When Carbon Pencil meets Liquid Crystal meets Reflection
A note to Peter, whom I met through nothing less or more than art. “These encounters always provide some trace of ‘shift.’ We’re all given minute and subtle chances to achieve some prodigious schemes. So I tend to leave no stone unturned and take to heart these notes in the margins of life.”
I am quite certain, everyone I meet is brought to me as the beginning of a very important sentence… I’m a writer’s junky, a readers pusher.
You were expecting Venus? So that’s where you are; I should have known.
*****
First there was dirt, and God yawned and said nothing, for even He could look within Himself and know that there must be more out there than this.
He paced back and forth across the universe, rolling a piece of lint in his pocket into an immense idea.
Then “God Shuffled His Feet,” and kicked up a spark from the floor of heaven, sending a lightening bolt into a puddle of primordial ooze, squeezed from a giant rock. He looked into the elixir of life, the original ground zero, and saw that it was good… so He rested.
In the pre-dawn of time, stuff began growing and crawling onto land, followed by some monkeys who serendipitously learned to fling their dung against rocks with great deft and expression (it’s always about monkeys). And then some of them stood erect and walked into the evolution of Homo Sapiens Scriptoricus (Human Writer) and Homo Sapiens Lectoricus (Human Reader).
That writers ever crawled out of the ground, is an event that overcomes astronomical odds. Imagine the frustration of the first human writer, of knowing that he does not have words to convey what he feels, senses, fears, loves, or loathes.
Even today, many Homo Sapiens still relate to that feeling of wanting to share, but having no sense of what sharing means or takes to accomplish.
God really knows His shit. But God didn’t make it easy — we are all still evolving as creators… and He keeps jumping up shouting, “Oh, oh, write about Me, write about Me!”
And we did… and now we get married because of it, and we feel guilty because of it, and we annihilate cultures because of it – and then something happened.
Lectoricus began realizing that she needed to break from the descending progression by writing herself in a new direction. Now it seems like just about anyone with opposable thumbs can tap out a creative writing piece. Yep – God does know His shit.
Evolution is a natural inability to accept the conditions of our limitations. But revolution, ah, revolution changes the conditions so there are no limitations. One need only to muse for a moment at the potential of what has yet to be created, and in that moment, creation manifests.
Let’s say, and I’m just saying, that evolution applies to a writer. Our hearts will one day turn to parchment, our blood to ink. The letters on the keyboard will fade in synchrony with the march of time, and our thoughts will drip tears into the black well of the soul.
A writer’s composition is her footprint through time… traces of heel-to-toe, dancing through the archaeological record like notes on a scale.
Her nimble steps and surefooted gate, prancing along the azimuth of passion; providing the artifacts on where she’s been within herself, the predators she evaded, and from which watering holes it was safe to sip.
An irritated friend noticed my pensive distance and snapped,
“…were you listening to anything I just said?!”
I thought about this for a moment and replied crisply and with honesty,
“No — no, I wasn’t. I was listening to what I heard.”
To know a writer through his writing is not necessarily the same as understanding what he has written. The dilemma of this writer is whether to sing to your weaknesses or strengths; to play upon your dreams or to lure you into mine.
In seeking to know another, the Venusian writer and the Marian reader should begin with what they seek to observe within themselves.
“What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.” ~ E.M. Forster
The planet rotates about the spine of a book while the universe expands from the Archimedean point. To get closer to the source of expression means opening yourself up to the sensations of its symptoms – the transformation happens at the precise moment the cause becomes the effect.
The identity of the reader emerges through creative conjecture and destiny is fulfilled when self-discovery within the Venusian manifest through the creative clues of the Martian.
For Earthlings: the writer – lightening; the reader – lightening rod; the planet — energy.
The feeling of writing is akin to that of making love to the mind and heart of the reader – it’s this unfettered giving that feeds the ego, the id, and libido.
Mental foreplay will become the distinguishing characteristic of the writer species as palpating fingers play on the flesh of still and silent creatures – until they leap, from repose to rebellion on a steed of words… echoing within our bodies, not fading off the pages.
“Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.” ~ Henry Miller
The geological law of original horizontality will be up-righted by the humming glow of phosphor and liquid crystal – millions of computers en echelon pitted and weathered by the ideas of so many unleashed minds.
Impressions and casts, etchings and primitives, potshards of jagged broken ideas buried in situ where overflowing urns were emptied into the bellies of despondent artists and left behind as they maundered off in their besotted dreams.
Reading disassembles the coils of love laid sweetly by poet and plume. With our shovel, pick, and brush, we clear away the dust and detritus of entombed poems.
With the turning of pages, the lids of the sarcophagi are cracked open to the musty gasps of revelations — page one, see me; page two, feel me; page three, love me; page four, let me go; and so on back to darkness. The turning of the page chases the ink to the next.
