Mysterious mist, how I have missed you wrapping and unwrapping your gifts of seashore and sand.
So delicate, your will o’the wisp touch, your fingers tightening my curls, a delicacy of delight your butterfly kiss damp upon forehead and cheek.
A distorting mirror in a circus or a sideshow at the fair, you twist things with your little fingers, complicating our simple lives, shape-changing them with dreams and visions conjured from thin air.
Now you are here again, in my garden. I welcome your presence among the trees, your spirit enveloping the bees’ balm, your crowning gift, soft-toned cone-flowers where Monarch butterflies drift and reign.
Comment:
A golden oldie from way back when. I have nearly finished my next book – The Poet in Island View. When it is done and printed, I will start blogging regularly again. Meanwhile – relax, enjoy the joys of autumn.
My audience two obedient teddy bears a technicolor cow and an obsidian frog from the Temple of the Moon at Teotihuacán
Outside my window the listening trees clap their leaves beating the wind with their branches
Flowers lend deaf ears for they are dead dried and broken by this deathly drought
In the next room TV ads blare in an effort to silence my voice
Absence and presence of water the garden dry fall foliage crisp and complaining useless tears flowing down my cheeks
Audience
So important, the audience. But is what the poet writes what the audience hears? With an audience like mine, who knows? What does a teddy bear know about tears, drought, or doubt? Does a multi-colored cow suffer, like I do, when he hears the adverts on the television set? What does an obsidian frog, from the Temple of the Moon know about life in Island View? Carved in a desert, surrounded by volcanoes, some dormant, some liable to break into activity, does he understand the morse code words tapped out by the branches of trees?
How do we understand the pathetic fallacy in terms of the inanimate stuffed animals that sit upon my table? I talk to my teddy, the one that sleeps beside me in my bed upstairs. I talk to him, but he never replies. Opposite me, at my desk, sits Hairy Fred, my favorite teddy bear. He used to be an overcoat, until his creator bought the coat, cut it into fifty pieces and grew fifty teddies from the wreckage.
I guess he should know more about humans than most teddy bears, having wrapped them and kept them warm in a previous life. Alas, he too is silent. As in reality are the trees, the leaves, and the flowers. Silent, in the human sense, but full of a different sort of life that overflows with another set of languages, that creative people can hear, but seldom speak.
Choppy waves at Three Cliffs on the Gower Peninsula
The sea seethes boils with bubbles bursting upwards breaking the surface
Boys and girls screech with delight grab buckets and shrimp nets abandon the rock pools rush into the sea and scoop up dancing mackerel so deep the shoal a boy could easily walk on their backs
The shoal moves on as swiftly as it arrived silence after the storm peace is restored broken only by the sigh of wind and waves
Commentary
Inspiration can arrive from the most unlikely places. My friend Yolande texted me a photo of the silent stillness, after the summer hustle and bustle, of the almost empty harbor by the wharf in Shediac. Then, without warning, a shoal of fish broke the surface. She put her cell phone into video mode and filmed the tumbling waters, the flashing silver backs, the sudden disturbance. It was a short video. Within seconds, the shoal vanished and the harbor returned to its former peace and stillness.
So much inspiration comes from our own memories. In my case, a visit to Three Cliffs, on the Gower Peninsula, yielded much the same experience. Yolande’s video prompted me to recall it.
Intertextuality – texts talking to texts. Memory – the search for time past and the restoration of memory. So much can be generated from our creative memories of childhood when we receive inspiration.
I cry out for the love of art that warms my heart and makes me a part of the universe
how I yearn to earn the name of poet or painter though my way of approaching both is quainter and therefore fainter than any other poet or painter
some days I feel the world spirit stepping its cautious way through my fingers without ever reaching heart or soul without which no artist is whole
I long for some creative wind to blow deep crevasses in my heart to make it an open wound with blood that flows like ink or paint and stains page or painted panel then lodges in other people’s minds and hopefully their hearts
Comment
An old friend dropped in today, quite unexpectedly. Six years ago he left. So much has happened since then. I needn’t tell you about everything from Covid onwards. You will be well aware of the state that the world is in. He lives in Alberta now and assured me that Albertans had no desire to separate from Canada. That is good news. But we stayed away from politics.
We talked about the joys of ageing. Heart conditions – stents on the one side, A Fibs on the other, blood thinners for both. The gradual loss of mobility and flexibility. The gradual loss of strength. Our kitchen sounded like the consultation room of a third rate doctor who didn’t understand exactly what was the nature of the patients’ complaints.
We shared green Matcha tea, laced with honey, and he discovered the mystical magic of KTJ’s PNBs. We talked about setting up a supply line, from east to west, to bind Canada with PNB appreciation.
As old friends do, we changed the world, rebuilding it in much less time than the biblical seven days in which it was created. Not only that, we changed the laws of rugby – we are both former players – lamenting the size and weight of the current playing generation. Then we changed the rules of soccer, rued the latest version of the world cup, with its extent, fake gamesmanship, and some blatant corruption.
Then we went into sports injuries, especially the exploitation of the Head Injury Assessment laws in rugby. And then we were back to our own war wounds, like two old soldiers, returning from a campaign.
It was all such fun. Then, alas, it was “Time, gentlemen, please.” The bell rang, the kitchen emptied. I saw him to the garage door, which he kindly shut for me, and peace returned to the house. Now I rejoice in the joys of a friendship restored, and lament the loss of a former team member soon to be absent once more.
I knew you the first day I saw you. I knew your heart before you could open it up and let me in. I knew your soul before you allowed me to touch its beauty’s depth.
Did I know you from another life? I just don’t know. I only know that I knew who you were and what you meant to me.
Once I saw you, how could I let you go? I reached across the bridge that spans the ages and saw you as you always were, clad in white, shining like the Milky Way across a universe of falling stars and you the only one I wanted to put in my pocket, hold, and keep safe in my heart.
Comment
I was talking to Moo this morning about how, once in a while, you meet someone, talk to them, and, within minutes, feel such a compatibility with them that it seems you have known them all your life. Or from another life, another planet, another star, another galaxy, perhaps.
Moo said that yes, he had himself undergone such experiences. He couldn’t explain them. But he knew how they felt, those special moments, when two minds click, and are suddenly at one. In fact, he told me, I have just painted my version of such a moment. I call it Blue Magic, as distinct from Black Magic.
What’s the difference,” I asked him
“Blue Magic is peaceful and positive,” he said, “Black Magic can be distorted and used to evil ends. And I want nothing to do with that.”
“Me, neither.”
“You know what amazes me. That you haven’t posted for 22 days, not since August 28. And yet, people are still visiting your page. You had 294 hits on the 16th, 217 on the 18th, and 263 hits yesterday. Yet you haven’t posted a thing. I have been worrying about you. You haven’t asked for any paintings from me. In fact, we’ve hardly talked for three weeks or more.”
“I know. It’s been a funny time. But I have written and published two books of poetry in that time. And I have started a couple of other projects. And I have borrowed some of your earlier paintings for the covers.”
“Without even asking me?”
“Well, you always said I could use your paintings any time. ‘Treat them as if they were your own,’ you told me.”
“Well, that’s true. So pax it is.”
“Pax amorque.”
“And remember, you will have to apologize to all those lonely visitors who kept logging on in hopes of seeing something new.”
How quietly she moves, the old one, scarcely disturbing the floorboards way above my head.
Such a light touch as she tip-toes from room to room, her floor my ceiling.
Not at all like the young one with her two left feet, both flat, and her elephantine shaking the floor overhead.
We often wondered if the earth was quaking, the house shaking, with the ceiling about to come tumbling down upon our waiting heads.
Comment:
How silent, the house, with the visitors gone and me and my beloved back together, alone, as we have been for so many years. The silence is broken only by the tick-tock of the grandfather clock, an occasional creak from a floorboard expanding in the sun, or creaking in the shade, the hiss of the kettle … a silence so deep that sometimes we gesture to each other or whisper low.
Don Ryan came over to visit and joy and noise returned. I made him coffee and he brought us a fudge delight. My beloved took refuge in the silence of the front porch and Don Ryan and Don Roger planned their future adventures. We will be working again together soon. Our first task – to finish reading Don Quixote and to complete our notes on our readings, suspended, alas, during the summer work season, but soon to return when university goes through its September Rebirth.
After Don Quixote, we will probably explore two picaresque novels, Lazarillo de Tormes and The Swindler. That will be great fun for both of us, and I look forward to preparing the readings and their annotations.
When Don Ryan left, our table top noise melted away, silence returned, and Clare with it. Other friends will be visiting soon. They will break the silence with a soft tap on the door and a gentle voice calling “Hello!” We look forward to that. Meanwhile all is quiet and silence is golden.
Until the arrival of Moo. “Hello,” he bellows. “Writing again? Have I got a painting for you. You thought the little ones were noisy… well, speak for your self. Here’s your painting, Et Tu, Mu. It comes from Julius Caesar, the play. And remember, when you and Don Ryan get together you’re just as noisy as the little ones. And I am too, when I’m with you. That’s why the painting’s called Et tu, Mu. Time to go.”
Out he went, thumping and clumping, and left me to the tap of the computer keys and the ticking of the grandfather clock.
My creativity lay crippled. I picked up two fountain pens, held one in each hand, a pair of walking sticks or crutches, but nothing happened.
My mind did not pick up its bed and walk. My tongue tripped between my teeth and refused to move, let alone to talk the talk.
Reason and rhyme fled from my head, and walked a cross between a plank and a frost crossed midnight road of petty, lisping syllables that struggled and limped and lost themselves as they wandered the labyrinth that wrapped and mapped my empty head.
Comment:
Moo and I have both been on walkabout, absent without leave, wandering a deserted desert road filled with rocks and sand and not a glimpse of grass or a flower. Hour after hour, day after day, not a singe inspiring thought or brush stroke coming our way. We sat at the table, looking at an empty page of snow, with not a footprint upon it.
Why do these things happen? I don’t know. I have never worried about writer’s block, and Moo has never worried, to my knowledge, about painter’s block. The shock of the shadow of nothingness lay upon us both and even the coffee tasted differently.
Then, suddenly the dam broke. Moo painted five paintings in two days. I wrote four poems in that same time period. Suddenly, the silence lay broken, the plank had been walked, and we found ourselves safe on the other side of whatever it was that had come between us and our respective joys.
A dark night of the creative soul, perhaps. Luckily it was followed by a creative dawn. Light broke where no sun shone and suddenly those minds of our sparkled with creative gems once again. I reached out to Moo and we hugged each other. “It’s over,” we said. Then we changed ends and life and the grass was so much greener on the other side.
May it never happen again, we sighed. But I am sure it will. And I hope it never happens to one of you. If it does, just breathe deep, believe, examine the joys of that silent midnight, and wait for the dawn.
A weathered canister releases galaxies, gears, symbols, and handwritten notes into a star-filled universe.
Original Question –
Roger I have a question for you. Recently I purchased a book by Forrester- The African Queen. I enjoyed the movie years ago and thought I would like to read the story. The main actors were great. The book highlighted that it showed what it was like being a female during the war, (1) which when I look back on now is one of its main points.
My question or thought on this book is tied around the library system. When I lived in Fredericton I wanted to give a bunch of books to the library, their first question to me was, “How old are the books? I told her and she said anything over five years in not being accepted. (2)
I wondered about this and the fact that many books in school are being removed, (3) how can we tell how much we have progressed? (4)
I don’t like predjudice but it seems we are throwing out too much. (5) Any thoughts on this. I don’t mind some of the history being trashed (6) because for Canada the consentation is for Quebec and Ontario.
