But it's a museum!
The De Young Museum in San Francisco, that is. Doesn't look all that exciting from the outside, but inside is pretty amazing. The view from the tower-- 360 degrees of San Francisco -- is spectacular. That alone is worth the price of admission. But there's neat stuff to look at, too.
It's been a long time since a dream has waked me in a sudden sweat. In the early hours of morning I had one of those dreams. It begins in the confused muddle that dreams sometimes are. I'm back in the Cabaret (last summer--I"ll tell you about it sometime), and I'm at home getting ready (except I'm in an actual house, not an apartment, but I know in the strange way of dreams, that this is my home). I'm struggling with my stockings and I can't seem to get them on straight. No matter how I adjust them, the seams are all crooked, and I'm getting frustrated because I know I'm already late.And something moves past my window-- a huge bulk of a shadow crossing a gauzy white curtain-- and it's a T-Rex. First, he eats the Muppets in the garden: Animal, Kermit, Miss Piggy, maybe a Fraggle or two. (Why are there Muppets in the garden? I don't know! It seemed to make some kind of sense at the time...) Then there's an opera singer standing by the window--and she's either singing or screaming, I can't tell--and the T-Rex's head bursts through the window and wall and snatches her up. I drop to the floor because I know he's coming for me next. I want to wiggle under my bed but there's no time, he's already in the room. And I must stay Absolutely Still. I am lying face down on the floor with my arms wrapped around my head and stomach like they say you should do if you are attacked by a Grizzly. I am lying absolutely rigid and trying not to breathe. And suddenly in the strange way of dreams I am both the Mind's Eye that sees the dream and Myself pressing my face down into the floor. It's not as crude as a split screen in a film; I am actually experiencing both visions at once. (I've read that only really creative minds dream this way...). And I watch as the T-Rex moves into the room, cocking his great head to gaze along the length of me with his one great eye. And as he leans down closer I can feel his hot breath blasting against the side of my head, scattering my hair in a ruffled plume. And my heart is racing and I'm trying not to breathe and trying not to scream and my lungs are burning... And he lets loose his terrible roar, shattering the world around me...Is it any wonder I woke up at that point?NOT my idea of being eaten. Oh, no, not at all. Current music: David Bowie Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
I recall quite vividly that the first time I read T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was in the library of Irvington High School. I was captivated by it. I believe that was the last time I read it, though, until just this week. All I really remembered was the image of the yellow smoke curling about the house. So reading it again, and discussing it in class, was a real treat.
My professor, Dr. Samuel Maio, is a damn fine poet and a wonderful instructor; he serves up a lot of humor with his spoonfuls of enlightenment. To participate in his class discussions is a true delight.
You see, my trouble is, I am seduced too quickly by the voice of the poet. I read this poem and think, "Poor J. Alfred! Can't get the girl! Poor guy!" But Dr. Maio backs us up a space and tells us to take another look. This guy is a dandy. He must be 30 years old, maybe more, and yet he's still talking like he's in Junior High. He's wondering, "Should I ask a woman on a date or not?" Well, DO IT, Man! Talk to her! You're not going to get a date by spending all day wondering how you should part your hair! And then he (J. Alfred) concludes that all women are sirens out to seduce men, and if he falls under their spell he'll just DIE, but it doesn't really matter because they're not singing to him anyway... Can you hear the little violins? They whine for thee and me...
I've known men like this. Maybe that's why I feel sorry for him. Or maybe I am J. Alfred, or like him, an inhabitant of the Waste Land. Or maybe I am the Waste Land. [whoa. deep.]
Nevertheless, I love this poem. Therefore, for your reading pleasure, it is reproduced below. Notice how Eliot uses imagery to suggest a thing without really naming it: the smoke rubs like a cat against the window, but he doesn't say "cat"; J. Alfred wishes to be a crab at the bottom of the sea, but he doesn't say "crab." That's using objective correlative. I'm a grad student now. That means I Know Things. ;-)
Oh, and the opening quote is from Dante's Inferno. Basically, it says, "I'm not really supposed to tell anyone my story, but since you're here anyway and since I know no one can ever escape from hell, I'll tell you my story anyway." See? Enlightenment.
Enjoy!
The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.
And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
It is perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?…
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet—and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.
And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: “That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.”
And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
“That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.
