Staying local

I’ve pretty much run out of places to go that are within easy reach. It’s not that I haven’t done anything this weekend – just that I haven’t done anything particularly interesting. But there has been a common theme to the weekend (unplanned, as usual) – of playing with my natural sense of normality.

For example, I toured the local thrift shops yesterday, looking for nothing special, and not intending to buy anything (Val will tell you that we already have way too much “stuff”!). Well, I didn’t buy anything, but I did flick through a book of poems by ee cummings (I would have been tempted to buy, except that it was a paperback, and these days, I only buy hardbacks). One poem caught my eye, and I wrote down the first line so that I could look it up on the internet when I got back to the hotel. The text of the poem is attached. A lot of scholarly work has gone into interpreting it since it was written (in 1940, I think), but I prefer to let it play with my mind the way I think it was supposed to. Sometimes we need our conventional way of thinking to be disturbed, so that we open our minds to other possibilities. Witness the punk movement in music that, no matter how un-melodic, upset the musical desert of the late 70s. The same thing happens in art, as well as in social mores, and every sphere of our existence.

I also bought a CD called “Love of Ages” by Sheetal, an Indian musician. The significance of the music is that it is a blend of eastern and western cadences, and sounds, at first, dissonant to our ears. The truth is that Indian musicians do not understand how we, in the west, can manage, musically, without quarter-tones. And that the major 7^th chord, when it was first introduced, a couple of centuries ago, was considered outrageous.

And this morning I watched “Sunday Morning” on CBS. I don’t think there is a British equivalent. It is a “magazine” program, in the Panorama or 60 Minutes sense, but there is no politics; it is the TV equivalent of National Geographic, except that it is not confined to geographic material. Check out http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/09/sunday/main13562.shtml that will show you that this morning’s program was devoted to “islands”, from Martha’s Vineyard to Gigha in Scotland to Branson’s Necker Island. And I realized that tranquility is hard to find. It has been cool at night here recently – cool enough for me to sleep with the windows open. The trouble is that the windows are triple-glazed – my room faces onto Highway 183, and is directly under one of DFW’s flight paths. The noise doesn’t keep me awake, but it does wake me up, and I realize how quickly we become inured to sound, how quickly it becomes a backdrop to our lives.

This afternoon, I visited probably the last “popular” local tourist attraction that I haven’t been to before: Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not” and Louis Tussaud’s “Palace of Wax”. Both cheesy, but both challenge your sense of what is normal. Many of the so-called “freaks” – the tallest man, the dog-faced man, the ugliest woman – were described as thoughtful and sensitive, which I can quite believe they were.

So did I discover tranquility? I bought (for $1) a CD called “Sounds of the Tropical Rain Forest”. With the air-conditioning on, the windows rolled up, and the CD cranked up, that’s the closest I’ll get around here.

ee cummings poem

 

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain