"On Monsieur's Departure" - Queen Elizabeth I

Queen Elizabeth I, circa 1575
artist unknown
Oil on panel, 113 x 78.7 cm

One last poem for National Poetry Month!

Ever since I heard Glenda Jackson read this poem as she played Elizabeth I in the BBC series Elizabeth R, I haven't been able to get it out of my head. The music of the words, the opposition in the images, and the melancholy cadence just come together in a unique way. Plus there's the fact that it's a tantalizing glimpse into the mind and heart of a well-known - yet enigmatic and private - ruler.

Elizabeth wrote this poem shortly after ending her courtship with the Duke of Alencon, which was likely her last chance at a married life and for children of her own to continue the Tudor dynasty. 

For my part, I have always believed that Elizabeth never meant to marry and not for any of the overly dramatic or weird medical reasons put forth by historians. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that a highly intelligent woman, like Elizabeth, who had power and security would never wish to give up either to a husband. 

Even so, she must have had some moments of regret about having to make this choice. And I've always read that regret in these lines. I doubt she truly second-guessed her choice, as it was the only choice that made sense for her, but all of us sometimes wonder - in our introspective moments - what if...

On Monsieur's Departure

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.

    I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,

    Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

His too familiar care doth make me rue it.

    No means I find to rid him from my breast,

    Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

Let me or float or sink, be high or low.

    Or let me live with some more sweet content,

    Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

- Queen Elizabeth I

St. John (Day 3)

Honeymoon Bay (from seestjohn.com)

Once we got completely disconnected from normal life, it was time to dive in. Literally! We started off this day with an spontaneous return to Honeymoon Bay. We had been here before, but it's so close to Cruz Bay and we enjoyed it so much that we decided to go back. Plus, with only one cruise ship arriving at St. Thomas, the odds that hordes of people would a) take a side trip to St. John, and b) spend that trip at Honeymoon Bay instead of the more popular Trunk Bay was small.

We were right! And we were rewarded with an almost deserted beach and a morning of excellent snorkeling. Honeymoon Bay is shallow and sandy all along the beach, so even someone totally unused to snorkeling can feel good about getting started. Off to either side of the bay are reefs that spread away from the beach into deeper water. Also, in the deeper middle area of the bay, is a grassy bottom. So you have just about everything for everyone. We tend to stick to the reefs over by Salomon Bay (on the left side of the bay as you face it).

Visibility was terrific and the water was pretty warm. Pelicans skim the water, sometimes gliding quite close to us. In waist deep water we were surrounded by schools of small fry with silver-neon stripes on their backs. Bigger fish darted in and out of the schools looking for an early lunch. Off by the reefs, we peeked into a crevice and saw a huge, colorful fish hanging shyly in the shadows. He had to be three feet long with a rounded head about the size of my own with puckered lips. No idea what that fish was, but it was an awesome sighting. There was also a sea turtle encounter in the grassy region but, unlike most turtles, this one was content to munch on his grass despite my presence. He was probably a bit bigger than my torso in size, and it was cool to just hang out watching him for a while. And of course, we enjoyed the usual host of sea critters. As for the coral, there was plenty of elkhorn, sea fans, some brain coral, and a few other varieties that I don't know the names for.

Jim enjoying a gimlet

After we were done with the bay, we hit the gift shop. This was to cancel out the $20 parking fee with a purchase. Last visit, we picked up a set of wooden bowls, and we got a larger version this time to go with them. During this trip to St. John I was determined to have some shopping successes. However, this was the only purchase we made. The shopping on St. John is just not very good.

Back at Andante, we sunned and swam. As evening came on, Jimmy made gimlets! It was very relaxing to sit on the deck with the sea breeze around us, 'getting happy', and enjoying the view.

More so than in past visits, there were a good number of large sea birds gliding past and above the villa. Since we're quite high up the island the wind is pretty strong here, and yet these birds go minute after minute without so much as a twitch of a wing. I think I recall reading in Oceanus magazine about how they manage to do this (have to re-read that article!).

Later, Jim won his sixth game of hand and foot in a row. Bad cards. Jim twice went out while I had still had my foot, which contained a red three. Grrrrr! I was officially pissed off. Not that I'm competitive or anything but...I vowed that before the vacation was over that Jim was gonna go down!

