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Moment of Zen: Fall Semester

If you live near a college campus, you’ve probably already seen this sight a time or two. It seems like guys at colleges love to bond by running together or they may just need to get out by themselves for a bit. Regardless of the reason, it makes for a lovely (and distracting) sight.

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TGIF

I am so glad that it is Friday. It’s been a long week at work, and today, I get to work from home. A weekend with no plans where I can relax and take it easy sounds like heaven to me. The weather is not expected to be great tomorrow, and the temperatures will be cooler. In fact, on Monday the high temperature is only expected to reach 60 degrees (15.5 C). I don’t mind the cooler weather. It’s been a pretty mild summer, and I’m not ready for winter. However, the fall colors in Vermont make the rest of the year worth it. It’s like living in a postcard. Anyway, with the cooler temperatures this weekend, I can curl up with a book and cuddle with Isabella, i.e., Isabella will lay on my hip, but it’s just nice she likes to be close.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

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Looking Forward

I’m looking forward to this weekend. I don’t have any plans, but it is Labor Day weekend which means I’ll be off work on Monday. I just have to make it through work today and then I don’t have to be back until Tuesday. It’s been a tense week at tue museum, and I’m frustrated with some people’s attitudes. They’ve purposely made it tense in the offices, and I wish they’d just get with the program and quit resisting any changes. Maybe, I just need a vacation, which is why four days in a row away from the museum will be nice.

I can just spend some time with Isabella. So, here’s your Isabella picture of the week:

I call this her invisibility cloak. She blends in so well, I don’t even see her sometimes when I’m not looking directly at her.

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Overslept

I overslept this morning. I pulled a muscle in my shoulder yesterday. It continually felt worse and hurt more throughout the day. After I got home and had dinner, I took a muscle relaxer to try to help. I fell asleep around 8:30 pm last night and had to drag myself out of bed this morning. Now, I feel like I’m already running behind today. Thankfully, my shoulder feels better but is still hurting. Hopefully, it will continue to feel better as the day goes on.

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The Love Of Narcissus

The Love of Narcissus

By Alice Meynell

 

Like him who met his own eyes in the river,

  The poet trembles at his own long gaze

  That meets him through the changing nights and days

From out great Nature; all her waters quiver

With his fair image facing him for ever;

  The music that he listens to betrays

  His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways

His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour.

 

His dreams are far among the silent hills;

  His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain

With winds at night; strange recognition thrills

  His lonely heart with piercing love and pain;

He knows his sweet mirth in the mountain rills,

  His weary tears that touch him with the rain.

 

 

About the Poem

 

If you are not familiar with the Greek myth about Narcissus, he was born in Thespiae in Boeotia, the son of Cephissus (the personification of the Boeotian river of the same name) and the nymph Liriope. His mother was warned one day by the seer Teiresias that her son would live a long life as long as “he never knows himself.” Narcissus was known for his incredible beauty, and as he reached his teenage years, the handsome youth never found anyone that could pull his heartstrings. He left in his wake a long trail of distressed and broken-hearted maidens and even spurned the affections of one or two young men. Then, one day, he chanced to see his own reflection in a pool of water and, thus, discovered the ultimate in unrequited love: he fell in love with himself. Naturally, this one-way relationship went nowhere, and Narcissus, unable to draw himself away from the pool, pined away in despair until he finally died of thirst and starvation. Immortality, at least of a kind, was assured, though, when his corpse (or in some versions the blood from his self-inflicted stab wound) turned into the flowers which, thereafter, bore his name.

Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse (1903 oil painting) 

 

Narcissus appears in other myths as well, especially the myths surrounding mountain nymph Echo. Another version of the myth appears in the work of the Roman writer Ovid. In this telling, Narcissus is as handsome as ever but cruelly refuses the advances of Echo. The lovely nymph, heartbroken, wastes away and dies with only her voice remaining to echo her plight. As a punishment for his neglect, Narcissus is then killed. Another version has Echo punished by Hera because she kept the goddess distracted with stories while the lovers of her husband Zeus, the mountain nymphs, escaped Mt. Olympus without notice. This explains why Echo could only repeat what others said to her. It is Echo in this form that Narcissus comes across one day while hunting deer in the forest. After a useless exchange of repeated words and statements, Echo tries to embrace the youth, but he rejects her and dashes off back home. Echo then pines away in the forest so that her body eventually perishes and only her voice remains.

