TiaTalk











{Mon 30 August 2021}   Take me under your wing

Take me under your wing

Images that make us feel

The viral image of 640 Afghan refugees packed into a cavernous US military plane has stuck with me these last two weeks. I could not find out how to get permission to use it here, but it was so widely shared that you’ve probably seen it already.

This picture called to mind strongly the biblical metaphors of God as a mother bird who protects her young with her wings and body.

This does not mean either that I equate the USA with God, or that I believe in their (or your) versions of g/God. It only means that I have been aware of the image and the metaphors and the powerful feelings they stir.

Together, they also reminded me of Bialik’s beautiful poem, Take me under your wing, which for me speaks directly to the fear and hope I see in the picture; see it below with a translation by my husband (mostly) and me (tweaking).

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After a month of rain and stormy weather, our King Lear reading took place on the first sunny weekend of the summer. However, with the images of grey skies and floodwaters still strong in our minds, it wasn’t difficult to feel the intensity of Shakespeare’s insistent “Storm continues” repeated so often in the stage directions. Poor Lear is adrift in an awful storm of his own making. Despite their loyalty to him, the Fool and Kent repeatedly assert that he is the author of his own misfortune, for giving up his crown too early and for disinheriting the one daughter who truly loved him and on whom he might have counted when the others betrayed him.

Many hold this to be the Bard’s greatest play, but not always for the same reasons, or perhaps because there are so many possible reasons. As usual, we enjoyed the different perspectives that arose in our group’s discussion. Are Lear’s irrational pronouncements and acts born purely out of wilful folly or monstrous ego, or does his great age suggest the possibility of dementia, something he senses is happening and knows he cannot control? If a king of forty wants to give up his throne in order to “shake all cares and business from our age”, we might well accuse him of laziness, of simply wanting an easy life with the trappings but not the responsibilities of authority. But when the king is eighty (in a world when many people did not live past fifty), and has exercised authority throughout a long life, is the same charge fair? In this latter case, might one not see his attempt to transfer power peacefully during his lifetime as a brave and responsible act, fouled only by the dementia itself when he repudiates Cordelia? Goneril’s and Regan’s references to earlier irrational acts before the play opens lend themselves to this interpretation, as do Lear’s own expressed fear of going mad and his alternating periods of apparent lunacy and lucidity.

Of course he also represents humankind at large, buffeted by the storms of life. We know this because our sympathy for him grows as he rails alone against the storm, even if it is his own fault that he’s there at all. Is Shakespeare suggesting that most of our stormy experiences arise because of our own stubborn refusal to see clearly and to act rightly? Or does the theme of “nothing”, also repeated often, suggest a lurking nihilism, the idea that all our intentions and efforts may be meaningless, subject to the random attacks of nature, no matter whether we act responsibly or not? Cordelia acts according to her conscience throughout, but ends up just as dead as Lear and the traitors. Is Shakespeare evoking an absurd universe, long before Waiting for Godot? This is one possibility raised by the really enjoyable essay “Speak What We Feel: An Introduction to King Lear” by Ian Johnston at http://www.mala.bc.ca/~Johnstoi/eng366/lectures/lear.htm. This essay also raises several other questions, such as the ‘normality’ of evil and the value of individual acts of goodness, like that of the unnamed Servant who challenges and kills Cornwall. There is a wealth of other Lear material online as well — just search on “King Lear”.

After such a stimulating reading and discussion, we are very much looking forward to seeing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of King Lear with Ian McKellen in the title role at the New London Theatre in November. Join us if you can! Note that booking for this production is currently only available to RSC Members. Public booking opens on 7th September 2007. RSC Membership costs £15 and is well worth it, as tickets for most productions over the past two years have sold out very quickly.

The next reading, probably in August, will be The Merchant of Venice.



{Wed 28 February 2007}   Leadership

Last night I was browsing through some of my thought-blurts and almost-poems and found this picture-poem combination. I recalled that I had been in a workshop where I made the picture first in response to some classical music (unfortunately, I forget which now) and then the poem in response to the picture. One of the things I couldn’t decide was which way up I preferred the picture, so that’s part of the theme!

One day this may become a standalone poem, but it needs further development. There’s just something about it that I like… I hope there’s enough here to catch your imagination too.

Sword of Damocles AboveSword of Damocles

Leadership

Am I emergent or exhumed,
Birthed or rebirthed,
Now dangling below,
Now arched above
Damocles’ sword?

With hair root-startled
And sucked-in stomach,
Breath whisked away
By words yet unformed,
Briefly balanced,
But naked,
In thought’s blue waters,

Is it with rhythm and poise
Or by sweet accident
That I somersault
(am catapulted)
over today’s death?

Do I swim under that sword,
Or is it beneath me?
Is this my dagger that I see before me?
No matter.
Tomorrow, a thousand deaths await me.



{Wed 7 February 2007}   OntheDeathof Saddam Hussein
On the Death of Saddam Hussein
– A Response to “Damn-Sad” by Ian Reed

When musing on the myriad ways to die
We often fail to challenge our own lie
That others’ deaths are distant from our own
And we’ll be graced with mercy we’ve not shown.

His death becomes not him, nor one of us.
It rather bursts the boil of poisoned pus
That festers in our mind beneath the sham
Of righteousness we keep up in our scam.

Pretending love and truth are ours to know
And teach and judge and finally bestow,
We claim a seat on heaven’s judgment bench
While seraphs recoil at our ghastly stench.

“Who sheds the blood of man,” the prophet said,
“By man his blood is always to be shed.”
But can you see an end of peace in this?
The prophet saw the worst of our abyss,

But did his words prescribe, or only show
The depths we’d sink to, blow for vengeful blow,
If pain and loss and fear remained our measure
Instead of hope in god-shaped humans’ treasure?

What purpose holds the prophet’s role or mine
If we can only speak, observe, enshrine
The status quo? This must not be our goal!
Transcend what was and is with “Will be whole!”



et cetera