The Panopticon: Dealing with Loss

The Panopticon: Dealing with Loss
My sister turned me on to Franklin's blog. I am more of a lurker, though. But this post does sum up nicely my beliefs regarding umbrellas and my proclivity for losing many, many things. For awhile there, I kept buying and losing umbrellas quickly. I found a green one in a lecture hall that I appropriated. Lost my last one in England of all places. Bought one and have held onto it for awhile, though it's probably because I don't use it as much.

The whole concept of losing things reminds me of Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art" which I actually liked when I taught it during my ENG 218 class. Probably has something to do with the style and the rhyme, and it's clever, kind of like one of Dorothy Parker's poems. Here it is.

Elizabeth Bishop
One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

They've just released a book on Elizabeth Bishop, about her letters; it seemed interesting, perhaps. Saw an interview on Charlie Rose who I normally don't watch as his smugness annoys me. Not that I need more books. Am still trying to make a dent in the stuff I've got. Just finished the book Sex Lives of the Hollywood Goddesses which is a lurid pink color. I got it for like 2 bucks at a book sale. Pretty much what I expected and there were some things about them I didn't exactly want or need to know. Plus, the guy who wrote it is British so some of his phrasing is odd. Thus endeth Babs' poetry corner which always reminds me of Dot's Poetry Corner from Animaniacs. I loved that show.

Why my I-Tunes is calling up "19" by Paul Hardcastle, I don't know, but seems oddly appropriate that it came out in the 80s, as the 8os were all about the 60s. As evidenced by all those movies where the 60s generation came to term with their adulthood. Like Big Chill and so forth.