Thus die I: thus, thus, thus!

Now am I dead, now am I fled
My sooooul is IIIIN the sky.
Tongue - loose thy light!
Moon - take thy flight!
Now die...die...die...DIE...DIIIIIIIIIIIE!!!

Some thoughts before writing up recommendations for my students.

1) Midsummer Night's Dream is sooooooooo making fun of Romeo and Juliet. I couldn't help but thinking of MND in near to every scene of R&J on Sunday afternoon. Ruined the balcony scene for me, I'm afraid. ;P >snickering evilly< Actually, Friar Lawrence kept all his theological speeches in the version I saw Sunday, and the fellow playing him was wonderful. One simply cannot simply FULLY understand Shakespeare without a Catholic understanding - his every deeper thought in even the least of his plays is riddled through with Catholic theology. Whuh. Wonderful.

2) First rehearsal for Pirates last night. Went well, despite not enough time to talk to everyone I needed to talk to. (Oh, grim looked night! Oh, night which is so black! Oh night which ever art when day is not! Oh night, oh night...alack, alack, alack!) This caused some consternation this morning which is slowly clearing up. There may not need to be a separation of church and state, but quand une dit des relations avec son famille, donc quelque chose sont plus complique parce que une vie (conjugation?) avec le question. (Et ma francais disparais!) Oh, and the anticipated assault of undesired entomology did not rear its ugly and persistent head last night much to my surprise and quiet delight. The promised poem has therefore been diverted to:

3) Naw, a slight digression before moving on. Sinbad is still a really good CD.

4) Regard the event, long desired!
Long thought of, trembled over, discarded, poked in moment of boredom -
Appear!
And one wonders whether the desire were not the better in the having
Than the actuality.
Anticipation becomes anxiety,
Anxiety, avoidance,
Avoidance, desire,
Desire, nothingness
And the return to comfortable "naught."
Is the hermit the better for his hermitage
Than the man without the desert?
There is comfort in a desert,
Although hardship there also.
Yet in the other lands,
The winter lands, the summer lands,
The lands of planting and of harvest,
There is also toil and the longing
For the solitude of desert vagaries.
Within the desert, vast terrain,
Full light of sun and stretch of sky,
Extremes of light and dark, of hot and cold,
Ever anticipation of the Ever Lands
Which all men hold dear.
Within the other lands
The shift from one season to another,
Blurred, abandoned, ploughed through, forgotten -
The ease of slow familiarity,
And the likewise ease of a cluttered life,
Where days and nights and years and days
Run, run, ceaseless run, with never pause until
That final pause
Which leaves a man quite breathless.
Within my hand, white as any letter,
Bleached white like the desert sands,
Red rivulets from the cracked skin start and flow
Between the creases of the years that bow and bend.
What words take form between the criss-crossing
Of this all-too-fragile parchment?
Here is no divination, but invitation -
No mirage, long desired with the ease of desire
Seen from a-far away.
But the thing itself, raw and red and bleeding -
Coursing from palm to holy palm,
Beneath the palms of my desert home,
Leading westward, mayhap - or eastward, who can say -
In the glaring heat that stems from sun above?
With what shall I bind my hand,
Stop up the wound that my Savior first bore for me?
Or shall I bear its burden and follow the Moses stream,
The sudden stream, the well-spring
To discover whether it be blood or life itself?
The bare foot lifts, pauses in shadow-thrown
Upon the smooth and shifting landscape.
What though, one wound bore;
How many more are bound me
The many miles I travel long?
I look upwards to the setting sun -
Or rising, rising, ever rising?
Red streak upon the silent hills
That blow a veil of sandy smoke before
My weary, dryling eyes....
I seem to see
Figures, streams, innumerable tributaries
That converge within the very heart
Of that brilliance, sweet unbearable.
Shall I lift my hand to block the sun,
That I may squint at the figures who stand
With arms outstretched,
Courage in their very backs,
Knit into the fabric of their skin which now, I see,
Bleeds not unlike my own.
I raise my hand, and find the sun
Grown more brilliant,
Vibrant,
Tangible,
Corporeal,
Encased in the web of vein and tissue
That part to hold in tender cherishing
That sweet and humble glory.
My fingers spread in anguished imitation
Of short and stumpy rays.
My arm turns, as though I could hold the sun
Within my wounded hand -
Support Him as He ascends
Rising, rising, ever rising -
Not east nor west nor north nor south
But upwards,
Inwards
To pierce my very flesh.
Here the source unveiled, the mystery revealed -
My own palm a mere terminous
Dipped into the wellspring
Of youthful waters.
Blood and water are one:
Water crimsoned by the laughing sun.
Shadow wavers one minute more
Beneath my bare, uncallused foot
That has stayed within the cool, oasis confines
Of my meek and humble hermitage.
Sorrow not - my path may lead me here again,
To feel the damp moss beneath my feet -
Older feet then, blistered, bruised, callused,
Much in need of hermitage,
Of warmth to ease my aching bones.
Strange distortion of shadow,
Shifting with the shifting sun,
Diminishing as He rises
(Rising! Rising! Ever rising!).
My foot moves forward
To crush the shadow into the unforgiving sands,
And move within the hourglass
Forward along the river wide
Until the sands diminish
And I reach the Ever Lands at last.

Mood: I can't think quite how to describe it. See above, I suppose.
Music: Sinbad, silly! On repeat.
Thought: Half day tomorrow, tra la la la la LAAAAA!