The Construction Manager's Lament

This week, 3 Word Wednesday offers us demented poets and other story tellers

Backward; adjective: Directed behind or to the rear; (of a person) having learning difficulties; adverb: (Of a movement) away from one's front; in the direction of one's back; toward or into the past.

Ease; noun: Absence of difficulty or effort; absence of rigidity or discomfort; verb: make (something unpleasant, painful, or intense) less serious or severe; move carefully, gradually, or gently.

Omission; noun: Someone or something that has been left out or excluded; the action of excluding or leaving out someone or something; a failure to do something, esp. something that one has a moral or legal obligation to do.

You can find the other offerings by clicking on this link

The Construction Manager's Lament

Could be our errors,
or some kind of omission
(we have insurance,
thank God, for all those.)
We built the bay bridge backward,
arrogance sliding
home with ease, spilling
over elaborate plans,
tumbling down the stairs,
landing in a heap -
never enough time and gelt
to do these things right.

Written September 14, 2011   7:36 AM

I work for a construction manager, but we do this stuff with food processing and handling equipment, material delivery systems and plant structures in an industrial bakery. I literally work in a cracker factory.

Kicked Off The Bus

 (by glucken)

glucken found on this website

I have written before of this. I have several stories I tell on myself. They are true in the heart's way, the soul's way. This poem is one of them or at least a slant view of one of them. There was a bus. I was traveling on that bus to some destination. We reached a way station and following the rest of the crowd, I got off here. I got distracted. When I realized what had happened I tried to find that bus. It had already left and I have been waiting for another ever since. I am not where I am supposed to be but instead am stranded in a way station and I make the best of it as I can. I am sad underneath, and bewildered, for I don't understand how such a small oversight has left me so bereft. I have no idea how to call the bus, nor any clear idea why it would not signal or wait for me. Sometimes I think it was deliberate.

This is just a story like a myth is "just a story". It is true to my heart and I know I am not the only one. There are many who feel the true home is somewhere else and that this life is a journey in some form or other. When I discovered Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade and many others I learned that there is a universal mythos that points to elsewhere and makes claims for the truer and finer nature of that place. That was a relief to me, that I share this otherness in my bones with so many threads of humanity.

The primary truth of it is that it is so personal. Even though so many of us share this yearning, each of us yearns alone. At least that is how it feels to me.

My mother said of her experience of this feeling that she wondered all her life, "where does an alien go to register?"



Kicked Off The Bus

I shall fall apart
flying through the cold gray air,
landing on the grit
packed down at full speed
by so many who ignore
my daily losses.

I shall separate,
become the drab emptiness,
sad indifference,
lie here raw, exposed
before the weeping lost God
of this dead old world.

December 18, 2009 7:47 AM

Smoke

Jupiter and Io, ca. 1531

Antonio Allegri da Correggio (August 1489 – March 5, 1534), usually known as Correggio, was the foremost painter of the Parma school of the Italian Renaissance, who was responsible for some of the most vigorous and sensuous works of the 16th century. In his use of dynamic composition, illusionistic perspective and dramatic foreshortening, Correggio prefigured the Rococo art of the 18th century.

Antonio Allegri da Corregio

Smoke

I will turn to smoke
held to form by will alone
and I will rise up,
twining around you.

Remember the ancient snake
around the laurel
staff, the sage song and
stream of your inner story,
that was me, you know.

December 17, 2009 11:02 PM

The Revenant - for Magpie Tales No. 82

The Revenant, Andrew Wyeth, 1949
Self Portrait

Magpie Tales:Mag 82 
Go to the link to see the other offerings

Wiki says: "A Revenant is a visible ghost or animated corpse that was believed to return from the grave to terrorize the living. The word "revenant" is derived from the Latin word, revenans, "returning", from the verb "revenire"; in French, "revenant" means "coming back", from the verb "revenir", meaning "to come back".

"Belief in revenants lies beneath the universal rituals for propitiating the dead, to keep them in their place. Vivid stories of revenants arose in Western Europe (especially Great Britain, and were later carried by Anglo-Norman invaders to Ireland) during the High Middle Ages. Though later legend and folklore depicts revenants as returning for a specific purpose (e.g., revenge against the deceased's killer), in most Medieval accounts they return to harass their surviving families and neighbours. Revenants share a number of characteristics with folkloric vampires. Many stories were documented by English historians in the Middle Ages. William of Newburgh wrote in the 1190s, "one would not easily believe that corpses come out of their graves and wander around, animated by some evil spirit, to terrorize or harm the living, unless there were many cases in our times, supported by ample testimony".

"Stories of revenants were very personal, always about a specific individual who had recently died (unlike the anonymous zombie depicted in modern popular culture), and had a number of common features.

Medieval stories of revenants have common features. Those who return from the dead are wrongdoers in their lifetime, often described as wicked, vain or unbelievers. Often the revenants are associated with the spreading of disease among the living. The appropriate response is usually exhumation, followed by some form of decapitation, and burning or removal of the heart.

"Several stories imply that sucking of blood has occurred. Because of this, revenants have sometimes been described as "vampires" by a number of authors of popular books about vampire legends, starting with Montague Summers. Medievalists are, however, largely skeptical towards this interpretation, possibly because vampire legends are believed to have originated in Eastern European folklore and became known to the Western public only later through reports coming from the East in the 18th century. Vampires do not appear in Western fiction (with modifications) until the late 18th century and early 19th century, starting with authors such as Robert Southey, Lord Byron and John William Polidori. However, anthropologists and folklorists tend to blur distinctions between the various forms of "walking dead", for which counterparts exist in the myths and legends of nearly every civilization dating back to earliest history."

The Revenant

It is just like you
to think you can wear all white
as if from the dead,
coming back to tell
me what's what on the other
side of the divide.

You sneaking around
setting chairs to their rocking,
squeaking in corners,
all that ghost stuff plumb
wears me out and then you show
right in front of me
and the whispers rise
around us as if there are
crowds of you nearby.

I'm fit to be tied.

Written September 11, 2011   10:54 AM

Tonto Had Something To Say

Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels with
Silver and Scout in the background

The first of 2,956 radio episodes of The Lone Ranger premiered on January 30, 1933 on WXYZ, a radio station serving Detroit, Michigan. Sources disagree on whether station and show owner George W. Trendle or main writer Fran Striker should receive credit for the concept. Elements of the Lone Ranger story had been used in an earlier series Fran Striker wrote for a station in Buffalo, New York. In any case, the show was an immediate success.

Though it was aimed at children, adults made up at least half the audience. It became so popular, it was picked up by the Mutual Broadcasting System radio network, and finally by NBC's "Blue Network", which in time became ABC. The last new episode was broadcast September 3, 1954. Transcribed repeats of the 1952–53 episodes continued to be aired on ABC until June 24, 1955. Then selected repeats appeared on NBC's late-afternoon weekday schedule (5:30–5:55 pm Eastern time) from September 1955 to May 25, 1956.

Each episode was introduced by the announcer as follows: "In the early days of the western United States, a masked man and an Indian rode the plains, searching for truth and justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when from out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!" By the time it was on ABC at 7:30 pm Eastern Time, the introduction, voiced by Brace Beemer, had become "From out of the west with the speed of light and a hearty hi-yo Silver" following "Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear."

“A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty ‘Hi-yo, Silver!’, The Lone Ranger!“

When I was a small boy I had two 78s,  records I would play over and over, the legend of the Lone Ranger.  I remember the radio show.  On Saturdays, I would go by myself to the movies and among other serials shown would be some adventure of the Lone Ranger designed to bring me back the next Saturday afternoon.  This was 1953 or so, me seven years old, and  the number of TVs on our block only one or two.  My folks were far too poor to have a TV.  It is remarkable that no one thought anything of children wandering alone like that.  The movie house I walked to was at least ten blocks away toward the university where my mother taught and both she and my dad graduated.  Sometimes they would drive me, leave me at the theater alone and pick me up after.

 Tonto Had Something To Say
(overheard when they struck the set on that last Tuesday)

Go to any length
is what you told me as if
I would believe you,
take it to the bank.
When found in trees after that
they mistook me for
some sort of raccoon
up there all riled up, Masked Man,
fringe framed confusion,
old Kimo Sabe,
you the brass Clayton Moore to
my Jay Silverheels.

September 10, 2011 5:44 AM

At The End In Chelsea

Joan Recently

Joan Back In The Day

"Only you and I can help the sun rise each coming morning. If we don't, it may drench itself out in sorrow." - Joan Baez

Joan Chandos-Baez (born January 9, 1941) is an American folk singer, songwriter, muscian and activist.  Baez has a distinctive vocal style, with a strong vibrato. Her recordings include many topical songs and material dealing with social issues.

Baez began her career performing in coffeehouses in Boston and Cambridge, and rose to fame as an unbilled performer at the 1959 Newport Folk Festival. She began her recording career in 1960, and achieved immediate success. Her first three albums, Joan Baez, Joan Baez, Vol. 2, and Joan Baez in Concert all achieved gold record status, and stayed on the charts for two years.

at the end of the day Lit. at the time when work or one's waking hours end.  I will have an answer at the end of the day. Will this be finished at the end of the day or before? 

2. Fig. when everything else has been taken into consideration. At the end of the day you will have to decide where you want to live. The committee interviewed many applicants for the post, but at the end of the day made no appointment.

One of my favorite blogger poets, a guy who writes maybe more than I do is Joseph Harker, producer of naming constellations Click on that link to see the poem that inspired this one.

At The End Of The Day In Chelsea

I watched you lift off
with your belly leading, you
showing your grand thought
was to sneak right out
us none the wiser for it.

I know what you did.

I stood back and gave
a small secret wave farewell
to the gassy smear
you had now become,
not caring much if you knew,
watching for angels.

Written September 9, 2011   3:30 PM

Your Departure

Departure

Written for Bluebell Books Short Story Slam Week 9


Joseph Brodsky said,

"After all, it is hard to master both life and work equally well. So if you are bound to fake one of them, it had better be life."

"Bad literature is a form of treason."

"For the poet the credo or doctrine is not the point of arrival but is, on the contrary, the point of departure for the metaphysical journey." 

Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky (24 May 1940 – 28 January 1996), was a Russian-American poet and essayist. He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 for alleged "social parasitism" and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters. He taught thereafter at universities including those at Yale, Cambridge and Michigan.

Brodsky was awarded the 1987 Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity". He was appointed American Poet Laureate in 1991.

A movie based on his life has been made, "A Room And A Half", directed by Andrey Khrzhanovsky.

Your Departure

I doubt I can say

what it is you did to me

when taking your leave,

acting the pirate

as if this was a movie

and you a golden

coin with evil eye

upon me striped and flayed, flensed,

my strips left out to

dry.  That good enough?

Written September 8, 2011   10:12 PM

My Broken Heart - For Three Word Wednesday

The Flaming Heart

Go to Three Word Wednesday for the rest of the gang

Erode; verb: (Of wind, water, or other natural agents) gradually wear away (soil, rock, or land); gradually destroy or be gradually destroyed.

Heart; noun: A hollow muscular organ that pumps the blood through the circulatory system by rhythmic contraction and dilation; one's mood or feeling; the central or innermost part of something; verb: Like very much, love.

Observe; verb: notice or perceive (something) and register it as being significant; watch (someone or something) carefully and attentively; fulfill or comply with (a social, legal, ethical, or religious obligation).

Bleeding Hearts

My Broken Heart

I shall stand apart

as best I can and observe

the heart of matter,

the heart of life's splay

across this thin round surface

of things, and watch as

all things shred, erode.

Oh Reconciliation!

I shall pray for you.

Written September 7, 2011   4:58 AM

Walking The Ice

Life can be hard, can be cold and hard.  I have friends in the north country where it gets cold and hard and dark for long stretches.  The warm season is short and intense.  I rarely hear them complain of mosquitoes and I think they could.  Life abounds there when it can.  Summer is over for them already while on this day this year we here on the 45th parallel in Oregon State (half way from the Equator to the North Pole) have a summer heat thing going on.  This winter it will get dark quite early even for us.

It might be good to remember what winter is on a ninety plus degree day.

I moved to Oregon from California in 1973, moved some six hundred miles further north.  I have not yet in 2011 gotten used to how dark it gets here in the winter, and how light it remains in the summer.  I have gotten old here but I still have the California seasons of my youth in my bones. Oregon seasons still surprise me.

Looking for the cracks.  I think God appears in the cracks.  I think all the forms of self determination and choices fill up the world but nothing is perfect.  God slips into the world in the cracks between our intentions, from virus on up to the world soul.  It cannot be otherwise or else free will is at least potentially a joke.  I think God has made a pact with creation to refrain from f*cking with free will.  AA taught me you could say God and f*ck in the same sentence.  Blogger and Facebook have taught me that it is kinder to refrain from overt swearing most times.  I could have used other words.  Shame.  But I do refrain from swearing most times.  I guess not this time.

Walking The Ice

The water birds walk
the ice, looking for the cracks
and the flow beneath
the cracks, three of them
out there keeping track, watching
the bank for vixen
as they search as well
for something to eat, something
more than cold dry air.

December 16, 2009   8:06 AM

We Have Been Through Times

Abandoned Farm in Dublin, Ohio

For Magpie Tales, September 4, 2011. Go visit  Mag 81

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France

Anatole France (16 April 1844 – 12 October 1924), born François-Anatole Thibault, was a French poet, journalist, and novelist. He was born in Paris, and died in Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire. He was a successful novelist, with several best-sellers. Ironic and skeptical, he was considered in his day the ideal French man of letters. He was a member of the Académie française, and won the Nobel Prize for Literature in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament.

We Have Been Through Times

The swollen dusty

cloud left us behind the dunes

right where we landed

quite some time ago

now, not as if we wanted

to be here but look,

buried clear up to

both axles just like wagons

in the dusty bowl,

in the world's middle

ground and drier than deserts,

damned decades of drought.

Written September 5, 2011   7:38 AM

This Plaid Scarf

This Plaid Scarf

You protected me
from this mudhole, this green slime.
You gave me these shoes,
this coat, this plaid scarf
I drape and tie around me,
around my bare neck.
You told me not to
look, hear, sense the truth of this
Fetid old story.
But you couldn't stop
me for all those gifts, even now I still know it.


December 15, 2009   8:01 PM

Bonnie Prince Charlie in 2008 at the Highland Games

Prince Charles and I share November 14 as our birthdays, though he is younger by  a year or two.

Human Longtime History

Go Here

Preparing For The Night

Three Word Wednesday - This weeks' words

Drag; verb: Pull (something or someone) along forcefully, roughly or with difficulty; take (someone) to or from a place or event despite their reluctance; noun: the action of pulling something forcefully or with difficulty; act of inhaling smoke; clothing more conventionally worn by the opposite sex.

Mumble; verb: Say something indistinctly and quietly, making it difficult for others to hear; noun: A quiet and indistinct utterance.

Penetrate; verb: Succeed in forcing a way in or through (a thing); infiltrate an enemy or group to spy on it; (of a man) insert the penis into the vagina or anus (of a sexual partner).

Preparing For The Night

Take a drag, you queen.
Inhale, then mumble hopeful
schemes that penetrate
your exhaled smokescreen
like the needle pokes your skin
in those fevered times
before the mirror
as you paint your nails red
and flick your fine foot.

I Know Better

"As long as we have practiced neither concentration nor mindfulness, the ego takes itself for granted and remains its usual normal size, as big as the people around one will allow." - Ayya Khema

Ayya Khema (August 25, 1923 - November 2, 1997), a Buddhist teacher, was born as Ilse Kussel in Berlin, Germany, to Jewish parents.

Khema dodged the Nazis during World War II. She eventually moved to the United States. After travelling in Asia she decided to become a Buddhist nun in Sri Lanka in 1979. She was very active in providing opportunities for women to practice Buddhism, founding several centers around the world. In 1987 she co-ordinated the first ever International Conference of Buddhist Nuns.

Khema wrote over two dozen books in English and German. Her autobiography, I Give You My Life, is an adventure story sprinkled with nuggets of spiritual wisdom.

Ayya Khema was the spiritual director of Buddha-Haus in Germany, founded with her guidance. Her ashes rest in a beautiful stupa there:



I Know Better

You invite me up
but I know me way better than
to go North at this time of year.

All I would do is
bring the wrong clothes, pack too much
and then take pratfalls
in the softly snow
falling gently down.

December 14, 2009 8:19 PM

Irene

Hurricane Irene Hammers the Northeast

Updated: August 28, 2011 5:50 am ET
As of Sunday morning, the western edge of Hurricane Irene officially made landfall near Little Egg Inlet, N.J., continued to march northward right along the Jersey shore. This was the first hurricane to have made landfall in New Jersey since 1903!

Heavy rains have spread well ahead of Hurricane Irene's circulation center into New England. The threat of flooding along Irene's path is very high. Strong wind gusts will continue to cause tree damage and power outages. Coastal areas will be battered with large waves and a destructive storm surge.

Irene Longshore

Wiki says: Irene is a name derived from the Greek meaning "peace". It may also be spelled or transliterated as "Irini", "Eirene", or "Eirini".

Eirene, or Irene ( /aɪˈriːni/; the Roman equivalent was Pax), one of the Horae, (women or goddesses of the hour or time) was the personification of peace, and was depicted in art as a beautiful young woman carrying a cornucopia, sceptre and a torch or rhyton. She is said sometimes to be the daughter of Zeus and Themis.

She was particularly well regarded by the citizens of Athens. After a naval victory over Sparta in 375 BC, the Athenians established a cult for Eirene, erecting altars to her. They held an annual state sacrifice to her after 371 BC to commemorate the Common Peace of that year and set up a votive statue in her honour in the agora (marketplace) of Athens. The statue was executed in bronze by Cephisodotus the Elder, the father of the famous sculptor Praxiteles. It was acclaimed by the Athenians, who depicted it on vases and coins.

Although the statue is now lost, it was copied in marble by the Romans; one of the best surviving copies is in the Munich Glyptothek. It depicts the goddess carrying a child with her left arm – Ploutos, the god of plenty and son of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture. Eirene's missing right hand once held a sceptre. She is shown gazing maternally at Ploutos, who is looking back at her trustingly. The statue is an allegory for Plenty (Ploutos) prospering under the protection of Peace (Eirene); it constituted a public appeal to good sense.

Irene

What to make of it,
this coincidence of wind
with the ghost hollows
in my soul's edges?
It is not full hurricane
strength but it's more than
depression, a storm,
a tropical storm blowing
me away from you.

Written August 29, 2011 12:30 PM

Let's Just Be Friends

Go see the rest of the gang at Magpie Tales #80

Red Umbrella, Christopher Shay

Let's Just Be Friends

So I took my time,
then took your red umbrella
though I would prefer
my black one I left
in the back seat of my car.
You were not at home
and I did not leave
a note to say, "looking for you."
It's weird to be here
in this thing we do
now that you have said to me
let's just be friends. What?

Written August 28, 2011 7:41 PM


"Use your mind. Remember. Observe.
You are not different from others.
Most of their experiences are valid for you too.
Think clearly and deeply,
go into the structure of your desires
and their ramifications.
They are a most important part of your mental
and emotional make-up
and powerfully affect your actions.
Remember, you cannot abandon what you do not know.
To go beyond yourself, you must know yourself."
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (April 17, 1897 – September 8, 1981), born Maruti Shivrampant Kambli, was an Indian spiritual teacher and philosopher of Advaita (Nondualism), and a Guru, belonging to the Inchgiri branch of the Navnath Sampradaya.
One of the 20th century's exponents of the school of Advaita Vedanta philosophy (nondualism), Sri Nisargadatta, with his direct and minimalistic explanation of non-dualism, is considered the most famous teacher of Advaita since Ramana Maharshi.

In 1973, the publication of his most famous and widely translated book, I Am That, an English translation of his talks in Marathi by Maurice Frydman, brought him worldwide recognition and followers.

When She Was Young

Here's a mix of the real with fantasy. I wasn't there and I can't know. Some of it has the ring of truth to me. The main town on Catalina Island (the main island in the Channel Island group twenty plus miles off the Southern California coast) is called Avalon. That's where my mother lived for part of her childhood and teen years. There is another very small town at the isthmus of the island where it narrows to a less than half mile neck called Two Harbors. In the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties, Avalon was already a modest tourist town with a casino and a group of permanent residents that serviced the casino and other tourist activities, and of course the smaller group that serviced them. Santa Catalina is relatively arid and was used as for ranching, but then the owners built Avalon and its casino to attract tourism. The last owners, the Banning family who then sold it to the Wrigleys of chewing gum fame. Now 85% of the island is owned by a conservation non-profit. The Wrigleys also owned the Chicago Cubs who used Santa Catalina as their spring training facility from the twenties through the fifties.

There may have been a larger permanent population in the past. There are somewhat less than 3500 people today.



When She Was Young

When Hy lived with Pop
and Millie on the Channel
island, called Santa
Catalina, she
old enough to drive, they had
no car, but Maggie
did and Hy would drive
Nan and Ron to Two Harbors
over the gravel road
using Maggie's car, old
as it was but she not yet
eighteen and ready
to be a movie
star, or someone else by God,
anywhere damn else.

‎August ‎27, ‎2011 2:25 PM

Written for Magpie Tales - go there for the rest of the gang.

Sometimes It's Just Like This

Seppuku with ritual attire and second
Source: p.85 of The Gist of Japan - The Islands, Their People, And Missions, Rev. R. B. Peery, A.M., Ph.D. © 1897 Fleming H. Revell Company

Christopher: "I have never really been suicidal. However, I have always understood, understood both the serious act and the tangled cry for help that it might be. In Japan there was honor in seppuku, or hara kiri."

Wiki says: Seppuku ("stomach-cutting") is a form of Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment. Seppuku was originally reserved only for samurai. Part of the samurai bushido honor code, seppuku was either used voluntarily by samurai to die with honour rather than fall into the hands of their enemies (and likely suffer torture), or as a form of capital punishment for samurai who had committed serious offenses, or performed for other reasons that had brought shame to them. The ceremonial disembowelment, which is usually part of a more elaborate ritual and performed in front of spectators, consists of plunging a short blade, traditionally a tantō, into the abdomen and moving the blade from left to right in a slicing motion.

Seppuku is also known as harakiri ("cutting the belly") and is written with the same kanji as seppuku, but in reverse order with an okurigana. In Japanese, the more formal seppuku, a Chinese on'yomi reading, is typically used in writing, while harakiri, a native kun'yomi reading, is used in speech. Ross notes,
"It is commonly pointed out that hara-kiri is a vulgarism, but this is a misunderstanding. Hara-kiri is a Japanese reading or Kun-yomi of the characters; as it became customary to prefer Chinese readings in official announcements, only the term seppuku was ever used in writing. So hara-kiri is a spoken term and seppuku a written term for the same act."

The practice of committing seppuku at the death of one's master, known as oibara, the kun'yomi or Japanese reading or tsuifuku, the on'yomi or Chinese reading, follows a similar ritual.

The first recorded act of seppuku was performed by Minamoto no Yorimasa during the Battle of Uji in the year 1180. Seppuku eventually became a key part of bushido, the code of the samurai warriors; it was used by warriors to avoid falling into enemy hands, and to attenuate shame and avoid possible torture. Samurai could also be ordered by their daimyo (feudal lords) to carry out seppuku. Later, disgraced warriors were sometimes allowed to carry out seppuku rather than be executed in the normal manner. The most common form of seppuku for men was composed of the cutting of the abdomen, and when the samurai was finished, he stretched out his neck for an assistant to decapitate him. Since the main point of the act was to restore or protect one's honor as a warrior, those who did not belong to the samurai caste were never ordered or expected to carry out seppuku. Samurai generally could carry out the act only with permission.

Maybe not today but

Sometimes It's Just Like This

That's the way it twists,
Twisting in, ripping up, then
you pull it out to
the light that reddens
through the shroud that was your shirt.
And there is not yet
any fucking pain.
Indeed, that's the way it twists,
handle slick with blood.

August 26, 2011 8:34 PM

And really, just for shits and giggles, this might not be about suicide at all...

This looks like creating my own misery to me. It is just possible it is allegory for that part of my experience:

As the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous states:

"We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a veil of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear we made our own misery. God didn't do it. Avoid then the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence."

I must say, that cheerful part has always been difficult for me.

More Practice - Reprise

David Joseph Bohm (20 December 1917 – 27 October 1992) was an American-born British quantum physicist who contributed to theoretical physics, philosophy, neuropsychology, and the Manhattan Project.

David writes: "Another aspect of the whole truth must be the perception that there is no fundamental difference of "inner" and "outer." One must see that ones own feelings, aches, desires, ambitions, fears, etc., are no more important in a fundamental sense than are those of other people, and that all of these "inner" workings are just going on in the same way that it rains and the sun shines. This is also very hard, but if one doesn't see it, then one is confused, and can only perceive truth in its fragmentary form, and not as a totality.

I have tried working at the latter problem, and after some work, I occasionally got a glimpse in which one felt that reality is in a different dimension. In this new set of dimensions, one saw that the inner and the outer are basically one. However, this glimpse lasted for only a moment. I think that I saw why it didn't last. In this state of unity of "inner" and "outer," the new truth starts to operate. But this operation implies a totally different kind of action - an openness that is at variance with all the norms of common life. It also makes one very vulnerable, as nothing can be kept from oneself or concealed. To continue in such a state would require a kind of love that does not exist in me, and that probably exists in very few people. So fundamentally, our understanding is limited by the absence of love. Understanding without love is impossible, as is love without understanding."
- David Bohm
Bohm-Biederman Correspondence
[a collection of letters exchanged between a theoretical physicist and an artist]

More Practice

You said it is how
the world is made, that the slow
sad songs are easy
to play, while the bright
glad songs just take more practice
and are more mature.
You said I like sad
because I am afraid joy
will break me open.

What do you know of me
to say such things?

Written February 12, 2009 9:37 AM
First Posted, September 15, 2009

The Other Flight

The Fall of Icarus, 17th century, Musée Antoine Vivenel

Three Word Wednesday gives us the following words:

Adapt; verb: Make (something) suitable for a new use or purpose; modify; become adjusted to a new condition; alter (a text) to make it suitable for filming, broadcasting or the stage.

Glide; verb: Move with a smooth continuous motion, typically with little noise; fly through the air with very little movement of the wings; noun: A smooth continuous movement.

Lie; verb: (of a person or animal) be in or assume a horizontal or resting position on a supporting surface; be, remain, or be kept in a specified state; noun: The way, direction, or position in which something lies.

Wiki says: In Greek mythology, Icarus is the son of the master craftsman Daedalus. The main story told about Icarus is his attempt to escape from Crete by means of wings that his father constructed from feathers and wax. He ignored instructions not to fly too close to the sun, and the melting wax caused him to fall to his death. The myth shares thematic similarities with that of Phaëton — both are usually taken as tragic examples of hubris or failed ambition — and is often depicted in art. Today, the Hellenic Air Force Academy is named after Icarus, who is seen as the mythical pioneer in Greece's attempt to conquer the skies.

Icarus's father, Daedalus, a talented and remarkable Athenian craftsman, attempted to escape from his exile in the palace of Knossos, Crete, where he and his son were imprisoned at the hands of King Minos, the king for whom he had built the Labyrinth to imprison the Minotaur (half man, half bull). Daedalus, the superior craftsman, was exiled because he gave Minos' daughter, Ariadne, a clew (or ball of string) in order to help Theseus, the enemy of Minos, survive the Labyrinth and defeat the Minotaur.


The Myth:

Daedalus fashioned two pairs of wings out of wax and feathers for himself and his son. Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms. And so, Icarus fell into the sea in the area which bears his name, the Icarian Sea near Icaria, an island southwest of Samos. It also has been said he flew too close to the sea and the feathers got wet, no longer working due to added weight.

Hellenistic writers give euhemerising ( Christopher's note: eu·he·mer·ism, n. A theory attributing the origin of the gods to the deification of historical heroes.
[After Euhemerus, fourth-century b.c. Greek philosopher.] )variants in which the escape from Crete was actually by boat, provided by Pasiphaë, for which Daedalus invented the first sails, to outstrip Minos' pursuing galleys, and that Icarus fell overboard en route to Sicily and drowned. Heracles erected a tomb for him.

The Other Flight

"I'll adapt your face
to my fist", he said to me,
cold bitter venom voiced.

I lept from the edge
stretching out to glide on wings,
feathers and wax framed,
fastened to my back.

He stood, shaking with fury.
He believes I'll lie
with his lover soon,
that I've stolen her. He's right.
She's waiting for me.

Written just now for 3WW,
Wednesday, August 24, 2011 6:58 PM

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