The Inner Light

The Star Trek episode, The Inner Light, was, in my opinion, rediculous and funny, and i can see why we watched it and how it highlighted the theme "the 20 minute lifetime"
Obviously Captain Piccard, in his nucleonic beam induced stupor, lived out his entire lifetime in roughly 20-25 minutes. In order for him to accept his fate/reality, as it were, he had to find out, or rediscover, who he was and where he was. This reminds me of the Futurama episode where Lela is stung by a giant bee and dies, but really thinks Fry is the one who was stung. Throughout the episode she tries to convince herself that Fry is still alive (even though she's in a coma) until she begins to go crazy imagining a life without Fry. Long story short, Fry gives Lela some of his possessions to remind her of him and the world she has temporarily left behind. Similarly, Captain Piccard's friends and family put his old flute in the spaceship so he will remember them and remember to tell their story. Unforgetting the forgotten. It is he who must retell this story, and relive out his past life. You can relate this to Eliot's 4 Quartets, Page 31, last stanza:

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the vening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.

Essentially, we need to arrive where we started, but realize that we are again back at the same place, realize how we've changed throughout our journey and change.

FW and the Skin of OUr Teeth

Antrobus and Earwicker families both have Mom, Dad, 2 Sons, Daughter

The play Skin of Our Teeth was very dreamy and most of the time it was hard to differentiate between the two worlds. Finnegans wake is similar in that it is often hard to discern where the story is taking place, who is in it, what is going on, and whether it is actually happening.

The play, in its more dramatic stages, seems to fluctuate up and down. Often returning to where it began. As FW is a cycle, this ties in nicely with what Joyce was doing.

The play and FW both take us completely through the history of man (albeit very shortly)

The phrase Skin of Our Teeth comes from the book of Jobe, Joyce often makes satirical remarks about/ quoting the bible in Finnegans Wake

To me, at least, SOT is an easier way to understand the ciclical nature of FW. a sort of middlebrow between the low and the high.

Yakko's World Recital

I am not able to post the Video, but this is the Animaniacs naming the countries of the world: although some are not countries anymore, and others have been added, it is still a great list:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDtdQ8bTvRc&feature=related

The eternal reminder of the eternal list

James Joyce, Finnegans Wake:
"A cartridge of cockaleekie soup for Chummy the Guardsman; for sulky Pender's acis nephew deltoid drops, curiously strong; a cough and a rattle and wildrose cheeks for poor Piccoline Petite MacFarlane; a jigsaw puzzle of needles and pins and blankets and shins between them for Isabel, Jezebel, and Llewelyn Mmarriage; a brazen nose and pigiron mittens for Johnny Walker Beg; a paper flag of the saints and stripes for Kevineen O'Dea; a puffpuff for Pudge Craig and a nightmarching hare for Techertim Tombigby; waterleg and gumboots each for Bully Hayes and Hurricane Hartigan; a prodigal heart and fatted calves for Buck JOnes, the pride of Clonliffe; a loaf of bread and a father's early aim for Val from Skibereen..." (Page 210)

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
"We had two bags of grass, 75 pellets of mescaline, 5 sheets of high powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galexy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers... Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw either, and two dozen amyls. Not that we needed all that for the trip, but once you get locked in to a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can."

I think that last line by Thompson sums up Joyce's lists. "Not that we needed all that, but once you get locked into a serious collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can" (paraphrased). Joyce continues to push the envelope of what is decent, what is expected, and what is, dare i say, "normal"?

Another's Take on the Wake

I read a friend of mine a passage out of Finnegans Wake, actually the passage i chose to recite at the FW reading our class held. "Return sainted youngling and walk once more among us. The rains of Demani are masikal as of yere, and Baraza is all aflower. Seeker of calmy days, as shiver as shower can be". His reaction was more or less the same as Sarah's reaction which invloved, "that is gibberish. I can write nonsensical words on a page, but this guy can actually make money off of this shit?" And when he found out this was considered to be one of the great novels of the modern world, he nearly lost it. Long story short, he did not understand what i read. Not that i completely understood what it was. But after i told him to close his eyes and just listen, he seemed to relax a bit, even laugh. Which is what its all about, enjoying the moment, it doens't matter whether you understand everything, just enjoy the fact that its there. I believe this to be the central tenant of FW, i could be totally wrong, but i enjoy the fact that Joyce took such an unusual approach and actually had the balls to publish something he knew would most likely get crucified in its reviews. Enjoy enjoy enjoy.

The Eternal Recurrance

This is the image i had in my mind when i blogged about the cyclical life. The perfect representation of a non-linear fashion: the phoenix. This picture is a cropcircle (not really a circle? so what do you call it?) but i thought itwas awesome. The phoenix rising from the ashes to begin anew. Joyce completing FW and Ulysess, complementing both night and day, the ever repeating circle.

Me in FW again

While perusing FW again, i saw another example of how i am constantly in Joyce's distorted brain. Page 16:

"you tolkatiff scowegian?"

My highschool in New Hampshire was "Souhegan", inevitably, every time someone asks me where i am from/what highschool i went to, their reply is the same "you went to skowhegan?"
No, not sKowhegan, but SoUhegan". I interpret Joyce's lines as "you talkative skowhegan", or "you talk of skowhegan?".... No James, i talk OF SoUhegan.