For Shelter, the World

Making the leap

GLOUCESTER:

There is a cliff whose high and bending head
Looks fearfully in the confined deep:
Bring me but to the very brim of it,
And I'll repair the misery thou dost bear
With something rich about me: from that place
I shall no leading need.

-- King Lear, Act 4, Scene 1

Googling this phrase brings up an article from the UK newspaper "The Independent", written in 1993 on the occasion of Shakespeare's 429th birthday, which synopsizes the scene as follows:

Poor Tom, Gloucester's estranged son Edgar in disguise, leads his father part-way up the 'horrible steep', and convinces him that he stands on the brink ('The fishermen that walk upon the beach / Appear like mice'). Renouncing the world, and begging forgiveness from his son, the blind man throws himself forward to certain death. But Edgar has deceived him: Gloucester falls only on the grass. Returning in the guise of a local peasant, Edgar persuades his father that he has plummeted the height of 10 masts ('Thy life's a miracle'). The mental ordeal purges the old man of his despair. His imaginary fall restores us to solid ground.

And so it is.

A new world

Heal the World

There's a place in
Your heart
And I know that it is love
And this place could
Be much
Brighter than tomorrow
And if you really try
You'll find there's no need
To cry
In this place you'll feel
There's no hurt or sorrow

There are ways
To get there
If you care enough
For the living
Make a little space
Make a better place...

Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me
And the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough
For the living
Make a better place
For you and for me

If you want to know why
There's a love that
Cannot lie
Love is strong
It only cares for
Joyful giving
If we try
We shall see
In this bliss
We cannot feel
Fear or dread
We stop existing and
Start living

Then it feels that always
Love's enough for
Us growing
So make a better world
Make a better world...

Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me
And the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough
For the living
Make a better place
For you and for me

And the dream we were
Conceived in
Will reveal a joyful face
And the world we
Once believed in
Will shine again in grace
Then why do we keep
Strangling life
Wound this earth
Crucify its soul
Though its plain to see
This world is heavenly
Be god's glow

We could fly so high
Let our spirits never die
In my heart
I feel you are all
My brothers
Create a world with
No fear
Together we cry
Happy tears
See the nations turn
Their swords
Into plowshares

We could really get there
If you cared enough
For the living
Make a little space
To make a better place...

Heal the world
Make it a better place
For you and for me
And the entire human race
There are people dying
If you care enough
For the living
Make a better place
For you and for me


-- words and music, Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

namaste

El bandito ... or la bandita?

Late the other night, I was sitting in my living room, reading a mystery novel (one of the titles in Mary Daheim's "Bed and Breakfast" series). The window was open, since the weather was relatively warm; and as I read, I enjoyed the background noise of the frogs chirping and geese honking and the myriad other sounds one hears in the country after midnight.

The action in my book had me fully engaged, so at first I didn't pay attention to the specific goings-on outside my house, until I noticed the cats had all raced to the window with their ears perked up. It was a new noise ... a repetitive noise that sounded kind of like raindrops spattering on the deck, except that it wasn't raining.

My curiosity finally got the better of me, so I lifted the window shade and took a peek. This is what had my felines in such a tizzy:

Yep, a furry and obviously well-fed masked bandit was raiding the birdfeeder. For about twenty minutes it stood there, perched on its hind legs on the deck railing, pawing through the seeds in search of its favorite goodies (probably the peanuts and berries), and raking what it didn't want out of the feeder and down onto the deck; hence the "falling raindrops" noise.

Tao Te Ching

Quite often I post quotes from the Tao Te Ching here on my blog, and I've had some comments and questions about it. The Tao Te Ching, pronounced something like "Dow-duh-JING", is one of the classical texts of the philosophical system known as Taoism and is purported to have been written by the legendary ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Tse (also spelled Lao-Tzu or Laozi).

