Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Do Not Go Gentle

On my birthday, something that is somewhat bittersweet is the memory of my father. My father, like me, was an Aries, and boy, he could be an Aries.

One thing that I am pretty sure of though is that my father never knew my actual birthday. He once "bragged" to me that he was out riding motorcycles with his buddies that night. I was born at 1:32 am, so, that should tell you something, and this man was a highly respected surgeon, but just happened to be born in a Marlon Brando character.

So, every year, (well, actually there would be many years I did not hear from him), when he did call to wish me a Happy Birthday, it would always be either a week or so early, or late. I honestly do not think that once he actually got it on the right date, but that is what we learn about people. That was who he was, and when I got older, I just accepted it, and realized, "that's my dad." 

And, that is the best we can do sometimes. 

When my dad died, it was around my birthday as well, in fact, was last week 8 years ago. I just happened to be visiting the US as we were living in Italy at the time, and one of my sister's friends found me wondering the streets of Austin, as  I am wont to do, and let me know my dad was in the hospital, where he died a few hours later in Louisville, Kentucky, where he was a professor of Cardiovascular Surgery, and resident red-neck dragster with his Grand National.

Birth and death days then remind us of our mortality, from beginning to end. At my father's funeral, I met many people who respected him dearly, but who were surprised to meet me as they did not know he had a son. Something he seemed to have forgotten to mention, though they all knew who my two sisters were.

There are many misgivings that I could have for this man, but, without him and my mother, I would never have seen the light of day. So, what I have learned over the years is to be grateful for what we do have, and not to regret what we do not.

I don't know how my dad died exactly, meaning the last moments of his life, but I imagine it might have been something along the lines of Dylan Thomas' message.

Thinking of birth and death, as I celebrate my own birthday with my daughter today, and remember my father.

From Thomas....

Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

Friday, March 15, 2013

How to get (creatively) booted from Cambridge



Leave it to Lord Byron to be famously infamously booted from one of the most prestigious schools in the world. Lord Byron, the bad boy of Romantic Poetry, was known for dragging his more “innocent” friends, such as Percey Shelley and his wife Mary into mental hijinks and events of laudanum-induced night-long hallucinatory nightmares (supposedly the origin’s of Mary’s Frankenstein) in his country manor, which he ultimately lost due to his bohemian ways.

Byron would have felt a bit more at home perhaps at the present-day L’Università di Bologna, a rather bohemian hotspot of the time, though probably he would have not indeed like the less-than-pleasing aesthetics of the environs. Byron was a big “fan” of Italy, needless to say, though Rome and the Northwest Coast were more his cup of Espresso. (I wonder if the St. Eustachi coffee was already famous at the time…? It is such a secret recipe that they have screens in front of the bariste so no one can see how it is made.)

But, back to getting expelled. Cambridge has a very rich history of writers, poets and essayists, amongst whom are Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, Samuel Coleridge (another dabbler in hallucination-inspiration), Sir Isaac Newton, and more recently the poet Ted Hughes and Physicist Stephen Hawking, and on and on. So, one would think that Byron would see that his ticket would be punched if he could just toe the line, but, then he would not be Lord Byron, but merely another Cambridge man who “came down” from the Ivory Tower to the “real world.” Like Bill Gates, isn’t it better to get kicked out and then be taught in that very institution? So, Lord Byron did not come down to the real world, he brought the “real world” to the Tower. Apparently, to get the boot, Byron had a live bear in his room at Trinity College. Now that is what I call being creatively kicked out of Cambridge.

In Byron’s irreverent honor then, here is “Who killed John Keats?”:

Who killed John Keats?
‘I,” says the Quarterly,
So savage and Tartarly;
‘ ‘Twas one of my feats.’

Who shot the arrow?
‘The poet-priest Milman
(So ready to kill man),
Or Southey or Barrow.’