Tim Goldsmith

Having published my poem last week, I was listening to a Church History lecture the very next day while I jogged & it mentioned the 9th Century theologian, Predestinationist & poet, Gottschalk of Orbais. I was all excited to track down some of Gottschalk’s poems, but am yet to be successful.

That’s just fine for me, because I thought I would take you to a little C.S. Lewis first. Jack (says Tim, faking some kind of personal connection by using the nickname Lewis had from childhood) really was a multi-talented man. His essays are still my favourites, but the Narnia Series is a classic & the Perelandria series pretty stellar (no pun intended) also!

His Poetry catches you by surprise when you realise how good it is too. I have read a fair bit of Fantasy in my life, and inevitably ever author has an Elf, Dwarf, Human or some other being break out into verse or song. Usually, fantasy authors ought to stick to prose, but Lewis is a different matter.

For your enjoyment today, I have two poems. One incredibly short, the other of middle size. The first about the natural beauty of women, the second about the heart wrenching way that loss affects all of your life. They’re two favourites, and I suspect that many more of Lewis’ poems will come in later weeks.

(I still, for the life of me, can’t get the formatting that is clear on my screen to translate when I publish…)

Unnamed poem.

Lady, a better sculptor far Chiselled those curves you smudge and mar, And God did more than lipstick can To justify your mouth to man.

Joys that Sting

Oh doe not die, says Donne, for I shall hate All women so. How false the sentence rings. Women? But in a life made desolate It is the joys once shared that have the stings.

To take the old walks alone, o not at all, To order one pint where I ordered two, To think of, and then not to make, the small Time-honoured joke (senseless to all but you);

To laugh (oh, one’ll laught), to talk upon Themes that we talked upon when you were there, To make some poor pretence of going on, Be kind to one’s old friends, and seem to care,

While no one (O God) through the years will say The simplest, common word in just your way.

I’ll not sully them by trying to explain or exegete…

A nice way to celebrate St. Patrick’s day and the ability to shoot in HD…

I’m not the most poetic individual on earth, but I have always agreed with the proverb that “a word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver(1).” I always feel that I should write poetry, but rarely ever get around to it. Likewise, I feel I ought to read it more often, but don’t usually stray beyond the shorter works of C.S. Lewis, or Robert Frost.

Last week at “priestly formation” a guest speaker brought in some of his favourite poems and he convinced me that I ought to chase down more aptly spoken words. So maybe on tuesdays, or maybe just this tuesday, I’ll share one with you. (Can any lawyers tell me if I am doing something illegal here?)

“FIve Ways to Kill a Man” by Edwin Brock

(apologies for the lack of formatting. It’s formatted where I enter it, but not coming up on the site…)

There are many cumbersome ways to kill a man.

You can make him carry a plank of wood to the top of a hill and nail him to it.

To do this properly you require a crowd of people wearing sandals, a cock that crows, a cloak to dissect, a sponge, some vinegar and one man to hammer the nails home.

Or you can take a length of steel, shaped and chased in a traditional way, and attempt to pierce the metal cage he wears.

But for this you need white horses, English trees, men with bows and arrows, at least two flags, a prince, and a castle to hold your banquet in.

Dispensing with nobility, you may, if the wind allows, blow gas at him. But then you need a mile of mud sliced through with ditches, not to mention black boots, bomb craters, more mud, a plague of rats, a dozen songs and some round hats made of steel.

In an age of aeroplanes, you may fly miles above your victim and dispose of him by pressing one small switch. All you then require is an ocean to separate you, two systems of government, a nation’s scientists, several factories, a psychopath and land that no-one needs for several years.

These are, as I began, cumbersome ways to kill a man.

Simpler, direct, and much more neat is to see that he is living somewhere in the middle of the twentieth century, and leave him there.

What do you think? What’s in the last stanza? Is it implying that we have the freedom & opportunity to look back at 2000+ years of brutal history & yet we don’t learn? Or is it pointing to unparalleled dangers in a modern society?

Either way, it’s a beautifully written poem!

