Wiki Friday: Neruda / Rosh Hashanah / September

Four years have passed since I wrote a Wiki Friday post. Man, time. Anyway, this one is themed around connection and poetry.

Pablo Neruda

Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon

What adjective-noun combinations! They make you a little woozy, no?

I was at a dinner party with family friends on Wednesday and saw these words on the book shelf. They are the title of a collection of Neruda's poems–his mature work, apparently–and also the first words in a pretty sexy poem involving mud and honey. Naturally I came home and Wikipedia'd Neruda. So many nuggets of delight:

That he wrote his first poems when he was 10.

That he chose his pen name after a Czech poet. And later adopted it as his legal name.

That he wrote in green ink, his "personal symbol for desire and hope."

That he published erotic poetry at 18.

Rosh Hashanah

Next up on the Wikipedia search list was Jewish New Year, which started on Wednesday.

I learned that people often eat apples dipped in honey to evoke a "sweet new year." It was very fitting, then, that I ate three caramel apples at a wedding the weekend before.

The word Elul jumped out–the month in the Hebrew calendar leading up to Rosh Hashanah. In Turkish the word for September is eylül. And flash, I remembered a wonderful Turkish poem that I (poorly) translated in a creative writing class years ago. Here it is:

September

a poem by Hilmi Yavuz

september! even in childhood
I would watch you
how by the waning
words of summer
you were dismantled
      with the gardens and ashes
filled me… september!

september! the fragile season!
fall’s glass dagger
would splinter in my heart
while day and night
you were cloaked
      with loneliness and lace
filled me… september!

september! I forgot you
the mountain turned red, the path yellow
and I would glance back
your memory showed no mercy
your laughter shattered
      mirrors and roses
filled me… september!

Elul

Let us take another moment looking at Elul, the 12th month of the Jewish civil calendar.

The word comes from the Akkadian word for 'harvest'.

The word is similar to the Aramaic root for 'search'.

The Talmud says that Elul can work as an acronym for "Ani L'dodi V'dodi Li" - "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" 

"Many Jews also visit the graves of loved ones throughout the month in order to remember and honor those people in our past who inspire us to live more fully in the future."

The month is meant to be spent in preparation for important spiritual days, and for asking for and granting forgiveness. A time of focus and shift.

I have always felt that September is the true beginning of a new year. I am somewhat heartened to learn that an entire religious tradition feels the same way.

September art/craft: photography

So I'm doing this new thing. Every month I focus on an art or craft medium and do some small projects within that world. September was going to be acrylic paint month, if only to fill the blank walls of my room, but for reasons the medium is now photography.

Mini project 1: Photo walk in the neighbourhood.

Banana leaves next door

Oh I like it here

Reminds me of a hanging leaf project to re-do this fall

In an alley

New desktop image. Mmmm.

Take away: As I expected, the photo walk made me feel super relaxed, receptive, and gracious. The back alleys of this neighbourhood are not so rich in cultural and natural texture as others, but the diversity of plant life is still impressive. It was easy to find some nice shots, even at midday, far from those dawn and dusk ideal light times.

Sheltering Sky Take Two

When I read this book the first time, I was living in Morocco, the country where the author Paul Bowles spent most of his life. Centred around busy-minded, unsure, wandering expatriates, it was pretty easy for me to sink into. It was a pleasure to find the book again, here in Kabak, Turkey. Again I couldn't help but dog-ear pages to remind myself to copy out some passages.

Michael Hoffman’s introduction to the book:

what happens is not so much friction or collision as a reduced density, incomprehension, the impossibility of communication

Often this is how I experience life abroad, and it leaves me craving connection, meaning, understanding, conversation, expanded and built-up ideas.

On the bizarre characters, the Lyles:

The novelty of the caricature was wearing off. Port was beginning to feel smothered sitting there between them; their obsessions depressed him.

On why the character Port doesn’t write:

there had been nothing to write about – he could not establish a connexion in his mind between the absurd trivialities which filled the day and the serious business of putting words to paper.

I know this feeling. But then I look back and realize what an interesting and rich bounty of details was available to me during a period of time in a particular place, and I am sad to have already lost access to it.

Port on death and finiteness:

‘Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.’

Kit when she bathes in the oasis at night:

She felt a strange intensity being born within her. As she looked about the quiet garden she had the impression that for the first time since her childhood she was seeing objects clearly.

The next day, when she knows she will travel with the men of the caravan:

Even as she saw these two men she knew that she would accompany them, and the certainty gave her an unexpected sense of power: instead of feeling the omens, she would now make them, be them herself.

I love that: make the omens, be the omens.