Andrew Culver’s Weblog

Here is what you will need for the recipe:

Sausages (I like the selection at Trader Joe’s. The other day I got some that were made with four cheeses and wine. They were absolutely delicious. I will let you decide what particular sausage to use.)

Vegetables (I used asparagus, carrots and peas. Again, I will let you decide what your favorite vegetables are. Use your imagination.)

Rice

Butter

Lemons

Dill

Garlic

Paprika

Directions:

1. First you will need to cook the sausages because for some reason they take forever to cook. I would put two  sausages in a pan with some olive oil, cover them and put the heat on low.

2. Begin to make the sauce. I would put two entire sticks of butter in a pot and heat until it liquifies. Meanwhile squeeze your fresh lemon juice. You are not going to need very much lemon for the recipe, but again I will let you decide exactly how much to put into the sauce. Start with a little fresh-squeezed lemon juice and stir. Then do a taste test.

3. Add some garlic to the sauce. Be very liberal with the garlic. It will only make it better. Add dill and paprika to taste.

4. Cook the rice. I use a professional rice-cooker because it’s just too hard to cook on the stove.

5. Chop your asparagus and carrots into bite-size pieces and put them in the sauce with the peas to simmer.

6. When the sausage is done chop it into bite-sized pieces.

7. When everything is done add it all together. Really drench the rice in sauce. Let the rice soak it up.

8. Enjoy. I would suggest a white wine to go with the dish.

From Antony and Cleopatra

Antony:

I have fled myself, and have instructed cowards

To run and show their shoulders. Friends, be gone.

I have myself resolved upon a course

Which has no need of you. Be gone.

My treasure’s in the harbor. Take it. O,

I followed that I blush to look upon.

My very hairs do mutiny, for the white

Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them

For fear and doting. Friends, be gone; you shall

Have letters from me to some friends that will

Sweep your way for you. Pray you, look not sad,

Nor make replies of loathness; take the hint

Which my despair proclaims. Let that be left

Which leaves itself. To the seaside straightway!

I will possess you of that ship and treasure.

Leave me, I pray, a little: pray you now,

Nay, do so; for indeed I have lost command,

Therefore I pray you. I’ll see you by and by.

Antony and Cleopatra,

3.11, lines 8-24

 This speech, delivered by Antony to his attendants, centers around the idea that Anthony is not himself anymore. After Antony has disastrously retreated from battle, following Cleopatra’s ships, he begs to be deserted and realizes he is a mere shell of his former glory.

The passage begins with a beautiful paradox, “I have fled myself,” which pleases the ear with consonance and assonance, repeating the “f”, “l”, and “e” sounds while startling the reader with Antony’s understanding of his fallen greatness. By fleeing battle he has fled the very essence of his own character. Antony is battle. He starts his speech off with this awareness.

This idea is echoed later in the line “Let that be left/ Which leaves itself,” which encapsulates Antony’s state of mind. It pleases the ear with assonance and alliteration in the repetition of the “e” and the “l” sounds. This poetic elegance, as well as the poignant paradox of “leaves itself” highlight Antony’s dignity in the face of defeat. This line also uses polyptoton to underline the central theme of leaving. The two words, left and leaves, force the reader (or listener) to meditate on the different ways Antony is leaving and being left. We know he has left his legendary status as a warrior behind him through his love for Cleopatra. We also know he has been left behind by the changing Roman world. He is a relic of the old Roman Republic, which will soon become the Roman Empire under the helm of Octavius Caesar.

But Antony knows he isn’t just a victim – he has caused his own downfall. In the first line Antony describes what he has fled, and instructs his followers to flee him in turn. But this begs the question of what he has fled towards, which he answers cryptically with the line “O,/ I followed that I blush to look upon.” We know this is Cleopatra, and his shame turns to a giant outburst of rage when he confronts her later. This is Antony’s realization of his own errors, highlighted by the juxtaposition of the verbs fled and followed. What he has followed (love) makes him embarrassed. How could a legendary Roman warrior be ruined by a woman?

This shame causes Antony to repeat his plea to be abandoned with the line “Leave me, I pray, a little: pray you now,” which begins with a forceful trochee before reverting to the steady iambic meter. The inverted iamb of “Leave me” causes us to listen to the word being emphasized, which in this case is leave, the dominant theme in the passage. When we scan the line we see that pray is stressed twice, while me and I are both unstressed. This emphasizes Antony’s deteriorating sense of self, and suggests that all he has left are his prayers.

But for all his loss, Antony still possesses a diminishing status as a leader. This is why he plays with the word “command” in the penultimate line. “For indeed I have lost command,” he says, signifying both military command and personal command. The very purpose of his speech is to beg his attendants to abandon him, so in one sense he is giving up his military command. But we know this is a very personal speech that serves to indicate his interior state, so “command” can be taken another way. In the sense that Antony and Cleopatra both play the roles of themselves throughout this play, Antony has lost command of the role of Antony the legendary Roman warrior. His love for Cleopatra, who he blushes to look upon, has caused him to lose command of himself.

