Notes: My Back Hurts

I
Back spasms are no fun.  I don't even know exactly how I strained my back this time.  I didn't carry scuba tanks too far; I didn't lean over and lift a box of books and then twist to put it down somewhere else; I didn't even try to pick up the other kayak, which I know is too heavy for one person.  (I have, I must admit, been carting gear about, shifting book-boxes, and loading up the other kayak, but I haven't had the dramatic pull, that overstepping of muscle through negligence of mind.)

Still, I've had a sore back for days, and today the spasms started.  Really, from long walks in the wrong pair of shoes?  Or a 70-minute hike?  Or, more likely, from the years piling up?

I've applied heat, I've stretched, and now I'm trying ice: three cubes in a glass with Flor de Cana.

II
I certainly don't like pain, but sometimes these back spasms just crack me up.

I've always thought that muscle cramps carry with them a funny sort of pain (they hurt, but the twisting of the muscles seems ridiculous), but some of this morning's spasms seemed triggered by the slightest wrong move, almost by the thought of moving, and I keep having to laugh.

Gasp and grunt, yes, but also laugh.

(I didn't move, I swear; I only thought about moving!)

"Be Mind Full": Cawdor Castle Motto

Reading Properly: All In Play and At Play

Ideally, reading properly
is much like living properly:

moment by moment,
responsively;
attuned to everything
but also with due consideration for weight and strength and flow patterns;
aware of the past without being chained by it;
aware of the future without being dismayed by it;
and with heart and mind and soul
all in play and at play.

Watch-Words: Kayaking

Protected areas in a certain swell; the bay's mouth in a certain swell: as long as we approach matters carefully and are ready with back-up plans or for less than ideal, we are ready to look and learn.

Mirror

"I have a jumbled mind that only achieves clarification at times and then under pressure, as in a classroom. Then the material provides the unity; the random insights."

--Theodore Roethke

Lord Byron: "My Mind Is A Fragment"

Happy 225th, Lord Byron!  The portions of this entry will move fragmentally, in honor of his Lordship.

200 years ago today, Lord Byron turned 25, footloose, if not exactly carefree in London.  I've been reading around in his letters, his journal from later in 1813, and a bit of poetry composed around that time to enjoy Byronic wit, self-absorption, and poetic talent.  I want to share a few bits from (or about) Byron's “The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale,”  composed in pieces, fragmentary by design, from later in his 25th year, 1813, begun in March and published in early June.  ["Giaour" rhymes with "tower".]

Opening Lines: No breath of air to break the wave
That rolls below the Athenian’s grave,
That tomb which, gleaming o’er the cliff,*
First greets the homeward-veering skiff,
High o’er the land he saved in vain—
When shall such hero live again?

*A tomb above the rocks on the promontory, by some supposed the sepulcher of Themistocles. [Byron’s note]

My note:  The concern for the missing hero, the lost hero, the failed hero haunts the works, poetic and dramatic.   Byron’s excellent Don Juan opens with a call for a hero too, for none of the potential heroes of the period really qualify; he is forced to turn to the old seducer Don Juan (which for Byron & the English of  the time rhymes, quixotically perhaps for us, with “true one").


A favorite passage:
The Mind, that broods o’er guilty woes,
   Is like the Scorpion girt by fire,
In circle narrowing as it glows
The flames around their captive close,
Till inly search’d by thousand throes,
    And maddening in her ire,
One sad and sole relief she knows,
The sting she nourish’d for her foes,
Whose venom never yet was vain,
Gives but one pang, and cures all pain,
And darts into her desperate brain.—
So do the dark in soul expire,
Or live like Scorpion girt by fire;**
So writhes the mind Remorse hath riven,
Unfit for earth, undoom’d for heaven,
Darkness above, despair beneath,
Around it flame, within it death!—

**Alluding to the dubious suicide of the scorpion, so placed for experiment by gentle philosophers.  Some maintain that the position of the sting, when turned towards the head, is merely a convulsive movement; but others have actually brought in the verdict ‘Felo de se’. The scorpions are surely interested in a speedy decision of the question; as, if once fairly established as insect Catos, they will probably be allowed to live as long as they think proper, without being martyred for the sake of an hypothesis.

My note: I like the contrast between the poetic and the prosaic, between the melodramatic verse and the contrasting skeptical/satirical explanation.

