Awakening

Stray outside bird, my
Crucifix form held in bed.
Winter day unfolds.

(However, I did survive another Monday.)

  “As regards the Lost Word, it is explained that the sun at autumn has lost its power and Nature is rendered mute...” - A.E. Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross

Robert Duncan prefaced a work he composed (The HD Book) about poetics and the poet HD (and really life) with that quote. He talks early in the book about how students are taught to read and learn as a way to get to the middle class. Which has its advantages, to my creature-comfort disposition: a stable paycheck and some level of pleasure and acceptance. As he relates in the first pages, the schools teach us “signs and passwords” to the universities and our life in a job in a formed society. It will be our life to be, earning and spending and supporting a society. However, as I reflect on this and his words, the reading for grades is a reading which seems to pull us away from the small sacred things we had, from finding our own life in that continuum we are in. So we get a happy-enough life in sterile buildings which display caged pieces of nature as potted plants and glass aquariums to help us, but which keep us there from sun-up to sun-down, away from the real thing.

There is a reading, a choice, however, which does take us inside to the sacred life, to things which were valued in some romantically imagined (and perhaps never really existed) other life. A life which we can now, maybe some of us, have when we don't have to worry about fetching water and marauding bandits. From a middle-class comfort we can have the sacred I suppose, if we rediscover those Lost Words and what they represent and do. The sacred things were in those special books which we read for our own purposes, not for a grade, not for a “password” to a life in the middle. Things we read because they grabbed us full on, by the head, by the heart. The books which compelled us to read under the blanket with a flashlight past our bedtime. They took us to the very places we read, and back to “old orders overthrown by the middle class (but which) lived on in the beginnings of an inner life...” finding and making “what is not actual real.” (The HD Book)

An inner life which for some formed in books but also when we marveled at the flight of an owl in the evening, silent, daring, alluring on its wings spread before it disappeared into a line of old trees which themselves hid a secret life and history of earth. An inner life formed when we watched our young child with a cache of jelly beans and a smile wider than life itself. An inner life formed in books about muses, sacred fire, and intrusions of god into life. A time when there there was mystery, interaction, community. We marveled at heroes of giant stature, bravery from halflings, free will, love gained and lost, secrets on forgotten maps, all of those things that must be kept, and kept true as we march to orders in an ordered society. Things which caused, and cause, some to write. The following is my own small attempt at it:

   “As regards the Lost Word”
   a dropped white feather from silent flight,
   seen while holding a guitar, silent without chord.
   The word is sought in lost books, pages separating with dust,
   of half-remembered stories told around a pale fire,
   the teller in ash-white sigils, and when he sings his words
   with piercing dark look into our eyes, we both see
   memories from lost journeys in other care-worn lives, perhaps
   chasing the king's stag between rising sun and quieting moon.
   It was an arrow true across meadow blue with extinct flowers
   that struck down the sacred animal, a profit before
   rain showers that wash mud from our eyes.
   There it is we can now see the giant on bent knee, giving a flower
   to the traveling queen in silver robes and singing with gilded voice.
   She will take us back on a free-will path through the forest,
   to place our feet inside the prints of hero's steps
   on the way to mountains, battles, a lover's cabin, or quests
   heavy with choice, until the misted clock tower
   strikes us awake from dream, and in that first ashy moment of half-morning
   we hold emerald perception into the light and dark
   within the hearts of our race, seeing the watchtowers alight again
   with poets to sing, and artists to paint those beauties and horrors,
   both our found passwords to the life we live in the found word.

Recovering the word for myself, I read the poets and authors and songwriters I loved, in addition to the ones in a reading list for a grade. It was these others which made me want to write myself. The breakthrough in motivation for writing and imagination was the reading of a poet like Duncan, not on that required list. It was through Duncan I discovered the made places of imagination, the recovered word, and so I end with that most compelling poem,

“OFTEN I AM PERMITTED TO RETURN TO A MEADOW
 
as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought
...”

(from, Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field)

  The holidays are arriving, holidays from many different traditions. Christmas, Hanukkah, The Solstice, the festival of sacrifice (well that's one already past). The artist should embrace the holidays for inspiration, for the various holidays speak of community, of the deepest human emotions (those that celebrate, for example, the sparing of Abraham's son), and of turning points – the entrance of god into the world, the shortest day and the renewal to come, and others.

In some ways, holidays are about creating – creating shared experience, recreating links and goodwill through gifts, creating memories and traditions, What does the artist do if not create? They can create experience, that of intrigue, laughter, mystery, or just that “this book understands me!” feeling. The artist can create a community. Think of the community of fans around something like Lord of the Rings, or the community at the museum of art, or the community of artists themselves at the coffee shop.

Writers, using Logos, create as Yahweh did, through the word itself. Although some philosophers have argued on the limits of language, within those limits (if they do exist), the words can be powerful, creating worlds and characters which populate those worlds, and emotions that we can latch onto within those characters. Indeed, some occult traditions hold that by naming a person or thing, with the word, you gain control of it. The writer controls the world and the characters that he or she is creating.

The moment of creation is the moment most exquisite, filled with excitement, fervor, and many worries. “Maybe this is it!” “Is it good enough?” But it is a powerful moment, in some cases causing many of our writing compadres to choose a life of poverty for their dream of creation. For me, there can be no words better to describe it than those of a poet, Robert Duncan, in Bending the Bow:
        
        “We’ve our business to attend Day’s duties, 
          bend back the bow in dreams as we may 
          til the end rimes in the taut string 
          with the sending. Reveries are rivers and flow...”

Here's to the holidays and the hopes that the artists out there create ever new worlds, and insights into this one. Some days, “this one” does need a lot of explaining!

  “I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it.”
- Lew Welch, "I Saw Myself"

The poet, in the struggle for clarity, sees himself. At some point they must do this, or must struggle to do so, at the least. So truthful is the vision it goes to the very bones of the poet. Alternately, the bone seen is one, hollowed out and placed as in a stream, with life rushing through. One with the stream, not obstructing the stream, for the waters rush through the poet.

The identification is nothing if we don't do something with it, however, and that, as the poem goes on to say, is to “ring is what / a bell does”, to make the voice heard. That and to achieve a moment of zen.  The poems are but a reporting out, and an epiphany. Sometimes a personal epiphany, sometimes an epiphany about the world and time.  Many of us try at this. Some succeed. Some succeed but can't cope with the stream. In a sense, they are suffocated by the rush of the stream.

It is unfortunate that Lew Welch's ending was so tragic.

In my youth I came to embrace poetry – which was to embrace life and the rush of the stream and the ringing of a bell. I attempted to learn from the likes of Lew Welch and others who wrote in the 50's, 60's and 70's. They were muses of a different sort. They had a commitment to the poem. Perhaps that is another meaning from the poem. The whole thing can also be a commitment, for the ring is always symbolic of that, as well.
Here is a small tribute to Lew, and the others, a small poem to them, their work, and their impact on my youthful days and desire to write. At the time, my life was not so far from theirs in time, at least.  Is it now so different, however, in substance? What is the life of a poet today?

“Can you tell me where my country lies
Said the unifaun to his true love's eyes.”
- Dancing with the Moonlit Knight, Genesis

The search for home, for country, for principles, for soul...the lyrics from Genesis effectively call up emotions and paths we take in politics, in religion, and in art and literature. The use of a new mythic being in the lyric above, a unifaun, is an effective element to do this, a bridge back to our mythical days combining the mythic past of a unicorn, our innocence expressed as a faun, and our ideals and realities of those in uniform. We have everyday meetings, sometimes with people searching. To ask the question of “true love's eyes” is riveting and demands a cosmic truth narrowed down to what is in front of us.

In our everyday lives, the hard reality and drama often seems to merge with larger forces from beyond our neighborhoods or the ideas with which we are most comfortable. Sometimes, we get lost. At other times, it is our countries or our societies that get lost. Perhaps the things we belong to get lost, go adrift, and they lose us. Much of art has been made of our search for this. The search to regain and reclaim. Much of politics has been about this. An Arab spring and an Occupy movement attest to the fervent beliefs of many that are searching.

