Love is so strange

Every time he looked at her, he scowled. She finally had enough and asked him what his problem was. 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?” Now he didn’t understand and, of course, all the while he was scowling. 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, scowling and smiling, they say aloud, “What an odd couple.” Love is so strange.

Somnium

Somnium: Out there in the stars a drum is heard and they draw near the soft body and nearer the other one within, softer now, slows, now sleeps. The moon hangs in the sky. We find our way there. First, a hand and only then the eyes. What do they see? The moon hangs in the trees, wind weaving the light. There’s a burst of autumn colors, then the tears come. We dig in the dirt and find seashells, bones, roots. Still, the drumming, leading us on. You close your eyes to listen, then wake to find yourself alone, pawing at all that’s not there, the drumming now too distant to know if it is anything more than a lonely heart.

Child's Play

When Selina saw the children at play, she wished that she could tell them and make them understand: Don't grow up. You'll never play like this again. Your feet have roots, your arms branches that reach out for the light. The birds talk to you as friends should, and you give them shelter. They, in turn, give you wings that will take you far away from this time and place. When you return and other children gather around you and ask why you look so sad, you will tell them a story, not yours of course, nor theirs, but of some other children whom time forgot, children whose wings became leaves and whose feet were rooted in the ground and free.

Charles Eaton on Memory

. . . all of the reality that is available to us is reflective, subjective, and dynamic. To find a metaphor that might express something of what I feel/think, I would look at memory as this astonishing phenomenon that trails brightly behind us through time. If it were to be cut off within perhaps the first ten minutes of its life, we would be afflicted with the horror of a never-ending present. As it is, this multi-colored banner streams out behind us with its unique patchwork of successes & failures, defeats & wonderful victories, joys & sorrows, pieces of fabric that have been shredded/ripped/rent & segments repaired by the tender care of healthy recall that knits together frayed strands until they are stronger than woven steel.

In 1964, Pauline was in the Harrisburg hospital with our one-year-old daughter, Jane, who would die of Leukemia within a day or two. Pauline picked up Jane and held her closely in her arms—and then began to weep silently. Suddenly, Jane pressed her little hands against her mother’s collarbones and pushed away so that she could look directly face-to-face. Then, after a quizzical gaze, Jane lowered her head, tucked her head tightly against Pauline’s neck, relaxed her body, and patted her mother on the back.

I was not there. This is not my memory. It is Pauline’s. But she gave it to me and I am now the designated custodian of its continued life. Not only that, but my borrowed memory is so strong that with no effort at all I can feel Jane’s questioning gaze, her small head tucked against my own neck, the special perfume of her baby’s breath and head, and the touch of her hand patting my back. The very thought makes my throat ache. Is that a figment of imagination? Is it the dead strand of confabulated memory? No, no. This is what reflective, subjective, dynamic consciousness is all about. Is it a subjective artifact? Well, of course it is. Every human experience and memory is.

Death is an objective fact, but Death as we experience it is partially a sham. It truly is. It is a construct of the subjective mind. That is why the experience varies so dramatically from person to person and event to event. The sharp sting of death is as real as real can be, but there is one opponent which, if invited, always defeats Death with a salve that gently melts the stinger into a lingering ache in the throat, and that is a concoction of Love and Memory. It sounds like a commonplace that is easily gained and cheaply bought, but the price is high and may include the offering of a full heart.

Pauline Eaton's Credo as an Artist

Pauline’s Credo from “CRAWLING TO THE LIGHT”

Only one who has a personal religion, a unique view of the universe,
can be a true artist. -- Friedrich Schlegel

The purpose of life is spiritual growth.
We are evolving souls.
We participate in the on-goingness of creation.
We participate for the purpose of extending opportunities
        for growth in each other.
We MUST participate, because this is when we are most in
        God's image--that of creator--that this I why we, in turn,
         were created.
Life is being born again and again.
We are meant to evolve into pure love, that love is the
       attractiveness and inter-relationship of all.
We are the indwelling of God in matter.
We are made up of energy participles and soul stuff in the
        same patterns built in all that exists from the atom's core
to solar/stellar systems and beyond.
Joy is experienced in the creative act of birthing being,
        meaning and order out of non-being, meaningless, and
        chaos.

In this sense, we are all artists or called to be such.
As an artist, I believe my role is to continue making connections
and 'real'-izing my place in the FΑΒRIC OF ALL THAT IS.
I attempt to paint this.

My Pick-Up Line

Be brave! No more sneaking around, no more affectation!
What great soul said that? Yours, of course! One soul
seeks another, that's how it knows where to go.
You and I the same, same with wings and wind.
if you keep hiding, you may prove
you aren’t there at all, no hands no feet,
not those beautiful eyes that catch the sky
(yes, your eyes are beautiful. It's never a lie.)
no joy or grief, just an echo that dims.
Listen! the ringing in your ear is the tolling of your soul:
it's time, it's time, it's time, it's damn well time already!
Enough of all this hiding only to lose, a soul
only knows itself as the moon,
the one becomes two.
The less we fear and sooner than now
the more we can dance and dance our own tune.
Let the kite go and be where it goes.
That's poetry! It's like falling in love . . .

Hey there, beautiful, where ya goin?
—I'm going with you.

It's Raining Tonight

It's raining tonight.

there's thunder & lightning too

making sure we stop and listen

there's no place to go

no reason to be elsewhere

no summons for tomorrow

it's all happening now
here within & without
there's no need for prayer
I hear the beating
of every heart in my own
If this is a dream
I don't want to wake up

PoetryMatters 110

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.

Pauline Eaton: artist / dear friend

Pauline Eaton, American artist, educator. License instructor California. Recipient award, Hollywood (California) Form Arts, 1986, Grumbacker award, Conference 96 Hill Country Art Center, 2d award, Texas Friends and Neighbors, Irving, 2000, award of excellence, Arizona Aqueous, 2002, Originals award, New Mexico Women in Arts, Albuquerque Museum, 2003, Water United States award, 2008.

The dead don't talk

I know why

the dead don't talk

to the living:

it hurts

to remember

and we stopped

listening

PoetryMatters 107

PoetryMatters 106

Charles & All

Hugh,

Yesterday was very busy. I drove alone to Manistee to get a prescription for Pauline and a variety of things needed at the hardware store (mousetraps, a garden kneeling pad, lids for 5-gallon buckets, specific sizes of screws, ballpoint pens, paper plates, and groceries). It took a long time and was tiring.

I thought about your De Anima reflections but didn’t get farther than concluding that the Latin is preferable to the Greek (Peri Psyches) in that casual English usage would stimulate overtones of Life in Latin rather than of Mind in Greek. Happily, neither would immediately connote “soul” in common parlance.

As usual, the problem is the fundamental poverty of language itself. You probably will have to gin up some poetry if we are to proceed further!

I have been sleeping well, and this morning I woke fairly early and was able to have more than an hour of reflective thought before getting out of bed. That luxury is counterbalanced by constraints on my writing time this morning. So, although my thoughts will have some semblance of order, my writing will not probe as deeply as it might. I had probably better start with my comments because the pressure of time is increasing.

After we began reflecting on Julian Jayne’s take on Consciousness (when was that?), we came upon some agreement on the utility of the phrase: “subjective reflective self-consciousness”. (Did we hack that phrase together or did we incorporate it from someone else?) Without going further in that direction at the moment, I would also like to add the concept of “personhood”.

I believe I sent you an article (tell me if I didn’t) on Aphantasia––the inability to form mental images of remembered persons, places, things, and experiences. This rare phenomenon draws our attention to the fact that most people are able to form and be conscious of these images. There are also some who cannot mentally “hear” remembered tunes. At one time I was curious about the fact that it is quite possible to vocalize pitches indicated on printed musical notation with surprising accuracy. As I reflected on this, I noticed that my vocal cords physically changed their tension as I thought of various pitches. [Just think of the bugle call “reveille”. You will be surprised at how dramatic and clear this sensation is]

FULL STOP!! A Great Blue Heron, the first we have seen this year, just flew up from the water under the “Yellow Iris Cedar” about 30 feet from me! WOW! What a spot! What a life!

