Time and the Diffusion of Truth

The problem with didacticism is that it tends to diffuse and dissolve with time. Things as important as "don't scald yourself" or "don't lay under carts" become obvious, trivial and even humorous in their prominent evidence. These days advising someone to avoid scalding themselves on hot water is silly because of how so ingrained and incontrovertible it has become in our culture.

Another example of truth and logic being sepparated from useful information and becoming insignificant items of pointlessness is a story I had written earlier this year. It centers around a horrible event that took place long ago that destroyed an island. In my story it was several decades or even hundreds of years later and the ghostly remains of the island had become little more than a tourist trap. With no historical evidence of the event, it became all hearsay, and propigated itself as an unfounded rumor, rather than authentic fact. As with Atlantis, what could have been is not no more, and without propper literature placing the event in the real, we can only assume such places never existed outside human imagination.

Self-Affirming Textualality

I know, I know. Too much Quixote. But I realized something that I hadn't previously; the book itself is an extension of the ideas encapsulated within Don's mind. Don is constantly attributing truth as an important factor for nobility and chivalrous values. One major moral, I think, is that truth is not necessarily better than fiction. D.Q. thinks the stories in his books to be real, an obvious folly in the world in which he lived, but Cervantes tells us that so fantastic and unrealistic a story, told about Don Quixote is a factual account not to be taken as fancy (or at least he tells us so in the first part of the book).

For the sake of the story itself, Cervantes writes it as if were one of Don's own books--an epic story of a knight errant, but Quixote is decidedly not one (as far as I've read, I'm still reading the second book), and the general unbelievability of his madness, and the serendipitous nature in which everyone stopping at the inn that fateful knight (when the barber and curate tried to take Don home) knowing each other in some way or another.

There is the chapter in which Donny Q argues against the pedantic canon's claims that the romantic tales of chivalry are nothing more than fiction meant for writers to write about fantastic and impossible characters. Of course, Don is offended and talks of chivalry being didactic and true, while, ironically and hypocritically, Cervantes' story is, for all intents and purposes, fictitious.

A Poetic Detour

This has little to do directly with topics and ideas discussed in class, but we all know one could make contrived and vague connections towards such. I'm understandably concerned that using the internet as a forum for displaying my most recently revised epic (see: long) poem may lead to people using my work as their own. HOWEVER the library of congress' copyright website states that "Copyright protection subsists from the time the work is cre­ated in fixed form." That is, the second you make something original, it's copyrighted. This means no reproducing, performing, displaying or distributing without my permission (though I don't suspect any of my fellow classmates of doing such so much as random internet surfers, if they should perchance to happen upon my sad little blog).

I've worked an enormous amount on this in revision, conception, etc. and am merely looking for feedback from my English peers, if anyone has a suggestion or comment for me. It started as a parody of "Don Juan" by Lord Byron, and so randomly talks off-topic, insults literary figures, and even in a specific stanza ("I want not a hero...") directly emulates a stanza from Byron's epic canto. I also use a few older words, since I decided to adapt the poem to fit into a earlier time period that can't be immediately identified. Such as using "err" in the older sense of random meandering, not direct error.

It has since become something much more: a fun narrative I've come to love. It is by far my favorite piece of work produced to date, and I am modestly proud of it.While the language may be less poetic in parts that I would have hoped, I tended to put most of my focus in writing it on the sound of the poem when read or spoken; the rhythm of the lines, the flow of pronouncing sentences, and a particular focus to the sound of the alliteration and the general repetition of multiple similar sounds in each line. It was crafted with some painstaking concentration, and, ironically, as Byron's poem, it has become my masterpiece. However, not to be outdone, I actually completed my poem. (Ooh! Sick literary burn!) It is LONG. To the extent that it may be physically harmful. It is around 3,400 words, so take that into careful consideration before reading.

Here I write, with far better things to do
Than be writing—several items come to mind;
An opiate dream perhaps poetic whims pursue—
Faking prose and verse while I, in kind,
May sit upon this hazy Thames and ride
While mind and matters flow wide with the tide.

I could take it on my cheery bliss
To turn keen-stirred sights to alcohol,
Imbibe flustered fangs and searing kiss.
Ah, of sweetest sauce, to thee I call!
But no virtue, vice nor cannabis
Could further fix this fancy at all.
A man as I would yield such yarn well,
Though, unlike most men, in truth shall I tell.

See here that I hold a calm, steadied hand;
Mind, body, spirit—all working tonight.
See here that (for once) sobriety was planned
As to scrounge a means to scribe this story right,
Perch eyes and sit ears to my tale-spinning and
Soon you shall come to know of my plight.
In spite this lack of inebriation,
I pray shall bolster my motivation.

I have incredible incredibility.
Believable, this is no stretch of truth—
Here shall I absolve the myth of my ability;
By exchange of words I shall soon set loose
Upon your patient ears humility
So that I might not paint myself uncouth.
So that the chains of truth may carry no rust,
Let me claim, in my eyes, this venture unjust.

A town in a valley, when I care to listen
Can hear still the sounds of that villa I covet.
Though, due to events, my love since did lessen.
Sweet scene in the winter! Woe, did I love it!
Serene in the winter? Now here’s a lesson:
Who’er thought “beauty's truth” can go shove it.
I once loved the whiteness with various reason.
Whatever the case, I now ire the season.

Sixty-two months had I lived in that place
(Sixty-one I recall being pleasant).
I knew the town well, planting names to each face
That passed on our dimly-waked crescent.
Back then life was a laugh strolled at snails-pace
While the rest of the world grew cold and incessant.
There did I craft (as all craftsmen should)
My best bakes as a baker, and I was damn good.

Here I shall wander off-topic for brief
Random remark on a subject so dim
That scant men have heard, yet ‘tis my belief
He who knows naught for baking forever knows sin.
So that my soul finds some short form of relief—
Though for eight miles spinning I have yet to begin.
I’m certain by now your impatience is swelling.
Forgive intermission—this, too, is worth telling.

Some chefs may argue that cooking is art
While others, convinced, shout out “science,” opposed.
Having a kinship hence ripped apart,
Slamming many a kind and once-friendly door closed.
All art is science, and is science not art—
Both calling each other in craft, I propose
Art can be structured, and meant to inform
And, surely, there’s beauty where numbers perform.

Think what you will—art and science come one.
Practitioners certain may sear with such skill
That dough, spun on skin, kneaded and done,
Rise out from the oven as if their own will.
The gap twixt those skilled and those with skills none
Strictly follows this fact, if you will:
Those thinking to cook is to practice one school
Lack all form, vision, tact and are ever the fool.

I want not a hero—the sandwich, perhaps.
Though what tale could be told without just a few?
After cloying my brain short of mental collapse
My aged mind discovers that no man will do!
All yawning stories feature the boring synapse
of a hero, a villain and some trite daring-do.
But be this not a yarn—’tis all true confession
Of fact, void of hoax, pulled from my collection.

The fact is, my story is in no need of persons
To detail or scribe seven stanzas from now;
He’d start in good spirits then gradually worsen.
He’d be faced with a problem he conquers somehow.
Yet vainly he rides and dies off to the worst end.
Postlude his mother, drowning her brow.
Deadened and dripping, no vitals or pulse.
Oh, what an ending! Oh, that it weren’t false.

Heroes are fake; something penned in a book
With intention to deftly inspire
So that people, pathetic, in need of faith look
For that next strand of hope they might blindly desire.
I, by God’s grace, exposed truths I once took
That fueled towards those false figures my ire.
To have not a hero’s a problem quick-solved:
A good enough writer keeps villains involved.

Not that I scribe with a story line laid out,
Antagonist plucked from my person’s behest.
Let emphasis sway, laying rest all your doubt,
Mused not from some choir of angels’ request—
Though I must admit I’m far from devout,
I still pray I might tempt all doubt to rest.
I swear to be true, and embellish I shan’t
Simply sit in belief to the tale I recant.

Fall stains the world in a wondrous way
Leaving it naked after all’s said—
Giving such color with so great array,
Birthing such beauty, then leaving for dead...
Autumn year-round is a thing I can say
I would joyously treasure and cherish, and yet
As to a lion may be thorn or splinter,
So does my story start en medias winter.

So here I’ll begin, in the town known as Locks,
Sunk deep in the winter, still trembling with life.
When thin sheets of snow veil the meadows and rocks
And one’s breath cuts the air like a finely-tuned knife.
But soon was that town delivered a pox
Of unfair disaster and great, undue strife.
If only back then we knew that we were in
for the villain named Death, who shall follow herein.

Death lacks this world, less some Earthly force guides
It to pity or plunder or viciously haul
Some sweet soul from its threads, ere that soul hides
From its cruelty; creeping and harsh, breadth touching all.
Death strangles perception and pierces our lives
As our bodies decay and descend to a crawl.
Death is our king, and so rare leaves its throne,
But to smother our town, here Death acted alone.

How this all began is a quandary of great
Concern, but one thing I know is for certain:
Not by some chance but unwavering fate
Hid from our eyes by some sick, unseen curtain,
Springing, impacted and lured out our hate,
Turning our blissful existence to burden.
If survivors be found, they would tell you the same:
The beginning is doubtless—the mute was to blame.

His background was lack—a past no one knew,
Though his life, at the time, most people knew well;
A mute and a cripple with one leg askew.
A poor lot to tend, as I’m sure he would tell
Us if only he could (and I’m sure he wished to).
But if not for the mute the peace shan’t have fell.
It might not have been completely his fault,
But regardless, much life was still forced to a halt.

Now set the scene—I remember it clearly;
Our tavern, “The Blue,” and I deep in thinking,
telling barista, quite hotly, to “beer me.”
I did not see the mute (eye-deep in drinking)
At the time, ‘till my head lifted drearily,
Scanning the room, unintentionally blinking.
‘Til, unconscious, my eyes fell at his feet
Just as he, rising, took leave of his seat.

Then this mute, blessed beyond a form deformed
Awed the room, catching whispers in his wake.
Shocked he all, espousing loud: “Be warned,
Sick fools! My lust is birthed to satiate!
Upon your weak heads and necks shall be adorned
My wicked rights imposed on those worth least!
In licking sin shall feast and under I shall spill
Perfect blood in perfect pitch ‘til all is perfect will.”

Then collapsed he, slumping down upon a chair.
Mute no more, he howled and tightly clenched his chest.
He prayed to God for but one last gasp of air,
Drew a breath and died, God granting his request.
The people to which he spoke were quite unaware
The urgency in tone with which the mute addressed.
‘Tis true, for all the crowd thereafter talked
Was how rare his Death, of which they mocked.

And so it was, in truth, this man heard God;
How this, I wondered at great length, could be.
This simple crippled mute, this boorish sod,
For God to choose to speak of all to he?!
The man worth least, with life so greatly flawed.
Or was it that he held great reverie?
Yea, for the simple I have heard
God oft will choose to gift his word.

Not that I am of any greater worth;
Being pious is something I ne’er could do.
In fact, I’ve grown to frankly hate the church—
My rising breads the only mass I e’er tend to.
A man of the cloth, if that cloth be skirts
Of young, nubile ladies, to which shall I woo.
But I admit thoughts of the bees and the birds
Flew out of my mind when the mute spoke those words.

As much as I hate to admit it, all I
Could ponder, though ever so deep in my glass,
Soused in my thinking, was Death, by-and-by.
Soaking my liver each night as time passed
Through fingers and flames as if I’d run dry.
I sought through drunk mirrors and eventually asked
Why he who spoke nary a word and had sung
Nary a song impulsed so quick a tongue.

So hard have I hurt from indulging the sentiment
Of unjust a God who would forcibly wangle
A marionette of free will and of sentient
Thought to provoke and enticingly tangle
A man without family, friends or tenement
To pointlessly channel some curious angle.
Yet, despite pessimism, I feel in this case
That God’s will will work in mysterious ways.

A fortnight and then some had set on our town
Just as the talk of the mute man had waned
And rumors were said of the worrisome gown
Some cold-footed bride threw away in the rain,
While the poor groom-to-be heard hearsay of "drown"
(I never did figure how he maintained).
A search party sought and effectively ceased
When found they the bride, in quintessence, deceased.

In stillness she lay as we gathered to meet;
Most the town brought babbled murmurs of rape.
Neither bonnet nor blouse nor shoes for her feet.
She, naked completely, contorted in shape,
We swore ‘twas an angel enlaced in thick sleep.
Though, curious, cracked in disjoint at the nape.
High did I hold such lament for the dead.
Daily I pine this visage from my head.

Then the panic unveiled our innermost dreads
As spoke out one and then many a man
Reminding us words of "weak necks and heads,"
But most felt it dull to indulge in such plan
And thus turned our thoughts to our lives (or our breads).
So most soon forgot in so short of a span,
Turning deaf ears and averting blind eyes.
Ignorance false, we returned to our lives.

Still drank I, more often than not, than I should
'Til six days had passed with scarce happen of freak
Events ‘til a man came to town from the wood
Screeching of some horrid scene, err near the creek.
Enticed, all, we traced task as best as we could
'Til set sights a scene that squeezed stomachs weak.
Take care to this—I implore you to heed it;
If light be your nerves, I urge you: don’t read it.

It haunts me far worse that that girl’s mangled neck.
He, brutally bloodied, interlaced with the tree.
No discern of his innards from that of the wreck;
Entrails entwining, nameless face thinned in three,
Languished in spatter, abundant in speck,
Boundlessly mazed within trunk and debris.
In confident credit we all felt at last
The menacing mantic had thus come to pass.

But, torrid inside, we feigned it away,
Bribing inklings that in so pastoral place two
Mutilations were rare and thus would display
Not one sincere notion of what could ensue.
So we, paying no slight (as such was our way),
Felt frauding the case as pure chance ought to do.
That pitiful doctrine would promptly give out
When soon set in motion arrest to our doubt.

Sporadic inspiration sudden strikes me
To fade from this saddening tale I have hurled,
And worsened your day, no doubt, to depress thee...
The phrase “I would not miss it for the world”—
I implore your attention to please bear with me
That from out this annoyance a gem shall be pearled.
And so, yet again, I fall in my habit
To toss out a thought in the hopes you might grab it.

...For if but the world I would loose some great gift
And thus own the world in all of its facets
Would not then I still own the item I missed?
For own I the world and all in its mass. It’s
Brazen to think with so quirky a twist
(I no longer fear the contempt or the casket).
Yet, less objection, I’ve undoubtedly shown
I have ne’er a reason to miss something I own.

I doubt that objections be brought to my door,
As one-side discourse is the premise of late.
To write, I confess, holds some simple allure
When to talk, face-to-face will spark heated debate.
Oft out from these quarrels come vents I abhor
When harsh far-flung fists kiss the side of my face;
My personal thoughts far more fun to report
When criminal critics can never retort.

Repetition becomes me; here I remind
The shifting in mood to renewed talk of gore.
If thus far you have found my details unkind
Take care not to drudge further on, I implore.
Lest too weak of heart that would sooner take blind
Than read in disgust and endure murder more.
So “suspend disbelief,” as some jerk once said,
That, if so inclined, please read on then, instead.

The sole site in Locks (and by no small extent),
For traders and craftsmen to peddle their goods,
Setting shop under awning, umbrella and tent,
Squalling of trinkets, tawdry baubles and foods,
At peak bulk rousing mints to fall and be spent,
Finding all in high Sunday and corking in mood,
Is market square, bustling, eclipsed with decorum,
Bartering swaps ‘round domain of the forum.

Vexation of bites... a small worry that teethes
Is spilled through these veins whilst I must recollect
View lucid, and thus am I put ill-at-ease.
Sudden breached an affair of acrid intent.
As King Richard the Third once spoke, if you please,
That “now is the winter of our discontent.”
So harsh my skin flinches in gathering thought
To retell such a tale I rather would not.

It troubles me, true, to recall such an act:
Swift heard I a scream that enticed me to turn
As a man told his friend to let off his back—
That his play was too much not to garner concern.
So great was their tiff that he called it “attack,”
And, trembling in tone, confessed that it burned.
When freed of the grasp (once three men stopped the qualm),
Born ill of his back stood the mark of a palm.

So now here in the square, in front of us all,
Something wrong beyond wrong I witnessed in stare.
The view that I had (though I’m not really small)
Would have scaled at great length if I had but a chair;
Obscured by the throng so enticed in the thrall,
The diligent droves stood staunch in the square.
In spite of this, still, I did manage to sight
The start of the end and the herald of night.

