Sonnet 18 | The Professor's Convatorium

I have been away from WordPress blogging and commenting lately, more so than usual, only briefly scanning blogs I follow, but not always or infrequently commenting. As the popular slogan goes these last several months, “unprecedented times,” the unprecedented part is profoundly and painfully true thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The times part is so true as well, as there seems to be little of it for personal hobbies, pleasures, and R&R down-time, e.g. blogging, commenting, or simply finding 1-hour of quiet-time. I am also quite annoyed with WordPress seemingly introducing every year a “newer better version” of the Editor. As if I am free to learn new software programming features like I work full-time for WordPress, this constant frequent changes or complete overhauls rub me a bloody chapped ass! I’ve loosed a fury of expletives at my computer screen so much the last 2-weeks my neighbors are ready to dial the police.

Despite these “unprecedented times” and WordPress incessantly changing their Editors to draft/write new blogs, I jump on here to quickly share a short, romantically moving, classic and soothing Shakespeare Sonnet. I hope it touches you as much as it does me. There is no other modern, renown, multiple Oscar-nominated actor that can recite Shakespeare any better than the late Peter O’Toole. None in my opinion.

*Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?*

I recommend listening to the YouTube clip of O’Toole’s heart-rending oral rendition of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 with your eyes closed. This allows one to imagine every vowel, every eloquent word and rhythm O’Toole seems to effortlessly capture and float upon your ears like a warm whisper.

If you would prefer to read this exquisite Sonnet, I give you the fourteen lines here:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

For all of you, do not forget what makes us uniquely beautifully and brilliantly human with each other.

—-

Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate;
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

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∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼ ∼
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I was contacted over the last several months by a few old, intimate friends, some of which were ex-girlfriends. I considered these now defunct dating relationships (and still do) to be quite significant to my life whether past or present. Now they have disappeared into that mysterious lost world of attachment, again. If history holds true, I should not hear from them again for another ten or twelve months or more, or perhaps never again. Why is that?

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I suppose the freedom and pursuit of happiness and meaningful experience in all of our human interactions is in these cases just too risky an endeavor within the subtle framework of traditional attachment. These situations sadden me to be honest because it was they who missed me and contacted me after so long. I find this curious and perplexing… and so I write.

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I did not graduate from elementary and junior high school by passing one subject. I did not graduate from high school or college by passing one subject. As obvious as those implications might seem, why did we all take so many various subjects throughout our educations? What did it benefit us? Why was it required to pass many subjects? Could we not have functioned or succeeded in life just as well with only one single subject of study? Of course not, so why should our relationships/friendships be any different?

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Allow me to put this analogy in another perspective. How about your teachers or your classmates? Would it be considered well and fine if they forbid you to study any other subject but their own? Or what about the not so ancient business of human slavery? Isn’t it fine and well to own slaves to benefit the personal well-being of the owner? Of course not, so why should our relationships/friendships be any different?

Yet, too often I discover this curious, perplexing attachment in relationships today. One subject and one subject only… and it seems to be either chosen or enforced, verbally or non-verbally, in action or by passiveness. Very reminiscent of ages and civilizations gone when proprietary rights ruled in all aspects of life and home.

Edgar Cayce believed, as I believe, that soul mates (i.e. persons in our life that through interaction we become acutely aware of our shortcomings and our abilities) were to be embraced…forever.

“Soul mates (not one but many) are individuals that are not our full compliment or other half that makes us complete, but rather in being with those individuals we are provided with an impetus to become whole ourselves AND to offer the same to them.”

Fullfillment, happiness, problems or obstacles are all presented in the relationships/friendships for a purpose:

“they are infinite opportunities of invaluable assistance to mature mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Soul mates are not to be feared by a partner, but on the contrary should be encouraged by both to grow as they may.”

How well do you live freely? How well do you love freely? How deeply and how freely are YOU loved…and how freely is it given?

“…When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.“

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