Sonnet 59 A FORMER CHILD - If there be nothing new, but that which is

If there be nothing new, but that which is
Hath been before, how are our brains beguiled,
Which, labouring for invention, bear amiss
The second burden of a former child!
O, that record could with a backward look,
Even of five hundred courses of the sun,
Show me your image in some antique book,
Since mind at first in character was done!
That I might see what the old world could say
To this composed wonder of your frame;
Whether we are mended, or whether better they,
Or whether revolution be the same.
O, sure I am, the wits of former days
To subjects worse have given admiring praise.

Sonnet 58 GOD FORBID - That god forbid that made me first your slave,

That god forbid that made me first your slave,
I should in thought control your times of pleasure,
Or at your hand the account of hours to crave,
Being your vassal, bound to stay your leisure!
O, let me suffer, being at your beck,
The imprison'd absence of your liberty;
And patience, tame to sufferance, bide each cheque,
Without accusing you of injury.
Be where you list, your charter is so strong
That you yourself may privilege your time
To what you will; to you it doth belong
Yourself to pardon of self-doing crime.
I am to wait, though waiting so be hell;
Not blame your pleasure, be it ill or well.

Sonnet 57 SLAVE - Being your slave, what should I do but tend

Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do, till you require.
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu;
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought
Save, where you are how happy you make those.
So true a fool is love that in your will,
Though you do any thing, he thinks no ill.

Sonnet 56 SAD INTERIM - Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said

Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said
Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd,
To-morrow sharpen'd in his former might:
So, love, be thou; although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes even till they wink with fullness,
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love with a perpetual dullness.
Let this sad interim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that, when they see
Return of love, more blest may be the view;
Else call it winter, which being full of care
Makes summer's welcome thrice more wish'd, more rare.

Sonnet 55 SLUTTISH TIME - Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme;
But you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even in the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lover's eyes.

Sonnet 54 SWEET ORNAMENT - O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem

O, how much more doth beauty beauteous seem
By that sweet ornament which truth doth give!
The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem
For that sweet odour which doth in it live.
The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumed tincture of the roses,
Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly
When summer's breath their masked buds discloses:
But, for their virtue only is their show,
They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade,
Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so;
Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made:
And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth,
When that shall fade, my verse distills your truth.

Sonnet 53 STRANGE SHADOWS - What is your substance, whereof are you made,

What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you, but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring and foison of the year;
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,
The other as your bounty doth appear;
And you in every blessed shape we know.
In all external grace you have some part,
But you like none, none you, for constant heart.

Sonnet 52 BLESSED KEY - So am I as the rich, whose blessed key

So am I as the rich, whose blessed key
Can bring him to his sweet up-locked treasure,
The which he will not every hour survey,
For blunting the fine point of seldom pleasure.
Therefore are feasts so solemn and so rare,
Since, seldom coming, in the long year set,
Like stones of worth they thinly placed are,
Or captain jewels in the carcanet.
So is the time that keeps you as my chest,
Or as the wardrobe which the robe doth hide,
To make some special instant special blest,
By new unfolding his imprison'd pride.
Blessed are you, whose worthiness gives scope,
Being had, to triumph, being lack'd, to hope.

Sonnet 51 DULL BEARER - Thus can my love excuse the slow offense

Thus can my love excuse the slow offense
Of my dull bearer when from thee I speed:
From where thou art why should I haste me thence?
Till I return, of posting is no need.
O, what excuse will my poor beast then find,
When swift extremity can seem but slow?
Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;
In winged speed no motion shall I know:
Then can no horse with my desire keep pace;
Therefore desire of perfect'st love being made,
Shall neigh--no dull flesh--in his fiery race;
But love, for love, thus shall excuse my jade;
Since from thee going he went wilful-slow,
Towards thee I'll run, and give him leave to go.



Obviously paired with S50.
That groan from the froward beast,
the reminds the Poet that his destination
he is ever traveling towards grief and away from joy.

S50 is an internal monologue
while S51 is the outward explanation to the YM

Lest, perhaps, the YM believes the Poet's delay
is calculated? What is the slow offense?

Speed used ironically.

