A Synaesthesia Sonnet

In Poetry Club we were challenged to write a poem using synaesthesia, which is when you mix up your senses, so that you smell things that you should hear, or see things that are meant to be felt. The most synaesthetic experiences in my life come through music...

As music fills the space where I abide
Each note, each phrase finds life beyond just sound
The song, it seems to come from deep inside
My senses spring awake, no longer bound

In every tone I see bright colours burst
Fleeting and prancing pictures in my mind
And for the flavours of this song I thirst
But soon it's quenched as melodies unwind

The sound is thick as it flows through the air
Just like a humid day, this wall of notes
I feel it brush my cheek, dance through my hair
My senses on a sea of song now float

Through sight and touch, through taste and smell and sound
The music makes me whole, from lost to found

Passion's Prologue

processions of palms

this prancing peaceful parade

a prelude to pain

A Sonnet for John 8:32

As I am preparing and writing this year's Bible Curriculum, focused on Discipleship, I have been searching for appropriate theme verses for the summer, and right now one of my options is John 8:32. It has been floating around in my head, so when we wrote sonnets in Grade 12 Lit the other day, it became the topic for my poem:

A Sonnet for John 8:32

"The truth shall set you free," it was proclaimed,
And yet it seemed that no one understood
Their hearts with hope and love, wholly enflamed
For asking questions, what would be the good?

As years went by this freedom was perversed
And soon they thought this was for "me," for "I"
The hope he had exclaimed, it was reversed
Now "freedom" comes when enemies do die.

The truth that had been meant for all to hear
- the truth that said how freedom comes through grace -
Where all were meant to live in joy, not fear
Has been by our great world destroyed, debased.

And so we must return to that first plea,
To live in truth, where love will set you free.

The Floating Nun - Harris Burdick

     The air in the upper part of the cathedral had more movement than the cold and stagnant heaviness down below. She could almost imagine what it would have felt like on her hair, had her hair not been so severely constricted by her habit.
     She had been floating here - in the centre of the nave, on one of the hard chairs that they used instead of pews - for at least half an hour now. The strange thing was not the floating chair, but the complete peace she felt up there: no fear of falling, not even any questions of why she was where she was. She wondered when she might get back down to earth, but she certainly didn't worry about it.
     The Bishop and his aide had walked into the church, and seemed as unfazed as the Floating Nun.
     "You've been there long?" asked the Bishop in his nasal drawl.
     "Not too long," she replied. "I seem to be in a place quite beyond the constant state of flux existent down there. I think I shall stay here for the foreseeable future."
     "Stay there?!" exclaimed the Bishop, for the first time showing an inkling of emotion, though it wasn't clear if that emotion was anger, horror, or just surprise.
     "Yes! Stay here."
     The Bishop frowned his frown that the Nun knew only too well, for he employed that frown for his many employments: praying, preaching, teaching, disciplining, and even - if his aide was speaking the truth - for sleeping.
     The Nun had always been beyond the reach of the Bishop; as a woman she answered to her Mother Superior, and of course to the Lord her God, but to no one else. Now, however, she was beyond him in a whole new way, and as she realized that she smiled, and as she smiled her chair floated higher towards the vast and ornately decorated ceiling.

The Perfect Sentence

Currently I am reading Death comes to Pemberley, by P.D. James. This is my first foray into the land of James' mysteries, and I have to say that although I was eagerly anticipating the content of this novel, I had low expectations about the quality of the writing. Having read Steig Larsson and Dan Brown, I assumed that mystery writers were all in the same class, yet I am pleasantly surprised - and consistently blown away - by the beauty of her sentences.

Here, then are a few of my favourites so far:

"They also accused [Elizabeth] of being sardonic, and although there was uncertainty about the meaning of the word, they knew that it was not a desirable quality in a woman, being one which gentlemen particularly disliked."

"An assembly ball was a penance to be endured only because it offered an opportunity for her to take centre stage at the piano forte and, by the judicious use of the sustaining pedal to stun the audience into submission."

"Mr Bennet was a quiet and reassuring presence in the house, rather like a benign, familiar ghost."

Lovely.

The BBC and Me

I have had a lot of different television obsessions over the years - MuchMusic, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then, more recently, The Office. Television viewers have, for the last decade, been collectively obsessed with detective/police/crime shows, (or have we been forced into it - the chicken and the egg?), and although I have watched them now and then, only in the past few months have I, myself, become infatuated with mysteries.

This fixation, however, is focused solely on the mysteries presented by the BBC, namely: Masterpiece Mystery, shown every Sunday night on PBS. While being not only of an obviously higher quality (as pertaining to the writing, acting, story line) than network series, these mysteries captivate me with their locations, their wit, and the nuances of the relationships between the characters.

Whether it be Zen in Rome, Wallander in Sweden, Poirot on the Orient Express, Jackson Brodie in Edinburgh, Sherlock in London, or Inspector Lewis in Oxford, I want to know each and every one of them (especially Lewis). I want to be a first-hand witness to their intelligence, to their bravado in the face of danger, and to their assurance that there will always be a truth to be found. And, more than anything, I want to drink at the pub with them (or maybe just with Detective Sargent James Hathaway).

Thanks, BBC.

Reading Hemingway Aloud

The Sun Also Rises has been on my shelf for almost two years now, ever since one of my camino friends declared it the best book of all time, and then took us to the Iruna, Hemingway's Pamplona pub, and the favourite haunt of Jake Barnes in the aforementioned novel.

I usually read books with an excess of words, superfluous adjectives, and a wealth of semi-colons - and that's the way I write, as well. Hemingway was a startling change: as the dust jacket explains, he "revolutionized American writing with his short, declarative sentences and terse prose." I found his style shockingly choppy, but clearly he made that into a style all its own. The only problem with his writing, then, is that I tend to read aloud a lot - at school I am constantly reading out loud, whether it be poetry, short stories, or even novels (Animal Farm being my favourite read-aloud). Hemingway, especially in his dialogue, sounds completely ridiculous out loud. Here is one of the best passages I read aloud to my roommate (because I just had to share it with someone, and if I read this aloud to my kids they would hate me). So, give it a try and read it out loud to anyone who will listen. Context is irrelevant: just look at these sentences.

"Bill," Edna looked at me. "Please don't go in again, Bill. They're so stupid."
"That's it," Mike said. "They're stupid. I knew that was what it was."
"They can't say things like that about Mike," Bill said.
"Do you know them?" I asked Mike.
"No. I never saw them. They say they know me."
"I won't stand it," Bill said.
"Come on. Let's go over to the Suizo," I said.
"They're a bunch of Edna's friends from Biarritz," Bill said.
"They're simply stupid," Edna said.
"One of them's Charley Blackman, from Chicago," Bill said.
"I was never in Chicago," Mike said.

To enhance this Hemingway experience, now watch Midnight in Paris, and imagine the great man himself reading this aloud to his friends...