Annie Died Too Young

Annie was in her fifties, fifty four when she died. We cremated her as was her wish and I got a bottle of her ashes from Columbus, Ohio where she lived at the last. I took that bottle to Newport, Oregon, where in 1985, after two years of living together in Mountain View, Ca and then in Portland, Or, actually most of three, we were married by my mother, a minister.

I have posted two photos. The first shows Ann standing upper left. This was in better times. Next to her standing is my Aunty Nan (never Nancy), who considered Ann among her best friends. The last move Nan made was to Portland to be near us, especially near Ann. At the far right you will see Fran Springhetti. Fran moved to Newport not too long after we did in 1975. She got work in the Children Services office there alongside Annie and later became supervisor there for a short while. During this time Fran became Ann's best friend, at least in the Social Work business. Later Fran retired from that work and among other things remodeled our house when we bought one and opened a coffee retail business called Coffee Concerto.

Seated is my mother. She too moved to Portland to retire from her ministry. She kept active in ministerial duties, going on trips to offer seminars and trainings and was given the title of chaplain to the local Unity School Ministers to maintain her IRS business exemptions and her manse write offs. I live in her house now.

All four of these women are gone now. Fran and Nan both died of cancer. My mother had a stroke and died in three days, in January of 2001. In October of 2001 Ann died of kidney failure as the autopsy put it. She was found dead a few days later in her own apartment. Nan lived a few more years, but all died fairly young except my mother who was most of the way to eighty when she died.

The second photo is of me. I took my then current lover and my oldest friend (he stood for me when Ann and I married and later I stood for him when he married) and went to the main beach in Newport as I wrote before. Isabel was there too. She was Carroll's mate, and they were together longer than Ann and I were, but they married far later in their lives together. That is of course, Annie's ashes leaving the bottle. She is also placed in the back of the house we bought together, out in front of this one, up at Willamette National Cemetery where I go sometimes to visit her and her uncle and aunt also buried there. I also have kept a small portion of her and she sits in her bottle where these pictures are also on display, but in a room only I go into. This house is only mine, I have almost no visitors here. That room is even more private.

Annie Died Too Young

With my friends I took
as you gave me your ashes
to Newport, the beach
we would walk early
in our years together, when
we had no money
nor did we know what

would come. I dug a tideline
hole for you, there placed
your dream as it poured
from the long green glass a thin
ashy stream as we
who knew you witnessed
the tide come for you and take
away from us all

old false empty hope.

August 3, 2009 12:56 PM

Now That's Old

La Musica del Silencio by Elena Dudina
(The Music of Silence)


The wise are wise only because they love. The fools are fools only because they think they can understand love.
Paulo Coelho

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Jonathan Swift

Self-pity is our worst enemy and if we yield to it, we can never do anything wise in this world.
Helen Keller

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active - not more happy - nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.
Edgar Allan Poe

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt


This poem is shorter than my usual nine to twelve lines. At the time I wrote the poem my cat had disappeared and I thought she had died. She had gone through a bad patch and was looking disoriented and pathetic to the lady who lives across the street. My cat was rescued by this lady who had no idea who she belonged to. She lived there right through most of the winter, but one early spring day the cat came back home. She lived once again with me until one day not that long ago I ran her over because she couldn't see that well and could not hear the car start up. She had gone behind the car and something distracted me right before I might have walked around the car to make sure. She had been doing this lying in the way sporadically as I was driving in and out for several weeks. She is not old any more but is instead under a modest shrine in my back yard right next to the house. She was 19 years, 3 months when she died of her insistence in choosing to lie right behind the car, the street side.

Now That's Old

You have a cat, thinks
she's a bird when not a dog.
I have a cat too,
so old and ragged
she quit thinking or hearing
unless she wants to.

August 3, 2009 10:24 AM

In The Aspen Trees

Zarmina's World
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Lynette Cook

Explanation: A mere 20 light-years away in the constellation Libra, red dwarf star Gliese 581 has received much scrutiny by astronomers in recent years. Earthbound telescopes had detected the signatures of multiple planets orbiting the cool sun, two at least close to the system's habitable zone -- the region where an Earth-like planet can have liquid water on its surface. Now a team headed by Steven Vogt (UCO Lick), and Paul Butler (DTM Carnagie Inst.) has announced the detection of another planet, this one squarely in the system's habitable zone. Based on 11 years of data, their work offers a very compelling case for the first potentially habitable planet found around a very nearby star. Shown in this artist's illustration of the inner part of the exoplanetary system, the planet is designated Gliese 581g, but Vogt's more personal name is Zarmina's World, after his wife. The best fit to the data indicates the planet has a circular 37 day orbit, an orbital radius of only 0.15 AU, and a mass 3.1 times the Earth's. Modeling includes estimates of a planet radius of 1.5, and gravity at the planet's surface of 1.1 to 1.7 in Earth units. Finding a habitable planet so close by suggests there are many others in our Milky Way galaxy.

Visiting the Graveyard

When I think of death
it is a bright enough city,
and every year more faces there
are familiar

but not a single one
notices me,
though I long for it,
and when they talk together,

which they do
very quietly,
it's in an unknowable language -
I can catch the tone

but understand not a single word -
and when I open my eyes
there's the mysterious field, the beautiful trees.
There are the stones.
- Mary Oliver
Red bird

It is very hard to wait. A great deal of my spiritual training has been to encounter the mirrored light that shines reflecting many of the facets of the complex jewel that is creative waiting. In some ways that is what I am doing now. I am waiting creatively. As ever, I must do this with the sense of something coming but no clear idea what or when. I am better at it these days, but I would hope that I am. It's been forty years since I realized my position. I don't mean I have been waiting forty years, but that these waiting times have come and gone and come again over these forty years. I guess that there are many people better at waiting than I am, who did not start so far back in the pack as I did. Me, I required spiritual training in several modes to simulate a natural attitude to "not yet". The anxiety of being at the mercy of people I do not trust has been the last to subside as I have found ways to trust even these.

It is not a moment too soon. I am, I suspect, soon to be struggling with my health far more than I am now. Now it is just irritating even though there is much I can no longer do. It won't take much for something more sobering to occur, but this is not very serious and is quite natural, a part of the ordinary processes of the planet. I will certainly be tested, will certainly uncover new facets of the complex jewel of waiting.

In The Aspen Trees

I fear you will not
notice me here. He said stand
silently, gathered,
no loose ends dangling
in the sultry wind blowing
through the aspen trees.

I must stand tight bunched,
constipated with held back
hope. I know I could
break my main chance by
acting too soon and not sure
when true change will come.

-written by me,
August 2, 2009 9:10 AM

Forward Movement

Artist: Philip Straub

Medium: Photoshop 6 and Painter 7
© Vivendi Universal 2001
© Fisher Price 2001
About this Image: A painting made for the Fisher Price product line "Rescue Heroes"


Quite a long time ago now, I had a time like this. I had to leave behind a life and take a new one based on a more mature form of honesty and commitment. I was dragged to it and terrified, I entered it. I found safe places in this new life that made it possible for me to bear it. I was informed that the terms of this new life would not be too hard since I didn't have to bear the burden alone. That turned out to be true, both that the terms were not too hard, but that they were not too hard because I didn't bear the burden alone. It turned out that God had a really high opinion concerning what I could take. Also, it turned out that I can't save my face and my ass at the same time, at least I can't when the chips fall. Full grown love is not for sissies or for the faint of heart. In that way it is exactly like old age.

I have a very good friend who is called Vivian. She was taught by her husband that a life well lived has in it Relentless Forward Movement. This poem has her in mind.

Forward Movement

I walked straight through my
patch of uncompromised truth
without my heavy
pack of lies and all
other listless mad burdens,
having forgiven
you all in my dreams,
willing to embrace this new
landscape of your love.

August 2, 2009 10:01 AM

Late Afternoon

NGC 346 in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Credit: A. Nota (ESA/STScI) et al., ESA, NASA

"How and why are all these stars forming? Found among the Small Magellanic Cloud's (SMC's) clusters and nebulae NGC 346 is a star forming region about 200 light-years across, pictured above by the Hubble Space Telescope. A satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) is a wonder of the southern sky, a mere 210,000 light-years distant in the constellation of the Toucan (Tucana). Exploring NGC 346, astronomers have identified a population of embryonic stars strung along the dark, intersecting dust lanes visible here on the right. Still collapsing within their natal clouds, the stellar infants' light is reddened by the intervening dust. A small, irregular galaxy, the SMC itself represents a type of galaxy more common in the early Universe. But these small galaxies are thought to be a building blocks for the larger galaxies present today. Within the SMC, stellar nurseries like NGC 346 are also thought to be similar to those found in the early Universe."


"The truth of the matter being that there is no such thing as time. Time is a hallucination. There is only today. There never will be anything except today. And if you do not know how to live today, you are demented."
- Alan Watts

I have very little to say for myself tonight.

Late Afternoon

I could not write this
until your whisper touched me
so precisely on
my most tender skin
like a ray of sun on white
white winter's snowy
slope given sudden
transport into summer's last
long late afternoon.
August 2, 2009 12:48 AM

They Sent You Away

No More SummerAuthor: yakodzun

The spirit expressed in this photo by yakodzun and his model reminds me of the essence of the woman I loved in those days.


"There is nothing to compare yourself to. You have your own value. That value is not a comparative value or an exchange value, it is more than that."
- Shunryu Suzuki
Branching Streams Flow in Darkness

This is the value of having others in my life. It is not only true of me that my value is more than comparative and the value of exchanges, it is also true of you. I am in service in two particular fields of action. In the one I serve industry and profit, but also I assist in feeding the people. In the other I assist in saving and salvaging and beautifying lives. I am not only loving those who are close to me, but also loving more generally in the ways of my service.

This is the short version. I have a longer one, less symbolic, that I will not make public. This poem is about a particular moment in my life when I confronted the pain of my own decision to love this woman. I entered into a love certain to fail, entered it to a purpose and achieved the purpose. There is no question that we loved under divine protection, that we could not have succeeded without it. It was convoluted and clandestine. We were otherwise too exposed. It took two years and a little more to accomplish the task. She had to depart as certainly as she was destined to come to me.

I would make the same choices again were I to return to that place and time. I would not attempt it now. Still I can't help but wonder. If this woman were to enter my life again at this point just the right way, as she did the last time, I would fall anew. It would be worth it. It was last time.

They Sent You Away

I took my other
life, my wolfen shape and voice
and I howled all night
along the broken
trail, bloodied red paws, limping
past our yesterdays,
past the last gray moon
of this horrified season.
I have lost your scent.

July 31, 2009 1:02 PM

Drink The Essence

"Todays main hero is a talanted graphic artist from Spain, Elena Dudina. Her beautiful artworks are great combinations of magic fantasy and dark emotions. Just playing with illumination, colors, and contrast she brings us something special. But the main thing is the idea. As she said “It’s like a puzzle. It’s a long process to make it perfect.” She has created photomanipulations for almost 2 years and already has such stunning results. Elena is definitely a talanted artist" - beautiful life

The Wordle that started this:

Go to the Big Tent to see the gathering of the devoted.


How far would you go to find the Way? If I placed the potion before you, would you drink, like Alice down the rabbit hole and out in some strange garden beyond the ordinary? Would you eat the mushroom, dance with the Mad Hatter, pay heed to the Dormouse? Would you recite this poem three times at the full of the moon? I cannot ask it of you, can only say there is a Way to find, that some do find.

Would you practice and then practice some more, become the artist on fire for the revelation? Do another poem, then drop all poses and declare your desperate love in the essence of it all - in the grief of it all.

Drink The Essence

The glossy extract
comes from my hook set, my trap
near the bitter place
at the bottom step
of God's drooping old staircase.

It's royal purple
you know, this essence
of a shiny plasticine
doll's sweet, sweet french kiss.

You who stand astride
muddy patches, you are called.
Take the drinking gourd
filled with this potion
and drink the last of it all -
then pluck the holy.

‎October ‎14, ‎2010 8:00 PM

The Abyss Love Heals

The Road To The Volcano

Author: c-man

I want this to be true so much I have decided to believe it so. That's risky, but what the hey!

The Abyss Love Heals

I found an abyss.
I tripped at its ragged edge,
a near fall, terror.
Oh man, that yawning
is a gap in me though it
looks like it's outside.

Then I tried on blame,
your fault or mine, anyone's
but no fault to find.

Can I run? Or hide?
Can't I just fall into sleep?
Why not play more games?
That's when you told me
Love would work around, weaving
A healing poultice.

Even though no blame,
you tell me I must forgive
to build my true bridge.

July 30, 2009 12:44 PM

Slipping Through My Fingers

The naked kingdom
Author: puma100 (Tatyana)


"The refusal to feel takes a heavy toll. Not only is there an impoverishment of our emotional and sensory life, flowers are dimmer and less fragrant, our loves less ecstatic, but this psychic numbing also impedes our capacity to process and respond to information. The energy expended in pushing down despair is diverted from more creative uses, depleting the resilience and imagination needed for fresh visions and strategies."
- Joanna Macy

I hit the turning point. My Medicare card came in the mail. I will be officially on Medicare starting November 1. Now I'm old. Sent out to pasture. What's real about it, my left thigh and left thumb, my right hip and right big toe, my broken L5 vertebra, I think it is and my heart and bronchials, my upper right sinus, certain parts of my systemic regulation and the teeth in my mouth all agree. The line up of prescriptions on the counter taunt me. I once paid no attention to my body. Now I notice the consequences of oxidation all the time. I am rusting like an old bridge. Considering all that I don't feel so bad.

I went to work again today, worked all day. I come home worn out though, and wonder if I will have to pull over to the side of the road to have a nap before I continue my drive home after work sometime soon. Some days, like yesterday especially, it is very hard to do the last three miles of the commute in the afternoon traffic. I can barely stay awake in the forced idleness of sitting in traffic.

Slipping Through My Fingers

I tried to hold time
in my hands no matter what
even though you said
that's impossible
and I kind of thought
so too, so I grinned sheepish
as you inspected
my stiffened talons
and the piles of lost minutes
building at my feet.

July 30, 2009 11:29 AM

The Case For Concealment

Found at the National Geographic site


Cygnus Loop Supernova
Photograph courtesy J. J. Hester (Arizona State University)/NASA

This 1991 image shows a small portion of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. The formation shown here marks the outer edge of an expanding blast wave from a colossal stellar explosion that occurred about 15,000 years ago. The blast wave slams into clouds of interstellar gas, causing it to glow and revealing information about the composition of the gas.

(My comment: this is the consequence of a star's failure to thrive after a time. It is very wise to get the hell out of the neighborhood if you can when something like this is about to happen. Stay informed as best you can.)

One should always consider the consequences, both near and far. One thing is just guaranteed: that you don't know what the consequences are will not matter when it is time to pay the piper. This is the worst part of our overly complex world, that we each and every one are busy paying consequences we never intended for our well meant but ignorant actions. No one escapes this. Some of us realize and turn deliberate sometimes. If you are going to pay steep unintended prices you might as well lean into them and create spectacular outcomes.

You should know that some unintended consequences are not bad, at least not everywhere and if you are lucky you will find yourself in the eye of the storm, though dragons stalk the nearby wounded and feast on them.

The Case For Concealment

Should I reveal things,
unload the baggage, unwrap
the trash packages
as you suggested,
there would be large explosions
in unexpected
quarters, in the rooms
left thoughtfully beyond time
and occupied space.

July 29, 2009 12:32 PM

Creative Intermission

I found myself composing where I should have been reading and posting. I don't know whether to apologize or not. I have several more poems. Thank you for your patience.

"We do not come into this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated egos inside bags of skin."
- Alan Watts

What Can I Trust Now

This is Van Gogh's Starry Night


Elizabeth Kate Switaj wrote: Note to self: when writing, trust instincts, even if it makes the task harder. Especially if it makes the task harder.

That's a delightful statement from my new FaceBook friend. I can't help it. I am a responder by nature. This is how I responded to her.

What Can I Trust Now?

I trusted my instincts and look what it got me...
My life has turned to just this place and my words
Are whorls like stars in Van Gogh's sky.
They leak like that and turn me froward
(Used to be a real word, like toward and untoward)
And I rationalize in a hurry these days.

October 9, 2010 7:47 PM

Loving The Crow

The Three Word Wednesday site master writes:
Each week, I post three words. You write something using the words... This week's words:
hint, lust, sheen

This poem is my response. Go here 3WW CCIX to get access to the work of the other participants.

Loving The Crow

I've been looking high
and low, under rocks, behind
the dusty curtains
that make me sneeze hard
trying for a hint, some clue
left behind, some taste
of your red ripe lust
for life.

I would stroke
your feathers until
the sparks would leap off your back
leaving the blue black
sheen of your bird life
for all to see spun large, large
on my pallid shape.

Poetry Conversation

I have this habit that manifests itself, I think, primarily as a musical phenomenon. It is the sort of thing that musicians do with each other, where it is called improvisation. They play with each other back and forth, embellishing the theme and changing it, listening to each other with a joy of the moment.

This can happen in poetry too. Rachel Westfall has a lovely poetic voice. I don't need to inquire why she touches me like she does. She has been very kind, and apparently this works for her too. The following conversation is only the latest of several we have held. It is easy to write to her, which involves going into some world or other and revealing what life would be like there.

Rachel lives in Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory of Canada. That is fairly far north. I live in Gladstone, a town south of Portland, Oregon in the USA. Rachel and I have never met, but in some ways we may have known each other for a very long time. You can see this poetry conversation in its original location here. This conversation or collaboration started last Monday and has continued throughout the week as you may notice. There are two more poems that extend the conversation beyond the four I have chosen, one by Rachel, one by me that appear here but these poems are not included directly in this response to the Big Tent prompt. It's been a busy week.

You might stay and read other things this beautiful lady writes. If you look hard, you will find other examples of our collaboration. She was also kind enough to post one of my poems in her sidebar. For that matter, you can find our conversations from time to time in my archives too because when the fancy strikes it may be her posted poem that starts it, or it may be mine.

Go to Big Tent's poetry prompt, to see the prompt that the Big Tent poets are responding to.

Go to The Big Tent Come One, Come All site for the responses.

Rachel wrote:

shoreline

Something froze on the shore
etched in lines
scratched by feet of the passing gulls
cast in red-gold rays
of the sudden dawn startling night’s chill
scuttling back to a huddled place
under rocks, in the cool moist dens
of the red-backed crabs
Something froze
on the shore in the salt-tinged sand
where the wind braided hair
and summer freckles smiled
as we combed
tidal pools to fill our treasure chests
Something froze
and I’ve lost your name

Rachel Westfall
October 4, 2010

I replied:

The Gray Sea

You know my frantic
hopes, my pleas that you decide
to stay in my arms,
but like the gray sea
of this late autumn morning,
like the slick scaled sides
of the creatures there,
you slip free and go. I can't
keep you home this time.

This forces me out
of my dream. I must admit
I no longer know
your true and private
name.

October 4, 2010

Then Rachel wrote:

The day you lost my name

I was sleek, limbs fresh
and soft as wax
newly emerged
when you first drew me up
in a long embrace
and spoke
my true name in my ear.
You told me I was real,
grew me lean and strong
to run colt-limbed
across the sand, the wind
stroking long ripples
through my hair.
You say you do not know me
now, you say
you’ve lost my name.
Without your hands,
your breath, your hawk’s whisper
I have no name at all.

October 4, 2010

And I replied,

Your Gone Away Posture

To me you have gone
and taken your name away.
I no longer know
what it is to say
it, what aroma
and shape it takes when I say
it in day's early
light or in moonshine.
It's your gone away posture
that strafes my soul's face
with large caliber
plugs of gray sea ice
and my peeled back skin reveals
my sunk thews and bones.

October 5, 2010

Field Theory II

A theoretical M theory multiverse. One of the bubbles is ours. This is theoretical. It is background radiation bubbles that we see in this picture. We cannot see past the background radiation. The universe goes opaque at that point, with all the light trapped along with everything else because the distances are too small and everything is too hot. The background radiation was the first thing that can now be seen when the universe went transparent. It is very far away which is equivalent to saying it was a long time ago. This is because it is space/time and there is no real separation. Light travels about 6 trillion miles in a year. Almost 14 billion years ago the universe formed and in less than half a million years became transparent. So something around 13.7 billion light years is the location of the background radiation in every direction.

So today this is a science blog and the poem is a science poem. It won't last long. Tomorrow is Three Word Wednesday and I am hopefully going to post a poem freshly written to use the three words.

"The goal of becoming a better person is within the reach of us all, at every moment. The tool for emerging from the primitive yoke of conditioned responses to the tangible freedom of the conscious life lies just behind our brow. We need only invoke the power of mindful awareness in any action of body, speech, or mind to elevate that action from the unconscious reflex of a trained creature to the awakened choice of a human being who is guided to a higher life by wisdom."
- Andrew Olendzki
Unlimiting Mind


Field Theory II

The long redaction
of strings reaches past the rays,
theoretical
motion faster than
little dots of stranger light,
lonely hordes, photons
all, corpuscular
at this precious momentum
but field theory
holds firm just the same.

July 29, 2009 10:11 AM

The poem is titled Field Theory II because I used the title in another poem. That one was about losing love after working to insure its presence in my life. This poem is about connection. If field theory holds firm then there is a way that each little photon is connected to all the other photons. Indeed, when you look at the situation in a certain way, just as there is only one electron manifesting in uncountable ways, there is only one photon also manifesting in uncountable ways. Perhaps there is only one of us too, manifesting in uncountable ways. There is no us. There is only one. There can be only one. This sounds like the Highlander story.

Littering

Here's a little reality for you.


"Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult "What is that?"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

I spent time on the streets. All streets are mean streets when you are in a certain condition. I was more interested in getting high than I was in keeping an apartment, in working, in bathing, in eating. I found ways to get by but I was literally starving. I weighed 148 pounds at 5'11". I would stand at a street corner and wonder which way led to more dope, which way to an escape from my trap. I knew I was trapped, that it would take an act from outside to get me out. I couldn't get myself out. I had dropped below the event horizon.

At one stage, I was living in the back of my car, a Rambler station wagon that only had second gear. The rest had failed somehow. That didn't matter because I didn't have any money anyway. I had parked that car in front of a vacant lot, so no one really objected. The car was full of my stuff but there was room for me to sleep. My toilet was where I could find it, but I peed at night in that lot. Later I snuck into empty apartments and hooked up with a guy who had an extra bed in his rented room, a bed that was supposed to rent out. The bed was terrible. Still later we went to jail for walking down the street late at night. My friend was carrying pot, less than an ounce but more than enough in those days.

I still marvel at one thing. We were all so broke, all so not into finding ways to make a living, all so out and out incompetent at keeping shit together. Just how is it possible that we could find all that dope?? We thought it was weird then. There is magic in the world and that is part of it. Every dope freak knows this. You need the dope. It is rare that it doesn't come. When it doesn't come it is a horror, an effing disaster and also it is like a violation of the law of dope. On any given day there is enough dope, often more than enough.

This poem is about that kind of life, but not about me.

Littering

I'm watching tv.
This ad comes on, tells me Stop
littering! Shows a
Red Man in full dress
with a sweet tear in his eye,
wounded at the mess.

This won't stop me now
any more than what happened
when I dropped my rig
in that field running
from the dealer I ripped off.

Turned out, was shit dope.

July 28, 2009 11:06 AM

Predator Words

A White Tailed Deer. I hope it was only hunted by camera. In looking for a photo I found a hunting site, with photos of hunters glorying in the kill. I cannot have a real opinion about an activity that is basically millions of years old in the human lineage. I will only say I am not and cannot be a hunter. I hope it never comes to that. It would break my heart. I am a meat eater. I don't care that eating meat is hypocritical for one in my position about hunting. I just don't care. I won't be able to get over it.

The most dangerous strategy is to jump a chasm in two leaps.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

One of my favorite images of success is the image of the King's Hunt from the ancient chinese wisdom stories. It is told that the king goes on the hunt with his whole retinue, who form an open box formation, but with a line of beaters directly in front of the king. There are three sides to the box, the king's right and left, and behind him, and as I have already said, there is a line of beaters blocking the direct path to the king as well. The whole formation moves at a stately pace, driving game before it, and the open side ahead of the line of beaters in front of the king allows all game to escape in that direction, to get out of the box. So the game must wind up somehow going down a corridor sideways to the main direction of travel or it will not reach the king's range, and always the game can turn around and escape by reversing its track and then running in the direction still open to it. The reason for this is that then the game that ends in the corridor directly in front of the king has wound up there from a series of turns that indicate it is God's will that the king take the game. There has been ample alternatives that the game has chosen from to escape or not. It is assumed then that this game is God's gift to the king. Also then, it in its own way mirrors the gift that a successful hunt is in the world of nature.

It is well known that hunters in the shamanic traditions are expected to treat the gift of meat as a royal gift, an offering of the totem spirit of the animal, and a participation in the web of life. In this way, sometimes my poems come to me as offerings.

Predator Words

The northern sun sits
high above the horizon
of auroral dreams,
dreams of the long way
home, of singular bare trees,
dry and hot, leafless,
dying or just dead.
In the wild of my long life
around the corner
there lurk predator
words that ache for expression,
aching for the truth.

July 22, 2009 12:40 PM

Thinking Like A Hawk

Swainson's Hawk

"Wild geese fly south, creaking like anguished hinges; along the riverbank the candles of the sumacs burn dull red. It's the first week of October. Season of woolen garments taken out of mothballs; of nocturnal mists and dew and slippery front steps, and late-blooming slugs; of snapdragons having one last fling; of those frilly ornamental pink-and-purple cabbages that never used to exist, but are all over everywhere now."
- Margaret Atwood
The Blind Assassin

I sought oblivion for many years, just a small one for a time, a little time each day, to make the rest tolerable. I would organize around that opportunity, support it with space and effort and intention. I would defend it with my slippery ways and with an earnest weasel's capacity to evade my own better forms. I would tie one hand down and gesticulate with the other, sure that was all I needed, all you all deserved of me.

I was so sure I was right. I would exclaim, don't you know I have to be like this to live? I would point out at peak voice some aspect or other of our approaching doom and I would discover and display what was wrong with you all, or Him in filigree, burnished, bright mirrored tales telling the truths I knew, not that I was above things but that I ached at my entrapments.

When I was called forth out of myself, I was hugely angry at the rudeness of that call, and terrified. Such was oblivion for me, a place very near an unending supply of wine and words circling the drain and justifying my mandala of despair.

When I was stuck in and on myself, this was my course.

Indeed, even though I write in first person, I am no longer always the person who writes. In fact, several poems in my growing body of work are poems of shape shifting and I take that ability to be a great blessing. How else can I be a great mage or a tiny frog or a lover of a goddess?

How else can I tell the world?

I do not know why I say these things just now, but here is another poem of shifted shape.

There is a type of hawk who is known as a locust hunter if at all possible, accepting small mammals as prey if it must. It is widely distributed, found as well in Oregon, and competes directly for territory with the Red Tailed Hawk. It is known as Swainson's Hawk. This hawk has the longest migration route of most hawks from North to South America and does not vary its route. The hawk migrates around 14,000 miles each season, a distance traveled in two months, eating locusts along the way if it can, but there is a point in the journey where it eats nothing for a few weeks, neither eating nor casting its pellets.

Thinking Like A Hawk

Sitting and thinking,
waiting for the big legged bugs,
the flyers to come.
I may have to eat
thin red squirrel if I must.
But really locusts
are my choice. They get my juice
flowing, my heart filled with joy.

July 22, 2009 12:10 PM

What I Will Do

Coyote makes an appearance, intent on her message. I shall be intent on mine.


"Now, my own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. I have read and heard many attempts at a systematic account of it, from materialism and theosophy to the Christian system or that of Kant, and I have always felt that they were much too simple. I suspect that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of, or can be dreamed of, in any philosophy. That is the reason why I have no philosophy myself, and must be my excuse for dreaming."
- J. B. S. Haldane

The Big Tent told me to go outside for inspiration so I wrote of the journeys I would take, willing to go to any lengths (I heard that phrase somewhere) for love, for adoration, to witness, to win. What? I'm a fool? Maybe so. Maybe I am revealed, dancing along my path toward the abyss, dancing in the open with my little dog Tige. Turns out Tige was an American Pit Bull Terrier.

Go here to learn about Tige, the first talking pet in American comics (probably) and me. Thing is, I didn't die suddenly in early middle age, and I have never lived in Amityville. OOOh. The movie about Amityville is not funny.

What I Will Do

Tell me anything.
Tell me where to go. I will
go to blazes for you.

I will crawl up steps
and through the nave just to show
how far I will go.
I will cross oceans,
walk on water. I will fly
to the sun and stars.
I will take extra
chances as I go, looking
for wild green dragons.
I will touch and soothe
the troubled souls of great beasts
and return the grail.

I might even go
outdoors, walk around out there,
take the air and sun.

September 30, 2010 8:18 PM

Don't Blame Me

Here It Comes!

Three Word Wednesday has offered the words, engulf, imminent, tamper. I used them several times in my romp through space/time. Perhaps there is some sanity somewhere, but probably not here today. I am wandering in search of an honest man, while carrying a sputtering whale oil lamp. The aroma is arresting. It's all rock and roll.

Don't Blame Me

You engulf the sun,
imminent heat death:
yes indeed, you tamper
with the scheme of things.
Holy crap!
I stand accused but I deny it,
I am innocent, innocent I say!
Even though my condemnation
is so goddam imminent,
I hate to tamper with your life,
don't you know I do.
I'll engulf my days with due regret.
(Perhaps I shall fly off at speed
to the far, far indolent corners, there
to lick my weeping cheesy wounds.)
You eat time with red sauce,
engulf space with hot intention,
and I am pregnant with ideas now
soon to wobble forth topsy-turvy,
soon to tamper gracelessly with
your imminent majesty,
you very freaking eminence.
Hope you can guess my name.
That's what Jagger said.

September 29, 2010 6:26 AM

Not That Many

"Most of our life is spent using behavioral strategies to cover or avoid our pain—the deep sense of basic alienation that takes the form of feeling worthless, hopeless, or fundamentally flawed in some way. When our strategy is to help, when we need to be helpful, this requires that we need to find people who seem helpless, or situations that seem to call for help. It’s true that we may also have a genuine desire to help—one that isn’t based on our needs—but whenever we feel an urgency or longing to help, it’s often rooted in the fear of facing our own unhealed pain. If our basic fear is that we’ll always be alone, what better way to avoid it than to find someone who needs us? If we have an underlying feeling of worthlessness, how better to prove that we’re worthy than by doing good deeds? If we’re trying to avoid the feeling of being fundamentally powerless or ineffectual, doesn’t it make sense to take on the identity of someone who can affect people and outcomes positively through service?

"The “helper” syndrome I’m describing is not outwardly harmful. What makes it dangerous is its potential to keep us blind to what is really going on. Yet it’s easy to see how this lack of awareness, multiplied throughout our society, could lead to the social and political chaos that we live in. Failure to work with our inner turmoil—our need for power, our self-centered desire to possess, our fear-based greed and need to control—results in hatred, aggression, and intolerance. This is the source of all conflicts and wars. Without inner understanding, individuals as well as societies will continue to flounder. This is why it is so important for each of us to come back again and again to the practice of awareness."
--a talk given by Ezra Bayda

"To do good is to be good." Earlier in this talk Bayda pointed out that we who are raised in Christendom, especially here in the West, are given this message. Implicit coercion is involved. Parents and caregivers are looking for behavior from us that creates easy parenting conditions. We are rewarded again and again. We are punished for falling short again and again. The consequence is how completely it is instilled in us that we need to be helpful in order to feel good. If there is any natural impulse to generosity or other goodness in us, it is buried under layers of coercion. "To do good is to be good" is a maxim that guarantees suffering in the name of goodness. That suffering perverts any natural impulse into activity that is undergirded by a selfish and self centered attitude. Any goodness arising in these conditions cannot be trusted and will often be doubted by our intended recipients if not by witnesses and ourselves.

We need to dismantle the hidden agendas which block open hearted generosity.

Here's another problem:

Not That Many

The migraine blind eye
would look not on the wide world
but on dim dark holes
to lessen the pain
just the tiniest wee bit,
and the gout driven
toe fears even sight
when someone looks at its heat.

There are things worse than
a dry writing spell.

July 21, 2009 12:47 PM

It Passes So Quickly

"Of course, even when you see the world as a trap and posit a fundamental separation between liberation of self and transformation of society, you can still feel a compassionate impulse to help its suffering beings. In that case you tend to view the personal and the political in a sequential fashion. "I'll get enlightened first, and then I'll engage in social action." Those who are not engaged in spiritual pursuits put it differently: "I'll get my head straight first, I'll get psychoanalyzed, I'll overcome my inhibitions or neuroses or my hang-ups (whatever description you give to samsara) and then I'll wade into the fray." Presupposing that world and self are essentially separate, they imagine they can heal one before healing the other. This stance conveys the impression that human consciousness inhabits some haven, or locker-room, independent of the collective situation - and then trots onto the playing field when it is geared up and ready.

It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up - release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened."
- Joanna Macy
World as Lover, World as Self

I dove in at the end of the sixties, after an exile of two years to get my head straight. When I came back I became a dope dealer, among other things, and I was conscious that doing that was a revolutionary act that stressed the system as it stood in more than one way. That is how we thought in those days, and though it is no longer true mainly because the money was too good and attracted the wrong folk, it was true enough then. That is not only what I did, nor what others close to me did. We really were subversive. In the end we were our own enemy though, and the best of us got out and did other things of note, like Stewart Brand did and so many others, and like some of the musicians did too.

Through changes beyond my control, this thing slipped through my fingers. I tried one more time here in Oregon, coming at it from a radically different direction but I was drinking too much and other obstructions were involved. In the end, I just kept going further away from that energy, in acceptance that it was no longer my path if it ever was. This is one of the heartbreaks of my life.

Now I am only interested in those matters that concern people who are old but awake. It is what I do here.


It Passes So Quickly

I can't help thinking
how spring is gone now, summer's
half over, my life
more than half over.
Fall is my season these days.

Spring vitality,
such grand bright tensions,
like birds on lookout, this fades
to white summer heat
and from there to dry
fall colors, the reds and golds,
with a hint of cold.

I shan't look beyond.

July 20, 2009 12:40 PM

With The Goddess

Nemesis, by Melanie Delon

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, "On Reading and Writing"

I remember well. To consort with the Goddess, has ever been my privilege. I do not fear.

With The Goddess

As you approach me
I find the edge of myself
tremble, then dissolve
as your sea takes me
into the orbit
of your lunar gravity.

There I find that I'm
overcome, must be
with you, conjunction of sun,
moon, total eclipse,
full corona, flares
on all sides of me as I
burn, nuclear fire.

July 19, 2009 2:43 PM
Modified September 26, 2010 12:02 PM

Like Starlight

Morning fog

Author: jedzer

"Here lies the misfortune of philosophy: we encounter on our travels some exceptional freak to which the philosophical rules are found to be non-applicable. Which are right - the freaks or the philosophical principles?"
- Michal Ajvaz

I have bet everything on the turn of a moment. This has happened several times in my life. Sometimes it didn’t work out as I hoped, falling short. Sometimes it turned out beyond my best possible dreams at the time, with one thing leading to another. I follow a spiritual path which allows for such things, though I hesitate to call them acts of God. I love the word serendipity, which to me means happy good luck, luck which carries the aroma of the divine about it. I am in Oregon in this way, and I have made my living in a career that started from one of these events. My poesy in its present incarnation comes from an investment in a woman that I made in a dream in 1983 which did not come to fruition until the last days of 1998. I had no idea such a thing could happen. That relationship led me to a poetry intensive of more than two years duration.

I began blogging by accident too. I stumbled across a blog that completely surprised me and that blog led to some others. Then I haunted the comments for a while, slowly spreading out and finding other blogs for a couple months before deciding I had the willingness to start my own. None of this would have happened had I not found that first blog, That blog so completely impressed me that I got the motivation to span the gap. I came to blogs fairly sure they were going to be time wasters, perhaps even worse than computer games are. I was biased against blogging. That was before I ran into a way of using haiku to my own purpose while haunting the comments of a couple blogs and that’s what led to this blog.

I can confidently say that everything that is of any deep value in my life has come in this “accidental” way. I deeply believe in the concept of destiny, that somehow in some way the outcome of my life is a meaningful participation, a collaboration between me and mystery, between me and forces beyond my ken.

Like Starlight

Everything turns
on one moment: before you
touched me I was not
much to look at or
listen to - no resonance.
I did not notice
as you approached. Why?
Why should I? Nothing
mattered. But your finger touched
my cheek like this, like
starlight and I changed
in that moment, noticing
who I really am.

July 19, 2009 1:13 PM

The Old Farm House

This picture came from Living Off The Grid, a site dedicated to homesteading.

"The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns."
- George Santayana

I have no idea what it would really be like to homestead except I am afraid, I know, of that much of that kind of work. Of course with this old body it would be out of the question. However, as with all poetry of the kind I like, everything can be read allegorically. This could be allegory for how a relationship with lovers is going. How about my relationship with God? Or for that matter, the relationship between my insides and my outsides? Or yours? That's the poetry game.

The Old Farm House

Hard packed, the floor feels
so old to my bare feet, toes
slip in fine grit missed
when last you swept with
the old straw broom that works best
to take the messes
out the door. The gloom
within suits my mood this day
better than the hot
sun bleaching color outside.
All that is light there
turns darker within.

July 19, 2009 10:53 AM

Coyote Grief, or How I Became A Poet

"Coyotes are incredibly adaptable," Gary San Julian reports. "They can switch from eating small mammals, including mice and voles, to dining on melons and apples and berries. They eat garbage. Some prey on domestic dogs and house cats. Coyotes are comfortable hunting on their own—catching small rodents in newly cut hayfields, for instance—and they also cooperate with each other to take larger prey, like deer."


The basic unit is a family group: an adult male and female, plus any grown offspring that have not yet dispersed into territories of their own. "Coyotes don't form large packs the way that wolves do," says San Julian. "A typical family group may number four of five individuals."

Coyotes have no problem coping with suburban sprawl…

exerpt of an article written by Charles Fergus based on his interviews with Gary San Julian, Ph.D., a professor of wildlife resources and an extension wildlife specialist in the College of Agriculture at Penn State.

Coyote Grief
(How I Became A Poet)

In the long ago, before this new world overran the stories, I would run with coyotes beneath the stars that hung much closer then. I had power then, I could fly. So could they. There were paths of light on which we loped, paralleling our brothers the wolves. For me the wolves were too serious, and I stayed with coyotes for the laughter. Sometimes when the light was right and the moon hung closest of all, in those days, in the deep dark of the nights of those days, we would gather and sing among ourselves all the old stories we knew. Those stories were fresh and new then. Time itself is different now.

Sometimes the night stills,
hardens, and the tight stars choke
and fall to flat earth,
dead embers. The sky
is no longer black, dim gray.

It was far away that it happened, in a drier land than here though of many rivers from nearby mountains. We gathered on the plateau to watch the world we knew die. I still don’t understand it. The earth shook and our hearts shattered. I stood and sang one last time in the way I could then, deep throated and free, not only bass but up through the tenor range, pure and open.

Coyote's sadness
is deeper than hope.

The sky fell. I don’t know what this means, but that’s what it did. I noticed her then standing in the circle, magnificent, of a different shape and color, and singing with higher notes than I can. She took my last song and my last breath. I have not sung those songs since and she howled beyond belief while my shattered heart turned to dust in my demise. The others wandered off to the ends of the world. She remained there solitary in her grief, breathing the stale air of that old, dead world.

She snuffs at dead stars amazed,
confused, wants to put
them back, cannot reach
that high, to the dim flat sky.
They won't burn again.

Me, I can never go back to the place where I died, to the land with no stars and that dead sun. I dare not if I could. Coyote, she holds vigil there, unable to go, unable to die, unable now even to sing. She tries to sing, but she has no voice any more. Her voice faded with the stars that fell to earth. As for me, my power is inside now, in my reborn heart. My power is no longer visible. So are my new words found inside me, though they are evoked, called forth by the things of this young world. They come rapidly lately from the mystery inside me and I write them down faithfully as fast as I can. Time is short. However, the music that we sang is still lost to me and to them too. That is why though the coyotes still howl, that howl is no longer a song but now more like a yodel.
**************

This prose is fresh. The poem was written in February, 2009. If you count syllables you will see, as with most of my recent poetry, that I use Haiku syllable counts for my lines, 5-7-5, repeat.

If you are interested in reading the work of other poets who participate in the Big Tent you can find their links or their work posted here: Big Tent Postings

Before There Were Men

This image found on this site: http://www.estatevaults.com/bol/archives/2009/07/17/roam_the_wild_h.html


Three Word Wednesday wants us to use these words in a poem: gait, nudge, ripen.

These words took me to the long ago time in North America. The fossil record shows that North America was a part of the evolving horse story though the horse was extinct pretty much completely as men spread throughout the continent. Here's Wiki:

Pleistocene Extinctions

In Western Canada, there is clear evidence of horses until 12,000 years ago. All Equidae in North America ultimately became extinct approximately 11,000 years ago. The causes of this extinction (simultaneous with the extinctions of a variety of other American megafauna) have been a matter of debate. Given the suddenness of the event and the fact that these mammals had been flourishing for millions of years previously, something quite unusual must have happened. There are two main hypotheses. The first attributes extinction to Climate change. Beginning approximately 12,500 years ago, the grasses characteristic of a steppe ecosystem gave way to shrub tundra, which was covered with unpalatable plants. Another hypothesis suggests extinction was linked to arrival of and over-hunting by humans. Extinctions were roughly simultaneous with the end of the most recent glacial advance and the appearance of the big-game-hunting Clovis culture. Findings published in 2006 showed that it was not yet possible to claim with confidence that the extinction of horses in Alaska preceded the arrival of humans.

Horse fossils disappear from the fossil record from about 10,000 years ago,[dubious – discuss] but begin occurring frequently again in archaeological sites in Kazakhstan and the southern Ukraine from 6,000 years ago. From then on, it is probable that domesticated horses as well as the knowledge of capturing, taming, and rearing wild horses spread relatively quickly, with wild mares from several wild populations being incorporated en route.

Before There Were Men

(The North American Plains)

I run with horses
across the plains with matched gait.

I nudge them, call them
forth with plaintive cry
for all that once was, before
we were to ripen
on the vine of time.

You were busy elsewhere then,

dreaming Asian dreams.

September 22, 2010 11:00 AM

A Singular Fate

This is a painting by Kim Waters of The Fool, part of the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Kim partners as lead singer with Hans Christian. Together they form Rasa and they sing devotional music in the Persian and Indian styles, among other things.

The Fool is a holy figure, closer to saying The Divine Innocent, than to some more modern vision of some stupid person, bound to fail for lack of something essential. The Fool often succeeds, and he succeeds because he is so innocent that he trusts God completely. The Fool is often depicted as one who is just about to step off a cliff edge.

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."
-- William James

A Singular Fate

I've been left alone.
I am the man they knew well,
nobody wanted.
They say, I am not
like you, not your kind, could not
ever be like you.
Then they sniff and snort,
they hem and haw, take themselves
away, leaving me
to my singular
fate.

July 19, 2009 8:24 AM

The Limpid Path, a reprise

Originally posted January 23, 2010. I reprise because I am so fond of this poem, so fond of the word limpid, and so fond of the linguistics and etymology I was able to display, to show how rich these disciplines can be with certain words.


"The Dechainee" by Melanie Delon - one more from Melanie. Dechainee-seems to mean "to be the one to lift or exalt through passion."


Here comes a complex post. You guys speak of favorites among my poems. I have my own of course. This poem is one of them.

This word Limpid is one of my favorite words. I also love the etymological thread of the word limpid. Limpid is related to lymph and through lymph to nymph and to nuptial. Limpid means clear and serene as in a limpid pool, but also as in a limpid style of writing. Lymph once meant pure and clear water, and then the sap in plants, and now the colorless off white fluid similar to the plasma of blood but filled with the substances and the white cells of the immune system.

Nuptial is related to wedding and to the primary point of wedding which is procreation, and thus as a fluid would be the potent sexual fluids. To say Nuptial Fluids might be unusual but would be obvious. This is a bonding of light as in how it passes best through transparency and sex. The sexual light might be an unusually clear light that can penetrate deeply and change things.

This word complex also demonstrates several linguistic substitution rules. The L of limpid is similar to the N of nuptial. Notice in sounding the L and the N, that the position of the tongue in the mouth demonstrates this similarity. The I and the Y and the U are related this way too. The MP in Limpid is the MPH in Lymph and Nymph, is the PTI (pch) in Nuptial. The MP takes the closed lips of M and adds the plosive of P. This is transformed to the fricative F in MPH. Finally the M is dropped, leaving the plosive P joined with the soft CH sound spelled ti in Nuptial. These transforms are all "legal" and commonly used in linguistics to trace the evolution of a language.

Finally, while Limpid comes through French from Latin, Limpa or Lumpa (water), alternatively Lympha, all of this is a modification of earlier Greek Nymphe. A nymph is a semi divine figure evoking the rise of life fluids in men and women both and also meant bride. Nymph is also connected to feminine sexual parts, the labia minora, which are also called the nymphae, nymph in plural latin form. The labia minora are the inner lips of the vulva.

Wow. It is this kind of connection which reveals the wisdom inherent in language, why it is there is magic in words, even when you don’t know it. This is one rich example of the interconnections, clarity with light and with water and with life fluids and with sexual bonding, and the very gate of love. Using limpid brings this all to the sentence, to the poem. While limpid basically means "clear", see how much would be lost if that word was chosen over limpid.

Before getting to the poem itself, I want to add something written by Natalie Goldberg.

The Importance of Illusions

In the beginning, our illusions are important. In some ways, those illusions bring us to practice. Hopefully, in the process of practicing, we wake up to how things really are. But it's not bad to have some dreams at the beginning. When I started writing, I didn't know what it was to be a writer. I didn't know what basic hard work it is. But my dream to be a writer brought me along, and then I met the task.

In betrayal and in failure, there are some real jewels. But wouldn't we much rather have a relationship in which we mature slowly? For instance, isn't it better to have a relationship with your parents in which you grow up and move away from them in a natural and beautiful way? Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen. And in spiritual communities, it doesn't always happen, either. So what do we do? We take what is in front of us and wake up from it.

- Natalie Goldberg from "Beyond Betrayal", Tricycle, The Buddhist Review (Spring, 2005)

The word Limpid evokes the kind of clarity Natalie writes about.

The Limpid Path

At a loss for words
about the broken winged
bird who flew away
except to say one
small word of true love above
all others set free
to fly after her
along the limpid path still
high above her pain.

March 21, 2009 9:33 PM

Witchcraft

Here's a fellow looking for truth, I suppose, or a way through, or maybe a fish for dinner.


"Three-fourths of philosophy and literature is the talk of people trying to convince themselves that they really like the cage they were tricked into entering."
- Gary Snyder

Magic, real magic, is the art of breaking free in the judicious use of the Divine brought near as sufficient power gathered through ritual and incantation. It is based on the assumption that God loves to be used. One must take care. There are consequences that follow in every endeavor on the planet and magic is no exception.

Witchcraft

The coven has met
within your heart and fallen
into trance, power
flowing out of stones
all around as if water
(struck by Moses' staff).

All those witches lurk
on darkened shelf, watch me write
these words waiting for
one main chance to pounce.

July 17, 2009 12:57 PM

Twelve Points

This work by Melanie Delon is one that bears close investigation. I would suggest zooming in on it and wandering around. The details are exquisite.

This is the Wordle that was offered at Big Tent Poetry's Monday prompt. I was directed to use as many words as I could in my poem. I used them all.


Twelve Points
(A Gangland Reverie)

Your half-eaten swarm
of words illuminate us
in frames of debris,
piles a child might build
on a temporary dock
of echoes called up
from the chant, your skirt
swirled to embellish inner
peace.

What's evidence
to me? An answer,
proof of your sturdy backbone
in the scheme of things.

September 16, 2010 6:23 AM
Go here to see all the other contributions to the Big Tent.

3 Word Wednesday - Political Predicament

-Elena Dudina
This is NOT a demure anemic virgin. May she cross my path. Please?

Three Word Wednesday has asked that today's participants use demure, offend and volatile in a short creative work. At least it seems to me it ought to be short to meet the spirit of the challenge.

Here is my contribution. The first lines were given to me by my Webster's Unabridged dictionary as part of their first example of usage. Arnold Bennett wrote "...by hustling male assistants very energetic and rapid, instead of by demure anemic virgins..."

Being an old acid head helps at this point.

Political Predicament

Demure anemic
virgins shall cross my wanton
path and shrink from me.
They shall not offend
the up-tight prudes who have thrown
us out of office.

Volatile odors
emanate from the gassy
members of our clan,
those who ate the stew
with billowing impunity.
Far from anemic
and hardly demure
themselves, they do not now care
that they will offend
the jolly stewards,
all frothy gaiety,
volatile worthy servants.

What now shall we do?

Depression

I see me in this picture. I haven't really changed in this respect, all my life. If you had the chance to view pictures of me at that age, you would see the resemblance too. I have always wanted a way out but also not to lose my way back. I'm pretty good at it.

"Seeing our moment-to-moment automatic conditioned reactions is crucial. Without that we will just continue the mess we are creating in our world, in our loveless relationships. Without clarity, the self-pitying or self-aggrandizing soliloquy takes up all the space; then there is just this little stage for the actor, the victim, the hero, the star. If that isn't seen, self-pitying and self-promoting proceeds and makes oneself and others miserable."
-Toni Packer

"Whenever we find fault with others, whether through anger, contemptuous certainty, self-righteousness, or gossip, it is often based in fear. We may not be aware of our fears, but when we look deeply, we may discover the fear of rejection, loss of control, of unworthiness, or the fear of disconnection. But refraining alone is not enough-by itself it is just behavior modification-and it is neither healing nor transformative. Only through uncovering and consciously entering into the deep hole inside, welcoming the fear with curiosity and compassion, can we ultimately reconnect with the basic wholeness of our true nature."
-Ezra Bayda

"Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have. Otherwise the giving hand closes into a fist and won't let go."
-Sallie Jiko Tisdale

Now my turn:
Cognitive depression (not chemically forced and based) arises when a thread of anger is married to the meaninglessness of things. It is difficult to break depression because the meaninglessness is actually undeniable in a certain way and in certain circumstances also permits positive responses, based in the freedom from constraints that follows. Thus the depressed person battles with a partial truth which justifies the depression. Depression is embedded in a dark fear that one lacks sufficient power to change things and that nothing will ever change because that is so. In other words, depression arises when one feels terribly alone, fearful and lacking, realizing that nothing means anything and one is angry at the only person present, which is oneself.

The key to unravelling a depression may be to find that meaning is possible and thus to find an answering thread of hope for change. It is necessary to find a source of power. Hope may provide it, or else provide a way to crack the depression open enough to allow power from elsewhere to take a useful and visible shape and to stream in.

When I was overseas, in 1967-1969, the whole time, I was prescribed a low dose of Triavil, a drug used to treat anxiety and depression. This was in the aftermath of a four month stay in a facility called Alum Rock Hospital that treated mental conditions. I was in this facility for a mental disability brought about by the high fever I suffered during a meningitis I contracted in military basic training in 1964. I nearly died of this disease and it took a full month and a half to recover and be released from medical supervision. I was considered depressed in 1967although the outward expression of my depression was more active and angry than the more common kinds of symptoms depressions display. It was connected to brain damage.

I still have the journals I wrote during that period. I don't remember ever feeling depressed. I had begun using marijuana and LSD before I went into Alum Rock Hospital and it was in the intense use of these drugs that I was intervened on while living on the street, starving. I was arguably anorexic but more certainly broke and homeless. It is interesting how a guy can be broke and homeless and still find all the dope he needs, maybe more than that. I continued using marijuana (ganja) and hashish (charras) during my stay overseas. However, as I read the journals today, they read depressed. My favorite saying to this day, f*ck the world. I don't feel depressed now either. I find it remarkable that there is such a disconnect between outward signs and inner states. That same disconnect arises in alcoholism and addictions when people who are alcoholics or addicts insist that they are not afflicted with those conditions.

Depression

It is really hard
to take this unending dinge,
this life, all the drudge
of it fumbling for
purpose without the success
that comes with finding,
looking for the key
as if there was light to shine,
as if it mattered.

July 17, 2009 11:49 AM

Annie Showed Up

Candidates for Compassion

I have reframed and expanded the following quotation. The quotation was originally offered in a talk given by Rimpoche Nawang Gehlek, founder of Jewel Heart, an organization dedicated to the preservation of Tibetan culture and Buddhism. The subject of the talk was 9/11 and how to respond to the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. However, Gehlek Nawang's observation really applies in more general circumstances and so I rewrote it for that purpose. The original issue of course was the hatred with which so many of us view the actions of the hijackers of the planes of 9/11.

We must see that when we feel anger, hatred, or some other resistance toward another person, we are not really reacting to the harm they may have caused us but we are reacting instead to that person's inability to adjust to the world and to feel about the world accurately. In such a state people act as if they are blind. It turns out they are unable to stand up for themselves, that they have caved in on themselves. They have submitted completely to their negative emotions about things. They may consider themselves righteous in the way they are approaching their own lives and the lives of others, but we can see how stupid they have actually been. They have allowed themselves to be enslaved by one or more of their negative emotions. Who are better candidates for compassion than those who have been enslaved, perhaps without even knowing they have been enslaved?

This observation is of course fundamental to the vision with which the Tibetans resist the Chinese occupation of their own homeland. The statement, “we must see…” at the beginning of the passage is a statement that if followed leads to wise behavior. If we do not see this as we must, then we risk being condemned to the same enslavement found in those who have done us harm.
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“Here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

My poem refers to the ghost of my former wife, Ann Sheekley, who died in 2001, five years after our divorce, and a little over a month after 9/11. What befell Ann called me to the kind of compassionate vision I have described above.

Annie Showed Up

I am confounded.
Where did you come from this time?
In my face again,
telling me, only
you can, how I lack all earth
and float above things,
not a good thing now
that I am to choose a way
to continue, to
love the world again.

July 16, 2009 8:22 PM