Villa View: Sunset over Chocolate Hole

We watched the sun set and then, later at night, did some stargazing. While my knowledge of the sky is not what it used to be, I was able to pick out several objects my own: Mars, Orion, Sirius, Rigel, and the massive red supergiant Betelguese. A tablet app helped us with the rest: Jupiter was brilliant near the zenith and we also located Arcturus, Castor, Pollux, Aldebaran, and a bunch of others. The stars always shine so beautifully on St. John, and we could definitely see the reddish tint of Mars and Betelguese with the naked eye.

What we did not see was the meteor shower. We had heard that the Lyrid meteor shower was happening and stayed up a little later than usual to watch but...nothing. As we researched a little, we learned that the best time for observing would be between 230AM and dawn. Forget it! I'm on vacation! Further, since we planned to hike on the hot and dry South side of the island the next day, we needed our sleep.

St. John (Day 2)

one of the views from the villa (click to expand)

After the Arrival Day Blues were over, Day 2 was much better!

This is all part of our arrival day strategy. On our first full day on St. John, we always plan to have no plans. Going by the mantra that inaction is not inactivity, we spent all of Day 2 at the villa we rented (Andante by the Sea). No driving, no planning, no thinking, no potential stress. An entire day to do nothing but to lie in the sun, swim in the private pool, nap in the hammock, eat, and read. The sole point of this day is to sloooow the pace waaaaay down.

And we succeeded! Within a few hours, I was in a state of samadhi via osmosis. On the rare occasions I thought about anything outside the villa or beyond the bay, the thought was like a cloud blowing by in the sky. "Yup," I'd think, "there is an outside world...oh look, it's floating away...bye bye!" Back to my nap.

By the end of the day, we had a little color going from laying out in the sun. During midday, when the sun gets really hot, I set up camp in the hammock. It's shaded by the upper deck, and there's a constant breeze to keep this comfortable. I spent at least an hour there, napping while rocking in the breeze, reading about the latest in supersymmetry, staring over the turquoise water, and listening to the ocean.

The surprise of the day was when Jim spotted an iguana that had come very close to the edge of the deck. Usually the iguanas stick to the cacti, watching us without much interest. There are usually between three to six on any given day (hence the name for the road leading up to Andante: Iguana Road).

However, on this particular day, the juicy petals of a flowering tree that rose to the edge of the deck were too tempting for this particular guy to resist. As he munched away on his afternoon snack he was close enough to touch. Of course, we were smart enough to settle for some up-close photos Jim took with his tablet. You can click this photo to expand.

Having left behind the normal pace of life, our arrival strategy is officially complete. Day 3 is the day we begin actual vacation activities...fully rested and relaxed. It works every year.

After Hours

Photo: Dave Dugdale/Flickr Creative Commons

Having fun going through my backlog of poetry to celebrate National Poetry Month...

I wrote 'After Hours' back in 1997 or 1998, during my last year living in Chicago proper. Techno music and its related sub-genres were bubbling just under the surface of pop culture, threatening to cross over and revitalize pop music. Unfortunately, this never really happened. However, it made for an exciting time to be into music and living in a city like Chicago where the dance music scene was so vibrant.

During this time, I was also reading very deeply about theoretical physics and planetary science. It was only natural that the science and music - two very different sources of inspiration - would surface in some fused format within the imagery of my poetry.

After Hours

Black garbed,
svelte,
I rave solo -
a gold ankh
painted on my jeans
to say more
than words.

Addicted to goa trance,
tangential to the cliques,
like a mix
I don't stop.
I get on up,
then chill
and feel the DJ
til the cops come.

Afterwards -
on moonless nights -
I 5AM cab
to the sea
and watch starlight
shining from galaxies
I'll never visit
glisten on the waves
washing to my feet.

I am not small;
the universe is big.

- Peter Cholewinski

St. John (Day 1)

Our fourth trip to St. John has begun (and ended, since we're back now). I'll be posting about our adventures for anyone who might be thinking about visiting St. John.

