It's probably still worthwhile to make your own predictions.
(I like how you wrote that.)
Thanks.
Lately I've been practicing the assumption that I'm just as qualified as all the experts we're supposed to revere, and whose judgements we're supposed organise our lives around.
This has been a nice change from my usual habit which is to defer the Last Word On The Subject to anybody with even the slightest whiff of authority about them, even if it's something I actually know quite a lot about.
Obviously I can't compete with the amount of time the experts devote to their various occupations, so I have to adopt slightly 'less rigorous' methods in coming to my predictions. In prescribing a pinch of salt with each pronouncement, though, I avoid the embarrassing pitfalls of getting it wrong, whilst at the same time encouraging the independence of my listeners in the formulation of their own quirky methods.
If I'm smart about it, I bet I'm right at least as often as they are
I will be stalked
By this hapless hunter,
I will walk, I will canter, I will run
From his blade
Shining hungry
To bite into skin and sinew
In the small of my back.
But when I see
The precipice approaching -
Lumbering like a slow vibration
With every step,
The panting behind furious, thirsty, demented and blind -
At the last, I shall step nimbly aside
With one foot outstretched, a relieved grin in my cheeks
As the flashing body stumbles, spins, screams, sighs ever further below.
This is really good.
I also enjoyed the first post in this thread and particularly this line:
Maybe poetry is nothing if not a dialogue between consenting subjects.
wow, this is very good post. gotta go now, but definitely coming back to finish reading everything in here. and thinking about meaning of those sentences
It’s nice to think that there is a plan for you; that all your particulate idiosyncrasies were put in place at the moment of your conception and shaped by experiences thereafter for a reason. It’s nice to think that you are the way you are for a specific purpose, even if that purpose isn’t always immediately apparent.
Maybe this compulsive, aggressive tendency to isolation was built in by the gods who made me because they in their wisdom could foresee a time when such an obvious handicap would turn to a definite advantage. Perhaps I keep people at bay because I know in my body that there will come a time when it will be necessary to sever ties with everything and every one I love.
It's only a short step away from 'collateral damage' - the only difference being that our governments haven't declared the wars they've been fighting with the larger part of their populations.
huh... that's weird... i usually spell so well. weird. yeah. i think i knew that.
anywayyy... I just saw Michael Moore's SICKO last weekend and it made me wish I lived over there somewhere... this? Well, maybe I'll stick around here for a while longer.
Four winds stacking up behind my sail
Gave me strengths and power
That I have not felt for a great age
Nothing for it:
A sharp inhale &
Turn to slip; silent,
Useless in their midst
...
I turn my eyes
New with sight
To the disappearing skies
But allow the gaze
Its momentary arrest at
The stains on the ceiling
In the old school photograph
Mine was the story
I took so long to find;
Mine was the expression twisting the mast -
Flexing away from wind and lens:
Once you found me
I was the sore thumb
(If ever there was one)
And flicking the hair out of my eyes
There comes rushing an ancient,
Long-forgotten familiarity
(It’s a good thing I’ve let it grow) -
I can once more beam radiant smiles
At a mirror receptive to the tale I bring,
And touch my face with the hands of a child
While laughing with him at the stern man he became
Yes, there are more stories
For this body, these eyes, this mouth
To tell - stories to reveal what has been hidden
In plain sight; stories to allow one who listens
To face whatever there was to face;
Turn a flapping mainsail full into the wind
The rivers in our minds have been dammed
Their flow regulated in the service of a Higher Power
Different somehow in every aspect to that great surge of life
Drawn inexorable to lands lower-lying and the wise ocean waters
The explosive rush of their youth
Now pooled and stagnant
The wide, stately majesty of their maturity
Drained to a salty trickle
And what of those ideas that once swam upstream,
Instinct impelling their flesh back to the Source to spawn?
A flash of silver as they crash a living impulse
Incessant on those deadened, immovable façades
For they have no place else to go.
There are two species of thought born of Confrontation
(Not itself, as parent, a third in its own right)
Their struggle is Life or Death
One found only in the breaching of the other
But while we observe our own arbitrations of Success and Failure
The water, knowing only the infinitely Possible
Bides its time in a momentary enclosure
Feeling for the cracks in the edifice, and
The rivers in our minds have been dammed
Their flow regulated in the service of a Higher Power
Different somehow in every aspect to that great surge of life
Drawn inexorable to lands lower-lying and the wise ocean waters
The explosive rush of their youth
Now pooled and stagnant
The wide, stately majesty of their maturity
Drained to a salty trickle
And what of those ideas that once swam upstream,
Instinct impelling their flesh back to the Source to spawn?
