The dancers are all gone

It might not be May Day, but Peter Brueghel the Younger's painting, "St. George's Kermis with the Dance Around the May Pole," seems to fit the occasion of T.S. Eliot's poem today, "East Coker," and the continuation of birthday celebrations during March. The party is almost over, but the sights and the sounds of approaching Spring brighten the days of our lives. Although the temperature was only forty-one degrees Fahrenheit (five degrees Celsius), I took my shirt off, washed my Suburban and sat outside in the sun while I read a newspaper yesterday afternoon -- no need to beware the Ides of March this year, Caesar. The suntan of 2011 is officially under way.

Oh, well .... on with the tale
Part 2 of 2

Not too many literature majors in the crowd, I dare say. It borders somewhere between pathetic and humorous to me. Oh, well. On with the tale ....

I once spent three days and two nights in a tree. I was tied there so I could sleep and not worry about falling.

It was for a reason, but it was not because I was trying to emulate Odin, who spent nine days in a tree as the price for wisdom. At the time of my event, I knew who Odin was, but I had not studied the religion of the Old Norse and was unaware of his travail.

I twice have swum a distance of about twelve miles. The first time was in the darkness of night and in a river I had never been in before that very time. This instance was similar to the occasion spent in a tree. It was for a specific purpose, that is to say; for a specific reason. Throughout much of it, I was not aware of where I was or what I was doing. It was like being asleep and in a dream, and complete, conscious awareness was not present until it was over and done with and the sun had risen.

The second time took place a few years later and was attempted to learn if I actually could do it, which, if accomplished, would mean I actually had done it before, which would mean that it was not a dream and it had been reality. It was a search for actuality -- not sort of, but the real, real thing. In a sense, it was like reading a book or seeing a film twice to discover what you did not notice the first time, but, in this case, actually living the book or the film.

(Off the record for a moment. This second time was with a friend, down the middle of a lake that I knew very well and during daylight. At a point about six miles from where we began was a resort. We stopped there and bought a six-pack of beer. We each drank two cans on the beach, and our third can while we swam back to our point of departure. I laugh to think about it now.)

Last year, I spent part of the day in a dentist's chair in Warsaw, Poland. This, "actually," was not strange, only unusual on the occasion of a birthday.

Yes, these events all took place on my birthdays. I wonder what other people do on their birthdays, if some of them have birthdays more memorable than others, and how other people mark the days of their lives.

Sometimes, I think I have a good thing going. Sometimes, I think I should have been a monk. This time, I think I deserve giving myself a new Rolex watch and, otherwise, will allow the day this year to pass without additional notation or further reflection.

Some final thoughts & random lines (for now) from T.S. Eliot:
"East Coker"
No. 2 of "Four Quartets"

In my beginning is my end. Now the light falls
Across the open field, leaving the deep lane
Shuttered with branches, dark in the afternoon ....

The houses are all gone under the sea.
The dancers are all gone under the hill ....

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth ....

You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not ....

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years—
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate—but there is no competition—
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter ....

In my end is my beginning.

I think, someday, in another world or another dimension or another life or, possibly, even in a dream within a dream, I will find and I will interview Mr. T.S. Eliot, and I (the chameleon reporter; remember him from past posts?) will induce the gentleman to explain himself and his words, and I will tear loose his apprehensions and gain access to understand his thoughts and his feelings to the bottom of his soul .... or, whatever ....

And, in the meanwhile, I sort of feel sorry for anyone who is not bewitched by his words .... so, listen to them in his own voice and see what you think.