Mickey Maloney ducked his head when a bucket of whiskey flew at him
It missed, and falling on the bed, the liquor scattered over Tim
Bedad he revives, see how he rises, Timothy rising from the bed
Saying "Whittle your whiskey around like blazes, t'underin' Jaysus, do ye think I'm dead?"– (“Traditional Irish Music”)
Whack fol the dah will ya dance to yer parner around the flure yer trotters
shake Wasn't it the truth I told you? Lots of fun at Finnegan's Wake –
(“Traditional Irish Music”)
“Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur, and
faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.” – Eliot, Four Quartets,
East Coker
"What does Reincarnation mean?"
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal
replied, "It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer
hair, and warsh yer neck,
And clean yer fingernails,
And lay you in a
padded box
Away from life's travails."
"The box and you goes in a
hole,
That's been dug into the ground.
Reincarnation starts in when
Yore planted 'neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin' on
Yer
transformation ride."
"In a while, the grass'll grow
Upon yer
rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is
found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now's become
Yer vegetative bower."
"The
posy that the hoss done ate
Up, with his other feed,
Makes bone, and
fat, and muscle
Essential to the steed,
But some is left that he can't
use
And so it passes through,
And finally lays upon the ground
This
thing, that once wuz you."
"Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And
sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object
that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin': 'Slim,
You ain't changed, all that much.'"
The above painting is by Bega, an oil painting 'The Alchemist' in 1663.Alchemy, originally derived from the Ancient Greek word khemia (Χημία) meaning
"art of transmuting metals", later arabicized as al-kimia (الكيمياء), is both a
philosophy and an ancient practice focused on the attempt to change base metals
into gold, investigating the preparation of the "elixir of longevity", and achieving ultimate wisdom, involving the improvement of the
alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing
unusual properties.[1] The practical aspect of alchemy generated the basics of
modern inorganic chemistry, namely concerning procedures, equipment and the
identification and use of many current substances.
The unstable, heterogeneous and dispersed social reality of the postmodern
cannot be contained within any totalizing theory. Without such metanarratives,
Lyotard argues, each work of art, "working without rules in order to formulate
the rules of what will have been done," becomes a unique event describing its
own process of coming into being.
This is what Beckett's fictions do.
Each one starts out anew, inventing its rules as it goes along. Its subject is
itself, the narrating voice creating a world out of language. Before, between
and after the jabber of words that constitute the fiction is silence. How to
express silence through sound? Beckett is preoccupied with this dilemma from the
beginning of his career.
LEAR:
O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is as cheap as beast's. Thou art a lady:
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear'st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need--
You heavens, give me that patience, patience I need.
You see me here, you gods, a poor old man,
As full of grief as age, wretched in both.
If it be you that stirs these daughters' hearts
Against their father, fool me not so much
To bear it tamely; touch me with noble anger,
And let not women's weapons, water drops,
Stain my man's cheeks. No, you unnatural hags!
I will have such revenges on you both
That all the world shall--I will do such things--
What they are, yet I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth. You think I'll weep.
No, I'll not weep.I have full cause of weeping, but this heart
Shall break into a hundred thousand flaws,
Or ere I'll weep. O Fool, I shall go mad!
(Lear to his daughters Goneril and Regan, "King Lear," Act 2, Scene 4,
lines 263-285)
Which reminded me of dinner the other night with my boyfriend, Sutter. I
made him dinner because I'm a nice girlfriend. After dinner I asked him if he
wanted dessert.
He said I'd like ice cream.
I said we have strawberry or vanilla.
Sutter said, I want chocolate.
I said, Well we have strawberry or vanilla and I'd be
happy to get either of those for you.
He says again, I want chocolate. (These here are some breaking up words.)
Again I ask, well we only have starwberry or vanilla so would you like one
of those.
Sutter says could you go to the store and get me chocolate?
So I said, spell the "van" in vanilla, and because Sutter is advanced
for his age he says, v-a-n.
I said, Okay can you spell the "straw" in strawberry? he does.
Now I say, can you spell the "fuck" in chocolate? And he says there
aint no fuck in chocolate.
I said, you got it!
This joke is funnier when you think it is true, but that conversation has
never happened between me and Sutter, but in order for it to be funny we tell it
like it's really happened just the other night. Sutter likes people to continue
thinking that it's real, however I always like to say, "that was a joke" or they
might walk away with the wrong idea.
Spring- comedy, celebrates life, sexual intercourse/procreation, comedies end in marriage, getting together
Summer- romance, myth, celebration of the triumph of order over chaos
Fall- tragedy, anti-sex, Hamlet, Oedipus......three roads meet...
Winter - satire, irony
Beckett - the end of things
About deterioration of people, mythic writing, Ovid's gold, silver, bronze, iron.......the mythic pattern, initiation, separation, return.
"I had been living so far from words so long, you understand, that it was enough
for me to see my town, since we're talking of my town, to be unable, you
understand. It's too difficult to say, for me. And even my sense of identity was
wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I
think. And so on for all the other things which made merry my senses. Yes, even
then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things
but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but
after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon
me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is
what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little
sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and
the long sonata of the dead."
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