All of us at some point of time or the other have sat at a wooden desk in a well lit airy classroom on a balmy summer afternoon listening to the english teacher drone out the lines :::
"Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it"
from one of Robert Frost's memorable poems "Mending Wall"
Some of us would have taken down notes
Some of us would have stared hard
Some of us would have yawned
as the teacher went on to say "And the carry home message is : GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBOURS"
I was one of those students that just couldn't resist taking down anything and everything the teacher said.
My texts would be all covered up by my scribbled cramped writings until it became difficult to decipher even the printed lines.
I was also the kind who would jump up at the prospect of writing a critical analysis of ::: "Good fences make good neighbours : The Truth?"
So it happened such that I came back home, sat at my desk in the confines of my room, chewed my pencil some , tried to decipher all the notes I had taken down and finally penned down a rather fetching analysis that brought me an "A" to no one's surprise.
Yawn
YaWn
YAWN
So what on earth is there to blog about all that past stuff right now you might say?
What indeed?!!
Well, I don't remember what I had written in that analysis now but what I do remember is that it wasn't anything I really really understood or agreed with.
It was simply Frost as interpretted by my english teacher of 8th or 9th grade, [ I have forgotten which grade we had the poem in ] just copied out verbatim in some flowery lines that I was and still am very very good at cooking up
However, almost a decade has now swept past since that particular summer afternoon and am a bit " more wiser" now or so they will have me believe simply 'cause my pimples have long since dissappeared and now it hurts to do cartwheels but I think I understand Frost a bit more now than when I had so audaciously critically analysed him in the first place.
LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THY SELF
BUT DO NOT LOWER THY FENCE!!! :-)
BUT DO NOT LOWER THY FENCE!!! :-)
Fences are there for a reason
Although you maybe an apple orchard and your neighbour all pine
And sure, apples may not "eat" pine cones
But sure they do not make much of a mixed fruit salad either
Now do they????
So to quote Frost again :::
"And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us as we go
To each the boulders that have fallen to each"
I understand him now
Atleast till these lines
But as I read on I come to a few more that says :::
" Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out
And to whom I was likely to give offence
Something there is that doesn't love a wall
That wants it down. "
And I pause
My brows are wrinkled again
I wish I had my 8th/9th grade notes to look up what my english teacher had said
'cause I still don't understand these lines
But Hey!
There's hope for me yet
'cause someday I won't be able to cartwheel ever again :-)
