This is how people learn to hate. It is a vicious cycle.
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
And so, Icarus fell into the sea...
Musee de Beaux Arts
by W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
This poem was written after Auden viewed the painting “Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Breughel
How many times has someone asked her who she was talking to? How many times has she tried to explain? How many times has she failed to explain? Someone has left someone else. Someone has left someone else! But she sees it happen every day. I wonder if she was hysterical at first, but now she is just nervous, and, with a shake of her head, can carry on her life.
I thought of the poem Musee de Beaux Arts, by W.H. Auden, today when I heard her talking. Who told her what she saw wasn’t real? Well I think it is real. Whatever it is. Whoever she is talking to, whoever is talking to her, is real to her. Icarus believed he could fly with feathers and wax, and as the story goes, he really could, until he flew too close to the sun. And when he fell into the water “the ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, but for him it was not an important failure…” I wish the first thing that came into my head wasn’t ‘who is she talking to??’ I wish it would’ve been ‘who has left?’ I wish I would’ve looked at her pain individually, not at what her pain was suppose to look like or manifest itself in. It isn’t always ice cream and movies, or a good work out, or a perfectly sad song to get you through. Sometimes things go deeper. Sometimes there is a splash in the ocean and it seems like everyone turns their head. Sometimes tragedy happens collectively, like war, like famine and genocide and plagues. Goodness, we could weep for lifetimes and lifetimes over.
And sometimes tragedy happens individually, in individual losses, gains, failures. And both are grand. Collective tragedies and not grander because they happen to more people. It is truly the fact that collective tragedy affects the individual that makes it grandly tragic. It is because a mother receives a folded flag when her son dies in war. It is the singularity in the photo ‘Tank Man’ that allows us to understand the injustice of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The man is holding groceries, he is holding his groceries as the tanks barreled him over!
by W.H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
This poem was written after Auden viewed the painting “Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Breughel
You can see only the legs of Icarus falling into the water.
There is a mentally handicapped girl who is a member of the gym where I work. The other day when I was sweeping the floor, I heard her talking to herself, well, sort of talking to herself, saying, “No, you’re not real, I can’t see you.” Then she paused. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh…she DID leave you, she DID leave you.” She wasn’t even saying it hysterically, she was just looking toward the wall and muttering nervously. Then she shook her head and started her next set of wall push-ups, seemingly disconnected to what had just happened and to the image that had just lurked at her side. She does that every time she visits.
How many times has someone asked her who she was talking to? How many times has she tried to explain? How many times has she failed to explain? Someone has left someone else. Someone has left someone else! But she sees it happen every day. I wonder if she was hysterical at first, but now she is just nervous, and, with a shake of her head, can carry on her life.
I thought of the poem Musee de Beaux Arts, by W.H. Auden, today when I heard her talking. Who told her what she saw wasn’t real? Well I think it is real. Whatever it is. Whoever she is talking to, whoever is talking to her, is real to her. Icarus believed he could fly with feathers and wax, and as the story goes, he really could, until he flew too close to the sun. And when he fell into the water “the ploughman may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, but for him it was not an important failure…” I wish the first thing that came into my head wasn’t ‘who is she talking to??’ I wish it would’ve been ‘who has left?’ I wish I would’ve looked at her pain individually, not at what her pain was suppose to look like or manifest itself in. It isn’t always ice cream and movies, or a good work out, or a perfectly sad song to get you through. Sometimes things go deeper. Sometimes there is a splash in the ocean and it seems like everyone turns their head. Sometimes tragedy happens collectively, like war, like famine and genocide and plagues. Goodness, we could weep for lifetimes and lifetimes over.
And sometimes tragedy happens individually, in individual losses, gains, failures. And both are grand. Collective tragedies and not grander because they happen to more people. It is truly the fact that collective tragedy affects the individual that makes it grandly tragic. It is because a mother receives a folded flag when her son dies in war. It is the singularity in the photo ‘Tank Man’ that allows us to understand the injustice of the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. The man is holding groceries, he is holding his groceries as the tanks barreled him over!
This image of one mother is how we see America's Great Depression.
It is because we have all had our dreams shattered like Icarus and our hearts broken like Krista, from the gym.
She DID leave you, she DID leave you. She has left us all. Whoever she is. And I hope that she comes back. At least I think that’s what I want. But I guess, most of all, I hope that one day Icarus could do wall push-ups in total peace, even though he knows he will probably never fly again.
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