Echo (right) with Narcissus, from a fresco in Pompeii

 

Unlike for Greek artists, the Roman version of Narcissus and Echo was a very popular subject in Roman art and is seen in almost 50 wall paintings at Pompeii alone. Renaissance art also took a shine to Narcissus; the story involving light, and reflection proved irresistible to Caravaggio, who captured the myth in his celebrated 16th-century CE oil painting. Finally, his name lives on today in psychoanalysis where narcissism refers to the personality disorder of excessive self-admiration and preoccupation with one's appearance. 

 

In the poem above, Meynell describes a poet as being similar to Narcissus looking back on himself through his poetry as a form of vanity. In this way, similar to Narcissus who lives on as the flower, the poet lives on forever through his poetry.

 

 

About the Poet

 

Alice Christiana Gertrude Meynell was born on October 11, 1847, in Barnes, west London, to Thomas Thompson, a lover of literature and friend of Charles Dickens, and Christiana Weller, a noted painter and concert pianist. Thompson insisted on a classical education for his children, who were homeschooled. This education, as well as the verses of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Christina Rossetti, inspired Meynell to try writing poetry as a teen.

 

Her poetry is characterized by its formal precision and intellectual rigor. She often explores themes of faith, nature, and the human condition with a restrained and understated elegance. Her focus on the musicality of language and concise imagery makes her work continue to be studied and enjoyed today. 

 

Meynell suffered from poor health throughout her childhood and adolescence. In 1868, while she was recuperating from one of these bouts of illness, she converted to Roman Catholicism. It was also during this time that she fell in love with Father Augustus Dignam, a young Jesuit who had helped with her conversion and received her into the church. Dignam inspired some of her early love poems, including “After a Parting” and the popular “Renouncement.” Meynell and Dignam continued to correspond for two years until they fell out of touch.

 

She was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite poets, an artistic movement founded in 1848 by the poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the painters John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, who is often credited with the group’s name, which indicates not a dismissal of the Italian painter Raphael, but rejection of strict aesthetic adherence to the principles of composition and light characteristic of his style. The Pre-Raphaelites’ commitment to sincerity, simplicity, and moral seriousness is evident in the contemplative but uncomplicated subjects of its poetry and in the religious, mythical, and literary subjects depicted in its paintings. Meynell shared their interest in symbolism and aesthetic beauty, but her poetry also displays a strong intellectual and spiritual depth influenced by her Catholic faith. Meynell's work was admired by contemporaries such as George Meredith, Coventry Patmore, and John Ruskin, and she played a significant role in shaping the literary landscape of her time.

 

In 1875, Meynell published her first poetry collection, Preludes (Henry S. King & Co.), which was received with great success. English poet and novelist Walter de la Mare called her one of the few poets “who actually think in verse.” Two years later she married Wilfred Meynell, another Catholic convert who was working as a journalist for a number of Catholic periodicals in London. He soon became the successful editor of the monthly magazine Merry England. Alice Meynell joined her husband at Merry England as coeditor, helping to keep the magazine at the helm of the Catholic literary revival. Her writing won her the recognition of other members of the literary elite of the time, such as Coventry Patmore, Francis Thompson, Oscar Wilde, and W. B. Yeats.

 

Meynell balanced her time between her journalism work with Merry England, her social life among the literati, her home life (she mothered eight children, one of whom died as an infant), and her social activism. She worked to improve slum conditions and prevent cruelty to animals, but she was best known for her work for women’s rights. Meynell worked with the Women’s Suffrage Movement and fought for workers’ rights for women. During this busy period, Meynell did not write much poetry; her second book, Poems (Elkin Matthews & John Lane, 1893), was published nearly two decades after the release of her debut. She published several more poetry collections in her lifetime: Ten Poems (Romney Street Press, 1915); Collected Poems of Alice Meynell (Burns and Oates, 1913); Later Poems (John Lane, 1901); and Other Poems, which was self-published in 1896. Restrained, subtle, and conventional in form, Meynell’s poems are reflections on religious spirit and belief, love, nature, and war.

 

She was twice considered for the post of Poet Laureate of England—upon the deaths of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in 1892 and Alfred Austin in 1913. Elizabeth Barrett Browning is the only other woman who had been considered for the post up to that point. Meynell continued writing until her death. After a series of illnesses, she died on November 27, 1922. A final collection, Last Poems (Burns and Oates), was published posthumously a year later.

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Calm Before the Storm

I’m relaxing this morning with a cup of tea and my breakfast. Sadly, I’m not as relaxed as the young man in the picture above. Today, should be a somewhat busy day. Students began returning to campus last week, and classes begin again today. I enjoy the students being back. It breathes life back into the campus. We have very few students on campus in the summer, so it’s mostly a quiet time, though this has been a much busier summer than I expected. With classes starting back up, it means that classes at the museum will be happening again. I love teaching at the museum, so I’m looking forward to a new semester with the students.

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We All Slip Sometimes

If I say, “My foot slips,” Your mercy, O Lord, will hold me up. In the multitude of my anxieties within me, Your comforts delight my soul.”

-Psalm 94:18-19

 

We all try to be good people, at least, I hope we do, but sometimes we slip. We may not do something truly awful, but sometimes we get angry and lash out or do something else that is unkind and makes us feel afterward that we are not a good person. We slip sometimes, but even on those days when we are not as kind or good as we would like to be, the Lord is there to hold us up.

 

Sometimes, we just make bad decisions. Those decisions lead to anxiety in our lives, but remember God is there to put to rest our anxieties. We all have a lot of things that worry us. Sometimes bad things just happen but know that no matter what happens to us in this life, God will be there for us. His comfort should delight our soul.

 

In Psalms 94:18-19, as so often happens in the Bible, the writer uses a visual image to help us understand a spiritual truth. Despite the thousands of years that separate us from the writer of this psalm, this image is one which still speaks directly to us. Perhaps there was a time when you were climbing a steep hill and suddenly your foot began to slip. You felt a moment of fear and panic, but your friend was there, to take your hand and help you up. In that moment, you may have seen your “life flash before your eyes,” but your friend was there to help you. That is what these two verses are reminding us of, God will be that hand that helps us up.

 

When something bad happens, or we slip in our spiritual life, it can cause a lot of anxiety. Faith is that friend that helps us in this life. Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” We may not always see God’s hand reaching out to save us when we slip, but God is there no matter how much anxiety we may experience. God can replace our anxieties with joy, so that the perceptions of our human condition become a cause for celebration.

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Moment of Zen: Bicycles

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Bob…

Bob the Drag Queen, that is. A friend and I have tickets to see Bob the Drag Queen tonight in Burlington at the Vermont Comedy Club. The show was originally supposed to be back in May, but for some reason was rescheduled. 

Christopher Delmar Caldwell was born to Martha Caldwell on June 22, 1986. His last name, "Caldwell,” was later incorporated into the professional name "Caldwell Tidicue.” He was born in Columbus, Georgia. He moved a lot as a kid, which included Phenix City, Alabama (across the state line from Columbus), Corinth, Mississippi, LaGrange, Georgia, and Atlanta, Georgia. 

He was raised in Clayton County, Georgia. Caldwell explained, "You can call it the hood. You can say it. That's where I'm from." His mother owned a drag bar in Columbus, Georgia. On the nights that she could not afford a babysitter, she brought Caldwell to the drag bar, where he would work and collect money from the patrons.

In the summer of 2009, Caldwell started doing drag, after watching the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race. In 2016, he competed on season eight of the show and was crowned the winner.

We should have a good time tonight. I’m excited. Luckily, I’m working from home today, so I have plenty of time to get ready to go out tonight.

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“Up and at ‘em!”

Some days are harder to get out of bed than others, but on most of those days, you have to get up anyway. Even if I have certain commitments at work today, Isabella is not a believer in sleeping in. She’s fine if I take a nap later, but she’s not about to let me sleep through her breakfast. So, even though I’d love nothing better than going back to bed right now, I’m awake and need to get ready for work.

Here is my Isabella pic of the week:

“What? It wasn’t me!”

