Natural Burial

I started 17th Century Metaphysical Poetry this week with my classes, and yesterday one of the poems we discussed was "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne.  It goes like this:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then;

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

The poem is one of Donne's Holy Sonnets.  He had unenthusiastically entered the ministry at the insistence of King James, and his quick wit, his flair for the dramatic, and his rolling intellect had established him as the mega-rock star preacher of his era.  In the poem, the speaker condescendingly confronts Death and personifies him as a tool, a cocksure pawn of Fate, Chance, and desperate men.  For the believer, death is really a peaceful little nap at the start of eternal life.  Yet he runs around like a bluffing bully.  The cacophonous  couplet at the end reveals that the joke is on Death.  While we wake eternally, death dies.

I'm not sure about all that, but what I do know is that I dig the gist.  

So naturally, I had a dream last night about my death.  It wasn't a morbid or a disturbing dream.  It was one of those dreams where I was thinking, sort of awake.  I was contemplating my own little nap and how I hope it goes down.  Here's what I dreamt:  

When I die, dig a hole in the woods about two meters deep in Newton County, Arkansas or in the Blue Ridge somewhere, 20 or 30 yards away from a waterfall or a bluff or a big, old tree where woodpeckers hang out.  Wrap my body in a linen shroud and place it in the hole.  No embalming fluids, no incineration, no concrete vault.  Cover me up with some soil and relocate a dogwood, a wild blueberry bush, blackberries and raspberries for the bears, some dwarf lilies, mayapples, and ferns.  I love ferns.  Or just spread some rich duff and fallen leaves; it doesn't matter.  One short sleep past, I'll wake eternally and death shall be no more.  Visit the waterfall, the bluff, the tree and see what I become. 

I'll send you off with a tune in your head if you know the Dave Matthews Band:

Gravedigger,

When you dig my grave,

Could you make it shallow

So that I can feel the rain?  

                                 --David John Matthews 

from Still Life With Woodpecker

by Tom Robbins (1980)

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.  Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.  Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.  There is only one serious question.  And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?  Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.  Answer me that and I will ease your mind about the beginning and end of time."

--MJF

Romulus: Part One

Recorded by Plutarch

Translated by John Dryden

Ransacked by MJF

Folks won't agree on how or why the illustrious old city got its name.  Shocking.  

• Some say Cretans.  They roamed all over that place.  Lol.  Or it mighta been Trojans on the lam while the homeland burnt.  Stowaway, Miss Roma, was sick and tired of the bumpy odyssey and torched the getaway ships to the ground on the bank of the river Tiber.  The other women placated the wroth wussyboys with sweet talk and kisses.  Didn't take long for the guys to suss out the bonanza: women acting beautiful and the real estate rich.  So the fickle cowards named the lot after the bold woman who put her foot down.  But ever since, their male descendants expect their chicks to grovel over the burned boats with lots of good crazy-love.  Doubt that's what Roma had in mind.  
  
• Some again say Roma was half-goddess and like any reputable half-deity was just fucking around with shit.  And some say Roma might really have been a god named Romanus or Romus.  But most anybody that knows anything admits it is probably the safest bet that it was Romulus who really named the place.  They just can't agree on who Romulus's progenitors were.  Another one of those darned oracular and prodigious virgin birth-riverside abandonment-evil twin-great flood-handmaid's tale murder mysteries.  But dude's name was definitely Romulus, and he had a twin named Remus.
• Story goes, a fortune teller notified a power-hungry local that the twins would get in his way, so all paranoid, he ordered the twins' infanticide.  Poor Teratius just couldn't do it and put them down by the river where a she-wolf suckled them while birds of various sorts brought them morsels of food to eat; till a shephard spied the weird scene and took the boys in.  They grew big and strong and whacked that sumbitch that tried to off them.  All this according to some unreliable Promathian that wrote a history of Italy.  

• A more credible version, one with the most vouchers, was first told by the Greek, Diocles.  It's pretty convoluted, but here's the gist.  The kings of Alba reigned in lineal decent from Aeneas eventually to two brothers, Numitor and Amulius.  Amulius suggested that in order to be fair, they should divide everything into two equal shares:  1) the booty from Troy and 2) the kingdom.  Well, of course Numitor chose the kingdom as planned and Amulius used his riches to overthrow his brother.  The wealthy king was so insecure he locked his daughter, called either Ilia, Rhea, or Sylvia, locked her up so tight she'd never have sex.  Straightaway, like clockwork, she was knocked up and had twin boys with superhuman size and beauty.   When the king saw the boys, he was sore afraid and had Faustulus take care of them.  Fausty laid them in a manger and headed for the river to toss them in like puppies in a sack, but the river was roaring and rising, and he feared for his own safety and dropped them off as close as he could get.  I swear Amulius, if you want something done right, you just have to do it yourself.  The river did come up enough to float the trough, but the water wafted the boat to a safe ground called Germanus, perhaps from Germani which means "brothers."  
• Germanus had a wild fig-tree in the shade of which the cattle ruminated.  The tree's name was Ruminalis.  The tree was named for the following reasons:  1) Ruminalis sounds like Romulus; 2) cows chewed cud the there; 3) ancients called the dug or teat of any creature ruma; 4) Rumilia is the tutelar goddess of the rearing of children, in sacrificing to whom they use no wine, but make libations of milk.  Anyway, under the fig-tree, a she-wolf nursed the boys, and a woodpecker constantly fed and watched them.  'Peckers and she-wolves are esteemed holy to the god Mars.  Ilia/Rhea/Sylvia had claimed Mars was the one that got to her by the way, and that would make more sense than the claims of the perves who had her daddy coming to her disguised in armor.

To be continued... 

--MJF