Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.
[Susan Sontag]

This is a poem by Jack Prelutsky, who was my childhood Shel Silverstein — his book The New Kid on the Block is the only poetry other than Ogden Nash that I read for many many years. I have a particular affinity for this poem because, to my chagrin, I often catch myself in the rough equivalent of the activity it describes. (I am, however, getting better at stopping.) Here goes:

I’ve got an incredible headache,
my temples are throbbing with pain,
it feels like a freight train with two locomotives
is chugging about in my brain.
I’m sure I can’t stand it much longer,
my skull’s being squeezed in a vise,
as regiments march to the blaring of trumpets,
and thousands of tap-dancing mice.

My head’s filled with horrible noises,
there’s a man mashing melons inside,
someone keeps drumming on bongos and plumbing,
as porpoises thrash in the tide.
An elephant herd is stampeding,
a volcano is blowing its top,
and if I keep hitting my head with this hammer,
I doubt that my headache will stop.

Case in point: tonight, walking into my yoga class (late, as, unfortunately, usual), I swung the door open with the energy of hurry–right into the third toe on my left foot. I kneeled on the floor for a little, biting my lip and whimpering (if I had been taught to curse earlier in life, I would have done that), and watching a blood blister form, and wondering whether it was broken (the toe).

Then I went into class. Then I limped to a cafe to meet a new friend, and got ice from the very nice barista, and by the time I left the toe was less purple than it had been, and I was limping less, and when I got home my roommate gave me neosporin and a clear band-aid she bought in India on an internship last summer, and now I am feeling hopeful again that I may not have to cancel the hike I planned with another new friend for Saturday, after all.

This also (maybe more etymologially accurately) goes by “Isle au Haut,” which is French for “island on the heights.” It was taught to me by Liz and Rachel Winter, whose mother, Penny, used to sing them to sleep with it. And in Maine, where Liz and Rachel spent many of their growing-up years, it’s called Islehaut. (Click and then click again.)

Islehaut Lullabye

The words:

If I could give you three things
I would give you these
Song and laughter and a wooden home
On the shining seas

When you see old Islehaut
Rising in the dawn
You will run in yellow fields
In the morning sun

Do you hear what the sails are saying
In the wind’s dark song
Throw sadness to the wind
Blow to lee and gone

When you see old Islehaut
Rising in the dawn
You will run in yellow fields
In the morning sun

Sleep now, the moon is high
And the wind blows cold
For you are sad and young
And the sea is old

When you see old Islehaut
Rising in the dawn
You will run in yellow fields
In the morning sun

This is Julie Lee, whom I heard for the first time at a retreat in Texas a few weeks ago. The text of the song is an Emily Dickinson poem, and the mournfulness of the melody is beautiful alongside the poem’s longing and its fanciful images. (Click twice, and it will load in a separate page.)

Morning

My favorite line is “has it feet like waterlilies,” and my favorite line break is the one between “could I see it from the mountains” and “if I were as tall as they” — seeing from the mountains feels like, “Oh, yes, right” but then being as tall as the mountans! And standing on top of them — and from there, being able just to catch a glimpse of the place called morning.

C. S. Lewis’ ideal day has always sounded attractive to me, but when I read his description recently, I was struck by a number of things:

One, that though I’ve had a great deal of freedom at various points in my life with regard to the structure of my days, I have never used that freedom to structure my days consistently in his ideal way.

Two, that this may mean that my assumption (Lewis’ ideal day is also my ideal day) is wrong.

Three, that in order to have Lewis’ ideal day on a regular basis, one needs a cook and servants (lunch is “on the table,” tea “arrives,” and the day includes neither laundry nor any sort of cleaning; he mentions not even the making of a bed, though in fairness, he also doesn’t mention brushing his teeth).

Four, that though I would be happy to have someone do my laundry (as long as they don’t shrink things), and ecstatic to have someone clean the place I live (guilt aside; part of me feels it as a cop-out not to be personally attending to my floors and sinks and toilet), I would not want someone to cook for me all the time. Sometimes, yes, it would be lovely to have eggs and toast just appear for breakfast, or steel-cut oatmeal, or to have a spinach salad with candied walnuts and craisins and feta and sliced green onions all put together and just waiting for me to dress it for lunch, and to have someone else have mixed up the brown-sugar balsamic vinaigrette. But last night I came up with a new way to cook the greens which we have in overabundance from our CSA (in Thai red chili paste and coconut milk and garlic and peanut butter), and I used all the ends of hard cheese (with more garlic) to fry corn, and both of these turned out scrumptious, and were satisfying in a way they’d never have been if I had not washed the greens myself and chopped them and stirred all the ingredients in the skillet and smelled them as they cooked.

