From:
shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com <shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Kirsten Kern <stan@texashealingarts.com>
Date: Friday, May 31, 2024 at 8:02 AM
To: Shakespeare Winedale Winedale <shakespeare-at-winedale-email-list@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Shakespeare at Winedale 1970-2000 alums <winedale-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
Subject: Re: Bertrand Russell on how to be happy (and also Shakespeare)
Thank you Mike. I feel that the combination of the embodiment of Shakespeare’s language, the nourishing earth one experiences on the grounds of Winedale, and the joyous dirt of the barn is what makes Shakespeare
at Winedale and Camp Shakespeare soooo very, very much the “union of life with Earth.” Thank you for this reminder and thank you Doc and all that keep this delight alive.
stan@texashealingarts.com
"I've been absolutely terrified every moment of my life - and I've never let it keep me from doing a single thing I wanted to do.”
-Georgia O’Keeffe
“When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”
- Audre Lorde
On May 31, 2024, at 9:13 AM, David Sharpe <dpsharpeaustin@gmail.com> wrote:
A favorite line of mine from "As You Like It." Poetically expressed -- and profound too.
Thanks, David. And you just reminded me of this:
"And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good
in everything."
For me, the most provocative and takeaway line of B. Russell's passage was "The organic need {union with the life on earth} that was being satisfied is so profound
that those in whom it is starved are seldom completely sane."
To be surrounded by nature and out in the country are important keys to the success of Shakespeare@Winedale.
I enjoyed the piece. Thanks, Mike.
How to be Happy — Excerpt The Conquest of Happiness (1930) often cited as one of Bertrand Russell’s most accessible and favorite books.
'Whatever we may wish to think, we are creatures of Earth, our life is part of the life of the Earth; and we draw our nourishment from it just as the plants and animals do.
The rhythm of Earth life is slow; autumn and winter are as essential to it as spring and summer, and rest is as essential as motion. To the child, even more than to the man, it is necessary to preserve some contact with the ebb and flow of terrestrial life.
The human body has been adapted through the ages to this rhythm, and religion has embodied something of it in the festival of Easter.
'I have seen a boy of two years old, who had been kept in London, taken out for the first time to walk in green country. The season was winter, and everything was wet and
muddy. To the adult eye there was nothing to cause delight, but in the boy there sprang up a strange ecstasy; he kneeled in the wet ground and put his face in the grass, and gave utterance to half-articulate cries of delight. The joy that he was experiencing
was primitive, simple and massive. The organic need that was being satisfied is so profound that those in whom it is starved are seldom completely sane.
'Many pleasures, of which we may take gambling and drink as good examples, have in them no element of this contact with Earth. Such pleasures, in the instant when they cease,
leave a man feeling dusty and dissatisfied, hungry for he knows not what. Such pleasures bring nothing that can truly be called joy. Those, on the other hand, that bring us into contact with the life of the Earth have something in them profoundly satisfying;
when they cease, the happiness that they have brought remains, although their intensity while they existed may have been less than that of more exciting dissipations.
'The two-year-old boy whom I spoke of a moment ago displayed the most primitive possible form of union with the life of Earth. But in a higher form the same thing is to be
found in poetry. What makes Shakespeare’s lyrics supreme is that they are filled with this same joy that made the two-year- old embrace the grass. Consider “Hark, hark, the lark”, or “Come unto these yellow sands”; you will find in these poems the civilized
expression of the same emotion that in our two-year-old could only find utterance in inarticulate cries.'
--
Be vigitant, I beseech you!
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