"What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?" -Vincent van Gogh
"It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth -- and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up -- that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had." - Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (Carlos Casteneda reported that the Brujo Don Juan Matus taught a similar message. You must live with Death on your left shoulder, close to your heart, if you are ever to become a man of power.)
"You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering." - Henri-Frederic Amiel
"There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation -- veneer isn't worth anything." - George Washington Carver
This poem draws on my first blog form, a form of Haiku in the count 5-7-5, 7-7, 5-7-5. Of course here it is 5-7-5, 5-7-5, 7-7. This form was a Japanese offer and response done off the cuff by two poets live and extemporaneous in a teahouse, a spoken form. I started blogging by following a couple blogs, of which one is still around, Motel Zero. f/zero aka Robinstarfish is a photographer, sells his own work and that's what he showcases now. In the days when I started he was writing haiku to go with the photos he was posting. The other fellow is off the blogs as far as I know. He is certainly off the blog he was writing then. I would post poems as comments and followed paths out from there, finding poets and leads to other blogs and yet more poets. After a few months, I decided to start my own blog. It was November 8 of 2008, my first post.
I don't think I would really like it much if the whole world tasted of anchovies.
Anchovy Test
The whole world tastes of
anchovies ever since you
left the main building
of the old campus,
the heart of my scholarship.
You claim it's a test.
I wanted to stop bluffing
or at least pretend I did.
August 14, 2009 12:30 PM
Recently I watched a movie by Werner Herzog, My son, My son. There is a short film that he narrates available on this rental, The Plastic Bag. It is beautiful and vulgar, in its way. Mostly beautiful. In the end of the film the bag wishes its maker had made it finite. I pounded the table. We spend too much time flailing against our mortality, when that is what grants us our poignancy. Without it, what would be?
ReplyDeleteAnchovies every day, life every day, and it all would be bland.
(And yet I cling to life like a quivering plastic bag in a tree, just a little.)
xo
erin
Ahoy, old friend , the Kubler-Ross quote struck home with the year I've had, especially since I've taken her advice to heart. Hence my lack of wandering the innerwebs as much as I once did.
ReplyDeleteThe Motel indeed does yet abide; thanks for keeping 'ku alive.
I think I'll order a pizza now. With anchovies.
Life being mystery, as it should be, we come and go as we also should. Where does my commitment lie? That is always the question, is it not? And so we are called to hold each other lightly as well as tightly, letting go as easily as we come together. I am grateful that you still are there and I miss Walt and all the old philosopher friends he would bring to the table.
ReplyDelete