“A significant portion of the earth’s population will soon recognize, if they haven’t already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.” Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose
Eternity flows deftly through these pandemic* days enfolding in her stream the many with whom we contemplated Knowledge and Mortality
Looking back, we ponder amazed at love among our relations and friends ……….a love that blossoms still, as fragrant, as gentle ……….as a dewy rose among thorns and thistles
We thrash and crawl and climb ………puzzling over the sea and fire that stalks us Our hearts are cupped in one another’s hands, ……….talking drums, they communicate across ……….time and space Our measured moments grave lines ……….in real and phantom fears, ……….they fly, they hover, storm clouds above us
In words of jade, our softest speech is elegiac Our tears merge into raging rivers Our smiles mask our grief and yearning Our laughter is love grown wild and reckless
We see one another in a thousand shapes and dreams ……….and in nameless faces Our sighs ride the ebb tides of Eternity …..Another moment: …..and even the sun will die …..but our lotus song will echo on …. ……….We have lived! We have loved!
* pandemic days: COVID-19, environmental degradation, hunger and starvation, poverty and lack of healthcare, nuclear proliferation. Will we succumb or evolve to conquer? Either way, nothing can take away the love we’ve given and received or the life we’ve had.
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In #MoralResistance and #RevolutionaryLove. (Go to those links on Facebook. They’re public so you don’t need to be on Facebook to see them.)
Photo of Rev. Barber leading a Moral Monday gather courtesy of twbuckner under CC BY SA 2.0 License
the unconscionable dance in the canyons of power,
lined with megalithic buildings, the edifice complex
of the spin-meister’s lie, that the demigods can do
anything – anything – walking this asphalt valley
a parade, flailing lemmings trussed and trusting their
die-cut dreams to the pitiless whim of the military/
industrial/medical alliance, whose war-cries are of
greed and arrogance, believing they’ll live forever,
today’s sovereignty, tomorrow’s guarantee. But it’s
all delusion – cultures die and the hope-crushing
architects of cuts and austerity measures are like
the rich man in the Lazarus story, there’ll be
some kind of backlash, some kind of hell to pay …
“Rich Lazarus! richer in those gems, thy tears, Than Dives in the robes he wears: He scorns them now, but oh they’ll suit full well With the purple he must wear in hell” Richard Crenshaw (c.1613-1649), English cleric, teacher, metaphysical poet, Steps to the Temple. Sacred Poems, Delights of the Muses (1646)
If you read part 1, then you will have become aware of certain things: my sometimes rather glum outlook on life and (more particularly) the photographs, which don’t seem to fit the subject. Here is another, hopefully more palatable side of me as well as an explanation of the photographs …
View from The Cary Inn, Babbacombe … and the roses
My wife and I had taken a holiday break in Torquay and, during an overcast, but warm summer’s day, we included a very special Birthday lunch for my wife – gifted and arranged by our daughter and her husband – on the ‘Captain’s Table at The Cary Arms, (‘Inn on The Beach’) at Babbacombe in Devon. In a moment, as we sat relaxing digesting our meal, the simplest, most natural thing happened, which most, including myself, would normally have brushed off, quite literally, and forgotten within seconds. However, on this occasion for some reason, it sowed a seed, which, along with several subsequent prompts, including from other blogs that I read, germinated a series of thoughts that resulted in this blog post … and a poem.
One of several menus at the Carey Arms … this is the most amusing!
It was a small petal – a deep vermilion rose petal – that arrived from somewhere and landed on the left hand sleeve of my folded arms. For a moment, I just looked at it, admired it for what it really was and allowed my thoughts to focus, for some reason known only to my right brain, on what had happened in the human world during the short life of the rose from which it had come. What war, human misery and treachery had occurred in that short time; but also what good had been done; what valiant efforts to keep the peace in war-torn countries of the world; what individual moments of heroism and courage had been demonstrated by a soldier, activist, newshound, medic or aid worker somewhere out there in this dangerous world.
The terraced borders at The Cary Arms are very well tended, including plenty of roses, all of which were in full bloom that warm June day. My thoughts on this event incubated for a short period, after which, early one Saturday morning, they evolved into this poem – a Shakespearean sonnet – entitled … well what else could I call it, but “Rose Petal“..?
This poem is invested with so much that is significant to me; I hope also to you.
Rose Petal
You came to me from rose vermilion red; so rude and flushed with health you seemed to be. I was surprised when I discerned instead your disposition was no longer free; that, whilst you were so moist and soft, I then with sadness realised your life was spent; that you had chosen me for your amen between your zenith and your final rent.
What price for love you had to pay, and stain upon your beauteous journey through short life, so full of human tragedy and pain; so savaged by our ugliness and strife.
And yet, you gift us your perfume unkempt and beauty, which our hideousness preempts.
(This was one of seven of John’s poems, which were published by Aquillrelle in the anthology “Petrichor Rising” in August 2013)
This post is a part of our participation in 100,000 Poets – and Musicians, Artists and Activists – for Change. Details HERE. Our theme is Peace and Justice.We invite you to participate in this global event by linking in your work with ours. We’ll be collecting all the links in a commemorative page shortly after we close this project on October 3. You may use Mister Linky below or include your link in the comments section. Thank you!
JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer and poet, a contributing editor here at Bardo, and multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. He’s been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).
*****
John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “Petrichor* Rising” in 2013. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.
* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.
[Current world events have conspired to remind me recently about a post that I wrote over three years ago. My experience to date, at that time, had demonstrated to me that I don’t have complete control over the processes that steer me through life. Nobody does, however much we would like to think we do. It is also apposite that the worrying and sinister developments in talks between the European Union and the USA about what is called the TTIP (Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) have rather vindicated the concerns that I expressed three years ago. It may also be appropriate to mention that the theme of this essay just happens to align, I think quite well, with Corina’s last piece – “Wilful Ignorance and Some Food for Thought” as well as Jamie’s “Earthlings, Making The Compassionate Connection” ].
Since my retirement, I’ve had more time not only to reflect but also review, research and interrogate life’s processes and relate them to what’s going on ‘out there’. I’ve woken up and opened my eyes. I admit, from time to time, that I’ve allowed my mind to become infected by pessimistic thoughts, which have conspired to worsen my mood, with a concomitant fear for the futures of my children and grandchildren in a world with an increasing population, increasing greed for its limited resources, self-interest, political and corporate corruption, treachery and tyranny!
In my less cynical moments, I like to call this ‘life’s rich tapestry’ and all the more interesting for it. So not all is bad; there is still hope.
We are all self-interested, to a greater or lesser degree; we are all selfish and greedy from time to time; and, given the opportunity, I dare say there are many of us, who would be tempted to take advantage of privilege and power, if we had it in sufficient measure! I hope that I would not be one of these, but how can I say so with certainty? It is only the truly arrogant, who are unable to see how fragile and vulnerable we all are! But it takes a certain type of personality to be capable of merciless and ruthless exploitation and treachery; to be bereft of conscience – I am reminded of the ‘Morlocks’ in H G Wells’ chilling vision of the world in “The Time Machine“, published late in the 19th Century.
These personalities display all the characteristics of damaged minds that can exploit beyond a simple local selfish motive; even beyond a desire to build and run a large, successful organisation – be it commercial, charitable or social one. I’m talking here of international, corporate power mongering; a desire to exploit and control whole populations, with the end game being investment solely in the interests of a minority elite. It has happened throughout the history of the human race. It continues today, but that doesn’t make it right.
In the face of all this, it is sometimes encouraging to know that there are still some very courageous, inspiring as well as philosophically and intellectually ennobled people in the world, people with huge integrity as well as faith, who are capable of giving us great strength as well as hope for the future of humanity. They come in all shapes and sizes and you find them in the most unexpected places, not least amongst some of the free spirits that are to be found here in ‘Blogosphere’. They can be anybody, from wealthy philanthropists like the social thinker and reformer, John Ruskin, on the one hand, to the totally charitable, nay saintly, who dedicate their lives to the cause of the underprivileged, to help the truly needy of the world, whose selfish human motive seems to have been subordinated and whose spiritual conscience transcends all that is material; here I think of Mother Teresa of Calcutta.
The Captain’s Table nearby poetic inspiration…
Whilst we each fight our own battles to survive and thrive, to overcome whatever obstacles there may be in our competition for the world’s resources, as well as our own sanity, I am constantly reminded that there is also a vast array, a rich vein of powerful and beautiful natural phenomena that have the unquenchable capacity to ennoble our own minds, to elevate our spirits. I am speaking of the natural world; the flora, fauna and insectoids, some of which existed long before homo sapiens marched onto the scene with our unique set of biological characteristics that have enabled us to rule, dominate and change all that we see. But – and I say this with some trepidation, because I know it is controversial in some quarters – we are still animals; animals with an extraordinary ability for creative and innovative endeavour, but animals nonetheless. Look what happens, as we turn on our television screens almost every day, when law and order breaks down or when people get hungry or angry [evidence the London Riots in 2011], and tell me human beings are only capable of civilised behaviour… the fact that we are, well, hopefully a vast majority of us, capable of civilised behaviour, listening to your conscience and, above all, giving air to our compassion, is a cause for optimism; a cause for us never, and I mean never to give up the fight to maintain democracy and intelligently to vanquish those who represent the worst side of human nature (ibid) and the greatest threat to our freedoms.
Although the natural world cannot help us directly in this quest, it is in this vein that I come to the crux. Something occurred to me that I would not normally have expected, not even given my ability for creative thought. This … happening … somehow focussed my attention and led me, in that moment, to become intensely mindful.
This post is a part of our participation in 100,000 Poets – and Musicians, Artists and Activists – for Change. Details HERE. Our theme is Peace and Justice.We invite you to participate in this global event by linking in your work with ours. We’ll be collecting all the links in a commemorative page shortly after we close this project on October 3. You may use Mister Linky below or include your link in the comments section. Thank you!
JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer and poet, a contributing editor here at Bardo, and multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. He’s been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).
*****
John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “Petrichor* Rising“. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.
* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.
Here in the room the breaths come
maybe every ten seconds apart,
snoring sounds from a mouth agape,
now voiceless, beneath eyes mostly closed,
but probably unseeing.
She doesn’t hear the talk in the room.
We think. We hope.
Above the bed, a little plastic bag
of morphine perches like blessed fruit
from a swirly silver branch atop
the six-wheeled tree they’ll roll
out of the room whenever her spirit does.
Here in the room we watch, we wait,
hearing only the sounds of the family,
of the bubbling O2 humidifier,
the beeps of monitors and machines,
the murmurs and shoe-squeaks from staff
in the hallway on the fifth floor
as the hospital awakens this morning.
And punctuating it all come
the snorting gasps of a life dwindling away
every ten–no, fifteen–seconds.
We think. God help her, we hope.
JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words. An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.
I was gazing at a darn moth the other day, bumping its head against an old mattress, testing the resistance of the now worn-out and arguably colored satin to the heaviness of its evanescence, when it just hit me: we are just a bunch of pathetic liars. We pretend to be so preoccupied with achieving perfection, we lie to each other and to ourselves that this is what we want, that this is our ultimate aim and goal and that this should be the official target of any sane human being. We build our whole lives around the obsession of becoming “perfect”. But to claim this while being aware that we cannot achieve perfection because first of all we don’t even know what perfection is, is the biggest proof of hypocrisy of all. Because, in the end, what IS perfection?
To find perfection we would need to establish a set of rules that would define perfection, a set of rules that would be unanimously accepted by all the people living in this world, a set of rules that would leave no room for misinterpretation or anything else. But do you realize what an enormous task that would be? Because then you’d have to define perfection for each and every notion. Just imagine this: how should the perfect human being be like? How should the perfect piano sound like? How should the perfect tiramisu taste like? How concentrated should the perfect mint tea be? Gosh…my head is already spinning.
Of course, there will always be the branch of the religious ones, who will say that “we are not perfect, God is”. Aye, maybe. To those I will only say one thing – if God is perfect, and God created us “in his own image”, shouldn’t that make us perfect, at least from the image point of view? (And this makes me think – what a wide array would be covered just by the perfect image of a human being…)
But it’s easy to lay on (a) God’s head the burden of some ambiguous invention birthed by our fear that otherwise our presence here might actually be just an accident – a purposeless accident.
The reason why we pretend this is that this way our lives would appear to have a reason, that search for perfection would provide us with a necessary and sufficient reason for us to BE here, to LIVE. It would give us the excuse for the mistakes we are making, because that way we could always claim that those mistakes are merely the steps of the stair we climb towards our ultimate goal – “perfecting” ourselves. We invented the concept of “perfect” so that we may have an excuse for when we are not happy – “life is not perfect”. We invented the concept of “perfect” to justify our fear to simply live.
Perfection may exist, but too many of us are so obsessed with the abstract notion that they fail to truly open their eyes and see the world as it is. Because in this world, in this dimension, the real perfection is simply whatever brings you happiness and peace in the “now”. From my point of view, “perfection” is by no means related to “flawless”. And what we don’t see, is that “perfection” is also not related to “everlasting”. Perfection is relative, and it’s adjustable to all of us. We can stretch it and contract it to fit whatever we may need “now”. It’s not rigid. That’s the beauty of it. We don’t have to find perfection, or to achieve it – it is already here, within us, around us. We just have to WANT to touch it and feel it as it is. Wake up, people! Each of you already has a grain of perfection in your life – don’t be afraid to see it! It begins with “love”.
As for the “absolute perfection”…who needs absolutes in a world governed by relativity? 🙂
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. She is also the author of a novel, Solo-Chess, available for free reading HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
The rules of the game
are set in stone.
You can read them
written on each slab
out there on the field.
The great game is summed up
in four numbers on one side,
and four on the other,
of a grooved hyphen.
Funny how those hyphens,
from end to end,
are the width of an N or M,
but a life may be wider
than a thousand thousand alphabets
or as narrow as an I.
You think of these things,
the unwritten,
the randomly ordered
string of letters,
of words, of stories,
of a life lived in
what seems like a hyphen,
a momentary there to here,
then to now,
once to once,
when you sit by a deathbed,
in front of a casket, or
at a graveside.
That’s where they post
the rules for all to see
and no one’s ever broken.
JOSEPH HESCH (A Thing for Words) is a writer and poet from Albany, New York , an old friend of Bardo and a new core team member. Joe’s work is published in journals and anthologies coast-to-coast and worldwide. He posts poems and stories-in-progress on his blog, A Thing for Words. An original staff member at dVerse Poets Pub website, Joe was named one of Writers Digest Editor Robert Lee Brewer’s “2011 Best Tweeps for Writers to Follow.” He is also a member of the Grass Roots Poetry Group and featured in their 2013 poetry anthology Petrichor Rising.
the things that were never said still hibernate like some embryos inside my voice. the sounds that i never heard are already perverted with ether by the time they reach my hearing, but everything can wait. nine zero one. the world doesn’t yet ask me to be alive, the world doesn’t yet need my eyes searching, raking through layers of light for the purpose of movement, the world can still postpone the infusion of quotidian which i can have, acid, next to the coffee cup. the world is still far away, at about the moment when it chose to be held in arms of sand, not knowing other ways to protect its smallness – and my words struggle between silence and burning, hiding me yet from light, protecting me yet from sand. but too many things strive to enter my eyes all at once, too many wasted lives flow their unlivingness just a brick away, and the wooden pillars of citadels feel their capillaries rotting. “once upon a time we were” but what if we weren’t? what if the “once” is truer than what the story says? once i believed that each of us lives only in someone else’s dream, and when that someone wakes up, we die, and our life is suddenly cut by the blink of the eye of a random person – and i wonder, how many lives have i ended myself by waking up in the morning? and how would it be to spend all our lives searching for the one dreaming of us, and then, in our last moments, to beg that one to not wake up? and why wouldn’t he wake up? what dream so beautiful would we offer to him so that he would sleep some more? nine zero two. the clock screams green at me while at the tip of my foot the tango born in the evening pulsates residually, just like the dirty pearly taste of shadows walked upon on the asphalt of a random street. in tones of crème brulée morning invades my senses, ignoring them, and i open my eyes and end some more lives.
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. She is also the author of a novel, Solo-Chess, available for free reading HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
I have held a universal and, it seems probably a pantheistic view of our life on earth for many years now. It is this: that there are probably other intelligent civilisations out there in the cosmos, but, in spite of our continued quest to find some and because of the humungous scale and mind boggling span of time that is represented in the life of the universe, we will never discover one. We may not even exist simultaneously. I would add a small warning to those, who like my mother-in-law, God rest her soul, are mind-bogglephobics, or who simply cannot cope with the scale of it all, that this may be a challenging concept to grasp. Nonetheless, it does require a calculator with a large scale, should you wish to do some proportions!
The following is a track from his album, “Letters from a Flying Machine” by a very fine musician, singer and songwriter from the USA, Peter Mulvey, whom we saw and met on the weekend at the Barnsley Acoustic Roots Festival. Having listened closely to the words of his songs and one or two of his ‘between song’ talks, I asked him in our brief chat, did he by any chance write poetry? He replied that he didn’t; he preferred to leave that to the poets, but that a few of his friends were poets and that he read a great deal of poetry … to exemplify this, the inside cover of the album we bought from him, “Silver Ladder” reveals a brief quote from the 17th Century poet, Mizuta Masahide: “Barn’s burnt down – now I can see the moon”.
… anyway, back to the theme of this post.
The only thing I can do is ask you to listen to this story that Peter Mulvey tells of a conversation that he had, over some beer, with “Vlad the Astrophysicist“:
Sums it up very neatly for me.
You might also want to listen to some of this fellow’s music; there is poetry in a lot of it.
JOHN ANSTIE (My Poetry Library and 42) ~ is a British writer and poet, a contributing editor here at Bardo, and multi-talented gentleman self-described as a “Family man, Grandfather, Occasional Musician, Singer, Amateur photographer and Film-maker, Apple-MAC user, Implementation Manager, and Engineer”. He has participated in d’Verse Poet’s Pub and is a player in New World Creative Union as well as a being a ‘spoken-voice’ participant in Roger Allen Baut’s excellent ‘Blue Sky Highway‘ radio broadcasts. John has been blogging since the beginning of 2011. He is also a member of The Poetry Society (UK).
*****
John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “Petrichor* Rising“. The other group is d’Verse Poet Pub, in which John’s poetry also appears The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, produced and edited by Frank Watson.
* Petrichor – from the Greek pɛtrɨkər, the scent of rain on the dry earth.
“Have you ever known a place where God would feel at home?”
Umberto Eco, The Name Of The Rose
there was dirt under his nails –
those uncared-for nails,
bitten and with stains of blood,
having known the nervousness of his teeth –
and his eyes were cloudy,
sad
and gray,
perfect reflection
of the undecided sky above.
the bones of god’s word
would have fit perfectly in his palm,
if ever his palm had been free
of the memory of one house
on a nameless street
flooded with sunlight one summer morning.
white… everything was outrageously white, as if somehow heaven had spilled its entire bright purity over those limed walls… the only things preventing an explosion of light were some cracked wooden panes, striving to carefully protect the inside from the outside…
only the ghosts of those sunbeams
were able to make the clouds in his gaze
move aside,
and in those rare cases
one could see a pair of
incredibly sapphirine irises,
harboring like a living vault
the secrets of mankind glazed with sorrow…
some said that was the hideout of Samael, after trading his wings for Lilith’s resurrection. others said it was the place where souls were waiting to ascend after meeting Azrael. but nobody knew for sure what purpose did that place serve, and to whom it actually belonged.
nobody, except for him…
somehow he remembered
nothing prior to opening his eyes
upon that door.
he was standing in front of it,
feeling under his soles
the sun-heated cubic stones paving that street.
for him,
that was the second his life had begun,
and also the second when it had ended…
he had no idea
how much time he had spent inside that house,
wandering from one room to another,
marveling at the way
everything seemed to be perfect…
in the blink of an eye,
he just knew what it meant,
although he had no idea
how he knew that …
guided by the typical fear, mothers forbid their offspring to talk to him when he had emerged from that house. people kept whispering at corners that his shoulder blades bore the marks of the fallen, yet nobody wanted to listen to him when explaining why each small crack had its reasons and why his voice had become a prism, translating for them the rainbow hidden within the white…
after a while
he stopped talking.
he sat, silent, in the corner of some stairs,
in the middle of an ignorant world,
aware that people didn’t care
for the reason why he just wouldn’t
go back inside that perfect white house
and be happily forgotten…
because he just loved too much
the rainbow of their souls …
“Prologue to nothing” is the closing poem of Liliana’s volume “The hidden well”. For the audio version feel free to click below:
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
These words belong to Rabindranath Tagore, and they came to my mind while I was actually looking at an over-water bridge that is currently being consolidated in the area where I live. I looked at the bridge this early morning, seeing it for what it is – a connection between the two shores of the river, meant to ease people’s access from one side to the other. And then I realized that the important aspect of Tagore’s quote was not what was said in it, but what it implied: the idea of moving, of doing something. The idea of not waiting for things to come to you, but of trying to reach those things somehow, whether by building bridges towards them, or by getting around the obstructions.
Man learned to cross seas and mountains because of his need for exploring, for moving, for trying to obtain the “better”. Up until now, evolution was not done only by staying still and admiring the circumstances – although, if sitting still means learning and evaluating the pros and cons of an action, it is also called “moving”, in my opinion.
Seas, waters, obstacles, are always in our paths. Sometimes we see them from a distance, thus having time to prepare for them, other times we wake up right in front of them, and we have to make a decision. And most of the time the decision implies moving – either towards our goal, or away from it. Sitting there and not doing anything about it, although a valid choice, is the worst, because you willingly confine yourself into a dead end. And life is not – or at least it should not be – about dead ends.
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
The one who said that was Einstein – and the main word in that quote is the last one, because no matter what happens at a certain point in time, in a specific place, no matter how big the pain, the horror, the joy or whatever the experienced feeling, time, as we, humans, perceive it, continues to flow. Things change. Life goes on – with or without us.
And related to that, I’ll end my pondering with one of the shortest quotes that apply here – Johnny Walker’s “Keep walking”.
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
My kids had a small festivity at kindergarten. They sang songs, and recited poems, and then Santa Claus came and gave gifts to all of them…overall it was nice. And obviously crowded, because for each of the kids in the festivity, there was at least one adult in the public in front of them, admiring them and cheering them and…doing whatever adults do when attending their children’s festivities.
After we left, when we got back home and the kids opened their presents and began to play, I couldn’t help thinking about the children of this world whose Christmas gift may not be big enough as to contain more than some fruit, let alone toys or other things. And that’s sad, because, above all, Christmas is a time of giving. Not because of Santa Claus, but because of its original meanings. Go beyond the birth of Christ, which was a gift in itself, given to the world (yes, I know that according to some new calculations Christ was actually born in spring, but it’s the symbol I’m talking about here), go back to those times of yore, when the only thing celebrated during this period of the year was the winter solstice – the joy that, after slowly shortening its gift of daily light for six months, the sun was beginning to turn the wheel around and days were starting to “grow” again. This was the gift people got back then – light. More light. Which, come to think about it, is such an awesome and priceless gift!
Anyway, the point of this pondering was that of reminding you all that, even if I don’t believe that giving should be the appanage of Christmas time alone but a way of life, I do believe that this is a good time to remember about all the gifts that we have ever been given, no matter by whom, and to try and imagine how our lives would have been had we not received those. Starting with the gift of life from our parents, and to the gift of blessings from our children.
And if you can, if you have the means, help those in need by filling their Christmas time with a little more light. You don’t have to give huge gifts – the simple fact that someone thought about them and gave them anything at all will be more than what they would expect. And their joy when receiving your present will be a priceless gift you give yourselves.
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
The words pierced her heart like sharp daggers. She felt a lump of tears dangerously knotting inside her throat, but she managed to swallow it and raised to find something warmer for the little boy who was trying to fall asleep by her side. Fighting with the need to scream, she put the only old patchy blanket left in the house over the other one already covering the small child, and crammed in the bed by his side, holding him in her arms and trying to help him get warmer. It was indeed cold in the tiny room, she had nothing left to burn in the stove, and the fact that it was freezing that night outside was not of any help either. She had spent whatever penny she still had on a bread, some cheese and a bottle of milk for the little one, and now she tried to ignore the feeling of despair rising within her soul. What was she going to do tomorrow?… A bit dizzy from hunger – was this the sixth or the seventh day since she had eaten last?! – she kissed the boy on his forehead and whispered:
‘Everything will be alright my little love…everything will be alright…just try to get some sleep…’
The child nestled in her arms and soon she was able to hear his regulate breathing, sign that he managed to enter the world of dreams. She realized though that it had gotten so cold in the room that her own breath was forming steams in the air, so she grabbed the coat from the chair next to the bed and put it also on the kid. Her back was beginning to freeze, and she began to shiver and shake, but she remained in the bed, making sure that whatever was left of her body heat was going towards her son. The shadow of a smile blossomed in her tired crying eyes – he was such a wonderful child…and she hated so much that she wasn’t able to give him everything she wanted…’Please, God, help me take care of him’, she prayed, while fighting the pain that was taking control over her chest. […]
[…] The child was dreaming – sweet childhood dreams, decked with chocolate and candies and other things he didn’t dare tell his mother about, for fear of seeing her cry…he loved his mother so much, and he knew she had no means to give him all those things. In his innocent wisdom he had chosen to ignore the typical childhood wishes in the day-to-day life and he dreamed of them only at night…the way he was doing now. Suddenly he saw her face next to him…beautiful and radiant…smiling…his mom was beautiful, and he always thought so, but this time she was such a ravishing appearance that he kept staring at her. She held him in her warm arms, always smiling and kissing him on his hair, and he heard her voice, calm and joyful this time ‘Everything will be alright my little love…everything will be alright…I’m always here…’. Then he felt arms carrying him and a warm light veiling him. ‘You’ll be fine, child, I’ll take care of you’, he heard someone. ‘Mommy, is this what an angel looks like?’, he asked with a feeble voice but got no answer…[…]
[…] Father Christian was carrying the boy in his arms as fast as he could. John was waiting in the carriage for him and when he saw the priest with the child in his arms he hurried down to help him.
‘What happened, father?’
‘We were too late John…she is with God now…she was already dead when I got inside, probably her heart failed because of the cold…but this little fellow here still lives, and I intend to keep him alive. Take me to Mary’s home, I need to leave him in a warm place and then come back and take care of his mother’s funeral…You’ll be fine, child, I’ll take care of you’, he further whispered into the boy’s ear. And then a soft murmur reached his hearing ‘Mommy, is this what an angel looks like?’
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
A couple of days ago I went with my husband to help an old lady friend prepare her apartment for renovating. After moving some furniture around the house and readying the space for the next step, we wanted to leave. The old lady, however, didn’t want to let us go away until she gifted me with some things of hers, including several flower pots, which, she said, were anyway deprived of care, since she doesn’t actually live in that apartment and only comes there once in a while. I took those flowers with gladness, not necessarily because they were gifts, but because they are pieces of life coming from a person whose life is hurrying towards its end.
The lady in question is about 65 years old and suffers from bone cancer in final stage, and despite that, and despite the even worse situation that her own son suffers from multiple sclerosis, she still finds within herself the power to not only smile, but to actually laugh and enjoy what is left of her life, and even make fun of the horrible sickness eating her alive.
While I was preparing those flower pots to take them home, I had a small conversation with her, and one thing that she said remained with me, like a second gift: “There is so little that we actually have in this world, no matter how much we possess!” In her eyes, when she said that, I thought I noticed a glint of pain, but in the next second it was gone, and she told me that she would give me all the rest of the flowers, if I wanted them, and I happily accepted. A strange tone of joy crossed her voice when talking again, as if she was suddenly relieved for the flowers’ fate, and so we established that next time we go to that apartment we would take the rest of the pots too. Then we left.
There are many gifts that we receive in this life. Many objects, many proofs of our evanescent nature. Most of them get lost along the way, and we forget about them, expecting others in exchange. There are, however, irreplaceable gifts, like, for instance, every single day that we live on this earth. Do not let that waste – because at nightfall, the day will have passed anyway – but it’s up to each of us to not let it go in vain.
The flowers that I took from her are now in my own house, making friends with my older vegetal tenants, and I don’t know which gift was more important – the plants, which she turned into a sudden piece of heritage for me, or the splinter of her own life and wisdom that she decided to share with me. I do know though that, even after she will be gone (no matter when that will happen) she will still be alive for me in each of those flowers.
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) ~ is a member of our core team on Into the Bardo. She is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
A few years ago, I went to an exhibit on mummies at the Milwaukee Public Museum. It was fascinating. Listening to the whispered comments and questions of other patrons was fascinating as well. We have a very scattered cultural approach to death, with so many various ways of marking the rite of passage, including not really marking it at all.
American culture, as a whole, has been dominated by technology to the point that important parts of our lives are relegated to “experts” and taken out of our hands completely. My mother fought against this trend in the late 50s when she insisted on breastfeeding her babies instead of allowing the “experts” to convince her that artificial formula on an artificial schedule was better for them.
Birth experiences have become sterilized, institutionalized, and anesthetized as well in the mainstream. My 4 were all born in a hospital under the HMO system (but not under any pain killers!) because in my 20s, I wasn’t brave enough to seek more creative options. However, my sister birthed one of her children at home, and I once assisted a friend who had a home birth. It’s not impossible to choose to take full responsibility in this event.
Death is another part of life that more and more people deal with by proxy. The hospice movement is a wonderful example of the purposeful effort to maintain the grace and dignity of this stage of life by bringing it back into the home, away from institutions. I recently watched an Ingmar Bergman movie set at the turn of the century, called Cries & Whispers (well, it’s actually called something in Swedish, but that’s the English title). This intense family drama deals with the death of a spinster sister from cancer. The action all takes place at home, in this case an elegant manor. The doctor’s largest role is in an affair with one of the sisters, in flashback. When I think of the family drama of my husband’s death, experts and technology played a huge part. Unfortunately, that became a distraction from entering into the rite of passage, from experiencing the more intimate aspects of the dynamics that were changing my family. What I mean to say is that it enabled denial.
The last photo taken of my husband: 11 days before he died at home.
What does it mean to choose to take responsibility for my life? Not to delegate the more painful or complicated bits to an “expert”, not to live by proxy or by representative? In which situations do I most often abdicate my ability to decide a course of action? Are they likely to be mostly financial, political, medical, social, spiritual, emotional or physical? I am only beginning to wake up and ask myself these questions. Steve often puts it to me this way: in every situation, you have at least 3 options: 1) Run away or hide 2) Try to change the situation 3) Change yourself.
This is a good time for me to think about aging, about how I want to live and address the changes that are happening now and will continue to happen. What do I want? I want to experience life in a more authentic way, not behind a duck blind or a proxy, not behind a curtain of denial or dogma, not by avoiding discomfort or hard work. I want to make decisions about who I am and how to live proactively. How do I embody this? At this point, I am still figuring out who I am and want to be and recognizing places where that has been dictated and I have responded without looking deeper. My father and my husband took great care of me. I want to learn to do that myself. I often dream about Jim returning as if he’d never died.
Last night, I had a powerful dream about him, set in the house I sold, with my young children around. My consciousness struggled with it; I knew that the house was emptied and I’d moved. I couldn’t understand why the furniture was back and the place looked so “lived in”. I couldn’t understand why Jim was there. He told me he was going out to work because he wanted to support me and the kids. In a choked whisper, I closed the door behind him and said, “Don’t come back.” I woke up crying. Talking about this dream with Steve, I realized that I do want him to come back and float through my subconscious and consciousness without confusing me, without affirming me or correcting me, just visiting. I suppose when I gain the confidence to affirm and care for myself, my dreams will change and Jim’s place in them as well. Then we will both move beyond this Bardo and into a different sphere.
PRISCILLA GALASSO ~ started her blog at scillagrace.com to mark the beginning of her fiftieth year. Born to summer and given a name that means ‘ancient’, her travel through seasons of time and landscape has inspired her to create visual and verbal souvenirs of her journey.
Currently living in Wisconsin, she considers herself a lifelong learner and educator. She gives private voice lessons, is employed by two different museums and runs a business (Scholar & Poet Books, via eBay and ABE Books) with her partner, Steve.
Some say that “diamonds are a girl’s best friends”. When you first hear that, it tends to sound very…material, shallow-meaning, But if you take a little time to think about it, you will understand that it’s actually a very true statement. Diamonds are not only a girl’s best friends, but often even mirrors.
“In mineralogy, diamond (from the ancient Greek αδάμας – adámas “unbreakable”) is a metastable allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at standard conditions. Diamond is renowned as a material with superlative physical qualities, most of which originate from the strong covalent bonding between its atoms. In particular, diamond has the highest hardness and thermal conductivity of any bulk material.”
Very scientific, precise and cold. Allow me though to warm things up a little bit, by pointing out one of the most beautiful similarities between diamonds and humans: they are both carbon based. Maybe this would explain in a certain measure so many women’s attraction towards these gems. After all, they can always say “Hey, it’s family! And family should stick together!”
But did you know that a diamond is just as fragile as it is hard? That it only takes for a tiny scratch on one of its edges for it to simply crack into shards? The hardest known thing to man is also of an unbelievable fragility. And here, diamonds relate, again, to women (well, they would relate to men too, but you know men, they would never admit they’re fragile ). The same can happen to the strongest one of us. We are diamonds until someone (or something) finds that exact spot where just a tiny scratch tears us to pieces. Sometimes we get fixed, sometimes not. However, the essence remains the same.
I’m a woman. And diamonds are indeed my best friends. Because I’m one of them.
LILIANA NEGOI (Endless Journey and in Romaniancurcubee în alb şi negru) is the author of three published volumes of poetry in English, which is not her mother tongue but one that she came to love especially because of writing: Sands and Shadows,Footsteps on the San – tanka collection and The Hidden Well. The last one can also be heard in audio version, read by the author herself on her SoundCloud site HERE. Many of her creations, both poetry and prose, have been published in various literary magazines.
John has also been involved in the recent publication of two anthologies that are the result of online collaborations among two international groups of amateur and professional poets. One of these is The Grass Roots Poetry Group, for which he produced and edited their anthology, “
The BeZine 