2016.01.17 — Conversation with The Liminalist, a weak fushigi* and a Poem

Hello. It has been a long, long time since I’ve been here in my blog. And as I write that, wondering how to be creative, my blood is beginning to dance and my cells vibrate with the joy of blogging. And with that I am sorely tempted to say that coming into my mid fifties has seen capital “L” Life fill my days with a busy-ness that is challenging, filled with wonder and the expansion of joy. Even now, I am “stealing” away time from a course manual that is demanding that I get it completed. Ah well! LOL! So be it. A blog today will get me smiling as the manual, even though fascinating, will not.

My friend Jasun Horsely, has given me the final push of inspiration to write this. Thank you Jasun. Specifically, he has just completed a blog post of the conversation we had. It was fun, and I found it very entertaining when I listened to it, the way we explored ideas of ego, self, deservedness and other ‘liminal’ stuff. And I am blogging to share that, and at the same time to promote his very interesting blog.

So, if you are curious about a light discussion on the liminal ‘truths’ we wrestle or struggle with when we aren’t busy making our lives work, here is Auticulture. (And the music he incorporated is perfect to the conversation!)

And, in a very quiet *fushigi, I wrote a poem that presaged the conversation, to some extent. And so this blog is to bring the two together, and put them into the blogosphere.

I laugh at that, as I wonder if that is ‘just’ my ego self wanting my writing read, or is that truly my intuition asking me to extend my creative expression into the world. [Shrug.] Does it matter, really, in the end? Not at all, of course, and so here I am. Writing a blog with my words in writing, and as they were spoken in early January with Jasun.

Here’s the poem.

The Clock Struck Six
“For last year's words belong to last year's language. And next year's words await another voice.” - T.S. Eliot

One
There was a moment
when the meaning was clear
a difficultly understood with a
brilliance that gave me the hope
of truth.
I remember that moment
in yesterday’s words
with a clarity that
adumbrated uncertainty.
Foolishness is the truth
of yesterday’s truths.
And to be unembarrassed in
the remembrance of the joys
born in each final truth’s finality
other than death
before death
instead of death
means something also true.
I am old.
My words no longer resonate
with the possibility of a future
remapped by words as sutures
with the power to unknot
what I had once been convinced
I had been able to unravel
more elegantly than
Alexander had done his Gordian.
Knot.
And whatnots.
Sew what.
The words that look back up at me,
now,
have a weight to them,
as if they are now eyeing me
as something worthy or not
to eat.
Sorrow, perhaps, for having been
wasted in my fervid well meant
fruitless looping back
to discourses in logic
looking for the mind
in my mind
in my books blinding my eyes
that would
cut
that
cursed knot,
answer
the demon Sphinx’s
riddle.
Oedipus in the end
put his own eyes out
for having been blind
to his truth.
I wonder,
was that enough to keep him
from getting lost in labyrinthian
words
words with points like the sticks
stuck in his eyes?
That had stuck him with what
had been
untrue?
I scribbled something,
but it was illegible,
or maybe just unintelligible,
and of dubious intent anyway.
As I squinted at it,
from my neighbour’s home,
through the open window
on this warm evening,
I heard his old fashioned clock
strike


Two
As I squinted at it,
from my neighbour’s home,
through the open window
on this warm evening,
I heard his old fashioned clock
strike
six.
Another day over
done, just
to
start over again
after the beginning
and the end of
night.
The movement’s indifference was
deafening,
Dawn to dusk, over and over
again.
I put from my face,
off of my nose,
the glasses I was blind without.
Hung them from my loose fingers.
I closed my eyes and
rubbed them
as if my fingers could erase
the ghosts of
the striata of
too many words read and re-read
again and again and again.
A living made and done,
long since done,
writing the same things
the same tiny little words,
over and over
again.
I set my eyes’ glasses down
pick up my scribble of ink
on paper,
and I stop. Reading.
Start to read it, again.
Stop. Again.
Through that open window
I hear young voices,
passionate angst,
fighting to find truth
in
love.
In the words of love,
misconstrued as words always are,
mistaken for the real
and the true.
I crumple my scribble
throw it away.
How appropriate,
I thought,
that my trash
can
had been
replaced by a recycle
bin.
Pre-canned.
Has been.
Has bin.

Well, that is my attempt at a blog.

And perhaps a good way to begin, late, this ‘new’ year.

2014.10.03 — Happy Yoga Hippy and a Word Fushigi*

I was asked to write something for my yoga instructor's newsletter. This is what I wrote for the Nataraja Wellness Centre.

“I’ve lost it!” I told Steve. It was Monday morning, first day back to work after a weekend gone too quickly. “It would seem I have gone totally hippy!” And I started laughing with him.
“How so?”
“I have discovered the joy of yoga in a park, with the sun shining down onto us through tall trees, with grass beneath our mats, and the sound of birds chirping and flitting in the leaves. It was so much better than I thought it could be.” I shook my head. “Yup, I’ve gone totally hippy.”

Yes. A few weeks ago the gift of hippy-hood was given to me as another lesson in life from life. Or, to be more accurate, a reaffirmation of the old lesson that out of all things, even the so-called ‘bad’ things, opportunity and discovery and joy can arise and be embraced. The bad thing was the closing of Babeeta’s Wellness centre on 6th Street at the beginning of September. In response to that ostensibly distressing event a few of us took advantage of the closing of our cherished yoga centre and the nice weather to brave the outdoors. Pure heaven! It was far FAR more delightful and invigorating than I had thought possible. And so, out of the blue I enjoyed yoga under the blue. And outdoor yoga has become, after the fact, a bucket list item I have managed to complete. Thank you.

And I can’t stop smiling, even as I write this. Yup. Maybe the hippies weren’t all dippy after the all, for it would seem I have become one, as I lay on my mat with my friends and fellow yogis, with the sound of birds all around us, under the sun tickling our faces and warming our bodies. Ahhhhhh. And to close the event before we dispersed into our days, hot tea, fresh fruit and bread, and conversation.

I am reminded of a poem. A favourite of mine that has remained a favourite for more than 20 years. Oddly enough, it is set in winter! But here it is:

Waxwings

Four Tao philosophers as cedar waxwings
chat on a February berry bush
in sun, and I am one.

Such merriment and such sobriety —
the small wild fruit on the tall stalk —
was this not always my true style?

Above an elegance of snow, beneath
a silk-blue sky a brotherhood of four
birds. Can you mistake us?

To sun, to feast, and to converse
and all together — for this I have abandoned
all my other lives.

Francis, Robert. "Waxwings", cited in News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness, ed by Robert Bly. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1980, p. 139.

Word fushigi:
As I was beginning to prepare this blog, I interrupted myself to send to a new friend the list of e.mail closing quotations I’ve collected over the years. My sending them came about after I related to her how a director of mine asked me to stop using them. Given that I had been attaching them to my work e.mails in a random manner, which was indeed unprofessional, I understood his request. However, he added that he thought that they were fine, except that most everyone wouldn’t understand them, and that if I wanted, I could send them to him instead because he would appreciate them.

Anyway, I felt I wanted to clean up the formatting of them. And I was enjoying reading some of them again. As I was doing that, Laurie Brown of CBCR2’s ‘The Signal’ once again added a fushigi: “The problem with words,” she said, “is that they try to explain away the mystery [of life.]” She then elaborated that music did the opposite. She then played Cosmogony by Bjork.

The fushigi was that, just before Laurie began speaking about the problem with words, I had just finished reading the following quotation:

Men know how to read printed books; they do not know how to read the unprinted ones. They can play on a stringed harp, but not on a stringless one. Applying themselves to the superficial instead of the profound, how should they understand music or poetry?

From the Saikontan, by Kojisei (circa 1600) cited in Haiku by Robert Blyth, circa 1947 Tokyo, p. 73.

So I looked for my other ‘word’ quotations:

If words were satisfactory, we could speak the whole day and it would all be about the Way; but if words are unsatisfactory, we can speak the whole day and it will all be about things. The Way is the delimitation of things. Neither words nor silence are satisfactory for conveying it. Without words and without silence, our deliberations reach their utmost limits.

Chuang-Tse. Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu. Toronto: Bantam Books, 1994. Tr. by Victor Mair, p. 266.

And, the finally noteworthy word on the word/music fushigi is a quotation I’d forgotten:

...in developing the language, enriching the meanings of words, ... [the poet] is making possible a much wider range of emotion and perception for other men, because he gives them the speech in which more can be expressed.

T.S. Eliot.

2014.10.04 Word fushigi Addendum
This morning, when I checked my e.mail, I saw that I’d received notice that a dormant thread in Goodreads had come alive again over night. when is poetry not poetry is the thread’s title. I’d first commented in it July 08, 2014 and, up to yesterday, the last comment was September 13th. This adds to the fushigi because one of the issues the thread is philosophically bantering about is the gap in creativity between reason, words, and that which exists before/outside of them. Yesterday’s comment, from Greg, is a simple one: “God has no reason to exist.” This makes me laugh. And of course, post a comment.