“His friend,” I have said, and it seems out of place
That so key a person (it makes me quite sore),
Could evade all my eye, and obstruct his own face;
Concealed in the crowds and the coif that he wore.
But the final affair I’ll reveal at my pace,
(Though slow it may be, I still aim not to bore)
Was the grimace he donned whilst rising above
And the state of his skin, a loose lack thereof.

Haggard, disheveled, red rot full of grit.
Stood after the tussle a monstrous new sin:
Bones burst from muscle—grotesque, I admit—
Faceless and twisted in sinew and skin.
How he transmuted, too much for my wit.
His forearm ablaze, encrusted with trim,
Flaked-off in black bits as his fingers burned red.
I knew I should run, but just stood there instead.

He quit from the ground and then, arching his back,
Shrieked a screech that the sirens should think it so loud.
His flexing and crooking culled with a crack.
My nerves in suspense—just a face in the crowd.
His posture reordered, as if to attack,
But we lemmings just stood there, impregnably cowed.
Sudden and stirring taxed a brief interject;
With withering lyric it spoke: “imperfect.”

Then erupted a scene I knew in my heart
Was ordained since the mute took leave of his chair—
Or further back still that this cease had its start.
Regardless, the moment that word hit the air
Eightcount—no, nine (hard to keep them apart)
Bodily dagger-laced ropes set off to tear
Out at the others—those sick leashes, so strange.
(But as luck would have it, I was out of their range.)

Through red-wringing ruckus the creature ascended,
Belting once more a curdling bawl. Then it
Pulsed with white froth and, somehow suspended,
Hung still for a moment, a pendulum’s pit.
An explosion of blood! People flew, rended!
What pilfered my pelt to preserve was my wit;
Blood flogged to my feet and fancied to run,
No longer dumbfounded, I found I’d been dumb.

The butchered lay sprawled from the sordid attack,
Stirring my feet through fleshed comets of ash.
Cadavers careened with such constant impact
My hotfooted hurdle became rather rash
As the rocketing corpses flew in attack
To decimate windows and walls in their crash.
By chance, in my gait I gaped the sky,
Entombing my hopes I might leave there alive.

The air burned with blood and concocted a cloud,
Unending expanse and cruel crimson in hue,
A violent, tumultuous, unsettled sound
Corrupted the sun, an assassin to blue.
Sky-killing heights of this cold callous crowd
Had blackened all sight, but veiled not what I knew;
While scraping my mind I recalled that in Locks,
A land locked by water, it harbored our docks.

Searching frenzied fevered sprinting, my eyes strained
To see the square—smothered sight bore lay to waste.
The cloud ate all, and through dull set drips restrained,
I glimpsed it gorging, ingesting all it chased.
I arrived at the wharf, with self dire drained,
And with panicking oar, I departed, posthaste.
Then, after numerous knots, I guarantee
All earth eaten by cloud and swallowed at sea.

After wickedly wasted lifetimes and weeks
I swept onto land and a port not yet seen,
God’s arms cradled my boat in high, rolling peaks.
Now accounting to sailors what once had been,
Marveling mariners whenever I speak,
Disinclined, for a pint I'd fashion the scene.
Yarning to port-comers, for all that it’s worth,
The things that I'd seen and that Hell on our Earth.

The end of my days as a body draws near.
Four decades I’ve lived in this fair-weather port
Imparting the past when invested with beer
Of the days, last of Locks (in slurring retort).
This routine was my life for forty-one years.
With ragged regard, I love liquor, in short.
So that, might I guiltlessly further imbibe,
I sit here in silence, transfixed in my scribe.

Here I wrote, with far better things to have done.
In turning this tale was I brought to the brink.
From fifty stanza's length, my verity spun;
A call for fresh booze and fine spirits, I think.
With mind eased at rest and toiled turmoil done,
I shall halt with the pen and return to my drink.
But, alas, I feel rise on my neck of my hair
Whenever a patron takes leave of his chair.

