Hughlings Himwich

A perfect thing

A perfect thing is known by its imperfection

thus a man whose sole desire is to die well

or a love endangered only by fulfillment

or a paw without an opposable thumb

or a cut that bleeds so cleanly

that one regrets there’s not enough of you

to feed those starving for something else.

The High Ridge

   
   The mist on the mountains lifts

ghostly greens glimmer

   and a new day darkens the valley

far below—your fingers tracing

   a line across the high ridge

that runs just above my eyes:

   I hold my breath—a sudden

swoop of wind and wing

 

Autumn Rain

This autumn rain comes
on me strange
as you and I lie
beneath the ledge
hold hands and kiss
and say goodbye.

When shall I see you again:
in Winter when I am dead
or Spring when you flower
or Summer when you rise
with the waves upon the beach
and make love
to every passing eye? 

No, it will be as today:
the rain drop drops
like leaves like tears
that hold our love
and all that's lost.
 
I shall come
as surely as Winter
and die a thousand deaths.

You too will come
and lie upon these
fallen leaves
and give me up

again.

You shall come
as you always do
dressed in pearls
and make it rain. 

Getting it up with Shakespeare

Love, friends, is deadly.  You may wonder,
Am I suffering from a broken heart
Or has love, freely given,
Not been returned? To which I say,
Yes, O Yes, Yes!
Beat the drums and let the bagpipes play
And I will march ripe into that narrow patch
Of mind and sand and play, She loves me
She loves me not, and haply saw
My soul in two.
I shall send her flowers,
Long purples that prickly boys
Call a grosser name, 
But she will say as maidens do, 
"How could you be so lame?" 

 

Isabel

When I was but a toddler, some seventy or so years ago, our family would travel during the summer to the beach in our roomy Kaiser-Frazer. As we motored along, I would draw near to the pulse of the tires on the road. It sounded to me like “Isabel Isabel Isabel Isabel . . . . " The memory is so strong that all I have to do is feel the sun on my arm through the car window or hum along with my  Ford Ranger, peacefully rolling along country roads, or discover at the beginning of the school year that I have a student named Isabel, so that when I say something like “Isabel, that was a great poem you wrote” or “Thank you, Isabel” for waking me up and informing me that unless I get to class in the next two minutes, my students will scatter like the wild birds they know themselves to be, or if I meet a woman at a social gathering who introduces herself as Isabel or Izabel or Isabella or Izzy or even Bella, though her real name may be Annabella, my ears ring like a bell that calls children in from play.  Why Isabel and not Alexandra or almost any other name? Isabel was part of our family, though it is more factual to say that she worked for our family.  She was a benevolent dictator and a shoulder to cry on. My most enduring memories are of the times when she would take my brother and me to her house to churn butter. It seemed like hard work back then, a blessing now. That Isabel had been a black woman is not something that registered with me at the time and that happy blindness may explain both my dislike of the word race, that is in itself a lie, as well as the outrage I feel when anyone is treated better or worse for no other reason than their perceived racial or cultural identity. I trace my moral character back to Isabel. The steady, muscular kindness with which I try to treat my friends, students and total strangers also comes from Isabel. Finally, it was in the sound of the tires of that old Kaiser-Frazer that I discovered poetry, the power to give the world ‘out there’ inner meaning. My debt to Isabel is unpayable, eternal and long overdue.

On Poetry

Poetry is inspired song. The breath is the soul of the poem. The poet gathers the air around, the blue from the sky and her curling eyes, the warmth from the sun and his lover's body . . . and sings. The air is measured, the lover's body rolls with the waves and her eyes become one with the night. In the morning, the poet crawls out of the sky like a bear, stretching full out, searching again for the sweetness, searching in the movement of cloud and leaf and desire.  He sings. If his words resound in skin and bone, in the stone-cold night, if he enchants the air with his song -- it is poetry.

Metaphor

Metaphor is the mystery. The poetic act is both a participation in and apprehension of that mystery.  A poem may affect us by its lyricism and its passion, by its matching sound with sense -- but without metaphor and the mystery it confers, poetry belongs solely to the decorative or rhetorical arts. It is by metaphor that a poem draws us back again and again to trace the lines that lead to the heart of being and to ourselves.

The Meaning of a Poem

The meaning of a poem comes not from the words, but from the transmutation that occurs in the heart of the poet at the time the poem is written.  In all poetry that is not simply decorative, there is an elemental activity of consciousness, a sustained golden moment that triumphs over raw experience.  The meaning of a poem is that activity of mind, triumphant over the despair that the words of the poem may convey.  

The poem that follows has elicited the dreaded no comment except from one good friend who did me the kindness of asking about the word ‘gimble'. Nevertheless, I continue to enjoy the poem as if it were written by someone else for whom poetry brings into view such beauty that we but suffer the more for its absence. It is a backward way of praising poetry.  That’s what I think antipoetry is doing. Anyway, here is the worthless little bit of a stinker in its final ode-rous form. Hold your nose . . . . .   

 Poetry Stinks

    Poetry gives us just enough of what is real
    to make us howl and gimble in the night,
    too far from moon and what is our fate
    To make it right.  It stinks a lot!

At Seventy-Two

As I have grown older, I have plunged into language as though I were one of Melville's Catskill eagles. Poetry has given me a kind of second sight that sustains me in the dark places and makes me invisible in the light.   Now, at seventy-two, poetry is leading me into a deeper knowledge: to be truly alive means to experience myself as essentially compounded of earth and wind and all other living things. It all breathes fire. I now want more than words. I seek to understand simile and metaphor as reality itself.  Man is as much wolf as wind, as much rain as mind and so I would be.  I know that I am approaching the age of oblivion whose plentitude is ALL, an empty mirror that is yet full of life.  What I tell my students is that to be truly alive is to strive passionately for one’s own truth. My truth is the poetry of mind and heart and of Being itself.  

The Lost Teachings of Hughlings J. Himwich (1946-2019)

I rather be an old fool than a popsicle. 

Why me, why not a zombie?

The last time I arrive at my destination I was somewhere else.

My mind is a fishbowl. Others sometimes stop and stare for a few moments and then move on.

If I were in free fall, I would not need a parachute.

In your absence, everything else happens.

We never quite say what we mean and so go on talking.

Mind matters, and vice-versa, matter . . . . .

Existence is the consciousness of the universe.

Existence becomes aware of itself (i.e. consciousness of consciousness) in man.

There is something it is like to exist.

Only the logic of metaphor and poetry is able to express the reality and mystery of existence itself: that there is anything at all and not nothing, that the many are one and the one many,  that everything participates in the existence of everything else.

There is a poetics of existence:

                     When night opens like spring
                and stars come out of dark longing
                like flowers out of the earth

                     Then do I close my eyes
                and see.

Existence hides.

Consciousness: that by which we seek the truth is itself the answer.

The searching soul everywhere finds a mirror.

Existence is continuously creating the forms of its own being. Thus light and life come into being.

The artist, the poet, & philosopher create everywhere the human form. Thus do beauty, truth and virtue come to be. 

When your rational mind starts to divide things into this or that, don’t lose sight of the original fullness of being. 

The first step in the search for truth is the most important one. Don’t begin with dichotomy.    Begin with a song of praise for Being itself.

Where eros is driven out, there you will find only thanatos.

What is deadly about rationality is that it strives to explain everything and to reduce all
truth to its truth

Drift and ye will find.

The search for truth comes straight from the heart.

Remember, remember, remember: Unless you somehow already know the truth, you will never recognize it when you find it.

Your being, your heart mind soul, is that by which you will know the truth when you find it.

Don't let school get in the way of your education.

All true speech is sweet delusion.

Truth is like the daughter I never had. Known by its absence.

If there were no soul, there would be no death.

Every time you think you are your brain, you are not.

Will you not also eat the apple core?

Follow the sound. It will lead you to me.

Mind-at-large or no-mind-at-all.

Beware lest you make a ghost of yourself!

To one who knows how to look everything is a mirror. 

What I am not makes everything possible.

Your best thoughts remain mysterious even to you.

Death is fire.

Blindsight is the very life of the darkness.

Mirrors lie.

What it is like to be me is you.

Do you not know the sound of your own voice? Listen to the wind.

Love makes every word sound like a kiss.

Come hither. There is no there here.

The universe curves like a woman's body.

The journey begins when we forget who we are. 

Hand in hand, we wander alone.

What you call truth, I call silence.

Free will is the dream from which I will not awake.

 

The Oracle at Delphi

 

    He saw the child in the woman, wild, innocent, mischievous, vulnerable and a nuisance to herself and others, not unlike how he had been when he was six, but try as he might, posing before his nemesis the mirror, he could barely conjure up the feeling of what it was like to be so young. Then one day, seeing his students for the first time after cataract surgery, he became unaccountably double or rather blind-sighted, seeing each of them as younger and older than they actually were, side-stepping reality, if you like, but yet somehow getting it all right. There was Sally, for instance, with flowing red hair, freckles, of course, and a smile that betrayed her awareness of how beautiful she was. Now, however, he saw her crying for papa when he would leave for work and crying again for papa when he departed this earth. She would in time become the sort of smartass, assertive woman, ever and anon unsparing of her smile, who would one day become his boss, if he were to live so long. And then there was Leo, a tortured face hopelessly entangled in his own arms and legs that would flop about like Udon noodles, his hands and feet dangling precariously at the extremities. Now, however, he saw Leo as an infant, well-composed in his mother’s arms, being rocked to sleep to Ariel's own sweet music in his mother's lilting voice, Where the bee sucks, there suck I and Come unto these yellow sands and Full Fathom Five Thy Father Lies, complete with all the dings and dongs of the bells and the strangely soft crowing of roosters, and it seemed to him like riding on a bat's wing, and then, at almost the same moment, he saw Leo as a father, impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit, having finally realized the benefit of his mother's theatrical training, with one daughter clinging to his leg as if it were the trunk of a tree, complaining that it was her turn, and another, younger, smaller daughter whom he was dangerously throwing up in the air and having to lurch to catch in the nick of time, dragging along the first daughter who refused to let go of his leg, and miraculously not a trace of fear in the eyes of the at-risk child. After all, papa was strong and now he could dance. He could even feel Leo's future strength and grace in his own arms and legs, and, naturally enough, found himself, the teacher, 73 years of age, intending on his next visit to ask his doctor to approve a disabled parking permit, now waiting like the other students for class to begin. He heard himself announce an in-class writing assignment: they were to write about a childhood memory and then trace how that memory was like an oracle -- you know, like at the Oracle of Delphi that we all learned about in the sixth grade. So embarrassing, his student-self was thinking, surely the old man can do better than that. All that Greek mythology was just a boatload of malarkey. Still, he knew he could hit that assignment out of the park just as he had actually hit a home run when he was thirteen, his team losing by three runs in the championship game for interstellar glory. It had been the bottom of the ninth inning, two outs, bases loaded, etc. He had even been disciplined enough not to allow his minuscule batting average of .023 or that he was leading the league in strikeouts to shake his resolve. The coach, not wishing to tempt fate, gave his butt a good smack, keeping his exhortation brief::  “It’s just another at-bat, son.” Of course, he was totally making all this up, but on the other hand, he had imagined this moment so often that the fantasy had come to substitute for any known facts. Indeed, everything he wrote for that assignment was a shameless fabrication, yet he knew that, like Odysseus, who was himself a skilled and inveterate liar, he could find within himself the resourcefulness to take on any Polyphemus he was likely to meet and prevail. He noted with satisfaction how he had worked words from their class vocabulary list into his essay -- stellar words like nemesis, precarious, anon, inveterate, and malarkey and, coming soon in lines yet to be written, peripherality, baptize and charlatan -- and was confident that he had hit yet another home run, though he was also aware that his teacher-self, spying on him with annoyingly persistent peripherality, was laughing at his student-self who had just previously sneered at mythology. Nevertheless, despite this handicap, he believed he had in fact become like his students or, as matters stood, like his fellow students, fearing as they did that he would finally be discovered to be a charlatan, a nobody, and so consequently baptized himself a true student of the game, always striving to learn new tricks to beat the system that, despite all his best efforts and those of his classmates, would still win out in the end and beat the crap out of each and every one of them.

 

Natura naturans

It hit, which is another way of saying ‘it happened’, whatever the pull of gravity or the water rising over the banks into homes built on the flood plain or the constellations in their peculiar but inevitable configurations countenanced. It hit like a hot iron let stand too long and so became a sort of dark commentary de rerum natura, ironic, steaming with the smell and heat of compost, natura naturans. And so she left him and travelled near and far until she came to where all the trouble had begun, the yearning, pure and simple, without an object or home, without knowing and there things stood as they had always been except now she was on her own for the first time and became somehow heedlessly clairvoyant, stirring up memories and desire and crosstalk among the young and the old, sounding more like the bleating of goats and howls of wolves, each on edge for what would happen next, though it be but more of the same. It hit, which is another way of saying, everything and nothing changed. 

Summer Rain

If it would only rain my words would pour forth like girls and boys too young to know shame O they are bold as I would be the rain falls I am young again dance touch while the music plays so falls the rain O she is here there are tears of joy tears songs of praise for the beauty of the day earth yields up its flowers to her hand turns to gentle thunder her body lifts and holds her laughter makes the night shudder unbinds her hair and falls to me now here now there like summer rain

Leaf Fall

Follow the path
of leaf fall,
the short cut home
twixt sky and dream.

When you're there,
you'll be right here,
safe with me. 

Death makes strangers of us all

I met her first in high school. Her name then was Alice Cyan. We dated and did what teenagers usually do, being full of hormones. When we went off to college, we wished each other luck and that was it. I met her again in law school, though her name now was Francine Bedower. She didn’t remember me, but I knew her the first moment I heard her laugh. It was like wind rattling through dry leaves.  She was beautiful. I mean, really beautiful, statuesque, as they say.  I slept with her once then, but so did almost everyone else. We didn’t see each other all that much and, though we graduated from law school in the same class, there was really no reason to stay in touch. When I met her the third time, her name now Townsy Harper, she was working for a law firm in San Francisco and I happened to be close by. We would meet for drinks. She was divorced, had two kids, a daughter and a son, and a lot of cats, but no dogs. She had made a point of that, no dogs. She had grown so thin I almost didn’t recognize her, but she knew me. She reminded me that when she and I were dating back in high school, her father had died and that’s why she liked me. That puzzled me a little, but okay, that’s as good a reason as any I suppose. Then she  stopped coming by. When we met for the fourth and last time, I was in the hospital for what I was assured would be a routine colonoscopy. Her name was now Sally Caulder, same last name as mine, though spelled differently as it turned out. It startled me at the time. She was stooped over, staring down at me as I lay there, waiting my turn. I had recognized her right off, that same laugh, but tart. When I asked her who she was now, she spat her name Caulder in my face and told me she didn’t know me and that she never wanted to see me again, biting down finally on "asshole" but seeming to look through me like glass. I can't say I blame her. After all, as I was soon to learn, she did not have long to live either.

One and done

You sit across the page, spelling

Your name like mine

Except it rhymes

And no one suspects you are lonely

Or looney or so hungry

you could eat this paper,

folding it into a star

popping it in the microwave

where you and I and the universe

will be one and done.

Surprise

Suddenly
this morning
I knew the rainbow
to be a bird

of my soul
taking flight 
and vanishing
into cloud and sky

as I am bound 
to do, shimmering
not with color
but surprise

to be at last
not here. 

Man on the Moon

 i stand

on the moon

and know

your heart

like one

who has died

and found

a home

Where is that?

During a thunderstorm when everyone else was running for cover, one woman remained outside and seemed not to be bothered in the least. They all looked out from their hiding places and wondered at her.  It didn’t hurt that she was strikingly beautiful.  Well, soon enough they all came out into the storm, feeling a bit ashamed, I suppose. At first, they couldn’t keep their eyes off her, glistening as she was in the rain and flash of light. Eventually, however, their eyes followed hers to the sky and what they saw was only a roiling grayness that seemed to envelop the earth. They asked her what she saw.. Home, she said. And they, like the dumb little fish of another story, asked, “Where is that?”

a dead-wall reverie

Ibidom. Is no thinking thing here but the peepinghouse round it goes is there nothing there from sea to rounda coda no knowing no browbeating to hoedown the adamses and damses looking roundaway the wailing goes awagginawaning about the off wall but there shebares all to what is not there the museymusik makes you trot and drop so rainruns and her lastofall. There!

now east now west

 

now east now west

the road has a mind of its own

and my feet obey

 

the rest of me stays behind
treelike

 

above

the sky grows gentle

 

MY HEART OPENS

the road goes on

as if not knowing

which way is best

Oranges

He was determined this time not to cut his fingers as he sliced the oranges.  He would focus and keep his fingers well away from the blade.   He remembered all too well how previously his blood had flowed onto the oranges and pooled on the plate.  He knew it wasn’t just because he was getting old, fading into memory and the lure of the trees and his first kiss.  She had been as nervous as he and had closed her eyes.  Now all he could think of was feeding her oranges and the taste on her lips.  And suddenly, she had bitten his lip, making it bleed. And then, more softly, she was feeding him. She was delicious and he . . . . he was lost in the trees.  He put the knife down and wept.  

What she came to say

Though he is dying and lost in time,
She will not permit the truth be spoken
Or any other game be played
Until she says what she came to say
To one who knows her wilder ways.

(The sun and moon now count the time;
The trees and shadows bend his mind.)

She, undressing on the forest floor,
All green and gold and shimmering song,
Takes him to ground and shapes his soul:
You will not die and never know
What it is to love and be alone.  

(She holds him in a last embrace
And turns his eyes to see her face.)

Nighttime in the Lyceum

Before the light changed and I forgot

the rules for how to see things as they are,

day was day and night was hidden in my heart.

What is not there

Though I am known to God
As Hughlings, my friends call me
Hugh and leave it at that --
Grace takes care of the rest.

Though I do not believe
In anything or have any Jesus,
Yet I retain a kind of genius
For harmless lies.

It is as if during the day
I can still see the stars
Blazing out of the night
And truly see what is

not there. Some say
it is a harmless madness --
My friends though look deep
Into what were once my eyes

And all they see is night.

As you once were

Set out beneath the stars
on a solitary raft
that drifts along the shore
on a current
that will bring you
out to sea and sky
beyond all imagining

as you once were
as you will be again.

Our first night

We met when raw desire
first flowed like fire
through the dark fullness
of simple night. We met
in the play of wind and wave
upon an unsung shore,
where rack and shell
called out the time to come,
the time that's now
and will always be
and be no more. 
Before there was love
Or hate, our names were
Inscribed in every sigh
in the golden harvest
of our first night.
You came to be
as I lay dying, barely
breathing, ready
to be born again
and praise the light.

Out of Time

When they removed the tree they moved the place
Or rather the place became a barren field
Where light through the green, still moving shade
No longer marks the ground like rain. 
And yet here I am with you,
Your face bent over mine the air
rippling with laughter the tree
covering us in its bright shadow the earth
yielding as we fall out of time. Out of time?
What is left but song?
Listen! the ringing in the air, this rain
These tears hammering out the tune, time and place.
He, she, and all you love, draw near. 

 

The only true word I know

I don’t know how you know you have to make a change. You just do it and think about the whys and wherefores later. And in any case, I would only be making it up to sound like I wasn’t crazy or something, as though I actually had reasons for doing what I did. Maybe it was the rain. Who in his right mind would throw a few things in a backpack, leave his car and bank account behind, and just set off walking in the rain?  That's what I did. At nightfall I found a place along the side of the road to sleep, but I couldn’t stop shaking.  It didn't stop raining until early the next morning when the sun came up as though for the first time. 

I had started out in Rhode Island but hitched rides that left me the next night in Georgia and the next day I was in the panhandle of Florida, walking down some back country road that would take me wherever I was going. I really had no idea, but I was going and I was going to stay gone. I know that this all sounds crazy, but it didn’t feel that way then. It felt right and for the first time in a long time my head was clear. 

When I had started out I had only a couple packs of cigarettes and about twenty dollars which paid for coffee and more cigarettes for awhile. The kindness of strangers supplied the rest. Folks who picked me up were curious about what I was doing and where I was going. What interested them most was that I didn’t know. They saw my sorry shoes, shook their heads, and gave me money for a meal at the end of the ride. One man said he had never picked up anyone before but now he thought he would the next time he saw some young person thumbing a ride. It had somehow been interesting. I told him that was a bad idea. 

I went wherever a ride would take me and that’s how I found myself in a small West Virginia town, where an old preacher picked me up and took me home for a meal. He showed me with pride the wooden casket he had made with his own hands and how he was all set for eternity. He called it his boat. It was really no more than a crate, though its dimensions where about right for a coffin. I don't know about eternity. What I was really curious about were the huge old books that were lying on the casket as if to keep the lid on. He said the truth was in those books and I could see for myself if I wanted. The first one I opened had the picture of a  young woman, tied to a stake, her breasts exposed, looking up at the heavens ablaze with lightning.  I swear her whole body looked like it was electrically charged as though she were having an orgasm or something. Beneath the picture were the words, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” I turned over the page and saw the words "I ad crucem!" scrawled over the English text. I knew what those words meant alright: "Go to the cross!"  On another page was the picture of some wild man who was having a crimson X branded into his chest. After that I was in a hurry to go, but the old guy kept me there talking about how half the town was dying of cancer because everyone was marrying their own kin and goin’ to hell. I got the crazy idea that he was about to ask me to nail him and his books up in that crate and set him adrift. I told him I had to go. He wanted to know why I was in such a hurry. I  told him someone was waiting for me in Winchester, which was just across the state line. He said he would drive me there, but I just walked toward the door and thanked him. I closed the door behind me and didn’t look back.  

My next couple of rides landed me in New Orleans. I was beginning to realize that though everything was new to me, I was not quite a stranger to the folks I met. In New Orleans, I fell in with others about my age who looked just as lost as I did. They had liberated an abandoned house, worked at odd jobs and did drugs at night. When I didn’t partake, they became suspicious and shortly came to the conclusion that I was a narc. I had never heard that word before but its meaning soon became clear to me. They said my story about going wherever the road would take me just didn’t add up. That wasn’t the last time I was suspected of being a narc, but later it somehow didn’t matter. They could just think whatever they wanted. The first time, however, it was a shock. I had been glad to have a place to crash for a few days, but they told me I had better leave.

I ended up spending a month or so in New Orleans, making some money by working out of a day load outfit that sent out sober men like me on jobs that paid ten dollars a day. If you didn’t quit the job – loading, unloading, throwing bricks out of boxcars and digging holes – you got paid at the end of each day. In the late afternoon after I was paid, I felt like some goddam saint. Cripples, men with no legs, drunks and drifters like me were lined up along the sidewalk with their hands out. One fella, mounted on a board with rollers, had no arms or legs, just a cup. I had a simple rule. I would give away half of what I made and keep the rest. It was more than enough for my needs. They would call me father, though I was younger than they were. Maybe I looked older because like them I had grown so thin. A fellow worker had his own room where he let me sleep on the floor and he knew all the churches and other places where a person could find a free meal, though sometimes you had to pay by praying after you ate. I didn’t like that and said so. I ended up basically stealing the food before the praying started. The problem with that was that they were on the lookout for you the next time. At night, I wandered the French Quarter looking in the jazz joints and at the girls who looked right through me as if I weren't there at all. I can't say I blame them.   

I forgot to tell you that before I left to nowhere in particular, I had been a desk clerk at an otherwise respectable hotel called the Pilgrim Inn that catered to a certain class of working girl. They were all somebody’s daughter and they sent the money they made back to their families. Some paid guys who protected them and would beat them up to keep them in line. I would take payment for rooms from the johns and take them up in the elevator first and then the girls. It became routine. I liked the girls, but they all thought I was queer because I hadn’t done anything with them even when they offered for free. They would laugh and ask me if I knew which hole to put it in. I didn't mind. Everything had been going along fine until one night I was arrested along with the girls in a police raid and spent the night in jail. The next day they just sent me home. The hotel's lawyers had worked something out. The girls had to pay a fine. After that, I felt like I almost belonged and everyone treated me as if I were one of them. Then one night a little later I got beat up really bad by a guy who demanded to know where a certain girl was and when I wouldn’t tell him, he came around the desk and let me have it. It all happened so fast I didn’t even have time to be afraid or even feel any pain. I was kind of numb or stunned I guess. After that, the girls treated me like a brother, which I guess I was.

After I had saved a little money in New Orleans, I set out again. I had heard from others about riding the rails. It was fast and straight but they also told tales of railroad bulls that discouraged me. I thought hitching was safer. My first ride, a long sleepy cruise through the night, took me to Texas, a little west of Austin. It had been a sweet ride; the stars out the open window seemed to pump their light right into my veins. My very next ride, however, changed everything, but I have written about that before. I don't really want to go into it again except to say I came out whole after a man tried to force me to have sex with him and maybe for the first time in my life I had been brave. That was then. What I really want to talk about is Richard whom I had met a year before all this craziness began, never saw again, and miss every day of my life. Before we parted he gave me a small carving, made from an odd piece of wood found on an east Texas beach. He had used only the sharp edge of a stone. It was like something out of the prehistory of man and had three faces on each side, one emerging out of another.  It is the face of every man I meet. For forty-six years I have kept this carving with me. It really is Richard's story that needs telling, not mine, though maybe his is in some way mine as well. You see, he taught me the only true word I know and he taught me by example and it cost him dearly.  He was the most honest person I have ever known and the bravest.   

https://www.hhimwich.com/hughlings_himwich/2016/03/song-for-richard.html

https://www.hhimwich.com/hughlings_himwich/2010/04/this-i-believe.html

Photograph by Her Himwich 

Time of life (with apologies to Zeno)

I have reached that time when I measure my life not by the years but by the months. Thus, I lengthen my life. I say to myself I may have only 6 years remaining, but 72 months is another lifetime. Soon, I will do the same with days and hours, then minutes and seconds. Each new measure will push life’s horizon back to a safe distance. The question is, of course, how long can I get away with this sort of time-chopping. Theoretically, forever. 

The Fall

He fell (he was always falling)

Or rather, he jumped, missing the water

That would have taken him, leaving his remains

to flow in the rhythms of his speech,

Washed clean like one hoping to please

Instead of what was, a silent heap,

Though there was heard from a nearby street

What some would call a melodious scream.

Kiss and Tell

 
Who but a god

Could look at you

Sweetly laughing

And not die


For a kiss, dying

Again and again

Like gods of spring

that never truly


Die. Your lips

Like night

hold back the day

And close my eyes . . .

Awake! Awake!

You are no god

To kiss and tell

Of life and death.

 

The Man Who Couldn't Love Someone Like You

He had once been a happy man. He had loved everybody, boys, girls, old women who thought themselves still vibrant and sexy, and old men with dangerously foul breath. He found lovable what others considered obscene, like protruding teeth or flapping ears or a nasty looking scar across the forehead.  He even found drooling as naturally becoming as sweat. He couldn’t help himself. Others thought he was delusional or simply a dirty old man, until one day, he suffered a head injury, having slipped off a ledge while ogling sagging sunbathers. After he recovered, he now found crippling fault with everyone.  His constant refrain was, “Who could love someone like you?” He said this whether the person was overweight, stuttered or blinked too much or had dull brown hair or had one too many eyes. He reserved a special place in hell for redheads, whom he previously had loved to distraction. Some remembered the “dirty old man,' but now putting their full faith in what had before been but a naive myth, that he had once been a lovely human being. They asked him what had changed and he said, “I woke up.” One day he took a good look at himself in the mirror and saw the faults he found in others in himself: unruly hair, yellowing and missing teeth, wrinkles that made his flaccid face look like a prune -- he even thought his skin had turned dark purple. So be it, he concluded, and banged his head as hard as he could against the glass. This time he didn’t wake up.

What's left to say

He was watching the parade
The clowns, the words, the trumpeteers
And in his dream he was awake
Or he was awake and dreaming.
He closed his eyes.
No matter, he heard the drums.
He opened his eyes a second time
And saw himself marching
Now to a different tune
A martial cha-cha-cha
And wet his pants.
There is little more to tell.
The daily Tribune records
That during the St. Jude Day Celebration
Saturday passed and a forgotten man
Had died, shouting blessings
Upon one and all. 

The Sound that Wind Makes

(for Maya)

I want words to breathe like I do, weep when I do, and bruise easily.

I want words to dream and remember those dreams that first set me on this path.

I want words to grow old with me and become like the lines in my face and tell me
      old stories that keep my stumbling spirit from falling and new ones that tell of
      love forever young and freely given.
I want words of no regret even for the sorry waste of all I have left undone, unsaid.

I want words to hold up a mirror and see there all who at some time have gone hand
      in hand with me through this life.

O what a wondrously crowded reflection that would be, all of them in the morning
     of their lives, young and old alike.  

O that words would fall like these tears and mark the page in silver and gold, the true
colors of night, that these words would live on in their hearts and find some rest there,
though I myself be nothing but the sound the restless wind makes on a cold night,
the wind that sweeps down the mountainside and past all the houses in which loved ones
have died and gathers up all those lost souls and scatters what is but dust and ash
through the deep space of time. 

River Notes

As I sit here writing tonight at my desk I am on the river and see myself in the flow of all things . . . the sounds of water, bird and wind are my voice, and all my senses are alive as though the stars were at elbow and foot . . . I breathe in the night and orion, aldebaran, and procyon come closer, and there you are again, musa, luna puella, your body curving and folding in the current, laughing and inviting me to dive with you beneath the rippling and lose myself at last, these words nothing but the falling rain.

Being Blue

(for my students)

Just remember the orange
Is not in the orange.

It is always you
Like a thumb in the eye.

The blue sky
So glorious today

Is also you.
Be beautiful!

Man

What goes
like a wolf
in the morning
like the sea
in the afternoon
and the wind
at night?

The wolf is desire.
The sea is the journey.
The wind is what remains.

The answer is always man.

A wise fool

One day a young monk asked his master, How can one find what one has never lost? You are a fool, the wise master replied.

The monk, who had been the master's most devoted disciple, turned his back and rejoined the world. The wise master smiled and continued teaching what cannot be taught.

Poem

I forgot myself

and spoke foolish things

and only now

does a sparrow sing

in my ear

Digging in the garden

 

Digging in the garden I find

but earthy loot: worms, beetles,

pebbles and ocean shells

and a blackened shard to cast away

for luck and there in the shade

of a supple palm, taking hold

where it should not be, a girl :

I think of Phaiakia and Nausicaa

washing her clothes for some

beggar like me, rough-hewn

in all but speech and she lingers

beside the pool, wondering

if it be a god or beast or bard

that shapes her soul seaward

to be free. She looks and looks,

not believing what she sees

or what she feels. He tells her

of a younger, stranger man

who will come for her

when the spell is broken

and she as wild as the sea. 

 

Though she's lost her way

Though she's lost her way

a river runs through her veins,

the moon in her hand. 

 

Love is so strange

Every time he looked at her he scowled.  She finally had enough and asked him what was his problem.  He said, “You’re so beautiful.  I can’t help myself.”  She didn’t understand. “But your face is so ugly when you look at me?” He didn’t understand and, of course, all the while he was scowling and making himself look ugly.  Finally, she asked, “Can you smile?” and he answered, “I thought I was.” “No, a smile looks like this,” and she smiled for him. He scowled. Then, for some reason, she kissed him. When people see the two of them together now, hand in hand, he scowling and she smiling, they wonder aloud, “What an odd couple!" Love is so strange.

The End of the Journey: A Conversation with Neil Longenbaugh

 

Neil Longenbaugh: Socrates knows he is wiser than the common man because he does not profess to know what he does not. This creates a few problems for me. How can Socrates know for sure that he doesn’t know something? I think the only thing he can be certain of is that he knows nothing for certain, and if this is true then how can someone be wiser than another person if both know equally nothing? This idea is a paradox that can’t be clearly answered unless Socrates is claiming that the craftsman and poets claim to know something and he nothing.

Mr. Himwich: Problem is that the craftsmen and especially those muse-inspired poets think that they do in fact know – but, of course, they don’t, as is revealed under Socratic questioning. You do touch on a difficult issue: Does knowledge require that we know that we know and perhaps even to be able to articulate what we know and be able to teach it to someone else. Absent this kind of knowledge we might categorize our “knowledge” as belief, hypothesis, intuition, educated guess, etc.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I think that knowing something for certain is an impossibility. We can know that we can think, and articulate this to other people, but we cannot know that we know something as it truly is. I agree that we can classify our knowledge as hypothesis, intuition, etc… What is truth though? If it is impossible to know for certain then can we find truth in our educated guesses and such?

Mr. Himwich: So much depends on what one means by "truth," as you well know. For me, the truth is paradoxically the very activity of a mind that searches for understanding. This activity of mind is the very truth it searches for. It is always thus, e.g. we create the very world that we seek to understand as if it were separate from us. The truth is as close as thought itself. I know this will sound mystical or worse -- plain nonsense. What is your idea of truth?

Mr. Longenbaugh: I feel that truth is something sought after. I think that there are elements that we must find within ourselves, but I think that the physical world also contains truth. I think one can find a balance between retrospection and examining the world they live in for truth. I think that truth is perhaps what you do not know, even if what you think is the truth is not really how it is. Since you believe truth to be activity of mind, do you believe that everything we perceive and experience is some sort of dream or separate experience or reality based on your mind’s bias towards the world?

Mr. Himwich: I think your understanding of truth is sound. I must admit that mine is a work in progress. When I say 'activity of the mind', I mean just that: not the products of that activity, just the pure activity itself. That activity is the existential answer to the mind/body question (how the brain and consciousness relate). If we thereby solve the mind/body question, then we will also solve the mind's relationship to the external world. I know this sounds weird. Truth for me is not this and that bit of knowledge or even the collection of such bits into a whole. It is what actually happens. Again, not what physics tells us about the nature of the universe, but the universe itself as it happens. If we could understand our own activity (our own happening), then we could understand everything else. We are part of the happening of things. Again, I admit I am exploring ideas here. Let me try one more time: we are already what we seek to understand. In our very attempt to understand what we already are is the Truth. (I am laughing at myself. Feel free to laugh at me as well.)

Mr. Longenbaugh: I can accept your argument (for lack of a better word), but it does bring about a few more questions. These examples seem to be contradictory or perhaps by the nature of the activity itself they aren’t. Take someone who is in a coma for example or a dream that persists indefinitely, is their understanding subconscious because dreams to me seem to be more of a ride than activity. Should we try to understand these, knowing we can’t control them, or should we try to learn to control them? What about out of body experiences while awake? (I won’t give any examples) These provide a little trouble for me and I’m sure for you too. I think that I can understand what I believe to be awake reality and activity.

Mr. Himwich: This is becoming more about my wayward ideas than yours (not to say yours are wayward). But I am happy to continue. It seems to me that the Truth only appears when we are actively in search for it, but it remains paradoxically and necessarily elusive. The search and Truth are like the sun and the moon, the moon’s reflected light derives from the sunlike mind. (I am expressing ideas here I have never expressed before.) What we want to understand is not the moon itself but the light that illuminates it, yet we fail to recognize the source of the light comes from our own consciousness. This little analogy must be read allegorically.

Mr. Longenbaugh: That is a good analogy. This raises an interesting question. Is the moon necessary? Can we simply look straight into the sun and try and find Truth? I think that before we can journey to the sun, we must first understand the moon, or start searching. It seems maybe that the moon is more tangible than the sun. We can travel, and search for what the moon and its light mean, but I don’t think its ever possible to make it to the sun. In the context of this analogy, we can keep getting closer to the sun or Truth, but the closer we are, the hotter it is. This slows us down and eventually burns us before we can ever get there.

Mr. Himwich: I think that consciousness, before it is consciousness of something, is nonexistent, or rather exists as a potentiality only. This goes back to that question in class: if you stop thinking, i.e. stop being conscious, do you cease to exist. That is a very live question. I would hasten to add that in the mystic traditions, especially with respect to meditation practice, there is a possible turning away from the object to consciousness itself. The reported experience is the usual wonderful mystic nonsense (of which I have a great share): a sense of unity with all things and then joy.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I’m turned toward thinking that consciousness is existence. And going away from this consciousness I think is a good thing, because I’m not sure even if there is necessarily one direction that you must head. Turning away could very well be just as real as going in the “normal” direction if we have to call it that. I can’t say I’ve experienced many of these traditions but I have a basic understanding. Do you believe that there is a certain direction, or is there a possibility or two, even an infinite amount of suns, or levels of consciousness?

Mr. Himwich: I am thunderstruck by your statement that consciousness is existence. I have made that very same statement on another occasion. First, there are some esoteric eastern philosophies that do in fact speak of levels, e.g. personal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, in which one experiences the loss of the self that the personal consciousness has constructed. I hardly know what to say about such things. I would rather discuss this "turning away" that you speak of. Speaking for myself, the "turning away" is the journey that, through experience, leads back to the sun. This means that only by going away from the sun can we ever really know it as the source of our being. Thus, the journey, as in epic journeys, always leads through the Underworld where there is little or no light at all. That may sound poetic, but it involves real suffering. Is such a journey the good? Yes, but I speak only for myself here.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I think that 'the turning away' is a perspective. If you turn away from the sun, you can see how far you have come and what you have experienced. I think it can help you appreciate the sun more. I am concerned whether it is possible to turn away and never go back? Hopefully, death doesn’t bring this but I think that a loss of consciousness means that there is no more journey.

Mr. Himwich: Just to sum up: There is both an objective and subjective aspect to this: reality is and is not what we are aware of: there must be something that is apart from consciousness itself and yet that there is anything at all, existence itself, is due to consciousness. This is why we both search for truth/reality as something external to our consciousness and why we keep returning to consciousness as the ground of being. It is the paradox upon which the journey hinges. The journey is the effort to return to oneself. It gives meaning to our life, precisely because we never arrive.

Neil Longenbaugh: Socrates knows he is wiser than the common man because he does not profess to know what he does not. This creates a few problems for me. How can Socrates know for sure that he doesn’t know something? I think the only thing he can be certain of is that he knows nothing for certain, and if this is true then how can someone be wiser than another person if both know equally nothing? This idea is a paradox that can’t be clearly answered unless Socrates is claiming that the craftsman and poets claim to know something and he nothing.

Mr. Himwich: Problem is that the craftsmen and especially those muse-inspired poets think that they do in fact know – but, of course, they don’t, as is revealed under Socratic questioning. You do touch on a difficult issue: Does knowledge require that we know that we know and perhaps even to be able to articulate what we know and be able to teach it to someone else. Absent this kind of knowledge we might categorize our “knowledge” as belief, hypothesis, intuition, educated guess, etc.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I think that knowing something for certain is an impossibility. We can know that we can think, and articulate this to other people, but we cannot know that we know something as it truly is. I agree that we can classify our knowledge as hypothesis, intuition, etc… What is truth though? If it is impossible to know for certain then can we find truth in our educated guesses and such?

Mr. Himwich: So much depends on what one means by "truth," as you well know. For me, the truth is paradoxically the very activity of a mind that searches for understanding. This activity of mind is the very truth it searches for. It is always thus, e.g. we create the very world that we seek to understand as if it were separate from us. The truth is as close as thought itself. I know this will sound mystical or worse -- plain nonsense. What is your idea of truth?

Mr. Longenbaugh: I feel that truth is something sought after. I think that there are elements that we must find within ourselves, but I think that the physical world also contains truth. I think one can find a balance between retrospection and examining the world they live in for truth. I think that truth is perhaps what you do not know, even if what you think is the truth is not really how it is. Since you believe truth to be activity of mind, do you believe that everything we perceive and experience is some sort of dream or separate experience or reality based on your mind’s bias towards the world?

Mr. Himwich: I think your understanding of truth is sound. I must admit that mine is a work in progress. When I say 'activity of the mind', I mean just that: not the products of that activity, just the pure activity itself. That activity is the existential answer to the mind/body question (how the brain and consciousness relate). If we thereby solve the mind/body question, then we will also solve the mind's relationship to the external world. I know this sounds weird. Truth for me is not this and that bit of knowledge or even the collection of such bits into a whole. It is what actually happens. Again, not what physics tells us about the nature of the universe, but the universe itself as it happens. If we could understand our own activity (our own happening), then we could understand everything else. We are part of the happening of things. Again, I admit I am exploring ideas here. Let me try one more time: we are already what we seek to understand. In our very attempt to understand what we already are is the Truth. (I am laughing at myself. Feel free to laugh at me as well.)

Mr. Longenbaugh: I can accept your argument (for lack of a better word), but it does bring about a few more questions. These examples seem to be contradictory or perhaps by the nature of the activity itself they aren’t. Take someone who is in a coma for example or a dream that persists indefinitely, is their understanding subconscious because dreams to me seem to be more of a ride than activity. Should we try to understand these, knowing we can’t control them, or should we try to learn to control them? What about out of body experiences while awake? (I won’t give any examples) These provide a little trouble for me and I’m sure for you too. I think that I can understand what I believe to be awake reality and activity.

Mr. Himwich: This is becoming more about my wayward ideas than yours (not to say yours are wayward). But I am happy to continue. It seems to me that the Truth only appears when we are actively in search for it, but it remains paradoxically and necessarily elusive. The search and Truth are like the sun and the moon, the moon’s reflected light derives from the sunlike mind. (I am expressing ideas here I have never expressed before.) What we want to understand is not the moon itself but the light that illuminates it, yet we fail to recognize the source of the light comes from our own consciousness. This little analogy must be read allegorically.

Mr. Longenbaugh: That is a good analogy. This raises an interesting question. Is the moon necessary? Can we simply look straight into the sun and try and find Truth? I think that before we can journey to the sun, we must first understand the moon, or start searching. It seems maybe that the moon is more tangible than the sun. We can travel, and search for what the moon and its light mean, but I don’t think its ever possible to make it to the sun. In the context of this analogy, we can keep getting closer to the sun or Truth, but the closer we are, the hotter it is. This slows us down and eventually burns us before we can ever get there.

