In Memorium: 9/11

On the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, many people will have many things to say about sacrifice and heroism. This is the two cents-worth that I have to contribute to the conversation and it applies to terrorists of every kind, of any religion or political agenda, in any nation in the world.

On this day 18 years after, it is time to repeat what rational people have always known:

Terrorism does not work.

Every goal it accomplishes is counter to its intentions. It makes everything worse for the people it is meant to promote.

Terrorism is narcissistic and delusional, thinking itself significant and effective.

It is the perigee of futility, of short-term, vertical thinking; it is the least meaningful of all sacrifices for any cause.

In short:

Terrorism is stupid.

Journal: On the Luck Spectrum

I don’t think I needed a flat tire today. But if I did, I needed to have it in front of the house, which it is. And I needed to have one more AAA service before renewing–next week, which I do. And I needed not to have to be anywhere right away, which I don’t. Also, I needed someone to drive by while I was trying to figure out why the truck was driving weird, and tell me I had a flat. And she did.

On the spectrum of luck, this isn’t a bad day.

Tolkien Tribute: The Golden Wood

The leaves shine like gold
in the long light of autumn,
adrift upon the last breath of summer,
sailing, like kites cut free,
taking their own sweet time
to come at last
to rest.
Years and seasons without number
crunch in their layers
beneath the feet that wander,
among the grey-like-silver trees
that stand and sigh in autumn’s scented air…
as if remembering
the past…

A time there was when trees were silver
and growing leaves were truly gold
and laughter light as lace,
of magic folk, made lyrics for
the music of the streams and breezes…
and Mystery crackled in the air
in every season
endless…
And Elven grace danced everywhere…
and Elven power shaped the Land and Time,
And Names were Named,
and Speech was Taught,
And the night was filled with stars
that sang
and also blessed…

Yet Autumn came for Elven kind,
and for all their works, the silver and gold–
Faded, the woodlands; faded the grace;
breeze sighing without words;
waters running without mirth…
Until we, remembering,
restore them
at last.

2004


Tolkien Tribute: The Ranger

JRR Tolkien, in creating the full and profoundly-envisioned Middle Earth  gave some of us an entire world  to explore and adopt for visions of our own. He hinted and suggested at so much he didn’t ever get around to writing, showing us doorways but not going through them. He expressed it in letters, in fact, the hope that others would also enrich the world he’d begun.  I have wandered there for many a year, and love it like home, and it is a great pleasure to share the dreams and visions I discover there. 

(In reference to the third piece below,  “Arda” is Tolkien’s name for Earth.)

THE RANGER


1— Lurkers

Storm and ice howling through the winter passes…
The bellies of the scudding clouds,glowing dull and fitful,
reflecting back the desperate firelight
from which all warmth is blasted by the winds…
Alone is better, the huddled traveler thinks,
Than the company he knows is lurking in these peaks…
And he shivers only partly from the cold…


2— Brothers

Brisk chill breeze of spring whips budding hazel branches
Rattling to and fro, little birds a-clinging, feathers ruffled–
Little brothers share the coming season
With one who wanders out from winter, too;
In a visage etched by ice and bitter rains…
A thread of softness starts, and grows,
And blossoms in a faint and weary smile…


3—Embrace of Arda

Night flows over hard-baked plains, cools the raging furnace-heat of day
Relief becomes a chilly breath no longer welcomed
By one who shivers in the summer night…
A breeze arises somewhere in the west,
Sweeps softly in from distant desert sands,
Unlooked-for cloak, caressing warmth…
A gift beneath the silver net of stars…


4— Out of Sight

Still… Utterly still… Still and silent like the stones, the dead…
A creeping insect makes its way from collar down the back,
It’s purpose is its own, and not betrayal…
Tension ripples just beneath the skin;
Sand teases in the throat, seduces silent breath
to rouse in thunderous cough…
When will the enemy move on?


5— Out of Mind

In the wood, sitting in the mulch and drift of falling leaves…
In the town, the fairy-lights of family hearths and goings-on…
Do they look out and see the little fire
That gives all that it has of warmth and cheer?
They do not, cannot see it, they are blinded by their own…
Complacent in their comforts.
By this little fire rests content.


6— Touching Sky

Clear, the air, as leaded crystal glass, like a bell it rings and calls…
Eagles cry back, soaring upon winds higher than the heights…
No higher place to stand than this,
Toes upon the mountain’s utter peak,
And in this moment, all the world’s free
Of evil, war,  and undermining enemy!
Descent– Much harder than the climb.


7— Unknown

A new road, a path unknown, unseen by most men’s eyes, it draws the feet…
Has ever any human foot trod here before, along this secret track?
Trees– ancient, hoary mosses draped, bedewed–
anchor its beginnings in their roots,
from whence it wanders carelessly
to find its way along a fragile rocky ledge
then wanders to the plain and disappears…


8— Reunion

The Ranger in his world-stained garb comes to a place he knows, and waits…
Another comes, nods greeting, sits beside him in the glen…
The Company of Rangers–it gathers slowly in,
embracing all the sons of long-dead kings
who in their time cared for the lands
and all the folk that there, within them, dwelt–
These still do the same, and also wait…

2005

Essay: Ownership

Consider…

Communities are entities and their inhabitants belong to them, not the other way around. They are composed of everyone in them, they are rich in life and art, in ideas and motions and sounds and smells. Power and wealth create illusions of ownership, but all illusions dissolve in time: lives come and go, all part of the whole, a whole that is lifetimes and generations long.

These entities grow and change over time, they evolve as living things do. To bind them to one form, hold them to one idea or model of perfection is to kill them. There are many ruins in the world to attest to this.

So, consider rotating any idea in your head that the community, the city or nation belongs to you or to any single group of people, any single ideology. Stop thinking it is your city, your neighborhood, your state, your nation. Stop trying to impose your ideas, your values, your beliefs on the whole thing.

Give up your notions of supremacy.
Give up your assumptions of privilege.

Give up the hubris.

The Dance

Around me
there are light and heat
and many people laughing
people talking, talking, talking…
floods of words unloosed,
flowing
endlessly
not caring what they say
or mean…

There is music of a kind;
and there are many, many games
to play within the pale,
in these gardens wide and formal,
paved and shaved and shaped…

Players moving
through the grounds
in gluts and clusters gathered
’round a single thought
or need or impulse
holding hands aloft
in stately dances,
holy and mundane…
Deciding moral issues
who is crazy, who is sane,
and what the Market bears today
and who can dance and who may play
and what is Art and
whether we can ever say
what is real enough to matter
in the Universal Scheme of Things…

Tears and laughter drift
above the heavy groan of angst,
above the pulse and throb of love,
romantic and profane…

…flavors, textures, touches
to inflame the senses
and dis-integrate the soul
into a million flickering portions,
each one compelled and clinging
to a feeling of the truth
that once it knew…

Where is my place,
my partner for the dance?
What secrets should I whisper,
cast upon the winds of chance?
And what hold close,
and what expose
of  my darkened inner chambers,
of what my mystic knowing knows,
of my own opinions, taste, and style…?

Or shall I stand alone
apart, without,
 within the haven safe
of solitude 
observing, only,
and sadly smile as if
superior.



1983, revised 2019

Tolkien Tribute: Reflection

This is another of my Tolkien-inspired poems, this one reflecting on Frodo after his return from the Ring journey.

I see myself reflected in the mirror every day,
the very one I looked in before the time I went away.
What is this face, this one I see?
It looks to be the same old me.

But there are other things reflected
in the eyes of others, eyes deflected
by what they know and what they think
and what they’ve heard, and what they drink…

In the eyes of friends who know me well,
there’s yet another tale to tell…
But I see sometimes someone small
and sometimes see no one at all…

Facing me from a window’s glaze,
staring with a puzzled gaze,
Is all I am and all I’ve done,
all I have seen–they are all one–

Staring back, reflecting…who?
I don’t know which of me is true.

2005

Glamour

In the United States, in much of the world that has long followed its lead, life is about surfaces: superficials carried to extremes of glamour like a thick and heavy layer of makeup; makeup that highlights, changes, and masks what lies beneath it. Glamour not only hides reality, it denies it. It seduces and lies and makes it seem that it is what matters most. Glamour distracts. 

We have learned not to look deeper. We have forgotten the need. 

But there are calmer cultures, older cultures that live lives more full, more dimensioned. They live with their own depths, knowing that besides the uppermost, there are layers like the ocean: the playful shallows of the shore; the quiet beauties and wonders that inhabit the zone of decreasing light; the profound and total darkness of the deeps that harbor monsters… and still, wonders. 

There are gardens in their cities, there is art and music in their streets, and people stop to take them in, to appreciate, to feed their own souls. Cities are not all about pavement and profit-seeking. Of course those things are there, too, but they are not alone. The superficials are there, shining and flashing in the breeze, but they are grounded in the reality of the wholeness of all the layers. Not everyone thinks about it, but they live with it always in the background, always on some level, aware. 

There are the powerful who wield the mop and broom, who chop the wood, carry the water… 

There are the wealthy who finance support for the weak in body, in mind, in resource…

The strong in the superficials also have inner, deeper strengths that make them more whole human beings. Glamour does what it does, but the blinding seduction, the total distraction fails, because the whole human being knows what things are really worth, and recognizes, distinguishes between the real and the false. 

Comments and conversation are welcome.

Sinking


Fathoms down from day
and light and warmth…
in the haunting intonations
of the singing of a whale;
the chittering of shrimp;
the clatter of a crab
against a rocky reach of ocean floor…

All
pressured into silence
in the deep…
There is no question of a voice,
my voice, arising up
from this dark space,
this deep and heavy drifting space…

I would reach out
to touch a lambent particle
that hovers near…
It flees, that spark,
before my thought,
before my hand can rise
against the dark.

Numb in every limb, in every notion,
feeling-free, I sink… I sink…
accepting all about me,
all this heavy ocean,
as a bed of down, a dream,
a universe of safety so profound
I’d never feel a thing,
would never know
if I should drown–
would never care,
nor miss the day above
nor light, nor warmth,
nor symphonies…
nor love…

1987