With you, I have skimmed the oceans of imagination,
Unfurling sails woven from the shifting threads of dream and myth.
And at night under the strange constellations of my new mooring,
These will console me upon uncertain waters while I wait for your return.

When fear engulfs me, the inspiration of your nobility and courage will buoy me.
As I recall our magic ship cutting through the uncharted sea of the old brambly apple orchard.
You, its captain, are now and forever master of the yarn.
All this I hold close for you, the best boy ever.

To all of you who still read Saving Captain Row thank you.

There is a new chapter up, part 2 of the Rumspringa arc. Rumspringa is Pennsylvania Dutch word that means 'running around.'

My new manga favorites --Itadakimasu, Aisura Hito, Blanc Marie, Chocolate Girl or anything else by Yuki Yoshihara; Barakomon, Library Wars, Noragami, From Far Away, Midnight Secretary, Vampire Knight, No. 6, Butterflies, Flowers, Until Death Do Us Part, Lone Wolf and Cub, Barefoot Gen, A Bride's Story and After School Nightmare. I also like Kuroshitsuji, Gintama, Natsume's Book of Friends, His and Her Circumstances, Akira, Monster, Buddha, Naruto, Bleach, Darker than Black, Blackbird, Dance of the Vampire Bund, Owari no Seraph and Gangsta.

My favorite anime are Dororo, Seraph of the End, Devil Man Cry Baby, Harlock: Space Pirate, 2013, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, Black Lagoon, Fate/Stay Night:Unlimited Blade Works, Fate Zero, Fate/ Stay Night, Doomed Megalopolis, Kara no Kyou Kai, Psycho-Pass, No. 6, Kill La Kill, Attack on Titan, Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood, Texhnolyze, Steins;Gate, Kurenai, Demon King Daimao, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Ozma, Clannad, Beelzebub, Corpse Princess, Asylum Session , Code Geass, Orphan (first season only!), Outlaw Star, Sengoku Basara, Gasaraki, Phantom: Requiem for the Phantom, Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler), Grave of the Fireflies,The Glass Fleet, Utewarerumono, Sekirei, Darker than Black, Blue Submarine no 6, Le Chevalier D'Eon, Getbackers, Samurai Champloo, Noein, XXXholic, Last Exile, Escaflowne, Evangelion, RahXephon, Heroic Age, Vandread, FLCL, Neo Ranga, Blassreiter, Sword of the Stranger, Ergo Proxy, Blade of the Immortal, His and Her Circumstances, Bastard!!, Rin Daughters of Mnemosyne, Gankutsuou, the Captain Harlock series, Tokyo Majin, Gurren Lagann, Melody of Oblivion, Kamichu, Wolf's Rain and Tekkamon.

Time in Wuthering Heights

The sequence of events in Wuthering Heights is not chronological. Nellie Dean recounts the story to Lockwood, and she tells of events either in the order she learned of them or when she can no longer hold them back. For instance, we do not learn of Heathcliff's close encounter with death as a result of Cathy's death in Chapter 16 until much later in Chapter 34, though it is hinted at by Apothecary Kenneth at the end of Chapter 17. Instead of describing Heathcliff's grief, Ellen recounts the story of Isabella's escape from the Heights, which in light of what is revealed much later about Heathcliff's condition at the time makes no sense. But by the time Lockwood and the reader learn this, they have forgotten the details and are only left with a distant impression. Too, by the time Nellie talks of how weak Heathcliff was when Cathy died, she has Lockwood and the reader in her thrall; thus her obvious misrepresentation of the truth goes unnoticed. The cruel injustices she has inflicted on Heathcliff since she has known him continue even in his death.

This instance is one of many threads throughout the book that are told out of order at Ellen's will. She is an exceptionally good liar and story teller. There is a similar example in Jane Eyre, when at the end of the book Jane makes outrageous statements -- obvious lies -- but by this time Jane's "dear readers" have become so enamored of her they have suspended judgement and believe anything she tells them. I must believe both Emily and Charlotte Bronte were making some comment on the credulity of the general public. But, whereas Jane is simply making herself look good at the expense of Rochester, who has been a very bad boy, Ellen is a malevolent agent not only in action, but in the slander she relates. It takes several readings to see Nellie's diabolical cleverness, and if Nellie is the moral center of Wuthering Heights as Charlotte Bronte has said than the amoral followers of Ayn Rand may rejoice.

To sort out the chronology of the events in Wuthering Heights there are several timelines available. I recommend them to anyone who is confused by the story, and, though it takes work sorting this out, it gives the reader a whole new perspective on Nellie Dean and the story. I have used Stuart Daley's timeline which corrects an earlier one by C.P. Sanger. These chronologies are helpful too, in that they give genealogies and birthrates so that it becomes clear that Nellie and Hindley are the same age and at least seven years older than Cathy and Heathcliff. Further they establish the action of the novel to between 1784 and 1802, and I believe part of Emily Bronte's intention was to compare England prior to the industrial revolution (the Heights) to England after the industrial revolution (Thrushcross Grange).

