Thursday, November 6, 2008

The Rainbow Comes and Goes


Im the sort of person who is fascinated more by footnotes than the text itself, by references in passing, by vague allusions, by name dropping, and other such material of the supplementary kind.

I have no idea if there is actually a "sort of person" under whose category i could fall, but nevertheless, i have come to realise that my (usually incredibly superficial) knowledge (if i could even call it that) of random, widely varying things is essentially a by-product of this extreme curiosity for the peripheral. Except that for me, the peripheral = the crux.

I think its because im obsessed with the bottom line. The root cause. The context. The fundamental principle. I cant stand generality. The more i scrutinise the obvious, the more satisified i am. Somehow, it makes me feel like i am finding out the truth about things.

This is how i came to find the poetry of Wordsworth.

Do i even like poetry? Im not exactly even sure.
But at the moment, i really, really like Wordsworth. I like that he saw in the innocence, the instinctive wisdom, the beautiful simplictity of childhood, a greatness.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
-"Ode: Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood"

I think Wordsworth gets my "sort of person".

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