Roger’s Response
(1) It’s also about the role of the nun in society. How do ‘holy women’ function in a male society? It sets the questions but doesn’t really give the answers. It’s a long time since I saw the film. I don’t think I ever read the book – the themes might well change in print. They are present (some of them) in The Handmaid’s Tale.
(2) The library system seems to have rules and an etiquette all its own. When I donated books to the library, they accepted some for their collections, but set others up for sale on the book tables by the door. My guess is that certain books are ‘best sellers’ and will be read, others are ‘dust gatherers’ and won’t be. They want the former, not the latter. They also have specialized collections. If the books fit the specialized collections, great. If they don’t, then they hit the unwanted category and are moved on. This is particularly true of the UNB Library System.
(3) This is an entirely different question, and one with very deep roots. It deals, in part, with the question of control – quis custodiet ipsos custodies – who shall guard the guards, who shall program the programmers? By controlling what people read, you control their thoughts. One of the worst signs of this was the book burnings of the Spanish Inquisition (16th – 17th centuries). The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. (And the Arabs / Moors, in 1609). Prior to that, they were ‘processed’ by the Inquisition. The original Inquisition was Papal, and was aimed at instructing the priesthood in Rome. It was corrupted in Spain by the Spanish Inquisition, a sort of secret police, which worked rather like the Gestapo in WWII. One of their jobs was to ensure that people who had converted, stayed converted and didn’t revert to their old religion, even in secret. Another was to ensure that reading material, religious material, and cultural material, particularly after 1527 (Martin Luther and his 97 theses) when the Reformation started, were all in line with the accepted thoughts of the time. All books were sent to the Censor who vetted them and either approved them or asked for changes, if he (they were all men) saw the slightest sign of dissent or heresy. Don Quixote, Book One, Chapter Six (DQ,I,6), deals with the book burnings of DQ’s personal library. In certain of the States (down south) books are already being banned. One that touches us closely is the banning of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale.
(4) “There is no earth, no heaven, no extended body, no magnitude, no place and that nonetheless I perceive these things and they seem good to me. And this is the most harrowing possibility of all, that our world is commanded by a deity who deceives humanity and we cannot avoid being misled for there may be systematic deception and then all is lost. And even the most reliable information is dubious, for we may be faced with an evil genius who is deceiving us and then there can be no reassurance in the foundations of our knowledge.” René Descartes (1635)
Descartes expresses this much better than I can. It is one of the major dangers of the age in which we live. How do we distinguish between reality and alternate realities? Which reality is the real reality? What is or isn’t fake news? How do we tell? Who do we believe, and why?
(5) Part of the problem is that ‘certain people’ – who don’t believe in science and who exploit people’s ignorance to their own advantage – are willing to destroy the foundations of our knowledge. Burn everything down. And start again. And the new starting point is to impose what they believe upon everybody around them. This is a huge and crucial question that threatens us, as individuals. It also threatens the foundations of our knowledge, as well as the very world in which we live – climate change vs denial of climate change – profits over people. Once one starts looking at the AI systems with their immense persuasive powers and their seemingly uncontrollable spread of Mis-information and Dis-information, then we start to realize how serious the problem is.
(6) Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it – Santana (I think). However, we must, in certain circumstances, adjust our current beliefs to current realities. Immigration is a major issue – as is how we deal with people, like me, of different cultures and beliefs? Not everything written in the past suits our current world view. I have been looking at old Westerns – “The only good injun is a dead one” (John Wayne). Really? I know some wonderful people in our first nations communities and I have taught them and worked with them and been taught by them. “Shoot first and ask questions afterwards.” Really? I won’t comment further on that one… and there are so many others.
All of this comes down to the big question – freedom of information or the release of just enough information to persuade other people of what we believe and what we want them to believe. Power and Control. Knowledge is Power – Michael Foucault. Control that knowledge and you have power over the people. Noam Chomsky has written widely on this – and his books have been banned in the USA. Bertrand Russell too – The Meaning of Meaning, for example, and his establishing – along with A. J. Ayer – of the doctrine of logical positivism – the removal by means of mathematics of all the emotional content of words.
My friend, you have opened a can of worms.
Long may they wriggle.
Comment:
A series of questions that have recurred throughout the centuries. Well worth re-asking them and rethinking them. Times change and the answers often change with them. The image, incidentally, is AI generated, based on an examination of my written words.
I love the way the light rises in the morning, stands still and stately at noon, and fades as day slips into night.
Each day I watch the berries on the mountain ash changing color as daylight strides strong across the sky then slopes away to the west.
A long time ago, in Paris, I saw Monet’s paintings of the Cathedral at Rouen – morning, noon, afternoon.
Seurat, Monet, and Sisley taught me to appreciate the multiple ways in which light fragments and scatters into many colors the cloak of berries on my tree.
Comment:
Moo thought this would be a lovely painting to accompany today’s poem. “Red berries,” he said, “and faces amongst the glowing foliage to match the low fires of the westering sun.” Sometimes Moo has a trick with words that is even better than his tricks with paint. Not that he would ever claim to be a poet, as I would never claim to be a painter. That said, by chance or fate, we sometimes luck out.
I saw those Monet paintings at Le Jeu de Paume in Paris, 1963 I believe it was. A long time ago. I remember standing in a circular room surrounded by water lilies – and I stood there, amazed, floating like a cloud in a floral paradise. Funny how those moments can linger, stamped on the retina, and recalled in the strangest of ways. I like the works of all three painters, but I must admit that Seurat, the founder of chromo-luminarism, also known as pointillism, can drive you dotty until you work out how all those little berries join together to make a perfect image.
Sisley, to my mind, is more akin to Monet – except for the actual choice of subjects, but that might just be my misinterpretation of their combined talents. No matter – what I see when the light hits the berries on my tree is a combination of creative memories that gift me with an insight into the multiple meanings of the structure of the evening light – the magic hour – as my friend Tony Bear calls it – that brings joy and delight to my garden each sunny evening, as it fades into night.
We need to see each person as an individual needing exclusive care, a unique style.
We must let them know that they are not lost and alone, that they will be approached individually, each and every one.
Treated equally, yes, but each in his or her particular case and cultural situation.
A dream? Perhaps. But the alternative is a nightmare.
Comment:
An interesting chat over the dinner table – de sobremesa – led us to the meaning of equality and treating people equally. The kernel of the discussion – I said I believed in treating all people equally, Moo’s guest for the evening, his Plus One, said that treating people equally was no longer right. It was necessary to treat each person as an individual, with different needs, and we must therefore go beyond equal treatment to individual treatment. A word to the wise from the wiser.
Treat other people as you would have them treat you. The phrase goes back a long, long way to Socrates, Seneca, and maybe beyond. It ties in with the ideals of Buddhism and also of early Chinese philosophers.
It centers on the meaning of ‘equally’ and is a wonderful topic for discourse analysis. If by ‘equally’ we mean one size fits all, then we merely drop the grid down upon the targeted individual and tick the boxes where the pieces fit. However, if we agree that such ‘equal treatment’ is in fact potentially discriminatory, then we must break ‘equally’ down and give it the extended meaning of ‘with equal care and attention‘ according to their individual needs and cultural, social, medical, educational, or religious beliefs.
So, here am I, sitting over the dinner table, musing with my family and friends on the meaning of meaning and learning that old ideas can be renewed and that yes, even an old dog like me, eighty plus years old and still counting, can learn a new trick or two [or several], from those who are brought up in a different, younger, more diverse world, and whom are consequently more habituated to this world than I am. It’s a good lesson – and I hope, well-learned.
“And that,” said Moo, “is why I painted Who’s Who Zoo. Look carefully before you label who is who and where they stand in the Who’s Who Zoo.”