(1) I Digress: I have a bit of a thing for bookmarks. Much to my beloved wife’s consternation, I had to track down a bookmark from just about every place we visited on our honeymoon. Many of them just sit in a box. Occasionally I remember to leave them in a book. I think part of my my little addiction came from the first time I ever read “Lord of the Rings” as a primary school kid of 11. I remember borrowing “the Fellowship of the Ring” and finding a textured card bookmark inside, with a beautiful picture of a golden apple on a silver trellis. I used that bookmark from 6th grade till I lost in in about year 10. It guided me through maybe hundreds of books during my literary golden age. I tasted and digested (and now, unfortunately, have mostly forgotten) many aptly spoken words, and that little icon came with me… What I’d give to find that book mark again! Every other bookmarks since, valuable though it maybe, laden with memories of Scottish summer days, or eating fresh bread under the Eiffel tower, are still just a poor cousin to my constant reading companion. Is it odd for me to have such a powerful connection to a piece of cardboard?

I made this fella and a bunch of his mates because I was struggling without any sweetness in my life. You see, I gave up chocolate for lent. Usually I don’t go a day without chocolate, so this new endeavour (now just a day shy of being a MONTH!) has kicked me for a bit of a loop! There has been a part of me that felt like I was cheating by having Gingerbread men. After all, if I were at an addicts meeting, they’d probably just tell me that I was swapping one addiction for another. There has been an even bigger part of me, however, that felt that this was a silly exercise all together. That “Capital “R” Reformed” part of me that says that occasions like lent are purely for Catholics & I ought not be involved in an activity that appears to promote the role of works in my salvation!

I’d say now that I need to repent for that mindset.

I was chatting to my boss when I first thought about the whole exercise & she challenged me to look at things again…

Are there things that are in my life that actually create some kind of barrier between me & God? Are there things that I have a greater sense of loyalty to than God? I have to say that I was probably more consistent over the passage of a year eating chocolate than I am reading my Bible! The boss challenged me that maybe lent isn’t a time for “Showing God that I can suffer too,” but rather, a chance to try & break down some of those barriers.

Is there time eating chocolate (or fast food, the other one to go) that might be spent in prayer or contemplation? Or maybe can I just gain some balance in my life again. Remember what things in my life are the rare pleasures & what aspects are really supposed to be part of my every day?

So my little ginger friend gets to stay. He reminds me that I’m not chasing after a physical proof of some kind of extra-human commitment… and he certainly helps cure the craving!

When I logged into my web application thingy, I had no idea what I wanted to write about?

I had been thinking about blogging on “Up in the Air” which I enjoyed a great deal (not surprising, since it was created by the same man who did two other favourites, “Thank you for Smoking” and “Juno”). There’s lots of great themes in the movie: the nature of relationships, our reason for being, the question of what is happiness & can it ever exist consistently?

Instead I decided I wanted to ask a question.

This is possibly a very stupid idea, given that my readership is maybe 5ish…

My question, for all 5 of you is “Why do you go and see movies? To turn your brain on or to turn it off?”

I know a number of people who only want to go to movies if they can guarantee at least one explosion every 10 minutes. They need action, adventure & possibly some gratuitous violence.

I on the other hand love a movie that causes me to think. I want to know what I would do in any given situation, or whether or not I agree with the philosophical presuppositions that the main character holds. Is their moral viewpoint logically consistent? Even better, does some activity in the movie cause me to ask whether I am morally or ethically consistent?

Even something like Avatar has levels to consider. Are we a culture that is getting caught up in nature worship? Is a technological societie’s ability to dominate a weaker (if more ecologically friendly) society just reflect the same kind of relationship we see in nature between, say, the Lion and its prey?

Even when a movie doesn’t ask a deep moral question, I still prefer the “Brain turned on” movies. Something that is dialogue driven, that keeps you thinking, that distorts one’s perception of time or space… It’s nice to inhabit a reality that is profoundly not mine, yet stretches my understanding of my own reality.

What gets you going in a good movie?