December, 1988

The passing song,
A Christmas Carol-
So randomly,
Quite arbitrarily
Pandora-played.

The memory that alights in a held-breath moment.
A ruffling of feathers
The trembling thought made black against fading light.
Listening to the tune
I sit on the couch
(an exhausted adult, with a sore back)
My mind a diffusion of reds and blues.

The pain of remembered happiness
Cold cheeks in December
Running home from the fields.
I had laid there in a bed of soft grass
Watched Texas clouds
They were vivid hued
Painted by a tired sun
Dipped its brush into a dark well
An early night that rapidly ensued.
Uncharted hopes sailed overhead
Dreams towered in waning light
Elegant castles that waited to be built.

I could have stayed there forever,
But I remembered it was time to put up the tree
Dress it with ornaments and string the lights.
I ran home-
There was a smell of something good
And the sound of a record on the player,
"Walkin' in a Winter Wonderland."

I could not savor it then,
But sitting in my quiet living room,
After wandering my kitchen at eleven P.M.
Drinking a cup of coffee black
Closing all the cabinet doors
That everyone forgets to shut
I paused,
Looked out the kitchen window
Watched the play of Christmas lights on melting snow.

Pandora plays where you last left off,
My quiet reading time with Vlatko Vedral stopped
When Christmas Eve's music came on.

I remembered,
So clearly,
I remembered!
That evening in December
Lying in my bed of soft grass
Watching the sky and clouds and the setting sun
The hopes and dreams of a ten year old.

Had my Nina, Pinta, and little Santa Maria gotten lost?
Or might they still find a home?

I sat for a awhile,
Then I turned to another station,
The orchestra pieces of Philip Glass.

I took a breath,
Drank some coffee
And then I wrote this poem.

I want to emphasize that despite our pleasant circumstances, we are never TRULY happy in this life, no matter how good things are going or positive the prognosis. I don't want this poem to be interpreted as a product of post-Christmas blues.

I believe it captures a universal message.

How can we  truly be happy, mortal transients that we are. My chain of reasoning is, my kids are making these memories now, just as I made mine then. I could not remember or even guess exactly what I was thinking that evening long ago, just that I had a strong feeling of infinite possibilities. It crossed my mind, quite distinctly in fact, that there were others who I know right now who might be experiencing what I did many years ago, and only just now recalled; I felt a great need to capture this and catalogue it. How can I explain this some day, or at least empathize with my children someday if/when they achieve this realization and I have not mentally excavated it for myself. Yeah. Tough one.

I think part of the melancholy of growing older in our lives comes from the diminishing returns of this infinite possibility into a more narrow approach. Most of us I think, if not all, are born with GREAT hearts. Hearts that wish to move with rhythms larger than ourselves- we all wish we could be part of something passionate and heroic and beautiful. Whether man or woman, part of us yearns for something more, a greater vision. It is more than adventure, it is the intrinsic longing that C.S. Lewis and many others talked about, the cold and clear dawn of our souls from a great height overlooking a shining sea: Sehnsucht. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sehnsucht

Then, when we reach a certain age, our backs hurt, we are more tired, and we just look at the next mile, the next corner. This is middle age, an age where we have secured an identity, but still do not have the wisdom of a long perspective. We are capable but still enmeshed. We know a great deal of what to expect from the future. It is often a lot of work, and usually largely predictable. We feel the weight of the mundane, and do not yet have the satisfaction of a perspective found only in old age, when we can look back and see that these years of slow sluggish walking were actually the gradually formation of an unparalleled pearl.

Yet, when we are young, we saw only possibility without the reality and worry of a parent and spouse. We do not have the motivation of invested time and effort nor the luxury of observing the second and third order effects of our labors. Life is a Tabula Rasa and we have a pen full of ink hungry for white space.

Especially in this age, each generation seems to outdistance the last geometrically. From many centuries, this was not the case, and sons saw what their father's fathers had seen, and did what their great grandfather's did. There was a changeless-ness to some degree in society. Today, we seem to have every possible path in front of us. Yet, it is almost a terrible lie, for we find ourselves forsaking our dreams to meet our responsibilities. This is not an ignoble thing, for it is better survive with honor than savor the thriving of our art in shame. However, this does not discount our inner angst, nor diminish our feeling of sehnsucht. In the words of the urban seer, Tyler Durden:

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. 

Well said, my good schizo-friend... but let's forego the pissed-off ear-punching and find a bodhi tree instead.

So, in the midnight hour, drinking my coffee while I sit on the couch,I realize how beautiful some of my childhood moments were and how important it is to give my children beautiful moments.

I realize that I have more than work to do. Of course, I still need to meet my obligations. I have to survive this house of cards life, and that takes a measure of compromise. But not COMPLETE compromise. There are territories that are sacred to me. I will not surrender the central Keep. 

When faced with our waning mortality, we can sit on the couch and feel it for a moment. But, it should never end there. We need to take a drink of coffee, and then struggle to understand it.

We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to our children.

Thirty is young yet.

There is still a lot to do.

Looking Forward to 2011

"Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men [sic] -- go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers or families -- re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body."

Walt Whitman

A True Experiment

Well, I stepped out on a limb today. Sometimes, you have to try something new. A long time ago, I started collecting old dictionaries, quantum physics books, and computer code books to use as material in my physical art. I will use a page of equations or data function tree from computers as the focal point for a canvas, drawing a portrait over the text/numbers and painting it or filling it in so that only fragments of the original is there. I am a total English major, so when I open a computer book filled with programing language- it is unintelligible to me. However, the terminology is fascinating in a sort of verbal brownian motion- there is a beauty akin to Dylan Thomas' more obtuse verse. Besides... after recently watching the documentary about the artist Basquiat, how he would have music playing in the background, the television going, the radio blaring so that he was constantly incorporating incongruities, weaving a quanta of disparate elements into a balanced final product. I listened to Philip Glass's symphonic music to relax my conscious mind, then opened Data Structures to Computer Applications to Non-Linear Data Structures and just started grabbing random phrases and words. Soon, I was able to fit them together like puzzle pieces, although several times I had to turn the whole thing upside down several times. When stumped several times, I incorporated several random words from Twentieth Century Small Fire-Arms encyclopedia, The History of Tree-Bark, Computer Reversion, and from earlier today, the title of a SyFy episode, Caprica (Apotheosis- I did not know the meaning of the word, but it stuck in my brain, and at the appropriate moment, I inserted it, and then looked it up to verify- I was ecstatic that it was right on target). So, here is the poem:

 Figure 5-1.9 
or
(men as trees walking)

An arbitrary footstep

The careless hand

A casual seed hastened by gravity.

There was a rebellion in the soil

A force-age of celluar stuff

Powered by water

Pushed by a chaos of roots

Mucilage aggression

Terminal advance of lignin and cellouse through loam.

The representation of a tree is not an actual tree.

There are glossaries for representations

But then-

We make glossaries from trees

Bind fibers with mucilage.

This is an ordered forest of binary trees

The represented and the actual

Intrinsic to but one family

Sparse matrices with terminal nodes.

Their every leaf designed

Fragile mazes inscribed  

Facilitation of chemical seraphim.

So listen:

Here we shall describe trees

The manipulation of trees

Nodes between branches

And the sap that flows

In non-linear ways

By a variation of notes

Ordered cues for a biological routine

The linked allocation in an mutually supportive scheme.

Lo the linear engine with traversing gears

Branch and sub-branch

Twigs that bend

Roots in profusion

All this correspondence

Threaded through with sequential cells

Empowered by rare fire atomic hued

Angels who whisper molecular chords:

Grow! Grow!

The cycle endures through repetition.

We borrowed terminology,

This bird sings a song of fluted chrome

There is no silence amid ambient action

Otherwise notes would blend to monotone.

The data structure of lignified matter

Pushed by life

Defies the force of density

Progresses geometrically

Initiates an indefinite recursive procedure.

The infinite triumph through finite components,

Apotheosis.

Trees have a valid logic.

The forest is global.

Here is the algorithm:

To die is human,

To live-

Divine.

So human being: Dying, live!

From Phillip Glass's "Pruit Igoe"

I wrote this listening to Phillip Glasses song "Pruit Igoe" from The Watchmen movie score:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0RKpmjjpLQ&feature=related

His eyes are closed

Descending.

There are ruins and broken walls here.

Children have fled to far away.

Hope has lost its hearing

Her hands are blind

And they have stopped their seeking.

His eye lashes are not locked

They rest-

A reposed disposition.

An exile!

He was an exile.

The exile descends.

This Zarasthustra has wandered.

There were many places

He saw many a sight

He looked but could not find.

The stars were bright, but they were not kind.

Here is but a jagged rust

Twisted beams

Sagging doors 

Empty windows.

The monuments have fallen

A statue's hand lies empty under sky.

Glass shards on cracked pavements reflect the moon.

There is no life here

He descends.

He descends!

His eyes open!

There is no sound 

He looks left and right

Between the gutted walls

Between buildings with missing teeth

He descends.

With arms extended

His foot reaches out,

The stones wait

Stars continue overhead.

He is descended.

The ruins.

He looks upon the ruins.

The exile looks upon the ruins.

When I listen to the song, I always have a distinct mental image of an infinitely tired traveler, a dying god or superhero with a terminal disease who descends over a ruined city at night. It is like a cosmic Gilgamesh who has searched the universe to restore his brother Enkidu, but upon failure, returns to his city. Everything is derelict; he knows this is the case, but he is serene and hence his eyes are closed to in a fruitless attempt to avert the inevitable reality of the true situation. Sort of like an inverse ascension married to Ozymandias moment...

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Amazing how my subconscious blended all that together. 

Parodie de Calme

In a hidden silence
She seeks a blue sky devoid of memory
The bright sun framed 
Sea walls that tower over the world.

But I feel a subtle wind
The slight shudder of a hesitant knock
A knock that shatters the soul of an afternoon.

Do not tremble, small one that lives in the shadow of a tree root
The axis mundi is deliberate reality,
It walks only to walk,
And if its feet are heavy on the ground
It is only because it's feet have weight and gravity is a simple messenger.
Perhaps to the meek, the truth will be kind.

And the stones are worn round by water
And the stones are worn smooth by tides
My skin is rough,
Thirty years plus one do not bring congruence to my uneven utterance.

Let the final flowers fall,
For they perish in the summer wind
And winter comes like a flood
Do not let the autumn of the soul strike without warning
For our lost thoughts are like dead leaves that nightly fall in silence
The earth shall embrace them.

For the Father said
In the name of,
And the son said,
Of the Father,
The Holy ghost said,
Amen,

(a puff of dust, a sparrow falls- is there remembrance? or
the dissonant but steady march of random selection)

Mea culpa, mea culpa!

Mi amor, my small sweet one.

A drop of red below a tiny beak
The feather-light form is framed on the dust
An empty plain is the canvas.


Who will save us?

By Satellite

As I drove
I looked over my shoulder
And I saw:
An empty lot of sky
The looming blue between red-brick buildings

A flock of birds
Searching
Flying

A cloud of birds
Painting the sky with wings.

They flew from the library to the cafe
Back to the library
Then across the square
They surged

Like snowflakes in a snow-globe shaken hard
And I lost them over city hall.

Turning the corner
I drove.

A small town road
A fall afternoon
The golden light.

I was a thinking person
Inside a breathing body;
Pilot to a moving vehicle.

The leaves fell around me
They flew like the birds
The road became a hill
The hill became a tunnel through leaves and light.

I joined the leaves
Became a bird
A bird on the wind.

Circling the city square,
Looked for a door
Castaneda's cave to Ixtlan.

I found only

The space between buildings
Anonymous sky
Empty blue.

Snow

Snow is coming down outside. I don't think it will stick, but there is still hope.

Ha, ha. I've always loved snow, ever since I was a kid.

One of my earliest memories was wandering out of my room at the age of 3 at about 6 AM. I walked into the dining room with the glass sliding door, and suddenly the universe outside was white in the early morning light. Clouds were heavy over the mountains, and from their depths a white army cascaded across the valley. My dad was sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast, dressed in his green flight-suit. My mom wore a green velvet robe with silver vines curling along the hems.

As I looked upon the billowing snow, I was transfixed. It was a paradox of a silent white desert and the muted fury of a storm as the flakes churned around the streetlights.

She took me by my hand, led me to the roaring fire where a large pillow lay. She returned with my special blue plastic cup with a handle-hot chocolate, the marshmellows half melted. I looked into the flames, and hearing my parent's voices at the table, I was happy.

That's the end of the memory.

If it sounds too good to be true, too perfect- too contrived, it's not. Honest.

Maybe that's why I remember it so well.

So, right now... maybe I'll turn off the news, open the curtains- make myself a cup of hot chocolate.

( :

Lost Seraphim at the Red Wind Casino

'Till recently,
Casinos were a mystery to me.
Was I just too serious?
Cursed by many books,
Perhaps not enough oxygen-
Sometimes a lack of flippant green?

Despite these faults,
I drove a beautiful road last evening
Towering trees cathedral-vaulted the road,
Fading light touched lightly the tips of pines.
Amid the rustic forest in the heart of the Reservation
The Red Wind casino sprawled like a blockhouse next to a large gas station.
Trees watched from across the highway as I wove the parking lanes-
A massive blacktop you find at Disney World or mega-churches.
Later, when I left the mandatory dinner in a private room
I entered the open casino floor:
A wide space
A thousand ATM's with gleaming screens
Only they took people's money in.
A casual decadence of cigarette smoke floated overhead
Faded rumpled folks-
Wrinkled laundry souls
Unsmiling faces lit by green screens.
They perched on stools nursing a beer
Solitary stockbrokers with pursed lips
Blond bleach-burned hair
Old men peering through big spectacles
The neatly uniformed workers of doubtful pedigree.
It was a crowded terminal with no planes
A bus station shipwrecked in a forest without roads.
Crowded marketplace of individuals busy with loneliness
Folks who gave up on finding heaven
Spent all their time in a dingy waiting room.

Yet, I paused on the edge of the jaded crimson carpet-
Because:
The sound, the sound!
A subtle music
The blended beauty of singing machines
Somehow harmonized
Not a symphony but a prelude of intangible meaning
The whirring of blown-glass angel wings multiplied
The music of the spheres
Somewhere in the divide between heaven and hell
Tingling like a million small bells
Ice crystals hanging from Siberian trees
Trembling into silver vibration from the wind
The muted whisper of shattered sub-particles in distant space
An off-key fragment from a Vangelis musical score,

I stopped at the entrance
Stood and listened.

In the smoky casino next to the wide doors
People brushed past me,
The greeters glared-

But I took a moment to stand and listen
I think it was the music of lost Seraphim.