What We Were Like - Reprise

Dracula's Castle

I don't know about others. I can't speak for you. I can be sure that I rarely actually fit in with people specifically. There seems to be always some difference difficult to swallow. I am required, I believe to overlook, rise above, find a path of coexistence. I am certain it is required. I suspect it is necessary to the exact extent it seems to be.

This, I think is why the most mature spiritual walks on the planet emphasize forgiveness and mercy, compassion and love. These are the indispensible states of being precisely because we are so fractious. The Judaeo-Christian traditions viewed from the Christian perspective is in one way precisely this message, that the Jewish heritage was a working out of the Law, a clarity with God's perfect justice, and within that structure the revelation of love and mercy abides, embedded, obvious in its way, but still subservient. This is Old Testament as the Christians say. Christ comes to fulfill the Law, to transcend it, to show how natural and in place justice is when Love ascends to its rightful position. Love is the new Law.

That vision of Judaism makes sense to Christians but not to sophisticated Jews who will maintain that the ongoing Jewish experience also reveals Love and reveals it in all its importance.

Muslims will agree from their own perspective that Christians do not monopolize the Law of Love. My mentor Hafiz, a Sufi mystic, a Dervish, just beams with the light of Love, Compassion, Mercy, Forgiveness. In fact he claims these are highly intoxicating and God's House is a Tavern where the Holy Drunkenness is dispensed. Herein is the Dervish Joyful Dance.

And Mahayana leads to the Buddhist Ideal of Bodhisattva. Infinite compassion embodied in Buddha to the benefit of all sentient beings deliberately and deeply present immediately and permanently, not to disappear from the planet until all sentient beings are free. Turn and look. Then become. Hindu Tantra is the practical application of Love as manifest energy (sex is quite a small part of this).

I could go on. But the reality we experience is different for most of us most of the time.

What We Were Like

My family was chancy,
all technicolor critters
hanging together
despite different
destinies in inner space.
"I hate them all, all!"
I've said that before.

Like a few other
places on this old planet,
here we stay even
though otherwise we
would never willingly mix,
no, would not ever.

January 30, 2009 9:56 AM
First Posted July 22, 2009

How You Are Leaving Me

When my lover left me in 2001 it was a process of an ever widening gyre, not unlike watching a child rebel on the way out the door, leaving home. I was not ready but how would I ever be ready? She had to go. I knew it then, know it now.

I do not tell you how that all fit into the loss of my wife. Suffice it to say that what my first lover did for me was to bring me back into the world. She let me know that I was really here, really a man, and no slouch at that or at the love a man gives.

What was remarkable, when she left there was someone there for me. Leaving the old relationship behind, I was walking into a new relationship. It was not a rebound thing, not at all. These women were so different. In leaving my first lover I was leaving for that time poetry behind but not for nothing. What came was the return of my music, not only an intensification of the singing and keyboards that I was already doing, but my guitar practice was given back to me. She gave me back my guitar quite literally. It needed repair and that several hundred dollar restoration became a surprise birthday gift to me. My second lover was a strong woman and a musician herself. She actually became a choirmaster during our time together, running two choirs at once for a time. We established a territory of love that did not overlap with my earlier love at all.

Now that I am on my own, I have returned to the poetry, but the poetry that has come is not the poetry as it was. I have a voice now. My poetry is no longer words uttered through a role play, a character of some fantastic realm, more than half real through the alchemy of love. My poetry is now many voices from many eras of my own life and that of my imagination as well. I write from the Oort Cloud and beyond, from the civilized neighborhoods and the wild, close to the four footed people and the winged ones too. I write as a lover and a clown and just yesterday as a smack head. I write of the gremlins I have known, the lovers, and other mythological beasts, of God and angels and demons within and elsewhere. I do not write only to her expecting any reader to follow such a self indulgent path. Instead I write the truth, or at least true stories, and sometimes a spoof or two. I would not recommend taking me all that serious. I often am not serious. I would recommend not believing I always tell what has actually happened to me. I am a story teller.

Both of these women left me. This is okay with me now though I resisted both separations. I would prefer to have a lover though I am no longer really young enough to be the lover I was. I would prefer a companion but I know I am not really companion material. I am too singular. I sit in the evening here quite content to be solitary and undisturbed to do this work. Later this evening I would like to join my lover, but I know she would like more of me right now than I want to give. But I am all right. I have nothing to prove. I was a damn fine lover. They both said so, no question. They did not leave me because of me, at least not mainly. They both said that too.

