William Butler Yeats

A great quotation from William Butler Yeats, a poet whom I hold close to my heart because he is tattooed on my arm. So hopefully he stays close to my heart...

"When I try to put all into a phrase I say, 'Man can embody truth but cannot know it.' The abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its contradictions. You can refute Hegel but not the saint."

This is sort of what I was discussing a few posts ago and it jives with what I've been learning lately; I guess I'm just increasingly interested in that practical active God-fearing saint.

A Tragedy

Imagine two men sitting in a library.

The first man clearly thinks he is teaching, speaking with an air of genius superiority and delivering didacticisms in the reclined manner of a vanguard who is at the forefront of his profession. This man expects his words to be regarded as ascendant profundities by his hearers.

The second man is pitched forward, leaning into the lecture with evident wholeheartedness. His mien conveys fascination in the subject matter and gratitude for the experience. It is apparent that the listener desires to be nowhere in the world but rooted to his chair by the lengthy discourse being provided by this clearly brilliant scholar.

Now, be sure to catch aaaaaaall the sarcasm, and you have secured a proper allegorical depiction of my current British Literature course.


I don't want to spend my time concocting bull shit, but if I must, at least let me do it for free.

A few weeks ago, I started working at Starbucks (that's a Rorschach statement to bloggers, I'm sure). This company consistently ranks near the top of lists that measure employment desirability, and part of the reason why is the thorough training process; a solid 8 days are reserved merely for training, and I can tell you that much of that time is spent educating a new hire about the nature of coffee: how it grows, what the coffee distribution process looks like, how to sample a coffee and with what it should be paired. During training, I became unshakably aware of something: my brain has the palate sensitivity of strong and sturdy plywood. As other baristas around me commented with appreciation about the refreshing floral notes and robust body of whatever unpronouncible African coffee was being sampled, I focused on the searing blisters developing on my tongue due to what I considered an impractically hot beverage. I'm not joking - I nearly drowned during my first coffee tasting. You're supposed to smell the coffee pretentiously (or at least I smell my coffee pretentiously. Which is actually pretty difficult; it's not easy to smell with pretense), but I sniffed too deeply and began choking on the distinctive cocoa bouquet I was supposed to be appreciating. This is accurately microcosmal of my first eight days.

That said, I've managed to learn that coffee appreciation is the ability to notice the complex interplay between various palate components. On one sip, notice body; on the next sip, pay attention to acidity. And it is at this point that my blog once again becomes about books, so let those eyes roll.

I notice the same complexity, the same interplay between ideas, the same need to take multiple 'sips' in order to approach from another perspective. I just read Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants", and it can be read from beginning to end any number of times and it has this organic way of creating something new; how does Hemingway use symbolism? How does he use language to manipulate his reader's emotions, and what does he do with them once captivated? I've heard of a university course named "Twice-Read Novels". I think this sort of class is a great arena to learn the tools of literary composition, and it acknowledges the fundamental motion, the inherent activity, of literature.

The fourteenth English mystic Julia of Norwich had a vision of a tiny hazelnut seed rotating in her palm, and she asserted that it was a true representation of the world (specifically, because it was created and maintained by God). Within a component of the system is found the system itself; and to me, this is the resplendent and ineffable beauty of literature (and art more generally). Within a part we find the whole, ever-expansive and dynamically active.

This is another in a series of attempts to elucidate my basic beliefs. I feel a siren call towards writing, but I don't know what to say, whom to write to, or why I should. Hopefully, simple practice will help pull it all together....