This is our fourth trip to the island; we've gone every other year for eight years. We stay at the same villa (Andante by the Sea) each time, and we recommend staying on the island as opposed to a cruise for the privacy and freedom to explore.  Despite its small size, St. John encourages exploration and return trips because - even though we are now familiar with the island - we always find new things to do or experience each time we visit. This time out, the new stuff we planned on were deep sea fishing (which technically we've done before but just not here), snorkeling Great Lameshur Bay, and hiking Ram's Head Trail.

Another reason we like coming back to the island is that our familiarity with it sure comes in handy on arrival day. For me, arrival days are a mess wherever we travel. There's just no use planning otherwise or trying to avoid it; something always goes wrong and we end up so tired we just want to eat, chill out for a few hours, and go to bed. Day 2 is when good things start to happen.

So, because we know our routine for getting to and arriving at St. John, the 'Arrival Day Blues' sting a lot less. And we were certainly put to the test this time. Our connecting flight to St. Thomas was delayed by half an hour, which meant we wouldn't get to the villa until dinner time (and we'd have to go grocery shopping in order to have something to eat for dinner). When we got to St. Thomas, heavy rain kept us sitting on the runway long enough to miss the 4PM ferry to Cruz Bay. When we finally got to St. John, we learned there was no power on a good chunk of the island due to the storm (including Andante). On the one hand, it was no big deal since we never use AC when island breezes are so plentiful. On the other hand, island breezes don't keep a fridge cold or light an electric stove. Arrival Day Blues, for sure!  While we didn't get angry or bitchy, I won't lie that I was very bummed. What an awful start!

Soon enough, the rain stopped. We sat out under the stars, which were especially brilliant due to the outage. In a few hours, the power came on. We unpacked, got settled, had dinner, and went to bed knowing tomorrow would be better. Another arrival day survived!

The Power of Words

In another post, I compared writing rhymed poetry with spell casting, mainly referring to the rhythm of the poem when it's read or spoken. However, it also occurs to me that poetry is like spell casting because it makes such powerful use of words.

Unlike prose, poetry doesn't use or need full sentences. A good poem condenses meaning so as to be conveyed by a fraction of the words used in a story or novel. By choosing the most powerful words to convey all the nuance intended, poetry taps the power of words more than any other form of written communication. It takes into account connotation and denotation, they way things sound, and how it flows.

"Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it." - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part II

If You Have No Wings

As April is National Poetry Month...

2014 has not been an easy year so far and, as often happens in such situations, this poem comes to mind. I wrote it in 1987 when I was transitioning (slowly) through college and into full, independent adulthood. At that time, I didn't have a plan. My friends had all gone away to college, I hadn't admitted to myself I was gay, I didn't know what I wanted to do career-wise, and - most difficult - I didn't have a passion to drive my life. I felt myself idling when I had a lot of big decisions to make. It was all too big and overwhelming to think about.

I started writing 'If You Have No Wings' to vent. Only during the writing process, did the poem change from a venting session into a solution (note how it changes between first person and me telling myself what to do - not a conscious thing!). Poetry and art have often served me in this manner. I can feel my way through something that I can't assess in a linear or logical manner.

I've re-read this poem at several tough times during life. And, just like when I wrote it, it doesn't give me any answers. It reminds me we don't need answers to live. Taking a small step causes the next step to suggest itself. Before long, there's a path. That can be all the answer we need and, sometimes, all the answer there is.

If You Have No Wings

So the angel said,
"Fly to me."

I have no wings.
I have no things
that shall let me do
that which I cannot.

But all our wisdom
is limited by poor vision,
and the powers we possess
stunted by indecision.

So if you have no wings -
then walk!
If you have not the things -
then do without!

Someday I will be
greater...wiser,
but for now,
I must do without.

- Peter Cholewinski

"Invictus" - William Ernest Henley

It's national poetry month again! My first post for the month is this inspirational poem written by Wiliam Ernest Henley when he was 17 and recovering from having one of his legs amputated. It's a great anthem.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the Pit from pole to pole, 
I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
Under the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody, but unbowed. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years 
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 
How charged with punishments the scroll, 
I am the master of my fate: 
I am the captain of my soul.