I grow old … I grow old …
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
~T.S. Eliot
Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it.~T.S. Eliot
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.~T.S. Eliot
Earlier this week--I think it was Monday--when I was driving to work through downtown San Jose, something unusual happened. There was this blind woman out in the middle of the street, nowhere near a crosswalk, just completely disoriented walking in circles. Traffic slowed to a crawl, but still kept moving. She was clearly getting frantic, unable to find her way. I was about three or four cars back when a man pulled his truck over, hopped out, took her arm, and led her to safety. It was just so surreal. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, including my own thoughts. Did anyone else think to help her? Did I? I like to think that I had only had enough time to assess the situation--that if I had been a little bit closer, or had a little bit longer to think about it, I would have done the same as that man. But I don't know.Sometimes I am frustrated by my own inherent passivity.
Some of you may already know I'm taking Critical Theory this semester. Now, you really have to have a sense of humor with critical theory. You see, the trouble is, the scholars take it all so seriously. They set up their forts and wage heated battles over who is right and who is wrong. Whole careers are made and broken over what stance to take toward literature. This is the kind of thing that drives some people to run screaming from higher learning; they believe that once you get sucked into critical theory, you will never enjoy a book, a movie, hell, anything in life ever again. But I don't see it that way.I believe that critical theory is like my closet. The text is like the human body, and choosing a critical theory is a bit like getting dressed in the morning. Let's see... what shall it be today? An Aristotlean Unities three-piece suit? That little Feminist miniskirt? A Postcolonial evening gown? Maybe a Mythological long red velvet cape or a New Historicist ruffled shirt? How about a Deconstructionist handknit sweater (if you catch one strand on something it will unravel completely)... We can put Queer theory in the top hat and tails. And Psychoanalysis? Well, that's that naughty black lacey thing brought out for special occasions (hey, it's all about sex, right?).The thing is, the text, like the human body, well, it's beautiful just by itself, isn't it? You don't have to dress it up in anything if you don't want to, or when you do, you're going to have your favorites and things that don't fit so well. It's all about finding what fits and what's fun. Of course, even the act of observing brings with it its own theory: Reader Response. That's what you bring with you when you read a text. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. What you see is affected/distorted/interpreted by everything you've read/seen/heard/experienced up to this point. I believe it was the Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu who said you cannot step into the same river twice, because you are no longer the same person and the river has changed as well; the same applies with books. (Hmm. Maybe Reader Response is like that favorite pair of blue jeans that only gets better with time...).
Of course, even applying this analogy of the closet is putting a structure on the whole thing. I am reminded that no matter how hard I try I remain a structuralist, which in literary circles is considered tres passe. It's Old School. Nobody who's anybody does it anymore. Eh, what can I say, I'm an old fashioned kind of girl.So most of this weekend, I was reading Sigmund Freud. Whatever happened to old Siggy? you may ask. Well, basically when most of his theories were discounted or disproven, he packed up his bags and moved into the literature department. You see, we don't have to worry about sticky things like scientific facts. Our art is illusion, so most of what he said fits rather well. Oedipus complex? Penis envy? Repressed desires and Unconscious wish-fulfillment? We can work with this. We can't be too hard on old Siggy, though. He really got the ball rolling when it came to psychoanalysis. He was a product of his times in more than one sense of the term. There could not have been a Freud before Freud, so to speak, because science, medicine, philosophy, and religion had to advance to a certain point before what he was thinking about was even possible. Were there complexes before Freud? Did they exist in a nameless state, or did they come into being upon being named? Then, too, his own forays into the field were affected by the culture he was a product of. He was a German in the Victorian age: How more uptight can you get? Repression was the game of the day.But without him, we would not have this idea of psychology at all. He was a pioneer in the field: He may have gotten a few things wrong, but at least he let us know there was a field. And he opened a path for those who came after him, like Jung, my personal favorite. When it comes to psychoanalysis, Jung is the man!One thing that Freud never understood, though, was women (see yesterday's quote). They were a complete enigma to him. What do women want? Psychologists are still trying to figure that one out. It's funny, though, the question Psychology can't seem to answer was answered hundreds of years before in medieval literature. What does a woman want?Do you really want to know?Well, read it yourself and find out....Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale
Female sexuality is the dark continent of psychology.~ Sigmund Freud
But it's a museum!
