Gardening & Writing

The recent rains, that ended the drought in California, carpeted patches of soil in our home garden with weeds and flowering plants. Weeding is the first task, removing unnecessary plants, like deleting excess verbiage from a text. The moistened soil made it easy to till and pull out the weeds, leaving the alstroemerias and primroses alone.

Pruning is the next task, cutting off dead leaves and tendrils that detract from the beauty of the flower.

On paper, alstroemeria is a word; in the garden it’s a beautiful flower, also called “Lily of the Incas.” Lily evokes the biblical injunction “consider the lilies in the field and how they grow.” Inca recalls an ancient civilization and Machu Picchu. Three elements are at work here:

Object Name

Image

The object may be a thing, a feeling, or an idea; the name identifies the object; and the image is the picture or phrase conjured by the imagination. A poet thinks of his love and writes “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” A romantic poet sees “the splendor in the grass.” Another poet confronts his anti-semitic feelings and creates a portrait of “Sweeney among the Nightingales.”

In the following poem, the speaker moves from knowing the flower’s name to grasping its holy and mystical being. The senses – sight, smell, and touch – gather the external impressions, the mind connects these impressions, and the imagination forms tactile, visual, and images that comprise the poem. In the sum, the senses perceive, the mind apprehends, and the imagination creates.

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The Ways We Remember

I was hired at CSULB under the presidency of Stephen Horn. He went on to become a Long Beach Congressman, and died on Feb 17, 2011, at age 79 from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease. Since then, I’ve followed news items on the disease, and watched a friend succumb and die from it. In a way, I’ve become obsessed with memory loss; I fret when I can’t remember names, titles of books and movies, and here have gathered my thoughts on the subject (before I forget). This essay looks at three ways of talking about memory: as identity, therapy, and epiphany. As identity memory faces skepticism that casts doubt on whether a particular memory did take place. As therapy, its effectiveness will also be called to question; how does it deal with memory loss caused by dementia? And as epiphany, its insight or revelation will also be questioned; is it “truth"? Such is the nature of discourse on a topic that has many sides — positive and nega...

Is the University an Ivory Tower?

A metaphor from the 19th century, an ivory tower is a place where people are happily cut off from the rest of the world in favor of their own pursuits. To describe the university as an ivory tower suggests that it is a place of privileged seclusion, filled with professors who pursue their research interests under the mantle of academic freedom. At the start of their university career, tenure is their goal. They eventually achieve this by publishing books (preferably nonfiction) and writing scholarly essays to publish in journals, or read at conferences in their disciplines such as, the Modern Language Association and Philosophy Research Society. A colleague once told me that he had recommended for promotion an associate to full professor and found out later that the candidate had submitted a fake resume, he found out later. He told me, “I owe the university president an apology.” It’s too late. The president is deceased and my informant colleague and fake professor have r...

Paulino Lim Jr. ~~ Pandemic Dream Diary

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