Finally, a line from Byron's journal of 1813:

For my part, I adhere (in liking) to my Fragment.  It is no wonder that I wrote one -- my mind is a fragment.

--Byron's Letters & Journals: Volume 3: 1812-1814 -- 'Alas! The Love Of Women!',
edited by Leslie A. Marchand,
Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA,
1974.

Shakespeare's Sonnet 122: "Thy Gift, Thy Tables"

Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full character'd with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain
Beyond all date, even to eternity; 
Or at the least, so long as brain and heart 
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be miss'd. 
That poor retention could not so much hold, 
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score; 
Therefore to give them from me was I bold, 
To trust those tables that receive thee more: 
   To keep an adjunct to remember thee 
   Were to import forgetfulness in me.

         --William Shakespeare

"The Sea In The Head": Two More From Kennelly's "Islandman"

When will we permit the sea in the head

To flow as it will?

The moon has laws but no theories.

It sends out a cold, golden call

And hangs in suspense for the answer

We fear to give.

I would release the sea in the head.

I would let it live,

Pour through the brain's darkest caves,

Out through the eyes,

Touching the distant skin of other 

Minds and bodies.

Who will say which is more real --

My hands on the sea,

The strange flesh or the hurt roar

That is part of me?

Who will say which is more felt --

Loneliness

Or the desolation written on stones

When the sea withdraws?

I have learned to live both night and day

Uncertain of day and night.

This beautiful island is poised forever

In a dubious light.

--Brendan Kennelly,

Two poems from his "Islandman," a book or sequence of poems that  I've pointed to and quoted from before here and here.

Borrowed, with respect, from this volume:

Brendan Kennelly, Breathing Spaces: Early Poems, 
Bloodaxe Books: Newcastle upon Tyne, 1992.

Fragments From Bacchylides

Though Honor shifts to any shape,
And man's skills cannot be told,
One outranks them all: the mind
Discretion moves to what's at hand.

----------

Yet resilient Theseus
Did not flinch:
Poising tall
On the planked deck,
He dived an arc
To his welcome warm
In the sea's glades.
Minos, bit to the quick . . . .

----------

Works of the gods are wonders
Seaworthy men confirm.

----------

This for the last time:
Profit can crush
Profoundest minds.

----------

One writer picks another's brains--
Call it tradition:
Taking the gates of a new song
Is no small job.

----------

One criterion, one approach
Leads on to man's success:
The soul that sees out
Life in self-delight.
Who hounds his wits
At the heels of crowding cares
And pummels his mind with what's to come,
Drives dead work through the days and nights . . . .
Throttle your heart with sorrow,
All the gladness dies.

----------

. . . when she curves that smooth arm,
And flicks some wine at the saucers--
Just with a neat turn of her wrist--
Our flute-girl serves her bachelors.

----------

Never underhand,
The words that Wisdom
Resonates in man.

----------

The gifts of the Muses,
Goals of a hard campaign,
Do not surrender
To all who handle arms.

----------

*Bacchylides was a Greek poet of the fifth century B.C.  You can find these fragments and more with an appropriate scholarly treatment in . . .

Bacchylides, Complete Poems, 
Translated, with a Note to the New Edition, by Robert Fagles,
With a Foreward by Sir Maurice Bowra,
Introduction and Notes by Adam M. Parry,
Yale University Press: New Haven & London,
1998.

Hektor: sculpture mix, pit-fired.
(The red is from kelp-wrappings before I put the piece into the pit, I'm fairly sure.)

Yeats: "Memory," "Presences," and "The Balloon of the Mind"

MEMORY

One had a lovely face,

And two or three had charm,

But charm and face were in vain

Because the mountain grass

Cannot but keep the form

Where the mountain hare has lain.

PRESENCES

His night has been so strange that it seemed

As if the hair stood up on my head.

From going-down of the sun I have dreamed

That women laughing, or timid or wild,

In rustle of lace or silken stuff,

Climbed up my creaking stair. They had read

All I had rhymed of that monstrous thing

Returned and yet unrequited love.

They stood in the door and stood between

My great wood lectern and the fire

Till I could hear their hearts beating:

One is a harlot, and one a child

That never looked upon man with desire,

And one, it may be, a queen.

THE BALLOON OF THE MIND

Hands, do what you're bid:

Bring the balloon of the mind

That bellies and drags in the wind

Into its narrow shed.

--W.B. Yeats

Clay Bowl, Stone Bench