How were these chronologies made? Well The first version of the novel was so confusing the publisher sent it back to Emily Bronte, suggesting she find some means of establishing the sequence of events. So she took old almanacs, and used moveable feasts, astronomical data and weather events: thus she was able to establish a subtle order. Sanger was the first to discover which almanacs, later Daley tweaked it. I highly recommend them.

Why do most adaptations of Wuthering Heights miss the mark?

Most adaptations of Wuthering Heights either skip or spend very little time on the development of the childhood bond between Cathy and Heathcliff, even to the point of aging the characters. Some delay their meeting until they are teenagers, which has more to do with Romeo and Juliet than Wuthering Heights.

I realize all adaptations are a form of fanfiction and, therefore free reign for the imagination is to be encouraged and expected. But ignoring the nature of the childhood bond between Cathy and Heathcliff neglects one of the central themes of the novel: the betrayal of childhood dreams and promises in order to meet adult and societal expectations.

If Cathy and Heathcliff are teenagers when they meet, they have already passed beyond the borders of childhood and are aware of what is expected of them based on their situations in life. If at this point, they choose to pursue their love for each other it is simple rebellion, more like Catherine and Hareton, who meet when she is eighteen and he is twenty-three. And then too, though they rebel against Heathcliff, it is only a minor skirmish, since there is no societal constraint against these two marrying – even though they are first cousins.

On the other hand as far as social mores are concerned, Cathy and Heathcliff are definitely not acceptable marriage partners, but, with their shared history as children, they have a bond goes back to when all things are possible. Pledges made at this time of life are oddly true and binding. True in the sense that most children are still free enough to act in congruence with their authentic natures, and binding in the way a forgotten childhood prayer or promise can hold sway over a lifetime.

This is why Cathy’s betrayal of Heathcliff for all that is shiny and valued by others is such a dagger to the heart. We have all been faced with leaving behind something or someone we valued deeply in order to enter the adult world. We have all betrayed our childhood hearts to fit in as teenagers and adults. Further, though the novel does not deal with it directly, after Cathy’s death Heathcliff spends his life trying to regain that childhood paradise.

This is why I think the story must start with Heathcliff and Cathy meeting at the ages of approximately seven and six as they do in the novel. This is a difficult task in movies given that the characters must be aged from childhood through adulthood. Too, there is the problem of how to portray the child abuse suffered by Heathcliff, without which his character makes little sense. In a narrative it is not as difficult; the author has to re-imagine the childhood mind. But take it from one who has tried to figure out what games Heathcliff and Cathy might have played, it is hard to recapture that sense of tangential play.

However, there is another possibility I would love to see attempted. With good writing, Japanese anime could manage it, given the high state of the art and the extended episode format. The problem of aging the characters does not require multiple actors that look alike. Making plain Heathcliff’s childhood suffering does not require a child actor to suffer through acting it out. Too, heartrending poignancy is a feature of Japanese anime making the medium uniquely capable of rendering the pain and sorrow of Cathy’s betrayal to both herself and Heathcliff apparent.

What is gossip and what is true in Wuthering Heights?

Perhaps, my Heathcliff seems out of character to you. But what do you really know of Heathcliff? Just the gossip of his jealous competitor, Nellie Dean, who, in truth, witnessed very little of his life. He must have been clever considering all that he managed. Then too, how did he occupy his time during all those years Nellie was not around? If this book teaches you anything it is the unreliability of gossips. They always have a hidden agenda; poor Lockwood is oblivious to her end.

The other day at dinner a guest commented on the wasted life of another person, recently passed away. A person my guest saw at the most once or twice a year. At these careless comments Nellie Dean sprang to mind. How, I wonder, can anyone make such a judgment on another's life unless they are witness to every minute of it? Such comments are cruel; and, you people who make them, you should know that is what others are thinking of you. Unless you are omnipotent, you should hold your tongue.

My justification for Heathcliff’s articulate chattiness in Haunted comes from several incidents in the book. I’ll mention two: Lockwood’s description of his conversation with Heathcliff on his first visit to the Heights, and Heathcliff’s tale of what happened to Cathy and him when they were caught peeking at Thrushcross Grange, including the detailed description of the manor house’s furnishings and décor.

As to the latter, I questioned it as Nellie embellishing at first, but shortly after, Nellie, knowing Heathcliff stands in the shadows, lets Cathy go on about Edgar’s proposal. Why did she do something so cruel? To get to Thrushcross Grange, I believe. Heathcliff’s description enticed her, and who would want to stay at the Heights around Hindley’s drunken dissipation?

Many of Nellie’s judgments regarding Cathy and Heathcliff are projections of her own desires. It is Nellie who is moved by greed, not her two wards. Cathy’s assessment when near death that Nellie is the architect of everyone's misfortune is spot on. Nellie wanted to work at the grander more orderly house, and she had no intention of turning Edgar down for Hareton’s sake. When she tells Lockwood this, no one is alive who can verify her story regarding her protests about leaving Hareton.

As to Heathcliff writing to Cathy during his travels, do you think any of those letters would have ever reached her? No, Cathy was enslaved by her need to be taken care of, just like Hindley, Edgar and Isabella. The servants brought their mail to them and an unscrupulous, ambitious lady's maid might take it upon herself to censor the mail. Certainly Heathcliff would have realized this.

In the end Nellie Dean becomes the overseer for young Catherine’s landholdings, and she states as much to Lockwood when he comes to pay the remaining rent for Thrushcross Grange after Heathcliff’s death. Joseph accuses her of taking money from Lockwood for sex. I can only wonder in fear how she went on to manipulate Catherine and Hareton.

Why is Heathcliff a more daring choice for a hero than Edward Rochester?

Edward Rochester may be a bad boy, but he is still a member of the British gentry, very well connected, and very rich. Further, he is rather severely punished for his misdeeds before being allowed the happiness of marrying Jane. So Victorian Christian morality receives its due, and Jane climbs the social ladder, from servant to master. Though there are scandalous and cruel aspects to this story, and the narrator is shown at the end to be unreliable, the devil gets his due, and the story follows the romantic formula.

Heathcliff, on the other hand, is of unknown pedigree, being referred to as a Lascar (from India) a gypsy (Romani) or an American, which I take to mean Native American. Ellen even imagines him to be the son of a Chinese Emperor. Thus he is not Caucasian -- not shocking in our time, but when Emily Bronte wrote, interracial relationships were viewed very differently. When he arrives at the Heights at the age of seven, he speaks an unrecognizable language, and cannot communicate with anyone, though in a poignant scene he tries desperately.

When Cathy rejects Heathcliff, he runs away and gets rich. This part of the plot reminds me of Persuasion by Jane Austen, except that Cathy gives in to social convention and marries Edgar Linton whereas Anne Elliot refuses Charles Musgrove and remains a spinster. Anne is rewarded when her true love, Fredrick Wentworth, whom she rejected because he was poor, returns a rich and respectable naval captain. Poor Cathy is married and pregnant when her true love returns, resulting in mayhem.

Heathcliff and Cathy's deep and unbreakable bond scandalizes Edgar Linton, as it must have Victorian England, because Heathcliff is utterly other, and no amount of wealth will ever make him acceptable. As the book progresses, Edgar's refusal to accept their friendship leads to Cathy's and much later Heathcliff's unrepentant and subtle suicides. In the end, in accord with suicide lore of the time, the two lovers triumph, becoming earthbound spirits, eternally free to roam their beloved moors, even though no minister ever interceded for them.

It seems to me that Heathcliff is clearly a very brave choice on the part of Emily Bronte. Whereas her sister Charlotte, who wrote Jane Eyre in reaction to Wuthering Heights, chose a much safer and well connected bad boy. Heathcliff is a reflection of all that proper Victorian society rejected, and yet most readers remain sympathetic to him. Why? What does he represent? And what makes him so deeply and intriguingly masculine, out shinning other the male characters like Rochester? Well, I have a theory or two which I plan to expand on in my fanfics, but one thing I will say; Heathcliff is incredibly brave and noble, standing up to a system that considers him inhuman, good for nothing but the free labor that can be extracted from him before he perishes. He takes this system and turns it upside down, by completely legal means. When he finds that he is now the oppressor, he lets it all go; unlike the characters of Jane Eyre, who never question the master/servant relationship. In the end Heathcliff is set free and discovers something amazing.

Both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre have a lot more going on in them then most novels-- the unreliable narrator or the difference between fate and providence, for instance, that is why these novels live on. Neither are simple romances. I like Jane Eyre very much, but I love Wuthering Heights.

Several Bronte scholars have mentioned this poem as the possible inspiration for Cathy and Heathcliff.

The Two Children
by Emily Bronte
(May 28, 1845)

Part I

Heavy hangs the raindrop
From the burdened spray;
Heavy broods the damp mist
On Uplands far away;

Heavy looms the dull sky,
Heavy rolls the sea -
And heavy beats the young heart
Beneath that lonely Tree -

Never has a blue streak
Cleft the clouds since morn -
Never has his grim Fate
Smiled since he was born -

Frowning on the infant,
Shadowing childhood's joy;
Guardian angel knows not
That melancholy boy.

Day is passing swiftly
Its sad and sombre prime;
Youth is fast invading
Sterner manhood's time -

All the flowers are praying
For sun before they close,
And he prays too, unknowing,
That sunless human rose!

Blossoms, that the westwind
Has never wooed to blow,
Scentless are your petals,
Your dew as cold as snow -

Soul, where kindred kindness
No early promise woke,
Barren is your beauty
As weed upon the rock -

Wither, Brothers, wither,
You were vainly given -
Earth reserves no blessing
For the unblessed of Heaven!

Part II

Child of Delight! with sunbright hair
And seablue, sea-deep eyes;
Spirit of Bliss, what brings thee here,
Beneath these sullen skies?

Thou shouldest live in eternal spring,
Where endless day is never dim;
Why, seraph, has thy erring wing
Borne thee down to weep with him?

"Ah, not from heaven am I descended,
And I do not come to mingle tears;
But sweet is day though with shadows blended;
And, though clouded, sweet are youthful years -

I, the image of light and gladness,
Saw and pitied that mournful boy;
And I swore to take his gloomy sadness,
And give to him my beamy joy -

"Heavy and dark the night is closing;
Heavy and dark may its biding be;
Better for all from grief reposing,
And better for all who watch like me -

"Guardian angel, he lacks no longer;
Evil fortune he need not fear;
Fate is strong–but Love is stronger,
And more unsleeping than angel's care.

Often Rebuked
By Emily Bronte

Often rebuked, yet always back returning
To those first feelings that were born with me,
And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning
For idle dreams of things which cannot be:

To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;
Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear;
And visions rising, legion after legion,
Bring the unreal world too strangely near.

I'll walk, but not in old heroic traces,
And not in paths of high morality,
And not among the half-distinguished faces,
The clouded forms of long-past history.

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading:
It vexes me to choose another guide:
Where the gray flocks in ferny glens are feeding;
Where the wild wind blows on the mountain side

What have those lonely mountains worth revealing?
More glory and more grief than I can tell:
The earth that wakes one human heart to feeling
Can centre both the worlds of Heaven and Hell.

A Fragment from the Writings
of Charlotte Bronte

I owe him something; he has held a
A lofty, burning lamp to me,
Whose rays surrounding darkness quelled
And showed me wonders, shadow free

And he has been a mental king
That ruled my thoughts right regally,
And he has given a steady spring
To what I had of poetry…

Orphic Hymn 29 to Persephone (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
Hymn to Persephone. Daughter of Zeus, Persephone divine, come, blessed queen, and to these rites incline: only-begotten, Plouton’s (Hades’) honored wife, O venerable Goddess, source of life: ‘tis thine in earth’s profundities to dwell, fast by the wide and dismal gates of hell. Zeus’ holy offspring, of a beauteous mien, Praxidike (avenging Goddess), subterranean queen. The Eumenides’ [Erinyes’] source, fair-haired, whose frame proceeds from Zeus’ ineffable and secret seeds. Mother of Eubouleos (Dionysos / Zagreos), sonorous, divine, and many-formed, the parent of the vine. Associate of the Horai (Seasons), essence bright, all-ruling virgin, bearing heavenly light. With fruits abounding, of a bounteous mind, horned, and alone desired by those of mortal kind. O vernal queen, whom grassy plains delight, sweet to the smell, and pleasing to the sight: whose holy form in budding fruits we view, earth’s vigorous offspring of a various hue: espoused in autumn, life and death alone to wretched mortals from thy power is known: for thine the task , according to thy will, life to produce, and all that lives to kill. Hear, blessed Goddess, send a rich increase of various fruits from earth, with lovely peace: send health with gentle hand, and crown my life with blest abundance, free from noisy strife; last in extreme old age the prey of death, dismiss me willing to the realms beneath, to thy fair palace and the blissful plains where happy spirits dwell, and Plouton (Hades) reigns.

Orphic Hymn 29 to Persephone
As Translated. A. P.Long.

Persephone, Daughter of Zeus, blessed
Only begotten, gracious Goddess, receive this good offering,
Much honoured, you, overpowered by Pluto, you are beloved and lifegiving,
You hold the doors of Hades under the depths of the earth;
Transactor of Justice, your beloved hair the sacred olive branch of the enemy
Mother of the Eumenides, Queen of the Underworld, You, maiden from Zeus through secret begetting.

Mother of loud-shouting, many-shaped Bacchus.
Playmate of the moving seasons, lightbringing, of beautiful form,
Holy, ruler of all, maiden, showering fruits,
Radiant, horned, you alone are longed for by mortals.
You are Spring, delighting in fragrant meadows
Your sacred body appears to us in growing fruits and branches.

Raped into your marriage bed in the late autumn
You alone are life and death to distressed mortals.
Persephone. You are forever the nourisher and the death bringer.

Listen, blessed Goddess and send up fruits from the earth
In peace, flourishing in health from your soothing hand;
And, in life abundance, leading to richness of old age
Then to your realm O Sovereign, and to powerful Pluto

Fly / Small Circle of Friends
by Tsutchie and Fat John

One morning, while I lay stretched in the grass by the river.
A butterfly tickles my nose, and the predawn sky is infinitely far away.
What is projected on the gradually darkening blue screen is the continuation of my dream.
I yawn and stretch the character for “big” standing alone among the sounds of spring.
Snow lingers on the mountains as my path carries me across the seasons.
A swallow brushes my cheek as it flies past, and looking back, calls out good morning to me.
It’s time to be off, and with a “Heave-Ho”, I get to my feet, but where am I off to?

As to that, as to that, as to that, as to that …
Yeah, right now it’s early spring, and my journey has just begun.

In other words, we travel westward,
Wandering delinquents who think we’re samurai.
The souls accompanying us drift up to the sky,
If they wave their wings they can fly.

I knew the day I was born I would set out on a journey one day.
With a knapsack on my tiny back, I heard a voice calling out behind me.
As I walked home from school along the little path lit by the sun,
I was overwhelmed every day at how familiar it seemed…

The journey finally has begun to seek out and awaken the “me” that I am sure lived long ago.
Your world is far bigger than what you have read about in history books.
That sensation reverberating up through your sneakers…
Is the history lying beneath the asphalt.
As I travel from the present to the past, will I meet myself?
My future self will find me, so I will wait here a while for him.

In other words, we travel westward,
Wandering delinquents who think we’re samurai.
The souls accompanying us drift up to the sky,
If they wave their wings they can fly.

Sonnet 5
from The Sonnets to Orpheus I
By Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Howard A. Landman

Erect no monument. Just let the roses
Blossom every year as his reward.
For that is Orpheus. His metamorphoses
To this and that. We shouldn't strive too hard

To find another name. Once and for all
It's Orpheus if there's song. He comes and goes.
Isn't it enough that sometimes he'll
Survive a few days longer than the rose?

And though he also worries at his passing,
He has to fade, for you to understand!
For when his word expands beyond existence,

He is already, where you can't go with him.
The lyre's bars do not constrain his hands.
And he obeys the best, when he's trespassing.

The Buddha on Belief from the Kalama Sutta
“Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men. Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all. Then accept it and live up to it.”

A Song of Despair
By Pablo Neruda

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not
drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!

A Tree Telling of Orpheus
By Denise Levertov

White dawn. Stillness. When the rippling began
I took it for a sea-wind, coming to our valley with rumors
of salt, of treeless horizons. but the white fog
didn't stir; the leaved of my brothers remained outstretched,
unmoving.

Yet the rippling drew nearer — and then
my own outermost branches began to tingle, almost as if
fire had been lit below them, too close, and their twig-tips
were drying and curling.
Yet I was not afraid, only
deeply alert.

I was the first to see him, for I grew
out on the pasture slope, beyond the forest.
He was a man, it seemed: the two
moving stems, the short trunk, the two
arm-branches, flexible, each with five leafless
twigs at their ends,
and the head that's crowned by brown or gold grass,
bearing a face not like the beaked face of a bird,
more like a flower's.
He carried a burden made of
some cut branch bent while it was green,
strands of a vine tight-stretched across it. From this,
when he touched it, and from his voice
which unlike the wind's voice had no need of our
leaves and branches to complete its sound,
came the ripple.
But it was now no longer a ripple (he had come near and
stopped in my first shadow) it was a wave that bathed me
as if rain
rose from below and around me
instead of falling.
And what I felt was no longer a dry tingling:
I seemed to be singing as he sang, I seemed to know
what the lark knows; all my sap
was mounting towards the sun that by now
had risen, the mist was rising, the grass
was drying, yet my roots felt music moisten them
deep under earth.

He came still closer, leaned on my trunk:
the bark thrilled like a leaf still-folded.
Music! there was no twig of me not
trembling with joy and fear.

Then as he sang
it was no longer sounds only that made the music:
he spoke, and as no tree listens I listened, and language
came into my roots
out of the earth,
into my bark
out of the air,
into the pores of my greenest shoots
gently as dew
and there was no word he sang but I knew its meaning.
He told of journeys,
of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots…
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
and I, a tree, understood words — ah, it seemed
my thick bark would split like a sapling's that
grew too fast in the spring
when a late frost wounds it.

Fire he sang,
that trees fear, and I, a tree, rejoiced in its flames.
New buds broke forth from me though it was full summer.
As though his lyre (now I knew its name)
were both frost and fire, its chord flamed
up to the crown of me.

I was seed again.
I was fern in the swamp.
I was coal.

And at the heart of my wood
(so close I was to becoming man or god)
there was a kind of silence, a kind of sickness,
something akin to what men call boredom,
something
(the poem descended a scale, a stream over stones)
that gives to a candle a coldness
in the midst of its burning, he said.

It was then,
when in the blaze of his power that
reached me and changed me
I thought I should fall my length,
that the singer began
to leave me. Slowly
moved from my noon shadow
to open light,
words leaping and dancing over his shoulders
back to me
rivery sweep of lyre-tones becoming
slowly again
ripple.

And I in terror
but not in doubt of
what I must do
in anguish, in haste,
wrenched from the earth root after root,
the soil heaving and cracking, the moss tearing asunder —
and behind me the others: my brothers
forgotten since dawn. In the forest
they too had heard,
and were pulling their roots in pain
out of a thousand year's layers of dead leaves,
rolling the rocks away,
breaking themselves
out of
their depths.

You would have thought we would lose the sound of the lyre,
of the singing
so dreadful the storm-sounds were, where there was no storm,
no wind but the rush of our
branches moving, our trunks breasting the air.
But the music!
The music reached us.
Clumsily,
stumbling over our own roots,
rustling our leaves
in answer,
we moved, we followed.

All day we followed, up hill and down.
We learned to dance,
for he would stop, where the ground was flat,
and words he said
taught us to leap and to wind in and out
around one another in figures the lyre's measure designed.

The singer
laughed till he wept to see us, he was so glad.
At sunset
we came to this place I stand in, this knoll
with its ancient grove that was bare grass then.
In the last light of that day his song became
farewell.
He stilled our longing.
He sang our sun-dried roots back into earth,
watered them: all-night rain of music so quiet
we could almost
not hear it in the
moonless dark.
By dawn he was gone.
We have stood here since,
in our new life.
We have waited.
He does not return.
It is said he made his earth-journey, and lost
what he sought.
It is said they felled him
and cut up his limbs for firewood.
And it is said
his head still sang and was swept out to sea singing.
Perhaps he will not return.
But what we have lived
comes back to us.
We see more.
We feel, as our rings increase,
something that lifts our branches, that stretches our furthest
leaf-tips
further.
The wind, the birds,
do not sound poorer but clearer,
recalling our agony, and the way we danced.
The music!

Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes
By Rainer Marie Rilke

It was a mineshaft peculiar to souls.
Like silent seams of silver ore they moved
as veins through the darkness. Between roots
sprung up the blood that issued to humankind
and heavy as porphyry this seemed in the darkness.
Nothing else was red.

Rocks were there
and forests lacking substance. Bridges over abysses
and the great, gray, opaque pool
that hangs over its long-distant source
like rainy skies over a landscape.
And between meadows, gentle and forbearing
appeared the pale stretch of a single path
laid out like a cloth strip for blanching.

They came along this very path.

In front, the slender man in the blue cloak
who mutely and without apology looked forward.
With no concern for chewing his step ate up
the path in huge bites, his hands hung
from his garments ungainly and clenched
and no longer knew the delicate lyre
that had grown into his left hand
as rose tendrils do on an olive branch.
And his mind was rent in two:
while his gaze ran on ahead like a canine,
turned round, came back and ever again went
on ahead and stared at the next turn waiting,
his hearing lingered back like an odor.
Sometimes it seemed to him this reached all the way
back to where they both were walking
who would follow him for this whole ascension.
Yet really this was only his own climbing’s echo
and the waft of his mantle that closed behind him.

But he said to himself: “They are still coming.”
Spoke it aloud and heard it echo away.
They were still coming but both of them
only frightfully slow. If he dared
turn around even once (were not turning around
the destruction of the whole process being accomplished
thus) he would surely see them,
the light-footed couple following him soundlessly.

The god of gateways and far-off messages,
with his helmet down for travel over his bright eyes
a slender staff slung from his body
and wings beating on the ankles of his feet
and to his left hand beholden: her,
The so-beloved, for whom out of one lyre
more sorrow poured than from all sorrowing women;
that became a world of sorrow in which
though everything were still there: forest and lake
and path and village: field, river and beast,
they were yet wholly within this sorrow-world;
as if round this other-earth a sun
and star-filled silent sky revolved,
a sorrow-sky with distorted constellations —
so beloved was she.

But she went by that god’s hand
her step restricted by long winding-shrouds
uncertain, gentle and without impatience.
She was within herself, like one whose hopes are high
and thought not at all of the man who strode ahead
nor of this path they were climbing up into life.
She was within herself. And her state of being dead
filled her to completeness.
Like a fruit with sweetness and darkness
she was so full with her great death
so new to her that she grasped nothing.

She was within a new maidenhead
and untouchable; her sex was shut
like a young flower’s petals toward evening
and her hands had grown so unused
to marriage that even the gentle god’s
infinitely lightly guiding contact
she suffered as a too sudden intimacy.
Already no longer was she the fair-haired woman
that in the poet’s song she sometimes echoed,
no longer the scent of the wide bed and its island,
the belonging of that man ahead no longer.

She was already loosened out like long hair
and surrendering like fallen rain
and shared about like hundredfold provisions.

She was already root.

And as abruptly
the god halted her and with anguish in his voice
spoke the words; “He has turned around!”
She grasped nothing but asked softly, “who?”

But in the distance, dark against the shining gateway
someone stood whose features
were not to be recognized. He stood and saw
how on the strip of the meadow-path

with a sorrowful look the god of far-off messages
turned away in silence, the form following
that was already going back its very same way
her step restricted by long winding-shrouds
uncertain, gentle and without impatience.

To make a prairie (1755)
By Emily Dickinson

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,
One clover, and a bee.
And revery.
The revery alone will do,
If bees are few.

Sweet is the swamp with secrets
By Emily Dickinson

Sweet is the Swamp with secrets,
Until we meet a snake;
‘Tis then we sigh for houses,
And our departure take

At that enthralling gallop
That only childhood knows.
A snake is summer’s treason,
And guile is where it goes.

Orphic Hymn 77 to Mnemosyne (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :
"To Mnemosyne (Memory),
Light Incense

The consort I invoke of Zeus divine;
Source of the holy, sweetly speaking Mousai nine;
Free from the oblivion of the fallen mind,
By whom the soul with intellect is joined.

Reason’s increase and thought to thee belong,
All-powerful, pleasant, vigilant, and strong.
‘Tis thine to waken from lethargic rest all thoughts
Deposited within the breast;
And nought neglecting, vigorous to excite
the mental eye from dark oblivion’s night.

Come, blessed power,
Thy mystics’ memory wake to holy rites,
And Lethe’s (Forgetfulness) fetters break."

From the an Orphic Tomb Lamella

Parched with thirst am I, and dying.
Nay, drink of Me, the ever-flowing Spring
Where on the right is a fair cypress.
Who are you? Where are you?--I am the son
Of earth and of star-filled Heaven, but
From heaven alone is my house.

Fuller version:

You will find to the left of the House of Hades a spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this spring approach not near.
But you shall find another, from the lake of Memory
Cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
Say, "I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven alone. This you know yourselves.
But I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly
The cold water flowing forth from the lake of Memory."
And of themselves they will give you to drink of the holy spring:
And thereafter you will have lordship among the other heroes.

The Robin is the On
By Emily Dickinson

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
And April but begun.

The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

Bacchylides, Fragment 55 :

"For the keenly-contested gifts of the Mousai do not lie open to all for any comer to carry off."

Pindar, Olympian Ode 6. 91 ff :

"For you give to my words their true report,
Unerring tally of the fair-tressed Mousai,
A rich-filled bowl of sounding song."

Pindar, Fragment 150 :

"Moisa! Be thou mine oracle,
And I shall be thine interpreter . . ."

Orphic Hymn 76 to the Muses (trans. Taylor) (Greek hymns C3rd B.C. to 2nd A.D.) :

"Daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus . . .
Kleio, and Erato who charms the sight,
With thee, Euterpe, ministering delight:
Thalia flourishing, Polymnia famed
Melpomene from skill in music named :
Terpsikhore, Ourania heavenly bright."

Comments on Barefoot Gen

I've just finished reading Barefoot Gen, by Keiji Nakazawa in the new translation, which is spectacular. The story is based on the author's experience as six year old in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the day the U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on that city. He and his mother, who was eight month pregnant at the time, survived along with two older brothers who were not in Hiroshima on that terrible day. His father, older sister and younger brother died in the fire storm that followed, burned alive, trapped in their collapsed house.

It is a cruel irony of this autobiographical story that the author's family were outspoken war dissenters who criticized the Japanese military and the war its leaders started. In fact the author's father spent eighteen months in prison for speaking out. The family suffered ostracism for their views with many dire results.

The story is told through six year old Gen's eyes, and a remarkable child he is. Indefatigable in the face of the terrible horror that resulted from the dropping of the bomb, he carries on, inspiring others. This is not an easy story to read. It does not pull punches, and it comes down hard on both the Japanese and the U.S. military. Gen survives pretty much unscathed compared to others because he happens to be standing behind a concrete wall when the bomb detonates. Afterwards, as he walks through the streets trying to find his way home in the devastated city, he sees people, whose skin has melted off their bodies walking the streets like zombies, searching for water. Dead bodies of men, women and children lie everywhere, burned to a crisp. And that is only the beginning of the horror as fire envelopes the city only to be followed by 'bomb sickness'.

The survivors of Hiroshima did not understand the nature of the bomb so they did not realize the strange plague that followed was due to radiation. Many thought it was communicable like influenza or measles which led to the abandonment of many of the bomb victims. Through Gen we see a cross section of the Japanese peoples' reactions and experiences, ranging from deplorable to heroic. Too, we cringe as the U.S. military examines victim's bodies in the streets of Hiroshima, removing body parts to conduct research, something the Japanese people found ghoulish.

There are ten volumes in all of Barefoot Gen. I will read them all though it is painful. I highly recommend this manga, though the story is unprecedented in its tragic horror, the author offsets it with Gen's humor, loving kindness and sweetness. Reading this story puts so much in perspective, and I came away inspired by Gen. If he could survive such a huge tragedy I can certainly make it through my comparatively minor problems.

I have read some of the debate about Barefoot Gen. But you know what? That terrible arithmetic is just so much blah, blah, blah. This author does criticizes militarism and war in a general sense, making the observation that the war was started by rich, old men, who, through the military dictatorship, mislead the Japanese people in order to make themselves richer. Gen's father suffers dire consequences when he states this and asks the people in his neighborhood when they are going to wake up and think for themselves; something everyone from every country needs to do. Nakazawa also comes down on the U.S. military for dropping the bomb on cities full of civilians not once but twice. To debate the rightness or wrongness of any particular action is not the main purpose of the manga, however. It's purpose is to describe the hellish suffering and terrible destruction of lives wrought by the bomb so that it will never be used again.

Towards the end Gen makes a startling speech in which he says that dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ultimately saved lives, and that the rest of Japan and the world should feel gratitude toward the citizens of those cities for their sacrifice. How could he say this after all he'd experienced? Gen reasons that the devastating effects of the bomb not only ended World War II, but made large scale war unfeasible.

