Tuesday, June 8, 2010

DrinkTheRemainder

Hello everyone. Welcome to our travels. We created this blog in order to chronicle our haphazard journey through Peru, my personal Mecca. The title of this blog is a shout back to the time Kristin and Kara left Laine, Sarabeth, and I (the three responsible roommates) alone in our apartment for the week of finals last year. We tried our hardest to keep the apartment tidy but realized by the end of the week that if Kristin and Kara were to walk in, they might die on the spot due to the state of things at bine-oh-five. To hype ourselves up to clean, we had to drink the remainder at ten in the morning and somehow we got the cleaning done (while sleeping in Sisc's bed, performing Ninja and African rituals, and stealing supersmashbrothers from fifth). Anyway- we hope to drink the remainder all trip this trip. Here is a poem about doing just that- which hopefully reflects our attitude toward life and towards these next 5 weeks.

Cliff Klingenhagen
Edwin Arlinton Robinson

Cliff Klingenhagen had me into dine
With him one day; and after soup and meat,
And all the other things there were ot eat,
Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed
It off, and said the other one was mine.
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-wondering when I shall be
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.


eh gooch, wormwood? eh?

3 comments:

  1. Have an amazing time!!! I can't wait to hear all kinds of stories!!!!
    And yes, we did appreciate you doing whatever it took to get motivated for a little cleaning :) Love you ALL!!!

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  2. Canto XII from The Heights of Macchu Picchu

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    Arise to birth with me, my brother.
    Give me your hand out of the depths
    sown by your sorrows.
    You will not return from these stone fastnesses.
    You will not emerge from subterranean time.
    Your rasping voice will not come back,
    nor your pierced eyes rise from their sockets.

    Look at me from the depths of the earth,
    tiller of fields, weaver, reticent shepherd,
    groom of totemic guanacos,
    mason high on your treacherous scaffolding,
    iceman of Andean tears,
    jeweler with crushed fingers,
    farmer anxious among his seedlings,
    potter wasted among his clays--
    bring to the cup of this new life
    your ancient buried sorrows.
    Show me your blood and your furrow;
    say to me: here I was scourged
    because a gem was dull or because the earth
    failed to give up in time its tithe of corn or stone.
    Point out to me the rock on which you stumbled,
    the wood they used to crucify your body.
    Strike the old flints
    to kindle ancient lamps, light up the whips
    glued to your wounds throughout the centuries
    and light the axes gleaming with your blood.

    I come to speak for your dead mouths.

    Throughout the earth
    let dead lips congregate,
    out of the depths spin this long night to me
    as if I rode at anchor here with you.

    And tell me everything, tell chain by chain,
    and link by link, and step by step;
    sharpen the knives you kept hidden away,
    thrust them into my breast, into my hands,
    like a torrent of sunbursts,
    an Amazon of buried jaguars,
    and leave me cry: hours, days and years,
    blind ages, stellar centuries.

    And give me silence, give me water, hope.

    Give me the struggle, the iron, the volcanoes.

    Let bodies cling like magnets to my body.

    Come quickly to my veins and to my mouth.

    Speak through my speech, and through my blood.

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  3. sorry about the first few lines from internet mash...but neruda is a badass, check him out

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