“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn’t.” ~ Mark Twain
The inconceivable truth shifts in the shadows along the artist’s path; snapping twigs in the darkness. There in the absence of light, a writer learns to tell lies of the stories they’ve lived, until they begin to live the stories they tell. In the end, the reader finds out that only dead writers write the truth.
I need to feel the predator eyes of the writer upon me, catch the flash of teeth that bite teasingly into her lower lip, recoil from her dripping tongue and the tensioning of her haunches, then the rise of her hips an instant before sharp words spring upon my senses.
As for my wounds — when I hand you the rose of honesty, please be aware of the thorns. I’ve already pricked my hands many times carrying it around on my own.
A writer’s pen is the scythe that emblazons the sinuous trails between origins and destinations that are as unique as the traveler – it’s the turn in the path, not just the soil beneath the feet.
Fear not that you’ll read your next great idea somewhere else, before you’ve had a chance to find it within yourself; there is less treasure left by the others in the ground behind us worth carrying, than there is our own treasures we’ve yet to bury.
My gift at mid-life was received when I dropped a palette of gold that I pulled from the earth to catch a single white feather that fell toward me from the sky. The gold was intended to pave the trail from whence I came, the feather, to be dipped in an inkwell so I might author the direction I should go.
When we are through with the pounding pursuit of our myopic objectives, and the chisels of tactics are worn down to nothing but pitted dull stumps, we will find we have created a tall berm of talus and dust between us and the truth, but there stands the “fruits” of our labor nonetheless.
A true artist can look at a block of marble and know the true form within it before the chisel is ever set and struck.
Writing is art, and it is especially interested in destructive approaches to building castles of catharsis – it resonates from a dull hum to vibrating harmonics that disintegrate the matrix paralyzing the verve of imagination.
The cement-layer constructs the “forms” with his mind, and then pours the cement. He textures it with stones of syncopation and sounds, cobbles of consonance, and grains of alliteration. He writes an entire sidewalk…for pedestrians to read. The words may be the cobbles in the cement, but the magic is in the matrix.
In music, it’s rhythm and melody, adorning the words, which resonate with listeners on a very deep and subconscious level. Some hear music, some write notes, some read lyrics.
Westerners culturally hear music different than easterners. The scale goes from monkey poop to honeysuckle. Melody and harmony are a blend of unique notes that are untainted and parochial-ized by customs and dogma and codicils of culture (which impacts words and meaning).
Writing also is best when it doesn’t rely on language. Hard to explain but so is the musical scale.
Writing is tricky. It’s what the words don’t say, that gives freedom to the creative machinations of the reader. Left only to the vocabulary of the reader, even armed with a dictionary or synonym finder, there’d be no such thing as great writing.
“The creative adult is the child who survived.” ~ Sun Gazing
Of this quote, a loving friend wrote, “Think about it; the most creative moments of your adult life were the moments you allowed the child in you to play.”
Sad how growing older often becomes the smothering of the innocent innovator; we are compelled to protect what’s within us by never letting it out.
Through the course of adulthood, the surface of childhood is wounded and scarred, like tree bark around the sapling; well intended… but ill begotten in the end. And then one day, we’re so numb that we can’t remember what we dreamt the night before. We should hang on to these moments of our youth, for they become the trusted handholds and firm footing for many a slippery slope as we cross into our later years.
I’m reminded of a picture from Kent State during the war protest — a college student is placing the stem of a flower in the barrel of a national guardsman’s rifle. Images like this are misconstrued as spittle against an institution wall, rather than acts of creativity, passion, and love.
The world can only be saved by the minds of adults and the hearts of children. Of all the animal kingdom, the only species to not evolve is the child within a adult. It is a misprint in the recipe for man, but one that is serendipitously delicious for mankind.
Tomorrow I will imagine the conference table as a sandbox, our coffee cups as pails, and my colleagues as playmates.
She who flies the kite should not fear he who snips the string. But both will gasp at frame and sail — careening off on the winds of malcontent, gusts of rapture, cyclones of confusion, and eddies of pain.
The impish voyeur and bon vivant twisted in the sheets, moaning from within the cave of literary fornication – beautiful revolutionaries in contrapposto.
I’ve picked up many a stone, etched with words of encouragement…but none so fulfilling to me as those I’ve scribed and thrown into the wild. I’m just a reluctant angel with ten unruly typing fingers who apparently conspire with the warped underworld of my mind to snuff the lanterns at Dantes door.
“… All the love in the world we need, can be fit on the tip of a pen. More than the bounty of earth, sea, and sky, it’s ink that gets under our skin…”
~ Lovely Dreaming Foxes (who, you ask?)