In this day of saber rattling, when many of the same old chicken hawks left over from the Iraqi debacle are demanding that the nuclear option be left on the table, it would do them, and all of us well to read Keiji Nakazawa's story so that we all might see the horror that such an action would reap. Survival, as we all know from Darwin, depends on adaptation, and species that cannot adapt do not survive. This includes us humans; surely it is time to develop more skillful means for dealing with our fears and disagreements. Thank you Keiji Nakazawa for your deeply moving manga. Gen is a treasure!

Review of 1Q84

I've just finished reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. Whew! All nine hundred plus pages! However, the author did have mercy on his readers by dividing his tale into three parts, so I must admit; I took little breaks between each section. I enjoyed this novel for many reasons, but, in particular, I loved the modern rendering of one of my favorite myths – Orpheus and Eurydice. Murakami uses this story as the framework of his 1Q84. In this case, however, it is Eurydice who descends into the underworld to seek out Orpheus. Neither does Murakami confine himself to the cosmos of the ancient Greeks; instead, he expands the possibilities with Buddhism's concept of myriad worlds.

The story is complex and adult which I appreciate; I am tired of the tightly-woven, fairly simplistic plots of most current novels. As the story begins, Aomame, our Eurydice, works as hitwoman, an agent of Hades; she is on her way by taxi to assassinate a fantastically rich man who is a wife abuser. On a tight schedule, she worries she will miss her target when freeway traffic slows to a halt. She waits in the cab while the mysterious driver blasts the radio which happens to be playing “Sinfonietta” by Leos Janacek, one of my favorite composers, and, though I'd never heard this piece before, I've come to love it. “Sinfonietta” takes on significance later in the story with regard to Tengo, our Orpheus.

When it becomes obvious Aomame is in a hurry, the cab driver suggests a short cut which entails crossing lanes of halted traffic to a utility cutout where there is a stairway. Oddly she takes him up on his suggestion, climbing down the stairway, which takes her below the freeway and into an underworld with two moons, long distance sex, little people, air chrysalises and lots more. Because many things in this new world are similar to the world from which Aomame came, it takes some time before she realizes what has happened. Once she understands her situation, she names this new world 1Q89 to differentiate it from the first world, where the year is 1984.

While Aomame climbs down the ladder, Tengo waits at a coffee shop for his friend, a publisher with a strange proposition. But as Tengo sits alone, a recurring vision that has plagued him since childhood paralyzes him.

Though I do wish to tantalize you; I don't want to give too much away. And just because it resembles the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, I can honestly say I have not given away the end. After all there are many versions of that story. This novel is convoluted, complex and very original. There are many plot threads that are never tied up, but as a manga and anime fan this is familiar to me. In fact I've come to prefer such conventions, since it more closely resembles life. However, that said, I loved the resolution of the story. I found Aomame and Tengo's search, each for the other, deeply moving, Yes, I cried; their love, separation, and yearning for each other mirrors longings we have all felt. The desire to be with the one being that completes us.

One of the recurring complaints I’ve read in regard to the novel takes Murakami to task for his extremely detailed descriptions of everyday life. As an Asiaphile I liked this; I was truly interested in everything Tengo cooked and ate. Recently, I read a book by a Japanese Jungian psychologist in which he described the primary functions of the Japanese psyche as sensate and feeling. So it makes sense that Murakami would go into such detail regarding the minutia of daily life, but I think there is another reason as well. In the novel, constant reference is made to Marcel Proust's novel Remembrance of Things Past, which, like 1Q84, is highly detailed. One of the characters even reads it.

As to the feeling function, touch and the emotions are all highly important. The memory of holding hands as children drives both Aomame and Tengo; there are many long descriptions of how the experience felt physically as well as the emotions it elicited. For both characters this encounter was life altering as they were both on the brink of puberty. In this way, to bring Jung up once more, Aomame receives Tengo’s anima projection even as Tengo carries Aomame’s animus projection.

I have no doubt that Murakami is ruminating on Jung’s ideas regarding the animus and anima in this love story. First, I must say that this is a common subject of both manga and anime. What is interesting is that whereas in the west the story is most often told from the male perspective as with Orpheus, in Japan the story is just as often told from the feminine perspective, as for instance in the anime Escaflowne or even Howl’s Moving Castle. Murakami manages his story from both points of view.

Not to belabor the point, but I loved Murakami’s tale; it evoked complex emotions which I savored. Its basis in myth, too, was very meaningful to me as I've written my own version of Orpheus and Eurydice, coming to some of the same conclusions as Murakami, especially in regard to Orpheus' character traits. However, it never occurred to me to make Eurydice a feminist hitwoman, though it makes sense, for in one version of the myth she is attacked by Aristaeus and bitten by a deadly snake as she flees from him. This modern and relevant rendering of a very ancient tale into something meaningful for our era is the sort of thing that Joseph Campbell said must happen or we will lose our bearings.