As with many legends, there may or may not have been an actual person named Lao Tse, in the same way as there may or may not have been someone named William Shakespeare. But as with Shakespeare's plays, the work speaks for itself, having been written in a time when the "cult of personality" wasn't as important as it is now. (Well, I'm assuming it wasn't.)

There are many reasons why I am attracted to the Tao Te Ching, and to Taoist philosophy in general. One of the main ones is that it is based on the natural world ... the rhythms and cycles of the life process, as it is reflected in nature, and as a metaphor for human existence and creativity. Much of my own poetry is written from this standpoint, using allusions from nature. And with the current chaos and constant change in the world, I find that the more I can stay grounded and in touch with the Earth and its energy, the more balanced I am.

The version of the Tao Te Ching I quote and link to is this one, maintained on the Brooklyn College/City University of New York website, based on a modern interpretation by the eminent scholar, poet and translator Stephen Mitchell. There are numerous other translations, most famously the more traditional 1972 version, re-released in 1997, by Jane English that is illustrated with the wonderful photography of Gia-Fu Feng.

Stephen Mitchell himself has a new book out, entitled The Second Book of the Tao, which just arrived in my P. O. Box from Powell's Books.

Inaugural Poem

The beginning and final stanzas of the poem composed and read by essayist, poet, and teacher Elizabeth Alexander at the presidential inauguration, January 20, 2009:

Praise Song for the Day

A Poem for Barack Obama's Presidential Inauguration

Each day we go about our business,
walking past each other, catching each other's
eyes or not, about to speak or speaking.

All about us is noise. All about us is
noise and bramble, thorn and din, each
one of our ancestors on our tongues.

[...]

Some live by love thy neighbor as thyself,
others by first do no harm or take no more
than you need. What if the mightiest word is love?

Love beyond marital, filial, national,
love that casts a widening pool of light,
love with no need to pre-empt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air,
any thing can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp,

praise song for walking forward in that light.

"Praise Song for the Day" will be published in chapbook version by Elizabeth Alexander's publisher, Greywolf Press, next month. Meanwhile, the entire poem may be read online here. I've printed it out and put it where I can see it everyday ... on the fridge.

Let it be

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be,
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.

For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.

Let it be, let it be,
Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.

And when the night is cloudy,
There is still a light that shines on me,
Shine on until tomorrow, let it be.

I wake up to the sound of music
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

Let it be, let it be,
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.

Let it be, let it be,
Let it be, let it be.
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

-- "Let It Be" , Paul McCartney/John Lennon

Truth or Consequences

In my previous blog entry, I quoted the song that unfolds stanza-by-stanza in Tom Robbins' novel Villa Incognito. A reviewer of that book described it as a "Zen koan". I can't argue with that. In fact, I'd go further and call it a defining koan for our time, or at least the current bit of it.

Today, Eric Francis at PlanetWaves published a commentary on the final days of the Bush-Cheney administration, in which he discussed the imminent invasion of the Palestinian Gaza Strip by the Israelis, as well as Americans' response to the situation.

In viewing politics from the outside, it’s easy to think that you’re seeing the whole thing. More accurately, it’s like watching a movie for two hours, having missed the years of scripting, casting, production, editing and marketing that has led up to it. It’s easy to get caught in the emotion and the apparent level of “right and wrong.” Basically, we get caught in the movie and not the movie business.

Personally, until I figured out what was happening, I kept getting caught in the idea that Israel has the right to defend itself, and that Hamas is suicidal. The emotional, right-and-might vision of the world is like being lost somewhere and not looking at a map.

What he's describing here doesn't just apply to global politics. It is generally the way those of us in Western culture approach things nowadays ... flitting across the surface, taking what people say and do at face value, applying our logic to that erroneous view of things, reacting emotionally to what we think we see, and then acting on that basis.

I've got this clear image in my mind of what that's like ... it's as if a big hand comes down out of the sky, holding a big stick, and stirs an enormous pot of stew, until everything gets all mixed up and messy. Imagine that we're all in that stew pot together. When the stirring commences, we all start freaking out, screeching and hollering, throwing things and arguing and stomping all over each other.

No one stops to notice the big stick stirring things up, much less the hand holding it. We're too busy reacting to what's going on in the stew, and thinking that's "it".  To switch metaphors, we believe the sleight of hand. We really believe the magician has cut his assistant in half. We saw it with our own two eyes, didn't we?  And he said he did it. Why would he lie?

I'm including myself in this. Despite my years of training as a lawyer and working in the "real" world of corporate business, I've still got this tendency -- even a need -- to take things as they are presented. I want to trust people, to believe what they say, to discuss things with them on that level, and to believe that we can have real, meaningful, honest interaction. 

At the same time, I have always been aware of the undercurrents in any given situation, the things that are unspoken, the energetic dissonance between what is presented as being true and what is actually going on. The end result has been to put myself in a Catch-22, a kind of self-inflicted crazy-making and a collusion with the crazy-making by others, full of denial, manipulation, projection, self-righteous finger-pointing, and ... well, there's that sleight of hand again, that teaches us to believe what is not true and disbelieve what is, and that makes everybody else in the world wrong while we, of course, are right.

This is a loss of integrity -- individually and collectively -- that is deeply pathological.

The good news is that, if it's a disease, the patient (that's us) has gone about as far it can go in the direction of ill-health. Either it gets well or it dies. We've begun to make the shift, and are in what the medical community might call a healing crisis. Not a bad place to be, although not the most comfortable. Which may be the point. If it were more comfortable, we might be tempted to ignore the situation and slide back into denial. There's nothing like being on the edge to keep you moving.

The further good news, as any good astrologer or metaphysician can tell you, is that it's time. The doorways and paths are popping up one after the other -- the New Moons, the Full Moons, the magnificent Solstice that's just passed, Pluto entering Capricorn, Neptune squares and Uranus oppositions -- we're on this cosmic conveyor belt, and all we need to do is keep our eyes open and have the intention of moving along with it. It's there if you want it.

Incognito

I came across this just now and thought it was a lovely description of one of my "assignments" for 2009. Hmmm. Make that our assignment.

Meet me in Cognito, baby.
In Cognito we’ll have nothing to hide.
Let’s go incognito, honey,
And let the world believe that we’ve died.

Meet me in Cognito, baby,
Of course we’ll have to color our hair.
The best thing about life in Cognito
Is that everybody’s nobody there.

Meet me in Cognito, darling,
Sure, some may think that it’s rash,
But you’ll look chic incognito
With your fake nose and Groucho mustache.

Meet me in Cognito, baby,
We’ll soon leave our pasts behind us.
The present is always a mystery,
As the future never fails to remind us.

Once we’re alone in Cognito,
We’ll remove all of our clothes very fast,
But though we be naked as jaybirds,
At no time will we take off our masks.

Cinderella went incognito,
And it’s said that she had a ball.
It’s always midnight in Cognito
By the black clock at the end of the hall.

We’re destined to be clandestine,
Incognito is our very last hope.
I’ll meet you where the sun don’t shine,
With a fake I.D. and some dope.

So do join me in Cognito,
You know that I’ll never tell.
We’ll sneak in the back door of Heaven
And stroll unnoticed through Hell.

Incognito
Incognito
There, every day’s a surprise.
Incognito
Incognito
Where truth tells all the best lies.

(Those who travel in Cognito
-  Their very lives can depend on a hunch.
They eat intuition for breakfast
And sip cold paranoia at lunch.)

If you won’t meet me in Cognito,
Baby, I’m apt to go out of my head.
But if you really can’t handle incognito
Meet me in Absentia, instead.

The One Who Is Missing is missing,
He can’t run but He certainly can hide.
His ghost car is parked in Cognito,
Do you think He might give us a ride?

You play the game incognito,
You risk paying a very stiff price.
You’ll bet the ranch on Number 13,
Though that number is not on the dice.

No news is good news in Cognito,
Addresses are damn hard to find.
The queen of spades runs the mailroom
And all the postmen are legally blind.

Just because you’re naked
Doesn’t mean you’re sexy,
Just because you’re cynical
Doesn’t mean you’re cool.
You may tell the greatest lies
And wear a brilliant disguise
But you can’t escape the eyes
Of the one who sees right through you.

In the end what will prevail
Is your passion not your tale,
For love is the Holy Grail,
Even in Cognito.

So better listen to me, sister,
And pay close attention, mister:
It’s very good to play the game,
Amuse the gods, avoid the pain,
But don’t trust fortune, don’t trust fame,
Your real self doesn’t know your name
And in that we’re all the same:
We’re all incognito.

 

--- from the novel Villa Incognito, by Tom Robbins

Stepping Stones

Learn the changes and then forget them.

-- Jazz musician and composer Charlie "Yardbird" Parker (1920-55)

According to the wikipedia article on Charlie Parker:

Parker played a leading role in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuoso technique, and improvisation based on harmonic structure. Parker's innovative approaches to melody, rhythm, and harmony exercised enormous influence on his contemporaries. ... He introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including a tonal vocabulary employing 9ths, 11ths and 13ths of chords, rapidly implied passing chords, and new variants of altered chords and chord substitutions. His tone was clean and penetrating, but sweet and plaintive on ballads. ... His themeless blues improvisation "Parker's Mood" represents one of the most deeply affecting recordings in jazz.... At various times, Parker fused jazz with other musical styles, from classical to Latin music, blazing paths followed later by others.

I haven't been writing much in my blog lately. It's not because nothing's been going on. A lot has been, and still is. This is a significant time, a profound turning point. But it's felt as though reducing it to writing now would solidify something that doesn't need to be solidified yet. There will be time enough to do that, when it's time. I guess you could say that I've been busy learning the changes and then forgetting them. ;)

As a friend of mine once said, stepping stones are there for you to use in crossing the river. You don't pick them up and carry them with you. It may well be that some of those stepping stones will offer more than just a foothold in travel to my creative process and to my life; if so, they will show up again in one form or another.

200

I've been cheated
been mistreated
When will I be loved?

I've been put down
I've been pushed round
When will I be loved?

When I find a new girl
That I want for mine
She always breaks my heart in two
It happens every time

I've been made blue
I've been lied to
When will I be loved?

I've been cheated
Been mistreated
When will I be loved?
When will I be loved?
When will I be loved?

 

-- lyrics and music, Phil Everly

 

I don't know about you, but I've had about all I can stand of living this way. Are we ready to let go of our precious, closely-guarded identities as "victims", and find other ways of being here, individually and together, on this beautiful small planet?

 

Are we ready to actually enjoy life?

 

Are we willing to let go of everything that stands in the way of that?

 

Do we really have a choice?

 

To everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To Everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to build up

A time to break down
A time to dance

A time to mourn
A time to cast away stones

A time to gather stones together

To everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace

A time to refrain from embracing

To everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to gain

A time to lose
A time to rend

A time to sew
A time to love

A time to hate
A time for peace

I swear it's not too late

 

-- "Turn, Turn, Turn", words and music, Pete Seeger

 

There's only so much raging and weeping and fighting that a person can do. I've done my grieving and raging, and struggling to make things work for myself and for other people that simply aren't meant to work. I'm tired of trying to make sense of insanity. Trying to get people to listen to me and see me who cannot hear and see, and then descending into despair because I can't get them to do so; and feeling their pain and my pain, all mixed up to where I can't tell the difference.

Trying to make tigers not be tigers; or worse, not recognizing that they are tigers until it's too late. And doing things that aren't mine to do. Some of them never were, to begin with, and others have outlived their time. I'm tired of beating up on myself for not having realized that, and for having made mistakes. I'm tired of hurting.

I'm ready to move on. Anyone want to come along?