One man in particular is searching right now for his freedom, but for years he has been searching for his home – and what home means. He is a knight, dancing in the moonlight of the world's stage. Not front and center, unfortunately. The sun shines on a world stage only if there is celebrity scandal, and we can be entertained by the stage. No, this stage is one where only the moon shines a light, but still, that light is strong once your eyes adjust. For this man who is searching, who has dared to ask where his country lies, spring has turned to trouble. He is searching not just for a place, not just for an idea, but for the reality of both. Only where place and idea meet and blossom can he help to bring his country to where he thinks it should be.

He occupies, right now, a prison in Egypt. I became aware of him through @Alikat747. Here is a poem for his predicament, which is our predicament, as well. I don't know Alaa, and I am too privileged to really know what he is going through. Still, if we don't raise our voices, the other side of midnight may come – a darker night for Alaa and others in his country, a night we cannot truly imagine here.

You can find out more about Alaa here, and sign a petition here.

  “The dance, then, here in the gray and gold light of the FIRST VALLEY, is the dance of the mind as a mute – muted man and muted place.” - Charles Olson

We sit in our homes, far from our origins in, well, it doesn't matter your beliefs. Our origins in a garden guarded by flaming trees with reason to be lost if we left, in a savannah where we learn to walk upright with reason still on the far dawn, in the dark woods of a cold Europe seeking the inmost cave where reason would take us – they are all far from our homes layered with carpet or tongue and groove wood, padded chairs, electronics blaring into our mind and taking control of our evolution without our knowing how.

Sometimes, however, we sit with a window open, curtain flapping in the breeze, and if we stop the electronics, stop our minds, stop our places, we just might hear it. A far off echo of some din in the past, a memory stirring out of the collective, an archetype rising from its deep sleep in the farthest corner of the woods or deepest trench in the ocean. At that moment, if we enter the time and memory and invading place, we enter a dance. This dance is one where we are in a primal dance around a fire with our own meaning, our own place, our own actions. Sometimes, we fall mute in The Presence.

Some never have these moments, and it is a pity. Others have them but do not share them. That is their right, the personal is, after all, personal. Others find a way to overcome the muteness on their return, and use feeble words or abstract images thrown at a piece of paper in fevered attempts to capture what was 'just there'. Perhaps they heard a hound bay and were suddenly on a hunt, perhaps they heard a gypsy guitar and were sitting next to a red wagon in the dance of firelight, perhaps they were back at a school dance, even, or they heard the voice of the other. The words are never good enough, the images on a canvass never quite right, but they are re-worked, and then, the electronics of the present world are back. What is there is what will be there despite any further attempts. The moment is gone except for some deep feeling carried in our bones. Memories of some generative place, a first valley where someone once walked in the mists and rising sun.

An attempt at overcoming the muted man and place is in Curtains in the Wind, the poem. It is but a short dance, re-played now at your convenience. A faint echo of the moment that came in past the curtains leaning in on the scented wind.

  A favorite line, a favorite phrase, to start the week with.

“Often I Am Permitted To Return To A Meadow

as if it were a scene made-up by the mind,
that is not mine, but is a made place,

that is mine, it is so near to the heart,
an eternal pasture folded in all thought...”

- Robert Duncan, The Opening of the Field, © 1960

This poem is a poem I often return to. For reasons perhaps not what the great poet intended. Or perhaps they are. It speaks to me, however, as a creed about art, creation, and creativity.

It is as if there is a place where we can go to find our voice, our meaning, our myths, and our art. It is, however, not wholly our own. We are permitted to find our voice, and we are permitted to make our meanings. But this is a sacred place, a place where we can't go whenever we want. Perhaps this is writer's block, but this meaning I attach to it is itself the mythology we can make of small things. And in this way, become connected to something greater.

It is, of course, a made place. Does that mean it is not natural? Or is nature made, too? Either way, it is part of eternity, “an eternal pasture folded in all thought”, our thought, our muses' thoughts, the thoughts of the field itself, perhaps, the ground of being.

It is ours, it is dear to us. It underlies everything. I use language to make it mine, to show it, to fold it in thought – all thought – which means it becomes part of other's thought as well. They have the final act of creation, of linking it to their own experience and interpretation. The reader, given permission by the author putting out this section of the field, now is part of the field. The field is much greater, of course. We explore it bit by bit, poem by poem, story by story. We then fold ourselves into the greater part of the world.

