Tu B'Shevat is here

The Jewish "New Year for Trees".

The climate's not conducive to tree-planting where I live, but planting trees is very much a part of this holiday (though as it falls on the Sabbath this year, Jews who keep the Sabbath will plant the trees another time).

Soon I'll light the Sabbath candles, then go to synagogue, and then to the first Tu B'Shevat Seder I've ever attended (hosted at a local Chabad). In some respects it will resemble a Passover Seder - with people gathered at the table eating special foods and discussing the meaning (or rather meanings) of the day, and telling stories from Jewish texts and from their personal lives. There will be an array of wines, a large sampling of fruits, including the Seven Species - figs, dates, pomegranates, olives, grapes, wheat and barley (the last two as bread and cake).

Tu B'Shevat marks the day according to which the ages of different trees are determined (this is for purposes of tithing, and because a part of each tithe is donated to the poor, charity is also an important part of the day).



After a hectic week I'm looking forward to a day of contemplation, savoring, appreciation, and warmth. There's Tu B'Shevat, and also that wonderful constant in my life - the Sabbath.

And now, some words from the Bennet sisters

Jane

"I would not wish to be hasty in censuring anyone; but I always speak what I think."


Elizabeth

"I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female, intending to plague you, but as a rational creature, speaking the truth from her heart."


Mary

"Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures! They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me - I should infinitely prefer a book."


Kitty

"I do not cough for my own amusement."


Lydia

"Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting?"

Yonder - a video

Yonder from Emilia on Vimeo.

Eerie and absorbing and delightful.

It reminded me, at some points, of Fantasia, and at other points of the animations in Monty Python's Flying Circus.

There's whimsy in it, along with beauty and mystery.

But the word "yonder" suggests distance, while I prefer to think of the sort of lovely and peculiar landscape and the creatures found in Yonder as just beneath the surface of things nearby (like opening up a dark closet, where your coat and boots are, and finding nameless colorful shape-shifters).

One reading of 'Smell and Envy'

I thought of this poem after a conversation with a friend about the best type of place to live in, with the main contrast springing up between the city and the countryside.

Douglas Goetsch wrote Smell and Envy in the voice of a city poet scoffing at the nature poets, who think that because of where they live and what they're surrounded by, they have some sort of monopoly on the poetic.

so it blooms and withers only for you,
so all you have to do is name it: primrose
- and now you're writing poetry...

I like the suggestion here that there's a poetry just in the sound of words - like primrose - and there are many words from nature that lend themselves to this poetry. And that it's not just the poets of nature and countryside who can take those words and make poetry out of them. Though in the mind of a city poet the words take on a new form:

we dunk your roses in vats of blue

There's also a suggestion of laziness - that all a nature poet has to do is look out the window and there's the poem, right there, ready to be plucked from a tree. While a city poet has to wring a poem out of concrete.

And it's not only nature words that have poetry to them. There are urban words with poetry and music in them too, though maybe those words lend themselves only to a harsher kind of poetry (is there a word associated with city life that's comparable to, say, primrose? There might be, but it's likely more difficult to find).

As the poem continues there's also an implication of city poets being more knowledgeable about human nature (likely in a more cynical, wordly wise, "seen everything" sort of way). Not that a nature poet can't capture human character as well. Maybe it's that city poets get at the grittier parts of human nature and the greater varieties and idiosyncrasies (and downright insanity) of human personality - they can't help it; in a city everyone's crowded together. No one's flaws go unnoticed. You're nose to nose with a stranger in the subway and the wart on his chin is right at your eye level.

Maybe another contrast is that poems of nature capture the roots and foundations of human character, because we all once lived in nature; the truths of those poems seem to echo in your bones. With the city there's more a sense of displacement, distortion and dysfunctionality - maybe it's a poetry of feeling uncomfortable in your own skin. The Pleiades aren't the remote wonders of the starry night, when you're in the city:

When the moon is full
we hear it in the sirens. The Pleiades
you could probably buy downtown.

But nature can give you grittiness too, and the knots and intricacies of humanity. And maybe there are some lovely (possibly deeply resonant or maybe just uncomplicated) poems set amidst urban life; you know, the beauty of buildings, of city parks (oops, there's nature encroaching a little), and people standing out strikingly on a street corner.

Monkeying around

Only humans 'use laughter to mock or insult others' says this article (though I'm not sure if the claim is well-supported, at least based only on what's written here).

Researchers carried out "tickling sessions" on gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans and compared the sounds to recordings of humans laughing.

"How was work today, dear?"
"You know, the usual. Went to a meeting, analyzed some data, tickled a couple of apes."

And it's not just apes:

The researchers also found that other animals, including bats, made different sounds when they were tickled, but that these may not be the same as laughter.

"They have actual operating rooms... and it's just amazing."

Two videos from CNN on the amazing work carried out by the Israeli army medical corps in Haiti:





They've got a state of the art field hospital set up. They're saving lives, treating difficult medical cases that other makeshift facilities are not yet equipped to handle, and doing so with efficiency, order, compassion, and calm. There's such a disaster in Haiti, but people like these professionals, who've come from so far away and do such great work - they're a fierce bright light in an abyss, a steady strength amid chaos.

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allan Poe

Maybe Poe did manage a cheerful birthday or two in his time, who knows.




Why a painting by Monsieur Cézanne? It's his birthday too (Bon Anniversaire, Paul Cézanne); he was born 20 years after Poe.

So I quickly picked out a Poe-ish sort of Cézanne painting. One that might evoke the lost Lenore:

Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore —
Nameless here for evermore.

The Edgar Allan Poe society of Baltimore presents his works here. Poems, prose, his groundbreaking work in detective fiction ("The Murders in the Rue Morgue").