Four Quartets…ish
The following story is a group of poems that were inspired from reading T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. It is a way to incorporate earth, air, water, and fire… and the luck that I’ve had with them.
Bishopsgate
I
The twenty third of April, 1993
Lives on in mother and my’s memory.
Boarding the tube at Kings Cross
We traveled down the map.
When we came to the red line
A transfer was made
For a trip to Stratford was to be on that day.
Young as I was,
And a tourist at heart
I pleaded with mother to let us part
Early with the train so that I may see
St Paul’s Cathedral, chim chim-in-ney.
II
I hurried ahead,
Rising to surface level.
The scene had been set for my own
Mary Poppins Adventure.
Bert was singing.
The pigeons were flying.
An old lady sold me seeds
To feed her little chickadees.
I threw handfuls of seed
Upon the ground
Waiting for the birds
To come on down.
Startled I was
When they all took to wing.
The earth began to tremble
A siren began to ring.
III
Screaming was heard all around,
As the earth ceased to move.
Panic.
The screaming of machines
And of people
And of birds’ wings
Deafened the world…
to silence.
Leaving only one song to be heard,
The one without a singer.
Did you hear it too?
Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-ee!
A sweep is as lucky, as lucky can be
Chim chim-in-ey, chim chim-in-ey
Chim chim cher-oo!
Good luck will rub off when I shakes 'ands with you
Elm Grove
I
What is black is also white,
But the white is not black.
Joining together
Yet never combining,
For together they will never be.
A sphere that has corners:
Its ridged seams smooth,
The object points to the direction,
An end goal.
It bears in agony the pains of winning.
II
The game was tied
And I felt faint.
Water, water everywhere.
I swept back and forth that field so green
And I felt faint.
Can somebody lend me their air?
Juggling with my feet I moved forward
Still I felt faint.
Eclipsed by the punt, can you tell me if I scored?
The white clouds replaced the white net
I had fainted.
How many fingers am I holding up?
Mallard Springs
I
To float upon it is to try to be one with it.
That wily river, unconquerable, yet with its allure
Tempts us all to try once more.
Named for an Indian tribe,
Long passed, they say,
To man, it shall never give way.
Swirling eddies
Green, blue, brown, and white with foam
Held in place between the banks of sandy loam.
II
We came upon a system of rapids,
Ones that I had navigated before.
Confident I was, while others raced to shore.
Toocus firmly planted in the doughnut hole,
I braced myself for a fun ride
Always one to explore the wild side.
The first few rapids rocked me back and forth,
But keeping my balance upon the waves did not
phase me,
The Yellowstone River and her majesty.
III
Mother said to be careful of those waters
To each of her daughters,
For they had claimed the lives of many.
A statement I wish I had heeded more so
When I was captured by the undertow.
The rapids blinded me with white light.
To open my mouth as I was sucked under
Would guarantee the river’s plunder.
Forced into silence, I fought it.
IV
Baptized in my own fear
I arose, a champion.
A champion over the river
And over Death.
I outwitted them in an instant,
Yet it seemed like forever.
I can’t help but wonder if this was how
Arjuna felt.
However, a reminder of my
Foolish undertaking was left:
A parasite to wreak havoc
On the river in me.
Old Lyme
I
The day after that bless’ed matrimony
We readied ourselves for our journey.
Packing and primping, all alike,
Before we could venture onto the turnpike.
With a hair dryer in one hand and a brush in the other,
I wished that I had a brother.
For rushing me wildly were my mother and sister
When a flaming coil sprung forth, an instant blister.
And all shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
The kind of words parents say to their kids
When they’ve gone and blown their lids.
II
The world has stopped.
Pain flashes in my eyes.
Watery tears burn my flesh.
The scorched flesh,
Twisted, melted,
Around the red hot metal.
An omen, to be sure.
Delay had taken place.
III
Upon the tele flashed a newsbreak
The airport was closed, thanks to a gas leak.
People who were to board the flight that we’d missed
Now were among the hospital bound.
