First, love. Then everything becomes lovable.
Day: July 10, 2018
davidbrucehaiku: IRIS DREAM (After Ogawa Shüshiki)
https://pixabay.com/en/iris-flower-handsomely-nature-3463413/
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IRIS DREAM (After Ogawa Shüshiki)
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Dreamed of irises
Now I am wide-eyed awake
I still see purple
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David Bruce: William Shakespeare’s HENRY V: A Retelling in Prose — Act 5, Prologue and Scene 1
ACT 5
Prologue
The Chorus walked on stage and said, “Be kind to those who have not read the biography of King Henry V, and allow me to recap some events of his life. To those of you who have read his biography, I apologize for leaving out of our play events that their length of time, the numbers of people involved, and their magnitude make impossible to cover here on this stage.
“Imagine the King traveling to Calais. Imagine that he has arrived there, and now use your winged thoughts to imagine him traveling across the English Channel. Behold now the English beach fenced in by men, women, and boys — like a wall the throngs of people hold back the sea. The shouts and claps of all these people out-voice the deep-mouthed sea.
“The sea acts like a mighty whiffler — an official who clears a path for the King — and prepares his way to land.
“Having landed, the King journeys on to London.
“So swift a pace has thought that even now you may imagine him at Blackheath, on the road from Dover to London. There his lords try to persuade him to carry his bruised and dented helmet and his bent and hacked sword in a procession in London. Henry V forbids this because he is free from vainness and self-glorious pride; instead, he gives all the tokens and emblems and displays of victory to God, not to himself.
“But now behold in the quick forge and working-house of your thought how London pours out her citizens! The mayor and all his brethren — the aldermen of London — in civil array, similar to the senators of ancient Rome, with the plebeians swarming at their heels, go forth and fetch their conquering Caesar in.
“Imagine a general returning from abroad after putting down a threat to your country. How many citizens would leave the peaceful city so that they could go out and welcome him!
“Many more citizens than that, who had much more cause to rejoice, left London to welcome this Harry.
“Now in London place the King. The French mourn their dead while Henry V stays at home, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund visits England to try to arrange peace between England and France, and other events occur that we must omit.
“But now Harry is back in France, so know that he is there.
“I have performed my job of filling in — all too briefly — the gaps. Tolerate my overly brief summary of historical events, and send your thoughts and your eyes to France to see the King.”
As the Chorus had said, he had very briefly summarized events. The Battle of Agincourt occurred in 1415, and King Henry V returned to France for the signing of the Treaty of Troyes in 1420.
— 5.1 —
In the English camp, Captain Gower asked Captain Fluellen, “Why are you wearing a leek on your cap today? Saint Davy’s day is past.”
Captain Fluellen replied, “There is occasions and causes why and wherefore inall things. I will tell you, ass [as] my friend,Captain Gower: The rascally, scald [scurvy], beggarly,lousy, pragging [bragging] knave, Pistol, whom you andyourself and all the world know to be no petter [better]than a fellow, look you now, of no merits, he iscome to me and prings [brings] me pread [bread] and salt yesterday,look you, and bid me eat my leek. This happened in a placewhere I could not fight him, butI will be so bold as to wear a leek in my cap until I seehim once again, and then I will tell him a littlepiece of my desires [mind].”
Pistol walked toward them.
Captain Gower said, “Why, here he comes, swelling like a turkey-cock.”
“It is no matter for his swellings nor histurkey-cocks,” Captain Fluellen said. “God pless [bless] you, Aunchient [Ancient, aka Ensign] Pistol! Youscurvy, bitten-by-louses knave, God pless [bless] you!”
“Ha! Are you bedlam?” Pistol asked. “Are you mad? Do you thirst, base Trojan and hooligan,to have me fold up Parca’s fatal web?”
Captain Gower thought, Pistol is only partially educated, if that. The Parcae — plural — are the Fates, and they cut the thread of life instead of folding up the web of life.
Pistol blustered, “Hence! Go away! I am qualmish and nauseous at the smell of leek.”
Captain Fluellen replied, “I peseech [beseech] you heartily, scurvy, lousy — literally — knave, at my desires, and my requests, and my petitions, to eat, look you, this leek: Because, look you, you do not love it, nor your affections and your appetites and your digestions do not agree with it, and so I would desire you to eat it.”
Pistol replied, “Not for Cadwallader and all his goats.”
The seventh-century Cadwallader was the last Welsh King to rule Britain. Wales is a mountainous country that is known for its goats, and Pistol was insulting the Welsh by calling them goats.
Captain Fluellen hit Pistol on the head with a cudgel and said, “There is one goat for you.”
He then said, “Will you be so good, scauld [scurvy] knave, as to eat this leek?”
“Base Trojan, you shall die,” Pistol blustered.
“You say very true, scauld knave. I will die when it is God’s will for me to die,” Captain Fluellen replied. “I will desire you to live in the meantime, and eat your victuals. Come, here is sauce for it.”
Captain Fluellen struck Pistol on the head hard enough with his cudgel for Pistol’s blood to flow.