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Rainy Wednesday ☔️

Here in Vermont, we’ve had rain every day this week. I honestly don’t mind the rain, but my migraines do. Changes in air pressure causes my migraines to act up. I definitely have a problem whenever the air pressure is low, and Vermont has been in a low pressure system for past several days. 

In other words, I’ve had terrible migraines all week. It started Sunday night and was pretty awful throughout Monday. I had been out with a bad migraine the Monday before, so I felt bad about calling in two Mondays in a row. My migraine got so bad Monday night that I went to bed at 7:30 pm. Last night, I went to bed at 9 pm. At least I’m getting at least 8 hours of sleep. The sun is expected to return on Friday, so hopefully, this migraine will improve by then.

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My Hole. My Whole.

 

My Hole. My Whole.

By Sam Sax

 

what to call you who i’ve slept beside through so many apocalypses

 

the kind that occur nightly in this late stage of the collapsing west

 

boyfriend was fine even though we are neither boys nor men but love 

 

how it makes us sudden infants in the eyes of any listener—how 

 

it brings us back to some childhood we never got to live. that was, 

 

at the time, unlivable. my sweetheart. my excised sheep’s-heart. 

 

my fled garden. my metal garter. after yet another man calls his wife 

 

his partner at the dog park it’s clearly time to find another name for you—

 

he says it’s my partner’s birthday we’re going to buca di beppo then key largo—

 

and wild how quick a name becomes yet another vehicle 

 

through which to reproduce violence. partner fit like a skin and then 

 

that skin tightened and tore off—you who are neither my chain 

 

italian restaurant nor my all-inclusive vacation spot. not my owner

 

or my only or my own. not my down payment or my dowery

 

of sheep and crop. not lost. not loss. apophasis is a way of naming 

 

what is by what is not—but what is? my boutonniere. my goofy queer. 

 

my salt. my silk. my silt. my slit. my top and my basement. my vanquished 

 

prostate. my battered apostate. my memory. my memory. my meteor. 

 

all these names for what exactly? to introduce what is to those 

 

who don’t know. this is my whole. this is my hole. take part of me.

 

 

About This Poem

 

Some of you may not be too fond of this poem because it’s modern poetry, but occasionally, I think modern poetry can really make us think. Then, sometimes, it just doesn’t make sense at all, even after the poet discusses what it means. “My Hole. My Whole.” is one of those poems that is easy to understand, is quite interesting, and makes you think.

 

Sam Sax wrote about what inspired this poem. He said, “This poem began, as many do, struggling with the limitations of language. Being in a long-term, queer, poly, nonbinary relationship, we often find ourselves pushing against the terminology we inherited for how to name ourselves and our love(s), how to become legible to ourselves and to others. Both queerness and poetry can offer ways of breaking with the past and searching for strange syntax and improper nouns, not just to define an already lived experience but to eke out a space to imagine new possible futures. This poem struggles with this question of naming, of possibility, of fluidity. It offers up one way of honoring the flexibility and specificity of our loves.”

 

 

About the Poet

 

Sam Sax is a queer Jewish writer and educator. They are the author of Pig (Scribner, 2023); Bury It (Wesleyan University Press, 2018), which received the 2017 James Laughlin Award; and Madness (Penguin Books, 2017), winner of the National Poetry Series. They are also the author of the novel, Yr Dead (McSweeney’s, 2024). 

 

Of Sax’s work, James Laughlin Award judge Tyehimba Jess writes,

Bury It, Sam Sax’s urgent, thriving excavation of desire, is lit with imagery and purpose that surprises and jolts at every turn. Exuberant, wild, tightly knotted mesmerisms of discovery inhabit each poem in this seethe of hunger and sacred toll of toil. A vitalizing and necessary book of poems that dig hard and lift luminously.

Sax has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Lambda Literary, MacDowell, Stanford University, and Yaddo. They are also the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion. 

 

Sax has served as the poetry editor at BOAAT Press, and they are currently serving as a lecturer in the ITALIC program at Stanford University.

 

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What to Wear?