Alex Emery | 12/8/08

Don and Dumber

All right, I'll be off the Don Quixote blogs here in a second. But I noticed today a very interesting parallel; Donny Q. and Sancho P. are in many ways reminiscent (though Cervantes, assuredly, came first) of Harry and Lloyd in "Dumb and Dumber." They are two innocent, likable guys who only real crime is the overall lack of knowledge of the real, working world. They are unemployed, see the world as something far different from what it truly is, and are living their lives in accordance to what the world seems to be like to them.

While Sancho Panza may be the smartest of the bunch, he still is faulted for following so insane a man, and eventually believing with similar fervor the chivalrous didactic reasoning that pervades poor Don's reality. While the modern movie characters prove to be dissimilar (they don't have the wherewithall to understand the reality of the world, living in obliviousness, in a truer sense that Mr. Q), they still tend to conform their actions to the events they assume are unfolding.

When assaulted and thrown asunder by a complacent windmill, Don Quixote insists his cruel tormentors, be they necromancer or a gang of rogue enchanters, had transmogrified the giants to windmills. When Harry and Lloyd are told by a bus of scantily-clad women they're seeking two oil boys to join them on tour, the two point them in direction of the nearest town, their absolute logic of the reality being that the women could not have meant them. While Don (and the increasingly convinced Sancho) is guilty of the sin of illusion and misinterpretation of reality, Harry and Lloyd are guilty of sheer lack of sense of the world.

Don Qui-ha-ha-xote

I'm a little disjointed. I understand the overall importance of Don Quixote as a didactic narrative of the world and of literature and/or literary criticism, but I'm somewhat unsettled that we haven't talked about the marvelous, affluent and ironic sense of humor that so pervades the novel. It helps make the unordinant amount of reading more tolerable, but also serves to advance a reader's love for the book. I smile. I laugh. Out loud. In the quiet study section of the library. People turn to look at me and I apologize without further noise.

Never since a few humorous parts of various other stories or writing specifically made for laugh-based pleasureable reading (Dave Barry, etc.) have I had so literal a "good time" reading a book. Don Quixote is no pharmakos. He is no tragic figure. He is a comic hero. He forces smile and joy at the ironic mistakes of peasants for beautiful maidens, a neglected old horse for the elegant and deserved steed of the righteous knight. True, we may find musings of humor in his less fortunate mistakes that end in bodily harm for our poor may Spaniard, invoking the universal spirit of humor from others' misfortune. He may exibit the commonalities of a scapegoat, but his character, self-deluded truimphs and innocent nature make him so much more lovable as a person, outside the ridicule and rediculous harm upon his person, that I dare say he is far too beloved by his audience of readers that he transcends the idiom of pharmakos.

The Fantastic Mind of Don

Don Quixote is a beautiful mind. I envy, desire and wish to aspire to such perfect delusion. His world is the absolute sublime. When he recieves the ever-approaching effect of his constantly deficient attempts at true chivalrous acts, he misconcieves the causes of his failure as the works of some vendettously malicous necromancer that turns giants to windmills and armies into dust. He does not, however see inn turn to castle through any sort of phasmagorical, selectively attributing any illusion that benefits his version of reality as fact, not a mystical enchantment.

A real-world comparison would be the arrival of Spanish ships on foreign ports. Circumstantially, we are told that when the first huge boats and galleons arrived, the natives where supposedly unable to see them for their minds could not comprehend something so unknown, so dislike anything they knew of in their world. Don's sheer will to live in so elevated an era, simply refuses, or perhaps cannot process the possibility for reality to be anything less.

The Experience of Tangents

Tangents (no, not dark-skinned gentlemen) are essential to didacticism. Without meandering thought, delving intellectual stimulation, general brainstorming and imaginative exploration, how can we learn? Without experience, we retain our innocence and in that sense we also deprive ourselves of the wealth of worldly knowledge. If not for (often topic- or subject-focused) expression through apparently nonlinear thinking, we would never learn a thing.

We must be inspired by experience, and even going off on a tangent is a moment of blisfull experience. Every way in which a person may express thoughts is an invaluable tool of both literature and the general human experience. Poetry is a way of exploring the inner schemes of mind, man, nature and the existential state. I would argue that tangents are a form of stream-of-consciousness profoundly manifested in oral tradition. All forms of words are important, indispensable and infinitely intragle to didactic experience.