A Momentary Taste of Being

Human and Humane Sometimes in the face of such evil the only human response is apology, is listening to the stories you do not want to hear or believe and accepting them as part of the world you do not know and then making amends--truly setting things to rights, truly liberating the captive who has been so long languishing through a sin-- not commission, not truly omission, but complete inattention, indifference. It is indifference that robs us of any trace of humanity-- the willingness to allow things to be, so long as they don't affect me or mine. Indifference tamps down the cobbles with which hate paves the pathway to hell for all of us. Indifference is an invitation to inhumanity.

Standing at the bathroom sink brushing my teeth I think about the time my brother pulled the golden glass-domed clock from her desk and she cried and said because it wasn't cylindrical but more oval, the glass couldn't be replaced. And I felt her pain and said I'm sorry, and felt that moment that I was really talking to her wherever she might be, but she was for certain with me and without her I am not and then spoke the truth I saw "But you had some share of the blame-- putting a thirteen year old boy who wanted nothing more than to be left alone in charge of his little brothers." And I still love you.

Your annual reminder that Ulysses is for everyone:  Will you read it? “and yes I said yes I will Yes.” Longer excerpt: “I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.” Joyce was absolutely terrible at formal poetry, because his poetry is in his writing. ReadJoyce!

I I had a sandwich there And read the window and bronze plaque but it was not Gorgonzola. II I passed the siren's tavern which I did not see and crossed quietly over the placid Liffey. III You would have laughed to see my thrill at finding old Tommy Moore and his once-urinal. IV Out past Dun Laoghaire where the chill North Sea meets the Forty Foot--the Martello Tower. V James Joyce hopscotched every brick in Dublin to celebrate the date of his love. VI Sirens and Cyclopes and Wandering Rocks all for a beer and some cheese. VII Breakfast kidneys and chemist and Leopold leaves Molly abed. VIII he thinks fine day for a funeral even if I flee and find my father. XI A fine edifice and fancy facade for mothering maters about to bear. X Ah rejoyce and rejoyce again that we readjoyce for doubling our Dublin. XI While just inside Stephen proves by algebra he is the ghost of his own father, ...

Did you hear me when I whispered your name to the dew that had not yet formed? When I stirred the clear water of a sticky stream and found in the eddies and whirls a language only I could read? I carried you like the single breath of an ancient bird preserved in lithographic limestone, like all the salt of the sea bound and floating.

I read a poem and set the book down in front of the fan that is never off and I let it turn a few pages before I pick it up and read another poem May Sarton "Salt Lick" and it's time to go to work so I close the book and write this poem.

Their majesties--three Sandhill Cranes, parents and a chick, step out to survey their domain, and pause their stately strut to nod (noblesse oblige) at doting subjects in their stopped cars.

When you look at the beautiful things of the world, what do you see? How do they speak? What language is whispered in your ear? How do you know the loveliness of the turquoise wave, of the pebbled shore, of a marble in a vacant park relaxing her robust nakedness against the manicured green?

Like the dragonfly trapped in my car I beat against the windshield uncomprehendingly seeking the light but barred from it by some barrier I cannot see. Sometimes flying the length of the window, sometimes perched an inch from freedom, ignoring the indraft. Oh for a Hand to guide me to open air!

How we feel Is an illusion we choose

Today I saw sea eagle piercing the blue sky silver glinting from his talons promises there will be a tomorrow.

Not first upon the Cross God let Himself be slain, For see! He lieth dead there at the feet of Cain. --Angelus Silesius ***** Goodness this is a powerful reminder and brings forward what it means to be in the image and likeness of God. When we lay violent hands on any person, we lay violent hands on God himself--Matthew 25:40: "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

On Looking at the Columns in the Temple of Hathor What dim, flickering, ageless age you speak to us--an ageless age that changes in the mind of the one who sees it. How many worked for how long to make these columns and friezes to tell us what story? How much shadowed labor in what heat and weather? How many working here and how many others to support the work they did?                  It beggars the imagination to think--no outlets, no switches nothing but the muscled labor of men and women and beasts. No eight-hour day and then off to be with family, no unions, no protection from elements or random anger.  And yet all done all to glorify a silent goddess--joy and a mother's abiding love.                                          What connection have I now to what this meant to you when it was new--when groun...

This is the problem with today, we look to the future and the past, we're taught to do it from the time we can think, and here we look to both ways-- To the future that we are building memories (the past) for, with not so much as a sidelong glance to the fact that when we live Romantic nows the past and the future take care of themselves.

Instead of focusing on the outer cosmos, Socrates focused primarily on human beings and their cosmos within, utilizing his method to open up new realms of self-knowledge while at the same time exposing a great deal of error, superstition, and dogmatic nonsense. The Spanish-born American philosopher and poet George Santayana said that Socrates knew that “the foreground of human life is necessarily moral and practical” and that “it is so even so for artists”—and even for scientists, try as some might to divorce their work from these dimensions of human existence.

"From the moment of inception a poem must be driven by the meaning you would give to it" "Oh Tom, not this again, please-- look at the ocean, the sun just reflecting, the pelican raising his head to swallow a fish." "That's it! That's it exactly! The three persons of the trinity-- the Holy Ghost present to all equally, the Father Ocean in whom we live and move and have our being and most of all the Pelican Christ, who moves on the surface of the Father and engulfs sinners to their salvation. " "Eh," I say, "can't the ocean be the ocean and the waves just waves? Can't sand be sand no matter how we sculpt it?" "Poetry isn't for the faint of heart or the weak of will, its for men of stout heart and strong mind who know what they mean and say it with full force of their words." "Why can't poetry just be beautiful. . ." "It must be beautiful but not just, it must ...

I just read this poem and fell in love with it. A picture rather than a typescript because you have to see it for it to mean. I first read it in a Keillor collection where all design was removed and it still entranced me, but now even more properly arrayed.  As set in Keillor's book, the poem is rather like pâté de foie gras, sans pâté, pas de gras.   Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Central Park West.

And when you write, write. one word in front of another your meaning, your meaning their meaning, their meaning expanding the boundary to bursting, and who cares? Because now it is one word one word one word a pile of words.

I truly love your energy efficient high green grass-covered hut with fake fireplace and long bench with chairs heavy as thrones for overlooking the lake some people made to build things on while watching the tethered balloon reel in and out like some giant fishing rod pulling people out of the cerulean dyed blue. Even more I love the people who try to please with smooth and carefully trained efficiency who have to deal with idiots like me who refuse to conform to your tone-y café lingo and who instead ask for the biggest or the next size down or the smallest. But truth to tell I'd rather go to Panera, McDonald's Dunkin Donuts, the local sinkhole or frogpond to find something to drink Despite your colorful and sometimes insipidly controversial cups.

Can you imagine! He was looking for a sphere with one handle and all he could find was his hidden wife's Japanese Tea ceremony set minus the pot-- cups so delicate and thin you could breathe through them. ***** note: while this may seem to be needlessly obscure it helps to know that a sphere with one handle (or even with a hole in it) is topologically identical to a coffee cup. More or less.

Start with the assumption that the poet is writing about some- thing, not just playing with words, note I said "just playing" because all poets play with words just like your toddler plays with food, folds it up, mashes it down, stirs it up makes it good. Yum.

Maybe there would be a donut there, or perhaps nothing to make the coffee better, you could never tell but you also couldn't lose counting on bad coffee-- so bitter and burnt your tongue would feel better licking the dingy coffee colored shingles of your neighbor's unpowerwashed roof, but still it IS coffee unstirred by spoon, cuillier or Prévert and it asks no easy coffee- house questions and offers only the solace of a cup with a handle. Coffee . . . In case you were asking.

I'm back after long absence and have a question for anyone who pays attention (there are only a few).  It used to be fairly easy to follow a blog.  Now I seem to have to cut and past the URL of the blog I wish to follow into the edit area of a reading list to be able to follow.  Is there an easier way?

Oh you splendid light that shines from within all things, do not hide from us who look, perhaps only time to time. It is true we spend more time looking at our own feet, listening to the dog or cat fight, running away and laughing like children who have just lit a paper bag on your porch. it is good for us that you are a song, the sun in the morning, a rainbow, a pair of Sandhill cranes and their young, the scent of jasmine, magnolia, vanilla, the ocean. In all things and being all things, you fly to us at the slightest nod at the smallest gesture you invite us to feast. And even when we pay no attention, You shine out of all things and sing the song of longing presence.

Don't look at me, there's nothing here to see-- look at Who loves me.

Today is a day for hearing. though I've set myself under the huge iron bell of the carillon on a festival day, still its clamor cannot drown out the whisper of Your love. No matter how I flee it, it rings in my head and my body takes Your sound and transforms it into light that though I try to trap it escapes me and blinds the world into new sight.

There are times, indeed most times, when I feel like a fake, an impostor, not entitled to the gifts you send, to the caresses you extend in return for my playing in the mud. I am a liar, a cheat, a false lover, a pretender--oh, I am every falseness all in one, from Trojan horse to human skeleton on the moon. And mysteriously, you seem to love me all the more for it, and throw out snares that draw me in again and again, and though I rip and turn away from your gossamer nets, still I long for their soft touch and come again to be ensnared. Stop playing! Take me because I cannot give myself.

It crossed my mind to buy yet another book until I stopped to count the ones I have. **** Have you thought how you litter Earth with poems like leaves from shaky fall trees **** I fall into these words time and time again **** In falling I fall in walking I walk. **** Options are very limited--so be who you are. **** Did you ask me because you wanted to know or because you needed to fill the empty air **** Your wounds are already healed if you would just stop re- opening them. **** Just listen with your other ear to what you say and hear it for the poison it is. **** Patience, kindness compassion, humility, I seem to run out of everything but words.

I tore it open and started to stuff it full of stories and string and whatever came to hand as I was casting about for yet more to fill its sucking unsoothable emptiness-- tales tragic and trivial, endless facts and recipes for foods no one would ever eat, murders and weddings and the vast silence the underlay the thunder of the pounding surf. And still there was no help for it-- each thing I stuffed in only made it emptier. Who knew that emptiness could grow bigger could consume everything? And yet the more I stuffed inside the less it contained worthy of note. Should I cease and sew it up? Should I cast it into the sea to see if it should be swallowed or more likely swallow the bitter salty sea and still be craving in its emptiness.

All the people that cannot be, but admire give pleasure to being me. 

You judge the oyster ugly and so do not discover the pearl within.

So long as I insist upon my own way everything is broken But then evening comes

We should start by understanding that this is impossible. We cannot create a sacred space because all spaces are already sacred. In their being they reflect their making and their maker. So now we understand our goal is different, what should we say? Living our sacred space. We choose to see that everything around us is a gift. Every person we meet is a gift, is a hammer to knock off the harsh corners, the uneven contours, to shape us to our mission. There is no such thing as an intrusion, as an obstruction. Every person is a lesson, is a challenge, is present to strengthen our ability to love, to transform us from potential to kinetic. Until we see this, we miss some of the sacred brought to us each day. In our hurry to accomplish we push aside possibility to pursue our own ephemeral agenda. Did cutting that person off in traffic really save that much time? Did letting the door slam behind us in the face of another really get us to where we were going fast...

Silence the clatter of judgment in your own head. Judgment is the noise you make at night to scare away the burglar who is downstairs before you go down to find that everything is all right. Judgment is our own self-doubt crying out, saying, "Make sure I'm still important. Make sure I still matter. " By judging we claim control, power, certainty. But what we get when we judge is a certain fixity of viewpoint, a certain hardening of the lines of who and what we are, a certain diminishment of joy. Because when we judge and exclude harmless and beautiful things, we close off access to the treasures they contain. Treasures countless others have tasted and known, but which we find "beneath us." When we judge a person, we set up a barrier, a line neither can fully communicate across. We gaze into a mirror and exaggerate and demonize what we do not like about ourselves. So what instead? Instead, let us, each one accept what comes to us...

Yesterday, the last of April, and my mother's birthday, a race on the beach.  Ten K up and down the sand, with the clouds of sunrise reflecting, first gray, before the sun has a chance with them, and then the broad strokes of pink and yellow and orange and purple and gray.  And people gathering there on the hard flat surface of the beach near the ocean.  Watching the wind whip up the waves and drive the crest fast upwind.  Race time and more people and rain and the possibility that Space X will launch something from nearby Cape Canaveral, so the first two miles or more during rests, turning around and glancing back over my shoulder to see if it happened.  And it doesn't, so I watch the people on the beach with their phones and cameras aimed toward the cape and if I see someone point or lift their camera or stand up and look, I'll turn around, but I don't.  And I'm running so hard and the wind is blowing back at me that I am surprised when I turn around and ...

As through some distorting lens my eye cannot see what is there but only what sits heavy in my chest--dark pluton of ancient choices, thoughts formed in the furnace and through time warped and bent and changed and turned and now looking new--but so so old--the ore of the idol that called Moses down from Sinai to cast the new law to the ground. If only I could open up to devour this excess--like earth consumed Aaron's handiwork. That this core of mine would vanish, resolve, change itself-- the crooked lines made straight and my darkness light.

He spreads  his hands to any who will take him  and his face is  wreathed in smiles at the slightest provocation. Slight paraphase of a description by Louise (Taft's mother)of WHT as a baby-- quoted in Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit)

Not the days, not the nights, not the ocean, not the waves not the sky, not the clouds in it

You haunt me--you fill my head with snapshots of you I should not see--they boil and seethe within the limitless confused  molten furnace. You say things that cannot be unheard and like obscene petroglyphs they litter the landscape on either side of the molten frenzy that is the core of who I am--its banks and curves unknown and too dangerous to explore on my own-- and there you stand, naked and grinning and poised for the dive into oblivion I am powerless to stop--you haunt me. (4/27/15)

I Good Wace tells us that Constantine to Totnes came and thereby hangs the tale. II What would the world be if not for the Duke of Tintagel's wife?

Sorry bud but what you got is a dude older than he thought he'd ever live to be who doesn't wear a raincoat because in Florida's tropical downpour raincoat paper bag about the same thing, and if he did would never consider cleaning it because hell didn't the rainwater just do that who walks into a bookstore sees your name on the cover and plunks down an obscene amount of cash to be able to open the book with his morning coffee. Sorry man, better luck next time. My writing   Poetry   Drafts

If simplicity of living is a valid principle, there is one important precaution and condition of its application. I can explain it best by something which Mahatma Gandhi said to me. We were talking about simple living, and I said that it was easy for me to give up most things but that I had a greedy mind and wanted to keep my many books. He said, 'Then don't give them up. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, you should keep it. If you were to give it up in a mood of self-sacrifice or out of a stern sense of duty, you would continue to want it back, and that unsatisfied want would make trouble for you. Only give up a thing when you want some other condition so much that the thing no longer has any attraction for you, or when it seems to interfere with that which is more greatly desired. Richard Gregg, 1936

I saw a five star Met Opera cast and staging presenting what seemed to be little more than a two star opera. Some of the music was wonderful, but most of the characters were nitwits, hotheads, or amoral monsters.

Reading through "Agamemnon," which I'm certain I read in college and I'm a little surprised by my reaction. I have a lasting impression of Clytemnestra as the villain of the piece along with her lover Aegisthus. This reading I understand much more clearly Clytemnestra and can even summon up a little bit of sympathy for Aegisthus--at least so far as their crime against Agamemnon. The sacrifice of Iphigenia tore out a mother's heart--destroyed her completely. And what happened to Thyestes (Aegisthus father)--being fed his own children by Atreus (Agamemnon's father), certainly explains some things, even if I am not into the generational vengeance thing.  I used to think them the villains of the piece but this speech by Clytemnestra pretty much sums it up: So now you sentence me to banishment, allot me hatred, rumbling civic curses. Back then you offered him no opposition when he, as casual as at one death among the crowding and luxuriant flocks, sacrificed...

You treat love like a rare earth element infinitely precious, Incredibly valuable, in so many ways powerful, and rare, to be dolloped out in micro- and nanograms, to be used only here and there to coordinate functions and link however temporarily things that are apart. What will it take to convince you that love is like the atmosphere– infinitely precious and in the universe–rare enough. But oh my it’s everywhere–in and on and around all living things It is our home and our life and without it–a barren rock is all there’d be. Just try to hoard the atmosphere, stuff it in a bag, dollop it out in nanograms it goes where it goes and it stays there despite all you can do to drive it out.

If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is not wise. You must go back and put out the fire. So when you are angry, if you continue to interact with or argue with the other person, if you try to punish her, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while everything goes up in flames. Anger Thich Nhat Hanh

" They mounted and set off for the house. Ordering the servant to ride on before with the lantern, Leila brought her horse close in so that they might ride knee-to-knee, solaced by the touch of each other’s bodies. They had not been lovers for very long —barely ten days —though to the youthful Mountolive it seemed a century, an eternity of despair and delight. He had been formally educated in England, educated not to wish to feel. All the other valuable lessons he had already mastered, despite his youth —to confront the problems of the drawing-room and the street with sang-froid; but towards personal emotions he could only oppose the nervous silence of a national sensibility almost anaesthetized into clumsy taciturnity: an education in selected reticences and shames." In Mountolive  by Lawrence Durrell, and describing him (Mountolive)

Suffering is contagious in a way that joy is not--we are ENGULFED by the passion but the transfiguration trundles by ignored.

Jammin' with Basquiat Art decore888888888 sp A C E and Muse-sich decar8888888888 t-I me but po et tree descar888888888 theme eind.

For all the problems I see around me, I prefer no time to my time(really, they were all the same but now you can see both light and dark. No longer do we sit in complete ignorance while others tell us how great we are); no age to my present age(though sometimes in the aches and pains, it sounds nice to be a younger self--the pain of the fire that burns too intensely and forgets more frequently that life is the only real gift far outweighs these signs that I've come far enough to delight in what the world offers);  no place but my place(the spirit of wandering sings loud and the lure of having ever more and more persuades, until I think of the hours and days and weeks and years expended in keeping all fine and catch a glimpse of me as servant to all that owns me, and know that however far I go, I long still for a place of retreat). In short, I can be content if I settle down to be.

I'd like for my biggest problem to be "What shade of blue do I wear today."

Seeing It was like He said Let's put a black box around your head and cut a small ragged circular hole in it right in the center just above the bridge of your nose and cover the hole with a million year old, scratched up gray filter. Then let's light the room with dim red bulbs accented with a silver bright flashing strobe light. And let's fill the room with fog like sublimating dry ice and then send you in to pick up a thousand black pins from the deep pile dark green carpet. If it doesn't seem right just keep at it until it does. And not knowing any better you do. poetry   Drafts   My writing