Between the Terror and Splendour of Nature

            On Friday I stayed in and decided I wouldn't bother to pay for my phone service till I go out to the supermarket on Saturday. Even though it’s November I’m still receiving phone calls from bill collectors, so I assume that's true of all incoming calls.

            I haven’t started my essay yet but I’m going to read William Blake a couple more times to get a handle on him before I start to write.

            I downloaded all of the copies of Blake’s illustrated poems and put them in a folder.

            I read all of the poems twice more and once aloud.

            Our essay assignment is to discuss the author's representation of nature in relation to human consciousness. I sat down with a large piece of paper and, with that question in mind I filled the page with stream of consciousness writing. I transcribed the handwritten text that made sense and that will be the root of my essay:

William Blake draws from nature to paint both sides of human consciousness. What he sees as the holy part of man is reflected in the light of nature while his understanding of humankind’s evil is echoed in nature’s dark and terrifying aspects such as the frightening man-eating tiger and of other natural things that deliver death. But he writes also of renewal and of how death is part of the natural cycle.

He writes of the starvation of innocence by uncaring humanity holding it back from nature in a parentless urban prison. He writes of children denied the love of mothers and denied singing, dancing and joy in nature, bearing the brunt of winter while helping to heat the homes of the rich.
The sun represents the warmth and the light to which people aspire. The sun is the source of ourselves and everything we know on Earth. The living things in nature are drawn to the sun and Blake sees that humanity should be as well as it is a source of not just physical light but also of the inner light of human nature and the source of our very being. The suns light and warmth is humankind’s refuge and since it is our source it must also be our place of return.

Nature represents the darkest aspects of man but also the greater plan to which humans must submit and accept because even the most horrible things were made by nature. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil grows in the human brain.

   

            I watched the third episode of Peter Gunn. In this story a newspaper columnist exposing a mob boss named Kane is attacked by a trained German shepherd. He asks Gunn to investigate. Kane has Gunn forced into his car where he tells him to lay off but he doesn’t take the advice. Gunn goes to a campsite where a hobo named Homer is doing a dramatic monologue from Hamlet to entertain the other hoboes who are sitting rapt around the fire: “Nay do not think I flatter! For what advancement may I hope from thee that no revenue hast but thy good spirits to feed and clothe thee? Why should the poor be flattered? No, let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp and crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where thrift may follow fawning. Dost thou hear? For thou hast been as one in suffering all that suffers nothing. A man that fortune buffets and rewards hast ta'en with equal thanks. And blessed are those whose blood and judgement are so well commingled that they are not a pipe for fortune’s finger to sound what stop she please. Give me that man that is not passion’s slave and I will wear him." Gunn arrives and is greeted warmly by the hoboes, as he knows half of them by name. There are also dogs there and Gunn asks Homer if he knows anything about a dog being used as a weapon. He says he doesn’t. Gunn’s apartment is broken into and one shoe is stolen. The columnist’s secretary Nancy calls Gunn to say she has a lead on the man with the dog. She drives him out to rural area at night, and it turns out she’s working for the gangster. She offers Gunn $10,000 to forget about the whole thing but when he refuses she pulls a gun and leaves him there. The dog is released from a van, given a sniff of one of Gunn’s shoes and then sent after him. Gunn wraps his trench coat around his arm as the dog attacks. Meanwhile Lieutenant Jacoby has been following and he catches up with the dog owner who turns out to be the Shakespearean hobo. Jacoby is behind him but the hobo blows a silent whistle and the dog leaves Gunn to run and attack Jacoby from behind. Jacoby has no choice but to shoot the dog.

            Lola Albright as Edie Hart sings “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” by Duke Ellington and Bob Russell.

            Nancy was played by Virginia Christine, who became known in the 60s as Mrs. Olsen, the Folgers Coffee woman.

            Homer the Shakespearean hobo was played by British actor and singer J. Pat O’Malley.