Do not ponder too much

Feeling rather contemplative tonight. Somebody on my friends list at myspace bulletined something today that at first I thought “wow I really like that”, but later started resonating with me in a rather large way.

George’s poetry is characterized by an aristocratic and remote ethos; his verse is formal in style, lyrical in tone, and often arcane in language, being influenced by Greek classical forms, in revolt against the realist trend in German literature at the time. Believing that the purpose of poetry was distance from the world – he was a strong advocate of art for art’s sake, and was influenced by Nietzsche— George’s writing had many ties with the French Symbolist movement. He was in contact with many of its representatives, including Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine.Do not ponder too much
Meanings that cannot be found—
The symbol scenes that no man understands.

The wild swan that you shot, that you kept alive
In the yard for a while, with shattered wing—
He reminded you, you said, of a faraway creature:
Your kindred self that you had destroyed in him.
He languished with neither thanks for your care nor rancor,
But when his dying came,
His fading eye rebuked you for driving him now
Out of a known world into a new cycle of things.

~Stefan George

I wanted to share this poem with a special friend and in doing so, in typical Julia fashion of writing and thinking – nutting things out – all at once, have unearthed ‘something’. (Hey, Shiv, I’m still digging with a pick and shovel, and the ground is awful hard and rocky. Send earthmoving machinery.)

The world is such a big place with so much to learn out there. And I’m only just coming across these things. I’m feeling – I can’t name the feeling – it’s not despair (that’s too strong a word) – that I have wasted all my years getting to where I am now. I feel ignorant. I feel stupid. I know, it’s never too late to start. I don’t think I’d like to do distance ed again though. I need to go to classes to keep myself motivated. And of course there’s no other way of doing it here were I live as there is no campus nearby.

I always thought that IF I took up study again (and that’s a huge if because I pretty much closed the book on that one) I would probably take up the B.Psych (Hon) degree again. Not out of any great huge interest (even though it was the degree I thought I’d do ever since high school) but because it goes more with the career thing of social work/social sciences etc. But now I’m finding I’d be more interested in doing something like literature – something pretty ruddy useless in the grand scheme of things really, but something infinitely more interesting and exciting.

Excuse my ever rambling mind. I guess this was all bought about by a previous discussion with my special friend about his multiple degrees and then Stranger bulletining this poem that I was taken with. So many windows are opening for me that show me glimpses of a huge variety of beautiful, yet seductive, vistas of the world beyond my reality.

Discontent? Yes. Restless in mind and spirit too. And I feel that awful twanging on my existential thoughts again, bringing them back to life. Goddamn it. And it all started with simply wanting to share a poem with my friend. A simple thing.

And so I come to the conclusion after writing all of this, that it is awfully ironic, this poem. All of a sudden it has a great depth of personal meaning to me. A very personal poem indeed.