Pleasure in a Second

A flash.
The thrill of the throbbing engine
The wind picks up my hair
A spicy chill that floods my veins
In that moment of Ecstasy.

Speed.

The miles are devoured,
The trees fly by
And the blinding rush
Toss my spirits into the wind.

A taste.

In that second,
An immeasurable freedom, a
Lifetime of yearning is fulfilled...

A moment.
Just another moment,

That moment passes.
Has past.

              And I'm intoxicated
With the milk of Paradise.

Fortune

I dreamt of years yet to come,
amidst rolling hills and deep blue skies
a glowing sunset, all the while
my arms around your shoulders, tight

the autumn leaves would blow past
the pond that mirrored a million stars
But I'd see naught but the beauty before me.
So engulfed was I

Your scornful eyes were mellow then,
Your soft hair would drift into my face
Your warmth in my soft embrace
Your smile behind my shuttered eyes.

I woke. With a pain in my chest
And wiped the last tears from wearied eyes
As the dark flower of reality bloomed
The vision faded with the light

Lady Fortune smiled not upon me
And such visions, only will dreams devise.

Sleeping Beauty

I dreamt of a tower built long ago. Surrounded by rolling hills and a garden of peaches.
A hundred sleeping beauties, all in a row, draped over beds and chairs and sofas.
And whittling away at a bench, an old woman grey.
Forever bent over the kitchen stove, serving cold breakfast to a dozing dragon.

Souless.

I have no faith, no religion.
I am not lost, not broken, not unsaved.
There is no Absolute Truth, no Damnation.
There is me, the world and my own way.
There is no hope when there is no hope,
No fear when there is no danger and no Love when there is no person.
I have no Dependence upon which I cannot see and cannot feel.
They tell me its freedom, they tell me it's hell.
They tell me many things because to them, I am Lost, Unsaved, Broken. A leaf in a tornado, a sheep in a flood.
But I am not one of them. I cling to my own truth, watch it scatter, shatter and fade away. I create others in a world of my own imagination and strength.

You speak of the tears you share and the pains you carry together. That I envy, and long for.
You speak of the Truth that remains solid within you heart, a heart bigger than your mind and a faith stronger than your body.
But for me, there is no eternity only now. And I wonder.
Is it you or I that shall win in the end?

Lady Red

A flame flickers in a hearth.
Red, golden.
And shadows that dance within.
Lost as I awaken.

The spark of one word fades
And fades into the darkness
Here, I am left blind
Though my eyes are open

The air is thick,
Thick as blood left to dry,
Stained upon white sheets
And lost beneath the waves
A lone fish swims
Lighted by Its own light


I see the flame flicker
And I see the shadows dance,
I see the fire choke
In a cloud of its own ashes.

I see it waver,
and as it dies
The embers glow red
In one last goodbye.

And then it was light
As the ashes turn grey
The cold morning sun
Darkens the way.

Ice Prince

Sempai is cold, like an ice sculpture
Holding hands with ice,
I feel his warmth tug at mine.

His smile is brilliant
Icy, glancing off glacier blue,
I gasp at Perfection.

He brushes against my skin
I lean in
And feather soft flakes kiss
My upturned face.

One hug, I remember,
My breath misted,
My heart was frozen in that moment
Forever in that second
At that time.
I was frozen on the inside

But that's okay.
I quite like it.
I despise heat, for fear
It would melt that precious ice away
and all that's left inside,
a puddle of muddied water
to mirror me.

Romanticism

Romanticism essay:

The mid-18^th-19^th century was marked as an era of social change. The Industrial Revolution not only transformed technology, but also traditional social structures, creating an obsession with obtaining an objective truth and filling humanity with the hope that these new found technology could sate all of humanity’s needs and desires. Romanticism manifested in a group of intelligentsia searching for an alternative social focus, believing that the comprehension of universal laws did not represent the entirety of human potential, and instead chose to revere individual truth and experience. Building upon the philosophies of Kant, Rousseau ad Berkeley, they acknowledged all experience as subjective interpretations, and the importance of self-expression. Subsequently, their art often engage the responder in order to evoke emotion and an interpretive experience. ‘The Voyage of Life’ a series of four painting by Thomas Cole (1840) and ‘The Scarlet Letter’ a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850) are didactic texts embodying in the importance of individualism and highly influential in the course of American Romanticism.

