I've been reading Thomas Kinsella's 1969 translation of the Irish epic The Tain (published by Oxford UP) and enjoying it immensely. Sad to say, my familiarity with the myths of my ancient, barbarous forebears is pretty lacking. Kinsella's work captures the excitement, the rawness, and the strangeness of these stories well. They feel at once very foreign and very familiar--meaning they have all the grandiose dimensions of any mythic tales, but are also interlaced with the surprisingly mundane. The edition I have is wonderfully illustrated with "brush drawings" by Louis le Brocquy; their primitive, cave-painting qualities are uniquely appropriate to these ancient tales. On a whim, I Googled Brocquy and found his official site, which is excellent. I hadn't known much about him until now, and he deserves much deeper study (how embarassing! he's one of Ireland's greatest living painters too! I have so much to learn...) Find his site here: http://www.lebrocquy.com/.
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Here are five reasons to forgive yourself for yelling at an old man who tried to snip rose blossoms out of the flower beds in your front yard: (1) Misheard song lyrics. They are almost always better than the real lyrics. Check out the funniest website in existence: KissThisGuy (as in "'Scuse me while I...": http://www.kissthisguy.com/. Some years ago I offered this bit, misheard from "Funkytown": instead of "I gotta move on," I heard, "A cat on the lawn". It didn't make it onto the site due to an absurdly long backlog and mismanagement, but I think it's a better lyric. Why shouldn't there be cats on lawns in Funkytown? K's was from Bowie's "Jean Genie": instead of "loves chimney stacks" she heard "loves genie snacks", which, I say again, is a much better lyric. (2) Mango sticky-rice. A terrific Thai dessert--sweet, sticky, ricey, mangoey goodness. Probably what the Jean Genie would snack on. (3) The Sellwood Bee. A 100 + year-old SW Portland newspaper still going strong with headlines such as, "Homeowner leaves sprinklers on for a week. Can't pay water bill" and "Sellwood Library Expands Hours of Operation," and "New Chalkboards Coming Soon to Local Bakery" and "Yard Sale Creates Traffic Confusion on Tenino." (Okay, I made those up. But you gotta love the Bee!) (4) The poem "In An Artist's Studio" by Christina Rossetti. While her poems are, for me, hit and miss ("Goblin Market, in fact, could be a good example of the abysmal sublime, see entry for July 8) this one about a visit to her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti's studio and seeing the countless images of Elizabeth Siddal is brilliant. Any fan (or despiser) of pre-Raphaelite art would understand these sentiments, I think. I've never read a better articulation of an artist's singular obsession--and communicated with such a lovely, curious, searching, and exasperated tone. (5) Galileo's legendary utterance of "Eppur si muove" before the Inquisition, even if there's no proof he said it. It needs to be true.
Here are five reasons to forgive yourself for yelling at an old man who tried to snip rose blossoms out of the flower beds in your front yard: (1) Misheard song lyrics. They are almost always better than the real lyrics. Check out the funniest website in existence: KissThisGuy (as in "'Scuse me while I...": http://www.kissthisguy.com/. Some years ago I offered this bit, misheard from "Funkytown": instead of "I gotta move on," I heard, "A cat on the lawn". It didn't make it onto the site due to an absurdly long backlog and mismanagement, but I think it's a better lyric. Why shouldn't there be cats on lawns in Funkytown? K's was from Bowie's "Jean Genie": instead of "loves chimney stacks" she heard "loves genie snacks", which, I say again, is a much better lyric. (2) Mango sticky-rice. A terrific Thai dessert--sweet, sticky, ricey, mangoey goodness. Probably what the Jean Genie would snack on. (3) The Sellwood Bee. A 100 + year-old SW Portland newspaper still going strong with headlines such as, "Homeowner leaves sprinklers on for a week. Can't pay water bill" and "Sellwood Library Expands Hours of Operation," and "New Chalkboards Coming Soon to Local Bakery" and "Yard Sale Creates Traffic Confusion on Tenino." (Okay, I made those up. But you gotta love the Bee!) (4) The poem "In An Artist's Studio" by Christina Rossetti. While her poems are, for me, hit and miss ("Goblin Market, in fact, could be a good example of the abysmal sublime, see entry for July 8) this one about a visit to her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti's studio and seeing the countless images of Elizabeth Siddal is brilliant. Any fan (or despiser) of pre-Raphaelite art would understand these sentiments, I think. I've never read a better articulation of an artist's singular obsession--and communicated with such a lovely, curious, searching, and exasperated tone. (5) Galileo's legendary utterance of "Eppur si muove" before the Inquisition, even if there's no proof he said it. It needs to be true.
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In an Artist's Studio -- Christina Rossetti
One face looks out from all his canvases,
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
That mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel — every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more or less.
He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him,
Fair as the moon and joyful as the light:
Not wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim;
Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.
All right, sonny. That's enough. Just pack that in...
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