How You Are Leaving Me

I hop, hop along
trying to get it, get it.
Man, what can I do
to convince you that
you've risen higher than this
yard we've known so long?
You've returned to nest
in the old haystack we called
good enough once more.
But I know you'll go,
again you will fly away
and one time soon, soon
you will not come back.

December 3, 2009 8:05 PM

How I Woke Up

No, I didn't wake up today like this. I actually wrote this poem in a response to another poem I read yesterday, in response to remembering what I was like decades ago. But no, this exact thing did not happen to me. It could have been me. There are at least two people way back then who might have deserved this from me.

Or as someone said, perhaps this is actually not about dope, even though it says it is. It is dark, though. It is deeply trapped and basically awful. If I woke up like this today, I probably would have been waking like this for some time. I would very likely be stuck in the nightmare. I would probably continue to wake up like this until a miracle or some darker disaster would then shape things differently, like going to jail might change things. If I have awakened like this, then going to jail might be a dark blessing rather than a disaster.

I have some personal experience with bad shit turning out to be a blessing. I wrote recently on the idea of sloppy good luck. There is a whole spectrum. Sometimes luck turns really sloppy, even stinky, reeking of the sewer. This kind of luck takes awhile to reveal itself as the good luck it is. The point embedded in this musing: sometimes you fall so deeply into the pit that you have no way back up without help of some kind, from serendipitous fate, from God, angels, demons, from the thrust of destiny, from the kindness of others.

It may be in that hard school you learn the most about love, humility, forgiveness.

It occurred to me that I might be appearing too saintly lately. I thought it might be appropriate to point out that I went through some really dark shit in my youth.

How I Woke Up

I need to smack him
down, take his dope, end his life
if I can, oh Lord,
if I can like he
took mine that last thrust before
the next nasty rise
erupted on me
like vomit, like black light groans
in the back room mess
I must now live in
as I choke down my cold rage
and am torn apart.

June 12, 2011 11:17 AM

The Promise - Reprise

Orange Forest

The Promise

Dazzled by the light

Found in the pack God carried

And left at my door.

I asked Him in but He left

Me again, again with gifts,

And look, a promise.

This hand written note says "Peace."

Oh, I am thirsty!

Written sometime before November 18, 2008

First Posted November 18, 2008

What I Have To Say - Reprise

This is a poem written in 2000. In those days I was immersed in the first of two love relations I entered after the ending of my twenty year marriage. This time was a complex weave of fantasy and reality and Maire (as I called her) was my muse. I write about this often in this blog, the blog being to a great extent an homage to that relationship and what happened to me because it occurred. It was both the most amazing and rewarding two years of my life and arguably the most painful severance as well. I let go and moved beyond this genuinely clandestine affair with my muse when it was time to move.

She left me as I knew she would in the beginning. I have that prediction in black print. Most of the foundational skill I have as a poet was tempered in the fire of this love. This poem was written first to this woman in a moment of anticipation of what was to happen next in our affair. I was not wrong in my expectation, not in the coming next few days.

I was gifted in my life with a much better, more viable and vibrant love relationship following my loss of this clandestine woman and our fantasy. I received the renaissance of my music which returned to me full force with my connection to this new woman, and we were connected fully in public view. This relationship was not clandestine in any way. I gained her family too, an amazing family. I am quite likely deeply connected with this woman for the rest of my life, while my muse has been out of my life for years now.

What this poem is is a psalm, of course, and is said entirely to Divinity. If you do not have Divinity in back of your love for one another, what do you have?

What I Have To Say

Father Sun, Grandmother Sky,
Mother Earth, hear my call.
I am here within You.

This is what I have to say.

I will stand here at the stillness.
I will witness what I see.
I am open to Your Ways.
Give me the tools, give me leave
That I can bend and trim the Tree
Of Life and keep the Deep of Days.

Then I will turn with a gift of love
For the Goddess of the moon and stars
And I will truly touch Her heart.

This is all I have to say.

First Posted, part of my fourth post, November 10, 2008

It's Always Something - Reprise

So, long before I ever dreamed up this blog the wee folk were part of my poetry. I have Celtic roots and instincts. I prefer a whole ecology of the divine and semi-divine, complete with angels, demons, devas, faerie, dwarves and elves, gods and goddesses, familiars, witches and mages and as I write of them here, gremlins.

The original impulse to house gremlins comes from a science fiction story of the fifties. I believe it was by Robert Sheckley, but only because Sheckley wrote wonderful off beat often humorous stories. This story was about a guy who got gremlins in a cloaked birdcage, gremlins who lived in a lovely house and garden and gave him lovely luck when he took the birdcage into his house. He could not resist peeking in on them even as he was warned that they wanted complete privacy. Finally there was a "for rent" sign put up and then the vacancy. His luck departed too. After awhile he noticed there were tenants again in the birdhouse but everything was run down and sloppy, a slum as it were. Also though his luck was still mostly good, it was also sort of sloppy and never a pure blessing again. So much for looking at your luck.

My mother and I agreed we must have slum gremlins for we had what we called sloppy good luck. Things turned out for the better most often, but there was also this rather ugly price, sometimes before the luck, or with it, even after. That's the story of my life pretty much, sloppy good luck. Slum gremlins.

Oh by the way, the crack in the windshield was a real outcome of a journey on a day when I did find my keys after a brief moment when I thought I wouldn't.

It's Always Something**

The small folk are in charge of where things are
In my house. I don't understand the rules.
Where my keys rest, on what surface they should be
Goes according to them, not according to me.

I really try to get along. I really mean this. No, really.

Today I rejoice with wide eyes. Today I found my keys
Right where my best thinking said they would be.

(Now I hope the small folk haven't moved away
In protest of some willful violation of mine-
Perhaps instead I find my keys seemingly unmoved
Where they are through some act of mine they approve.)

The simple blessing of found keys, you would think
Enough, but I was still late for work. Road gremlins.

My windshield is newly cracked in the lower right corner.

**Earliest save September 24, 2006
Probably written around that time.
First posted on this blog, part of my second post ever, November 8, 2008

Ave Maria

Found by my long time blog friend, Ghost Dansing:

No Post Tonight

No post tonight. Sorry. Don't feel up to it. This is not a bad thing.

Eating Prayers - Reprise

"The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing."

"If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."




What utterly true statements. Throughout my high school years, and really before that, the best science fiction and fantasy did precisely this, and so strongly I could not deny my longing. I would look for signs in my life and on my body that I really belonged somewhere else. The conviction I am not from here remains with me today, originally fired by the longing that came from books and my imagination, which "proved" to me that there was an elsewhere to be from, a place where much that plagued me in my life dropped away. I was never so naive as to believe in utopia but at least the challenges elsewhere would be more colorful and meaningful.

Wiki says:

"Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as "Jack", was an Irish-born British novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is well known for his fictional work, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.

"Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, and both authors were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to Christianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His conversion had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.

"In 1956 he married the American writer Joy Gresham, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age of 45.

"Lewis died three years after his wife, as the result of renal failure. His death came one week before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal, as he died on 22 November 1963 – the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the same day another famous author, Aldous Huxley, died."

While I cannot speak for "Jack's" return to Christianity, I can say that one of his visions is arresting for me and I carry it still as one serious description of the human condition. He claimed in his fictional work that planet Earth is under quarantine and placed so by the rest of the cosmos as a planet that is spiritually sick. He said that elsewhere, even as close as Mars, the rebellion fundamental to the human spirit did not take place and so the rest of the cosmos was at peace and reconciled to the real in ways incomprehensible here. We are under quarantine because we would behave as a virulent plague in the larger universe, much as we are doing on the planet. The keepers of the quarantine are containing our self destruction and waiting to see if we survive and then recover sanity enough to be let free.

Doesn't that feel right to you? It does to me. Please understand I don't claim this is "real", just that it really fits well with my experience of the planet.

Eating Prayers

Embodied knowledge-
Never less than two wide views,
Colored vistas, skew.

I swim very well
Among the rocks, wade the bars
Seeking shells of life.

Then I return home,
Brush away the gritty sand
And eat my prayers.

Written October 14, 2008 1:39 PM
First Posted December 29, 2008

My Cold Dark Dream - Reprise

"In life, many thoughts are born in the course of a moment, an hour, a day. Some are dreams, some visions. Often, we are unable to distinguish between them. To some, they are the same; however, not all dreams are visions. Much energy is lost in fanciful dreams that never bear fruit. But visions are messages from the Great Spirit, each for a different purpose in life.

"Consequently, one person's vision may not be that of another. To have a vision, one must be prepared to receive it, and when it comes, to accept it. Thus when these inner urges become reality, only then can visions be fulfilled. The spiritual side of life knows everyone's heart and who to trust. How could a vision ever be given to someone to harbor if that person could not be trusted to carry it out. The message is simple: commitment precedes vision." - High Eagle


My Cold Dark Dream

The sparrow flew in
Through the window, landed here
On the strewn papers,
On the table beside
My heavy heart on this rain
Filled night without you.

This could be a song
But it is my life that plays
In this cold dark dream.

Sparrow dying now
On the floor and the cold grows
Colder in my shell
Of an empty life.
My dream shatters. I break down,
Then wake to gray dawn.

Written January 26, 2009 9:23 PM
First posted July 9, 2009

Calling Forth My Light - Reprise

*********************************

"Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you believe yourself to be, that you overestimate yourself, in fact that you lie to yourself. That you always lie to yourself every moment, all day, all your life. That this lying rules you to such an extent that you cannot control it any more. You are the prey of lying. You lie, everywhere. Your relations with others - lies. The upbringing you give, the conventions - lies. Your teaching - lies. Your theories, your art lies. Your social life, your family life - lies. And what you think of yourself - lies also. But you never stop yourself in what you are doing or in what you are saying because you believe in yourself. You must stop inwardly and observe. Observe without preconceptions, accepting for a time this idea of lying. And if you observe in this way, paying with yourself, without self-pity, giving up all your supposed riches for a moment of reality, perhaps you will suddenly see something you have never before seen in yourself until this day. You will see that you are different from what you think you are. You will see that you are two. One who is not, but takes the place and plays the role of the other. And one who is, yet so weak, so insubstantial, that he no sooner appears than he immediately disappears. He cannot endure lies. The least lie makes him faint away. He does not struggle, he does not resist, he is defeated in advance. Learn to look until you have seen the difference between your two natures, until you have seen the lies, the deception in yourself. When you have seen your two natures, that day, in yourself, the truth will be born." - Jeanne de Salzmann, First Initiation

Jeanne Matignon de Salzmann born Jeanne Allemand often addressed as Madame de Salzmann (1889 – 25 May 1990) was a close pupil of G. I. Gurdjieff, recognized as his deputy by many of Gurdjieff's other pupils. She was responsible for transmitting the movements and teachings of Gurdjieff through the Gurdjieff Foundation of New York, the Gurdjieff Institute of Paris and other formal and informal groups throughout the world.

Madame de Salzmann began her career at the Conservatory of Geneva, studying piano, orchestral conduction and musical composition. Later a student of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze in Germany from 1912, she taught dance and rhythmic movements. She met her husband Alexandre de Salzmann in Hellerau at Dalcroze's school. With him she had a daughter, Boussique. The Russian revolution triggered a move for Jeanne and her husband Alexandre to Tiflis, Georgia where she continued to teach.

In 1919, Thomas de Hartmann introduced the de Salzmanns to George Gurdjieff, a relationship that would last until Gurdjieff's death in 1949. She worked with Gurdjieff for nearly 30 years.

In December 1949, together with Henriette H. Lannes, Jane Heap and J. G. Bennett she initiated the startup of an organization, which would eventually become the Gurdjieff Foundation, to continue the Gurdjieff Work. On 6 October 1955 The Society for Research into the Development of Man Ltd. was founded. This organization later changed to The Gurdjieff Society Ltd., on the 17 June 1957. She led the organization and continued Gurdjieffs teachings, emphasizing work with the movements, until she died, 101 years old in 1990.

Her son by Gurdjieff, Michel de Salzmann born 1923, took over the leadership of the organization.

***************************

What a great day this was! Was I lying to myself?

Calling Forth My Light

Fairies ring flowers
Like churchmen ring steeple bells
And dew sprays like sound.

Calling me to devotion,
Fairies lead me to my knees.

They dust me with love
And touch my cheeks, kissing me,
Calling forth my light.

Written September 5, 2008 11:57 AM
First Posted November 22, 2008

Black Pepper - Reprise

...and coming into the clearing I spied a vision I had never seen before...and there was the aroma of some exotic and unknown spice. It stung my tongue and my saliva squirted as if it was prey I spied but my heart melted at once and I knew I was lost...

***************

"In reality there has never been a day in our lives (and maybe not one hour or even one minute) when something happened that did not eventually lead to significant results. However, in the onward rush of events it is usually hard to see these patterns." - Manjusvara

When I am in love odd things happen. The world changes in a myriad of ways. I find gratitude in odd places. Sometimes when it is going very well, is very fresh, there is a kind of quality to the light and sound of things, to the feel of things. Only LSD ever came close to this experience of being high and that only twice. I know what it means to be able to say I would die for love. I haven't felt like that since 1999. Before that time I had not felt like that since 1970. What is really cool, the echoes of love are still in my soul. I am so deeply grateful I have never been embittered no matter what happened.

By the way, I loved my wife with a life love and we partnered for nearly 24 years but she never took me, transported me, changed me like this. I am not sure it is wise to marry someone who has this power in your soul. At least for me, the women who changed me like this would not have been good marriage material.

Black Pepper

I hear her. She stirs
Behind the words she wrote down,
Below the sweet rhymes
She made while setting
Her gratefulness in this place,
Declares black pepper
The fruit of her choice,
Asks me to hang a crescent.

This moon's lit by grace.

She defines the space
Near my heart and all this while

She caresses my face.

January 23, 2009 10:47 PM
First Posted July 5, 2009

Corkscrew - Reprise

Merlin

This poem really is three poems that relate to each other but come from different places. First, the Man of the Northern Wall was a mage and power behind the throne of a queen in a before time, much as Merlin was behind Arthur as King in the time of Camelot when Britain was not yet but Rome had retreated back across the Channel. That is the sense of the Magic. There are limits even at the best of times because the age of true magic is in the Golden Age of archetype, or the Dream Time of the Australian aborigines, or the before times of any cultures. In other words, full power magic was in the world prior to the world of history. Even the most powerful mage is limited in historical time. That is just true, no matter how a magician may strive for power.

Then there is Coyote, one of my favorite gods, almost not a god. He screws up far too often to really be a god. Often he is hilarious, sometimes stupid, sometimes brilliant. He has a kind but self centered heart but can be cruel, even mean his cruelty. In short he is as tangled up as we are.

Of course in classical myth Coyote is sort of a cross between Pan, Dionysus and Hermes and these three are definitely gods.

The last verse goes from a touchy task to the fact that we can all fall from high enough to hurt, and this at any time.

And I mean all this of course. There is something in me that is so arrogant that I think I can save the world. If saving the world is possible at all from our side of things then it is some kind of magic that does it. If it is saved from the other side, it is of course miracle that does it.

**This poem's introduction was modified and the picture added tonight**

Corkscrew

If I were Magic
And Magic was as I dream
Then so much would change.

Coyote is the teacher,
Shows the corkscrew way of things.

To thread the needle
Takes courage, wit, hollow bones,
Or else you fall, break.

Written October 13, 2008 3:48 PM
First posted Saturday, December 27, 2008

Yaquina Bay

Yaquina Bay, Newport, Oregon.
Click on the picture to get a bigger view.

In this picture which looks basically a little west of south the headwater of the Yaquina River is the main subject, which is thoroughly tidal all the way back to east of Toledo, Oregon, eight miles inland. Because the tidal zone and the slow flow of the Yaquina makes this body of water mainly a salt incursion of the Pacific Ocean, it is instead known as Yaquina Bay.

At the bottom and to the left of this photo by the US Army Corp of Engineers, there are three rows of apartment style duplexes that were made top and bottom two bedroom apartments. The master bedroom was at the rear (northern exposure) in each, the master bath in what is the northwest corner. North is to the bottom of the photo. Each apartment had a full glass wall and a patio or deck on the south end, the viewpoint overlooking the bay. You see these apartments built on a fairly steep hillside, with the roofs of the five in the lowest row completely below and not blocking the view of the seven units above them. To the right (west) of the seven unit row is a separate row of three. In the middle of that row and upstairs is where I lived with my wife and three cats. We were the first tenants in the building. The complex was built by the man who had the house east of the lower five units, a fellow named Brice. He called his complex "Embriceadero", reminiscent of the luxury Embarcadero Hotel on the bayfront to the East and just outside the boundary of this picture. This was in 1976-1979.

We lived there nearly three years before moving back to the Portland Area from which we had come. In some ways this time overlooking Yaquina Bay was the happiest time in my life, but it was not so for my wife. I didn't really want to but for her sake I agreed and we moved to Lake Grove, south and west of Lake Oswego, itself upriver of Portland above the Willamette River, on the river's west side. Lake Grove basically holds the southwest tip edge of the man created lake (an expanded swamp flooded by a dam) that gives the city of Lake Oswego its name.


Yaquina Bay

I lived on the bay,
above its north front, my home
a soft box that breathed
in the gales sweeping
in from the ocean, bowing
the south wall, curtains
falling away, showing
the plumb line, the house top bent
in the storm's ancient
agonizing

(and)

the blooming secret of joy
she grew in my heart.

May 29, 2011 8:40 AM

Singing To The Sky - Reprise

I have a penchant for witchcraft and shamanism. I know that mankind's spiritual impulse arose in shamanism first in the long sweep of human evolution. I believe, since it lasted such a long time, most of the time that humans have been on the planet by far, that this sort of spirit walk is probably best suited for the human spirit.

There is a caveat to that. Shamanism is not egalitarian. Only a few people really practice, often one to a band, with an apprentice, or perhaps a couple of shamans, though two can lead to severe and dangerous conflict. The rest of a hunting and gathering band do a variety of things and often the band considers each specialty task life saving and affirming and so sacred, blessed by the shaman and a blessing to the band.

Sometimes there are sacred societies, both men's and women's, and so more of the band does participate in some involved sense, but the full meal deal usually is the province of one or two people, the tribal shamans and the rest know this. This tendency for only a few fully engaged individuals suited to the practice continues to the present day in the shamanic spiritual walk. The priesthood is the modern version of hunter-gatherer shamans but priests rarely shape shift or fly to heaven or wage spiritual warfare or chase away evil spirits, all regular duties of a shaman.

Witches have covens. There is good reason and a heritage in this need for privacy. Witches and shamans can be misunderstood and that misunderstanding is deadly at times, the way things have been and in some sense still are.

Nevertheless, the great mainstream religions - the Judaeo/Christian/Islamic tradition of the Near East, the Hindu and its variety of offshoots including Buddhism in Central Asia and China, modern Taoism and Shinto in the Far East, have been around at maximum for five thousand years. Man's shamanic spirit walk is at least 40,000 years old, probably older, and threads of shamanism are still present in Bon in Tibet, and Taoism and Shinto in China and Japan. In the Americas the mainstream was shamanic, though the high civilizations, Cahokia, the Olmec/Maya/Aztec, and the Inca all evolved priesthoods. This is beyond question. Shamanism is the forerunner. Shamanism is the spirit walk prior to history and the artifice of civilization, hence is the spirit walk of the natural man. We call shamanic teachings superstition but this may be dangerous in that in doing so one assaults the heart and soul of the natural man.

I suspect that had I survived childhood and was born 20,000 years ago, I would have been a shaman. Hmmm. I probably have been one. Many times.

*This essay underwent some modification and expansion tonight, including adding the picture of a fantasy shaman from one of the computer games*

Singing To The Sky

If the sky asked me
I would reply with a song
Of how the moon, clouds
Need a dwelling place.
I would sing in keys that change,
Modulate blue moods
To gray and silver,
And back again to sky blue.
I would howl and bray
At the moon's track line
And bare my chest to the sun.
Then I would dance, dance.

January 10, 2009 7:58 PM
First posted June 2, 2009.

The Ski Tower, High Centered - Reprise

A spectacular, luminous ring offers the best evidence yet that a nearby star is circled by a newly formed solar system.

The ring is composed of dust particles in orbit around Fomalhaut, a bright star located just 25 light years away in the constellation Pisces Australis - or the Southern Fish. A recent image captured with the Hubble Space Telescope - which makes the system look uncannily like the Great Eye of Sauron from the blockbusting Lord of the Rings trilogy - confirms that Fomalhaut's ring is curiously offset with respect to the star.

The most likely explanation is that the gravity of one or more unseen planets is dragging the ring askew. The fact that the inner edge of the ring is relatively well-defined adds further weight to the argument because it suggests the unseen planets are sweeping up stray dust within the radius of the ring.

From The New Scientist

The following is the complete post and comments, the post date being
FRIDAY, JUNE 26, 2009 (I added the picture and reference to Arwen tonight)

I am a long time Lord Of The Rings fan. I yearned to follow the elves to the lands in the west. To not know how the emigration of the elves turned out seems cruel to me. Of course, not even Tolkein was capable of telling a true elven story. Elves are NOT human. In order to be remotely like humans they have to step down, corral, back off, pin hole their presence. Otherwise they are at right angles to this plane, hard to even see. When they accepted Bilbo, it meant that a certain elven group would have to exercise that discipline to tend to him. It was what Aragorn's lover Arwen was prepared to fix in place so she could be with him, to essentially cripple her elven self for love. It is that crippling that would render her mortal. I can't write from the elven point of view either.

Arwen Undómiel (Arwen Evenstar)

The Ski Tower

Looks like Sauron's eye
Could appear any moment there
Staring down on skiers
Not suspecting anything
Like such awful disaster.

The ring bearer
Needs to find another way
Up the snowy slopes.

January 19, 2009 12:21 PM

*********************************

I got off my high center. This is not unlike stepping out of my elven self for the sake of movement along the high Way. I don't remember writing in code like that. It is a good alternative to being hung up and this being the way I find motivation to get going.

High Centered

You told me to move.
You held the whip's long shadow
In your whipping hand.
Made my withers twitch
To see that lurking notion
Of motivation.
I got off my high center,
Took to the highway again.

January 19, 2009 1:16 PM
POSTED BY CHRISTOPHER AT 6/26/2009 07:43:00 PM

10 COMMENTS:

Michelle said...
Christopher! I am clapping my hands with delight :)

Thank you

*big grin*

...and as for finding another way, yeah, some of us can't 'move' the same way around this unfamiliar place.

x

JUNE 27, 2009 2:43 PM

christopher said...
It is an unfamiliar place. Yes it is!

You're welcome, and you are in my thoughts.

JUNE 27, 2009 3:19 PM

Michelle said...
We all shine for each other my friend.

You know this.

love

x

JUNE 27, 2009 4:07 PM

Michelle said...
Not trying to hog your blog :)

But

go here

http://michelle-colourmyworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/into-night.html

Seemed relevant

x

JUNE 27, 2009 4:30 PM

christopher said...
Michelle, you are not hogging my blog. I think you are excited just now is all. Also many people are leaving special things here and your link is special.

JUNE 27, 2009 7:38 PM
Woman in a Window said...
Makes me laugh a little at all of us about our little business while a big eye blinks out penultimate truths somewhere far above.

Are there always other paths?

JUNE 27, 2009 8:53 PM

Michelle said...
The earth sighed
and the poetry
fell
like rain
cried through
the eye
of a howling storm
and nothing
nothing
would
ever
be the same

Thank you :)

xx

JUNE 27, 2009 9:30 PM

christopher said...
Erin, indeed. Perspective.

Michelle, thank you for your contributions and your warmth.

JUNE 27, 2009 10:05 PM

Lucy said...
I always thought Tolkien entertained angels unawares. I think you may be one of them...

JUNE 27, 2009 11:59 PM

christopher said...
Lucy, if that was true, I would have to deny it as a condition of employment. I am just another bozo on the bus. :)

One of my closer friends these days is a man with a major hit to his record in the music business. He hums along, making enough money with his band, originally out of Detroit. He lives nearby here in Oregon and the others are scattered across the country. They have a business machine that gathers play dates for them at casinos and such. They meet back in the midwest for practice sessions and composing sessions. Otherwise he is just busy with his music.

He is also active in his son's school and keeps connected in his family life.

Of himself, he says he has a trade. Other people think other things about him. Me, I think it is blessing. At least I feel blessed knowing the man before I knew anything about his music, knowing the man first. He is a simple man who loves his family.

Exactly.

JUNE 28, 2009 7:41 AM

The Calling

A blog comment dialog concerning prayer:

Woman in a Window said...
I think this of fundamental importance, that none of us negates the other's specialness, either in the day to day, or in the eyes of god, or in a line at a theatre. If we could all get our hands around that one, and our minds, we'd all be doing pretty well. - JULY 16, 2009 2:33 PM

christopher replied...
Erin, I agree with you. I would like to enrich the notion. I think of how Christians I have known use the idea of talent or calling. We are indeed special, and it is to a purpose. Without that we are perhaps not so special.

This is where it gets a little thick though. Things get thick because the purpose behind the call is plainly much larger than we are, and quite likely not of our choosing. We will fit the calling but maybe quite strangely considering our own point of view. This tends to demand an enriching our own character so that we begin to know and enact humility. I mean the kind of humility that is you or me finding our right size.

I can't figure out what about us is so special if it does not involve following the purposeful path that not only arises beyond us but leads us to return there as well. There is a cycle present though it may extend well beyond the portals of human birth and death. Reinhold Niebuhr commented that nothing worth doing can be finished in one lifetime. That might be completely true in relation to a call and I am sure that is how Niebuhr meant his words as well.

I should mention at this point that we are not special because we are loved, and we are certainly loved, but we may not be capable of the richest love ourselves unless we do follow our calling. This is the heart of the civilizing process, of maturation. - JULY 17, 2009 8:05 PM


Wiki says:

Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr; (June 21, 1892 – June 1, 1971) was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, he shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world. He attacked utopianism as useless for dealing with reality, writing in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944):

"Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary."

His realism deepened after 1945 and led him to support American efforts to confront Soviet communism around the world. A powerful speaker and lucid author, he was the most influential religious leader of the 1940s and 1950s in American public affairs. Niebuhr battled with the religious liberals over what he called their naïve views of sin and the optimism of the Social Gospel, and battled with the religious conservatives over what he viewed as their naïve view of Scripture and their narrow definition of "true religion."

His long-term impact involves relating the Christian faith to "realism" in foreign affairs, rather than idealism, and his contribution to modern "just war" thinking. Niebuhr's perspective had a great impact on many liberals, who came to support a "realist" foreign policy. His influence has been acknowledged by such recent leaders of American foreign policy as Jimmy Carter, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama.

Alcoholics Anonymous acknowledges the young Niebuhr for his penning of what has come to be called the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity

To accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

It is quite possible Reinhold Niebuhr was called and followed as best he could. So may we all be called and follow.

What's It Like To Be You?

My whole life I have tried to understand you. It has always seemed crucial, as if my life were at stake. I think maybe I am right. This is complicated.

I am certainly no solipsist. I am sure I am a product, a complexity with multiple sources and cannot stand alone in any genuine sense. When I needed to quit drinking it made complete sense to me that I was going to need a community to do it. Since that time I have learned over and over again that I don't get to choose the members of my life except as a collaboration. I cannot choose you if you do not choose me and I cannot keep you if you release me.

If in that moment as you release me I refuse your release it is not you I keep but the gargoyle in my own brain that turns to growing stone. I have to keep carving it to hold its size and by that crude carving it becomes even less like you. Or if I let it grow then I am crushed from the inside and its size still makes it less like you. I must let go, let the stony dream release and shatter and pass, no matter that passing it is like passing kidney stones.

The pain informs me of my regret.

What's It Like To Be You?

You walk on my heart.
I hope you don't mean to be
like this, not to me.
I wish I could see
what it's like to look out your
eyes and taste your mouth
from the inside...is
the stale taste like mine? Do you
have a bad place or
even two in there that
leaks out the small pain, that stinks,
that you hide like me?

December 3, 2009 7:39 PM

Reptilian Mood

I was so taken with writing as a reptile in December of 2009 that I tried it again. I took the second poem apart and put it back together tonight. This is a snake poised to strike, I think, or perhaps a predator lizard. It is certainly no vegetarian.

Reptilian Mood

Behold! I intend
you still, your shudder - cold
stare, cold yellow stare
sizing you up, up
in the clear cool light of noon
of this last summer,
of my sunny rock,
my stand, ‘neath my slow scaled chest,
‘neath my hissing breath.

December 2, 2009 7:20 PM
Edited May 23, 2011 8:04 PM

Pagan Rites - Reprise

My long time blog friend Lucy has written more than once on this subject. She lives with her husband and her wonderful walking companion, Molly, in France. Her blog is a delight because she is not only a wonderful writer but as well an amazing photographer. Here from a post in 2006 is the source of the poem I wrote in 2009. I think it is not the post that inspired me but it might as well have been. The Little Saints
In that post she wrote

"Despite the popularity of the little saints, and their inclusion in many guides and other books on the region, little effort was made to safeguard them. The originals were stolen some twenty years ago, but fortunately a local antiquarian and woodcarver had made faithful copies, which were installed in their place. These too were stolen two or three years ago ( with the exeption of St Eugenie, who must have been better secured). Only recently has the local commune seen fit to even explain their absence with a notice to the numbers of visitors in cars and camper vans from all over Europe who stop at the chapel. The powers that be, sacred or secular, may not have valued them; they were too pagan, too maverick for the theological correctness of the established church, too crude and odd for the artistic arbiters, and too irrational and superstitious for the secular, intellectual spirit of modern France."

Pagan Rites

I'm a holy thief
Stealing little saints
When nobody looks.
I've kept them in caves,
Come and dance before the flames
I set down in front
Of the half circle
I made of them, tall to short,
But I left behind
Eugenie, not mine
To take, so strong her magic.
I have principles.

Written January 26, 2009 4:25 PM
First posted July 12, 2009