Senior moment

So, having dropped some stuff off at the thrift store, I decide to have a bit of a look round, that being a nice little de-stresser for me. I happen upon a bowl by Thomas O'Brien and a knife from IKEA. When I went to pay for them, the cashier totaled my purchases and then said

Cashier: Oh wait, it's Tuesday, you get the seniors' discount.
Me (not quite understanding what she was saying, but hearing clearly the word "discount"): What discount?
Cashier: Senior discount -  10%.
Me: The simian discount?
Cashier: Sen-ior, Sen-ior, Sen-ior, Seeeeen-yooooour discount.
Me: Oh, the senior discount, yeah sure,  55 and over right?

I think it's time to do my roots.

It's not often one gets a chance to see the exact price of their dignity, to see in cold hard cash the value of their esteem. In my case it was 49¢ ; the amount my senior discount saved me. The bowl still makes me happy tho'.

Robbie Burns said it best - and he uses a lot of exclamation points, so you've got to love that.

 O wad some Pow'r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion!

 (English Translation)

O would some Power the gift to give us

To see ourselves as others see us!

It would from many a blunder free us,

And foolish notion:

What airs in dress and gait would leave us,

And even devotion!

Robbert Burns, To A Louse, (1786)

John Clare

So I'm working my way through the shortlist of the books selected for the Mann Booker Prize 2009, and I just finished The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds. It takes place in 1840, in an asylum in Epping Forest, and is based on real events in the life of John Clare, the nature poet. I found it very affecting; the author vividly portrays the desperation and lack of control felt, not only by Clare and the other inmates of the asylum, but also the director Dr. Mathew Allen and his lonely daughter Hannah. Clare eventually escapes into madness and delusion, which actually seems a blessing given his brutal reality.

In real life, Clare was at first lauded for his original, rustic style but had fallen out of vogue by the time he published his third book of poetry. This critical neglect, (together with his alcoholism and depression) led to his spending the last 23 years of his life in Northhampton Lunatic Asylum, where he continued to write poetry, including the one reproduced below. I find this a sad and humbling poem.

I Am!

I am! yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am! and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest—that I loved the best—
Are strange—nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below—above the vaulted sky.

Lot's Wife by Wisława Szymborska

I love this poem. It's one of my favourites of all time. I hate the story of Lot's wife in the bible. She doesn't even warrant a name, just is some silly woman who can't do what God tells her to do. I love the idea of reclaiming her story and all the possibilities of her turning around to look, especially that is was deliberate. The phrase "From the disobedience of the meek" especially resonates with me, and also the ending - "It's possible I fell facing the city" (my emphasis). Keep in mind that this is a translation - how good must it be in the original Polish?
Wisława Szymborska won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996.

Lot's Wife

They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.
Our two daughters were already vanishing over the hilltop.
I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now--every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
I looked back in desolation.
In shame because we had stolen away.
Wanting to cry out, to go home.
Or only when a sudden gust of wind
unbound my hair and lifted up my robe.
It seemed to me that they were watching from the walls of Sodom
and bursting into thunderous laughter again and again.
I looked back in anger.
To savor their terrible fate.
I looked back for all the reasons given above.
I looked back involuntarily.
It was only a rock that turned underfoot, growling at me.
It was a sudden crack that stopped me in my tracks.
A hamster on its hind paws tottered on the edge.
It was then we both glanced back.
No, no. I ran on,
I crept, I flew upward
until darkness fell from the heavens
and with it scorching gravel and dead birds.
I couldn't breathe and spun around and around.
Anyone who saw me must have thought I was dancing.
It's not inconceivable that my eyes were open.
It's possible I fell facing the city.