A flash of silver as they crash a living impulse
Incessant on those deadened, immovable façades
For they have no place else to go.
There are two species of thought born of Confrontation
(Not itself, as parent, a third in its own right)
Their struggle is Life or Death
One found only in the breaching of the other
But while we observe our own arbitrations of Success and Failure The water, knowing only the infinitely Possible
Bides its time in a momentary enclosure
Feeling for the cracks in the edifice, and
Waiting for the thinking to run its course.
These lines give me the best picture of this idea!! Thank you.
Belated thanks for the kind comments, you two! ^^^ Always nice to hear the hammer striking a chord in others too
Here are some truisms to pass a little time & maybe sink into memory some more:
The best way to tell a lie
is to believe in it yourself
But beware: any shoe will fit
after it's been worn so long
In spite of your princely protestations
I fear after a time the Mask does wear you
and there's precious little you can do about it.
The Man in the Iron Mask[/i] (dunno if it's in the book - I haven't read it). The imprisoned prince has to put the mask his rescuers had only just removed back on in order to make good his escape. I think we have less choice than we like to assume when it comes to keeping our minds healthy and aloof from the repetitive strain our bodies are often subjected to.]
You lay on white sheets in your white-walled basement
With wide blues taking aboard my carefully tailored words
And I ask:
'Are these really all I have to offer?'
A beautiful situation crafted with the barefoot arch
And pad, spreading to kiss a stone pathway
To a library, to the meadows I'll follow,
Down the stairway to your door.
But even in my dreams with you
I refuse to not tread carefully!
No more than a brush of the hair,
A small stare to see my gifts impart
And when so convinced of my veracity
('It would be you, darling I promise,
I not for the dreams of every other')
I give birth again to the born liar
Whose noble dishonesty will forbid (both parties
after five seconds) the Merest Consideration...
From the look on her face
That she might actually want
Something more of mine
alien to an alien body
heaving from the shore of one
to the other in a rush
and a wave that breaks
watching from the banks
with the water rats
and fisher kings, we
observing our own oarsmen
and women a-paddle with
the swans on the sandbanks
startled as the curve
took us by. Surprise!
a fantastic ‘woosh’ in the wings
on the nod between eye
of orange and green and
the decision to take flight
for pity’s sake, the keenness
we’ve found in marrow and muscle
drawing hard on the thread
to loosen under the sucking surface
and learning my anthems
with the fire burning brighter
from the other side of the river
where we gathered the nightskirts
around us to plunge a little deeper
alien to an alien body
heaving from the shore of one
to the other in a rush
and a wave that breaks
watching from the banks
with the water rats
and fisher kings, we
observing our own oarsmen
and women a-paddle with
the swans on the sandbanks
startled as the curve
took us by. Surprise!
a fantastic ‘woosh’ in the wings
on the nod between eye
of orange and green and
the decision to take flight
for pity’s sake, the keenness
we’ve found in marrow and muscle
drawing hard on the thread
to loosen under the sucking surface
and learning my anthems
with the fire burning brighter
from the other side of the river
where we gathered the nightskirts
around us to plunge a little deeper
into the darkness
I don't know what this means yet (and I've read it twice already!) but I like the way it sounds anyway.
I've been paying more attention lately to the audible texture of words and putting more emphasis on what sounds good in their organisation than necessarily the clarity of message they convey. I've been reading (heh, only because no one I know is talking about it!) about oral traditions of poetry and storytelling and about how inherently place-based they are, with an immediate relevance that vanishes when they are written down and transplanted to new locations. Check out this talk David Abram gave on 'Gary Snyder and the Renewal of Oral Culture':
'As you walk through the land, then, the places you see and the sites you encounter are continually sparking the memory of the particular stories associated with those places and sites. The land, in other words, is the primary mnemonic, or memory trigger, for remembering the oral stories. So while ancestral knowledge is held, as it were, in the stories, the stories are held in the land. The land is alive with stories!'
So, I wrote this in about five minutes on the train back to the UK from France, but its essence belongs to a four-day canoe trip along the river Cher in north-central France: a few episodes, some personal pre-occupations and the general physical sensations that were imprinted on me by that place and process. Much of this was already mysterious to me by the time I came to write it down, but if you took me back there I could explain much better
I am more often interested in the sound of the words too...at least, I think the best things I've ever put down flow out of the sound and rhythms that are bouncing out.
I think the idea that location is related to the stories is interesting. It reminds me of how different smells can pull old memories out too-- so quickly and directly.
Yes, I think there are ways of using language in a much deeper way than allowed for by our dominant habit of cerebrally decoding abstract symbols from page or screen. Abram's book, The Spell of the Sensuous (extracts on the main site from the above link) is well worth reading on this. When conjuring sound and meaning from these symbols (no mean feat in itself) the result is somehow weaker and more ... deprived sensually when you compare it to direct face-to-face communication. 'Disembodied', to use the word differently (I think) to how I meant it in the title...
Modern English in its standard international business mode is remarkably 'square' in this regard. Regional dialects, pidgin mixes and other subcultural phenomena like 'Hiphopspeak' all seem to revert to the norm by reintroducing rhythmic lilts and an easier 'flow'. Again, this works as a breakup of the homogenous monoculture with a new emphasis on place - a re-rooting, if you will, of the language in its local environment. Taking the words off the page and giving breath to them (Abram sees the divorce of alphabet from breath as a pivotal moment in the alienation of civilised man from his surroundings) is the only way they can really make sense in the fullest meaning of the word.
Ian, it occurs to me that "correct" language is a way of having a more universal form of communication though. For, if the idea of location (which might be related to dialect) goes totally unchecked, at some point people no longer understand each other...a new language is born...so I suppose there is also some good reason for a standard or simple form in a language. More people can communicate without the barrier of local slang, customs, meanings.
Which is not to say, that having a second, more specific language is not useful or fun.
alien to an alien body
heaving from the shore of one
to the other in a rush
and a wave that breaks
watching from the banks
with the water rats
and fisher kings, we
observing our own oarsmen
and women a-paddle with
the swans on the sandbanks
startled as the curve
took us by. Surprise!
a fantastic ‘woosh’ in the wings
on the nod between eye
of orange and green and
the decision to take flight
for pity’s sake, the keenness
we’ve found in marrow and muscle
drawing hard on the thread
to loosen under the sucking surface
and learning my anthems
with the fire burning brighter
from the other side of the river
where we gathered the nightskirts
around us to plunge a little deeper
into the darkness
interesting to see this was inspired by a canoe trip, as this piece brought images of my own canoe trips to mind. never knew there were canoe trip options in france, an interesting idea for the future
Hmm, "correct" according to who? Language has long been an important tool in the kit of the imperial conquerors. The Gaelic cultures in Scotland for instance were subdued by the English specifically through the education of the elder sons and later the entire population in the foreign English protestant traditions. If you want to destroy or absorb other cultures into yours then the indigenous language and religious traditions are your first targets for 're-education', and a literal dis-location in these is an inevitable result when you've finally succeeded in imposing your replacements. A 'universal form of communication' perhaps arises as a result, but I get the impression that it's quite a one-sided affair: "Listen to what we're saying. Here's what you're going to do, and you'd better get down to it fast and without complaining or we'll kick your ass."
if the idea of location (which might be related to dialect) goes totally unchecked, at some point people no longer understand each other...a new language is born...so I suppose there is also some good reason for a standard or simple form in a language. More people can communicate without the barrier of local slang, customs, meanings.
Yeah - people would understand each other, but mostly in the local context with less understanding the further away they got from home. All of which serves to anchor you in your locality. In New Guinea I've heard there's a different language for every valley, and there's reason to suppose that much of the world was like this before the empires started spreading. Bringing 'universal language' into this context means a massive loss of cultural diversity and it's revealing how often this process has gone hand in hand with the other more recognised forms of genocide.
But why would you want to communicate with the people from the next valley anyway? I think the 'good reason for a standard or simple form in a language' is the wish to trade with the other folks. Thus English (or any other language for that matter) in its universalised form was an essential pre-requisite for the globalised economy. You can play the game if you speak the language... For those fed up with globalisation, localising your language by intentionally putting up barriers of 'local slang, customs, meanings' is a good place to start IMO. And yes, it also happens to be useful (albeit not for the national economy) and fun
never knew there were canoe trip options in france, an interesting idea for the future
Dunno whether you'd be looking for more 'whitewater' experiences (this definitely wasn't one of those) - in which case you'd probably be best heading for the central mountains - but I saw a chart and most of the major rivers appear to be navigable.
Comments
(I like how you wrote that.)
Thanks.
Lately I've been practicing the assumption that I'm just as qualified as all the experts we're supposed to revere, and whose judgements we're supposed organise our lives around.
This has been a nice change from my usual habit which is to defer the Last Word On The Subject to anybody with even the slightest whiff of authority about them, even if it's something I actually know quite a lot about.
Obviously I can't compete with the amount of time the experts devote to their various occupations, so I have to adopt slightly 'less rigorous' methods in coming to my predictions. In prescribing a pinch of salt with each pronouncement, though, I avoid the embarrassing pitfalls of getting it wrong, whilst at the same time encouraging the independence of my listeners in the formulation of their own quirky methods.
