William Shakespeare

Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun
By William Shakespeare

Guiderius. Feare no more the heate o' th' Sun,
Nor the furious Winter rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home are gon,and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.

Arviragus. Feare no more the frowne o' th' Great
Thou art past the tirants stroake,
Care no more to cloath and eate,
To thee the Reede is as the Oake:
The Scepter, Learning, Physicke must,
All follow this and come to dust.

Guiderius. Feare no more the Lightning flash.

Arbiragus. Nor th all-dreaded Thunderd thunderstone

Guiderius. Feare not Slander, Censure rash.

Arbiragus. Thou has finish'd Joy and more.

Both. All Louers youg all Louers must,
Consigne to this and come to dust.

Guiderius. No exorcisor harme thee,

Arberagus. No no witch-craft charme thee.

Guiderius. Ghost vnlaid forbeare thee.

Arberagus. Nothing ill come neere thee.

Both. Quiet consumation haue,
And renowned be the graue.

It is hot, darn hot here in Korea, but it takes William Shakespeare to put it all into perspective. Guiderius was a legendary British king who was slain on the battlefield by the invading Romans. His brother, Arberagus, took over as king during the battle. Guiderius after death did not have to worry about the heat of the sun or anything else.

I remember putting the ashes of my mother into the Pacific Ocean at Crescent City, California and it occurred to me that her biggest concern at the time of her death was her knees and it was her insistence of an operation to correct them that caused her death. Then, as I put her ashes into the receding waves, I thought she did not have to worry about her knees again. It seemed like supreme irony, one that I did not appreciate.

The other day, I went to Home Plus to get out of the heat. Unfortunately, many other people did the same. It was wall to wall people doing the same thing I was. The small restaurants in the store were full. The tables were full of people as they sat there with their families trying so hard to stay cool for the store was decent although just barely.

One of the things you have to say about the sales people in Korea is that are uncommonly kind and friendly even under the most trying of circumstances. There is never a shortage of staff to help the customers which is a very nice feature of Korean life. Unfortunately, few Koreans can speak English, but why should they since this is their country. The point is the store was full of people as we all tried to escape the heat and have the cool drink and enjoy each other or in my case read and write as I tried to stay cool. The sales people tried so hard to understand what I was trying to order even when a friend of mine got short with them when she could not get milk for her coffee. Like me, she did not speak Korean. For some reason, it is very hard to get milk for coffee here. I drink coffee at home for that reason.

Not too many years ago, I used to have a job in the States that involved working for the state of California. I liked the work since it involved helping people but the particular work site was made dysfunctional by an out of control manager. Before the state finally made him retire, he made things very difficult for the employees and for the people who came in for services. The job had a great retirement plan and I was getting up there in years so I was not going to quit. The union was doing all that it could. It took a trip to a nearby cemetery that I took for exercise one day to put it all in perspective as Shakespeare did for me now. I looked at all of the markers with all of the names with dates of births and deaths and I realized that I had no idea what their problems were at the time of their deaths. Being an older cemetery, no one knew since many of them have been dead for over 100 years. What I thought was earth shockingly important really wasn't.

I watched the Rachel Maddow Show the other day as the US troops involved in combat rolled out of Iraq and into Kuwait. Her program is one of the ones I can watch on the Internet. She was sitting in the heat and describing how hot it was and the fact that getting electricity for even a fan was very difficult if not impossible for most people of Iraq. Dr. Maddow was broadcasting from a site that was not the one MSNBC wanted because the one they wanted had rocket attacks there just hours before. She had no make-up and the viewer could tell she was sweating in the heat. This is a country where women have to keep covered up. The heat can go up to 125 degrees F. Then there is the danger of being blown up. Even if one's husband can't get a job, a woman still has to work all of the time and dress in bundles of clothes.