Note the movement from dull bearer to poor beast

The beautiful passage:

Then should I spur, though mounted on the wind;
In winged speed no motion shall I know:

Seems modern: no motion shall I know
the effect of being on an airplane

And the loaded line the marks Q3:

no horse can keep up with my desire

priapic boasting. the poet has been away too long
his prick shall spur the horse beyond the limits of the dull flesh
and he shall like a cartoon comet
arc fiery across the sky back to the YM

Interesting in the couplet
no spurring is necessary
the horse desires to get back to the YM
as quickly as possible


Q1: slow offense of the dull beast in leaving

Q2: the promised return will be faster than the wind

Q3: because the poet's desire is stronger than any horse and will speed him back like fire

C: I will let loose the reins on the horse and give him leave to exercise his full powers of speed (and desire?)

Sonnet 50 BLOODY SPUR: How heavy do I journey on the way

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek, my weary travel's end,
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
'Thus far the miles are measured from thy friend!'
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods dully on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side;
   For that same groan doth put this in my mind,
   My grief lies onward, and my joy behind.

It's a sweet image of a sullen Shakespeare
on a horse plodding down the road

You can feel the weight of time: the wait
heavy, weary, tired with woe, plods dully on...
The meter resounding like horse's hooves on the road
lugubrious lamentation in alliteration
when what weary woe weight wretch
mile measured
beast bears bear bloody
and those two bears!
wretched beastly bears
then the bloody spur
singing out in Q3
anger, what anger? where?
weren't we weary with woe?
but with the turn comes anger
perhaps for having to leave London
and travel back to Stratford
to the wife and kids
to the million little pricks
and that groan
this sadistic Shakespeare
full of such anger as to bloody a spur
in a horse's hide
seems incongruous and yet all too human
rationalized that the greater pain is his
that same groan
you wonder at the sound
the recalcitrant horse
Rocinante
the angry Poet
spurs jingling on his boots
wheels spinning
dripping with hot red blood
but which cause no difference in the horse's pace
there's a sonnet to be written about this horse
and his evocative groan

We each enact our own myths

source

Film offers an all too easy metaphor for memory which, while evocative, is not accurate. I think people born in the age of film and now smart phones will think of memory as a message aligned with those mediums: a slow motion panning shot of a walk to the altar, soundtracked with a favorite song, close up on the face, or, far worse, their lives as a series of posed/ not posed filter / no filter selfies.

The creative and interpretively demanding windows opened by a work of art with its constantly shifting meanings and aporia are traded for these more compressed representations of the experience - the plastic souvenir remembered instead of the experience itself.

The capacities of memory of enormous are vast and energized by immersion to the most profound depths. Borges said one of the most signal moments in the development of Western culture was when Aeschylus introduced a second actor onto the stage. No longer a single singer or priest addressing the crowd directly, but a re-presentation of reality, as two actors magically create a dramatic universe we view as non-participatory spectators. No wonder the earliest memory systems were memory theaters. Internal private stages where we each enact our own myths. Something Freud "discovered" as a unexplored country within.

OSSA 3 TRIGRAMS: I-CHING TRIGRAMS

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SCRIPTUM 3 CASTLES: I learned this, at least, by my experiment

Walden 

Henry Thoreau (1817-1862)

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment:
that if one advances confidently
in the direction of his dreams,
and endeavors to live the life
which he has imagined,
he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

He will put some things behind,
will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws
will begin to establish themselves
around and within him; or the old laws be expanded,
and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense,
and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.

In proportion as he simplifies his life,
the laws of the universe will appear less complex,
and solitude will not be solitude,
nor poverty poverty,
nor weakness weakness.

If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost;
that is where they should be.
Now put the foundations under them.

Synaesthetics

Composition VIII, 1923 - Kandinsky - source

I've been working to synaesthetically intertwine colors with letter, word and number. An age old Kandinskian effort, but solely for my own mnemonic purposes. For example. 0 = white. Seems natural to me, the white on a page around printed words is seen as silence. White is a kind of blank, an emptiness, a zero. The letter B is blue. It just looks like Blue. The two circles leaning against the wall, tired, drunk, squashed, blue. And 2 is also blue. Rhyme. But the image of the man on his knees, head bent over, in prayer or defeat, is blue. Blue smells like the sea, for obvious reasons. And the same: tastes like water. And so on... making myself into Pavlov's dog: 20 is blue on white, a drunk man kneeling on a white sheet, remembering the taste of rain, perhaps a sailor on a deserted island praying on a white sail, dying of thirst. This associative process of mnemonic creation, of cracking words open like oysters, searching for pearls amidst the labial folds.