He then said, “You called me yesterday a mountain-squire — a squire of mountainous land of little value — but I will make you today a squire of low degree. I pray you, fall to and eat this meal. If you can mock a leek, you can eat a leek.”
“Enough, Captain Fluellen, you have astonished and stunned him,” Captain Gower said.
“I say, I will make him eat some part of my leek, or I will peat [beat] his pate [head] four days,” Captain Fluellen replied.
He said to Pistol, “Bite, I pray you; it is good for your raw wound and your ploody [bloody] coxcomb, aka foolish head.”
Fools, aka jesters, wore a hat resembling a coxcomb.
Pistol asked him, “Must I bite into this leek?”
“Yes, certainly, and out of doubt and out of question, too, and no ambiguities.”
Pistol replied, “By this leek, I swear that I will get most horrible revenge —”
Captain Fluellen hit Pistol again with the cudgel and Pistol quickly took a bite of the leek and said, “I’m eating! I’m eating!”
He then muttered, “I swear —”
Captain Fluellen hit him again and said, “Eat, I pray you. Will you have some more sauce for your leek? There is not enough leek to swear by.”
“Quiet your cudgel,” Pistol said. “You can see that I am eating.”
“It will do you much good, scurvy knave — eat heartily. Nay, pray you, throw none away; the skin is good for your broken coxcomb. When you take occasions to see leeks hereafter, I pray you, mock at ’em — I would like to see you do that, really I would.”
“You win.”
“Ay, leeks is good,” Captain Fluellen said. “Wait, here is a groat — fourpence — to heal your pate.”
“A whole groat just for me!” Pistol said sarcastically.
“Yes, verily and in truth, you shall take it — or I have another leek in my pocket for you to eat.”
“I take your groat as a down payment for my revenge.”
“If I owe you anything, I will pay you in cudgels,” Captain Fluellen said. “You shall be a seller of wood, and buy nothing from me but wooden cudgels. God be with you, and keep you, and heal your pate.”
Captain Fluellen departed.
Pistol said, “All Hell shall stir for this.”
Captain Gower said, “No, it won’t. You are a false and cowardly knave. Will you mock at an ancient tradition, begun for an honorable reason? The leek is worn on caps as a memorable symbol commemorating long-ago bravery. You have mocked this tradition, but you have not made good with your actions any of your words.
“I have seen you gibing and scoffing at this gentleman, Captain Fluellen, twice or thrice. You thought, because he could not speak English as well as a native Englishman, he could not therefore handle an English cudgel. You have found out otherwise; and henceforth let a Welsh correction teach you good English behavior. Fare you well.”
Captain Gower exited.
Alone, Pistol said to himself, “Does Fortune play the hussy with me now and give me only bad luck? I have received news from England that my doll — my wife, Nell — has died in a hospital of the malady of France: venereal disease. No doubt Doll Tearsheet is also dead by now. The inn is lost to me, and therefore I have no refuge. Old do I grow, and from my weary limbs honor is cudgeled. Well, I’ll turn pimp, and I will also become a pickpocket with quick hands — I will use a knife to cut the strings of other people’s moneybags. I will also get bandages for these cudgeled scars that Fluellen gave to me, and in England I will swear that I got these scars on French battlefields.”
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
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David Bruce: Mothers Anecdotes
Professional women’s basketball player Lisa Leslie was tall from a very early age. In fact, in the second grade, she was already the tallest student in her class; she was even taller than her five-foot-two teacher. Of course, her height—and that of her older sister Dionne—was no surprise. Their parents were both tall. Their father, Walter, was six-foot-five, and their mother, Christine, was six-foot-three. (Lisa’s adult height was six-foot-five.) Their mother wanted the two sisters not to feel conscious about their height and often told them, “Being tall is nothing to be ashamed of.” She also told them that being tall was a sign that they were descended from African royalty. One of the things that their mother did to make them feel good about their height was to hold an at-home fashion show at the end of each summer when she bought them their school clothes for the upcoming academic year. Both sisters would take turns modeling their outfits. The training their mother gave them paid off—Lisa later did some professional modeling in addition to playing in the WNBA.
Jewish comedian Sam Levenson’s mother had to drive a sharp bargain when he was growing up because money was scarce. She would go into a grocer’s, hold up two cucumbers, and ask how much they were. When the grocer replied, “Five cents,” she would hold up one cucumber, and ask how much it was. When the grocer replied, “Three cents,” she would say, “All right, I’ll take the other one.” Once, young Sam needed a tie, so she took him to a tie salesman. The tie salesman said that the price for the tie she wanted to buy was 50 cents, and she immediately agreed to pay the full price, astonishing young Sam. When he asked her about it later, she replied that she had never liked the tie salesman, and “Tonight he will kill himself because he didn’t ask me for a dollar.”
When Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast Kerri Strug was in the fourth grade, she spent six months working on a science project: a biosphere in a large aquarium. Unfortunately, when her brother drove her and her science project to school, he had to hit his brakes to avoid a collision with another car. The aquarium shattered, destroying six months of work, with dirt, water, frogs, and fish scattered everywhere. Fortunately, her mother was able to bring Kerri another aquarium, and they put the science project back together. However, Kerri told her mother, “This is the worst day of my life.” Her mother then said something wise and wonderful: “I’ll be happy if this is your worst day.” (For the worst day, it wasn’t so bad — Kerri’s science project won second prize.)
In April of 1993 at Washington D.C., Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel spoke at the dedication of the Holocaust Memorial Museum. He told the story of a woman in the Carpathian Mountains 50 years previously who had heard about the rebellion of the Jews in Warsaw, Poland, and who could not understand why they were fighting. She asked, “Why are our Jews in Warsaw behaving like this? Why are they fighting? Couldn’t they have waited patiently until the end of the war?” This woman was unaware of the concentration camps and of why the Jews were fighting. One year passed, and then she and her family were forced onto cattle cars and taken to Auschwitz. Mr. Wiesel then told the crowd, “She was my mother.” She did not survive the Holocaust.
The mother of Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, was very encouraging to her son. He once showed her a drawing he had made of an animal with enormous ears. He told her that the animal was called a “Wynnmph,” and his mother said that of course that was the animal’s name and that his drawing of it was wonderful. In addition, his mother encouraged him to read and play piano as well as draw and actually used his love of reading to bribe him to practice his piano lessons. When he played well, she took him to a bookstore and let him pick out a book for her to buy for him.
When world-famous window dresser Simon Doonan was four years old, he threw his mother’s bras out the window. When she asked him why he had done that, he replied. “Because they flutter.” (Young Simon was effeminate and gay and interested in fabulous fashion. At the circus, he saw some ladies wearing fabulous costumes with plumes and asked his mother, “Why can’t you dress like that?”)
Miriam gave birth to seven sons, all of whom were martyred because they declined to worship idols, even when doing so could save their lives. When her final son was about to be executed, she kissed him and told him to give a message to Abraham, “Say to him: do not be proud because you were willing to sacrifice your only son—I have sacrificed all my seven sons.”
Some of the comedy routines of Mike Nichols and Elaine May started with a line from real life. For example, Mr. Nichols’ mother once telephoned him and said, “Hello, Michael, this is your mother — do you remember me?” Mr. Nichols had to ask her to hang up so he could call Ms. May and tell her about the new comedy line they would improvise around that night.
In the 1970s, actor Donald Sutherland, star of M*A*S*H, was both a cinematic icon and a sex symbol; however, some people may consider him an unlikely sex symbol. When he was in his teens, he asked his mother if he was handsome. She replied, “Donald, to be perfectly truthful, no. But your face has a lot of character.”
The mother of New Yorker cartoonist George Booth gave him good advice: “Always stand upright. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Finally, no matter what you’re getting paid, give it plenty of oomph!”
Conductor George Szell’s ear was developed at an early age. As a child, he used to listen to his mother play the piano. Whenever she played a wrong note, he slapped her wrist.
“Just when a mother thinks her job is done, she becomes a grandmother.” — Anonymous.
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Copyright by Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
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Edgar Lee Masters: Robert Davidson (Spoon River Anthology)
I GREW spiritually fat living off the souls of men.
If I saw a soul that was strong
I wounded its pride and devoured its strength.
The shelters of friendship knew my cunning
For where I could steal a friend I did so.
And wherever I could enlarge my power
By undermining ambition, I did so,
Thus to make smooth my own.
And to triumph over other souls,
Just to assert and prove my superior strength,
Was with me a delight,
The keen exhilaration of soul gymnastics.
Devouring souls, I should have lived forever.
But their undigested remains bred in me a deadly nephritis,
With fear, restlessness, sinking spirits,
Hatred, suspicion, vision disturbed.
I collapsed at last with a shriek.
Remember the acorn;
It does not devour other acorns.
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In a Relationship with Lee Vining
Helicopter Cooking
Excellent concluding lines. I love “the messiness of families and meatballs.”
A Six-Word Story
This should be collected in books of new proverbs.
In Memory: ” …I’m not on earth to win a popularity contest. I’m here to be the best human being I possibly can be.” — Art of Quotation
“I don’t care whether people like me or dislike me. I’m not on earth to win a popularity contest. I’m here to be the best human being I possibly can be.” Tab Hunter, actor, 1931-2018, Goodbye in 2018
41
Everything I am
and everything I will become
is already within me.
All the tools I’ll need to cultivate internal growth
are hip-holstered, at my disposal.
I find comfort in that
there is nothing new that will become of me
but the fate that was decided
the day I was born.
Like an abandoned backyard set,
I thanked everyone who entered my life
for all they taught me
as I looked at that empty swing
nostalgic and grateful
for the way they’d leave.
“Everyone you meet has a story to tell you,”
forces us to take those coming and going
as gifts
of shaping us;
that they can’t resist leaving because
that’s what they were meant to do.
The lesson of leaving is not in the longing
clinging to the memory of a back, receding.
The lesson is in dusting off your jeans
and reaching to your hip
to find…
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