Many, But Not Most

I meant to write this post at the beginning of the month, but you know how it is ? . . . . so like the other States in this God-fearing nation, the voters of Maine, by a narrow margin, struck down the right of gay people to participate in the social and religious ritual that is marriage. Emica, for one, worked very hard on the 'No on 1' campaign and I know she was bitterly disappointed. On the other hand, I saw lots of crowing on the part of the 'winning' side on the Interwebs about the 'victory of decency' etc. Well what is a blog, if not a place to sound off uninterrupted. so here goes . . . .

To the Opponents of the Referendum

( the pro gay rights side, if you will)

Take heart! The old, the Catholics and the ignorant who voted yes-on-1 are doomed! Each year more and more of them will die and eventually your numbers will prevail. Well as long as the ignorant demographic doesn't increase. Nationally, if not here in Maine, statistics are with you. Give it a few years. The only problem is that Maine is getting older and whiter every year and that does not bode well for progressives. Think about moving to Burlington where they actually vote for Socialists, instead of equating them with devils and the Anti-Christ. Taller mountains and Lake Champlain can stand in for Casco Bay.

To the Proponents of the Referendum

Yeah! We won a big one didn't we? Thank God those damned-able gays won't enjoy the privileges of marriage that we hetero-sexuals take for granted. Like the ability to oppress and keep our spouses in sexual and/or financial slavery. Not theoretical 'slavery', but actual unpaid- no escape - no control of your own fate - slavery to another person. If we allow gay marriage what will come next? Gay marriage taught in schools? Of course not! I hate to break it to you folks, but no curriculum at any level teaches marriage of any kind in public schools. No, kids don't learn what marriage is (or isn't) in school, they learn it at home. They learn what marriage is watching their parents screaming at each other, or while one of them sits at the kitchen table, nursing a black eye or worse. No, my fear is gay marriage would lead to more stories of spouses killing each other, or making the other person financially destitute or tortured in body and soul.

So to all those reactionary forces that banded together to 'preserve the sanctity of marriage', I say, 'OK. . . . now you own marriage. Your responsibility is to make each and every marriage in this State a relationship of mutual respect, of equality, of trust and of love. You need to show as much enthusiasm for sustaining lasting relationships based on mutual needs as you showed on excluding certain individuals from the right to sanctify those relationships between themselves. and if you don't do that . . . if you continue to support relationships that denigrate one sex over the other; if you tacitly support the rights of one part of a marriage to exert their 'authority' over the other member without their consent; if you stand by and let 1/2 of all relationships end in failure; if you support, in other words . . . . the status quo, then you need to get the fuck out of the way and give 'the other team' a chance to give this marriage thing a go. Understand?

Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay from Huntsman,What Quarry?, Harper & Brothers, 1939 ( from a first edition I found in the outside stalls of Brattle Street Book Store in Boston)

My earnestness, which might at first offend,

Forgive me, for the duty it implies:

I am the convoy to the cloudy end

Of a most bright and regal enterprise;

Which under angry constellations, ill-

Mounted and under-rationed and unspurred,

Set forth to find if any country still

Might do obeisance to an honest word.

Duped and delivered up to rascals; bound

and bleeding, and his mouth stuffed; on his knees;

Robbed and imprisoned; and adjudged unsound;

I have beheld my master, if you please.

Forgive my earnesness, who at his side

Received his swift instructions, till he died.

30 Years Old Today

Ashes of Roses

for m.

Brittle dried blood petals there

roses kept for future time

collected for her wedding day,

the petals wait in a box of brass.

She slipped away like morning dreams

in fluid darkness down she spun

last kick unfelt that starry night,

we dreamt of running daughters then.

When she was born, her body warmed

by womb, she lacked just breath alone,

and faintly, slightly stirred as she

lay on Dawn's weeping, empty heart.

Petals wait in a box of brass

her ashes in a box of wood.

Originally published in the Maine Review, Spring 1980

Fallen Leaves

Spring and Fall:

To a young child

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I am entirely destitute, having lost my boat"

This image is from a poster in the Galway City Museum which we visited last summer as part of our vacation in the British Isles. The title of this post comes from the caption on the image. I enjoyed the museum, it was just the right size for an hour or so respite. According to our local source, it isn't thought much of by the Galway locals, being a modern building and having replaced a much older building attached to the Spanish Arch itself. But it is well worth the visit, if only to see a Galway hooker. It is not every day you can visit a hooker with your wife and get away with it!

Today I was mowing the back yard (well actually mulching the leaves more than cutting any grass) and as I mowed around my sailboat, I realized that I hadn't taken it out for over two years. It is time to get rid of the thing once and for all, especially now that I don't have a truck to even pull it. I don't expect to replace it and to be sure it wasn't much of a boat, but it will mark the end of another hobby. Dawn says my problem is I can't afford my hobbies. I under-capitalize them, if you will, and that is the case with a sailboat. I have been lucky enough to have sailed a couple of times in my life - although as it turns out, none of those friends still own a boat either. It is something that I love to watch and do, but it is also something that takes money and time away from other things, like family and work, so now I am, as I used to say 'on the hard'. At least I can still visit the ocean whenever I want to, even if from the landward side.

This poem is from a book I bought in Galway entitled Swallow of the Sea, Pages from a Yacht's Log, by Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, published in London in 1937. It is entitled A July Thought in a High Place

A gentian hull
And fox-brown sail;
Cry of a gull,
And laverock's hail;
Green sea that reaches
Score upon score
Of silver beaches
And rocky shore;
Far-away Skye
Where cummulus mops
All day long lie
On the Coolin tops;
Lord of the Sea!
Let me remember
This Quiet beauty
through my December.

When I was in school, I had a fencing buddy who had built a scale model of the Constitution and was writing a novel about life on board that frigate. Duke had never, to my knowledge, sailed, let alone blue water sailed. But he was undaunted. (And this was long before any of us had heard of Captain Jack Aubrey and the common knowledge of seamanship we have all learned from him.) Maybe I need to get out on the Facebooks and the Interwebs and see where my old friend sails today. There are oceans of data out there that I am well equipped to cruise. . . . .

For Dawn

This is a statue of Patrick Kavanaugh along one of the canals in Dublin. He often came there while recuperating from cancer, the story goes. This poem was written by him and is obviously a reference to his mother. I found it in a book of his complete poems I bought this summer in Galway. I first heard of Kavanaugh in a book entitled Irish Poets Since Yeats and among the poems quoted in that book is one called The Great Hunger. If I have a chance I will quote from that one someday, I still read it every so often and try to puzzle out its message. But today I wanted to share this poem written in 1945 when Patrick's mother died. However, as the title of this post suggests, what I saw was an image of my wife. Not dead, naturally, but as my helpmate and support over the years of our marriage. Like no one else, I believe, Dawn truly 'knows' me. . . better than I know myself, I am sure. I think that this poem captures my feelings about her.

IN MEMORY OF MY MOTHER

Died November 10th, 1945

You will have the road gate open, the front door ajar

The kettle boiling and a table set

By the window looking out at the sycamores-

And your loving heart lying in wait

For me coming up among the popular trees.

You'll know my breathing and my walk

And it will be a summer evening on those roads

Lonely with leaves of thought.

We will be choked with the grief of things growing,

the silence of dark-green air

Life too rich - the nettles, docks and thistles

all answering the prodigal's prayer.

You will know I am coming though I send no word

For you were lover who could tell

A man's thoughts -my thoughts-though I hid them-

Through you I knew Woman and did not fear her spell.

World War Two Begins

Seventy years ago this week, on September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland and began the Second World War. For all the media attention over the last few years concerning D-Day and other WWII anniversaries, I was surprised that this day came and went without comment. I wonder how many years it will be before we forget the dates and significance WW II had on world and US history. An entire generation of Americans, no less than the Europeans and others in the world, were affected by the war and its political aftermath. Yet not a word about this date. Here is a poem by W.H. Auden. He had left England, where he was born and was living in New York City. One the one hand, you have to read this poem from the perspective of the Depression, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of Fascism throughout the world. On the other hand, I believe every poem holds a message for the present as well. So what is the message here?