At any rate, “personhood”, although it can veer off and dive deeply into various realms, can be hijacked into being a stand-in for that element of De Anima that is limited to the idea of an essential human element that you allude to.

My, my. I had no idea that I could reduce the deep waters of thought that I had this morning into something that would have any coherence at all––much less that it would relate to the subject you are addressing.

I do hope that I can dip into the prospectus you sent, but I must warn you that I am also following the trail of the common elements of “the good Life & the good Death”––as well as living an otherwise ordinary life.

Something will have to give;

It always does.

Charles

Charles & All

(June 9, 2021)

This morning's herald:

Rising from the water

Beneath the cedar

And yellow iris,

A Great Blue Heron

Welcomes us home.

When you wake,

for Charles

It will be only then

That the sun will rise.

The light sleeps with you.

May you rest well.

PoetryMatters 105

Demolition Video by Ber Himwich

The Poet's Voice

Poetry is what is missing
When you wake in the morning
And don’t listen for the silence
That will always be with you.

But for that unheard song,
There would be no call
Of bird, no sigh,
No laughter, no word

Beyond the word
To call you home.

When your love speaks,
Listen for that silent singalong,
For the truth that cries out
For life and to live

Beyond life itself.
Do you know that voice?
There are children playing
In the rain. There’s one

Who stops and listens, his heart
Beating wildly with your own.

PoetryMatters 104

Guadalupe Box Canyon / Guadalupe River / Below the Gilman Tunnels / Jemez Mountains

PoetryMatters 103

A Madrigal: Bembo and Cervantes

Don Quijote (II, 68):

Amor, cuando yo pienso
En el mal que me das terrible y fuerte,
Voy corriendoa la muerte,
Pensando asi acabar mi mal inmenso.
Mas en Ilegandoa l paso,
Que es puerto en este mar de mi tormento,
Tanta alegria siento,
Que la vida se esfuerza, y no le paso.
Asi el vivir me mata,
Que la muerte me torna a dar la vida.
iOh condici6n no oidal
La que conmigo muerte y vida trata!

https://youtu.be/5q8G1PSCKyg

O Love, when my thoughts turn
to the suffering, dread and fierce, you bring,
I swiftly run toward death,
hoping to end forever the pain I feel;
but when I reach that place,
the port in this rough ocean of my torment,
I feel such joy and gladness
that life grows strong and does not let me pass.
And so my living kills me,
and death insists and gives me back my life.
Mine is a novel state:
I go on living, and constantly die.

(Cervantes, Miguel de; Edith Grossman (2009-01-29). Don Quixote (p. 905). Harper Perennial.)

Bembo: Gli Asolani, o Los Asolanos (1515)

Quand'io penso al martire,
Amor, che tu mi dai gravoso e forte,
Corro per gir a morte,
Cost sperando i miei danni finire.
Ma poi ch'io giungo al passo Ch'?
porto in questo mar d'ogni tormento,
Tanto piacer mi sento,
Che l'almas i rinforza,o nd'ion ol passo.
Cost il viver m'ancide:
Cosi la morte mi ritorna in vita.
O miseria infinita,
Che l'uno apporta e l'altra non recide.

Mignarda - Quand'io penso al martire by Jacques Arcadelt (c.1507 –1568)

When I think of the suffering
That love has so grievously forced upon me
I hasten toward death
Therefore hoping to end mine own damnation.

But then to add to the suffering
I stand at the port of this same sea of affliction.
Senseless in the face of such delight.
Why the ship of my soul braces a waterless wave.

Thus, living kills me;
Thus dying, life returns.
O endless misery
One gives, and the other takes away.

Here is my own take on this theme in Latin and then in English.

Amor

Amor, mori velim
abesseque ab asperis vitae
sed mors me a litore tuo repellit
donatque mi tantum gaudium
ut mare meo in corde tuum inveniam.

Love, I would wish to die
and be far from the harshness of life
but death drives me from your shore
and grants me such great joy
that I find your sea in my heart.

Remembering

Photo by Ber Himwich

Remembering

How like the river this scattering

Of ash. It takes our tears to heart,

And every sorrow flows through love.

The river reminds us of tomorrow.

The river runs through every sorrow.

PoetryMatters 102: Alejandra Pizarnik

But For Song

for Eve

If the world were round
And night had its way,
Then words would mean
just what we say.

But the world plays false,
Sometimes flat, sometimes hoarse
And sometimes singing
Like a tuning fork.

And sometimes night
Shines with loving eyes
And says what we mean
with joyful sighs.

"The Creative Process" by James Baldwin

https://openspaceofdemocracy.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/baldwin-creative-process.pdf

First Two Paragraphs:

Perhaps the primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid; the state of being alone. That all men are, when the chips are down, alone, is a banality—a banality because it is very frequently stated, but very rarely, on the evidence, believed. Most of us are not compelled to linger with the knowledge of our aloneness, for it is a knowledge that can paralyze all action in this world. There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed. None of these things can be done alone. But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

The state of being alone is not meant to bring to mind merely a rustic musing beside some silver lake. The aloneness of which I speak is much more like the aloneness of birth or death. It is like the fearless alone that one sees in the eyes of someone who is suffering, whom we cannot help. Or it is like the aloneness of love, the force and mystery that so many have extolled and so many have cursed, but which no one has ever understood or ever really been able to control. I put the matter this way, not out of any desire to create pity for the artist—God forbid!—but to suggest how nearly, after all, is his state the state of everyone, and in an attempt to make vivid his endeavor. The state of birth, suffering, love, and death are extreme states—extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we fall prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge.

PoetryMatters 101: VERMEER

Ber Himwich Photography 375-380

PoetryMatters 100: BLUE HORSES

For Sasha

Love is born

like a child

who brings to all

all the noise

of simple joy.

For my grandson born 11/8/2013

Of Another Life

(June 27, 2021)

The silences of flowers

Teach us to listen

To our own

These morning birds

Sing of the night

And the fall of rain.

The shadows of trees

Fall like tears like light

upon the grass.

The wind takes

Our breath away

And is always at rest.

PoetryMatters 99: THIS SOLITUDE -- Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens

PoetryMatters 97

Leonora's Photography 148-53

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Étalager

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Helicoid poetry

« (La poésie) ..Il est plus aisé de la faire que de la connaître.(..) elle est au-dessus des règles et de la raison. Quiconque en discerne la beauté d’une vue ferme & rassise, il ne la voit pas, non plus que la splendeur d’un éclair. Elle ne pratique point notre jugement, elle le ravit et le ravage. » -- Montaigne, philosophe français (1533-1592) in "Essais,I

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Il sème à tout vent

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Jeu de Vitres

© Leonora; all rights reserved

The girl at the door

© Leonora; all rights reserved

Réunion au sommet

Leonora's Photography on flickr

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.

Ber Himwich Photography 370-374

PoetryMatters 96

The Weird Sisters

What it's like to be like you?
A cat's meow or thunder's tune?
Try out both and be amazed
How different is on different days, .
Feeling bad? Let's make it rain
and give ourselves another name:
John is Sally but who's to blame?
Something wicked this way came.

Round again and up your snout
Be pretty now! Don't let them out!
They do not know and yet they do.
Step through the veil and say it true:
Life is death, and death a friend.
What begins today will never end.

Comments (0)

Jumping the Gap

for my students

There are so many echoes in my life, but there’s one voice louder than the rest.

It tells me to move on, be on the move.

There will never be a time just to look back and wonder.

Even this morning there are the birds, ever still in flight, and the wind

Chirping in a nest of leaves. They say, Fly away and be still.

A phantom hand reaches out . . . now so near . . . It’s Her hand –

It pulls me forward. Flower and flame await, love and consummation.

This is what I believe: it’s never over.

May the next words I write bind me . . . cricket and rock,

rain and tears, sparrow and sorrow . . . all one . . .

too foolish to see the trees in winter.

A hand claps: there are children at play, lovers blushing, there is a road leading into the

mountains, the birthplace of sky and sea.

I jump the gap and see it all as flower and fire, worlds appearing and disappearing like children,

a daughter not to be but in love’s mirror.

Here all is possible and real – a needle threads its way, becomes a tuning fork.

I move on and hear every heart beating as one its own raucous rhythm,

unaware of the harmony that is creation.

I move on. A tiger leaps through the gap and mauls its prey, a girl beats her heart out on a

drum, unheard; a babe lies abandoned in an eagle’s nest, its cry my

own. My breathing stops.

I move on. A blue sky thunders, stars are born and burn out, a raven’s

wing covers all. A whirlwind out of the darkness sweeps us all along.

Who knows but I will meet you on the way to terra incognita.

But here I am, writing these words, my legs ache, my right foot throbbing. I am hungry, alone,

my days more like nights, my nights more like spring, a dying ember.

But what about tomorrow or tomorrow or tomorrow when I do not wake to wind or jay.

Then, my friends, hear my song . . . it will be the whirlwind of creation,

sung at last as it should be sung.

Listen, listen, never stop listening. It’s your song too.

For James Wright

“ . . . They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.”

There is, of course, the love of life

To go on living after one has lived

In that place that is no place

But like the wind finds itself at home

Touching all things like skin that shivers

And brings forth all we have loved and lost.

PoetryMatters 92

Ducks have found our 'pond'

Day One

Day Two

Day Three (photograph by Ber Himwich)

Day Four

GONE

Spartoi

If we were to sow our teeth,

There would come stories

To make us shudder

Like the one about a desperately

Happy old man who gave up

His love of life to become

A gravedigger and lied

To those asking whose grave

He dug, falsely saying

He was looking for treasure

But so far had found only gold.

Spartoi: the ‘sown men’ of Greek mythology, born from dragon’s teeth. Cadmus in founding Thebes had for good reason slaying a dragon, sacred to Ares, and was advised by Athena to sow its teeth. The genealogical line of the Spartoi ends in a great many tragic stories, those of Oedipus and his spawn among them. In death, Cadmus and Harmonia, his wife, became snakes. It does not seem to have been a punishment. It is worth noting that Cadmus is said to have brought the Phoenician alphabet to Greece. The result we all know well. One might ask why are snakes sacred to the gods. To understand that would be a treasure. It may be necessary like Cadmus to become one.

PoetryMatters 91: Arthur Sze

Quirky Little Love Poems

Ode to the Stars

O she is pretty
But she’ll never catch me
Looking
More’s the pity

O she’s so pretty.

So simple is love
If only she weren’t so damn

Da Blues

You left me standing there
Alone

Like a tree.

Do you know what it's like

Just standing there

Looking up

At all that blue?

Not Another Quirky Love Poem

Please, not another love poem

That’s not about love at all.

You know, like Platonic love

Or hate mail.

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit (explained)

Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

This Latin phrase from Lonesome Dove is neither nonsense nor bad Latin. It means "A grape becomes mottled by being a grape," with the sense: it is the nature of a grape to become "mottled" as it ripens. In the context of the novel, this means, "Character is destiny" -- the truth of which is illustrated time and again in the novel. The repetition of the 'v' strengthens the point. It is lovely Latin.

vivendo here is a gerund of vivo, in the ablative (instrumental). uvam is a cognate or internal accusative (a play on vitam vivendo), a not uncommon feature of ancient Latin. Most often in Classical Latin the gerund and its object are rendered into the same case and gender, but the usage here is also well attested. The grammatical formation of the gerund and its object are too involved to discuss here, but for a Latinist it would present no problem. I have seen elsewhere the claim that vivendo is a "false gerund." That's absurd on the face of it (the gerund form of vivo is actually quite common, e.g. modus vivendi), unless the author of the post meant that vivendo was simply thrown in without any regard for its grammar or meaning. In either case, the claim is unfounded. The effort to derive this superb Latin sentence as a corruption of a line from Juvenal is likewise misguided and is likely responsible for the "false gerund" claim. At best, Juvenal's line is a red herring. Clearly, an accomplished Latinist, perhaps an acquaintance of the author if not McMurtry himself, is responsible for Uva uvam vivendo varia fit.

Just as a grape or a man can become nothing other than what each is, pigs remain true to themselves. "We don't rent pigs. . . Goats and donkeys are neither bought nor sold," only cattle and horses whose character man has fundamentally changed.