A great poem to come back to, when time permits, when need arises. It is eternally there for us.

  "Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity" (G. K. Chesterton).

As one who writes fiction and not literature (at least, yet – one can hope, right?), this statement has often intrigued me. Forgetting for the moment what distinguishes literature from fiction, what would make one a necessity and not the other? Or one a necessity at all?

The necessity means we need it to get through life. Now, one could get through life I suppose by simply tending to a food source, their shelter, and their health. However, for most, simply doing that requires a fiction or two. A fiction of why the seasons change in a way that helps or hurts me. A fiction of why someone gets to rule over me...whether as king in most details of my life, or for 8 hours out of every day. A fiction on why some girl does or doesn't like me. A fiction on why I don't have luxury.

The fictions help us explain our life at a level that allows our mind to “be okay”, to make sense of things without going crazy, to put a small meaning onto things. It helps us to remember. But the things may or may not be lasting meaning in and of themselves. Life without meaning is harsh. At a minimum, fiction entertains as a story around the campfire to draw us together, with one another around the campfire, or with others around their campfires in the past and in other places. They tell us our story. They hint at the grand, even though they may not take us there in full color and detail.

Literature, the really good stuff, however, is a luxury. It does “taje us there” in full color and detail and rises higher. A grand story that tells of grand events, grand people, grand concepts. Siddhartha is a story within literature that while it may help us with dealing with a social class we find ourselves in, is also a story that teaches us of seeking, of harmony, of finding truth. Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man teaches us of how we develop and grow. Lord of the Rings teaches us about what the small person in each of us can do to change the world and of free will. In some ways, these are a luxury. They are universal and fundamental. They are completely engaging, life-changing, ...but they don't always help us make sense of the little disconnected events that start and stop on one or two days. So sometimes, fiction is necessary, but literature is a luxury. And, of course, literature has to be “good” - constructed well, as an art – and that is a luxury, although it is no excuse for fiction not to aspire to be good.

Also, of course, while fiction is “made-up”, it does not mean that the story and the lessons are false. It is the truths found within the made-up that make them necessary and a luxury.

I recently passed 100,000 “reads” on Scribd. A small, meaningless milestone. To celebrate, I wrote a memoir that is certainly a fiction, with one of my fictional characters (Jack) and my dog (Dog), who can talk in my fiction. In such a way I was able to explore the event for myself, and place it within the context I find myself in...doing yard work, working a real job, having a family and friends, etc. Perhaps others have small milestones that they reach which wouldn't mean anything to others but we should not always be so literal in assuming that.

Anyways, for all you know, Jack might exist, and my dog might really talk in some important way, if we only listened correctly. It is the mystery of not really knowing life that allow us to draw upon the corners and just-out-of-peripheral-vision odd happenings in order to make a story, and have it be believable while we read it. Doing so may help us explain and entertain and connect. Not doing it would have allowed another black hole to form in our collective memory.

If you get a chance, I hope you will enjoy the 'memoir', and leave a comment!

  “            They were what we volunteerd,
incidents the mind barely recalls.
                                                                    Let me then
        recite the seasons as I would recite
                 the passing of anarchists and great kings.” - Robert Duncan, Ground Work

Well, it's simply a great piece of writing.   What more can be added?  Our lives are seasons, are filled with anarchists and kings, and those with memory, or bemoaning the loss of memory, recite them. 

"The known interprets the obscure, the universe is alive with myth."  - Ernest Fenollosa

We can spend an evening on our suburban decks, and look at the surrounding city life, on the verge of sleep, and think that is all there is.  Just sterility, the movements on the surface, nothing more than what we see.  But if we see, really see, we might find what is below the surface, and connect it to what has happened always.  Prayers made with fetishes in a hut, or in a bed under covers; sharpening of hunting knives or a pencil for an accountant's ledger;  a raid on a neighboring clan, or an invective on some political website.  And if we look closely enough, might we not imagine the demons and spirits that hovered over the daily life of our ancestors? 

It is part of a theme offered up here with Singers, Souls, Silence and also on my Scribd collection, with The Lighted Window.