Mr. Himwich: I think that consciousness, before it is consciousness of something, is nonexistent, or rather exists as a potentiality only. This goes back to that question in class: if you stop thinking, i.e. stop being conscious, do you cease to exist. That is a very live question. I would hasten to add that in the mystic traditions, especially with respect to meditation practice, there is a possible turning away from the object to consciousness itself. The reported experience is the usual wonderful mystic nonsense (of which I have a great share): a sense of unity with all things and then joy.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I’m turned toward thinking that consciousness is existence. And going away from this consciousness I think is a good thing, because I’m not sure even if there is necessarily one direction that you must head. Turning away could very well be just as real as going in the “normal” direction if we have to call it that. I can’t say I’ve experienced many of these traditions but I have a basic understanding. Do you believe that there is a certain direction, or is there a possibility or two, even an infinite amount of suns, or levels of consciousness?

Mr. Himwich: I am thunderstruck by your statement that consciousness is existence. I have made that very same statement on another occasion. First, there are some esoteric eastern philosophies that do in fact speak of levels, e.g. personal consciousness and transcendental consciousness, in which one experiences the loss of the self that the personal consciousness has constructed. I hardly know what to say about such things. I would rather discuss this "turning away" that you speak of. Speaking for myself, the "turning away" is the journey that, through experience, leads back to the sun. This means that only by going away from the sun can we ever really know it as the source of our being. Thus, the journey, as in epic journeys, always leads through the Underworld where there is little or no light at all. That may sound poetic, but it involves real suffering. Is such a journey the good? Yes, but I speak only for myself here.

Mr. Longenbaugh: I think that 'the turning away' is a perspective. If you turn away from the sun, you can see how far you have come and what you have experienced. I think it can help you appreciate the sun more. I am concerned whether it is possible to turn away and never go back? Hopefully, death doesn’t bring this but I think that a loss of consciousness means that there is no more journey.

Mr. Himwich: Just to sum up: There is both an objective and subjective aspect to this: reality is and is not what we are aware of: there must be something that is apart from consciousness itself and yet that there is anything at all, existence itself, is due to consciousness. This is why we both search for truth/reality as something external to our consciousness and why we keep returning to consciousness as the ground of being. It is the paradox upon which the journey hinges. The journey is the effort to return to oneself. It gives meaning to our life, precisely because we never arrive.

The Boy Who Flipped My Mind

for Caulder

It always scared me when he did his flips. What, I thought, if he should misjudge the landing or slip on take-off and break not just an arm or a leg but his head, already balanced precariously on his shoulders. A mere shrug, it seemed, and he would be unrecognizable. I decided it was best not to mention my concern. Then what I feared most happened, but he was smiling, asking me who I was. It had been fun.

For the life of me

Yesterday before school I watched the sun rise over the trees but for the life of me I couldn't remember what I was supposed to do next.  

                                The trees                                           

                                 I can’t remember    

                                Yes! It was

                                The sun

                                 Life    

                                Above . . .

Come the revolution

At night you could hear the wolves cry or was it  my own voice coming from afar, searching out like a comet in the night a nesting place where all would end, burning out, and begin again come the revolution and the downfall of the sky and all that keeps us from knowing who we are or what we're doing, always returning like birds in spring, hunting seeds and love and laying up treasure against the day when the revolution comes and we are what we have always been and will be again but this last time riding on the backs of storms and galaxies, spinning spun and spent all at once.  

The Woman Whose Lovers All Had Green Eyes

The Woman Whose Lovers All Had Green Eyes -- or so she told me, though when I looked, my eyes were as blue as the sky, just like hers. She said that’s because I’d had other lovers too. That was hard to figure, but then I remembered my first love and her eyes were as blue as the moon, though she said I’d mistaken her for someone else. Maybe so. Maybe I was thinking of you. It’s hard to know. There’ve been so many.   

Song for Richard

You spoke the only true word I know
And that word became an open wound
They cleaned with lye, not knowing
Your pain, your tears were like wine
That would save their shining souls.  

Pick up the rifle, son
No you said
That’s no SIR, son
Pick up the damn gun!
No you said. 

They called the captain
They called the priest
They called the doctor
Are you crazy, son?

No no no

Come with us!
You walked away.

I see you now forty years later
alone on that far thundering shore
    “I will not fight your fucking war!”
You are carving a face out of driftwood
the face behind the face of everyone I meet
I have it still and think of you.

You came back. True to your word.
And they sent you to Leavenworth
Where your bruises became sores
Your sores gaping wounds
Your screams the blessing
That saves our sorry souls. 

Once begun

Across the lake the sun falls

Water rises to the night

The moon divides

Lets loose a silent keening

Human bird and spark

And then there’s naught

 

But clap and clatter

Of constellations:

Your story once begun

For my students (2019 - 2020)

For Yoshi

Here an old man on his crane-like legs unfurls his wings and tucks

    his head into the clouds

Here a young man who does not know he has wings begins to flutter

    like a leaf in the wind

*****

For Mateo

Here the seasons wait in line to fall upon the land

Here a young boy already old and bent in two spins the wheel

Here Mateo, young in winter, dreams of hunting

*****

 

That Bird

I. 

When I came to school today, I did not come alone. There was a bear with me. No one seemed to notice except for one young girl whose eyes were filled with the glory of the morning and whose red hair played in the light air.  She gave me a look, laughed, and asked who my friend was. "What do you mean?" I  replied. She laughed again and said "you can't fool me" and flew up into a tree.  Later, walking from one building to another, I heard a bird call, and there she was walking beside me. Cautious, I asked, "Who are you?"  She seemed surprised I didn’t know.  She said she was my student and had been with me from the beginning. This time when she flew away, I growled annoyance and padded on hand and foot to my next class.  

II.

So, I thought I was alone on that beach when a sudden gust of wind blew my old tattered hat away.  It was like the hat had wings or was some sort of kite, diving and lifting over the sea, but having no string attached, it disappeared over the water and surely landed wherever it is that kites go once they are set free.  But then there was this bird call. I turned around and there, where there had been not one solitary person for months, was a girl wearing my hat.  She laughed at my surprise, handed me my hat, and flew happily off.  I knew then I was not alone.  

                                                            

Dividing the night

If you were here

All aflame in the evening light,

If it had been you running

through my fingers

like long summer grass

If it had been you curling

Like a wave upon the shore

So much like my own heart

Beating for night to come

And you close upon me

Your eyes dividing night

To hide away the tears,

There would be no sound

Or silence, no hour,

just you and all delight.