If I'm smart about it, I bet I'm right at least as often as they are
is as easy (or as difficult) as the realisation
that it’s impossible not to.
Only the obsessive compulsives
who must complicate the simplest task in ritual
will tell you otherwise.
Doing Something New
is as easy (or as difficult) as stepping off a path
and into the forest.
This is really good.
I also enjoyed the first post in this thread and particularly this line:
Maybe poetry is nothing if not a dialogue between consenting subjects.
Thanks for sharing.
I forgot about that 'consenting subjects' line. I should perhaps figure out a new context for it so's it doesn't get lost in the rest of the muddle...
Sharing's my pleasure too.
Maybe this compulsive, aggressive tendency to isolation was built in by the gods who made me because they in their wisdom could foresee a time when such an obvious handicap would turn to a definite advantage. Perhaps I keep people at bay because I know in my body that there will come a time when it will be necessary to sever ties with everything and every one I love.
my memories were an odour imprinted
in clothing whose solemn rites of
purification I was beginning to question
by candlelight it seemed as I went
about my dry, sacred business at gone
two in the morning (ah, memory!)
it was good to receive the kiss of wet grass
on the soles of my feet; to dance around
the heavy lines, slowly easing their load
by the dull clunk of pegs dropped into the basket
a blister opens on the ball of my middle finger:
the small ecstasy of doubt
In my country
you can stalk
an innocent man
and shoot him
seven times
in the head
with no provocation
and they won’t call it
'MURDER'.
No.
they will call it
a 'breach of health and safety laws'.
***
See http://ukwatch.net/article/quot_endangering_the_public_quot if you want your blood boiled.
What the fuck is going on?
it's a very wierd world we live on
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/mene-n03.shtml
It's only a short step away from 'collateral damage' - the only difference being that our governments haven't declared the wars they've been fighting with the larger part of their populations.
BTW - 'i after e' doesn't work with 'weird'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_e_except_after_c#British_version
anywayyy... I just saw Michael Moore's SICKO last weekend and it made me wish I lived over there somewhere... this? Well, maybe I'll stick around here for a while longer.
Gave me strengths and power
That I have not felt for a great age
Nothing for it:
A sharp inhale &
Turn to slip; silent,
Useless in their midst
...
I turn my eyes
New with sight
To the disappearing skies
But allow the gaze
Its momentary arrest at
The stains on the ceiling
In the old school photograph
Mine was the story
I took so long to find;
Mine was the expression twisting the mast -
Flexing away from wind and lens:
Once you found me
I was the sore thumb
(If ever there was one)
And flicking the hair out of my eyes
There comes rushing an ancient,
Long-forgotten familiarity
(It’s a good thing I’ve let it grow) -
I can once more beam radiant smiles
At a mirror receptive to the tale I bring,
And touch my face with the hands of a child
While laughing with him at the stern man he became
Yes, there are more stories
For this body, these eyes, this mouth
To tell - stories to reveal what has been hidden
In plain sight; stories to allow one who listens
To face whatever there was to face;
Turn a flapping mainsail full into the wind
Their flow regulated in the service of a Higher Power
Different somehow in every aspect to that great surge of life
Drawn inexorable to lands lower-lying and the wise ocean waters
The explosive rush of their youth
Now pooled and stagnant
The wide, stately majesty of their maturity
Drained to a salty trickle
And what of those ideas that once swam upstream,
Instinct impelling their flesh back to the Source to spawn?
A flash of silver as they crash a living impulse
Incessant on those deadened, immovable façades
For they have no place else to go.
There are two species of thought born of Confrontation
(Not itself, as parent, a third in its own right)
Their struggle is Life or Death
One found only in the breaching of the other
But while we observe our own arbitrations of Success and Failure
The water, knowing only the infinitely Possible
Bides its time in a momentary enclosure
Feeling for the cracks in the edifice, and
Waiting for the thinking to run its course.
These lines give me the best picture of this idea!! Thank you.
I'll remember this for a long time.
Here are some truisms to pass a little time & maybe sink into memory some more:
The best way to tell a lie
is to believe in it yourself
But beware: any shoe will fit
after it's been worn so long
In spite of your princely protestations
I fear after a time the Mask does wear you
and there's precious little you can do about it.
The Man in the Iron Mask[/i] (dunno if it's in the book - I haven't read it). The imprisoned prince has to put the mask his rescuers had only just removed back on in order to make good his escape. I think we have less choice than we like to assume when it comes to keeping our minds healthy and aloof from the repetitive strain our bodies are often subjected to.]
what's that PJ tune about the masks, again? hmm slightly sacreligious.... fuck... i can't even spell sacriligious anymore
what's the world coming to?
You lay on white sheets in your white-walled basement
With wide blues taking aboard my carefully tailored words
And I ask:
'Are these really all I have to offer?'
A beautiful situation crafted with the barefoot arch
And pad, spreading to kiss a stone pathway
To a library, to the meadows I'll follow,
Down the stairway to your door.
But even in my dreams with you
I refuse to not tread carefully!
No more than a brush of the hair,
A small stare to see my gifts impart
And when so convinced of my veracity
('It would be you, darling I promise,
I not for the dreams of every other')
I give birth again to the born liar
Whose noble dishonesty will forbid (both parties
after five seconds) the Merest Consideration...
From the look on her face
That she might actually want
Something more of mine
To take on board
*If* not for the dreams of every other')
heaving from the shore of one
to the other in a rush
and a wave that breaks
watching from the banks
with the water rats
and fisher kings, we
observing our own oarsmen
and women a-paddle with
the swans on the sandbanks
startled as the curve
took us by. Surprise!
a fantastic ‘woosh’ in the wings
on the nod between eye
of orange and green and
the decision to take flight
for pity’s sake, the keenness
we’ve found in marrow and muscle
drawing hard on the thread
to loosen under the sucking surface
and learning my anthems
with the fire burning brighter
from the other side of the river
where we gathered the nightskirts
around us to plunge a little deeper
into the darkness
I don't know what this means yet (and I've read it twice already!) but I like the way it sounds anyway.
...
I've been paying more attention lately to the audible texture of words and putting more emphasis on what sounds good in their organisation than necessarily the clarity of message they convey. I've been reading (heh, only because no one I know is talking about it!) about oral traditions of poetry and storytelling and about how inherently place-based they are, with an immediate relevance that vanishes when they are written down and transplanted to new locations. Check out this talk David Abram gave on 'Gary Snyder and the Renewal of Oral Culture':
http://www.wildethics.com/essays/on_snyder.html
sample:
'As you walk through the land, then, the places you see and the sites you encounter are continually sparking the memory of the particular stories associated with those places and sites. The land, in other words, is the primary mnemonic, or memory trigger, for remembering the oral stories. So while ancestral knowledge is held, as it were, in the stories, the stories are held in the land. The land is alive with stories!'
So, I wrote this in about five minutes on the train back to the UK from France, but its essence belongs to a four-day canoe trip along the river Cher in north-central France: a few episodes, some personal pre-occupations and the general physical sensations that were imprinted on me by that place and process. Much of this was already mysterious to me by the time I came to write it down, but if you took me back there I could explain much better
mmm, fluvial erotics...
I think the idea that location is related to the stories is interesting.
Modern English in its standard international business mode is remarkably 'square' in this regard. Regional dialects, pidgin mixes and other subcultural phenomena like 'Hiphopspeak' all seem to revert to the norm by reintroducing rhythmic lilts and an easier 'flow'. Again, this works as a breakup of the homogenous monoculture with a new emphasis on place - a re-rooting, if you will, of the language in its local environment. Taking the words off the page and giving breath to them (Abram sees the divorce of alphabet from breath as a pivotal moment in the alienation of civilised man from his surroundings) is the only way they can really make sense in the fullest meaning of the word.
Which is not to say, that having a second, more specific language is not useful or fun.
interesting to see this was inspired by a canoe trip, as this piece brought images of my own canoe trips to mind. never knew there were canoe trip options in france, an interesting idea for the future
Yeah - people would understand each other, but mostly in the local context with less understanding the further away they got from home. All of which serves to anchor you in your locality. In New Guinea I've heard there's a different language for every valley, and there's reason to suppose that much of the world was like this before the empires started spreading. Bringing 'universal language' into this context means a massive loss of cultural diversity and it's revealing how often this process has gone hand in hand with the other more recognised forms of genocide.
But why would you want to communicate with the people from the next valley anyway? I think the 'good reason for a standard or simple form in a language' is the wish to trade with the other folks. Thus English (or any other language for that matter) in its universalised form was an essential pre-requisite for the globalised economy. You can play the game if you speak the language... For those fed up with globalisation, localising your language by intentionally putting up barriers of 'local slang, customs, meanings' is a good place to start IMO. And yes, it also happens to be useful (albeit not for the national economy) and fun
Dunno whether you'd be looking for more 'whitewater' experiences (this definitely wasn't one of those) - in which case you'd probably be best heading for the central mountains - but I saw a chart and most of the major rivers appear to be navigable.