unreasonable.org

Poems! Songs! Stories! Writing!

See the local stuff here.

Links outside:

• Some of Tom's poetry
• Zelda's Inferno, a poetry workshop
• PoetryInBaltimore.com, what the name suggests
• Stuck? Need a word? Zokuto kindly provides a random word generator.

As I tweeted about a week ago, the first draft of the book is done. (Except for checking one footnote, for which I await an amazon.com order...and given the snow I don't expect a mail delivery until next week!)

A few weeks ago, Elissa asked me if I had done any writing about Piccolo's passing, and I told her I planned to work something into the book. So here's that. Not including the copious appendix, these are the closing words, following on a discussion of life and death and reincarnation and anatman:

It’s now January 2010, a few years after the trip to Japan that started this book. As I have been concluding work on it in the past few months, death has come and paid me a visit, taking the two dogs who were my close companions for over twelve years.

People are much more forthcoming with questions and advice when you lose a dog than when you lose a parent or a spouse or a child. And so friends have been asking me, “Will you get another dog?” (Compare the questions “Will you marry again?” or “Will you have another child?”, which we often wonder about but seldom ask the bereaved spouse or parent.) Many have suggested that I do so – some even to the point of implying that grief is something to avoid, that I should fill the void as soon as possible.

Another advisor, though, pointed out that taking another dog into my life will just have me back in this same place of grief some years down the road. And this is true – but it is also true for any relationship. Every connection we make eventually ends with us saying good-bye, from one side of the grave or the other.

The only way to avoid that grief would be to never love – an even greater tragedy. I am reminded of an aphorism attributed to author John A. Shedd: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Just so, a heart that never loves is safe from the pangs of grief; but that’s not what hearts are for.

And so the death of a loved one (two-footed or four-footed) is a reminder of the grief that is common to us all, a call to tenderness, a call to open the heart and let the whole Cosmos in.
As I knew that my second dog, Piccolo, was in failing health and likely to pass on soon, I wrote this prose poem:

The snow is gone. Where did it go to? There were billions of snowflakes, in my backyard, each perfectly detailed, dazzling faceted. Now they have gone, and my yard is mud.

Did they go to snowflake heaven? Did they reincarnate as packed powder on some ski slope?

Each snowflake was a nexus of conditions, of water and temperatures and altitudes of clouds. Each snowflake was a mass of Arctic air, plus an ocean breeze, plus a low pressure system. Each snowflake contained the cycle of seasons, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the deep ocean currents that make the climate, the Milankovitch cycles that make the Ice Ages. And more: the formation of the Earth itself, the Sun, the element of oxygen born in a dying star, the hydrogen that condensed out of the Big Bang, the whole universe in each snowflake.

And then those elements move apart, no longer overlap and the snowflake cannot be seen. But it is not gone, because the seasons, the Earth, the Sun, the Universe, remain.

And what is true for a snowflake, is no less true for a dog or a human. We are the snow that appears when conditions are just so, and then melts and goes into the soil, and is taken up by trees and grasses, and rises to become the cloud skittering across the sky, and then falls to become the stream and the ocean and the puddle, part of other sets of conditions, each glorious and beautiful. We melt into the world, and our oneness with it – which never went away – is again revealed.

And this oneness is also revealed when we open our hearts, remove the boundaries, and let death remind us of our own tender Buddha nature.

we are playing games

across the miles, Scrabble on the computer
building on each others words
a sort of improv two-author poem

in person, chess
we sit over her board, hand-carved wooded pieces
we both play slowly, carefully
considering each move

but as I steal glances at her
I am considering another game

where I win if I keep the spark of a possibility alive
in a space and time where circumstances aren't right for the fire

and no guarantee they ever will be

but with every single beat
every strand of muscle on the left side of my heart
the stronger side
says "love her...love her...love her"

but the right side
connecting to the lungs, to the breath, to the moment
whispers, regretfully, "not now...not now...not now"

so I try to wind between the tight boundaries
of too much said, and too little
how much can I say without saying?
a look, a smile

we finish the game
this chess game at least
and time to go

an embrace
that
I want
to last forever...

but
"not now...not now...not now"
and so I say farewell
and, with both sides of my heart, drive off into the night

SFX reports that Neil Gaiman will be writing an episode for the second Matt Smith season of Doctor Who. Hooray!

(Spent part of my snowed-in weekend catching up on the last adventures of the Tenth Doctor, The Waters of Mars and The End of Time. Very well done and a fitting sendoff.)

Zelda's Inferno exercise: supported free-write around the phrase, "To focus & believe creates what you want, like prayers over a Rose Bush will Burst Blooms!" A long one, so I played with it piece by piece, and ended up with a stream-of-consciousness sort of thing.

to focus and believe creates
creation via an act of mind -- only what we believe in, focus on, exists --

at least for us

to focus and believe create what you want
what you want
what do you want?
to know what you want is deep wisdom
you can never get enough of what you didn't really want
and so we spend our days chasing the wrong things
eating food that will not fill us

to focus and believe
to believe to behave to beehive to be or not to be
to focus to folk us, us folk, we
we believe
we retrieve
we re-believe, again and again and again

to focus and believe creates what you want, like prayers
now I lay me down to sleep, hail mary, who art in heaven, bless us o lord and these thy gifts, for we believe in one god
or two, or three, or a hundred, or a thousand, or zero
we believe in minus one god
we believe in the square root of minus one god
we believe in an imaginary number of gods, in an irrational number of gods, in a transcendental number of gods, in an aleph-null number of gods, in a square number of gods, in a perfect number of gods, in a prime number of gods

