i'm freaking out. new house, new job, new romance, new friends, new classes...even a new cellphone. it's all going fantastically, falling in to my lap piece after piece, begging me for attention, praising everything that i do. so, yeah, i'm freaking out.
"dark and twisty" it may be, but now i'm just waiting for the backlash, resisting every impulse to flee and embarking on malignant self-soothing that keeps me awake until 5 in the morning the day before i move, and i'm not even pretending to pack.
and so the id, the me, the clamorous i, refuses to be still, appeased. i sprint from reassurance to reassurance and can't stop thinking about the bubble of fiction on a balmy april afternoon in a haze of frangipani. i'm making it up. god knows which flower it really is.
i avoid deceptively, engaging and embracing, because it's the only thing i really know how to do. what can i say? whatever you need to hear. not want; need. second person is such a comfortable way to live one's life, didn't you know? vicarious is more fun, anyway.
so, yeah, i'm freaking out.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
literary what?
I've been hearing this term bandied about lately: "literary fiction." It rather mystifies me, but I find genres usually do. I suppose writing style or intended audience is just as arbitrary and therefore reasonably unreasonable as content and conventions to categorize something, since the categories are so restrictive and artificial anyway...but it certainly made me pause for thought.
Anyhow, I have been looking for this excerpt for a few days now, and finally found the version that I prefer (there is an oral, as well, and a "primary" source too, I would imagine), so I thought I might share it. Very egocentric, that sentence. Ah, well. From pages 179-80 of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, lauded and degraded by O's book club and I suppose a prime example of "literary fiction":
Anyhow, I have been looking for this excerpt for a few days now, and finally found the version that I prefer (there is an oral, as well, and a "primary" source too, I would imagine), so I thought I might share it. Very egocentric, that sentence. Ah, well. From pages 179-80 of Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie: An Old, A Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, lauded and degraded by O's book club and I suppose a prime example of "literary fiction":
"I heard a nice little story the other day," Morrie says. He closes his eyes for a moment and I wait.
"Okay. The story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. He's enjoying the wind and the fresh air—until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore.
"'My God, this is terrible,' the wave says. 'Look what's going to happen to me!'
"Then along comes another wave. It sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, 'Why do you look so sad?'
"The first wave says, 'You don't understand! We're all going to crash! All of us waves are going to be nothing! Isn't it terrible?'
"The second wave says, 'No, you don't understand. You're not a wave, you're part of the ocean.'"
I smile. Morrie closes his eyes again.
"Part of the ocean," he says, "part of the ocean." I watch him breathe, in and out, in and out.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
TBL is on the air!
The Buried Life, a crew of four guys who are looking to fulfill their dreams and the dreams of others, have touched the deeply buried heartstrings of even MTV, and are bringing their Matthew Arnold-inspired message of possibility to your television. The Buried Life is coming your way, wherever that might be. (And the pilot episode was awesome, by the way; ever walked the red carpet? Inspired an entire classroom of inner-city youth?)
These guys (Duncan, Jonnie, Dave, and Ben) are the energy that the post-failed revolution ironicized society needs to jumpstart itself, particularly in the wave of economic recession and with a thunderous ecological crisis. Based loosely in Victoria, B.C., they have done a variety of crazy, awesome things with their giant purple bus, Penelope. They brought kids with terminal cancer on a Toys-R-Us shopping spree. They opened the six-o'clock news. They lead a parade, destroyed a computer, planted a tree. They were in a protest. They got a song on the radio, sang the national anthem to a crowded stadium, and kissed the Stanley cup. There are a hundred different things on their list; what's on yours?
Here's their newsflash version:
When it’s TBL related, we always want you guys to be the first to know. Sometimes that’s tough.
If you’ve seen the front page of the New York Times today you’ve probably read some exciting news. After three years on the road, “#53: Make a Television Show” is about to be officially crossed off the list! Let us be the first to say: Yeeeeeehaawwwww!!!
We’ve turned down many TV offers in the past. Anything with a script, “mood music” or a lightning round has been - ever so politely - refused. We are exceptionally grateful to even get the offers, but packaging The Buried Life as a conventional “Reality show” would betray our principles. Besides, that shit is whack.
This one - as you can see from the article - has a different fit. The world is changing and we applaud MTV for being brave enough to change with it (for the record, we’re doing this the way we’ve always done it - on our own). We are stoked to be the flagship series of their turnaround and look forward to seeing more like-minded programs in the years to come.
Lastly and most importantly - to our friends, family, everyone out there following on the blog - take this as a sign that you can do anything, no matter how far-fetched or impossible it seems. Write it down, get your friends together and go after it.
It’s Sunday, TBL is in the New York Times, MTV is shifting course. TBL Season One airs (tentatively) July 20th worldwide and we’re going to go to the beach to celebrate!
What do you want to do before you die?
Jonnie, Dave, Ben and Duncan
Check out their website to learn more, and to become a part of the Buried Life network.
My list?
The top ten:
10.) Be involved in a Broadway production of either Cats, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, or Rent.
9.) Shake hands with Spider Robinson and Robert Hass.
8.) Play Mariokart in an IMAX theatre.
7.) Watch the extended Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings trilogy in an OMNIMAX, nonstop. Done it in the living room a few times; now it's time to supersize. After all, I am a cynical North American.
6.) Build another house for a homeless family (went to Tijuana once before, and have to do it again somewhere before I keel).
5.) Have a home that provides rent-free rooms in the form of scholarships for students.
4.) Adopt a child.
3.) Foster animals from the SPCA.
2.) Publish an anthology.
1.) Skydive.
Not an Arnold fan? Try some Tennyson, then, or Herrick. Try some Albom/Schwartz, or even Bedingfield. It's not too late. Dig up your life; the plot isn't sacred, and you will thank yourself later. There is no time like the present, and it's continually slipping away, but it's also continually reborn, an instantaneous shift from past to future, future to past. You're a time-traveler, and you can do the impossible. Prove it possible.
Now, the question again: what do you want to do before you die?
summertime, and the livin' is easy...
Walked the labyrinth at school yesterday, only to discover that in reading the surpringly engaging The Time Traveler's Wife I sunburned my nose. Hallelujah, it's here!
Thursday, April 16, 2009
night moves
No, no Bob Segar, I'm afraid. Just gentle musings of what I am currently pleased to describe as a "backwoods cretin"; seems appropriate given my rather obliquely rural upbringing and insistence on escapist nonconformity with popular culture. That is, I know nothing of anything that everyone knows, and have a mental block that keeps it that way. It's pretty fantastic.
Off topic, massively. I was actually intending to talk about time, and night, and nighttime, and night-time, and how lovely it is to meld, suspended, with the grand arc of time when it's quiet, dark, and still...seems rather ironic to speak of stillness (invoking the Koan posted below), but at the same time it's a sort of overflow of effusive joy that makes its way into everything (since it comprises and is composed of everything, all of the time -- the point, in other words). Time's very meaninglessness becomes soothingly obvious when everything is still and tomorrow is forever away. Surrounded by cats, who I am convinced are anciently imbued with the knowledge of time's triviality, anbd from whose eyes and propensity for napping one can learn the most intimate secrets of the world, I speak in fragments and run-ons, deliriously happy in my quiet night oasis. Facebook flashes, and I ignore it (but not really, since I'm writing about it here, right now, and thinking about it continually as it blinks, blinks, blinks, trying to force me to correspond with a figment of my high school imagination, so rather than ignore perhaps the word I mean is avoid) to drift a moment longer. Its flashes, though, are carefully timed, and remind me over and over that chronology is a persistent little fable...
Now, some links, since I segue like a goddess (read that as you will): Hymns to the Night and Being Time, graciously directed by another N whose preoccupation with transcendence and universality came into my general understanding of life right when I needed it to, of course.
Anyway, general drift (heh): I like the night for its anonymity, its escapist magnitude of silence and slumber, its reminder that at all times there is a pulsing dreaming unconscious hive that hums and carries on the menial tasks of existence, but that is continually in the process of spinning liquid gold...it is the alchemist, in his or her most literal, reductive form, and yet begs reinterpretation as the transcendent.
"If you focus on the local, you can reach the universal" (pleasantly paraphrased by Matt Molloy).
Off topic, massively. I was actually intending to talk about time, and night, and nighttime, and night-time, and how lovely it is to meld, suspended, with the grand arc of time when it's quiet, dark, and still...seems rather ironic to speak of stillness (invoking the Koan posted below), but at the same time it's a sort of overflow of effusive joy that makes its way into everything (since it comprises and is composed of everything, all of the time -- the point, in other words). Time's very meaninglessness becomes soothingly obvious when everything is still and tomorrow is forever away. Surrounded by cats, who I am convinced are anciently imbued with the knowledge of time's triviality, anbd from whose eyes and propensity for napping one can learn the most intimate secrets of the world, I speak in fragments and run-ons, deliriously happy in my quiet night oasis. Facebook flashes, and I ignore it (but not really, since I'm writing about it here, right now, and thinking about it continually as it blinks, blinks, blinks, trying to force me to correspond with a figment of my high school imagination, so rather than ignore perhaps the word I mean is avoid) to drift a moment longer. Its flashes, though, are carefully timed, and remind me over and over that chronology is a persistent little fable...
Now, some links, since I segue like a goddess (read that as you will): Hymns to the Night and Being Time, graciously directed by another N whose preoccupation with transcendence and universality came into my general understanding of life right when I needed it to, of course.
Anyway, general drift (heh): I like the night for its anonymity, its escapist magnitude of silence and slumber, its reminder that at all times there is a pulsing dreaming unconscious hive that hums and carries on the menial tasks of existence, but that is continually in the process of spinning liquid gold...it is the alchemist, in his or her most literal, reductive form, and yet begs reinterpretation as the transcendent.
"If you focus on the local, you can reach the universal" (pleasantly paraphrased by Matt Molloy).
Sunday, April 12, 2009
life is beautiful
a reponse to the following image, found @ PostSecret, and adapted from something else I was pondering:
aside from the fundamental question of good and bad, with a resignation to the distinction for the sake of argument (or, more, contemplation), what is it about submissive persistance that is so preferable? is it not perhaps the ultimate sign of surrender, to persist simply because it is asserted to be "good" to do so? what is the point of comparison? to be, or not to be? and in being, to actually be, or not to be? to accept breathing and eating, reproducing and defecating, working and playing, just for the sake of their asserted goodness? is this not a plebian surrender? is there any sentience at all involved in instinct? (I suspect that there is, but more importantly hadn't thought much about it before the "something else" rolled along.) why is it that we find numb, cheerful acceptance of persistence so appealing? is it to appease our heavily scare-quoted modern sensibilities that we solemnly assure one another that living is the thing? that our very existence is the evidence? what is the essential beauty of life? is it enough to let it become a cliche? should we not be at least occasionally striving to play devil's advocate, to see if perhaps there is something to the well-worn adages?
there probably is. it's probably impermanent, fluctuating, as subjective and constructed as anything else (and thereby no more or less true, except by the standards of the questioner). but just because cacophony was resolved with harmonoius melodies of lulling peace, it doesn't necessarily follow that the dissonance should die, should be permanently erased. why not wonder, once in awhile? why not challenge your instincts? make them stand up for what they have forgotten that they believe in. let them exercise their talents for debate once in awhile, so that when you really need them to be strong for you, the muscles haven't forgotten. instinct needn't be static; let it grow, evolve; shake it from empty resolution once in awhile so that there is something to sustain it. let it rest sometimes, yes; the demands of societal sanity require that you do so, in the self-soothing peaceful meditation that is routine and truths.
yeah, life is beautiful, and good. it is rife with potential and pleasant surprises. there are endless miracles sifting through our willing fingers, forever whispering of potential and breathless joy. there is the sound of children's laughter, the irregular freckles on your iris, the half-moon of a finally unchewed thumbnail. there are snapdragons whose vibrance melts from one to the next and who are laughing, even as you cup the sides of their jaws. there is the taste of fresh gelato and wild strawberries, and the sound of defiant graffiti redefining beauty. sometimes, the sunset is so soulwrenchingly ecstatic that sunrise is only a short blink away, and the diffusion of heavy eyelids cheekily redefines desirable focus. and the stars, oh, the stars, that drift and wheel and wait, occasionally humming secrets to each other in the vast silence. owls, and tigers, and dragonflies. bowls, and soup spoons, and trashy summer novels. it's beautiful.
but remember the option. you may need it one day; if you've got some practice, it will only break you in ways that are exquisitely mysterious.
"It is a profound personal reminder that every single breath is a decision to persist, to strive, to seek, to find, and at the same time a stagnant sort of fear that yields to the organism’s drive for immortality. It is a reminder of the universal unconscious, which cries uncomprehendingly for you to stop while the adrenaline reminds you of why you’d want to continue anything, ever, at all. It is living, in a tender confrontation with the alternative, and it makes you worthy of knowing, just for a second, that you have this same control over that decision every waking minute of your life" (something else).
aside from the fundamental question of good and bad, with a resignation to the distinction for the sake of argument (or, more, contemplation), what is it about submissive persistance that is so preferable? is it not perhaps the ultimate sign of surrender, to persist simply because it is asserted to be "good" to do so? what is the point of comparison? to be, or not to be? and in being, to actually be, or not to be? to accept breathing and eating, reproducing and defecating, working and playing, just for the sake of their asserted goodness? is this not a plebian surrender? is there any sentience at all involved in instinct? (I suspect that there is, but more importantly hadn't thought much about it before the "something else" rolled along.) why is it that we find numb, cheerful acceptance of persistence so appealing? is it to appease our heavily scare-quoted modern sensibilities that we solemnly assure one another that living is the thing? that our very existence is the evidence? what is the essential beauty of life? is it enough to let it become a cliche? should we not be at least occasionally striving to play devil's advocate, to see if perhaps there is something to the well-worn adages?
there probably is. it's probably impermanent, fluctuating, as subjective and constructed as anything else (and thereby no more or less true, except by the standards of the questioner). but just because cacophony was resolved with harmonoius melodies of lulling peace, it doesn't necessarily follow that the dissonance should die, should be permanently erased. why not wonder, once in awhile? why not challenge your instincts? make them stand up for what they have forgotten that they believe in. let them exercise their talents for debate once in awhile, so that when you really need them to be strong for you, the muscles haven't forgotten. instinct needn't be static; let it grow, evolve; shake it from empty resolution once in awhile so that there is something to sustain it. let it rest sometimes, yes; the demands of societal sanity require that you do so, in the self-soothing peaceful meditation that is routine and truths.
yeah, life is beautiful, and good. it is rife with potential and pleasant surprises. there are endless miracles sifting through our willing fingers, forever whispering of potential and breathless joy. there is the sound of children's laughter, the irregular freckles on your iris, the half-moon of a finally unchewed thumbnail. there are snapdragons whose vibrance melts from one to the next and who are laughing, even as you cup the sides of their jaws. there is the taste of fresh gelato and wild strawberries, and the sound of defiant graffiti redefining beauty. sometimes, the sunset is so soulwrenchingly ecstatic that sunrise is only a short blink away, and the diffusion of heavy eyelids cheekily redefines desirable focus. and the stars, oh, the stars, that drift and wheel and wait, occasionally humming secrets to each other in the vast silence. owls, and tigers, and dragonflies. bowls, and soup spoons, and trashy summer novels. it's beautiful.
but remember the option. you may need it one day; if you've got some practice, it will only break you in ways that are exquisitely mysterious.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
green tea enlightenment
"When you know that everything is light, then you are enlightened" (from a tea bag at UVic).
A KOAN:
Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.
One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.
"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.
"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.
"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is the true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuti as rain. (http://deoxy.org/koan/36)
A KOAN:
Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.
One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.
"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.
"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.
"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is the true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuti as rain. (http://deoxy.org/koan/36)
Monday, April 6, 2009
["Convinced myself, I seek not to convince" (Poe).]
There's a certain serenity in the futile. If there is truth, and goodness, light, and right, then the dark can be distinguished and extinguished. If, however, truth is illusory, an arbitrary construct that is in contiual conversation with itself, then darkness and light, too, begin to fade. There is an omnipresence of possibility, a continual set of decisions being made that, it is true, arise from a set of predefined terms, but these terms are within themselves meaningless and subject to change. These decisions, then, also have the potential to be redefined, axioms shifted, morals adjusted; there is nothing inherently light about lightness, nothing inherently good about goodness, nothing that makes a tree a "tree..." and therefore, if truth is unattainable, it can be conveniently reshaped, fashioned to suit the teller; the hive can swarm with possibility and breathe.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
fictional, what?
so I fall in love with "fictional" characters...is there any other kind?
top twenty five, from literature:
25. Hamlet (Hamlet)
24. Estragon (Waiting for Godot)
23. Prospero (The Tempest)
22. Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing)
21. Beren (The Simarillion)
20. Henry DeTamble (The Time Traveler's Wife)
19. Ishmael (Ishmael)
18. Jubal Harshaw (The Cat Who Walks through Walls, Time Enough for Love, etc.)
17. Edmund Bertram (Mansfield Park)
16. Zebadiah Carter (The Number of the Beast)
15. Captain Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
14. Jake Stonebender (Callahan series)
13. Athos (Fugitive Pieces)
12. Morrie Schwartz (Tuesdays With Morrie)
11. James Qwilleran (The Cat Who...)
10. Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter series)
9. Frodo Baggins (LOTR)
8. Richard Colin Ames Campbell (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls)
7. Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes -- yes, I know he's a stuffed tiger.)
6. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter series)
5. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
4. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
3. George Knightley (Emma)
2. Faramir (LOTR)
and tied for 1. Aragorn & Gandalf (LOTR)
top twenty five, from literature:
25. Hamlet (Hamlet)
24. Estragon (Waiting for Godot)
23. Prospero (The Tempest)
22. Benedict (Much Ado About Nothing)
21. Beren (The Simarillion)
20. Henry DeTamble (The Time Traveler's Wife)
19. Ishmael (Ishmael)
18. Jubal Harshaw (The Cat Who Walks through Walls, Time Enough for Love, etc.)
17. Edmund Bertram (Mansfield Park)
16. Zebadiah Carter (The Number of the Beast)
15. Captain Frederick Wentworth (Persuasion)
14. Jake Stonebender (Callahan series)
13. Athos (Fugitive Pieces)
12. Morrie Schwartz (Tuesdays With Morrie)
11. James Qwilleran (The Cat Who...)
10. Albus Dumbledore (Harry Potter series)
9. Frodo Baggins (LOTR)
8. Richard Colin Ames Campbell (The Cat Who Walks Through Walls)
7. Hobbes (Calvin and Hobbes -- yes, I know he's a stuffed tiger.)
6. Remus Lupin (Harry Potter series)
5. Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird)
4. Fitzwilliam Darcy (Pride and Prejudice)
3. George Knightley (Emma)
2. Faramir (LOTR)
and tied for 1. Aragorn & Gandalf (LOTR)
Breach and Orison: 1. Terror of Beginnings (Robert Hass)
What are the habits of paradise?
It likes the light. It likes a few pines
on a mass of eroded rock in summer.
You can't tell up there if rock and air
are the beginning or the end.
—All it is sunlight on granite.
Pines casting shadows in the early sun.
Wind in the pines like the faint rocking
of a crucifix dangling
from a rearview mirror at a stopsign.
It likes the light. It likes a few pines
on a mass of eroded rock in summer.
You can't tell up there if rock and air
are the beginning or the end.
What would you do if you were me? she said.
If I were you-you, or if I were you-me?
If you were me-me.
If I were you-you, he said, I'd do exactly what you're doing.
—All it is sunlight on granite.
Pines casting shadows in the early sun.
Wind in the pines like the faint rocking
of a crucifix dangling
from a rearview mirror at a stopsign.
"Mythopoeia" - J.R.R. Tolkien
To one who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless,
even though "breathed through silver."
PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet may free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden not gardener, children not their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not been dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
even though "breathed through silver."
PHILOMYTHUS TO MISOMYTHUS
You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are `trees', and growing is `to grow');
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star's a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, Inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.
At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o'erwitten without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
and endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain's contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees and not `trees', until so named and seen -
and never were so named, till those had been
who speech's involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh,
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves,
and looking backward they beheld the Elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.
He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath the ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-patterned; and no earth,
unless the mother's womb whence all have birth.
The heart of man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.
Yes! `wish-fulfilment dreams' we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem ?
All wishes are not idle, not in vain
fulfilment we devise - for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is dreadly certain: Evil is.
Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
through small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave rissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow's sway.
Blessed are the men of Noah's race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.
Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things nor found within record time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organised delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have turned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.
I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends -
if by God's mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day-illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land 'twill see
that all is as it is, and yet may free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden not gardener, children not their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God's picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not been dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.
concerning hobbits
Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights, we shouldn't even be here, but we are.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, the shadow, and even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you; that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we fighting for, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
Sam: I know. It's all wrong. By rights, we shouldn't even be here, but we are.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you didn't want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, the shadow, and even darkness must pass. A new day will come, and when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
Those were the stories that stayed with you; that meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now.
Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we fighting for, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.
ye olde favourite quotes
"Certainly the game is rigged. Don't let that stop you; if you don't bet, you can't win."
"All men are created unequal."
"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
"Never underestimate the power of denial."
"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."
"Some moments are so huge you notice only the little things."
"All men are created unequal."
"The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive."
"Never underestimate the power of denial."
"There's only one thing that will make them stop hating you. And that's being so good at what you do that they can't ignore you."
"Some moments are so huge you notice only the little things."
"Once in awhile, people will even take your breath away..."
"...And since you know how terrific you all are, you have no doubt in your mind that before long, either I will realize that, or I'm so much of a jerk you wouldn't want me around anyway. So we have no problem."
"In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him,
then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."
then in that very moment I also love him. I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."
Naomi - baby brown (neck rolls my butt hole) says:
I like the wilted rose so much more than the erect one
Renita Fantastic says:
as do I, the "erect one" is obnoxious
Renita Fantastic says:
its like, IM A FLOWER HERE I AM
Renita Fantastic says:
and the wilted one is like.."Oh.."
I like the wilted rose so much more than the erect one
Renita Fantastic says:
as do I, the "erect one" is obnoxious
Renita Fantastic says:
its like, IM A FLOWER HERE I AM
Renita Fantastic says:
and the wilted one is like.."Oh.."
Renita Fantastic says: show me a man who punches babies and stomps on kittens and i'll show you my husband
bright copper kettles (or, mine favourite words)
Abuse
Acuity
Alabaster
Altar
Amaze
Antipathy
Antithesis
Apathy
Apostle
Aqueous
Aquiline
Arraign
Asexual
Askance
Aspire
Asymmetrical
Avail
Azure
Bard
Billow
Blame
Blather
Bliss
Blister
Blithely
Brash
Brethren
Buoyant
Bustle
Cajun
Callous
Camaraderie
Cataclysmic
Cease
Chagrin
Charisma
Chasm
Churlish
Cloister
Cluster
Compulsion
Concierge
Console
Consort
Contrast
Contusion
Crumple
Cyanide
Cyst
Dawn
Depth
Desire
Dichotomy
Disenfranchised
Dryad
Eccentric
Efface
Elate
Embalm
Engulf
Entertain
Epic
Epiphany
Epitome
Esoteric
Ethereal
Evince
Evoke
Excellent
Exorbitant
Exploitation
Expose
Expulsion
Exquisite
Fade
Fairy/Faery
Fate
Fester
Fissure
Flame
Foreign
Fragment
Froth
Frugal
Gleam
Glean
Hallowed
Haply
Happenstance
Harangue
Hubris
Horror
Hysterectomy
Illumine
Illusion
Impeach
Importuning
Incline
Inebriated
Innuendo
Irony
Kaleidoscope
Knave
Liable
Lilt
Limpid
Livid
Lucid
Lustre
Matador
Masquerade
Meander
Metaphysical
Myriad
Narcissist
Nonchalant
Nymph
Obscure
Obsolete
Omniscient
Pallid
Pallor
Pandaemonium
Parabolic
Penance
Pendulum
Pensive
Perdition
Persona
Pestilence
Phantom
Phaeton
Phosphorescent
Piecemeal
Pincer
Platinum
Poignant
Pristine
Prodigious
Prophetic
Prudence
Puerile
Pulse
Punitive
Quiver
Raiment
Rapture
Refine
Refrain
Render
Repentance
Repine
Repress
Reprimand
Restitution
Revise
Rigmarole
Romance
Rustles
Savour
Scintillating
Searing
Sensibilities
Sentient
Sibilant
Slovenly
Squalor
Squeamish
Star
Statuesque
Strategic
Strive
Sultry
Sumptuous
Sunder
Sybaritic
Sylph
Symbol
Symmetry
Synecdoche
System
Tempestuous
Torrid
Verdant
Verdure
Virulent
Whimper
Willowy
Wily
talking 'bout my generation (circa september 2006)
It feels like this should be a pivotal, epiphanic time in my life, but the more I learn, the more I feel myself freezing, shuddering in wary anticipation of a lifetime of drudgery and meaningless toil. We are the hollow men, it is said, devoid of spirituality and conviction, and I'm afraid I'm starting to believe it. It's an apathetic generational pandemic, as the world shrinks and wars become more and more abstract. Far from the shock value of Vietnam's novel projection in North America, we are so bombarded with imagery of horror and loss that they lose their meaning, blurring together in a concentrated effort at subduing the will for revolution. Knowledge is a handicap, and one's greatest asset. The more perfect it becomes, the further one is from understanding. It's like the curved line in graphing whose theoretical implications I always failed to grasp in 11th grade: it never reaches zero. We float in our indecision, caught up by the whitherto's and whyfores as we deplete resources and abandon faith in an alternate state. Without education, one cannot begin to fully understand their projected role in society and in life, but the more education they receive, the more futility is brought home.
This in a world that has conceived of butterflies and orgasms, waterfalls and chocolate mousse. This, in a world whose star is essential and whose creatures coexist in a Darwinian Utopia, surviving. There is oxygen, and water, and baby laughter. There are rainbows and bengal tigers and orchids. Fairytales peacefully nestle in purely scientific ink, paper and voice. The brain, electromagnetic and chemical processes firing, conceives of unicorns and Nirvana and quantum physics, while regulating the corporeal essentials - breath, cognisance, digestion, desire. Desire. Humanity dreams, together and one by one. We have kissed the moon ("One small step") and gone home to dance with the Sandman. Frogs marry ducklings and grow to be princes and swans. Kittens grow whiskers. The smell of freshly baked bread wafts, intermingling with a warm glow of sunset. On one side of the world, people rise to the same rhythmic pulses that tell those opposite them to lay down and close their eyes. Shakespeare, Keats, Beethoven, Einstein, Ghandi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Chaucer, John Lennon, Mother Theresa, Dr. Suess, Tolkien, Atticus Finch, Callahan, Ender Wiggin, Kris Kringle, Nikola Tesla, Hobbes...
Despite spiritual stagnation and cutural assimilation, globalization is no excuse for apathy. We are willfully ignorant. (Not by nature, by decision.) May this millenial generation find their muse...
This in a world that has conceived of butterflies and orgasms, waterfalls and chocolate mousse. This, in a world whose star is essential and whose creatures coexist in a Darwinian Utopia, surviving. There is oxygen, and water, and baby laughter. There are rainbows and bengal tigers and orchids. Fairytales peacefully nestle in purely scientific ink, paper and voice. The brain, electromagnetic and chemical processes firing, conceives of unicorns and Nirvana and quantum physics, while regulating the corporeal essentials - breath, cognisance, digestion, desire. Desire. Humanity dreams, together and one by one. We have kissed the moon ("One small step") and gone home to dance with the Sandman. Frogs marry ducklings and grow to be princes and swans. Kittens grow whiskers. The smell of freshly baked bread wafts, intermingling with a warm glow of sunset. On one side of the world, people rise to the same rhythmic pulses that tell those opposite them to lay down and close their eyes. Shakespeare, Keats, Beethoven, Einstein, Ghandi, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Chaucer, John Lennon, Mother Theresa, Dr. Suess, Tolkien, Atticus Finch, Callahan, Ender Wiggin, Kris Kringle, Nikola Tesla, Hobbes...
Despite spiritual stagnation and cutural assimilation, globalization is no excuse for apathy. We are willfully ignorant. (Not by nature, by decision.) May this millenial generation find their muse...
solipsist educational dilemma
Did I Miss Anything (by Tom Wayman)
Question frequently asked bystudents after missing a class
Nothing. When we realized you weren't here
we sat with our hands folded on our desks
in silence, for the full two hours
Everything. I gave an exam worth
40 per cent of the grade for this term
and assigned some reading due today
on which I'm about to hand out a quiz
worth 50 per cent
Nothing. None of the content of this course
has value or meaning
Take as many days off as you like:
any activities we undertake as a class
I assure you will not matter either to you or me
and are without purpose
Everything. A few minutes after we began last time
a shaft of light descended and an angel
or other heavenly being appeared
and revealed to us what each woman or man must do
to attain divine wisdom in this life and
the hereafter
This is the last time the class will meet
before we disperse to bring this good news to all people
on earth
Nothing. When you are not present
how could something significant occur?
Everything. Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been
gathered
but it was one place
And you weren't here
and so it begins...
Before sunrise, before shadow, before tyranny and war, before love, and peace, and truths, before deceit, and life, and death, before time itself, there was a Tone. It was low, static, empty; it crept through the fabric of sullen void, waiting. Mæto, silent, ponderous, still, crouched at the edge of the abyss, peering down into the shallows and depths of heavy solitude. The Tone, flat, lay as if weighted by bricks of lead, writhing against its clutching bonds.
For a moment, an hour, an eternity, Mæto stared blindly into the teeming masses of empty space, searching. A solitary tear welled, slowly, slowly, or in an instant, and fell into the abyss, fell endless leagues, and an echo began. The Tone, awakened, became a thin hum. Trapped in the limitless confines of potential, it grew, as yet unaware of endings, focused only on beginnings. It grew, building and building until it began to reverberate against itself. It climbed, swelling, until a second Tone emerged, higher and faster than the first. They continued together, for an instant and an eternity, until finally (or right away), they clashed and clashed and clashed with each other, and there was endings. Each echoed off of the other, warring for space in the infinitely dark abyss. Thus, there was Dissonance.
With Dissonance, came Shadow, welling and pooling, caressing the viscous borders of Dissonance; and with Shadow came Light, flighty, elusive, magnetic; and the Light waged war with the Shadow, an epic battle, the epic battle, pulsing, pushing, struggling, shattering it into millions of fragments. Light bled through the fragments, dripping slowly past the Dissonance, until it had soaked through, leaving Shadow tainted and murky. They fell from the shaking of sound, faster than the tear, and caught it, writhed in its splendour for a fraction of an eternity, then bounced back up through the tumult of sound. The Light, and Shadow, and Sound rushed outward, and collided against the walls of the abyss, becoming Notes and Colours.
As they collided from the walls and rushed back inward, they began to encounter each other, sometimes splintering, sometimes merging, and Mæto heard a swelling Melody that danced on the surface of the Tone. The elusive Melody continued to kiss, and wrestle, and play; the colours to merge, and throb, and dissipate; and each pushed and pulled on the other until they mounted a Crescendo.
Mæto clapped, once, as a gong ringing through an empty stadium, and shattered the cresting wave. It tumbled over itself, a riot of startled colours and sounds, and collapsed into stillness and dark.
The silence was heavy, rich, strained; it tasted, to Mæto, of the as yet unimagined scent of sodden leaves in the waning of winter, when the snows have corroded and eroded the earth and rot is ripe in the air. Then there was Loneliness, and Mæto shuddered pathetically, for the taste was of chill and solitude; the heaving gasps of one about to drown and leave behind gaping absence.
Struggling, reaching, Mæto croaked, then cried out, then moaned. The Melody shook, then lay still. Mæto, in despair, hurled curses down into the darkness, and thus was Evil created in the hollow depths; the Melody’s sharp outcry of pain mingled with the curses, curling in an embrace of terrible passion. Overcome by repentance, Mæto sat, still, quiet, absorbing the shock waves of the curses that left Evil slinking below and around the Melody. Finally, conquered by tragedy, and longing, Mæto sang a mournful haunting to the crumpled Melody, subduing the curses with weeping. At first it seemed that nothing happened, but then Mæto began to hear a faint, distant pulse. It gradually grew, until the Melody feebly began to stir again, alternately whimpering weakly and self-soothing. It rose, slowly, gradually, rebuilding itself from the inside; and while the higher, clashing Tone still pushed lightly against the first, making it tremble slightly, the Melody was now twined in the steady branches of Mæto’s song, and its sinews could no longer be shattered, scattered, and lost.
So began the Hive, which pulsed with flickering white light, heady red glows, and sinuous rills of blue and green. Stained with droplets of violet, it echoed the song of Mæto, weakly at first, obediently. But as it pulsed into strength, light airy thrills began to flicker on the edges of the Melody. These were soon followed by reedy whispers and a deep, alto pulse, lapping gently through the core. The flickerings began as idle improvisations, trilling and skipping across the entire range of sound, distracting from the Song. Then, each flicker found a pattern, to complement the sinewy heart of the Melody. These patterns became stronger, and louder, as more of the flickerings joined each other, expanding the sounds. Thus was Harmony recreated, rediscovered, reimagined, and thus was Cacophony resolved.
But the memory remained of the echoing Clap, and the simple freedom that had preceded it, and a dissonance arose from the heart of the Hive.
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