Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Icarus

This morning in the confessional Dan pointed out to me that perhaps I am flying too close to the sun. He suggested I might have embarrassed myself by releasing too much emotion in my interaction with two different artists during the last week. I find however that both of these conversations (Dan suggested I might record future ones and be frightened and disgusted by my own intensity) inspired my thoughts and writing substantially in the days that followed them. But I can also recall these interactions with a sense of being self conscious, holding forth in the movie of my life and do feel a bit squirmy. I reread my journal last night and it was filled with good ideas and then thoughts so outrageous, full of shit and megalomaniacal they make me cringe( ICKY ICKY ICKY) but often these wild passionate rants level off and build some equity for me. Which is why I drag Richard and Dan into the confessional near every morning and I pour out my heart to my husband and Diana and the dearest of my friends in long e-mails. A blast of love for all of you who are brave enough to bear my loudness and not fade away.

Casamurphy is a dusty mess although I finally got around to cancelling the newspaper subscriptions and some day the basement will be done and I’ll dump all the rotting take out in the fridge, but until then, and the kids leave for camp, with our funky house and lack of adult man, we are roughing it. I am happy for my three adventurers, I hope that I too may steal a few days during which I can shut the fuck up and not feel pressured to think in any language or cover payroll and direct the movie or mastermind the church of me. If the planets align correctly in the next days, remodeling will have advanced and Budget Films will be able to self manage and connections in the north will be made (Jesus Harry, can you at least call me from the gym or the stylist or the haberdasher or somewhere?) I will flee this hotness and BE somewhere where the tape of me would have no human voice for a bit. Quiet.

2 comments:

harry said...

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

John L. Murphy / "FionnchĂș" said...

Bob, I am teaching this poem and this painting in my Literature class, along with James Bishop's shorter one! Good eye, but I'd expect nothing less from a once and future doctoral candidate.