These are a few of the things I want to do before I die:
-Â memorize a poem (I’m working on that)*
-Â travel the world until I feel like I’ve seen all there is to see
-Â experience different cities by living in each them for a month at a time
-Â travel across Canada by train
-Â snorkel along the Great Barrier Reef
- own a treehouse
-Â write a children’s book, and see it on the shelves of a bookstore
-Â enjoy a few grandchildren
-Â go white water rafting
-Â canoe camp: portage and all
-Â learn to kayak
-Â cover my walls with artwork
-Â have a forest and a fountain in my backyard
* I’ve been meaning to write about my Kubla Khan experience. I wrote about it awhile ago. And when I was telling Dani about it during our Blogging Chix night out, the quizzical look she gave me when I talked about it reminded me I needed to come back here and explain myself a little better. :)
Basically it comes down to self-improvement.
Before I set out on my media-free week I decided that this was something I wanted to do. I was reading about it on someone’s blog. This person decided to memorize a poem. It took him three days to do it the first time. But subsequent poems actually took less time to memorize. I thought that was pretty interesting. And wanted to try it out for myself.
My main motivation is this: I am in serious need of good brain exercise. Anything to stave off the dementia that is lurking around the corner. It is just me who is suffering from continued baby brain? I am fairly certain that when each of the girls were born, a significant number of my brain cells were flushed out in the aftermath. For chrissakes I had those babies YEARS ago and have not regained any lost cells! My brain hasn’t been the same since. I keep calling my own kids by the wrong names. When I’m tired I talk like a crazy person – forgetting words or subconsciously substituting one word for another. (I can’t even think of an example. See? I’m becoming a walking vegetable.)
And thank god for spell check.
So yes, some people do the mental gymnastics of crossword puzzles. I’m memorizing a poem that was first introduced to me during my fourth year Romantic poetry class (that’s the ROMANTIC movement, not the other kind of romantic poetry that involves red roses and blue violets), Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Â
I was originally going to make this into some kind of Blogger Poem Memorizing Contest, complete with funky little graphic you could take and paste into your respective blogs. But I assumed that no one would want to play. This is not exactly a “fun” sort of challenge. And besides, I was secretly afraid that I was seriously lacking in memorization skills and would suck at my own contest. And it’s kind of true. I haven’t gotten very far with my choice of poem, but then again I haven’t really had a lot of time to devote to it. I have the first part down pretty well. And I’m pretty happy with that.
Here, let me try to type it out and I’ll check to see if I get it right: [omg is this ever hard to do when kiddie cartoons are blaring in the background.]
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree,
Were Alph the sacred river ran,
Through caverns measureless to man,
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground,
with walls and towers were girdled round.
And there were gardens, bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree
And here were forests as ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh … somethingorotherthisiswhereIstarttoforget
–
Uh. Like that. My breaks and punctuation are all wrong, but at least I can recite this part if asked. Only 43 more lines to go!
You know, the more I read this poem the more I love it, and the more I get from it. It is becoming part of me in some small way.
I have learned something about how I learn.
I don’t have a photographic memory. I don’t learn by repetitive reading. I think I’ve read the whole thing 200 times in its entirety. Mark found me a good BBC recording that I downloaded to my MP3 player. I listened to it at various times, walking to school, lying in bed etc. But repetitive listening hasn’t helped. What does work for me is committing it line by line, one line at a time.
What poem would you have chosen? How would you go about learning it?
I’m heading to Toronto this weekend. This might give me something to do it in the car on the way.
It makes me wonder if it’s not just my brain that’s getting soft. No one has to memorize anything in school anymore. It’s just not done anymore, is it?
