Look Again

Look Again

O how the mighty fall.
Jesus turns to Judas
and Hamlet to Macbeth.
Men fall off their pedestals
when love falls to its death.

(I probably wrote this in late 91 or some time in 1992)

I do like this poem - its sarcasm, bitterness and humour - it reminds me of Dorothy Parker's style of writing. Incidentally, she is one of my favourite writers and I was titillated to discover that we share the same birthday.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 1881 - 1955

This afternoon at Manipal Hospital, I came across this quotation that was somehow so exciting to me - it said what I felt but had never captured in words - and took it further so powerfully. I mean, look at that last sentence, how MUCH is told in those few words, how perfectly he expresses love's potential for the human race:

"Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."

A few hours later, back home and blog-hopping, I came across another, by the same person.

“You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.”

- Teilhard de Chardin

I go my whole life never hearing this name before, and now I read it twice in one afternoon, both times referring to ideas that have been nudging at me lately. That's the sort of stuff I just have to google, being one of those we-are-all-connected-and-nothing-happens-by-chance types.

And what a fascinating chappie he turns out to be: a French Jesuit priest and philosopher, as well as a paleontologist and a biologist. And he was "green" long before we put the colour to use as a political adjective!

"Chardin's writings clearly reflect the sense of the Earth as having its own autonomous personality, and being the prime center and director of our future .. " (from a rather interesting article by Anodea Judith)

He went all over the world, got into some trouble with the church over his theory on evolution, and published rather a lot of books, the primary being something called The Phenomenon of Man. He was involved with the discovery of Peking Man. And he even provided the inspiration for Father Merrin in William Blatty's The Exorcist!

So very well known by everyone it seems, except me. Better late than never, though, I always say. And I like to believe that people come into my life when they're supposed to. I'm sure he would agree. Any day now, one of his books will leap out at me from a dusty book fair shelf, and he will make a second appearance on this blog's Book Fair Junkie section.

Till then, I leave you with this thought-provoking gem of his:

"Our century is probably more religious than any other. How could it fail to be, with such problems to be solved? The only trouble is that it has not yet found a God it can adore."

This sums it up.

“If velvet could speak, it would sound like Rickman.”

- Sandy Bauers, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Snape. A severely good site on him.

I must tell you about Severely Severus, which is an excellent site created by a wonderful human being who goes by the name Whitehound, who has put together a glorious listing of really nice fanfics - nothing x-rated, and all the ones she's selected present Snape in true character.

What is Snape in true character, you might ask? Well, as far as I'm concerned it's most-amazing-man-that-never-walked-the-earth-albeit-a-sarcastic-unfriendly-dark-scary-batlike-greasy-haired-git-who-never-got-enough-sunshine. Just got to love him.

Snape. He does not really look like he looks.

The Snape in my head, that is. It's the Snape of the books that I'm mad about, not the Snape of the movies. Alan Rickman is a fine man, I'm sure, and lustworthy in his own way. And in the movies, all I get are snapshots of Snape. The personality comes across so much better in the books.

But I will say one thing for Alan Rickman: That VOICE...I don't know if Mr. Rickman always sounds like that, or if his "Snape voice" is only for the Harry Potter movies. But that voice IS Snape. It's a rich chocolate mousse voice.

And if you don't know what I mean by that, visit Cafe Y on Langford Road in Bangalore, and order the chocolate mousse. It's orgasmically delicious.

THE BLOOM OF CANDLES by Laurie Lee, Rs. 30

Such a jolly sweet little name. But his poetry is so morbid. At the book fair, I found a book of his poetry, published in 1947. The book is a slim - practically anorexic - volume, bound in yellow, and titled "The Bloom of Candles".

"Tonight the wind gnaws
with teeth of glass,
the jackdaw shivers
in caged branches of iron,"

(what does that mean?)
"the stars have talons."

The stars have talons. And he is talking about Christmas Eve. He paints this depressing harsh landscape -
"the ground bitter with stones"

and then he ends with

"a new star opens
like a silver trumpet over the dead.
Tonight in a nest of ruins
the blessed babe is laid."

I kind of get where he's going: the ghastly ugly world, and the baby who's born to redeem it. It's a poem about hope, painted with despair. I don't know whether to hate it or love it.

When I first posted this on Rumi's Bird, the infamous commenter Vichoobhai sent me an excerpt about Laurie Lee:

That is the way he describes nature, always tinged with terror and gore, larks screaming, clouds fuming and sky tearing apart.

I googled Lee and found him described as a gentle, humourous, soft-spoken man and I can't help wondering what unspoken horrors he translated into words on nature.


I want to sing like the birds, not worrying about who hears or what they think - Jalaluddin Rumi