Hiro Protagonist

               e. e. cummings

all worlds have halfsight,seeing either with

life's eye(which is if things seem spirits)or
(if spirits in the guise of things appear)
death's:any world must always half perceive.

Only whose vision can create the whole

(being forever born a foolishwise
poudhumble citizen of ecstasies
more sleep than climb can time with all his years)

he's free into the beauty of the truth;

and strolls the axis of the universe
-love. Each believing world denies,whereas
your lover(looking through both life and death)
timelessly celebrates the merciful

wonder no world deny may or believe

Can Kenny convince
completely compentent crowds
" commit correctly"?

to travel to town;
time's ticking toward talking
through thorough thoughts.

Here is what I read that sparked my question at dinner over the use of the albatross as a symbol of Christ.

"If I enumerate in a work of art those pure forms which carry primary meanings, I subject that work that work of art to pre-iconographical description. Thus, in describing King Lear, one might list he configurations or forms he finds in that particular play: pelicans, vipers, blind men, mad men.
"To go beyond such elementary listing, and treat those configurations as carriers of secondary meanings, to treat, that is to say, notsimply the thing itself but what that thing stands for beyond the primary level of mere denotation, is to enter on iconography. A pelican is a kind of bird. But conventionally it has been used as an emblem of Christ. who feeds or repasts his flock - the phrase belongs to Laertes, In Hamlet - with his own life's blood. A winged man, a lion, an ox, an eagle, these, in conjunction, in Christian literature and art, figure by convention the Four Evangelists. The image of a fish betokens jesus Christ. In vaticinal poetry, men and women are symbolized in a character of animals and birds. The magpie may stand for an odious priest, and the dragon for any Welsh prince; or, if the time is propitious, for Own Glendower; or later, robert Aske, the Licolnshire rebel; or, it may be, for Anti-Christ, the Dragon of Babylon.
"The form, then, is charged with secondary meaning . It has become an image. Kig Lear, of course, is compounded of images. It is the business of the iconographer to describe them. . . . "

Taken from the beginning of _'King Lear' In The Renaissance_ by Russel A. Fraser, from the collection of essays "Shakepeare's Poetics - in relation to King Lear".

I looked up Albatross at dictionary.com and in my hard copy dictionary. This is what it had-

Albatross [[ altered , prob infl by Latin albus, white < Sp alcatraz, lit. pelican < Port. pelican, orig., bucket < Ar ak qadus, water-wheel basket, scoop < Gr Kados, cask, jar, prob. < Heb kad, water jug]] 1. A web-footed bird, of the genus Diomedea, of which there are several species. They are the largest of sea birds, capable of long-continued flight, and are often seen at great distances from the land.They are found chiefly in the southern hemisphere. 2. [[from the bird used as a symbol of guilt in a poem by Coleridge]] a burden or source of distress, esp., one that impairs effective action; often int he phrase 'an albatross around one's neck'.

Pelican [[ME < OE pellicane < LL (Ec) pelicanus < Gr pelekan (used in LXX to transl. Heb ka'ath, bird of prey), akin to pelekas, woodpecker, prob, < pelekys, an ax (from the shape of the bill) akin to Skr. para[,c]u.]] [Written also pelecan.] Any large webfooted bird of the genus Pelecanus, of which about a dozen species are known. They have an enormous bill, to the lower edge of which is attached a pouch in which captured fishes are temporarily stored. Note: The American white pelican (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) and the brown species (P. fuscus) are abundant on the Florida coast in winter, but breed about the lakes in the Rocky Mountains and British America.

I also found this when I looked up Pelican online at dictionary.com -
Pelican in her piety (in heraldry and symbolical art), a representation of a pelican in the act of wounding her breast in order to nourish her young with her blood; -- a practice fabulously attributed to the bird, on account of which it was adopted as a symbol of the Redeemer, and of charity.

The reference in King Lear to pelicans is in Act III, scene iv (line 69) :

KING LEAR :
Death, traitor! Nothing could have subdued nature
To such a lowness but his unkind daughters.
Is it the fashion that discarded fathers
Should have thus little mercy on their flesh?
Judicious punishment! 'twas this flesh begot
Those pelican daughters.

---

PS. Totally unrelated, I found this fascinating web site while loking up 'Christ and pelican' on the Internet- http://www.cannabisculture.com/backissues/cc11/christ.html

UPDATE 02.22.01 - http://www.kwantlen.bc.ca/~donna/sca/pelican/

Misc notes from George Braziller's "Hokusai - One Hundred Poets."

Pg 8.
"There are many technical restrictions to the classical Tanka. Words of Chinese origin, which now constitute about half of the words in Japanese, were not permitted. For counting syllables, it should be realized that there are no dipthongs in the pure Japanese language; ae , for instance, counts as two syllables. Long vowels, o and u, also are two syllables, and the final n counts as one. As Kenneth Rexroth points out, the common devices of Western poetry simply do not work because of the nature fo Japanese language. Stress is impossible. rhymes are trivial and alliteration quickly becomes intolerable. With such seemingly impossible restraints, Japanese poetry has produced many materpieces, rich in natural beauty and personal insight.

It is also important to realize that the purely Japanese portion of the spoken language has stayed remarkably consistent through the centuries. Similarly the Hiragana, or syllabic characters, with which the oen hundred poems are mostly written, have remained the same. Hokusai's nurse could probably read much of the earlier poetry, written centuries earlier, only a few words might be strange to her, and even many of those she could pronounce correctly. For a modern speaker of English, on the other hand, Beowulf, written in the eighth century, like some of the Japanese poetry, is a total mystery, both in meaning and in orthography.

Uji - "heavenly, peace"
Ushi/Uki - "evil" or "sorrowfull"
Momiji - any red autumn leaves. Traditionally depicted as maple leaves.
Koe - "voice"
Koi - "love" particularly physical love.

#6 by Chunagon Yakamochi (Otomo No Yakamochi)

If the "Magpie Bridge"
    Bridge by flight of magpies spanned -
White with frost I see :-
    With a deep-laid frost made white :-
    Late, I know, has grown the night.

The "magpie bridge" refers to an old myth, originally Chinese but adopted by the Japanese as their own. Once there as a herdsman, Kengyu, who was in love with a beautiful weaver maiden, Shokujo. But while courting her, he failed to pay attention to his cattle, which wandered intot he heavenly fields and ate all the flowers. The gods therefore decreed that the two lovers were to be seperated by the Ama-No-Kawa or , "River of Heaven" - the Milky Way. On one day a year, the seventh day of the seventh month, the magpies were allowed to make a bridge with their wings across the Milky Way so that the weaver (identified with the star Vega) could cross for an anual visit to her husband, the herdsman (the star Altair). The day is called Tanabata and is celebrated as a holiday in Japan. In the times of the old lunar calendar, the came in autumn, now it is in summer.

Adventure Began
fourteen years ago today.
Left home on a bus.

Seasons go quickly.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
Cycle eternal.