[Classic moment from Young Frankenstein]
From whiskey river:
Hiding in a Drop of Water
It is early morning, and death has forgotten us for
a while. Darkness owns the house, but I am alive.
I am ready to praise all the great musicians.
Whatever happens to me will also happen to you.
Surely you must have realized this from hearing
the way the strings cry out no matter who hits them.
From the great oak trees in the yard in October,
leaves fall for hours each day. Every night
a thousand wrinkled faces look up at the stars.
Still we know that at any second the soul can stand
up and start across the desert, as when Rabia ended up
riding on a resurrected donkey toward the Meeting.
It is this reaching toward the Kaaba that keeps us glad.
It is this way of hiding inside a drop of water
that lets the hidden face become visible to everyone.
Gautama said that when the Great Ferris Wheel
stops turning, you will still be way up
there, swinging in your seat and laughing.
(Robert Bly, from My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy: Poems)
…and:
It is a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations — these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit — immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
(C.S. Lewis)
Not from whiskey river:
I have always felt that much of the best poetry is funny. Who can read Hopkins’s “The Windhover,” for instance, and not feel welling up inside a kind of giddiness indistinguishable from the impulse to laugh? I suppose there has got to be some line where one might say about a poem, “That’s too much nonsense,” but I think it is a line worth tempting. I am sure that there is a giggly aquifer under poetry.
Right now I am thinking of something unlikely that I saw a few days ago, the morning after my town had experienced a major winter flood. In the middle of a residential street, a cast iron manhole cover was dancing in its iron collar, driven up three or four inches by such an excess of underground water that it balanced above the street, tipping and bobbing like a flower, producing an occasional bell-like chime as it touched against the metal ring. This has much to say about poetry.
For I do not want to suggest in any way that this aquifer under poetry is something silly or undangerous; it is great and a causer of every sort of damage. And I do not want to say either that the poem that prompts me to laughter is silly or light; no, it can be as heavy as a manhole cover, but it is forced up. You can see it would take an exquisite set of circumstances to ever get this right.
(Kay Ryan, from “Laugh While You Can: A Consideration of Poetry” [source])
…and:
Nasrudin is with his cronies drinking coffee:
They are discussing death, “When you are in your casket and friends and family are mourning upon you, what would you like to hear them say about you?”
The first crony says, “I would like to hear them say that I was a great doctor of my time, and a great family man.”
The second says, “I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and school teacher which made a huge difference in our children of tomorrow.”
Nasrudin says, “I would like to hear them say… LOOK!! HE’S MOVING!!!”
([source])
…and:
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
(George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma)
Finally,yes: I’ve already included one Young Frankenstein clip; when I read Robert Bly’s poem, which mentions “strings cry[ing] out” and laughter within a few seconds of each other, I thought immediately of Frau Blücher’s “He vas my boyfriend!” moment. But then I kept going in this post, and kept finding all these intermingled references to laughter at inappropriate moments — and when I hit that “Look! He’s moving!” line I just knew I’d have to include another bit from the same film.
(Mel Brooks’s movies are so much better when he’s not in them himself.)
Froog says
Love those Nasrudin stories! They’re reminiscent of the Jewish humour tradition. Where do you find this stuff??
all rebuilds says ReCaptcha. Quite so.
marta says
A friend may me laugh at my grandmother’s memorial service. Several people gave me baffled or evil looks, but I hugged my friend.
I laughed at several lines here too.
Now, in my obsessive way, the C.S. Lewis quote reminded me of why I like Doctor Who. One philosophy, if you will, of the show is that every person is important. Every person can change everything. Every death matters. There are no mere mortals.
John says
Froog: I’m embarrassed to admit I know almost nothing about the Jewish humor tradition. The Nasrudin tales are wonderful, though. For years I’ve had several collections of them just lying around the house, and I open one every now and then at random to make me laugh or — as sometimes happens — make one of those giant overstuffed question marks (straight out of comic-book orthography) appear over my head.
(If whiskey river ever dries up as an apparently inexhaustible resource of starting points for ruminations, I bet I could do a loooooong series of “Nasrudin Fridays” posts instead.)
marta: One of the strangest but most hilarious occasions of my life — strangest because most hilarious — was the afternoon of the day my father died. Mom and we four “kids” were sitting around the kitchen table at the house (he died at home after a long illness); also present was Mom’s minister, who’d stopped by to console us in our grief. And we were indeed grieving, and grateful for whatever consolation(s) we could get.
The complication was that we (especially Mom) were also exhausted, from taking care of Dad (in our various ways, to various degrees) during his illness. And our consolation of choice was laughter.
The minister looked and no doubt was a little confused by our demeanors that afternoon. We kept telling funny stories — some (as I recall) more or less traditional family stories about vacations while we were growing up, and so on, and some about things that happened in the previous couple of years. Which had been pretty much the most difficult ones we’d experienced. (We’d had lucky lives to that point.)
Probably it was the hilarity that comes from selfish relief rather than, y’know, fun which he was witnessing. But we sure seemed to throw ourselves into it. :)
Jules says
I’m so glad I’m catching this post, even though very belatedly. It just made my day.
The (wonderful) C.S. Lewis excerpt, new to me, reminded me of this from Rilke: “How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” (From Letters to a Young Poet)
John says
Jules: That Rilke quote is swoon-worthy! (Think I’m going to crib part of it as an updated Gmail status…) Thank you!
Jules says
I am very used to another translation of it that doesn’t involve “wants our love” at the end, so that made me do a double-take. But the meaning is the same, of course.
That Rilke. Brilliant.