Monday, August 13, 2007

Wordsworth

A poem I really like... I had copied it and printed it out and then today I happened to find the paper again. Thought I'd share it.

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting
The soul that rises with us
Our life's Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.

William Wordsworth

And today's Jake picture... taken right after he woke up. He woke up ready to start playing and exploring the office.

I have a headache tonight, so that's all you're getting from me for this post ;)
I blame the headache on watching a movie... but it was an interesting movie. It won best foreign film in 1956 and is titled La Strada. Italian. Those old movies are fascinating, and I rather like their slowness, the subtlely, the black and white picture. I am sure finding and watching some interesting movies thanks to Netflix!

2 comments:

El Donaldo said...

It's an interesting poem to read given my train of thought today.

I was thinking of elephants and their generational memory. Despite never having been there, young elephants grow up knowing the way to the Graveyard where every elephant goes to die.

I also know that the human genome carries a lot of what is called junk DNA. Wikipedia even has an entry on junk DNA, which apparently comprises 80% of our genetic code. If it takes a fraction to inform our physical dimensions, what could be in the remainder?

Maybe it's as Wordsworth says:
"The soul that rises with us
Our life's Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting"

..in that our "junk dna" is the memory of ancestors. Unlike elephants, we lack easy decoding. It's locked to us, but there. Given experience, we sometimes touch it, but as instinct it's not explainable.

Moving on...

"Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar
Not in entire forgetfulness"

But why should we even forget? If we were asexual beings, each birth would be a clone of the parent. But sex is our nature.

"And not in utter nakedness
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home."

Ah, poetry.

Lee said...

Love your comment, Donny, thank you! Junk DNA is NOT junk at all... there is so much untapped potential there. Some individuals (not only humans) are able to tap into it more than others... this poem touches on that, but to me it represents more of the fact that our souls come onto this earth, into these bodies, with a purpose, and a veil is drawn over... some remember more than others...