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-Second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September Night.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man,

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face

And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

the music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow,

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exist alone;

Hunger allows no choice

to the citizen or the police;

We must love another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages;

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleagered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

The Gods Will Not Be Denied

What is sacred space?  And how do we approach it? Or do we? 

Eliade says "The experience of Sacred space makes possible the 'founding of the world': where the sacred manifest itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence. " (The Sacred and the Profane, 1957) . (Mircea Eliade was one of my mentor's mentors when I studied the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Maine).  What Eliade talks about is when a people create a sacred site, they establish a point of orientation; a starting point for the psychic mapping of the world.  The world is always created out of chaos and will revert to chaos if we are not careful.  The sacred space is the anchoring of the world and is the link between the eternal plane and the temporal.  It is where the eternal, sacred world and the temporal profane world touch.  That is the symbolism of the Star of David - the triangle representing the temporal mountain reaching to the sky god and the focused power of that God reaching down to touch humans represented by the inverted triangle.

Sacred space also re-presents the sacred act of creation.  So when a people create a sacred structure, they are participating in the holy work of the gods.  They are, in fact creating order out of the void in imitation of the holy act of creation, but they are also, in fact, participating in that holy act.

Ok, so the point?  A couple of years ago, Dawn and I went to the Big Island of Hawaii for a business trip.  One afternoon, I took the car and drove up the Northwestern coast , near where we were staying and stopped to visit the Pu'ukohola Heiau National Historic Site.  There are several religious structures on the site, including the main one, a raised platform  on which human sacrifice to the War God Ku was made by its builder, King Kamehameha.

This is a picture I took.  It was on a warm day and I was literally the only person walking around the park that Sunday afternoon.  The temple is several stories high and at the base of the temple there is a sign that states that this is a sacred site to the native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians are not allow to go up to the top.  On the one hand, the site seemed no different than the ramparts at Yorktown or Gettysburg . . . and yet, on the other hand, I did feel something special, mysterious, about this artificial mountain. My curiosity was intense, but so was my respect for the holiness of the site.  What would I encounter at the top?  Was there still an active altar or buildings of some sort?  Would I feel the ghostly presence of past warriors and victims?  Or even encounter the spirit of the Ku himself?  What would that encounter be like?

Whether I want to admit it or not, I am under the protection of the God of the Hebrews in the arena of divinities, as are most of my readers.  Some, no doubt would claim others as their God - Allah or Krishna or the Green Man or Gaia - but in terms of holy protection, most of my readers would call on the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.  So what would it have been like to encounter the great god Ku, he who calls for human blood sacrifice and comes down to earth to dwell on Kamehameha's mountain top?  What would we have had to say to one another?  He with his retinue of warrior kings and me with my angels with their flaming swords? (Would the experience of one group been as overwhelming as the other to me?  When Jacob encounters the angel, he argues and wrestles.  Would it be any different with me?)

OK, I know this train of thought seems silly at best and sacrilegious at worst.  I don't mean it to be.  But I looked up at that temple and wondered and was awed; and I turned and looked out over that endless expanse of the sea and was awed and wondered.  We compartmentalize the world into sacred and profane.  We see God in the ocean or in a mountain or in a building or a work of art or a special person, perhaps.  But we don't , I don't at least, see God in everything.  It would be too overwhelming to acknowledge the sacred in everything.  That is why, I think, every religion has sacred spaces, like this temple, and sacred time, like this Easter day, to observe the holy in the world.  Then there is tomorrow; 'just another day'. To be constantly aware of he presence of God . . .  the gods  . . . whomever? Would that be sustainable?

By the way, what was on top of the temple?  See for yourself:

View Larger Map

The Myth and the Hard Truth

"You have already grasped that Sisyphus is the absurd hero.  He is, as much as through his passions as through his torture.  His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted toward accomplishing nothing.  This is the price that must be paid for the passions of this earth."

"If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious.  Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him?

 The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd.  But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it become conscious.  Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his decent.  The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory.  There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."

"All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein.  His fate belongs to him.  His rock is his thing.  Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols.  In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory.  there is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night."

"I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain!  One always finds one's burden again.  but Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks.  He too concludes that all is well.  This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile.  each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world.  the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.  One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

Albert Camus

from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

It Could Be Worse, I Guess

Obama Signs "Stimulus bill" at headquarters of New World Order in Denver

I subscribe to about 20 podcasts, give or take.  One that I have subscribed to since its inception is No Agenda by John C. Dvorak and Adam Curry.  Basically the two of them ramble on for an hour or so weekly on whatever topics interest them.  Curry is a conspiracy buff and Dvorak is in curmudgeonly agreement.  So last week, they were discussing why Obama signed the stimulus bill in Denver Colorado, of all places.  Curry believes that Obama is actually the tool of Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Trilateral Commission in its quest for world domination. Dvorak thinks Obama is actually two people (that's why they did that 'secret' swearing in after the Inauguration).  You have to love the Internet.

Well during the discussion, they talked about the common belief on the 'Net that the new International Airport in Denver is actually either a.) a Masonic temple and/or b.) the above- ground entrance to a secret underground military base from which the world will be eventually ruled.  Evidence of this includes the symbols incorporated in the decorations in the airport itself.  well , naturally I scampered out to the 'Net for a look and I must say, WTF?!?  

They are certainly scary, weird, unexpected.  One thing that struck me, naturally, was the similarity to the illustration of the "alien" warrior and the soldiers in HalfLife 2  check it out

What were the designers thinking?  It certainly gives you pause.  

Every democracy in History has sooner or later degenerated into an empire / fascist state.  Is that the legacy we will leave our children?  it may seem like science fiction (well, exactly like science fiction, if you think about it), but it does make you think.

Now For Something Entirely Different

In this Sunday's NYT style Magazine there is an interview and photoshoot with the actress, Rosaro Dawson.  Link to a video interview here. She describes her mother's discpline technique this way:

Was your mother a disciplinarian?

"My mom licked me - that was her punishment.  If I was a little uppity or if I didn't listen or if she wanted to get my attention, she'd lick the side of my face or under my armpit.  My mom's a six-foot-tall amazon and she'd say,"You came out of my vagina and I own every part of you." and she'd lick me like I was her wee pup and she was a lioness.  It was humiliating and really intense.  Very primal.  It's not spanking, but it definitely works."

Yikes! On so many levels . . . .

More Rilke

So I will let you figure out how these all items tie together.  I am not sure I know, but here is another short Rilke poem for your consideration.

Wir sollen nicht wessen, warum

dieses und jenes uns meisert:

wirkliches Leben is stumm,

nur, dass es uns begeisert,

macht uns mit ihm vertraut

We are not to know why

this or that masters us;

real life makes no reply,

only that it enraptures us

makes us familiar with it

May, 1924

Far North

Every so often a film comes along that moves and challenges me; a film that haunts my dreams and thoughts for days afterwards.  Far North is such a film.  I watched it Saturday afternoon after watching Apocalypto on Friday night, so I figured I was pretty hardened to violence, but I have to tell you that this movie has some scenes that are not for the squeamish. But it is worth your discomfort.  It is thought provoking - it will make you consider violence and its relationship to beauty.  It will challenge you to consider the price of living in a community and the cost of renouncing others.  It is a tragedy that you can see coming from the very beginning, but I will guarantee you that unless you already know, you cannot guess the ending.  It is a film that is as intimate as Once and as expansive as Lawrence of Arabia or, better , Dr. Zhavago.  I watched it alone, but I wish Dawn had watched it with me.  This ain't no date movie, but it is about men and women. It is a film that some consider misogynic, but was based on a short story written by a woman and the strongest characters are both women.  Beauty and violence - natural and human - are the themes here.  What are we capable of doing for love, or in spite of it? Which is worse, the cruelty of humans or the hostile  indifference of nature?

Here is the trailer:

I posted a review on Netflix in which I compared the movie to a fairy tale and it is a fairy tale, but not in a Disneyfied way, but in a Brothers Grimm, death and dismemberment, what-to-hell-is-my-unconscious-trying-to-tell-me? kind of way.  It is as stripped bare and elemental as snow under the Northern Lights. . . . and as unforgiving as snow at -50 degrees.  It is hard to determine where exactly the story takes place or when.  It is a little like being lost on the tundra or at sea.  Please don't go read the reviews, since the ones who rate it highly have it right, but the one 's who rate it one star are f*&^tards who obviously didn't begin to understand what the film was all about.  And there is a serious spoiler in one of the reviews.

