Sleepwalker - Reprise

Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness. These activities can be as benign as sitting up in bed, walking to the bathroom, and cleaning, or as hazardous as cooking, driving, extremely violent gestures, grabbing at hallucinated objects, or even homicide.

Although generally sleepwalking cases consist of simple, repeated behaviours, there are occasionally reports of people performing complex behaviours while asleep, although their legitimacy is often disputed. In 2004, sleep medicine experts in Australia claimed to have successfully treated a woman who claimed to have sex with strangers in her sleep. In December 2008, reports were published of a woman who sent semi-coherent emails while sleepwalking, including one inviting a friend around for dinner and drinks. Sleepwalkers often have little or no memory of the incident, as they are not truly conscious. Although their eyes are open, their expression is dim and glazed over. Sleepwalking may last as little as 30 seconds or as long as 30 minutes.


Sleepwalker

I accept you. You're
the one who walks with magic
through the walls of time,
through the halls beyond
the dry daytime ways we walk,
and there you seldom
have true company.

I also know you here, sitting
draped across the knot
you fashion, your life
as a daytime creature, raw,
bleeding a little
when not caught in joy,
in the grand play of your heart.

I know you, jewel
from the loving flame,
with just a small spot or two -
creature of your dream.

Written February 8, 2009 12:07 PM
First Posted, August 23, 2009

My Last Diet

The Five Things We Cannot Change: And the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them - by David Richo

"A lucid, thought-provoking, and illuminating book about the realities of human existence—a wonderfully useful guide to fluid acceptance of life as it is."—Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Own North Star and The Joy Diet

"I started highlighting splendid passages in this book and my highlighter ran dry. The whole book is splendid."—Brother David Steindl-Rast

Description
Why is it that despite our best efforts, many of us remain fundamentally unhappy and unfulfilled in our lives? In this provocative and inspiring book, David Richo distills thirty years of experience as a therapist to explain the underlying roots of unhappiness—and the surprising secret to finding freedom and fulfillment. There are certain facts of life that we cannot change—the unavoidable "givens" of human existence:

(1) everything changes and ends, including you and me,
(2) things do not always go according to plan,
(3) life is not always fair,
(4) pain is a part of life,
(5) people are not loving and loyal all the time.

Richo shows us that by dropping our deep-seated resistance to these givens, we can find liberation and discover the true richness that life has to offer. Blending Western psychology and Eastern spirituality, including practical exercises, Richo shows us how to open up to our lives—including to what is frightening, painful, or disappointing—and discover our greatest gifts.

"Mindful presence means that one person enters the interior garden of the other and walks through it without trampling any of the flowers, without blaming anyone for the presence of weeds, with great appreciation for all the time, pain, and growth it took to be the way it is." (The Five Things We Cannot Change, pg.56)

David Richo, Ph.D., M.F.T., is a psychotherapist, teacher, workshop leader, and writer who works in Santa Barbara and San Francisco California. He combines Jungian, transpersonal, and mythic perspectives in his work.

**I like the quote and include the stuff about Richo and his book for what it is worth.**

My Last Diet

I dreamed all I had
and when I woke, was thinning
down as the dream left,
taking the bloated
parts of me very gently
away, little by
this as if I could
walk away from all the fat,
weighs me this far down.

December 14, 2009 8:10 PM

Color Blind

Color Blindness -
What is color blindness?

Color blindness means you have trouble seeing red, green, or blue or a mix of these colors. It’s rare that a person sees no color at all.

Color blindness is also called a color vision problem.

A color vision problem can change your life. It makes it harder to learn and read, and you may not be able to have certain careers. But children and adults with color vision problems can learn to make up for their problems seeing color.

What causes color blindness?

Most color vision problems are inherited (genetic) and are present at birth.

People usually have three types of cone cells in the eye. Each type senses either red, green, or blue light. You see color when your cone cells sense different amounts of these three basic colors. Most cone cells are found in the macula, which is the central part of the retina.

Inherited color blindness happens when you don't have one of these types of cone cells or they don't work right. You may not see one of these three basic colors, or you may see a different shade of that color or a different color. This type of color vision problem doesn't change over time.

A color vision problem is not always inherited. In some cases, a person can have an acquired color vision problem. This can be caused by:

Aging.
Eye problems, such as glaucoma, macular degeneration, cataracts, or diabetic retinopathy.
Injury to the eye.
Side effects of some medicines.

Color Blindness In Humans: An X-Linked Trait
Note: This Is Sometimes Called A Sex-linked Trait
Test Yourself With The Table Below
Numbers That You Should See If You Are In One Of The Following
Four Categories: [Some Letter Choices Show No Visible Numbers]


4 Sex-Linked Traits:

1. Normal Color Vision:
A: 29, B: 45, C: --, D: 26

2. Red-Green Color-Blind:
A: 70, B: --, C: 5, D: --

3. Red Color-blind:
A: 70, B: --, C: 5, D: 6

4. Green Color-Blind:
A: 70, B: --, C: 5, D: 2


Color Blind

You said you must be
color blind, that explains it,
that explains how you
reach past my heart, then
pluck the world beyond my ken
and leave me loosely
bound to ground beneath
your gentle lovely notice,
grayed out in your place.

December 14, 2009 7:15 PM

Angel Wind

Philip David Charles "Phil" Collins, LVO (born 30 January 1951) is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, pianist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for English progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist.

Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1978 and 1994, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, often dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy "In the Air Tonight", dance pop of "Sussudio", piano-driven "Against All Odds", to the political statements of "Another Day in Paradise". His international popularity transformed Genesis from a progressive rock group to a regular on the pop charts and an early MTV mainstay.

Collins's professional music career began as a drummer, first with Flaming Youth and then more famously with Genesis. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: "For Absent Friends" from 1971's Nursery Cryme album and "More Fool Me" from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel's departure in 1975, Collins became the group's lead singer. As the decade closed, Genesis's first international hit, "Follow You, Follow Me", demonstrated a drastic change from the band's early years.

His solo career, heavily influenced by his personal life, brought both him and Genesis commercial success. According to Atlantic Records, Collins's total worldwide sales as a solo artist, as of 2000, were 150 million. He has won seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and two Golden Globes for his solo work. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.

Collins is one of only three recording artists (along with Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson) who have sold over 100 million albums worldwide both as solo artists and (separately) as principal members of a band. When his work with Genesis, his work with other artists, as well as his solo career is totalled, Collins had more top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart during the 1980s than any other artist. In 2008, Collins was ranked the 22nd most successful artist on the "The Billboard Hot 100 Top All-Time Artists".



Phil has basically retired.

In The Air Tonight - Phil Collins

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
Ive been waiting for this moment, all my life, oh lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord

Well, if you told me you were drowning
I would not lend a hand
Ive seen your face before my friend
But I dont know if you know who I am
Well, I was there and I saw what you did
I saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off the grin, I know where youve been
Its all been a pack of lies

And I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
Ive been waiting for this moment for all my life, oh lord
I can feel it in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord
And Ive been waiting for this moment all my life, oh lord, oh lord

Well I remember, I remember dont worry
How could I ever forget, its the first time, the last time we ever met
But I know the reason why you keep your silence up, no you dont fool me
The hurt doesnt show; but the pain still grows
Its no stranger to you or me

Phil claimed to write this one on the fly while in the midst of an angry divorce. This is one of the songs that has an urban legend, that Phil witnessed a drowning and a man who would not save his friend as he drowned. He has denied this legend. I remember this song used in a film about defection from Russia so I have always tied the song to that sort of intrigue. It is hands down one of my favorites.


Angel Wind

If I touched you like
this, right here behind the bone
you would fall for me
and lose all your spleen,
for just this one moment fly
with me to the high
places, the sweet clear
air, ride the gust of angel
wind and from this place
you would see it all.

December 13, 2009 12:41 PM

My Need For Fire

I sometimes chew on these ideas, ideas like soul mates, like what it means to commit to a soul mate and then lose her. Twice now I have lost my soul's mate in this lifetime. The pain is exquisite and then the question too is exquisite. If I have found my soul mate but she does not agree with me and departs, or if some illness takes her, then what has happened? Am I mad? I don't think so, but neither do I dare to create explanations. Instead I rejoin the dance.

My Need For Fire
(Revised)

I accept my need
so I've built a sacred fire
as you taught me to.
Now I begin slow
dancing with my lambent dream
around the bright blaze
that holds me here
life after long life as I
chase that flare of flame
where we first appeared.

December 13, 2009 4:33 AM
Rewritten ‎August ‎12, ‎2011 4:19 PM

The Outlaw Road

Wiki says: John Wesley Hardin, aka JH Swain, Young Seven Up, Little Arkansaw, (May 26, 1853—August 19, 1895) was an outlaw and gunfighter of the American Old West. He was born in Bonham, Fannin County, Texas. When Hardin went to prison in 1878, he claimed to have killed 42 men, but a considerably lesser number of these killings have been documented as actually attributable to him. Hardin's criminal career resulted not only in the deaths of his victims but also in the deaths of his brother Joe and two cousins who were hanged by a lynch mob seeking revenge for a Hardin killing.

Hardin eventually spent 16 years in prison, then stood for and passed the Bar to become a lawyer. It is possible he committed one more murder after his release from prison. Then after an argument and as a result of it while Hardin was in a saloon gambling with dice, he was shot in the back of the head and killed and then shot three more times. The man who shot him got off due to a hung jury, but was himself killed in a shootout a year later. The man who killed the man who killed Hardin, was himself mortally wounded in a gunfight with two robbers some four years after that. The old west was a cool place, no? This all happened in the 1890's. And a common thing to do, here's proof John was shot dead. See two bullet holes in him, two of the three others, since the kill shot was in the back of his head. Also it looks like an old scar on his chest. Was he branded?

The Outlaw Road

I've been crossing thin
ice above sectarian
water longer than
wise in this old world,
reptilian rage lurking
beneath the wasted
words that bounce off words
grinding it all down to bone
while I continue
to skate and slide on
ahead of the spreading cracks
as fast as I can.

December 11, 2009 9:22 PM

Passing It On

The site is Three Word Wednesday.

This week's words:

Drench; verb: Wet thoroughly, soak; forcibly administer a drug in liquid form orally to (an animal); noun: A dose of medicine administered to an animal.

Immune; adjective: Resistant to a particular infection or toxin owing to the specific presence of antibodies or white blood cells; protected or exempt, especially from an obligation or the effects of something.

Radiate; verb: emit (energy, especially light or heat) in the form of waves or rays or be emitted in such a way or (of a person) clearly emanate (a strong feeling or quality) through their expression or bearing; adjective: Having rays or parts proceeding from a center, arranged in or having a radical pattern.

In my Webster's Unabridged I got the following information.

The etymology of drench is Germanic and Norse and the word is more strongly verb than noun. One drenches the world more than one is a drench. Also, the sense of drench is to drink as a large volume is drunk more than to be immersed, as in a bath. The word carries an overthrow of all measure, akin to flood more than to dose. Further, the word carries a participatory aspect. One drenches another purposefully and thus the tie both to medicine (or poison) and to veterinary, where the lines of power are more clear between the one who drenches and the other who is drenched. The word is used more from the aspect of the person in power.

One way the word drench has been used takes it out of realm of liquid and liquid medicine and places it in the flow of heart and mood - thus I can drench the world with my person or presence if I am large enough and if I am not then you may drench me with your love and save me, revealing your presence in my life larger than my life by itself.

Immune is a direct descent from Latin: in + munis meaning exempt from public service. Thus a sense of the massive commons of susceptibility and the unique and singular state of freedom of the immune. The breathtaking arrogance of the medical community then is the reversal of things when we eradicate disease through immunizations.

Radiate also is a Latin descendant, a past participle in this form and it suggests both the center that must be mainly the source of emission or secondarily the calling back that brings about the return of things that tend to travel in defined and usually straight lines. A participle is a "small part" and thus radiate is better as a supporting feature than as a primary quality.

Passing It On

I shall rise to my station
and there dissolve me
becoming the flood
that rushes back to drench
your common places.

You shall then rise up,
full, immune, and find your way,
your bright life renewed.

Now the shine of stars,
you shall radiate brilliance,
and release your joy
as light for the rest.

Here Is One Way

Wiki says: Edward Paul Abbey (January 29, 1927 – March 14, 1989) was an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues, criticism of public land policies, and anarchist political views. His best-known works include the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang, which has been cited as an inspiration by radical environmental groups, and the non-fiction work Desert Solitaire. Writer Larry McMurtry referred to Abbey as the "Thoreau of the American West".

"I am pleased enough with the surfaces - in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child's hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of a friend or lover, the silk of a girl's thigh, the sunlight on the rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind - what else is there? What else do we need?" - Edward Abbey

Edward Abbey was the consummate activist Hippie, a certain kind of counter culture guy. When you put it like that it is hard to argue. And I will not. Instead I will observe that such a statement is only really possible for one who has found his place here and by here I mean right here and right now. Every time I am reconciled and right here and right now, I find it possible to say some part of the world is enough for me too. What is also true, I am often not reconciled, or I am not right here, or I am just not right now and there is little I can do about that. I know I am not alone.

I claim I wrestle with angels or with God. I am right here and right now when I do that too, but I am certainly not reconciled.

I notice Ed Abbey was not reconciled in the sense that he could not accept what others were doing to this place or what it turned into after they had done it. Thus he was not reconciled with humanity as it is. That kind of unrest may be necessary but there will be a difference between the man who makes a higher peace and returns to the restless work and the man who delays his peace as a sacrifice in order to continue the work at the price of his restlessness. I hope that Ed was the former rather than the latter for his own sake.

I will trust that Ed was not the third, the unfortunate kind, the man who takes on the work in order to buttress a false pride. There are far too many of them and they tend to ruin the work because it is impossible to hold a true course with false pride.

Here Is One Way

Sometimes coyote
howls with such truth and purpose
that she builds a track
out to the low moon
on the horizon of things,
a spinning gold path
of bright filigree
lighter than air but stronger
than any of us.

If we want to walk
her path it will take the smoke,
the sage, our own howl,
releasing the old
and tangled remembrances,
and the heart's return.

August 9, 2011 2:57 PM

A Hell Of A Life - Reprise

A Hell Of A Life

I'm all hung up,
Thrown high up over a wire,
The butt of a prank.
I am upside down,
Hanging head down and dangling
And I can't get down.
Come back years from now.
I'll still be here, just grayer,
A hell of a life.

Written November 27, 2008
First Posted, February 27, 2009

Past The Moon-Reprise

I want to write you healed and found as if I could write thus and by writing make it so. I also want to write you healed and found because you are not and are lost and perhaps in need of a poem from one who loves you. I want you lifted on angelic wings. This I want if you wish to rise. I see this incantation as a statement of power, as if I had this power. I insist.

I am an arrogant man.

Past The Moon

I want to write you
healed and found, lifted higher
than you thought you would
go this very night.

I want your vision to clear
so you remember
who you really are,
no, not then but beyond that
history you told
to the history
you don't speak of now because
it goes past the moon.

Written February 12, 2009 9:20 AM
First Posted September 12, 2009

Life As A Poem

‎"To see life as a poem and yourself participating in that poem is what the myth does for you." - from Joseph Campbell and The Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, p.55




I do in fact live my life as a myth...

Joe was passionate about the myth of the Hero. He felt that only that kind of risk could lead to bliss. Being a Hero in the mythological sense is naturally risky, leads into uncharted territory. Often you don't get company on your journey either because most people (and quite often rightly so) just don't get what you are doing, let alone why they should participate.

Taking the chance, you don't always win, not even in the end. If that risk wasn't there it would not be a Hero's journey. Even if you lose, if you take the risk your life will be worthy of poesy.


