Sonnets

Also --

For my acting class, we have to pick a Shakespearean sonnet that we really dig, and memorize/perform it. There are so many that remind me of my eating disorder (how fucked up is that?) that I'm having a hard time choosing. Here are a few of my favourites:

SONNET 57.

Being your slave what should I do but tend

Upon the hours, and times of your desire?

I have no precious time at all to spend;

Nor services to do, till you require.

Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,

Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,

Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,

When you have bid your servant once adieu;

Nor dare I question with my jealous thought

Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,

But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought

Save, where you are, how happy you make those.

So true a fool is love, that in your will,

Though you do anything, he thinks no ill.

(The middle bit -- the part about how the subject is probably sleeping around -- I equate not to my eating disorder cheating on me but about the generally awful things it does.)

SONNET 61.

Is it thy will, thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night? (Yay anorexic insomnia...)

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows like to thee do mock my sight?

Is it thy spirit that thou send'st from thee

So far from home into my deeds to pry,

To find out shames and idle hours in me,

The scope and tenor of thy jealousy?

O, no! Thy love, though much, is not so great:

It is my love that keeps mine eye awake:

Mine own true love that doth my rest defeat,

To play the watchman ever for thy sake:

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all too near.

(I'm a huge fan of the line "it is my love that keeps mine eye awake," because while it's easy to pass all my suffering off on my ED being so cruel... I'm the one who keeps going back to it. It's my decision to subscribe to its torment. And that's something I could fail to realize if I were, you know, stupid.)

SONNET 109 (this one would be how I feel every time I begin a relapse... you know, the "I hate recovery" sonnet).

Alas! 'Tis true, I have gone here and there, (renounced anorexia and sworn myself to recovery)

And made my self a motley to the view,

Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,

Made old offences of affections new;

Most true it is, that I have looked on truth

Askance and strangely; but, by all above,

These blenches gave my heart another youth,

And worse essays proved thee my best of love.

Now all is done, have what shall have no end:

Mine appetite I never more will grind

On newer proof, to try an older friend,

A god in love, to whom I am confined.

Then give me welcome, next my heaven the best,

Even to thy pure and most loving breast.

The lines "these blenches... best of love" represent how every time I come out of recovery, I'm even more committed to my eating disorder. It's never quite the other way around, at least not for very long.

SONNET 141.

In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,

For they in thee a thousand errors note;

But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,

Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.

Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted;

Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,

Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited

To any sensual feast with thee alone:

But my five wits nor my five senses can

Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,

Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,

Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:

Only my plague thus far I count my gain,

That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

SONNET 147. (This is probably too close to home for me to actually use with successful discretion)

My love is as a fever longing still,

For that which longer nurseth the disease;

Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,

The uncertain sickly appetite to please.

My reason, the physician to my love,

Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,

Hath left me, and I desperate now approve

Desire is death, which physic did except.

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,

And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;

My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,

At random from the truth vainly expressed;

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

So then I decided to challenge myself to write a 5-minute sonnet to my eating disorder, cause I was all inspired and shit, in the flowery and verbose style of Shakespeare, and this is what I'd come up with when my time was up. Not nearly Shakespeare caliber, but I was semi-pleased, given my sleep- and food-deprived state:

O! That I were not strong but had the strength

To ever more your slave and subject be,

And not so fear time's ever waning length

The longer you dominion hold o'er me;

That your effect should hasten full to take,

That worldly eyes could my efforts behold,

To worldly pleasures, physic's needs forsake

And my life to let your dark arms enfold;

Then would my soul know worth, my mind some peace

As evermore do you forswear will come

In tandem with indulgence's decrease,

That in its mercy doth rend me so numb

Until thou, Tyrant, hath rent me bereft

Of mind and life; that I no I hath left.

I call it, "AJ can't write in iambic pentameter for shit." But it makes me smile.