This week's Zelda's Inferno exercise: a list poem, around the theme of music

my father's old guitar, sitting in the corner of my office
my grandparents' piano in the living room, that I don't really know how to play
a bamboo flute, a thumb piano -- both gifts
my Ovation guitar, veteran of numerous camping trips and a voyage to Japan, the
    guitar I played in an art center in Kyoto and a
    basement bar in Osaka
old cassette tapes, sliding toward dead media
an old tarnished guitar string coiled up in the bottom of a desk drawer
a folder of song lyrics and chords, songs I've covered, another thin folder with
    those I've written
a bag of mics and cables and music gear, the truth of the expensive hobby

and memories:
guitar as a security blanket at parties, something to hide behind
concerts -- Peter Paul and Mary with my parents, the Dead (and all a show
    entails) with friends
a violinist who used to play the open mics, slightly crazy goth chick,
    taking her for a ride late one summer night
my uncle playing and singing at the family gatherings
playing on 9/11, and the day after -- and at a party the weekend
    before, the change in what it all meant in just a few days
walking through a subway station in Boston on a warm September Sunday
    afternoon, and a man with an electric guitar was
    playing the music that was in my head

Zelda's Inferno exercise: a prose poem on the topic, "where does stuff go?"

The snow is gone. Where did it go to? There were billions of snowflakes, in my backyard, each perfectly detailed, dazzling faceted. Now they have gone, and my yard is mud.

Did they go to snowflake heaven? Did they reincarnate as packed powder on some ski slope?

Each snowflake was a nexus of conditions, of water and temperatures and altitudes of clouds. Each snowflake was a mass of Arctic air, plus an ocean breeze, plus a low pressure system. Each snowflake contained the cycle of seasons, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the deep ocean currents that make the climate, the Milankovitch cycles that make the Ice Ages. And more: the formation of the Earth itself, the Sun, the element of oxygen born in a dying star, the hydrogen that condensed out of the Big Bang, the whole universe in each snowflake.

And then those elements move apart, no longer overlap and the snowflake cannot be seen. But it is not gone, because the seasons, the Earth, the Sun, the Universe, remain.

First poetry attempt of the year -- Happy New Year!

Zelda's Inferno exercise: free write around the phrase, "It should be free" (selected at semi-random from the Baltimore Sun). This came out stream-of-consciousness, not very sensible but some bits I like.

It should be free, unbound, unrestricted
It should be free, without cost
It should be free, able to choose without coercion
It should be free, lead-free, BPA-free, cholesterol-free, sodium-free

It should be free, free beer, free lunch, free with the purchase of a second item of equal or greater value, free bird!, free to be you and me, I'm free to do what I want any old time, free at last, free at last, praise god almighty I'm free at last, free free set them free, free of dyes or perfumes, fragrance free, free and easy, peaceful easy feeling, feeling free and easy, easy, easy to be free, is it? No, not so much. To live outside the law you must be honest, said Dylan; just so, to live outside control you must be brave and strong. Easier to let someone else make the decision for you -- and then have the blame. Mankind, someone once said, cannot bear too much freedom.

now that you have your freedom, how will you keep it safe from robbers? take your freedom and lock in up in a heavy chest bound tight with many chains, yes. Tie your freedom down firmly. How will you get free from your freedom, the heavy freedom you carry around like a spy with an attache case handcuffed to his wrist, the freedom that weighs you down and holds you back.

It should be free to be free from freedom. Write today for your free brochure about freedom from freedom. It should be free It should be free to follow me It should be free four five six seven eight nine for the lost god, freedom of religion, freedom from religion, freedom of the gods or lack thereof, free to find your own way to hell. Everyone in hell is free to leave at any time, but the damned demand their punishment, keeping the demons hard at work. Of course, the demons are just as free to quit...but the dammed and the demons keep up their dance.

Zelda's Inferno exercise: write a poem using words from the following list, generated around the theme "snow": orange misaligned aching oppressive flange £cocoon grimy fluffy damp glitter confined peaceful cotton bombastic cluster deep isolated comfy

the oppressive ache of winter
cold and confined in the dark

we gather together to fight it
we cluster around the orange glow of the hearth
set the lights to glitter on trees and houses

but the deep cold will come
and we will be isolated each our own cocoon of warmth

but cocoons make for metamorphosis
and in the spring, we will burst forth, bright, flying, transformed

It's beautiful, can stop everything, cause disasters, come unexpectedly. Some can live without it, others never get enough. Snow or love?

Snow is the big story this weekend. It started about 10pm Friday, came down all day and all night Saturday, was still falling lightly around 1 am this morning. I measured 19 inches of it last night, and it was still falling. Dug out this afternoon, which was a decent workout. So just about everything that was scheduled for this weekend -- including the big Solstice show with Telesma and Alex Grey -- got canceled.

After all that digging out, felt like I had to go somewhere tonight! Came down to Fells Point, figured maybe the Grind would be open (it is) and some Zelda's folks might make it (none yet) -- and if not, surely some bar would be open.

I was just down here Friday -- sort of the other half of the question, as I met up with Jen for the first time since October. We had planned to play some chess, but her set got left in her car when she had to borrow another. Still, we spent almost four hours talking, lingering over coffee at the Grind and a drink at Birds of a Feather. Bittersweet, but so it goes.

Got some work done on the book while snowed in yesterday. The chapter on Shinto is shaping up, and when I've finished that, I just have one more to go! I've set the goal of having a rough draft complete by my birthday, and am well on target for that.

So. How about a little writing exercise? What can we make of "nineteen inches of snow"?

nineteen inches of snow
covers the graves
nineteen inches of snow
keeps writers holed up, working
nineteen inches of snow
weighs down the roof
nineteen inches of snow
buries many sins
nineteen inches of snow
makes the city go slowly
nineteen inches of snow
take all day to fall
nineteen inches of snow
will take a long time to melt
but
eventually
will