groggy hyperlinked maundering
Jan. 9th, 2006 02:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wombat1138In the midst of trying to tessellate together small scraps of poetry, I think I've finally figured out why I've never liked "The Waste Land" On the other hand, I may be any combination of misguided, trite, or incoherent :b
Years ago, when I was still full of initial disdain for Eliot's collage of echoes,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
owenthomas kindly cluestuck me that surely it was a matter of intentional effect, especially considering its own historical context (ironically enough): familiar fragments of La Belle Epoque, flotsam awash in the (post)modern awareness of its own wreckage and thus the futility of hope in any form, even childhood and love. Even moist spring loam might only sprout a crop of bones sown from leaf-green mists.
(It's a very different aesthetic from haiku, which seems to mournfully revel in ephemerality from what little I've been able to grok, perhaps akin to true classical Epicureanism between the extreme poles of "carpe diem" (fatalistic hedonism) and "sic transit gloria mundi" (the tharn paralysis of anticipatory nostalgia), but that's probably beside the point.)
So we've got advanced wallowing in despair, but also something that strikes me as a deep panic at ambiguity: the elemental interstices of mud, ashes, smoke, and fog; things that're both partially (and thus entirely neither) Russian/German, alive/dead, male/female, and so on.
What started me on this line of thought was the similar way I always feel about this time of year, between the cracks of the solar and lunar calendars. The odometer has ticked over, but the mascot hasn't caught up yet. This time, once it does, it'll be my fourth Year of the Dog through a different cycle of elements, from Metal through Water and Wood and soon into the Fire with accompanying math trivia. I have no real idea what all of this means to me, if anything. Well, presumably something.
Then again, it may relate to my continuing fitful attempts to mesh together the color maps of the Eastern/Western elemental systems, now currently incarnated in several index cards scribbled with badly-drawn RGB/CMY-vertexed polyhedra. I think I may need more colored pens. Or better handwriting. Possibly both. Or neither.
Years ago, when I was still full of initial disdain for Eliot's collage of echoes,
owenthomas kindly cluestuck me that surely it was a matter of intentional effect, especially considering its own historical context (ironically enough): familiar fragments of La Belle Epoque, flotsam awash in the (post)modern awareness of its own wreckage and thus the futility of hope in any form, even childhood and love. Even moist spring loam might only sprout a crop of bones sown from leaf-green mists.(It's a very different aesthetic from haiku, which seems to mournfully revel in ephemerality from what little I've been able to grok, perhaps akin to true classical Epicureanism between the extreme poles of "carpe diem" (fatalistic hedonism) and "sic transit gloria mundi" (the tharn paralysis of anticipatory nostalgia), but that's probably beside the point.)
So we've got advanced wallowing in despair, but also something that strikes me as a deep panic at ambiguity: the elemental interstices of mud, ashes, smoke, and fog; things that're both partially (and thus entirely neither) Russian/German, alive/dead, male/female, and so on.
What started me on this line of thought was the similar way I always feel about this time of year, between the cracks of the solar and lunar calendars. The odometer has ticked over, but the mascot hasn't caught up yet. This time, once it does, it'll be my fourth Year of the Dog through a different cycle of elements, from Metal through Water and Wood and soon into the Fire with accompanying math trivia. I have no real idea what all of this means to me, if anything. Well, presumably something.
Then again, it may relate to my continuing fitful attempts to mesh together the color maps of the Eastern/Western elemental systems, now currently incarnated in several index cards scribbled with badly-drawn RGB/CMY-vertexed polyhedra. I think I may need more colored pens. Or better handwriting. Possibly both. Or neither.