paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- wondering about scope on a rainy morning Last night I was so tired I did something I have not done in years�. I went to bed at 9:00 and cried myself to sleep. Exactly like an adolescent. There is nothing terribly, horribly wrong with my world, just me, it seems. But it amazing what a big night of sleep can do. Today, I slept a bit later. When I took the dog outside, the air was cool and damp. Leaves are starting to fall off of the trees. Quiet. Peaceful. I have Milton�s �Il Penseroso� drifting through my mind. I keep thinking about how different my world is from that of a woman in the early seventeenth century. I don�t mean in the obvious ways of having a job, living in a house with electricity and plumbing, driving a car, not needing to be married�. Instead, I am thinking about the differences between what sorts of constructs are in my mind as compared to what sorts of constructs were in hers. Milton took six years and read every book printed in the English language. There is not enough money and time to do that now. And so much crap is printed anyway; there would be no point behind that achievement. Milton�s reader knew a lot about a little. So Milton was not lost on his reader. There was no quest for information to understand his poems. No digging through books for the meaning of an allusion, no searching the bible to discover why he referenced a certain story. People knew the Mary and Martha story. They knew the story of the nine virgins. And probably they could consider why the Mary and Martha story instead of another story. For us, it is so much conjecture. A great lake of ink has been spilled writing about Milton in the past 400 years. It is like a giant puzzle with images on two sides today. Because I know a little about a lot. My scope is so much broader that it is difficult focusing it down to a set of constructs that I do not even have. But what thrills me is that is unnecessary. Because there was a way that Milton looked at the world that both astounds me and intrigues me, even though I do not always agree because we do not share the same life-philosophy framework. I read the old stuff because there is some depth I appreciate in the way writers back then focused on a subject and built a new world of meaning around it. To do the familiar extremely well was the goal. Originality and creativity were not as heralded back then as they are (in theory) now. I am reminded of a former professor from UMASS Boston who once asked me while we were having coffee to think about what it would be like to know only 15 books, but to know them perfectly and throughout my whole life. How my relationship with them would change as I changed. And the impact those 15 books would have on my life. The tendency now is to panic � what would I be missing? Because so much of our lives is about not wanting to miss something. I know that I think about this. In music, I am aware that I am missing out on more new music than I can speculate to quantify for this example. And when I am talking to a younger person who seems well steeped in that arena, I ask questions to get a notion of this territory I know I do not have time to visit. In new fiction, I think about this. Fiction from other parts of the world � I have no idea. And I wish I did. This is an ongoing theme in my life. Just after high school graduation, I was eating Chinese food with a woman I greatly admired. When I was her student, she used to speculate on �my dinner with Piper� and what that would be like. So there we were, having dinner. And she told me about how little time she had in her life to read and to write, and how drawn she was to the idea of having some boundaries. Yet where does one draw them? Or is it that we draw and redraw, and that is the quest of life. Everything, these days, is negotiated internally and externally. As I think about it, I know that one way does not have the advantage over the other in the grand scheme. But to keep up with and participate in the world around me, I need to have this broad set of constructs. It is funny, even not watching television makes it hard to relate to people at work or casually at a happy hour. Because a lot happens on cable. Not just programs, but also information. The irony is that I would not be able to begin to approach Milton if I were not comfortable with seeking information broadly and generally. Because although his writing has caused me to wonder this this morning, his writing would be lost if we didn�t spill ink, look stuff up, and turn the contemporary curiosity towards his poetry. Just wondering about scope on a rainy morning. 8:18 a.m. - 2002-09-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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