Some friends are like the leaves in fall.
From the verdant spring they unfurl
in their splendor and vibrancy.
In soft whisper and summer hiss,
they stage the hues of blossoms and ballads
and whistle birdsongs from hidden branches.
Elevating from their ecstatic state of equinox,
these satellites drift into the so-long’s of solstice,
and from hue to hubris, calling come hither,
lofty leaves dance and whirl and vault
in the Autumn air for new friends of fair,
who too will turn like bookish pages into pulp.
Fly from twig in twilight, oh friends,
fade to saffron, russet and rust
carmine to cobalt into forgotten pyres of time
Fall friends, fall into the dirt and dust,
For in the spring you shall route the roots
from which fresh leaves feed, unfold, and revel sublime.
Tomb of Hafez – A Kaleidoscope
I like the way random events align and mingle with one another – like the clacking of billiard balls after a super clean break. Close your eyes and it all sounds the same, but if you open them you see that every pattern left by the “break” is unique. All seemingly familiar things are never the same, yet each different thing shares some quintessential similarity. The human mind seeks distinction through it’s own decomposition and subsequent reassembly – in the sounds of nature, cacophony of mankind, even the solitude of one’s own being. If one even bothers to seek reasons for connections, within him or within others, there seems to flourish some associated essence of providence. Make your intent, take your aim, and hand the cue to God – the pool shark.
Don’t you just love the alignment and the chaos? Their coexistence in a single moment, elicits a sweet pain of futility as you sift through the fine sands of your thinking. Through the sieve of consciousness, soft drops of sea glass float to the surface, and crowd into a vision that is rife with colors and piquant non-sequiturs. Perhaps, your hands are etched by the razor sharp edges of jet black obsidian that explode from the molten core of your heart and flow out onto the waiting beaches of illusion. Chaos is the mental inkwell of the belletristic writer. And it’s very intriguing that it’s ultimately never about WHAT you do, but THAT you do. That you do what you love, how you do it, is far different than loving what you do, after you’ve done it. The latter is but ego’s contrivance in hindsight, but the former is a fragrance of innate awareness of how fleeting “purpose” is from moment to moment. Doing what you love comes with a fundamental condition of being love, before doing it.
My verdant eyes have been blinking awake to the sweet procession of pageantry around me and it’s fortunate, actually it’s divine, that the pomp remains in my heart after my eyes close. I’m quite certain I’ll die in my mind – but my heart will continue living in the love-parade. Something about seeing the ray of light in the black of darkness that makes both so rich; this parade goes on all night.
In this parade, it’s a procession of chaos…it has no origin or destination…which means there’s everyplace to go in between. And the cast of characters descend from heaven to the pavement; some like butterflies on the edge of a rose petals, others like raindrops on the windshield, and still others like a crested waves spilling over onto the beach.
The Sufi’s, the careening seekers of divine rapture, hold their heads as cups and pour the wine from their hearts. These besotted writers, painters, scholars, photographers, obsessed and wanton poets; only the lost are found. These wandering lovers and change agents in the world, quite un-deliberately stirring social consciousness, mystically arousing love.
The street corner philosophers. The high voltage dialectic in the dingy enclaves outside the Assembly halls. Now, well, they’ve been forced underground.
These days it seems that the palates of these scholarly bon vivant’s, have dulled to tame and prosaic nibblers. Rather than change the world in their kitchens with exotic and savory spices, they wallow and eat bleached rice over their sinks, wishing they were filling their mouths with chilled moist tiramisu.
All the creative writing it the world won’t change a horse into a bird. But we might be able to change some small thing about a horse into some small other thing about a bird. Micro-biological transformation at the sub-cellular level. Changing big things, one little thing at a time… things aligning and mingling to fulfill a potential to be something else.
“There are all kinds of love in this world
but never the same love twice.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
Love is a breeze that stirs a million tree leaves, so much, that each leaf believes it is in love with all those with whom it rustles…even as they let go and fall in Autumn.
But love must mean something different for some ‘leaves’.. or else it’s meaningless.
Each leaf, in it’s own unique wind-inspired vibration, shares with another a love as unique. Ah, the remarkable elusive, invisibility of the wind and the striking crystal clear affects of it’s curve. Each leaf believes it quivers for another on it’s own accord; but secretly it obeys the laws of nature beyond it’s comprehension. Still, all it knows of the divine Wind, is its own flutter for that of another.
What is it that gives love “meaning?” What gives each lump of clay it’s own special characteristic… is it only it’s relation to the sculptor? Must each first be “thrown” into the form of an urn to become unique or to hold and pour love?
Perhaps while each lump may seem the same, their latent potential to be something else is what truly distinguishes them. Just maybe, we lovers are all lumps of clay on the Grand Potters wheel; in love with, and seen by, the unseen. Joyful with what we are and what we are to become.