Antony’s syntax is abrupt and informal, showing a decaying sense of identity. The presence of short, declarative sentences shows Antony’s sense of authority even in defeat. Commands like “Friends, be gone” and “Be gone” and “Take it” are indications of his impatience. If he is going to be defeated, he may as well get it over with. He alternates between end-stopped lines to indicate a sense of finality, and enjambment which shows there is an abundance of personality still left in Antony. “Let that be left/ Which leaves itself. To the seaside straightway!” This combines an overflowing of the plea to be left onto the next line, with a final alliterative command to go to the seaside straightway, where they will find his ship and treasure. This end-stopped line conveys the end of something grand.

Antony uses his hair as a metaphor for his conflicting emotions. “My very hairs do mutiny, for the white/ Reprove the brown for rashness, and they them/ For fear and doting.” This personification uses the image of hair to embody an inner conflict. His white hair is used to represent age and cautiousness, while his brown hair represents the warrior he once was. These two conflicting elements underscore the aging Antony, the shadow of his former glory. The simple fact that he has white hair indicates that he is past his prime and he sadly realizes this.

Antony uses repetition, with characteristic theatricality, to simultaneously draw attention to himself and drive people away. Though he repeats the phrase “Be gone” three times to his attendants, he keeps talking, holding their attention, knowing they do not want to leave him. His repetition of the word “pray” four times, while imploring his attendants to “look not sad,” and “take the hint which my despair proclaims,” signifies a desire to at least get some dramatic value out of his destruction. His ability to play the “role” of Antony, however, is fading as he grasps for an identity. Cleopatra never breaks character the way Antony does, over the course of acts three and four, as he narrates his own decline. We never hear her private thoughts, but we are granted access to Antony’s interior world through many soliloquies. Because of this he is not the mystery that Cleopatra is. Shakespeare allows us to see the inner life of a larger-than-life character as he self-destructs spectacularly.

Edwards sat on his balcony waiting for the fireworks to start. He had a bottle of Jameson from the liquor store. He had no company to celebrate with. They had all died on the space station. The bomb- terrorism, they were calling it. Edwards didn’t care – all he knew was Milton was dead, Stevens was dead, and Bradley, the smartest engineer NASA had ever produced, he was dead as well.

Edwards had testified in the Senate about the attack but he knew he wouldn’t be of any help. He remembered almost nothing besides the bright fire of the blast and the deafening roar of the ship cracking apart.

He remembered sitting in the chief’s office after getting back to earth, numbly listening to the news – we’re sorry, but the program has been cancelled. The administration can’t afford to rebuild the ship. We’d love to keep you on in some capacity – maybe you can do some lectures? Tour some colleges, talk about life as a NASA engineer?

Edwards knew the country’s future in space, at least in a scientific capacity, was a distant dream now. The program was over. Funds were no longer available.

At about nine the fourth of July fireworks started, and he could see them downtown as he sat on his porch. They rose beautifully in the night above the skyscrapers and split apart in startling cascades of red, white and blue. The sound and the light reminded him of the bomb, floating in his engineering capsule and watching as explosives ripped his ship apart.

Someone on the street below started playing “America the Beautiful” on a saxophone. Whoever it was, someone in an alley, was playing it slowly and mournfully, almost like a funeral dirge. Edwards sat and stared at the fireworks raining down on the city. They didn’t seem like a celebration but a commemoration of something great that had passed. It seemed like the fireworks meant something different every year he saw them.

That night his girlfriend came over and he made dinner for the two of them, a pasta dish he had grown quite good at. He had a special secret that included a touch of balsamic vinegar, garlic, and butter. She loved it when he cooked and she always requested the dish when she came over.

She had been exhausted from work and fell asleep early on the couch with her head on his lap. He carried her to his bed and she slept with a light smile on her face. Sometimes she talked in her sleep, saying mostly gibberish that made him laugh. She always seemed to be actually smiling while she slept, and it was better than watching TV in many ways.

For a long time he watched her sleeping form, serene and saint-like. Then he went to the window and watched the street. A bus flew by, well-lit and empty save for a few separate souls asleep or reading newspapers. He put the TV on mute and the flashing blue and yellow images lit up the bare white walls of his apartment. The street was devoid of traffic and a few orange streetlights shined on the empty sidewalks.

On nights like these, strange memories from his childhood would come to mind, unsought and unsummoned. There was the time his neighbors were going on vacation and he had been walking by as they left. He waved at the family in their car, packed with camping supplies. Then he noticed their dog, a golden retriever, barking insanely in the yard, his nose poking through the fence, barking, barking, barking. After awhile the dog stopped barking and stared quizzically at the road where his family had gone.

Poor dumb dog, he thought. He probably thinks he’s been abandoned forever. If only he knew that they were coming back in a week. He wished he could somehow tell this to the heartbroken beast.

He stared at the empty street for awhile, sorting through memories like these, and then went to look at his girlfriend. She was beautifully indifferent, sleeping away her long day. He kind of wished she was awake so he could tell her this funny story, but he knew she was tired. He wasn’t sleepy so he went back and looked at the TV for awhile. There wasn’t much on.