May 15 2008
Now Am I Dead? Now Am I Fled?
(Bonus points for anyone who knows where this post’s title comes from.)
——
Shall I compare me to a frazzled mom?
I am more sleepy, and delirious.
Rough spills do mess up kitchens clean and fair,
And carpets here are far more vomitous.*
Sometimes too hot the voice of mother speaks,
And often are good children scared to death.
As sometimes mother yells more than she should,
By fluke, or mother’s full exhaustion’s wealth.**
And my eternal packing shall not cease,
Nor lose possession of the junk I claim,
Nor shall the toilet clean pee off itself
When little boys forget just how to aim.
So long as I wade through my duties deep,
So long lives limbo, I shall never sleep***
——
*We had a puking incident today, just after I finished cleaning all the carpets…
**Or possibly because my kids are big fat (but adorable, natch) stinkers
***Yup, still in limbo, with no official end in sight just yet.
(Did you notice that the whole thing is in full sonnet form: 14 lines, in iambic pentameter, rhyming, AND ending in a couplet? Yeah… I felt like I needed to point that out…)
Hang in there…remember drugs ARE your friends…lmao.
HAHAHAH
You would not have had to point out your sonnet . . . you had me at “shall I compare thee to a frazzled Mom.”
well done and may your days ahead be far from stressful.
Iambic pemschmameter!
Oooo! Oooh! (Raising my hand.) That’s one of Bottom’s lines in Midsummer Night’s Dream, isn’t it? During the pseudo play where he’s dying as Pyramus. I think. My son did a hysterical rendition of that scene for a 6th grade Shakespeare doo-hickey. Proud mama was I. He stole the show.
And I’m way impressed with your full-fledged sonnet! Anyone who even KNOWS the sonnet form belongs on my “cool person” list, so you’re like, #1 or something.
I noticed the sonnet in the first line. Good job on that. Sorry about the puking incident. Hope things get better soon.
That’s one of Shakespeare’s most famous sonnets, though admittedly much more amusing. Is it number XVI? I can’t remember the number anymore, but I do remember the entire sonnet verbatim. (Thanks Voice & Diction I!)
You are the cutest dork ever. Love yah! Hope the frazzeledness settles down soonly.
Brillig, this is completely brilliant! Seriously. It’s a fantastic sonnet, even better parody, and so … so … so… TEACHABLE. I know you may think I’m nuts, but I teach the Shakespeare sonnet “Shall I compare thee” every year to my freshman. Would you mind if I used this too? Seriously, I’ve been trying to work up a good lesson on parody and its uses, and this would be just the thing… Can I, Please? Also, I’m sending this to every brainiac mother I know for amusement’s sake. I love it.
Okay. Done gushing. Thanks for stopping at my place today too.
I m,ust be the dorkiest dork in Dorktown, because not only did I notice, I double checked to make sure (not that I was gonna correct you or anything, as you are frazzled, but I had to make sure - and I had to make us of my English degree)
I did notice. What marvelous talent!
Incredible parody - and of course, play within a play in Midsummer!
Brilliant!
(I’m feeling a wee bit dork-ish. I did have to be reminded. Didn’t spend me enough time on my bard, apparently–even with three or four classes worth.)
A sonnet!
You are way too cool for words.
Loved it.
fantastic but my favorite line has to be “Nor shall the toilet clean pee off itself” It just doesn’t get better than that.
Loved it! I think you should number the lines out in the margins so we can quote from them refer to them more readily.
And I’m guessing that obsessing over a perfect parody of a sonnet is perhaps the ONE thing that kept you sane today! Cheers!
Too funny! One of my fave Shakespeare sonnets… although the one about his lover having wires for hair and bad breath is good, too.
It is Midsummer’s Night Dream! I had to double check, but it is! Wow… that’s a whole lot of the Bard right there. Kudos girl!
Very clever! But can you do it to a hip-hop beat?
Great post!
You are aaamazing!
Yes, being frazzled will bring out the best in all of us, I did notice! That was absolutely brilliant and I wish I know what the vomit thing is, it’s going on at my house too.
Thanks for sharing this nice sonnet.I like sonnet very much.
Brillig my sweet, that was fabulous. I hope the limbo doth bu**er off soon.
I am impressed–with sonnet delivered so perfectly!
I am impressed–that with all that’s going on in your life right now, you had time and creativity to WRITE a sonnet–and it made sense LOL!
You’re a wonder–I know I wonder about you with every post
A sonnet, indeed. And no need to point out your damn brilliance, it intimidates on it’s own.
I love your PYRAMUS-raculous self all the way to the BOTTOM and back, babe.
I am thinking of you (in full Winnie the Pooh fashion: think-think-think) and for the record, I miss you. Bad.
Wow - you’ve never taken the boring path. Nicely done! Truly brilligant, truly.
Loving you a whole heck-of-a.
Sounds like just another day in the life of an uber-literate mom. Brava, my dear.
There was a fantastic production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at our local Shakespeare festival last summer. See what you are missing by not living next door?
Midsummer is always a good choice for students, since it has many good roles, not depending on any single one for success. An exception is Bottom, of course; if he is not funny, the mechanicals’ scenes fall flat, and the rest of the play with them. Bottom is a character like Con Melody, someone who wants to play big, gallant roles in contrast to his all-too-ordinary self. Again as with Con, this is precisely the kind of role that the traditional realistically-trained American actor finds problematic. How do you play a ham when your teachers and directors have been squeezing all the hamminess out of you for years? Well, at Juilliard, they do not teach acting by having you replicate your everyday behavior; you play the character, not yourself. The result here was the hilarious turn by Francois Battiste, a young black actor who last year won the school’s John Houseman Prize for exceptional ability in classical theatre. His version of Bottom, dressed in gang-banger gear, spoke jive talk at first but when performing switched to an Olivier-style British intonation, which was so funny that I had to fight not to laugh too much, because I did not want to miss a word. After Bottom’s death as Pyramus in the final scene, Battiste leapt about the stage like Baryshnikov, crying “Now am I dead, / Now am I fled; / My soul is in the sky,” etc., until Nick Westrate, playing Peter Quince, came out and began to strangle him! Ever since Jan Kott’s famous book Shakespeare Our Contemporary came out in the sixties, the tendency has been to play Midsummer as a depressing treatise on pathological behavior; I was delighted that Dowling and Battiste decided instead to play it for what it is, one of the funniest plays ever written.
Thus, if you are in New York and are feeling sticker shock at the hundred-dollar theatre tickets, check out the Juilliard website. The Drama Division is putting on plays regularly, and, as noted, they are free. You do need a reservation, however. Also, I am afraid that if too many people start to take advantage of their shows, they may close them to outsiders. Let us keep this hidden treasure to ourselves.