I'm never sure how I feel about this, doing the "last" of something. I keep thinking to myself, what happens after? But of course there really is no "last" or "final", because everything just goes on. As will I, in having epiphanies and being enlarged by them, and trying in vain to comprehend clearly what it all truly meant, and in the trying is where the knowing comes, even though I will not know it at the time. If this sounds nonsensical, probably it is. But that's alright. I have moved beyond praise and blame(at least I'd like to have!).

And so on we all will go to the lighthouse, and the Gates of Dawn, and to the Battlefield and to the river as it runs by swerve of shore to bend of bay.

The rest is silence.*





*which is golden

The day for our en masse recitations of the Four Quartets has been moved to April 30, on which date we must arrive at 8:30. The good news about this is that there will be no final on Finals week. Thank you Mr. Sexson!

I think that this was a thoroughly intimidating batch of final papers; I would say that I was cowed and intimidated by them, and this would be true. But(at the risk of sounding Pollyanna-ish or something like that), I wasn't bothered in the least by this or threatened by them. Rather, I basked in the glow of their achievement: Sam's reader's diary, Doug's touching life story interpreted through Tarot, Katie's transforming of her misfortunes into epiphanic experiences, Mick and his passionate poem, Nick and his great concluding treatise on silence and epiphanies. And as Nick said, this has been a great batch of creative intellectual minds at work here. He said it better than I could, and I am happy for this. The rest is silence.

We talked today about the last act of Hamlet being the epicenter of the ontological(having to do with the nature of reality) argument, with Hamlet finally coming into his own, with the understanding of his own part in the play that is life. But this was his dark epiphany, seeing that all of life was a play. So how can his good epiphany be the knowing of his own role in the play? This is where mysticism--seeing the recollection of opposites--comes into play(pun intended).

Abby posted a blog about Horatio, saying that he is Sanjaya: it is the job of both to chronicle the events in their respective dramas, and to be the ones who are detached in the right kind of way. Really, this is probably the first study of Hamlet which I've participated in that gives Horatio his dues--he tends to be devalued as a soundboard/sidekick for Hamlet. But what if, in a way, he ends up being the true hero of the story?

And I now need to read Borges' story The Secret Miracle, where time stops at the moment of annihalation, ala Bhagavad Gita and just as Kevin talks about.

Readiness is all. Always.

I've been somewhat remiss in blogging about our sacred duty( the Gita and Hamlet). But I think I shall now, if only to say that I now have found a way to finally read Hamlet in a truly satisfying context--understand me, I do not (like TS Eliot)deny its aesthetic stature; its just never been my favorite Shakespeare play--. With an eye to epiphanic insight, Hamlet becomes very enlightening, more so than it maybe was already.

Yes, Hamlet in Act 5 is changed. He has had an epiphany, having I would guess to do with the attack on the ship by pirates, but he won't say, and the play doesn't present it to us. And at the moment of his death, Hamlet acknowledges the insight he has gained: "You that look pale and tremble at this chance,/That are but mutes or audiences to this act,/Had I but time(as this fell sargeant Death/Is strict in his arrest)-O, I could tell you-/But let it be. Horatio, I am dead."(5.2-319-322) We the mutes and audiences are left, along with Horatio, to figure out what it was that Hamlet had come to know. What was it? The necessity of right action? The need for time and playing your part within the play that is life? I ask these things because I don't know for certain. But it is so. Quite possibly so.