Five, that I would miss people, a lot, if I were to live Bookham days. I like talking to people, and eating with them instead of with books.

Six, that I am not sure what my ideal day would be. Lewis knew his own preferences and felt free to voice them in a way I don’t, yet. He knew how to say “IF I had no obligations and could live entirely selfishly, here’s what I’d do.” I don’t think I’m less selfish than he is; I’m just not as good yet at separating desire and obligation from one another.

Seven, that I would like to find out my own ideal day. And that the first step is accepting the length of days: that a morning is not a week, an afternoon is not a lifetime. And that this is all right. And another step: accepting that I am not C. S. Lewis, not Dorothy Day, not anyone but me. And that that is all right, too.

Surprised by Joy contains a lovely self-portrait of Lewis by way of a description of his ideal day. (Bookham is the town in which he lived as a teenager, being tutored by the fierce rationalist Kirk, who taught him classics and logic, among other things, and to whom he refers elsewhere as The Knock):

“We now settled into a routine which has ever since served in my mind as an archetype, so that what I still mean when I speak of a “normal” day (and lament that normal days are so rare) is a day of the Bookham pattern. For if I could please myself I would always live as I lived there. I would choose always to breakfast at exactly eight and to be at my desk by nine, there to read or write till one. If a cup of good tea or coffee could be brought me about eleven, so much the better. A step or so out of doors for a pint of beer would not do quite so well; for a man does not want to drink alone and if you meet a friend in the taproom the break is likely to be extended beyond its ten minutes. At one precisely lunch should be on the table; and by two at the latest I would be on the road. Not, except at rare intervals, with a friend. Walking and talking are two very great pleasures, but it is a mistake to combine them. Our own noise blots out the sounds and silences of the outdoor world; and talking leads almost inevitably to smoking, and then farewell to nature as far as one of our senses is concerned. The only friend to walk with is one (such as I found, during the holidays, in Arthur) who so exactly shares your taste for each mood of the countryside that a glance, a halt, or at most a nudge, is enough to assure us that the pleasure is shared. The return from the walk, and the arrival of tea, should be exactly coincident, and not later than a quarter past four. Tea should be taken in solitude, as I took it as Bookham on those (happily numerous) occasions when Mrs. Kirkpatrick was out; the Knock himself disdained this meal. For eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably. Of course not all books are suitable for mealtime reading. It would be a kind of blasphemy to read poetry at table. What one wants is a gossipy, formless book which can be opened anywhere. The ones I learned so to use at Bookham were Boswell, and a translation of Herodotus, and Lang’s History of English Literature. Tristram Shandy, Elia and the Anatomy of Melancholy are all good for the same purpose. At five a man should be at work again, and at it till seven. Then, at the evening meal and after, comes the time for talk, or, failing that, for lighter reading; and unless you are making a night of it with your cronies (and at Bookham I had none) there is no reason why you should ever be in bed later than eleven. But when is a man to write his letters? You forget that I am describing the happy life I led with Kirk or the ideal life I would live now if I could. And it is essential of the happy life that a man would have almost no mail and never dread the postman’s knock.”

“If you can’t find the right adjective for a noun, leave it alone. Let the noun stand by itself. A comparison must be as accurate as a slide rule, and as natural as the smell of fennel… a noun needs only one adjective, the choicest. Only a genius can afford two adjectives to one noun.”

And in the top right corner, I just noticed, the edge of the loop of my camera’s wrist cord.

“Will power, the kind that, if need be, makes us set our teeth and endure suffering, is the principal weapon of the apprentice engaged in manual work. But, contrary to the usual belief, it has practically no place in study. The intelligence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.”

The vulture eats between his meals
And that’s the reason why
He very, very rarely feels
As well as you and I.

His eye is dull, his head is bald
His neck is growing thinner.
Oh! What a lesson to us all
To only eat at dinner!

[speaking of homeliness–a poem by Hillaire Belloc, to which I was introduced when my brother, then eight, recited it at a talent show]