My favorite American author is Cormac McCarthy. I was a member of the Cormac McCarthy Society for a year, and will join again as soon as I get a little slack in my checkbook. (Teaching school in Louisiana is an exercise in humility and poverty). I’ve read everything he’s written that’s in print. I’m requiring my seniors in my AP class to read All the Pretty Horses. A beautiful novel that was made into a beautiful movie. Below are are couple of quotes from it I like.

Movie Quote of the Day:

“He’d half meant to speak but those eyes had altered the world forever in the space of a heartbeat.”

(John Grady) “You’re fixin to get me in trouble.”
(Alejandra) “You are in trouble.”

Today, I’m giving vocabulary tests to my honors and gifted students, and we’re filing papers and busy work like that. My room is a wreck. Imagine a writer’s study used as a classroom and you’ll get a good visual image. Books piled everywhere, scattered papers, etc. I imagine there are some writers who have clean workplaces: I salute them.

The holiday season is going to be busy. I must attend a production of Scrooge tonight–no graceful way out of it. I have a 3-4 hour editing project I must finish, and a good friend in Atlanta wants me to come visit him this weekend. Thinks it will help my recent depression. I do owe him a visit, as it’s been a year and a half since I’ve seen him, and I haven’t seen his new place in Atlanta. (He lived in Greenville). But I haven’t made up my mind as to whether I will go or not, as Sunday my band was supposed to play at a private party, but our singer is still having throat problems. I might go on to Atlanta if I can set up a book reading/signing.

 Beyond this weekend,  on the 8th of Dec. my friend and I are DJ’ing a party at Calvert Crossing in Calhoun, and playing for the Scottish Society Christmas part on the 9th, in El Dorado on Monday the 11th for the SCV, for the SCV in W. Monroe on Tuesday the 12th. January is booked for me for three weekends. I do a posting on those later.

Movie Quotation for the Day: from Cold Mountain:(my favorite Civil War movie!)

Inman: You are all that keeps me from sliding into some dark place.
Ada: But how did I keep you? We barely knew each other. A few moments.
Inman: A thousand moments. They’re like a bag of tiny diamonds glittering in a black heart. Don’t matter if they’re real or things I made up. The shape of your neck, that’s real.  

Soon, I’ll be teaching my sophomores the myths and legend of King Arthur. One important lesson of this unit concerns Courtly Love as it was practiced in the Middle Ages. I make the point of how this doctrine of the Code of Chivalry placed woman on a pedastel, and how much (sometimes how little) courtly love has influenced modern ideas of romance. I point out how marriages then were matters of practicality, issues of power, and how if a person wanted to experience true love, it had to be found outside of marriage. I wrote this poem after thinking about how a knight would feel about the object of his adoration in such a relationship.

A Queen’s Duties

You are a queen, my queen,
A princesse lointaine,

The far-away princess
I could never obtain,
One with a bursting heart,
Filled with kindness and charity,
And I, the knight, the warrior-poet,
Differing from the boisterous,
Bragging, illiterate men surrounding you,
Who think of women as breeders, servants,
As a source of their (not your) sexual gratification.
I am the chivalrous knight who
Knew from the first glance
He loved you, and only you.
I am the only knight who would
Suffer for you, court you, even die for you,
You, with your responsibilities,
Duties, schedules, and blossoming beauty,
You, the queen who knew books
And loved words, who needed my poems.
The Queen of Love and Beauty.
We were thrown together
By chance, a fateful meeting,
The kind that changes everything, and
My queen became the love of my life.
This courtly love is our hearts’ outlet,
Feeding our souls, our hearts, our bodies,
But you are still a queen with duties, one
Who loves those in her charge too much
To destroy her own kingdom
Because of her own needs.
The rules of love are different for a queen.
She can only love when and as she can.
Some say courtly love cannot work in a modern world,
I say it can if it must, for as long as it must.
I know that it has elevated you,
Civilized and energized me,
I will always be your knight in the background,
Practicing the proper etiquette, but
Walking the knife’s edge of admiration of you,
Holding the tokens of your love against my heart.

My muse has been active lately. I thought I’d try my hand on a song. The lyrics seem to work, though like everything I write, need editing, but the song has a feel I like. Now must get to work on a melody.

In my new silence of living
I have no regrets,
For the magnet of your love
That still pulls upon me yet.

I’ll hold to my promise
To my words and my verse,
To lose you is hard,
But to hurt you would be worse.

If by chance I should see you,
You won’t see me cry,
I’ll smile and I’ll wave,
But when you’re gone I’ll die.

There’s no need of compensation,
There’s no lines drawn in the sand,
Only soft pleasant memories
Of me once holding your hand.

You’re still my heart’s focus,
Still the love of my life,
Your ghost will walk with me
Until the day that I die.

There’s an ache deep inside me,
My heart’s hollow and sore,
Breaking from the memory
Of what’s not there anymore.

I know it’s not an ending,
But it still feels like death,
Because you’re the best thing
That’s happened to me yet.

We faced love’s complications,
Lived through storms and through guilt,
And even this amputation
Won’t end the love that we’ve built.

The best and worst things happen
When the timing is wrong,
But we’ll live on forever
In the words of my songs.

Yesterday, I saw a stack of blank maps of Africa in my classroom. If you teach English in this culturally illiterate age, you learn that you have to teach other subjects (across the curriculum is the jargon) also in order for the students to truly grasp the literature. So, I make use of history and maps constantly. The blank ones I use for various assignments, usually for the gifted students to map out colonial Africa. Anyway, when I saw these maps, I thought of two books: Heart of Darkness and Out of Africa. I thought some more on this and realized that books become points of reference. I still remember my first reading of both of these books, so they’ve become part of my mind calendar. Books and movies: the two greatest influences on my mind these days. I also remember seeing the 1985 movie version of Out of Africa. That made me think of this quotation, which I so identify with these days.

Movie Quote of the Day: I’ve got this little thing that I’ve learned to do lately. When it gets so bad…and I think I can’t go on…I try to make it worse. –from Out of Africa

There are many other memorable quotes in this movie. You can find the script for Out of Africa here: http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/o/out-of-africa-script-transcript.html

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, one of my favorite performers is Beth Patterson. I’ve transcribed one of my favorite songs she often performs. It just seemed to speak to me today. One word is in brackets, indicating I could be wrong on the transcription there. Of course I could be in other places too. You need to buy this CD of hers. It’s called, Hybrid Vigor. Here’s the song, “Steer by the Stars.”

Steer by the Stars by Beth Patterson