baldwin-creative-process.pdf

First Two Paragraphs:

Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone. That all men are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality—a banality because it is very frequently stated, but very rarely, on the evidence, believed. Most of us are not compelled to linger with the knowledge of our aloneness, for it is a knowledge that can paralyze all action in this world. There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed. None of these things can be done alone. But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

The state of being alone is not meant to bring to mind merely a rustic musing beside some silver lake. The aloneness of which I speak is much more like the aloneness of birth or death. It is like the fearless alone that one sees in the eyes of someone who is suffering, whom we cannot help. Or it is like the aloneness of love, the force and mystery that so many have extolled and so many have cursed, but which no one has ever understood or ever really been able to control. I put the matter this way, not out of any desire to create pity for the artist—God forbid!—but to suggest how nearly, after all, is his state the state of everyone, and in an attempt to make vivid his endeavor. The state of birth, suffering, love, and death are extreme states—extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge.