Out Beyond Ideas

Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing,
there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase
each other
doesn't make any sense.

-Rumi

Lives of great people all remind us, we can make our lives sublime,
and, departing, leave behind us, footprints on the sands of time.
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Deep and Inscrutable

The Naming of Cats

The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
You may think at first I'm as mad as a hatter
When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily,
Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo or James,
Such as Victor or Jonathan, or George or Bill Bailey -
All of them sensible everyday names.
There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:
Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -
But all of them sensible everyday names.
But I tell you, a cat needs a name that's particular,
A name that's peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,
Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,
Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -
Names that never belong to more than one cat.
But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover -
But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.

T S Elliot

Bad Dreams

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams."

-- Hamlet

Outward Eye

"Your outward eye is like the palm of a hand: the palm cannot grasp the whole of the object."

- Rumi

Fearful Symmetry

Or maybe just symmetry...


Another image from around town.

I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Piano
by DH Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Memorial Day

I don't want to say "Happy Memorial Day" because that seems somehow incongruous. Memorial Day is not a happy occasion. So instead I will leave you with this, an excerpt from Laurence Binyon's poem For the Fallen that adorns war memorials all over the world;

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

My Dreams Deferred

Another poem that accurately fits where I am in my life right now. I'm only 24, yet I feel like my life is over. I feel like my dreams will never be achieved, so there's no point wasting my time with them. Sad, no?

A Dream Deferred

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The Treasured Volume

I just stumbled on this poem a few minutes ago, completely by chance, and by chance it just happens to describe the way I've been feeling the past few days perfectly. This poem is pure beauty, the kind of beauty that is rarely found these days and treasured when it is found. It's no surprise that Longfellow is considered to be one of what he himself terms "the grand old masters".

Read, and enjoy.

Bask in the beauty of what good poetry can be.

Let your mind rest while your eyes move.

Just feel.

The Day is Done

by

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me
That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,
And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.

Ozymandias, King of Kings!

Sorry, no photographs today. We're back to poetry again. I don't read poetry enough for as much as I love it, so I've been remedying that by occasionally posting some of my favorites on here as they come to me. Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem Ozymandias is one I just absolutely love, so that is going to be today's selection. And now, with no further ado,


Ozymandias

by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Unfortunately I don't have any relevant photos of mine to include here, but really the imagery is so evocative that an illustration isn't necessary. The words illustrate the scene more than competently, and a photo would just distract from their power.

The Old Lie

Lately I've been reading too much about war. So here for everyone else is a taste of what I've been learning too much about.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

by Wilfred Owen, 1917

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

(Translation from the Latin: "It is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" -- from Horace's Odes)

This poem was written by a soldier in World War I about one particular incident so common that it became the defining weapon of that conflict: gas attacks. Mustard gas, more specifically. When I read this poem a few months ago, it brought to mind what I've read about fears (later proven baseless) of chemical attacks on troops during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and all the precautions taken because of that fear (if you don't know what I'm talking about, read and/or watch 'Generation Kill'). That correlation between wars separated by 90 years, numerous technological innovations, and the development of peace activism, really brought the point home that no matter how much technology is developed, the basic essence of war changes very little. It's still horrible, no matter how many 'smart bombs' and non-lethal ammunition developments there are. By the way, the poet, Wilfred Owen? He died a year after he wrote this poem, just one week before the war ended.

World War I, early twentieth century.

And Operation Iraqi Freedom, early twenty-first century.

Nothing ever changes.

DISCLAIMER: Neither of these pictures are mine, I found them both online.

Another good poem

Lost Sister
by Cathy Song

In China,
even the peasants
named their first daughters
Jade —
the stone that in the far fields
could moisten the dry season,
could make men move mountains
for the healing green of the inner hills
glistening like slices of winter melon.
And the daughters were grateful:
They never left home.
To move freely was a luxury
stolen from them at birth.
Instead, they gathered patience,
learning to walk in shoes
the size of teacups,
without breaking —
the arc of their movements
as dormant as the rooted willow,
as redundant as the farmyard hens.
But they traveled far
in surviving,
learning to stretch the family rice,
to quiet the demons,
the noisy stomachs.

Another of my favorite poems

The Song of Wandering Angus

by: W.B. Yeats

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;




And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.




When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And some one called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.




Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

Another poem that calls to me

The Hollow Men
by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz -- he dead.
    
         A penny for the Old Guy
 
              I
        
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
        
              II
        
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
        
              III
        
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
        
              IV
        
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
        
              V
        
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow


                  Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

                  For Thine is the Kingdom


For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Moods

I'm in a lyrical mood right now. Moods are a strange thing. This morning I was depressed and pessimistic, and now I'm just introspective and thoughtful, pondering deep things and even getting a little existential now and then. What causes moods to change? I've always tried to figure it out. My depression this morning was undoubtedly caused by my dreams last night. I definitely did not sleep well. I've always had very vivid, intense dreams that seem to create more problems than they solve. You know how dreams are supposed to be your subconscious's way of working through your problems and occasionally solving them? Well, dreams work the opposite for me. All they do is increase my stress and agony. Often, my dreams are simply horror shows, highlighting all the possible things that could go wrong with an upcoming event that I'm nervous about and therefore increasing my fear. Then there are the straight-up nightmares. But we're not even going there, because those are the nights when I'm afraid to go to sleep and I'm so busy right now that I need my sleep.

Anyways, that was this morning. And now I'm in a more contemplative, speculative, not really happy but more content mood. I usually call this particular mood my "lyrical mood". The only reason I can think of for the sudden change is that 1. my dreams have faded and 2. it's an absolutely BEAUTIFUL fall day outside, and things are actually going fairly well so far this afternoon.

Now, when I'm in a lyrical mood that always calls for one thing in particular: poetry. Now with poetry, most of the time I can take it or leave it (with the obvious exception of Shakespeare because I adore Shakespeare and it's always the right time for Shakespeare), but if I'm in just the right mood for poetry I can't get enough. One of my favorite poems is Oscar Wilde's Ballad of Reading Gaol. It's odd really, I'm a visual person rather than an audio person--meaning that I learn better when I see something rather than hear it, so I usually prefer to read poetry rather than hear it spoken. But the first time I read this poem my response was basically, "Meh". It didn't call to me the way it did when I heard an excerpt on Classic Poetry Aloud, a podcast I listen to. After hearing it read out loud by someone who is good at it, wow! It's such a beautiful, sad, bittersweet poem. And it fits my current strange mood. So I'm going to post part of it here and share it with you, my non-existent loyal readers. Helpful hint: if you have the same reaction I did at first, read it out loud or better yet--get someone else to read it to you.

The Ballad of Reading Gaol
by Oscar Wilde

In Memoriam
C.T.W.
Sometime Trooper of
The Royal Horse Guards.
Obiit H.M. Prison, Reading, Berkshire,
July 7th, 1896

I.

He did not wear his scarlet coat,
For blood and wine are red,
And blood and wine were on his hands
When they found him with the dead,
The poor dead woman whom he loved,
And murdered in her bed.

He walked amongst the Trial Men
In a suit of shabby grey;
A cricket cap was on his head,
And his step seemed light and gay;
But I never saw a man who looked
So wistfully at the day.

I never saw a man who looked
With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue
Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every drifting cloud that went
With sails of silver by.

I walked, with other souls in pain,
Within another ring,
And was wondering if the man had done
A great or little thing,
When a voice behind me whispered low,
"That fellow's got to swing."

Dear Christ! the very prison walls
Suddenly seemed to reel,
And the sky above my head became
Like a casque of scorching steel;
And, though I was a soul in pain,
My pain I could not feel.

I only knew what hunted thought
Quickened his step, and why
He looked upon the garish day
With such a wistful eye;
The man had killed the thing he loved
And so he had to die.

Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword!

Some kill their love when they are young,
And some when they are old;
Some strangle with the hands of Lust,
Some with the hands of Gold:
The kindest use a knife, because
The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,
Some sell, and others buy;
Some do the deed with many tears,
And some without a sigh:
For each man kills the thing he loves,
Yet each man does not die.