_____________________________________________________________

After you have seen this movie, come back and listen to this interview with the Director, Asif Kapadia. then Google the title for more info.

Rainer Maria Rilke

This week's poem is very short. It is from Rainer Maria Rilke and is translated in the book, Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties, by John J.L. Mood. I bought the book on October 10, 1980 according to the flyleaf, but I had been reading Rilke all thorough college, beginning with Letters to a Young Poet. I remember that this short passage had great impact on me in those post graduation years as the group of college friends I was so close to began to drift apart.

Irgendwo blüht die Blume des Abschieds und streut

immerfort Blütenstaub, den wir atmen, herüber;

auch noch im kommendsten wind atmen wir Abschied.

Somewhere blooms the blossom of parting and bestrews

evermore over us pollen which we breathe:

even in the most-coming wind we breathe parting.

October, 1924

Back to the Lake

Last post I promised a poem of my own so here is one.  I wrote this poem for Dawn for St. Valentine's Day, 2007. I have written most of my poetry about or to Dawn over the years. Most of the poetry I have written over the years has been in response to an image or an emotion. In this poem I wanted to acknowledge companionship. I have learned over thirty plus years that love is more than an emotional state; or better, it is more than an emotional peak or valley. that is what I am trying to express in this poem. 

Every word and image is carefully chosen, consciously and unconsciously.  I once read that among Dylan Thomas' papers were found 75 pages of drafts for a single poem.  Well . . . OK . . . over-thinking that one a bit, Dylan?  I have certainly re-written and edited my poems after writing them out, but only in as much as sometimes other images and emotions get mixed together when composing.  A poem, to me, is the Unconscious communicating to the Conscious Mind and is therefore, by definition, symbolic.  Yes, you can have a very conscious, structured poem, but the inspiration for the poem comes from somewhere beyond the rational mind.  At least that is where my best poems have come from. The task is to marshal those images and combine them with other images that readers will be familiar with to communicate the message you have received.   The poet is a medium for their own psyche. The key to a poem, is to clarify and focus on one thing at a time, then expand on that one thing.  A poem is not a novel, you can't have sub-plots.

That being said, it is interesting to re-read my own poetry, just as I re-read my favorite poets, and see new meaning and new questions.  Just now in re-reading To The Lake, I began to wonder, 'Who threw the ball? And why? Is that unseen actor important to the poem?  What does it represent?'  I guess I will let the reader draw their own conclusion on that.

Any  lake, for me, is always The Lake, Mattawaumkeag, where I spent my happiest moments of my youth up through my college years. the Lake always symbolizes relaxation and reflection.I read Lord of the Rings at the Lake, I met my first friend from the South at the Lake, I slept (eventually) on that marvelous bed on the porch listening to the water lapping the rocky shore and the loons calling each other on the far shore at the Lake, and I met the ghost of my past at the Lake.  

Just after I graduated from college, I spent ten days there: reading, reflecting, boating, fishing, cooking and smoking. I have never forgotten those days and the books I read there (Albert Camus, Harvey Cox, Daniel Berrigan). It has been one of the happiest times in my entire life. So for me, the Lake always represents reflection on actuality and contemplation of potentiality.

Why the dogs? We had dogs on the farm when I was growing up and I could take them or leave them. I never had a 'dog of my own', per se. In my adult life, we have never been in a position to be able to afford a dog, either in terms of time or money. Although we talked about getting a dog not too long ago (and Dawn had a dog when she was growing up), I doubt it is something we will pursue. We would rather have the freedom to do things than the companionship of a pet. That being said, the dogs for me represent loyalty and companionship. To see two dogs together, you can see their recognition of each other, and their communion with each other as a species. It is as if they think, 'Yes, lets be together with these humans and serve them, but let's not forget who we are. and let's be joyful in our service.'

The scene is bright with sunlight, then. The dogs are black labs. The ball is a florescent green tennis ball. The pines that come down and lean over the water are deep green and dense. There is the edge of a camp in the background.  The water is still and dark. The dock is worn and rolls out into the lake on old iron wagon wheels. It creaks when the dogs run on it. Somewhere further down the lake, children swim and shout to each other.

Return to the Lake

for Dawn

The brilliant green ball arcs
Across the still lake. Lands
With a plop.
An instant later the pair of retrievers
Race down the dock, shoulder to shoulder,
Tongues wagging from canine grins.
They reach the dock’s edge and leap as one,
Heedless, they follow the balls arc.

It is the easiest thing in the world, the easiest thing
To write from pain, from longing, from passion. The
Dagger in the heart drives the word. But what
Happens when the blade is withdrawn?
When the wound closes and the chambers fill again?

What song for the dog’s joy? The simple meal,
The warm bed, The companion at
Your shoulder? The common goal?

We see our pair suspended, hanging
Over the still water. Paws outstretched,
Tails back, noses alert.
Thighs ready for the landing, eyes
On the brilliant ball. A moment from
Now we will celebrate their joyous splash.

February 14, 2007

Books and Love

I was talking with Matt on Skype a couple of weeks ago and he asked me what books I was reading.  I told him, I didn't read as much as any more, that my eyes make it hard to concentrate for more than an hour or so.  Maybe I don't have the attention span anymore, either.  Certainly books have receded in importance from our home.  When we were first married, I had a room (albeit a little room) that was filled with books: poetry and literature, philosophy and religion, history and everything in between. Dozen of tomato boxes of books were moved every time we moved.  But since we have been in this house, and even before - when I stopped working for Waldenbooks - books have slowly moved from bookshelves in the living room to bookshelves in a study in the basement to bookshelves in the storage room our basement has become.  And boxes and boxes of books have gone . . . to church libraries, to Goodwill, to the dump.  (Videos and games, on the other hand, grow and grow) Maybe it is not having time enough to devote to a book.  Matt mentioned going out to Aran with a pile of books for the weekend and doing nothing but read.  What a luxury that would be . . .  to have nothing to do but loaf and read.  When would I read my email? Post to my blog? Update my Facebook profile? Upload to Picassa? oh . . . . wait.

To be honest, I still read books. (I just finished a selection of stories about the Knights Templar edited by Katherine Kurtz.)  And I have a stack next to my bed that I have bought at library sales and that same Goodwill store I send so many to.  (I actually often have the experience of seeing a book I used to own in Goodwill and wondering if I donated it. . . or sold it sometime and it had come back to me.) I still read at least 4  times the average number of books read by Americans.  I just don't spend time reading the 'Great Books'.  If I don't get engaged in a book in 100 pages, I put it aside.  If I don't understand it, I leave it.  Life really is too short , and the number of books I have left to be able to read is finite.  If I read now, it is only for pleasure, not education.

I bought probably three new books this past year (sorry, Matt!) and this poem is from one of them, Intimacies, Poems of Love by Pablo Neruda.  I bought it for Dawn for Christmas because when I met her she had mentioned Neruda as a poet she liked and I thought I was going to be a poet at the time  . . . . well. . . . and Neruda writes so well about love.  Please find and read the poem in Spanish as well as it is the most beautiful of languages.  When I was in High School and college, I studied three languages: Latin, Spanish and German.  Of the three, the only one I can still understand is Spanish and that I learned 35 years ago. Next time, I promise some poetry of my own . . . though not as good as this at all.

Love by Pablo Neruda

So many days, oh so many days

seeing you so tangible and so close,

how do I pay, with what do I pay?

The bloodthirsty spring

has awakened in the woods.

The foxes start from their earths,

the serpents drink the dew,

and I go with you in the leaves

between the pines and the silence,

asking myself how and when

I will have to pay for my luck.

Of everything I have seen,

it's you I want to go on seeing;

of everything I've touched,

it's your flesh I want to go on touching.

I love your orange laughter.

I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.

What am I to do, love, loved one?

I don't know how others love

or how people loved in the past.

I live, watching you, loving you.

Being in love is my nature.

You please me more each afternoon.

