Perfect verbal abuse? Try Shakespeare.

If you think you may have heard some good verbal abuse or takedowns recently (relating to certain politicians) it may be good to brush up on your Shakespeare.

For instance how about this one from King Lear (Act II Scene II):-

Earl of Kent. Fellow I know thee. 

Oswald.What dost thou know me for?

Earl of Kent.A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass gazing, super serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in a way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

Oswald.Why, what a monstrous fellow are thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known to thee or knows thee.

Earl of Kent. What a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me! Is it two days ago since I tripped up thy heels, and beat thee before the king? Draw you rogue: for though it be night, yet the moon shines; I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you: draw you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw. (Drawing his sword).

Politicians take note!!

A masterful use of English and without vulgarity or a four-letter  “f” word anywhere.

NOTE: Definition of a pandar = a pimp.

            Definition of cullionly = mean or base.

The Wheel always turns.

The Wheel of Life that is. It turns on its axis regardless of what we, mere humans, do. Of course the largest of all “wheels” are the galaxies – unbelievably large “wheels” with billions of stars rotating majestically in, shall I say, their preordained manner. 

Always there are patterns, events, all manner of things seem to return to what was there before (or almost). Even the entire universe, it seems, will one day cease expanding and start contracting – presumably back to what it was before – nothing!

Where tides always ebb as they must flow; where the seasons change as they have always done; where day always succeeds night; when a salmon must always return to the same river in which it was born, to spawn - these are in their own way rotating wheels of similar events. 

Of course to us humans Life and Death is the most important “wheel” of all. Where a child is born or a man lies dead, Life continues. This is portrayed so well by Shakespeare in “As you like it” (Act II Scene VII):-

Lord Jaques:-

“All the world’s a stage,

And all men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts, 

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in his nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school boy, with his satchel,

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths, and bearded like a pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,

With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloons,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose well sav’d, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

A second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

So there it is. Wheels within wheels – not like clockwork – far above anything so mechanical. People and things must always obey the rules and regulations by which they were created. 

It cannot be otherwise.

Pilgrim Soul.

Pilgrim Soul – those words seem to have a special meaning for me. And I am not sure why. Possibly because the memory of my wife and best friend Magucha, who died three years ago is ever present. As far as I’m concerned she most certainly had a soul! And I like to think her soul is out there somewhere, helping and nurturing – always busy. Just like when she was “alive”.

I suppose it is also the fact that no one knows what “Life” is, why “Life” exists or where it was first evidenced. Furthermore the question remains to be answered - what is that essence, that vivifying force we call “Life” that is present when a living organism is “alive” but is absent or withdrawn when something that was “alive” is now “dead”? 

Science has no answer. This is the ultimate question that I think all philosophers seek to answer and is the basis (so I understand) of all what are termed “scriptures”, and is the basis (again, so I understand) of all religions. 

The mental image of a soul – that Life essence (however it is named) searching for a home – somewhere to express itself, it’s Life, resonates with me. Where was it’s original home? Where did it come from? It is certainly present in “seeds”; seeds from all biological organisms. These geminate and grow. The Earth we inhabit and share with millions of different life forms is testament to their variety and their beauty. 

But why? And will we ever know? Maybe Shakespeare was correct when he has Hamlet saying, 

“The undiscovered country from whose bourn

            No traveller returns, puzzles the will.”

I believe that there a continuum – there is “Life” and there is “Death” – that one leads on to the other. Just the way it is. Not to be feared. Rather this chain of events, this grand progression, is to be welcomed (so I like to imagine it) as a manifestation of something wonderful, of a grandeur that is always just beyond my reach and comprehension. 

It is, after all where we will all end up! But I would really like to know.

So will my "pilgrim soul" keep on it's journey, meeting other wayfarers and dear companions on the way? Until .....?

What does it all mean?

There are so many things, events, happenings that confound us all. Life itself is a mystery. And then of course, what is called the “hard problem” – consciousness itself. How can it be that we humans can be aware of our own existence? And what does it mean – to exist?

It may be said that at any one time (depending on the situation) each of us has three persona: the person we think we are; the person others think we are; and the person we really are. And they are not all the same!!

So who are we? Should we bother with worldly matters before we know who (or what) we are - what we really are – in our inner most being? What is more important? Determining who we are or what we do in the world?

Trying to understand this leads easily to the famous command, “Know Thyself”, that is carved into stone over the entrance to the Temple at Delphi in Greece – the famous “Oracle of Delphi”.