It is true that as hot as it is here in Korea, it is hotter in other places and someday it won't matter at all as it does not matter to Shakespeare whether or not there is global warming in England. He is dust as "Chimney -Sweepers come to dust." I went to church yesterday and the sermon talked about living forever. Well, I am not there now. The poets remind us of where we are now even if they have gone on, their words still live on the page. For now, I will sweat the heat because it is better than being cool in the grave.

"The Pleasure of The Dance"

About ten years ago, I had a dream that was so real that it stayed with me since then. I was driving in my car and going on some city streets and I noticed that I was going down the same streets over and over again. I noticed it because the same houses and churches were appearing. Since there were no other cars, I stopped in front of this church. I walked to it and its door was on the second story. I walked up the steps. Just as I opened the door I saw someone standing there who seemed very attractive and interesting. I was standing in the loft of a choir. He came up to me and started to teach me to dance. It was wonderful.

I was in a difficult time in my life then. I started to see a therapist in order to deal with a bad work site. Being a good Freudian psychologist, she interpreted my dream that I was looking for someone to have a relationship with. I knew she was wrong. I did not know the meaning of that dream but it wasn't that. I soon stopped seeing her and solved the problems on the work site. I did not find a meaningful relationship although I did make some friends. The meaning still escaped me, but I knew it was important.

Then something changed in my life this year. I had retired and felt lost. All of my life, I had looked forward to retirement but had not planned beyond that. Now that retirement was here, I was watching my life disappearing and I had no idea what I needed to do about it. Then I came to work as a visiting professor at a national university in Korea. What changed in my life was discovering the meaning of that dream and my suspicion that it was important was correct.

Being in Korea meant not being able to read what I wanted to. Getting books in English is very difficult. There is also the space problem. I live in a very small studio apartment and have to make due with few possessions. I found a book in the English library of the university where I teach. It was "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" by Rainer Maria Rilke. This is the only novel of a great poet and it includes his poetic vision and his experiences in Paris and so much more. The prose flows and is rich with the details, stories as well as the fears and joys of Rilke. It is a remarkable book.

Then in rapid succession, I read W. Somerset Maugham's novel, "The Moon and Sixpence". I had read this book as a teenager and then forgot it. It is about Charles Strickland who left his dull, bourgeois life and devoted the rest of his short life to painting. It was supposedly inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin.

One might question what these two books have to do with my dream and dancing. A lot really. When I was in the throes of that miserable situation at my government job, I was trying to survive. I concentrated on breathing, walking by placing one foot in front of the other. I had forgot the pleasures of the poetic dance.

Coming to Korea has given this back to me because I no longer am distracted by television and other things and I know that there is no chance whatsoever of running into the people I worked with on my last work site. I am in a country where I can't speak the language and I have to pay attention to the few books I can find and most importantly, write. My writer's block is totally gone.

The poet, Billy Collins, in his essay "Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader" calls poetry the pleasure of the dance. We circle and walk around a poem looking for a way in and when we do, it becomes the pleasure of the dance as we read it. It becomes the music that lets us slow down the pace of our thoughts so we can enjoy the rhythm. We join together as lovers entwined as we dance "somewhere else" and enjoy the sensations we would never have felt without the poem.

The novel, the painting takes each of us to unknown places and enriches our lives in ways we did not think possible before. The sculpture in an art gallery or one of the temporary sculptures that are done in the park using people or a Buddhist Tibetan sand painting are just a few examples of this artistic vision.

This was what I had forgot but remembered now. The artistic music that I used to dance with so many years ago had been forgotten. It drove Rilke to write his novel so he could understand his fears of death and loneliness. It drove Strickland to abandon his middle class life and family so he could paint.

Introduction to Poetry
By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press and ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry along with other forms of artistic expression gives us pleasures. It is light, feathery and gets our feet to move so we can enjoy the dance of life. Too often, we are tied to a chair and tortured when instead we need to skate across the surface of a poem and just enjoy it or in my case to dance and feel our selves unite so we can soar into the heavens.