Filling Jars Full of Silence

I can never have children, because I get really angry when noises interrupt me when I am writing. I lose my concentration, and usually just call it quits, dreaming of the day when I will be in a financial position where I no longer have to live with four noisy roommates.


ANYWAY.

In light of reading Barbauld, I think back to the introduction of our Norton Anthology. If there were so many influential women before the leading male Romantics, why are they not part of The Big Six?

It's a rhetorical question.


Another question: Why is "Mother Nature" usually used with a negative connotation? Mother Nature has the power to destroy. An earthquake devastates the lives of thousands in such and such country--that's Mother Nature for you. Mother Nature swallows a shrimp boat in the Gulf of Mexico.

What about...Mother Nature lifted her fluffy cloud-skirts and showed the world her Rainbow-Curtain. Mother Nature nurtured the bees which created the honey which fed the bear which clothed the hunter which impregnated the women who birthed the child who evolved into an intelligent race who learned to feel, then learned to speak, then learned to write, then learned to compose poetry? What about THAT Mother Nature?

Where would Wordsworth's work (woo, look at that fancy-yet-unintentional alliteration) be if not for Dorothy's record of their experiences with Mother Nature? 

And Charlotte Smith! Come on! So much passion! Can passion exist within permanence? Who knows. I mean, the Elegiac Sonnets are so damn great--and not just because I am a woman reading the work of another woman. It was not part of the required reading, but I read all the sonnets in the anthology. In some works, (Written in the Church-Yard at Middleton in Sussex), it is as if this woman took what she knew of Shakespearean sonnets and said, "I do what I want!"  Tides, combines, confines, rides, cave, bed, dead, grave, shore, wave, rave, more. A,b,a,b,c,d,c,d,e,f,e,f,g,g, can go to hell, she says.


I don't remember exactly, but someone in class mentioned something about lawns--in the context of "shaped nature." I wrote in my notes: "Dare we convert chaos into order?" I'm sure Mark, or another student, said those words. I don't think it was my own thought process, because I can barely form a sentence in class, my mind goes in so many different directions.


Kind of like now.


Permanence. We try to incorporate these women writers, but after the first eighty pages of a 900-plus page anthology, they virtually disappear. It is a contrived, politically correct effort.

I would be okay with a Big Seven. Just give me one, you know?

Coleridge's softer side.

I love the concept of an Eolian Harp. An idea of the speed of a breeze controlling the music in a room is...lovely. It creates a wonderful question: What if all events in the universe were subject to patterns of uncertainty? Are we all small particles in a world of chaos? 

Or,

Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

Before Man created the A-Bomb, he created a musical instrument for Wind to be enjoyed by Man.

And what is all of animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed 


No one ever touched upon it in class, but what if the speaker's reference to "O Beloved woman!" and his backstepping of poetic musings was not a cowering of the Christian Eye of his wife, who might have accused the poet of blasphemy? Rather, biocritically, maybe we can look at his unhappy relationship with his wife, and juxtapose it with the idea of the Eolian Harp. What I got, rather, was almost a passive aggression in the voice of the speaker. A sort of mockery, I suppose.  "Meek daughter in the family of Christ!" With an exclamation? He can't be serious.

Right. The juxtapose. One shift in the breeze, and the song of the Eolian Harp creates a different tune. I often think, "If I had done just one small thing differently in my life, would it have turned out the way that it did?" Well, if Coleridge had done one small thing differently, would he be in an unhappy marriage with a Bible-humping Harpie? 

That's all I have to say about that.



 

My roommate has a toad. The toad doesn’t have a name, and it sits in a tank, in an empty room. The toad is hideous. Hideous! I have never minded the idea of a toad in the house, because they’re just funny little dudes with big tongues. If I found a toad in nature, I would be rather excited. However, this isn’t just any toad. Like many other reptile/amphibians, he likes to eat crickets. In addition this, Toad likes to eat mice. When fed, the mouse inside the cage looks about the same size as the toad, and one has to wonder how Toad can be so gluttonous as to eat something that is nearly its same size. It would be like a human eating, not just a few slices of ham and some mashed potatoes on Christmas day, but eating the entire pig. Physically, it doesn’t make sense.

I hate Toad.

More than Toad, in the moments before, as my roommates call it, “The Feeding,” I hate my roommates. There is something perversely exciting about seeing the slaughter of an insignificant (is it?)animal. When I complain, roll my eyes, rush out the room, I am chastised and told, “He has to eat, Melissa!” I understand the hideous caged toad, must eat to survive. I am also aware that the pet store sells already dead mice for snakes and the like. I don’t have to ask why he just doesn’t buy the dead ones. It’s the thrill of the feast. It is entertaining to watch a mouse huddle in the corner on the opposite side of the tank. It is even more entertaining when the mouse does not realize his impending doom, and scurries around the take, plays in the water bowl, and inevitably sits on the mudd-shrouded toad, thinking it is a rock. It happens quickly. Toad bites once, hard, and swallows the mouse whole. Sometimes, only the tail remains for a gruesome few minutes before it too is swallowed.

“The Feeding” has become a ritual in the house, where all gather around the tank and watch for the fatal bite. I, of course, do not participate. I have seen it once, and it was enough to understand the cruelty of it. I have heard too many times, “It’s just a mouse.”

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,

In proving foresight may be vain:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

            Gang aft agley,

Robert Burns didn’t think so.

So, when destruction lurks unseen,

Which men, like mice, may share,

May some kind angel clear they path,

And break the hidden snare

Anna Letitia Barbauld didn’t think so.

I’ve been thinking about the Barbauld poem. Now, I do not believe in angels, but the poem reminds me of one particular Feeding. When the roommates gathered around the tank, the mouse scurried to the water bowl and bathed itself, and they waited…and waited…and waited. Apparently, Toad likes to arbitrarily hibernate. The mouse and the toad shared the same tank for days. I often tried to think of a time of day when no one would be home so that I could free the mouse and have everyone assume the toad had finally eaten it. I imagined how it would feel to let it free, but I never got the chance. When I wasn’t home, the toad decided he was hungry.

Now, more than ever, I feel a horrible pressure in my stomach when I think of The Feeding. I think of Erica Fudge’s description of the baiting of animals in Garrard’s text. She writes, “In proving their humanity humans achieve the opposite.” Even if a mouse is just a mouse, the act of making it into bait is still sadistic. The question of feeding caged animals to caged animals is an entirely different issue, and requires an equally lengthy internal debate. The question of whether it is inhumane to take so much pleasure in it: Yep. Totally revolting.