"Whence All But ME Had Fled" - "A Fish In A Carriage Rut": The View From Veer

The boy stood on the burning deck, Whence all but he had fled —Felicia Hemans, from "Casabianca"

These human legs are murmuring mantras.

Alone, alone...So I shower and put myself back, alone. 

I alone am the center of the world's light, the Lord's lamb... 

I alone am the air and the golden butter, 

linden bark, the king, the sickle and hammer, 

the Dalmatian, the saw, the key, alone. —Tomaž Šalamun, from "Alone

 

18 y/o Freshman freed a bit <> Barnacled Pier at 72

THEN 1971 -"whence all but he had fled" 

NOW 2024 - "a lord of nothing much" 

From childhood our song: 

Hurry awake sleepy bee

Softly sings the breeze

To sweetness we are 

called when the sun 

high shall be freshened 

with tears our departing

Behind the barred door wait -

a lock of wound hair

silk pouch of my gated heart

it will be a hard arrow to pierce it

Dear Incomprehension, 


all our Sun goes nova 


blossoms perform for eyes 

conform trees toward affinities 

for seasons 


rooted they are 

and remain in place 

are places without 

envy of motion they 

even fall or parts do 

which does not 

surprise the sky 

or dirt 


all hurt seems born 

to every option 

seems to some how 

know every plot 


So let all 

verb tenses confuse themselves 

for seasons 


the newly dead are come to ground

Coda: Epimetheus Looks Back

So, friend, you die also. Why all this clamour about it? - from The Iliad XXI by Homer

...but it's late and I've been under-slept, much distressed, stretched through veil and moan, though I dreamed last night a sweet yet-dog/not-dog sleeping upon a burning log most inviting, I see now it is a sacrifice that has consented to such and thus is resolved, at peace, surrendered to gentle flame, to rules of the human consciousness game, and/but I want to secure its comfort and safety though Fire winks at me and says, Got this covered.

So.

What to do? 

Out of my league as creature alone, 

I demur to Fire.

Am awaiting further instructions. 

Marinating in petrol. 

Negotiating 

with Combustion Union 

even as I 

speak or spark, 

whichever comes 

first which will 

inexorably of course 

come last then 

ashes to ashes 

and the mourning

a thousand 

or more books unread, 

not understood.

Tou jours mon ami, 

mon frère to rhyme 

with fire, and sireling.

*

"Who will lend a dipper of water 

to save a fish in a carriage rut?"

- Han Shan (712 -793)

August 8, 2024  New York City

Septuagenarian self to not yet 20 year old self - Paul Simon's first solo album as soundtrack to my "lost fart in a thunderstorm" doggie paddling to keep head above swamp water schlep, I mean, self, tryna be but bumbling along, sincerely though, which counts for not much at all in hard core congregations/congeal-izations of the "somnambulant entourages" who've fallen for their own act, what Alfred North Whitehead signals (who became a North Star for me while struggling within hard core Calvinism) by this one statement regarding "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness" also called 'reification' which is "when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion, or concept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality: "There is an error; but it is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete." - see 'reifcation - wikipedia

What a rush of relief upon reading this, INSTANT SATORI, and an accurate diagnosis of what I was being taught as "Absolute Truth". I felt an instant relief/release....soon to be followed by loneliness and dread, no choice left but to eventually leave, or try, what had been a long slow process of indoctrination

but now I'm proud of that kid in the threshold (his army jacket ON) for having the honest stones-enough to begin what Carl Jung calls "individuation" (I didn't know the term, his meaning of it, then) which is not only about "going one's own way" but ultimately of self/ego cultivating a conscious relationship to the archetypal, the SELF, Tao, the Way, whatever word or term for Mystery-which-is - though veiled, chimerical, not much can be nailed down about IT except that IT is tissue and fabric to everything...thus T. S. Eliot's apt phrase about making "raids upon the inarticulate" which Thomas Merton used as title to one of his book of essays on Mystery, "Raids Upon the Unspeakable" - thus the raids were, have become, ARE culture, history, art, science, even religions-as-raids and ever shall be as long as human we's wheeze and sneeze at/for meaning/Meaning while at the same time flapping our wings in the VOID

but don't confuse the utterances for the "ding-in-sich" (German philosophy phrase for the Thing Itself aka the rumored to be, rather, intuited/hinted(?) Absolute (a la Hegel) that Western philosophy, the past 100 years (more or less - well, let's name the man with the foresight that took 100 years or so for the West to catch up to - Friedrich Nietzsche - will forego a lecture here)) suggests "spooks" our very language/words which shape/form what is called experience....our thought systems are haunted by "meaning" but therein is also the rub and the dirty tub of Western civ. bears to the fact that we homo scrape-ians have earnestly been at and about making sense of ourselves as witnesses to the Unknowable aka Sir Arthur Edington's "something we know not what is doing we know not what" and I add "BUT it is doing something!"

The inner Zen Master hits me with a stick, shouts - KATZ!!!

OK. But just try to stop me when my nose is always to the wall or floor, toes first too - I'll quote Theodore Roethke when someone asks me why I am where I am, in that cuni-undrum (sorry, something's just want to be, insist on being, writ lol - and Eros goes a long way but that's another assay for another day) that compels nose and toes and vital parts to brickwall or floor or dirt...Roethke explains to the querier :

"A dark theme keeps me here,
Though summer blazes in the vireo’s eye.
Who would be half possessed
By his own nakedness?
Waking’s my care–
I’ll make a broken music, or I’ll die."

*

My own response, in/from old age (from a poem about Glenn Gould in Heaven longing for cold, hard Canada):

Roll in the coagulate burden then,
the Piano Grand.
And my little chair -

Little chair, hold me, pray.
Let there be, crouched again,
once again, play and play.
Let knees press close to chest near,
pressed knees there do pray.

Let all of me be
Agency become music
in fingers latency,

theirs deserve all waking praise.

Let us rejoice what is in scarlet shed.
Let us praise iron.
Let oxidation within us reign.

*

Paul Simon's first solo album was/is soundtrack that sums my education amongst the un-Even-gelicals, free enough was I to rebel though I was then and still am promised, literally, "hell to pay" (little ol' me? KATZ!):

"You can beat us with wires,
you can roll out your chains,
you know you can roll out your rules
but you can't outrun the history train."

Turns out that this song sings my experience of so-called "spiritual groups". Period.

I come by my hermit under a bridge honestly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgsAmUbrCnA