Good mourning, classh! How nice to see your smiling
faces once again. I can tell you’re just as excited as I am to expurgate the
next Roma Ryan poem on our silly bus. Mother Superioriosa wishes us all to
nurture hope in our hearts – yes, even you, little OperaKait, who apparently
lives in another dimension and who should actually attend Persia Ryan’s High and
Car Wash in 2019. But let us tackle our next offensive end “Hope Has A Place,”
and attempt to divine Roma’s celestial massage herein and thereupon.
We begin, amazingly enough,
with the first two lines:
One look at love and you may see
It weaves a web over mystery
Ah, what a striking image confronts us here! Love
weaves a web - perhaps she is weaving on a jet plane? Before the cardboard
onboard meal is served? Well, before she weaves us, we must ask her to
enlighten us. So we begin by looking for love in all the right places. No, Mr.
Woof, a brothel would not be a good place to die; say that again and you shall
be sent to the orifice, where an oracle will thump your ears lest you try
again.
Now, everyone knows, even Miss Guided, that Paris is the City of Love!
So, we shall all now jump into our tried and testy Anywhere Can Be ™ travel
machine, so thoughtfully provided by Ryan Air at a huge discount. Yes, Miss
Rhine, there are barf bags available for those allergic to Pepto-Brennan ™. Hold
on!
[creaking and thumping sounds are heard, and also
the sound of paper bags being quickly opened]
Well, studnuts, here we are in gay Paris. Now, if we are going to find love in Paris
where must be go? The River Insane, you say,
Miss Spoken? My, what an intriguing thought - so glad you’ve finally had one.
Yes, Master Chef? Why, of course! We find LOVE
in the LOuVrE! Lettuce swiftly grab a baguette and head right
there. Master Card, that lovely young lady is NOT a baguette, so get back in
line please.
Now, here we are the Louvre
- see that funny little pyramid thingie at the entrance? Isn’t modern
architecture original? Why even the ancient Egyptians never built one of glass,
but I fear I shall disgress. We must go within and begin our search, just like
Da Vinci and his famous Code.
My, my, look at this marble
masterpiece, Master Piece:
Miss Matched, please get this
poor woman a coat, she must be freezing! No, two fig leafs will not do.
Hello, dear, are you Love? Yes? I see, you are Ms. Venus of Milo. Or is that Ms.
Milo of Venus, the famous interplanetary rock star? Well, in either
case, so nice to finally meet you. I’ve seen many of your pictures, you know,
but please don’t tell that to Mother Superioriosa! Now,
can you help us? You see, we are taking one look at love and we have to see you
weaving a web over mystery. What, you don’t know a woof from a warp? Ah, but
you DO know the warped Mr. Woof? Excellent, we can kling on to this knowledge
in the immediate future perfect.
And yes, Ms. Miley, er Milo, you are correct indeed:
spiders DO weave webs, even over mystery!
(Please, Miss Apprehensive, don’t worry; we are only seeing virtual spiders
here, no need to climb onto that antique Louis XIV table.) So, Miss Milo, you
are telling us that love is an arachnid! What
amazing insight you have after standing here all those long years of feather
dusting.
Ok, classh, we now know that love is a spider that
weaves a web over mystery, as well as over the furniture in my apartment when
Brother Clean lags behind on his janitorial services. But we must now exculpate
what the MYSTERY is, and so we must plunge even
deeper into this enigmatic poem. And we shall stay right here, in Paris,
because the answer must be in French, well known as the language of love.
Ta, Ms. Milo, and merci buckets, and try to stay
warm, eh?
Yes, Master Full, Ms. Venus
of Milo is indeed a very disarming lady. I think she depleted her arms whilst
waving at Mr. Woof on Kronos; she got so tired with all that flapping, and he
never even looked up to see her there, half-naked. No wonder Mr. Woof is still
in high school on Earth!
Well, studnuts, Ms. Milo was of little help, for she
did not know how to weave a web over mystery. I doubt she even knew how to
hook....a rug, but I fear a digression creeping on. So, classh, and you too,
OperaKait, we must again inquire of an eggspert,
in this case, one eggspert at weaving. And who may that be? Right you are, Miss
Rhine: our friend, Ms. Sigourney Weaver Arachnid, currently
awaiting us online from Canada, where she is hard at work spinning on a
cathedral:
Oh dear, Miss Apprehensive appears to have swooned!
Miss Minnie, please give her mouse to mouse resuscitation.
Now classh, do take careful
notes of what Ms. Arachnid tells us, for we would not wish our web of mystery
to unravel, would we now? Of course not.
Dear Ms. Arachnid, will you
please explain unto us these mysterious words:
All ravelled threads
can rend apart
For Hope has a place in the
lover’s heart
Hope has a place in a lover’s
heart
Oh, yes, you are so right: we must first and
foremost deconstruct the phrase “ravelled threads.” Miss Calculated, what are
“ravelled threads”? No, dear, they are NOT an
Italian pasta. But nice try anyway. Miss Clare, do you remember? I didn’t think
so.
The word “ravelled”, my fledglings, means
“unravelled.” No, Mr. Woof, I am not making
this up! To “ravel” is to “separate the threads of a fiber,” ergo, to
“unravel”. So, following the drift behind my draft, “ravelled threads can rend
apart” because they ARE already rent apart –
and the rent is often very high in Paris! To say nothing of most Parisians,
come to think of it.
Now, I bet some of you thought that “ravelled
threads” were glued together by spider spittle, and that Roma's detention was
to rend apart what had been rent together, and let no man rend apart what has
been rent together, but no, my dears, that is NOT what she means at all.
So, Master Corporal, who may or may not be paying
detention, what we have here is a poetic device often used by Roma and known as
“conclusio interrupta et unexpecteda.” What we THOUGHT
she meant is NOT what she meant; she
fools us yet again, that clever woman. No wonder she has a school named after
her - she loves so much to torment little children.
But, Miss Behaved who is
playing Forum Lego with OperaKait, what thread can we draw from this? I see,
you suggest either “Where is Enya Now” or “What is Your Favourite Enya CD?” So
many threads, so little…….er, nevermind. Yes, OperaKait? No, we do not serve
spam for lunch here, not even on a baguette. No, dear child, by “baguette” I do
NOT refer to your beloved mother.
Perhaps we might glean some
assistance from the following line:
For hope has a place in the lover’s heart
Now this MUST be a very
important byte of data since it is immediately repeated with very little spare
change:
Hope has a place in
a lover’s heart
So we must now connect the dots: what do the
following have in common: ravelled threads, ravioli, Where is Enya Now, Hope,
her place, a lover and a heart? Yes, Miss Ing? You know all about love?
Excellent, do tell!
I see, the ventricle and the atrium are near the
aorta, and HOPE resides in the tiny space left
over. Hope is a leftover? My dear, my meat loaf is a leftover and it has no
hope whatsoever, why even my cat won’t touch it, but I digress, do go on, dear.
Aha! The heart NEEDS Hope, so she moved in. And the rent was cheaper too -
well done, Hope! And she chose a LOVER because lovers have roomy, comfy hearts,
complete with teeny tiny woodstoves for those long cold northern nights without
the northern lights. Yes, Miss Ing, you are on the right choo-choo track, and I
do hope that Miss Clare will remember your words of wisdom for prosperity.
So, classh, within the well
heated, yet affordable heart of a lover resides Hope, but what is Hope up to?
Aye, that is the question! Is Hope going to rend ravelled threads already rent,
or does that violate the landlord-tenant act? Will she eat my meat loaf and
live to tell the tale?
So
here is your first ASSIGNATION:
Each
of you must put together a coherent sentence or two explaining these first
lines of the poem. You shall post your response on our electronic bulletin
board as soon as you all wake up.
But now it’s high time to
get back to our texte du jour:
Whispering world, a sigh of sighs
The ebb and the flow of the ocean tides
Oh, studnuts, just listen to the heaving sounds of these wonderful lines: whispers, sighs, ebb and
flow - heaving, sea-sickness; ah, this reminds me of a cruise I once took on
Sail Away Lines – my oh my, was I ever glad my suitcase was packed with Gravel,
even though it was very heavy, but I digress.
Lettuce begin with
“whispering world”. Now, with 6 gazillion loud humanoids on this planet, and
you too, Mr. Woof, can we ever imagine our earth just “whispering”? Whimpering,
yes! Groaning, of course! All of us, so crowded together, spreading germs
everywhere. Oh, did everyone get their flu shot? Yes, Miss Clare? You DID
remember that, excellent!
But Roma’s world is whispering because she lives in
a very quiet place, at least since Ebony and
Persia seceded and went off to the Caribbean blue, to live on the Dutch island
of Arriva. Accordianly, Roma’s world whispers, but to WHOM? Does it whisper to
the wild wind? To the wild child? Is it whispering to Miss Rhine, telling her,
quietly and nicely, to do her homework?
No, it is not - you see, classh, the world is
whispering to its best friend, Ms. Luna Moon!
How do I know this, you ask, Miss Taken? Well, I just happen to have a
photograph of this momentous whisper:
Now, I am sure Mother Earth is telling Sister Moon
about how annoying we humanoids are! Notice that Ms. Moon is keeping her
distance, lest she catch any awful contagion.
So the world indeed whispers, but what about “a sigh
of sighs”? Yes, Master Plumber, a sigh of sighs is indeed the MOTHER of all sighs, whatever size the sighs may be.
