Epiphataphorial

An Epiphany, an Epitaph and an Editorial

Epiphany: Earth's the right place for love.

Epitaph: "I had a lover's quarrel with with world." - Robert Frost

Editorial: (this is where I elaborate)

Yesterday we had our last history class with Professor Palenscar, whom I have come to adore-- if not for his enthusiastic approach to the classroom and material but for the extreme emotional investment he makes in history. If we walked away with anything, he wanted us to walk away with this: a copy of Robert Frost's poem "Birches" and of the last page of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I'll include excerpts here:

Birches

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate wilfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.


How can I exlain? It's always so, ....with me. I often beg to be let off the spinning carousel world; I'm too dazed by the lights, deaf from the redundant music, blind to the whirling painted porcelain. I'm fixed on chips and cracks in the enamel, the dissonance in the tune, the light-bulbs that have blown out and are in want of replacing. But "may no fate wilfully misunderstand me". I have no desire to leave never to return. Constantly i'll re-ground myself to achieve focus, and this is when it hits me like a overly enthusiastic nine-iron in full swing:

"Earth's the right place for love."

That's it. Earth's the right place for love. I can't imagine where it's likely to go better. If I'm here for anything, that's just about all I believe in... the Love, especially when I remember how much this world lacks of it. And if i've got so damn much of it in me then I might be best suited sharing it, so long as my heart holds out. I'm not easily dissuaded; i've got that in my favor. My endorphins seem to be in endless supply. I must be insane.

So, I think, what Professor Palenscar wanted to impart, was this bit of wisdom: the world is lacking in love, we contribute to it. But we are not hopeless. Be kind. Be compassionate. Love your life, and one another. Don't lose Wonder.

Have we really seen "last and greatest of all human dreams", as the narrator in Gatsby suggests? No. We're still there... it's just not as tangible as it was then. The end gives a little hope you can fill in yourself.

Ah. Could you understand or do you see a bunch of pretty words?

I've leave you with some Fitzgerald, the last page of Gatsby:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes - a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further... And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.