Today's words follow this time. I want this poem from last winter to sit with you a little while. I hope you won't move immediately into my prose.
Within Winter Lies The Truth
At the heart of it
like an old matchhead, glowing
under the crust, like
setting lava grows
dark with heat inside, within
winter lies the truth,
spring ready to rise,
life calling out to life, soon
it will feed again.
This is so right, true
that I can't argue, even
though it really hurts.
February 15, 2009 8:11 PM
Why would spring coming hurt? Because I have to let go of the old, make room for the new. Because I am attached. Because I have no choice and I don't like having no choice, go out of my way to keep the illusion alive that I do have a choice. Because I lack humility and humility is essential to my survival. Thus when I encounter something where humility is the answer I die a little inside and the loss hurts, always. Because life feeds on life and thus someone, some entity has to die that others live, a truth I deeply regret, as if it was my fault. Because I am so self centered that thinking something like that my fault makes sense and I know better. This shames me. Because I suspect that I object to life feeding on life because life might be feeding on me. That's just soooo wrong. That's why spring coming might hurt someone like me.
Contraction
1 week ago
I want to say, "I won't let spring hurt you" but we both know I don't wield that kind of power....wish though I could. However, I can speak to humility and a little story I heard about these three little blades of grass that came before God, two of which expounded their own virtues. The third said, "Lord, if I have done one good thing, I know not of it." And the Lord said, "Best little blade of grass". Silly little story has stuck with me (and that is all that has stuck. Can't remember the whole darn thing). I feel that blade...everything I do is tinged with some unworthy motive. Maybe it is just a small part, put nothing is entirely PURE. And so humility is a skin, and I wear it close because I chose to. I chose it because it fits me.
ReplyDeleteAnd we all get attached to the old at times, never realizing the breath of fresh air that is 'new' until we're forced to it. How much better would 'new' be if we walked towards it with arms wide open....hmmm? Not sayin' I could...
Oh god Christopher.
ReplyDeleteI am so living this right now.
And WW it is so hard to walk with arms wide open, but I try, every damn day...
Thank you for being you and speaking truth :)
xxx
First the poem - The similes are wonderful - the image of the inside of the lava is brilliant!
ReplyDeleteNow the prose - It's so HUMAN to take responsibility - thinking that by thinking something we make it so. Shakespeare said, "There's nothing either good nor bad but thinking makes it so." I don't buy that because there is inherent evil, just as there is inherent good. But by thinking of ourselves as the center of the universe, though, we "make it so". It's all a matter of perception. What shames me is that I think about myself. Something happens, and I think about how it will affect me. And I know better. That's what hurts me.
Life feeding on life? I somehow accept that as the way of things.
Man! Am I messed up?!
This is gorgeous. I read your prose first so I would be left with the poem. And here I am feeling an old matchhead, perfect comparison. Perfect, perfect.
ReplyDeleteAnd with that new understanding, the death of one for the rebirth of another. Funny that we too often only see the rebirth. We need to celebrate the death as well and all that comes in between.
xo
erin
Wow. You all are so wise. Wow.
ReplyDeleteuroborus...
ReplyDeleteGhost, it was obvious to the ancients that appearances begin and end (there really is a head and tail) but that beneath that is the completed cycle that is in fact unbroken (the head swallows the tail). If I live within the cycle of birth and death, then there are beginnings and endings, perhaps nothing but beginnings and endings. If I live conscious of whatever it is that lies beyond, then birth and death are marks on an unbroken cycle.
ReplyDeleteHowever that is not the only image. It is in fact partial as astrology instructs. It lacks the other parts of the geometric vision. There is in fact a numerology, not only the one and zero of the ouroboros, which is in another name a duality. This is simply the case, and the trouble with systems that try to establish illusion and underlying reality and do not reach beyond that.
There are trinities and quaternities. There are quintessences (the fifths, the dominant to the tonic, and that itself a cycle that reveals the imperfection of things). These are the revelatory devices of magick, for example. It continues digitally on up to the nines, to the twelves. Beyond that it still continues but basically beyond human capacity. Most of us can't easily go beyond four.
Birth death orgasm spiritual revelation, these four are the cross that permits the enclosure of a human soul in the embodied condition...these are the doors. If there is to be inspiration and exhalation then they must be at least partially open and they in no way complete themselves in a cycle: they lie spreadeagle apart from each other, the spread of the arms and the serpent. In transformation the serpent becomes the yod, the finger of God. Thus the cross of man in reply becomes the man Michaelangelo envisioned with legs spread and thus five pointed, the quintessence. This cannot happen without God's dynamic through the open door. Any of the four will do, birth death orgasm spiritual revelation.
But which door does make a difference. For Man with God, Ouroboros is transcended in four different creative ways and in the transcendence becomes the fifth to God's tonic in the divine music.
Pythagoras knew this.