If by chance your eye offend you, pluck it out, lad, and be sound.
If By Chance Your Eye Offend You
If by chance your eye offend you,
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound:
'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,
And many a balsam grows on ground.
And if your hand or foot offend you,
Cut it off, lad, and be whole;
But play the man, stand up and end you,
When your sickness is your soul.
- A.E. Housman
I was thumbing through my book of poems by A.E. Housman this morning and stumbled across this poem. I don't know why, but in high school, I highlighted this poem and made all kinds of notes in the margin. I guess I must have thought I could relate to the sickness of the soul part. It's funny how intensely you experience everything when you're young. Time and age give you the perspective to look back and make horrifically patronizing comments to teenagers like "you have no idea what love really is." Of course they do. Just like we did when we were young. It's not that you don't understand love or hate or those emotions. It's that you haven't had enough experience with them at that point in your life to be able to look at them with any kind of perspective and realize that life is so cyclical that you'll experience these very same emotions many times again. Time gives you the experience that builds your armour so you can better handle pain. Or at least, in my experience it has.
Ok, no idea why I'm rambling today. When I read the poem, I had this idea for my selfie today, but I really couldn't get the processing the way I wanted it. So I'm going to stop obsessing over it and just post this. It's not exactly what I envisioned when I set out to do this shoot, but it'll do.
365 Days (self portraits): Day 76
TOTW: Lighting: sunlight
If by chance your eye offend you, pluck it out, lad, and be sound.
If By Chance Your Eye Offend You
If by chance your eye offend you,
Pluck it out, lad, and be sound:
'Twill hurt, but here are salves to friend you,
And many a balsam grows on ground.
And if your hand or foot offend you,
Cut it off, lad, and be whole;
But play the man, stand up and end you,
When your sickness is your soul.
- A.E. Housman
I was thumbing through my book of poems by A.E. Housman this morning and stumbled across this poem. I don't know why, but in high school, I highlighted this poem and made all kinds of notes in the margin. I guess I must have thought I could relate to the sickness of the soul part. It's funny how intensely you experience everything when you're young. Time and age give you the perspective to look back and make horrifically patronizing comments to teenagers like "you have no idea what love really is." Of course they do. Just like we did when we were young. It's not that you don't understand love or hate or those emotions. It's that you haven't had enough experience with them at that point in your life to be able to look at them with any kind of perspective and realize that life is so cyclical that you'll experience these very same emotions many times again. Time gives you the experience that builds your armour so you can better handle pain. Or at least, in my experience it has.
Ok, no idea why I'm rambling today. When I read the poem, I had this idea for my selfie today, but I really couldn't get the processing the way I wanted it. So I'm going to stop obsessing over it and just post this. It's not exactly what I envisioned when I set out to do this shoot, but it'll do.
365 Days (self portraits): Day 76
TOTW: Lighting: sunlight