No matter what scientists claim it is my strong belief that love, wisdom, courage, friendship, intuition and the appreciation of beauty, cannot be just the result of evolutionary chance and brain chemistry alone. I mean how can a cell – even a brain cell – think? Is a cell intelligent? With the various brain imaging and scanning techniques now available it can be seen that certain areas of the brain are activated when thinking or remembering something, but it has yet to be determined HOW this occurs and whether thoughts or remembrances, by some means, activate the neurons or whether the activated neurons, somehow, create the thoughts and remembrances. These questions remain unanswered.

 

I wonder if this quote from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (Act IV, sc.1) says it all:

Prospero: …    Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

                        As I foretold you, were all spirits and

                        Are melted into air, into thin air:

                        And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,

                        The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,

                        The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

                        Yea, all which we inherit, shall dissolve

                        And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,

                        Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

                        As dreams are made on, and our little life
                        Is rounded with a sleep….

Sixty-four.

Sixty-four.  Had she lived that’s how old Magucha would have been today - May 9.

I am not sure how others do it, but I find that coping with what Life (with a capital L) throws at me to be a continual rather ad hoc arrangement. Everyday, every moment, is different.

What I am doing is coping in my way with my grief. I know that I could wallow in a “poor me” trough – but I realize that such an attitude would not do me any good. But grief is not just “grief” – some amorphous “thing” out there somewhere. It is personal.

My way of coping is to try and “meet” my grief head on and attempt to understand the how and why. I mean the woman I loved, my wife, my best friend Magucha, is dead – has “passed away”. I can’t change that fact. I can’t deny it. To try to ignore it; to try and hide it; to try and divert my attention from this fact just doesn’t work. Not for me anyway.

But it is very hard. I look at some of the many reminders of her that are in the house we shared and I can remember the time and place, when and where the photos were taken, or the items purchased, or when the gifts were received or given; I sit down at a café and I immediately recall the table we sat at and what we ate when we were last there together.

It is of course a fact that we all suffer grief at some time in our lives. People have died of old age, illness, in battle, on expeditions and in various other tragic or violent means since humans first walked the earth – grief is always with us.

Being the person I am and as a human being, as a husband and father, I have a strong desire to know, to try and understand.  I am deeply curious but it is all made harder because I suspect that I will never understand what happens at the end. I am not alone in this and why I think that from the earliest times humans have had a belief (hope?) that there is a hereafter of some sort. But are we ever supposed to know?  

In my case my grief is compounded by the mystery of it all. I just have to accept it! But what has happened to the “person” – not the body - but the essence that was Magucha? I find it incomprehensible that her love, her intelligence, her vitality, her emotional strength and empathy have just disappeared into nothing. After all it has yet to be determined what Life actually is (that “something” that makes any living thing, “alive”) – it may be beyond our knowing.

But why is there something rather than nothing? And why us?

As always in moments of high emotion I find solace in poetry.

Shakespeare expressed this mystery in his timeless verse:

“The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

            No traveller returns, puzzles the will.”

Rabindranath Tagore, in a more accepting mood, also wrote:

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.”

And Shelley, long before Tagore, obviously had similar views when he wrote:

“Peace! Peace! He is not dead, he doth not sleep, -

He hath awakened from the dream of life;”

    Even though only 62 when she died, she lived her life to the full and Magucha, to quote Kipling:

   “Filled the unforgiving minute 

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.”

She did this every day and was glad.

It comforts me to believe that Magucha no longer suffers, that she has gone before me, gone on ahead, and that some time in the future we will meet again. That love will always win in the end.

I hope. Maybe - but who knows? I still have my memories.

Perfect verbal abuse? Try Shakespeare

If you think you may have heard some good verbal abuse or takedowns recently (relating to certain politicians) it may be good to brush up on your Shakespeare.

For instance how about this one from King Lear (Act II Scene II):-

Earl of Kent. Fellow I know thee.

Oswald. What dost thou know me for?

Earl of Kent. A knave; a rascal; an eater of broken meats; a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave; a lily-livered, action-taking knave, a whoreson, glass gazing, super serviceable, finical rogue; one trunk inheriting slave; one that wouldst be a bawd, in a way of good service, and art nothing but the composition of a knave, beggar, coward, pandar, and son and heir of a mongrel bitch; one whom I will beat into clamorous whining, if thou deniest the least syllable of thy addition.

Oswald. Why, what a monstrous fellow are thou, thus to rail on one that is neither known to thee or knows thee.

Earl of Kent. What a brazen-faced varlet art thou, to deny thou knowest me! Is it two days ago since I tripped up thy heels, and beat thee before the king? Draw you rogue: for though it be night, yet the moon shines; I’ll make a sop o’ the moonshine of you: draw you whoreson cullionly barber-monger, draw. (Drawing his sword).

Politicians take note!!

A masterful use of English and without vulgarity or a four-letter  “f” word anywhere.

NOTE: Definition of a pandar = a pimp.

            Definition of cullionly = mean or base.