Usually on Sunday, I plan out what I’ll wear to work during the week ahead. For some reason, I don’t do that yesterday. I haven’t even decided what I’m going to wear to work today. Not that I even want to actually go to work today, but I have to go regardless of what I want to do, which right now is to go back to bed. I’m really not looking forward to work at all this week. I have several events to attend, and I’d rather not go to any of them. While I don’t have any crucial tasks that need to be done today, I have things that should keep me pretty busy. The busier I can be, the quicker the day will go by.

I hope you all have a wonderful week!

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Rock of Ages

God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.

-Psalm 46:1

 

Rock of Ages

 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

let me hide myself in thee; 

let the water and the blood, 

from thy wounded side which flowed, 

be of sin the double cure; 

save from wrath and make me pure. 

 

Not the labors of my hands 

can fulfill thy law's demands; 

could my zeal no respite know, 

could my tears forever flow, 

all for sin could not atone; 

thou must save, and thou alone. 

 

Nothing in my hand I bring, 

simply to the cross I cling; 

naked, come to thee for dress; 

helpless, look to thee for grace; 

foul, I to the fountain fly; 

wash me, Savior, or I die. 

 

While I draw this fleeting breath, 

when mine eyes shall close in death, 

when I soar to worlds unknown, 

see thee on thy judgment throne, 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

let me hide myself in thee.

 

"Rock of Ages" is a popular Christian hymn written by the Reformed Anglican minister Augustus Toplady, an Anglican cleric and hymn writer. He was a major Calvinist opponent of John Wesley (founder of the Methodist Church). Toplady is best remembered as the author of the "Rock of Ages."

 

"Rock of Ages" has always been a popular hymn, and it’s one of my favorites. Through the song, Toplady speaks of how God is our refuge and strength. As Psalm 46:1 says, “God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.” God will be with us in our time of need. He may not always present Himself in the way we want, but it is in the way He deems we need the most. God answers all of our prayers, but sometimes that answer may be “no.” However, no matter what, we can draw strength from our belief in God.

 

There is a popular, but probably apocryphal, story about the origin of this hymn text that started 122 years after publication of the hymn text by a letter published in the Times of London on June 3, 1898 from Dean Lefroy of Norwich, together with one from Sir W. H. Wills on the same matter. The burden of Lefroy’s correspondence is based on a claim made by Sir W. H. Wills regarding the origin of this hymn. Wills' claim asserted that Toplady drew his inspiration from an incident in the gorge of Burrington Combe in the Mendip Hills in England. Toplady, then a curate (assistant Church of England preacher) in the nearby village of Blagdon, was travelling along the gorge when he was caught in a storm. Finding shelter in a gap in the gorge, he was struck by the title and scribbled down the initial lyrics.

 

According to E. J. Fasham, a more likely inspiration for the text is a 1673 sermon by Daniel Brevint (who had been the Dean of Durham Cathedral). This sermon had been partially quoted in the preface to Charles Wesley's Hymns of the Lord's Supper (1745), which was in common use amongst a number of ministers of the period. The similarity between the passages from Brevint's sermon and the hymn suggests this was the starting point for Toplady's text. Regardless of the origins of the hymn, we can still draw great strength and inspiration from it.

 

The text of this hymn from Toplady's July 1776 'alt' version has been substantially edited since its publication by different denominations over the years creating a number of versions of the hymn text used by different churches around the world. An example of an edit made to Toplady's text is: "When my eyes shall close in death" was originally written as "When my eye-strings break in death". Notwithstanding the bitter pamphlet war between Augustus Toplady and John Wesley over the correctness of Calvinist (souls are predestined for heaven or hell) versus Arminian (souls are saved through God’s grace) theology, there has been speculation by some, that although Toplady was a Calvinist, the edited version of the words, "Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath, and make me pure," suggest he agreed with the teachings of the Methodist preacher under whom he received his religious conversion, and of his contemporary, John Wesley, who taught the "double cure", in which a sinner is saved by the atonement of Jesus, and cleansed from sin by being filled with the Holy Spirit. 

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Moment of Zen: National Black Cat Appreciation Day

National Black Cat Appreciation Day is on August 17 every year. It's not the same as National Black Cat Day, which falls on October 27. The goal of both holidays is to celebrate these sleek, beautiful creatures.

Of course, I have to include the most beautiful black cat: