The other day I took a piece of scrap paper from the Special Collections desk to write a note. Later I noticed that the back of it was a photocopy of a map. There was a peninsula, and handwritten was: "Cape Disappointment." I mention this more for its poetic nature than any kind of parallel to my actual life, although I have been disappointing myself in a sense.
I was in Boston for the weekend, where it was 100 degrees and my senses and brain were cooked and motionless. When I came home, I realized that my New Year's resolution - to be more aware - had been sadly neglected, especially over the past few weeks. So I'm making a renewed effort not to screw up, not to forget things, not to come home and just lie around until I go to bed. Yesterday, this experiment didn't go so well. I forgot my umbrella on the bus, stabbed myself with a pencil, and dropped something I really shouldn't have. (Luckily, I wasn't hurt, neither was the thing I dropped, and I got a new umbrella this morning.) I'm getting there, though. One day at a time, etc. Not to get all John Bunyan on your ass, but beyond Cape Disappointment I am betting there is a smooth sea.
One more thing.
In an effort to improve my Spanish, I took my Penguin Book of Spanish Verse on the train with me this morning. I hadn't cracked it yet (it's old and from a used book sale), and there was already a dog-ear made by someone else, marking a poem by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz called "A la esperanza" (To Hope). The last six lines (it's a sonnet) are:
sigan tu nombre en busca de tu dia
los que, con verdes vidrios por anteojos,
todo lo ven pintado a su deseo;
que yo, mas cuerda en la fortuna mia,
tengo en entrambas manos ambos ojos
y solamente lo que toco veo.
LOOSELY:
Let them follow your name in search of your light,
those who, wearing green glasses,
see everything painted as they desire it;
but I, wiser in my fortune,
keep both my eyes in my two hands
and see only what I touch.
It's a grounding kind of poem, which I need in my 'awareness training.' But I found it serendipitously, which always appeals to me.
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1 comment:
may i refer your serendipity to the Kundera quote you so obligingly bestowed upon me.... Not surprised in the least. And Sor Ines es una poeta muy famosa del siglo XVI... she wrote under a nom-de-plume because she was a nun and a woman and therefore was prohibited from publishing. ¿Interesante, no? de veras, it's possible that she lived in the 15th and not the 16th c.--can't remember for sure, but what an amazing poem!!!!! Thanks. (thanks also for the kind words in your email.)
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