From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Sat Mar 09 2002 - 16:15:46 MST
Dear Jeff,
If you had been born in the twelfth century, then you would not have
needed to go to Troubadour School. Further..., your particular mastery
of lexicon would have facilitated a european-wide chain of Troubador
Schools.
>It was you then who seized upon this fiction, and turning it into whole
>cloth--fueled no doubt by a sincere and worthy devotion--dived into a
>frenzy of competetive slithering,
(I like competitive slithering !)
>hoping to secure your place at Amara's feet. Then she, the ever playful,
>with a show of kind regard for you, danced the dance of the
>over-achiever upon your prostrate, but no doubt grateful, form,
I hope Spike is OK.. :-)
>as she sang, "Carbuncle, rampallion, tra la, tra la, tra la, ere
>vultures grip mine eyes."
I rather like Elizabethan-debasing. If you want to insult someone
(or yourself), how can you beat
"Thou frothy clay-brained jolthead!"
or
"Rogue, avant, ye plague-sore!"
or
"Ye son and heir of a mongrel bitch!" ?
And since people swore by their beards, their swords, their honors,
you can throw that in too:
"By my hammer and tongs, you bottle-ale rascal!"
But then there's the danger that the other will be laughing too hard to
take you seriously.
>Personally, I prefer--it's a personal preference thing, you see,... to
>each his own--to formulate the character of those I admire from a
>loftier vision than that which one sees looking down at
[...]
?So then, for Amara, I choose the Olympian indomitabilty of Athena,
>stardust warrior, and the elegant craftsmanship of the Wright
>brothers--now THAT'S what I call the Wright stuff--from bicycle to
>"tumbling mirth of sunsplit clouds", and thence, no doubt, to gleaming
>starship. Amara standing tall, the veil of Maya streaming behind her in
>the solar wind.
Troubadorism (*) is in your blood Jeff. Truly. You reign supreme. :-)
Thanks for the solar wind streaming, and for the hearty lofty laughs.
Amara
(*) Some history, what say he? The Troubadors in the twelfth century
were poets of a certain character, they were the nobility of
Provence, and then later other parts of France and Europe. The
Trabadours have links to the even older Sufi poets. They (the
Trabadours) were wiped out in Provence in the Albigensian Crusade of
1209, launched by Pope Innocent III.
They were the first in the West who really thought of love as the
way we do now: as a person-to-person relationship. Well everyone
knows that, but their sociological contribution goes far deeper.
They were interested in the psychology of love as a personal,
individual experience, and they had the courage to affirm their
emotional experience against the tradition of the Church. ("libido
over credo", the mythologist Joseph Campbell calls it). Their accent
was on the individual, and they taught that one should have faith in
his experience and not mouth terms handed down to him by others.
You can see some traces of the Trabadours' life, still in Provence.
Les Baux de Provence is an old village and castle ruins located
on a detached (cliffs on all sides) portion of the Alpilles
mountains. (You would miss _alot_ if you travel by car, so take your
bicycle, please.) In the twelfth century, it was famous as a court
of love. To become a member, the women had to be of noble birth,
well-read and beautiful. Troubadours came from all of the southern
provinces and composed passionate verses in praise of these ladies.
The prize awarded to the best poet was a crown of peacock feathers
and a kiss from the lady in question.
http://www.provenceweb.fr/e/bouches/baux/baux.htm
-- ******************************************************************** Amara Graps, PhD email: amara@amara.com Computational Physics vita: ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt Multiplex Answers URL: http://www.amara.com/ ******************************************************************** "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." --Anais Nin
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