Transparent But Limited
Ask me more questions –
I’ll answer them all.
When/if I recoil
It’s not that I’m
consciously
Trying to lie;
Deception is not in my
bones.
Guilt and illusions
May live in those
hormones
I don’t know I own,
Un-known till the right
time is sown.
Transparent but limited;
Blind to some weaknesses,
Thank God, not all.
Week one, a new year,
So hear ye, this typical
New year’s resolve!
Resolved: new
persistence,
Stick-to-it,
carry-through
Dug into
Processes, habits and
thought;
See-through as glass,
Less
Limited.
Not a bad
Camelot!
Dreams of Camelot -- Josephine Wall
Colonia Claudia Victricensis was the official name of Camulodunum (modern Colchester), the 1st capital of Roman Britain after its conquest by emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus in 43. It was a Latinized form of Camulodunon (from Camulos, a Celtic deity whom the Romans equated with Mars, + "dunon," stronghold). Previously, it had been the capital of the Trinovantes and rival Catuvellauni tribes. Over the following centuries the descendants of Romanized Britons looked back to a "golden age" of peace and prosperity and the old city became the "Camelot" of Arthurian legend, though it been conquered by the Saxons in the 5th century. Its 1st appearance in literature was in the 1170s when Chrétien de Troyes made a passing reference to a "Cort molt riche a Camaalot" (a most magnificent court at Camelot) in his poem "Lancelot, le Chevalier de la Charrette." In the 13th-century prose romances that developed Chrétien's themes, Camelot began to emerge as Arthur's chief capital, rather than Caerleon (modern Newport, Wales), which, beginning in the 12th century with Gruffudd ap Arthur -- "Geoffrey of Monmouth," is where most of the English and Welsh romances located it (unless they were translations of French accounts); one important exception was the 14th-century "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." In the late 1450s, when Sir Thomas Malory was in Newgate prison in London for trying to overthrow Edward IV, he reworked the French tales to produce "The Whole Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table," which was posthumously published by William Caxton as "Le Morte Darthur" in 1485. It was Malory who firmly established Camelot as Arthur's capital, though he firmly identified it with Winchester. (Ironically, Malory, a lifetime criminal who had been arrested for theft, rape, and the attempted murder of the 1st duke of Buckingham, had formerly been imprisoned in Colchester, but its identification with Camulodunum was not made until the late 18th century.) In the 19th century Alfred Tennyson revived the magnificent image of Camelot in his popular "Idylls of the King," 12 narrative poem published between 1859-1885 which recounted Arthur's effort to lift up mankind and create a perfect realm; much of it was written in Caerleon. In 1938 T. H. White published "The Sword in the Stone," added 2 sequels ("The Witch in the Wood" [1939] and "The Ill-Made Knight" [1940]), and reworked the series as "The Once and Future King" in 1958. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe then transformed the White book into the 1960 Broadway musical "Camelot." Its original-cast album was the best-selling album in the US for 60 weeks and a favorite of president John F. Kennedy, who had gone to school with Lerner at Harvard University. Kennedy's favorite lines were in the
ReplyDeletethe final reprise, "Camelot": Don't let it be forgot / That once there was a spot, / For one brief, shining moment / That was known as Camelot." A week after his assassination in 1963 his widow Jacqueline was interviewed by journalist Theodore H. White for "LIFE" magazine, in which she established the connection between her husband's administration and the fabled Camelot.