Where is she? I keep asking

if your eyes disappear.

How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt.

I feel poor, foolish and sad,

and you arrive and you are lightening

glancing off the peach trees.

That's why I love you and yet not why.

there are so many reasons, and yet so few,

for love has to be so,

involving and general,

particular and terrifying,

joyful and grieving,

flowering like the stars,

and measureless as a kiss.

That's why I love you and yet not why.

There are so many reasons, and yet so few,

for love has to be so,

involving and general,

particular and terrifying,

joyful and grieving,

flowering like the stars,

And measureless as a kiss.

Por eso te amo y no por eso,

por tantas cosa y tan pocas,

y asi debe ser el amor

entrecerrado y general,

particular y pavoroso,

embanderado y enlutado

florindo como las estrellas

y sin medida como un beso.

There is so much of Neruda's poety on the Internet, including some great videos.  Here is one of my favorites.

Sub Heaven

This past Friday night, I stopped at Santoro's Sub-Villa in Saugus MA for sandwiches. I usually get the Sub Villa Special with everything but hots (chopped onions, chopped pickle,chopped tomatoes, ham, cheese, capacolla and salami (I think) on a crusty rolls with 'saltpepperoil', of course). For Dawn, I forgo the onions and hots. These subs (italians in Maine, hogies in PA, etc) are the GREATEST sandwiches ever made, bar none. The bread is crunchy and chewy like good french bread, the onions are redolent and the pickles (my favorite part) are tart and sweet. Along with the rich capacolla it is just is unbelievable!

The picture above is of the old sign for Sub Villa and is gone now. This morning, I was in bed thinking about Santoro's and I realized that I have been eating sandwiches from that sub shop for probably over 40 years! When I was a kid, my grandfather ("Grampie Earle") had lung cancer and went to Boston to have one of his lungs removed. Every year thereafter, he went down to Boston for a checkup and often we all went along. My father had gone to dental school at Tufts and we had lived for some time in Rockland, so he knew the area well. I am not sure why or when we first began stopping on Route One in Saugus at Santoro's, but I can clearly remember this old sign and the 'Jetson's-like' shop. I seem to remember at one time that you could get a sandwich and add your own condiments and vegatables self-service. In any event, when I began to travel to Boston for work, I made a point of taking Route One out of the city so I could stop in Saugus at Santoro's to bring home sandwiches for the girls. When we used to travel to Boston with my grandfather and family, the second stop was Putnam's in Danver's for Ice Cream Smorgasbord. For years, I had no idea where Putnam's was, since I used to jump on Route 95 before Danvers on my way home. Only recently did I finally find Putnam's, nestled in between superhighways. I haven't had a chance to stop there yet, but I hope to soon.

I was researching Santoro's for this blog and I found out that apparently part of the family left the North Shore of Massachusetts and opened a shop in Burbank California. You can read more about it at this link . The sandwich he shows certainly looks like a Santoro's sub. I have to agree with the blog post that if I was stranded on a desert island and had to chose one restaurant, it would be Santoro's. The Burbank shop is located at 1423 W Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA, so maybe when I am out to visit my sister, we can make a pilgrimage and I can compare with the original.


THE ARMFUL by Robert Frost

So, this poem is especially for Alice, though I doubt she reads my blog. We had dinner in Cambridge recently, and I know she has a lot on her plate right now. When I was her age, I hoped too to have a specific plan and direction for my life. I didn't and so have pretty much drifted from experience to experience. I don't think that is such a bad thing. It is how I came to be here anyway. I think Alyssa will do fine. She is bright and passionate; inquisitive and loyal. Whatever she decides to do, she will glean wisdom from it, I have no doubt. And isn't that the real purpose of life, to accumulate wisdom? Anyway, as I often tell my clients, "nothing is set in stone". Life is a moving river, not a mountain.

I used to carry this poem around in my wallet and read it from time to time. To me, Frost is talking about that same juggling of hopes and expectations, his own and others for him. Sometimes it is necessary to drop everything and start over - reboot the system.