A sigh of sighs: yes, classh, that would be a really
really BIG sigh, as if you were an atlas and
the earth had just been taken off your shoulders. A huge sigh of relief, such
as I get when imbibing Pepto-Brennan ™ after a pepper pizza, but I digress
again. Thus, the world whispers AND sighs the sigh of sighs, just like that
sighing bridge in Venice – what in the world is going on, one may well ask!
Ah, but listen to this:
The ebb and the flow of the ocean tides
You see, Ms. Moon is so close to Mother Earth – she
wants to HEAR the whispers after all – that she
is causing abnormal tidal activity! Why, it’s like being on the Bay of Funny in
Canada, where the tide rolls in and then rolls out, taking your Hummer with it.
The ocean tides are ebbing and flowing, away, away,
away – does this sound familiar? Yes, Roma loves water imagery, doesn’t she,
Miss Rhine? She even named her daughter Ebb O’Knee, didn’t she………………And she
wrote the "Orinoco FLOW" ….. and I bet she even uses Tide for tough stains! But what has all this to do
with LOVE and with HOPE?
Perhaps the next lines will illuminate us:
One breath, one word
may end or may start
A hope in a place of the lover’s
heart
Hope has a place in a lover’s heart
Once again we are in dire need of an eggspert to
help us unravel, or indeed ravel, the meaning of these poignant lines. But what
kind of eggspert is required? Yes, Miss Led, you are right for a change: we
must expurgate one breath and one word in order to end or start, and words and
breathing have much in common: they exude from our lungs and throats! They
requite AIR! So, we need an eggspert with deep
knowledge of the respiratory system. Perhaps:
This, classh, is Mr.
Respiration, a very famous Blues singer,
who turns blue as soon as he stops breathing.
R, if I may be so bold
as to call you by your first initial, what can you tell us about Roma’s meaning
here? Yes, one breath is better than none. And one breath may end or may
start a hope in a place of a lover’s heart, for if there is NO breath, then there is, after all, no Hope. Poor
Hope has passed away, away, away. Oh, the horror of it all - I can well
understand why tears are welling up your eyes, my dear studnuts. Even young
OperaKait looks very sombero.
Well, what about ONE WORD,
R? Ah, Roma refers here to the POWER of the
word! Indeed, a single word can determine the curse of history – why, Mr. Woof,
if Winston Churchill had offered the British “blood, sweat and beers”
instead of “blood, sweat and tears,” the curse of British history may well have
turned out quite differently.
So, then, Roma suppresses upon us all the vital
need for both breathing and speaking! Thank you so much, R. I think we all have
a clearer image of the function of WIND now! We
finally understand that Roma emphasizes the smallness of the spark that awakens
hope if it’s residing in a lover’s heart. All it takes is one breath, one word
– if they are good, they may jump start Hope,
whose battery is obviously dead. But if there is no breath, no
word, why, then we fear the END of Hope in a lover’s heart! And yet Hope still has
its place in a lover’s heart – yes, indeed, the heart of a lover hangs on to
hope even in dire straits. Or even in the Strait of Canso, or perhaps the
Northumberland Strait, have you got that straight, Miss Aligned? Good!
Now, we must decompose another
stanza of this magniloquent ode to Hope:
Look to love you may
dream
And if it should leave then give
it wings
But if such a love is meant to be
Hope is home, and the heart is
free
“Look to love you may dream”: Master Craft, what do you make of this? Is love dreamy – or is
love just a dream, just a dream? Is Life itself only a dream? Is Roma getting
metaphysical again? Yes, Miss Taken, that’s a good digestion: we should find
another eggspert!
Well, here is a nice Italian
friend come to assist us:
Dear Mr. Amore, how
nice to see you. Um, would you mind taking that arrow out of OperaKait, please?
She looks discomforted. Or maybe she is just asleep in her nappies. Thank you,
you sweetheart, you. I just love Italian men, but I regress into my misspent
youth.
Mr. Amore, or perhaps I might call you Q-Pid, as we
look to love, whether dreamy or not, what words of wisdom teeth do you have for
us?
I see, LOVE attracts dreamers who dream of finding a dreamy mate,
but end up spending the night with a mare? Are you getting this all down for
later explication, studnuts? Very good.
But, Mr. Amore, what are we to
do with ”And if it should leave then give it wings”?
Do you think love leaves?
Even without wings, which makes for a very bumpy trip? I see, you say it leaves
far too often, leaving all the house cleaning to you? As well as the leaves
left in the yard upon leaving! Oh my! You must be so very busy! So, should love
leave, whether in autumn or even in fall for that matter, we must merrily send
it on its winged way! Give it wings, says Roma, let it FLY
far far away to someplace where it may be leafed alone! Yes, Miss Construed, if
it needs wings I am sure Mr. Amore can lend it some. Just make sure it doesn’t
fly too close to the sun because then all the wax will melt and runaway love
may miss the runaway completely, and fall into the sea, a-drifting in a serene
but salty instrumental landing.
Moving right along, we next
ponderous:
“But if such a love is meant
to be
Hope is home, and the heart
is free”
Yes, my fledglings, if LOVE
is meant to be, MAY IT BE! If Mr. Amore smiles
benevolently upon a lover in love, then the love of that lover will love to be
loved. AND, if Hope is home at the time (and not out shopping), then the heart
is free – yes, Miss Rhine, free to pulse away
loudly and send all that rich blood cursing throughout every blood vessel in
your body. Free to nourish you as only blood can in the Vampire Diet. No, dear,
I had no idea you were a vampire-slayer, and that your real name was Buffy St
Rhine! Why, I myself have combated many an umpire in a graveyard – and have yet
to strike out, but I digress again.
Now, where do we go next? Ah
yes, here:
Under the heavens we journey far
Now, since the entire Earth is surrounded by the
heavens (and who can tell me if we have heaven? Put your hand down, Miss
Guided, I am busy digressing. Thank you, dear) and all of us, except Mr. Woof,
are Earthlings, we must journey BELOW the heavens. We don’t want to bump our heads, do we
Master Mixer? So we are indeed under the heavens on a journey, though
some of us look a bit under the weather too, but I refuse to digress here, for
the impotent question is “where are we going?”
Will Roma next elaborate
upon this primal existential conception?
On roads of life we’re the
wanderers
Aha, she emphasizes our journey by deferring to the
roads of Life! You see, Miss Trial, each life, according to Roma who loves to roam
to Rome, has its own road! Its own “path” if we wish to wax poetical. Your path
is different from mine, Miss Fit, and aren’t you happy to hear that! Yes, I
thought so. You see, I am soon heading for Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and you, my
dear, are heading for any place else - mainly because you cannot pronounce
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I will not digress here, so please don’t worry.
So, you go your way, and I go mine, each on
his/her/its own path. And we WONDER so often where
our path is going that we become WANDERERS.
Yes, Miss Chance, I do indeed know how to spell, and how to cast them at
studnuts too, mwahahahaha…oops, sorry, I got a bit carried away.
Ah, classh, the image of the wanderer – even the planets are wanderers, only they are ABOVE the
heavens and don’t have to wear bump caps. We muddle our way over our road of
Life, stopping now and then for a bite to eat and a place to rest. Hopefully,
an internet café will come along, or the restaurant at the end of the Universe,
or even Alice’s Restaurant, for who knows where the road goes, eh? And if we
get lucky, we may even get a hot, steaming bowl of Ferengi grub stew! Master
Card, why do you look so pale all of a sudden?
So, says Roma, we must move on
– each life following its own unique path while we wonder where we are going.
Thusly we move onto the next verse:
So let love rise, so let love
depart
Aha! Here Roma feasts us upon an image of rising and
departing. Love rises like the Sun, high in the
heavens, and departs like the Moon, low in the sky. When love rises, we are all
so sunny, even Miss Anthrope over there, scowling as usual. But when love
departs, ah, there’s the rub! We end up mooning away, even at shepherds in
their fields.
But Roma devises us to endure! Yes, we must LET love
rise if it wishes, and we equally must LET love depart if the train is in the
station. You see, my dears, this poem is about ALLOWING life to travel the path of least resistance. Whatever
will be, will be, the future’s not ours to see, che sera, sera. Mother
Superoriosa once told me that at a staff meeting when I was looking for my
faculties.
With that important and
soothing massage in what's left of our minds, we move on yet further:
Let Hope have a place in the lover’s
heart
Hope has a place in a lover’s
heart
Yes, Miss Chief, Roma does indeed once again use repetitio ad nauseam to
get her fine point through our thick heads. Hope
has her place – a lovely flat in Killiney it is, too. Yet, as for us, we HOPE
love will come and stay awhile, but if it takes the next train out of town we
shall let it depart, with heavy heart, and quite a start, as it boards the
DART.
Well, studnuts, we arrive at last at the concussion
of the poem:
Look to love and you may dream
And if it should leave then give
it wings
But if such a love is meant to be
Hope is home, and the heart is
free
Hope is home, and the heart is
free
Yes, all you eager beavers, we HAVE heard all this
before, and so Roma concusses her poem with another bout of repetitio. Yea
and verily, such a repetitio reinforces the theme: sometimes love stays, sometimes love goes --
you walk a lonely road, oh how far you are from home! Oops, wrong notes. Has Mother Superioriosa been messing
with my lesion notes again?
In
any event, Roma in this Ode to Hope (her Ode to Joy will come later) offers us
her deepest thoughts upon Hope and Love and Home and Hearts. On being FREED by our hopeful hearts. So, my fledglings, always
and ever look to love, unless, of course, your parents are home. In which case,
do your homework!
Ta!