Romanticism is often described as the ‘cult of the individual’. Their interpretation of truth lies within the progress and development of the individual. This emphasis upon the metaphysical sharply contrasts with the Enlightenment’s firm anchor in the material world, which the Romantics believed to be inhumanely rigid and uncreative. In ‘The Voyage of Life’, the man is depicted to be alone throughout the four stages of his life represented by ‘Childhood’, ‘Youth’, ‘Manhood’ and ‘Old Age’. He is situated in a landscape of imaginative ideals; the first two painting are Edenic in their depiction, with the extensive use of expansive natural imagery, bright and warm colour palette, bright lighting and extensive use of warm yellow shades. The angelic figure’s close proximity to the man in both images and its positional upon the same earthly plane indicates his strong personal spiritual connection to the higher power. ‘Manhood’, though hardly idealistic in its imagery, are equally imaginative with its gothic elements. Dark grey, brown and red dominated color palette combined with the descent of the responder’s line of vision in correspondence to the river and the depiction of hellish ghostly figures allude to human suffering and hellish experiences. In ‘Old Age’ he is rewarded experience of the heavenly symbolically represented by the reunion of the angel and the man for his faith, reinforced by the ascent of the line of vision from the man to the heavens following the beam of light. Through ‘The Scarlet Letter’, Hawthorne criticized the repressive excesses of Puritan practices through irony. Historically, Puritans had escaped religious persecution in Old England in order to create a better, visionary world, which is first introduced to the reader by Hawthorne with the image ‘a throng of bearded men, in sad colored garments and gray steeple crowned hats’. The solemnity of the aged men and their lack of joy is thus closely attributed to the ‘steeple crowned hats’ alludes to their religious ardor metaphorically ‘capping’ them. In comparison, when Hester is able to cast aside the judgments of society and follow her own emotions, she is alleviated of her sin in accordance to her own moral values. The favoring of a higher power towards Hester is captured in the scene where she enters the forest with Dimmesdale.  The forest is described to be a ‘moral wilderness’, its geographical remoteness indicative of its separation from the restrictive laws of Puritan society through its description as ‘that wild heathen Nature…never subjugated by human law’ personifying nature as a state of complete freedom . Hester is able to reveal her repressed emotions metaphorically represented by discarding the scarlet A - ‘she undid the…scarlet letter, and…threw it to a distance’; where upon her immediate physical revitalization parallels her soulful recovery. Her new found freedom as suggested by the removal of the cap, a symbol of the serving class and social etiquette, and the choice of verbs and adjectives in the description, ‘played, beamed, glowing, rich, softness’ indicate the completion of her emotional state. The extravagant language here evokes an awe-inspiring aesthetic appreciation for Hester’s renewed physical beauty, further emphasizing that her previous state was unwholesome. America was and continues to be a religiously devoted country, and this manifests in Romanticism through the emphasis upon a personal connection to and search for higher moral powers.  In both these texts, the importance of faith in one’s own moral values and emotional strength perseveres to deliver joy and freedom to the individual.

Romantic art readily embraced the individualism of the responder and worked to engage the responder to derive personal responses, and communicating their message thus. ‘The Voyage of Life’ emphasizes the ability of subliminal aesthetic experience to evoke emotion. In comparison to the scenery, the figure is always rather miniscule and dwarfed by his landscape. The role of the individual is further diminished by the expansive spaces portrayed in the paintings, and the depiction of a blurred or fading horizon in contrast to the limited distinct detail that frames the figure in the foreground. There is a continual use of angular, jagged lines to portray rocks or mountains, evoking an instinctive sense of danger and foreboding within the reader. The irregularity of the imagery also creates an overwhelming feeling, adding to the emphasis upon the need for faith and piety to survive the challenges of life. In the Scarlet Letter, there is a continual discussion of the symbolism of the letter A upon Hester’s breast. Firstly, the sign readily acts as a symbol for adulteress, the intended meaning of the sign. But as Hester’s situation evolves, the sign comes to signify a wide variety of things. Pearl interprets the sign as a replacement for the father she has never known as a result of the letter, and thus to her, it stands for Arthur Dimmesdale. For the sick of the town, they have come to appreciate the internal strength of Hester as shown by–‘she is our Hester’ , where the tone of ownership and affiliation communicates their  admiration. To them, the A communicates Able. The same sign, a scarlet letter A in the sky at the death of the Governer is interpreted to indicate his union with the Angels. The extremely diverse and complicated meaning of the symbol A in accordance to the context and people that interprets it contrasts sharply to the seemingly obvious parallelisms in the novel’s allegorical form, highlighting the need for the responder to develop their own interpretation of the symbols and parallelism throughout the novel, enriching its didacticism. Both the ‘Voyage of life’ and ‘the Scarlet Letter’ engage the responder actively in the interpretation and evocation of their own imagination and emotions, using their form and structure in order to highlight the necessity and importance of individuality in the realization of meaning and art.

Both these texts display a distinctive reverence of subliminal aesthetic experiences in nature, metaphysical strength of the individual and an advocacy for liberation in the ‘Scarlet Letter’ typifies American Romanticism in its context. The Second Revolution of the Jacksonian Era had seen rapid industrial development and westward expansion that had idealized the ‘New Frontier’ with its reverence for nature and both its beauty and terrible power. The increasing tensions in the conflict to abolish slavery and sever last ties with colonial Britain that would eventually lead to the American Civil War appealed to the Romantics in their support for the rights and equality of all individual creative minds, and thus liberation and freedom features strongly as a result. What the enlightenment project had regarded as an obstacle to obtaining the objective truth, the Romantics revered as a spark of divinity within each individual, representing their potential for truth. They developed their own stylistic and thematic character, moving away from portrait and historical events illustrated in painting to rugged landscapes and fear evoking gothics and the creating of the novel in response to a growing literary market. While they had the same goal of obtaining and experiencing an ideal world, they had created a ‘new voice to sing a new song’, with fresh interpretations upon the avenues in which to achieve their unique, individual ideals. Ultimately, Romanticism was rooted as an objection to the Enlightenments acceptance of only objective truths, instead embracing the myriad of contradicting truths that come with each individual.