Unlucky was I to have a burned bosom,
But lucky we were for mother’s intuition
School of Woes
You’re the moron
Plain and simple, I was born to be an English major. I come from a long line of them. Grandma has bachelors and masters degrees in English and Latin, my father received his BA in English literature from Yale University, and my mother minored in English literature. From a young age, I excelled in the reading and language arts programs at school, and I was ambitious with my own personal reading, thanks to my dad; however, I was not as talented when it came to math and science.
To this day, the mention of those two subjects makes me cringe. Moving on, when I was in fourth grade, I was excelling in history and English, but I was falling behind in math. It was my first year of algebra, and it was as if I had never even learned to count to ten. That year, my math teacher was Mrs. Moran… but the students called her (not affectionately either) Mrs. Moron. I feel poorly about it now, but when I was younger I tried so desperately to fit in with my classmates. Now besides her nickname, the woman was just plain scary. She had a temper and the bedside manner of an undertaker, so falling behind really became a huge.
There were quizzes administered each and every week. I dreaded them and often lost some sleep. My excellent grades withered to the shadows of average, and I could not rely on a good relationship with the teacher for leverage, against receiving some further instruction. Thus was my grade’s destruction.
A signature was required to acknowledge my lack of knowledge. Mortified, I was, and could not possibly take the quiz home. Not even a grade, just a big, red “See Me.” How does the daughter of a Mensa genius explain his bad luck, for his daughter lost the genetic lottery? My father’s signature resembled a seismograph, and over the years I had memorized the frequency of the surface waves. How dishonest was I when I took pen to paper and wrote words that were not my own? Such a terrible act, and I can’t even take it back.
My bluff was called, and I had no hope of becoming a future as a Vegas queen, ruler of the poker table. No, I would become famous in another way. Mrs. Moran called for the class’s attention, and she pointed out my desperate measure. While she was displeased, and had already called in the parental units for back up, she had taken a closer look at the class’s performance. I had not been the only one to slip up, and, in fact, she would never have found me out, but later I had learned that she called that day to schedule a parent/teacher conference, and my nanny informed her that my mom and dad had and would be in Europe for an extended period of time. All I knew was silence. I was in trouble, and the world stopped, and I couldn’t escape, for I was in time, and time was in me, weighing me down.
So she called everyone’s parents, and about half of us were in the same predicament. The terrible deed did have a lighter side. I learned algebra from that point on because Mrs. Moran knew how far behind the class had fallen. I went on to junior high, but that little oh epiphanic moment of realization of how badly I had screwed up stuck with me as a reminder of what I never want to be ever again.
* * *
The Ghost
Continuing in the tradition of basically sucking at math, I was left completely hopeless when my father died. My father was a genius, quite literally. His IQ was in the top 2% of the population, which qualified him for Mensa. He was well-rounded, too. He could read anything and then discuss it as he managed his stock portfolio, while watching the Steelers on their way towards another win, and then go explore the makings of his latest computer or work on one of his cars. His intelligence fascinated and scared me. I could ask him anything, and he would take two hours answering my question. Really, he could have taken longer, but it would have required me to be up WAY past my bedtime, as those discussions pushed the limit already.
When Dad died, I became a bit of a shut in, which I think was an understandable occurrence. I read more and more. That was the one way that I could remain close to my father while escaping to another place. He had a very impressive library, and I was left thousands of books to use however I wanted. All I wanted was my dad back. I was extremely bitter with my mom, and we became so distanced that I remember going for a few days at a tine without saying more than “Hi,” “I’m fine,” or “I’ll eat in my room.” I was in the seventh grade. I guess me wanting privacy was already something to be expected. Everyday I’d shut myself into my room or my dad’s study, put on my music, and read either my homework or whatever book I had pulled from the basement library.
My math skills were really lacking at that point. I didn’t care and neither did my teacher. We were told on the first day of class that we could either ask for help or fail, but he wasn’t in the business of talking to our parents about our grades; he was in the business of talking to us, so there was no signature to forge in temptation. My grade suffered. It was the day before my final in math that the guidance counselor pulled me into her office to tell me that if I didn’t get a B+ on the test I would be held back because they had a level program, and you had to fulfill each level completely before you could move on.[i]
I went home, and I finally cracked my book. Math was, and always will be, a foreign language to me. I became dizzy and decided to take a nap before I tried cramming again. Overwhelmed and exhausted, I fell asleep. Now the next part I realize sounds crazy. I’d swear on anything that it is the truth. Anyways, I dreamt of my dad. In the dream, I walked down the service stairs, across the foyer, and into my dad’s study. There he was sitting in his leather, high backed office chair at his beautiful desk working on something. When I walked in, he looked up at me and smiled and asked what his ‘Katie-bug ladybug’ was up to, which was when I asked him for help on all the math that I had put off.
Time actually passed in my dream; when I entered the office it was bright and sunny, and when my dad finally straightened his back and said that he better go make sure the garage doors were closed and the doors were locked because it was getting late. He left the office, and I looked back down at the pages of examples that my dad had written out for me to work through. By the end of my dream, the girl who I was at the beginning had left, and I had become confident. When I woke up, I panicked. It was the next morning, and I had slept in. My nanny was the one who woke me up.
I came to grips with the idea that I would not be trying out for any more musicals for a while because my after school time was going to be taken up from that day on with a learning assistance program. I went downstairs and walked into the study to get my books. Upon my binder was a stack of papers; they were in my father’s handwriting. At first I tossed them aside thinking that they were something that my mom had pulled from a file, but I recognized my own handwriting and I took a closer look. They were all the examples from my dream.
It reminded me of the following passage from T.S. Eliot’s Little Gidding in the Four Quartets:
And as I fixed upon the down-turned face
That pointed scrutiny with which we challenge
The first-met stranger in the waning dusk
I caught the sudden look of some dead master
Whom I had known, forgotten, half recalled
Both one and many; in the brown baked features
The eyes of a familiar compound ghost
Both intimate and unidentifiable. (lines 89-96)
My father was, to me, the dead master. I had known him, tried to forget him, yet I recalled him in my time of need. He gave me advice like Eliot’s ghost did. Even more similar to the ghost of Hamlet’s father when it interacts with Hamlet in Act I scene v. The Ghost directs Hamlet to what it is right to do, and not only that but as his dharma, or sacred duty, what he must do. My dharma thus was to get at least a B+ on my test.
I went to school feeling different. Almost lighter. First period was math, and I felt confident. We spread out our desks and erected blinders (so that no one could have a chance of copying someone else’s work). I turned my test over and began to work through the problems, and each time that I felt uneasy I recollected my dream and pictured my dad’s handwriting. I wasn’t the first to finish, nor was I the last, but I was nervous. My teacher looked up at me when I turned my test in, and he grabbed his red pen.
The bell rang, and we all rushed out from the class room. Ten minutes into the next class, the guidance counselor pulled me out of class to talk about my test. I had passed with a B+! When my teacher and the councilor asked me who had offered me so much help, all I could say was that it was thanks to my dad.
* * *
Un écho de cinq passé d'ans
The first class of my first semester at Montana State University was English 123, which was taught by Dr. Nora Smith. One of the books that were on the syllabus was called Six Walks in the Fictional Woods written by Umberto Eco. The day that she introduced the book to the class, she explained that even she had trouble understanding the book. I wanted to include my own difficulty I had with the text because I attribute it as being the final reason for me declaring my major in English literature, and it was finally one that set me apart from my family.
I picked up the book once more, and began to peruse its pages, which have been filled with my notes and various coffee rings, which have yellowed them greatly. I smiled as I read Eco’s explanation of woods, which “are a metaphor for…any narrative text.” He continues saying “a wood is a garden of forking paths. Even when there are no well-trodden paths in a wood, everyone can trace his or her own path, deciding to go to the left or to the right of a certain tree and making a choice at every tree encountered” (6).
Umberto Eco takes his readers down these paths in chapters titled “Entering the Woods,” “the Woods of Loisy,” “Lingering in the Woods,” “Possible Woods,” “The Strange Case of Rue Sevandoni,” and “Fictional Protocols.” As this is not a book report, I choose to allow my own readers to pick up Eco’s book and read how each of these woods are define; however, I will point out a few passages that I feel match up well with my overall experience as an English major, which I was excited to find that I finally had some sense of understanding. I found this phenomenon almost define for me when Eco writes:
For Iser the reader “actually causes the text to reveal its potential multiplicity of connections. These connections are the product of the reader’s mind working on the raw material of the text, though they are not the text itself—for this consists just of sentences, statements, information, etc… This interplay obviously does not take place in the text itself, but can only come into being trough the process of read… This process formulates something that is unformulated in the text and yet represents its ‘intention.’” (15)
A professor who I am barred from naming at his own request told the Literature 494 class that books are not boring, it’s the people who are reading them who are boring. If a person doesn’t make connections it isn’t because there are none to the story, per se, rather they themselves have none.
In the spirit of connections, Eco and I made another one with Proust who he quotes saying, “One is constantly obliged to turn back to an earlier page to see where one is, if it is the present or the past recalled,” and Eco continues “The misty effect is so pervasive that the reader usually fails in this task” (32). What a coincidence that Proust, the man with the cookie, could be connected to this class, yet even more were made when Eco says “A term like “apparition”[ii] reminds us of the “epiphany” of Joyce. In The Dubliners, there are some epiphanies in which the mere representation of events tells reader what they must try to understand” (36). It took Literature 494 to understand my English 123, yet all along the class had been familiar to me.
My quotes could go on, but these were my ‘ohs’ and ‘awes,’ which stood out the most to me. As T.S. Eliot wrote:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Little Gidding, Four Quartets
[i] I should note that the school was on a semester system, so I could, theoretically, have advanced to the eighth grade the semester following the next with the rest of my class, but it would require me to go to school full time, and then go to an after school learning center in order to complete the course that I had flunked out of.
[ii] Earlier, Eco had once again quoted Proust saying he wanted “a tightly knit style, of porphyry, without any cracks, without any additions,” in which we see a mere “apparition” of things” (36).
United in the strife which divided them…[i]
I hope you die
When I read Hamlet I always seem to identify with the protagonist. I felt terrible when I came to this realization. That is, when I finally acknowledged the connection. Hamlet’s father was murdered by Claudius, and through that loss he experiences a series of epiphanic moments that helped define him and set the stage for the play. Ten years ago, my father killed himself. Now to me, suicide means one’s self murder, so that is one of the first reasons for my fictitious bond with young Hamlet, but in addition, it was after the fact that I learned more about my father to help me draw conclusions stemming from epiphanies that sprung from the new found knowledge.
For example, I was unaware at the time, but my father had a series of mental issues that contributed to his lack of will to live. He was an alcoholic, which did not mix well with his clinical depression, which he was severely. Also, my father was mildly schizophrenic. It seems to me that my father was murdered by someone else. He wasn’t the same person in the end days. This was HUGE for me because of how those last days were played out.
You see, my mother filed for divorce five days before his death because my dad really wasn’t himself, and she could only take so much. I found out the next day because the night before I had slept over at a friend’s house, and mom took me over to our house so that I could pack a bag. Mom had been planning her escape from the situation for some time, and she had acquired the key to her best friend’s, mom’s summer house, so that we had a place to stay until the air started to clear. When we arrived at home I was upset because my dad was drunk. Like I said before, my dad was an alcoholic so seeing him drunk was nothing new; however, that day he was plain wasted. I don’t think I had ever seen my dad so drunk, ever. I was upset because he wasn’t trying to convince my mom to stay; he just sat there swaying.
My anger progressed to the point where right before we left I screamed at him, “I hate you Dad; I hope you die!” I’m not proud of this whatsoever, but those were my last words to my father. I didn’t mean it, but I was caught up in the situation. I was a child scorned. When my mom and I found my dad dead four days later, I was shocked. There was nothing that came from that day that was pleasant. My last words rang in my head, and their divorce was still so fresh. The blame game began. First I didn’t blame myself. Rather I placed it on my mom because had she not filed for divorce my father would not have been left alone to drink himself crazy, and I would never have said what I said.
Then I realized that it couldn’t have been my mom’s fault because she needed to get out of that situation. It was killing her, literally. She was battling breast cancer, and the stress was digging her grave for her, both from work and home. I then moved onto myself. My last words… the very last words “I hope you die” were a command that seemed to direct him to his present state: dead. I think this was a false epiphany because it wasn’t true (well at least I hope it wasn’t the case, but I guess I will never know for sure). The true epiphany was to realize that my dad was seriously screwed up. It was not my fault. When my mother disclosed the information that the psychiatrist had told her about my father, post-mortem, my world came to a halt.
I didn’t know, but a few weeks before he died, my father went to a doctor for ‘help’ because my mother had demanded him to. Like the brilliant dramatist that he was, Dad wove a tale of marital bliss, perfect kids, and a successful career, but the doctor saw through his charade. He made his diagnosis, but my father didn’t want to hear it, and so he disregarded all of the recommendations that were made to him save for beginning a regiment of anti-depressants. They of course were pointless because my father continued to drink. Mom explained to me everything (which was probably not appropriate for a twelve year old to hear, but my mom told me damn near everything, it seemed), and when she ended my epiphany began.
The world stood still, or at least it did for me. I will never forget the moment that the sensation swept over me. I could not recapture the experience in words even if I tried, but it was one of the biggest ‘Awe’ moments I have ever had or probably ever will have. Actually, to be honest I hope I don’t have another that is as big as that. Well at least not that big of one stemming from a very negative experience. All in all I was at T.S. Eliot’s still point. I was having a light epiphany, which transcended the darkest of all experiences: death.
* * *
The Blood of the Father
When I was growing up, my parents had the idea that dressing their two oldest daughters, Whitney and me, up as twins, When my youngest sister was born, the whole family was shocked because she differed from us completely. Instead of blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, new born Lindsey had jet black hair, dark eyes, and olive-toned skin. We couldn’t look any more different; however, it seems that I differed more from my sisters that was appeared on the surface level.
My family has unfortunately had to deal with some pretty trying situations in the past decade: Mom’s diagnosed with cancer, the family’s cross country move, Dad’s whole conglomerate of issues, my stomach problems, and, arguably the worst in the recent past, both of my younger sisters’ attempts at their own lives. This is unfortunate, without a doubt, but the learning that has come from these events has brought my family closer, contrary to how my father’s suicide tore us apart. Both of my sisters are getting help for what challenges their minds, but I am glad to say that while they have both tried and come close, neither one has succeeded.
Of any part of my life that I could wish some luck in, I am glad that I am fortunate enough to have received it in this area.
[i] Four Quartets, Little Gidding, III, line 174.
Key Quotes from Four Quartets
Descend lower, descend only
Into the world of perpetual solitude,
World not world, but that which is not world,
Internal darkness, deprivation
And destitution of all property,
Desiccation of the world of sense,
Evacuation of the world of fancy,
Inoperancy of the world of spirit;
This is the one way, and the other
Is the same, not in movement
But abstention from movement; while the world moves
In appetency, on its mettalled ways
Of time past and time future. (Burnt Norton lines 114-126)
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy. (East Coker lines 136-137)
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not. (East Coker lines 144-146)
Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. (East Coker lines 190-192)
Time the destroyer is time the preserver (Dry Salvages line 116)
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead (Little Gidding lines 49-50)
This is the use of memory:
For liberation—not less of love but expanding
Of love beyond desire, so liberation
From the future as well as the past. (Little Gidding lines 156-159)
References
Eco, Umberto. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1995. Print.
Eliot, T. S. Four Quartets. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1971. Print.
Miller, Barbara Stoler. The Bhagavad-gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War. New York: Bantam, 2004. Print.
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. New York: Dover Publications, 1992. Print.