Love is never complete. As there’s never been a sunset so beautiful, that the earth and sun would conspire to not show us another day.
A great idea is not your own.
Rather, you belong to IT…
and you are not alone in the clutches of such brilliance.
All we’ve had to drink for days
is drawn from tears and venom.
The pools of hope, we’ve dipped our cups
are buried beneath crumbled macadam.
To whom do we turn to in this darkness
Those sweet among the souls reviled
When no lantern burns nearly as bright
as the extinguished light of a child.
From the remains of our homes
Ashes drift from the rubble and the tinder
So all the world can see of our faces
Are shivering ghosts of cinder.
There was a time we flew our kites,
On a Mediterranean wave combed beach
Where the winds of hope drew out our strings
Beyond where Gaza’s prayers may reach.
Calls to “cease fire” by unknown tongues
bring tenuous silence to the ramparts
diplomacy may pen the end a battle,
but resolves not the war in our hearts.
Within my heart is a river like yours
That meets at the edge of the ocean
Where thirsts are quenched and time dilutes
our flowing tears and venom.
Children of Israel slumber on
Beneath the veil of an Iron dome
Tis ours of gold we take as shelter
and dream of returning home.
Freedom has no borders
Tis an illusion of a thin and weary line
For every day we wake in hunger
We’re sated by our love of Palestine.
This poem dons the thorny cloak of consequence,
Readers listen for its truth, but only the truthful hear.
Life is a kiss, a soft touch, else the prick from the thorn of a rose.
Seek love through beauty, but do not trample in gardens of idols.
From the mysterious combustibles of the heart,
True love smolders in the eyes of the friend.
Our babbling into oblivion leaves us in rented repose,
Friends made to bide the commands of their hearts…
Meant to wake along the sun’s blue arc of horizon,
Stirred by fleeing zephyrs, our dreams fast on their heels.
God wakes not the dreamers, with wordless hearts,
whose flagons fill with love to overflow reality’s cup.
Those delivered from God, are left to love others;
To dream awake and not wander off on winged words.
Oh, as my consciousness slips away in silence,
My lips spin silk into wildly flailing ribbons of flame.
God seals the scent of truth in my heart
And calls the faithful opener to draw the fiery bow…”
We who glow like embers are also shadows cast by light,
Just as the moon is a phantom without the sun.
As it reflects the sun, the moon cast light as if it’s own
If not mirrors in each other’s sky, what truth and beauty shown?
For each step taken toward God, He takes ten toward us;
how am I to love a Lover like that?
Nothing among everything, everything among nothing;
“Where shall I go, from thy presence, when thou art everywhere.”
Tis the prismatic heart of the poet alchemist
that frees the noble metal from its base alloy.
But my Beloved casts a white light no prism breaks;
No colorful shards to speak, no replicas.
Love is pre-eternal wisdom, named by God,
whispered into the heart, sealed by silence.
A secret unlocked with the lips, flies away untold;
The key lies within the unopened vessel of truth.
It is you who are being unlocked by it,
Your passage to the qalb*, is your annihilation.
Our gift of truth is unwrapped from the inside
From the heart, it ascends through dying bone and sinew.
NOTE:
*Qalb = heart, but different than we “think.” Qalb is more “essence of heart,” the momentum of the soul, not of flesh or romantic metaphor, or worn shape of a hand-gesture. Some languages hold a meaning well beyond the number of letters in it’s words. Arabic is one of them and is more of the pronunciation of a symbol… it is intended to be a spiritually efficient way to speak, one of depth beyond just speech and listening. It is conveyed through the feeling it elicits, which is why the listener is as accountable as the speaker… which is why the translations of such deeply mystic and beloved Arab and Persian poets require more than transliteration – it requires “qalb.”
Annihilation is salvation – the gift of truth is unwrapped from the inside. It ascends through the upwelling of love, an overwhelming disclosure, while our surface of bone and sinew disintegrates and descends. Death is the release of the incarcerated spirit; annihilation of the material container in which salvation awaits. Some spend their lives recklessly tearing open a path to the heart, when it beats softly through, patiently and joyfully awaiting the wearing down of time. Annihilation is not the wanton destruction the body but the desire of the soul to rebuild. Dream, take your time, lest your careless pursuits drift wildly from the path between your mind and your heart. Some truths you seek may be of no use in this lifetime, but rather in the timeless, unfathomable, afterworld – submit to these truths that seek you.
The illusion of love for another
is a manifestation of a secret
withheld from us by God…
as such,
those we love cannot darken our lives,
for what illuminates them,
is a reflection of a Truth
beyond death.
Those that carry the candle,
may not have lit the flame.