For every parcel I stoop down to seize,
I lose some other off my arms and knees,
And the whole pile is slipping, bottles, buns,
Extremes too hard to comprehend at once,
Yet nothing I should care to leave behind.
With all I have to hold with, hand and mind
and heart, if need be, I will do my best
To keep their building balanced on my breast.
I crouch down to prevent them as they fall;
Then sit down in the middle of them all.
I had to drop the armful in the road
And try to stack them in a better load.  

                                                                                (1928)

Happy New Year 2009

So I thought in keeping with the theme of Laika, I would post this Soviet-era New Years Day card. You can see more at this link. It has been interesting investigating Soviet-era art. I can remember as a child when the Soviet Union was our geo-political equal. "The Russians", it seems to me, tempered our ambitions in the world. The notion of nuclear war hung over my childhood as a real possibility. We always (eventually) understood our proxy wars in Africa and Asia to be engagements with the USSR. For some, the USSR represented a hope and an inspiration. For others, and I am particularly thinking of my own circle in college, understood Russia to be the failure not of Marxism, but a betrayal by politicians of the principals of Communism. We had to look beyond Soviet Communism to . . . . Chinese Communism for the better model of what Communism could be. Of course, now we realize that Mao was every bit as ruthless as Stalin. And what country in the world is more intertwined with world capitalism than China? The fortunes of the nation rise and fall on the fortunes of the USA and Europeans as much as any nation.

But I think I always had a soft spot for Russia. I suppose it was fueled by Dr. Zhivago and growing up in a similar climate. Those long trudges across open fields to get home from school in January, it was easy to imagine myself as a young poet Zhivago crossing the steppes to be with Laura. The movie was released for Christmas 1965. I would have been eight years old, but I have a distinct memory of going as a family to see it in the movie theater. Is that possible? Watching it now, I must have missed a good deal of the plot. I am sure, however, that I had a huge crush on Julie Christie. so maybe I did. The movie also has special resonance with me because it was what we saw on Dawn and my first date together. We saw it in the Fall of 1975 (ten years after its release) at the University of Maine.

Fairy Tales

I have been listening to a great podcast by a Jungian analyst in which he describes using Jungian techniques to interpret fairy tales. You can subscribe to the podcast here . Here is a tale I found while looking for images this week. A more detailed version is also available here.

The Snow Maiden

A Russian tale tells of a woodcutter and his wife who were childless. They were a good and kind couple but they were lonely. One winter day, to ease their loneliness, they began to roll large snowballs. together, and in short while they made a “snequrochka“, a Snow Maiden. She looked so beautiful that they called her their ‘daughter’.

At that same moment, hiding and crackling among the fir trees, was Grandfather Frost. He was an old winter god with a long, white beard and he carried a great staff that was filled with wonderful magic. He had overheard the couple and felt sorry for them. For people who were kind and good always touched his heart. And so he raised his great staff and suddenly the Snow Maiden came to life.

Some said the Snow Maiden was the daughter of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow, sent to comfort the couple for a time. Others said she was really a spirit-princess come to earth. Whatever her nature, she remained with the couple as a true and dutiful daughter would be.

Now as spring approached and people began to leave their houses, the Snow Maiden fell in love with a young man from the village. But the price of surrendering her heart in love would be to lose her human mortality. Grandfather Frost continued to watch her from a distance for he knew what would soon happen to her.

One day she was walking with her beloved through a birch wood. The youth played his flute; the Snow Maiden walked beside him turning her face to the sun. Suddenly she gave the faintest sigh and began to melt. She was still a creature of ice and snow and could not stand the springtime sun. Soon there was nothing left but an icy mist, drifting upward into the blue sky. The frail creature could not survive the breath of spring.

But her spirit had leapt into the waiting arms of Grandfather Frost and Mother Snow and they carried her away over the stars to the far north where she plays all through the summer on the frozen seas.

But each year in winter, on the first day of the New Year, Grandfather Frost and the Snow Maiden return to Russia. And they continue to work their magic for those who are kind and good. And they visit, in particular, the children, bringing them gifts and helping them to make their dreams come true, as they did long ago for the woodcutter and his wife.

Edmund Dulac, The Ice Maiden, 1915, watercolour, The Royal Pavilion, Art Gallery & Museums, Brighton