Suffering

My back is shattered
in that one specific place,
my marrow's leaking
and I fear dying
while that nerve trunk flames with pain
and nightly I moan
as I rest twisted
in the only position
left to me these days.
They said this price comes
of once loving you, loving
your naked body.
I ask myself if
I'd love you over again,
and keep my answer.

December 10, 2009 11:00 AM

To be straight up - this is an allegory. :D Can't catch me! I'm running faster than that!

Thoughts Of Home

Justic Oliver Wendell Holmes, ca. 1902

My friend the Taoist Harlequin shared on her blog a quote by Oliver Wendell Holmes. I understand the sentiment and she's a lovely friend I have met here in blogland. She's a fine English lady. I know she's a fine lady, and I believe she is English. You may visit this post as an intro to her long running site. Go here.

Holmes wrote and Harlequin posted:

And where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
The chain may lengthen, but it never parts.

Wiki says:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (March 8, 1841 – March 6, 1935) was an American jurist who served as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932. Noted for his long service, his concise and pithy opinions, and his deference to the decisions of elected legislatures, he is one of the most widely cited United States Supreme Court justices in history, particularly for his "clear and present danger" majority opinion in the 1919 case of Schenck v. United States, and is one of the most influential American common law judges. Holmes retired from the Court at the age of 90, making him the oldest Justice in the Supreme Court's history. He also served as an Associate Justice and as Chief Justice on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and was Weld Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School, of which he was an alumnus.

Profoundly influenced by his experience fighting in the American Civil War, Holmes helped move American legal thinking away from formalism and towards legal realism, as summed up in his maxim: "The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience."

As for me, Mom and Dad ripped me out of home the first time as I entered fourth grade, and then again as I entered eighth, both of these moves involving the loss of a best friend. I was inconsolable both times and never trusted the idea of home again. Home is where they do awful things against your will unless you have the power, and even then something can happen. My third grade friend was lost until by miracle I found him on Facebook this year, my sixty-fifth on the planet.

Mom and Dad actually began moving me earlier than that but it did not give me trauma.

Here's a poem I wrote tonight in response to the Holmes quote.

Thoughts Of Home

I stood outside them,
staring in the cold window
at them, at the food
they served each other.
I saw them hug and I saw
them struggle over
all sorts of puzzles.
I never really knew inside
what that was to me.

When my mother moved
across the country, midwest
bound, I heaved a sigh
of relief...I helped
her move willingly, hopeful
this distance would help
and it did, oh yes.
Then I could stay near to her
in my words and thought.

August 3, 2011 6:33 PM

Reprise - With My Long Rodent Teeth

There is always something. There is. It's enough to tire me out. Some mornings it hardly seems worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.

Grumpy Now

You told me to walk
on water, said that happens
when I find center,
lift my feathered wings,
hold my beak just so and slim
down for God's sake, please.

That's when I got grumpy. Hmphf!

Written February 9, 2009 9:47 AM
First Posted August 29, 2009

Under My Bed - Reprise

"To accept "things-as-it-is" looks very difficult, but it is very easy. If you don't find it easy, you should think about why it is so difficult. "Maybe," you may say, "it is because of the shallow, selfish understanding I have of myself." And then you may ask, "Why do I have a selfish understanding of things?" But a selfish understanding of things is also necessary. Because we are selfish, we work hard. Without a selfish understanding, we cannot work. We always need some candy. It is not something to be rejected, but something that helps you. You should be grateful for your selfish understanding, which creates many questions. They are just questions and they don't mean so much. You can enjoy your questions and answers; you can play games with them; you needn't be so serious about it. That is the understanding of the Middle Way." - Shunryu Suzuki

Wiki says: Shunryu Suzuki, dharma name Shōgaku Shunryū (May 18, 1904 – December 4, 1971) was a Sōtō Zen roshi (Zen Master) who popularized Zen Buddhism in the United States, particularly around San Francisco. Born in the Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan, Suzuki was occasionally mistaken for the Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki, to which Shunryu would reply, "No, he's the big Suzuki, I'm the little Suzuki."

I feel like this thought of Shogaku is like AA's Bill Wilson asserting that the heart of humility is being right sized.

I am too wordy. I know it. Back in the day, I was given the best task. I was working as a young designer in a paper mill. There was a need for a recording secretary at two regular meetings having to do with the contract construction work and the union's vested interest in the work that should belong to them. I was appointed this duty and it meant I had to write clearly and succinctly in a specialized language. I had to take a half hour or more of several people and end up not with the actual verbatim words but with the sense of them adjusted for the company spin except when the union had an adamant interest. In that case I had to downplay but not spin at all. I had to sense when which was which as well. These meetings were basically weekly. I succeeded. This is why I can write with two word sentences happily.

Also, I desire to keep a spare word count is why I am happy with my haiku line structure as my current form. I often find sentences that are smaller than seventeen syllables. Then I write these intros so I can gabble. :)

Under My Bed

My wild heart knows things
I don't know until they creep
Out from under me,
Under the bed I've made.

I keep the blankets, bedspread
Hanging down, a wall
To keep intruders
Out of my space, of my mind,
But my wild heart knows
How to get past me,
Spill stuff all over my life,
Teach my eyes to see.

Written January 10, 2009 3:23 PM
Revised a bit this evening...
First posted June 3, 2009

The Old Celt's Dream

The Old Celt's Dream

In the high branches
of the oak a mistletoe
signals my divine
presence, my shifting
sighs of whispered chant. Seven
times around the tree
I call out to you
by rote, by my heat, voiceless
though I am.

I hold
through this murdered day,
hold by the strings on my heart,
and clans of ravens.

Written today, ‎July ‎31, ‎2011 6:29 PM

I am weakened just now by severely damaged soft tissue in my right wrist below my thumb. My situation was created by a fall. I know how to fall and because of that sustained no damage in the rest of my body, but my right hand was caught and twisted beneath me as I rolled to protect the rest of me. This happened last Monday. I went to the doctor Tuesday and I have been wearing a splint as much as possible, taking as few pain pills as possible. Lately I have been doing most things one handed. I can't type that way though. This accounts for the lack of words from me lately. I have been working as I must and this means that I can't wear the splint in the work day. Life's a bitch and then you die...

Bleeding

Bleeding

I am inflated
in my opinions, pack them
around my soft heart
while I ponder you
with your claimed struggle with words
with yourself, with me.

I think of old songs
that I could sing were I brave
enough to sing them
and the caresses
that I could give you today
if I was able.

The distance between
is ever the rosy thorn,
Pricked, I bleed, bleed.

December 10, 2009 8:48 AM

Maybe in the Morning

A night off tonight. I have had a fairly good day if you overlook the health issues. I think I will. :D

Monarch

A tree full of Monarch butterflies, a phenomenon of the Monarch Mexican migration.

Monarch

Shape shifting comes on
in the cabin in the wood,
snuffing the clean air
of the shifting time,
and how the skin stretches out
and the bones do things
you would think so wrong
were it not for this deep need
to be four footed,
or winged, or a small
incredibly painted one,
six legged, curled tongue
seeking God given
nectar and the chance to flash
in the sun one more
time before leaving
on Mexican migration,
following the moon.

Written this evening, July 28, 2011

A monarch butterfly rests on the hair of a young girl during a visit to the El Rosario butterfly preserve, at 10,500 feet, near the town of Anguangueo, Mexico.

Visit
"U of A faculty, students observe massive gathering of monarch butterflies in Mexico central mountains"

The Spirit Of The Times - Reprise

In Hinduism, Durga (Sanskrit: दुर्गा, Durgā, meaning "the inaccessible" or "the invincible"; Bengali: দুর্গা, durga) or Maa Durga (Bengali: মা দুর্গা, mā durgā, meaning "Mother Durga") "one who can redeem in situations of utmost distress" is a form of Devi, the supremely radiant goddess, depicted as having eight arms, riding a lion or a tiger, carrying weapons and a lotus flower, maintaining a meditative smile, and practicing mudras, or symbolic hand gestures. The name is made of Sanskrit dur- = "with difficulty" (compare Greek δυσ- (dys-)) and gā ("come", "go").

An embodiment of creative feminine force (Shakti), Durga exists in a state of svātantrya (independence from the universe and anything/anybody else, i.e., self-sufficiency) and fierce compassion. Kali is considered by Hindus to be an aspect of Durga. She is thus considered the fiercer, demon-fighting form of Shiva's wife, goddess Parvati. Durga manifests fearlessness and patience, and never loses her sense of humor, even during spiritual battles of epic proportion.

Om Dum Durgayei Swaha!

"I think there is choice possible at any moment to us, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice."

"The universe is made of stories, not atoms." - Muriel Rukeyser

On the left, Muriel in her youth. On the right, Muriel fully mature.

Wiki says: Muriel Rukeyser (15 December 1913 – 12 February 1980) was an American poet and political activist, best known for her poems about equality, feminism, social justice, and Judaism. Kenneth Rexroth said that she was the greatest poet of her "exact generation".

One of her most powerful pieces was a group of poems entitled The Book of the Dead (1938), documenting the details of the Hawk's Nest incident, an industrial disaster in which hundreds of miners died of silicosis.

Her poem "To be a Jew in the Twentieth Century" (1944), on the theme of Judaism as a gift, was adopted by the American Reform and Reconstructionist movements for their prayer books, something Rukeyser said "astonished" her, as she had remained distant from Judaism throughout her early life.

I am touched that she recognized the perilous ground that sacrifice treads. I too deeply suspect that sacrifice and its justifications form a less than honest complex in the scheme of things, more of the warp and weft of man's strange yearning than of God's demand.

Role playing. I'm a nice guy, surely. Honest, hardly ever rob banks, haven't set a fire in absolutely weeks! People like me goddammit. Yet there is something sour and dangerous going on and there really always is. I pull the ten block radius test on some of my concepts. I believe everyone from saints to sinners is hanging out within a ten block radius of me in any metro area. When I was a victim of identity theft, my bag was stolen from beside my car in my driveway at 4:45 AM on a quiet residential street, and NOBODY but me is up at that time. And because of what happened next it had to be a local who did it. A full blown thief pretty effing close to me.

The next deal, I am sure the potential exists in me, in you, in all of us, for anything anyone else actually does. In a wierd way this is precisely like the dream professionals asserting we each are all the characters and structures in our own dreams which are totally solipsistic no matter who is in them.

Hitler lived his own nightmare so large that millions of people had and paid for aspects of the same nightmare. Think that way for a while, how we each participate in each other's dreams and illusions and learn from that how Buddhists came up with the Four Noble Truths.

The Spirit Of The Times

So enter into
The joy of the destruction
As if it were real.

Then pull the black curtain back,
Look behind the face of things.

The dark mother sits
Behind my eyes, embraces me.
I circle with vultures.

First Posted January 13, 2009

Reminder - Reprise

(Blogger's comment: all but the update and the comment conclusion after the poem here was written to introduce this poem back in 2009, after the first heart attack. It is interesting to note that the poetry was prior to the hospitalization but perhaps not prior to the beginnings of the heart trouble)

It is said of alcoholics and other dysfunctional people that they do not have relationships, they take hostages. I hope I am better than that. I am now living as alone as I ever have. Even my old girl cat is gone.

*****
Update: I often have a house guest, a cat I used to dislike, but through a complex neighborhood set of relations has come to be a fairly good friend, mostly on his terms.
*****

She was once this amazing kitten, so amazing that I took a photo. It was really good. Ann sent it off to the calendar people. They agreed. She was born early in 91 and so in spring she was perfectly posed, a young part Siamese kitten who looked like a raccoon kit, laying draped along our weathered wood fence, surrounded by the greenery and flowers.

First Ann sent it to the Page a Day folk for inclusion in their main page a day calendar. They rejected her I think because she was a mix breed Siamese. That calendar tends to feature purebreds a little more. Then Ann saw the kittens wall calendar and we sent the picture to them. In 1997 she became January 31 and a cover girl, along with several other kittens, thus appearing twice in the calendar. She could not have cared less. I was so proud, I eventually had the whole thing framed. She was not only a calendar girl, but a cover girl. But now she has gone into the mystery.

Reminder

I will not hold you
trapped in dreams I have, not those
dreams of perfection
that I like to dream.
Instead I will take the moon's
rays and weave of them
a bracelet, remind
you of your freedom, of hope,
of your destiny.

Written February 3, 2009 8:46 PM
First Posted August 9, 2009

Lately I have noticed so many close friends having serious relationship issues. It makes me grateful I am single. The rest of the story of course, my health is such a significant and complex challenge that it is hard to imagine how I would be comfortable attaching myself to someone else's life. I am sure I would feel like I was imposing.

The Violet Sky

Buddhist psychology refers to the aggregate of what we call personality as “the five clouds of entanglement.”

But if we are clouds, we are also luminous. Xenophanes, writing at the dawn of Western philosophy, tells us that the stars are actually clouds “ignited by motion,” kindled in their rising and extinguished in their setting, like coals. The sun too is a burning cloud, and as with the stars, each day it’s a different cloud that is set ablaze, for no two suns are the same, though they share in the same flaring grandeur—and this goes on forever because the world is imperishable, without beginning, without end. Herein hovers a magnificent hope: Entangled clouds that we are, sooner or later in our driftings we’re bound to catch fire, become a star or maybe even a sun, and not just for fifteen minutes but for a whole day or night. Every soul is combustible. - John P. O’Grady from Writing on Air, edited by David Rothenberg and Wandee J. Pryor, © 2003 by Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


The Violet Sky

When the sky colors
the world in violet hue
how can I stand still
beneath the changes?

I know I am far from home,
too far to get back,
cut off from old roots,
new ones not yet grown with you,
I am cold, breathless.

December 8, 2009 8:42 PM

I Know My Worth

I am a bursting bubble, yes I am!

"Perhaps the most important thing we bring to another person is the silence in us, not the sort of silence that is filled with unspoken criticism or hard withdrawal. The sort of silence that is a place of refuge, of rest, of acceptance of someone as they are. We are all hungry for this other silence. It is hard to find. In its presence we can remember something beyond the moment, a strength on which to build a life. Silence is a place of great power and healing." - Rachel Naomi Remen

Rachel Naomi Remen is one of the earliest pioneers in the mind/body holistic health movement and the first to recognize the role of the spirit in health and the recovery from illness. She is Co-Founder and Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program featured in the Bill Moyers PBS series, Healing and the Mind and has cared for people with cancer and their families for almost 30 years.



I Know My Worth

I know you don't pick
me like I'm all important,
not to you I'm not,
not to anyone.
I know you give me more than
I'd ever deserve,
Not that I am less
But that there are so many:
you've so much to give.

Then I think again,
Know I am a sprouting seed
To you, yes I am.

Written February 8, 2009 11:27 AM
First Posted August 22, 2009

Please Soften Me - Reprise

All the ways I have been on this planet...this is one of them.

Please Soften Me

I am the hard earth
packed down by the passing time,
the tread of many
heavy feet, baked by
incessant sun through the days
of my exposure.

I hope your rain comes
to soften me, to seep in,
to loosen my joints,
to wet my dry veins,
to get my heart's blood to move
as it should once more.

First Posted as edited, February 8, 2009
Written sometime before that.

In The Arctic Scene

This seems lighthearted. I wrote it a long time back. I don't think that I was saying anything in some coded way, at least not deliberately. The picture of the hare rolling in the snow is perfect. If you want to read something into it, I don't mind. I have blog friends in Whitehorse and Mendenhall, in the Yukon Territory. That's high up. Either one of these women would be capable of slapping me around a little. I am quite sure of that. And. Winter starts in October in Whitehorse. Some fun, huh? I am down here in the Oregon Territory. We get one good snow a year most years.

In The Arctic Scene

You have pushed me down
asserting yourself with me
though I told you no,
not in this cold snow.
You cover me with blankets
then roll me over
in them and slap me
clean, finish bundling me up,
a rolled up rug boy
in the arctic scene
wondering what you have in
store for me this time.

December 8, 2009 7:37 PM

The Arrow

Blue Flower; Georgia O'Keeffe
Pastel on Paper mounted to cardboard, 20 x 16 in

I need a stand up relationship with God. I must be able to argue and snivel and in the next moment stare him square in the eye. A God who demands of me a perpetual posture of below to above is of no use to me and I shall surely turn away. This may be illness or rebellion in me but the die is cast. I have made my commitment and expect of Him the same. This is just what is.

Actually, if there is any rhyme or reason to the Christian claim of God as Man in the form of Jesus, whom we are to strive to emulate His Image and Likeness, then this is it, that God is willing to be man sized for the purposes of relationship with us, with me. In that then there is potential that I can look at Him under certain conditions as if He is my size or I His.

If I argue with God, it is said, I lose. So what? That I can argue is deeply essential no matter the outcome. I am not alone in this realization. I believe it was Jacob in the Bible who wrestled with the angel in full knowledge of his condition and was struck lame for it, but blessed nonetheless.





The Arrow

I had to kill a bird,
left for dead after
a cat bite that paralyzed it.
The killing broke my heart.

I wrote a poem,
and in my poem
was a rage within my grief,
a shout,
an arrow so compressed
that it flew all the way to God.

He still bleeds. I checked.

November 20, 2009 8:24 PM

The Truth

"All men, at one time or another, have fallen in love with the veiled Isis whom they call Truth. With most, this has been a passing passion: they have early seen its hopelessness and turned to more practical things. But others remain all their lives the devout lovers of reality: though the manner of their love, the vision which they make to themselves of the beloved object varies enormously. Some see Truth as Dante saw Beatrice: an adorable yet intangible figure, found in this world yet revealing the next. To others she seems rather an evil but an irresistible enchantress: enticing, demanding payment and betraying her lover at the last. Some have seen her in a test tube, and some in a poet's dream: some before the altar, others in the slime. The extreme pragmatists have even sought her in the kitchen; declaring that she may best be recognized by her utility. Last stage of all, the philosophic skeptic, has comforted an unsuccessful courtship by assuring himself that his mistress is not really there." - Evelyn Underhill in her book Mysticism

According to Wiki, Ms Underhill was a prolific author, a Catholic, but also a Mystic and very popular in her time, as popular as Aldous Huxley in his.

Truth is not what it's cracked up to be, it seems. That's something to remember when someone waxes dogmatic as a Democrat, a Republican, a Buddhist or a Baptist. It appears the truth is really there but is largely a mystery and not easily approachable in any ordinary way. Any. Do I really mean ANY?? ordinary way.

To The Sun God

The ducklings of spring (like the boys of summer :D )

You can only be young once. But you can always be immature. ~ Dave Barry

David "Dave" Barry (born July 3, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author and columnist, who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for The Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comedic novels.

It's been wet and cool pretty much all summer this year and friends have been trying to paint but can't because the weather won't let them and they had this volunteer force all set up but too bad! Now I am not a sun worshipper, not like the woman at work who pines for the Arizona desert. But it is kind of time for the sun to bake the land around here. Soon, I think. August is nearly always hot and dry, and into September before the rains begin again. I came to Oregon from California in part for the green, knowing that the green requires soggy ground. My understanding, in the Willamette valley where most Oregonians live, if there were no people this would be rain forest pretty much.

I got a little desperate for sun in the winter of 2009.

To The Sun God

Look, I know you’re not
really going away, not
diving into earth
to decide what’s next.
I know even the longest
night has day after,
but damn! there’s something
to it, how my bones shatter
in the dread of it,
so here am I, Lord
I bow, I ask of You now
Please, my Lord, come back!

December 5, 2009 7:30 PM

The Quilt

No great artist ever sees things as they are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. - Oscar Wilde

When I have a terrible need of -- shall I say the word -- religion. Then I go out and paint the stars. - Vincent van Gogh

For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide. - Thomas Mann











The Quilt

Sew your patient quilt
one stitch, then another stitch
all in muted hue
and I will love you
through it all, as I promised
on that day last spring,
when our world's warm song
held us in the gift of peace,
momentary, true.

December 5, 2009 7:43 AM

An Old Story

Moses Siregar, a man attempting a career.

I have no comment on the writing of Moses Siregar. I do not know it. He put a "Black God" in the title of his upcoming (first?) novel, which he claims has been and perhaps still is a free novella on Amazon.

An Old Story

You teller of myth,
inconsolable goddess,
bringer of winter -
the ice enters me
that I too would steal your love
to keep here below
I am no better
than the old black god, older
than all my sand.

December 5, 2009 7:29 AM

Effective Prayer - Reprise

There is a concept, a hope, a belief out there that began in the late sixties. In the late seventies it began to have a name. Called the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon by some, it basically states that when enough of us really make a shift in paradigms, then we all go, assuming it is a true thing we are talking about and not a false hope. I know we discussed this idea hanging out in living rooms in 1966. I know I wrote my first poems about it in 1967. How many would be enough? Apparently more than appear in the photo.

Wiki says: The hundredth monkey effect is a supposed phenomenon in which a learned behavior spreads instantaneously from one group of monkeys to all related monkeys once a critical number is reached. By generalization it means the instantaneous, paranormal spreading of an idea or ability to the remainder of a population once a certain portion of that population has heard of the new idea or learned the new ability. The story behind this supposed phenomenon originated with Lawrence Blair and Lyall Watson in the mid-to-late 1970s, who claimed that it was the observation of Japanese scientists. One of the primary factors in the promulgation of the story is that many authors quote secondary, tertiary or post-tertiary sources who have themselves misrepresented the original observations.

Over the years the original claims are largely discredited as real science but the idea remains alive still today. There is a New Age Movement called the Shift Network. Google it and you will find what people are trying for these days, hoping to spread the consciousness of a new way of being and reaching that turning point. There are many phenomena that demonstrate a turning point and these include the awakening sometimes experienced along the sacred paths.

I have the same relationship to this idea as I do to Aliens Out There. I do so want these ideas to be true ones. I am fairly convinced we are too far down the drain to survive without some kind of intervention by God, Aliens, or Shifts in Consciousness.

I hope prayer can be effective in this matter.

Effective Prayer

The music draws me
Into the dance where you are
And gifts me with form.

So we twine, complicated
Shapes. We draw others to us.

Dozens, hundreds, more
Until we reach that moment.
Then God moves the world.

Written October 13, 2008
First Posted 12/26/2008

I Can't Hide It

Wiki says: A bleeding heart is an informal label applied to someone regarded as excessively sympathetic, liberal in a political sense, or both. It is typically considered a derogatory remark.

Etymologically, the term originated as a Christ reference, originally the bleeding heart under a cross, representing the sufferings of Jesus crucified.

Christopher says: Isn't it interesting that the sufferings of Jesus should devolve into a criticism of the left. I understand I am now speaking of US politics. This gets me to think there is something to the idea that conservatives of the right really don't like the New Testament very much. They wish for an ascendancy of the the Old - where "an eye for an eye" typifies justice and love and forgiveness is not yet ascendant as the New Law brought by Christ to supplant the whole of the old Law. Love and Forgiveness is Bleeding Heart. Please notice that love and forgiveness are not absent in the Old Testament (Torah and other books), just that they do not yet govern as they do in the Kingdom of God as described by Jesus.

Bleeding heart may also refer to:

Organisms:

Doves in the genus Gallicolumba
An Australian rainforest plant Omalanthus populifolius, also known as Queensland poplar
Flowering plants in the genus Dicentra of the fumitory family
Flowering plants in the genus Clerodendrum (glorybowers or bagflowers) of the vervain family


Other:

*"Bleeding Heart" - Elmore James song
*A song by the Brazilian metal band Angra, presents in the 2002's EP Hunters and Prey
*Bleeding Heart Yard, a courtyard in London, England
*A song by Olivia Lufkin on the album Flower Festival
*Bleeding Heart (album)

I Can't Hide It

Every time I
hear that snap I know my heart
lies looser here. One
more string is broken,
hanging adangle, allowed
to drip its salt flow
down my sticky heart,
crimson hot glowing spillage
setting me apart
as if I have messed
my bed, sheets hung out again
on display to all.

December 4, 2009 5:04 PM

The Lava Field - Reprise

Wiki says: The Boring Lava Field is an extinct Plio-Pleistocene volcanic field zone with at least 32 cinder cones and small shield volcanoes lying within a radius of 13 miles (21 km) of Kelly Butte, which is approximately 4 miles (6 km) east of downtown Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The name is derived from the town of Boring, Oregon, which lies just to the southeast of the most dense cluster of lava vents. The zone became active at least 2.7 million years ago, and has been extinct for about 300,000 years.

The Portland metropolitan area, including suburbs, is one of the few places in the continental United States to have extinct volcanoes within a city's limits; Bend, Oregon is another.

Panorama showing Portland and part of the Boring Lava Field. The buttes of the Boring Lava Field are visible toward the center of this panorama of Portland, Oregon. The panorama is taken from the west hills to the south of town and sweeps north, east and southeast.

The Lava Field

I was angry once,
So hot that my hope melted
And flowed down my sides.

I am deformed, bent like that.

I have held still for so long
That dreams have begun
To form on my ruined hope,
On you in my life.

Written October 22, 2008
First Posted, January 8, 2009

In Living Color - Reprise

"You have too good a mind to throw away. I don't quite know what we're doing on this insignificant cinder spinning away in a dark corner of the universe. That is a secret which the high gods have not confided in me. Yet one thing I believe and I believe it with every fiber of my being. A man must live by his light and do what little he can and do it as best as he can." - Walker Percy

Wiki says: Walker Percy (May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) was an American Southern author whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orleans, Louisiana, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age." His work displays a unique combination of existential questioning, Southern sensibility, and deep Catholic faith.

By the way: Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or (in the Saussurean tradition) semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes (semiosis), indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication. Semiotics is closely related to the field of linguistics, which, for its part, studies the structure and meaning of language more specifically. Semiotics is often divided into three branches:

Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning
Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures
Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them

In Living Color

To think I was there
At the unmasking moment
And saw your true face.
This is like early
Crocuses coming up, out
With their purple blooms
Just after the snows.
They too guess right times
As you did just now, showing
Courage in the gray.

Written January 9, 2009 9:23 AM
First Posted May 30,2009