And the wheel keeps turning ...

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.

Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn 'round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.

-- from "The Wheel"; lyrics and music by Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter and Bill Kreutzmann

The Grateful Dead Family Discography site has an interesting bit about the creation of this song:

The Wheel was composed spontaneously in the studio during the recording of the second side of Garcia's first solo LP.

Garcia spoke about it in an interview:

...that side was really almost one continuous performance, pretty much. When a song would come up in there, or just a progression, we'd play with it and work it through a few more times. And The Wheel came out of that. It wasn't written, I didn't have anything in mind, I hadn't sketched it out.

The engineer on the recording session, Bob Matthews, spoke in an interview about the addition of the lyrics:

As we were playing it back and doing some of the overdubs, Hunter was there and he had a big piece of paper and he was writing on it up on the wall. He was writing words while we were listening to one of the playbacks and it turned out to be perfect. It was The Wheel. That song came from nowhere and just happened like that.

"The Wheel" was first performed in public by the Dead on June 3, 1976, at the Paramount Theatre in Portland, Oregon.

Songs for the Winter Solstice (2006)

All praise to Thee, my God, this night,
For all the blessings of the light;
Keep me, O keep me, King of kings,
Beneath Thine own almighty wings.

"Tallis' Canon"; music: Thomas Tallis (1505-1585); words: Thomas Ken (1637-1711)

MIDI file

Skamania County, Washington State, December 2006Mountain peaks obscured by clouds

Lo, how a Rose e'er blooming
from tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse's lineage coming,
as those of old have sung.
It came, a floweret bright,
amid the cold of winter,
when half spent was the night.

Isaiah 'twas foretold it,
the Rose I have in mind;
with Mary we behold it,
the Virgin Mother kind.
To show God's love aright,
she bore to men a Savior,
when half spent was the night.

Words: 15th cent. German, trans. Theodore Baker; Music: 'Es Ist Ein Ros Entsprungen', Alte Catholische Geistliche Kirchengesang, 1599; Harmony by Michael Praetorius, 1609

MIDI file

The Soul of a Survivor

After working in my house today, right before sunset I drove up Beach Boulevard in Waveland, from Nicholson Avenue northeast toward Bay St. Louis. How many times can you say it's devastating before it gets to be a cliché?

On one of the beachfront lots, there is a FEMA trailer (which are travel campers, not full-size mobile homes) standing on the foundation of what used to be a residence. I am familiar with all of the homes along the beach, having driven up and down the beach road countless times, but it was impossible to tell which house used to be where the trailer is now. The landmarks are all gone. The owners have removed a lot of the debris and cleaned up the area around the trailer. The automatic sprinkler was turned on, watering the little bit of lawn visible in all of the gray and brown.

I have noticed the gracefulness and good humor with which the Katrina survivors on the Gulf Coast are handling their circumstances. Every day, observing myself and others, I learn more about the depth and strength and magnificence of the human spirit.

When I saw that lawn sprinkler, I thought of something else I've observed. I had just talked to a friend who lost her house and pretty much everything she owned, and almost lost her life. One of the first things she did after reaching safety was to go shopping for a new handbag. She was criticized by people, not hurricane survivors themselves, who thought she shouldn't be acting so "frivolously" at such a serious time.

But when my friend shows me the purple teddy bear propped up in one corner of her FEMA trailer, or when people decorate the outside of their trailers with twinkly white Christmas lights, or water their lawn even though there is no house, I see something really important happening, just as important as taking care of the practical business of cleaning up, making decisions, and rebuilding. We are feeding our souls.

I remember the afternoon I spent while in Dallas during weeks 2 and 3, at Half Price Books on Preston Road. I was still recovering from adrenal exhaustion at that point and had very little energy, but my urge to reconnect with something I love, that gives me joy, that feeds more than just my mind or body, was so strong. Looking back, I think I started coming back to myself during that afternoon, surrounded by all of those books.