Goodbye 2012, Hello new year

Photo by Luis L. Tijerina - Taken in Burlington, Vermont last night

 
What December Said to January

Let the record
show I did
not go willingly.

Nor am I impressed
by the ruse you
call “The First,”
which you use
to hide the fact
I passed this way.

I am offended,
not ended.

Do not forget,
I have frozen ponds
and cast blood-red berries
to the ground; I have
blotted out the sun.

You have crocuses,
I’ll grant you that;
but I have summoned them;
the rest you leave for
spring to solve.

My advice to you?

Take pride in what you do
and never follow suit;
your days are numbered;
be true to them.
________________________________________

From Poems, Slightly Used, by William Michaelian.    I posted this same poem here in 2009 (with William's kind permission) and thought I'd include it again.

End of year thanks to the many fellow writers/poets/bloggers who've inspired, shared and generously given of their time, talent, and encouragement when approached by the Salamander for poems, photos or art work, or queries about poetry, translation or writing in general, some of whom have since become treasured friends.

HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL!

Real and Not Real, Voices, and the Layers in Between

In a brief conversation with a poet recently, the subject came up of the poems and stories we write as creative imaginings versus those based on things personally experienced.   "A lot of my poems are made up," he told me.  "Sometimes the ones made up seem real, and the real ones seem made up." Getting fired from an ice-cream factory for bleeding on the fudgsicles, for example, actually happened; a poem about his father dying--which elicited condolences--was entirely fictional.

Speaking of the real and the imagined in our writing, here on my desk sits fellow blogger William Michaelian's recently published novel, A Listening Thing, of which I have copy #84--of the Tenth Anniversary Authorized Print Edition.    "I am Stephen Monroe: a fictional character," says Michaelian  in the Preface. "And yet I'm also Stephen's creator, and the author of his harrowing introspective tale."

The Afterword repeats this affirmation  quoted in the Preface:  "I am  Stephen Monroe" (with the  "I" italicized), and is signed "Stephen Monroe."   (Me, not that Michaelian dude, I felt his italicized "I"  insisting.  As if to imply: Well, he might've created me but he's not me!  I'm me. I  am Stephen Monroe.)  If you've ever read any of Michaelian's reported dreams you will not find this sort of situation unusual.  He has many faces, and his writings, like his artistic renderings, keep evolving.  This first novel is ample proof.

The book is by and about Stephen Monroe, as he reflects on himself and his life past and present.  Above and beyond the story itself there's a pocketful of insights about those things we sometimes wonder about but can never quite figure out--such as the possibility that  "Everything that is, isn't" and "Everything that isn't, is." 

Truth to tell, I have known people like Stephen Monroe--lonely, unhappy individuals holding tenaciously to a particular remembered time/place/relationship, unable to stop looking at it, mentally re-living it, feeling it important to preserve, describe and explain, wishing it could be reprogrammed for a different outcome in the now.  "It is in speaking, that I am able to figure things out", Stephen  says on page 133.  His marriage has failed; his wife, and the world, have moved on but he remains stuck in a memory warp, unable to let go.   ("Are you coming to bed?" his ex-wife Mary (who'd left three years before) beckons, in a familiar scene still playing out in his mind.)

"If this isn't real, then nothing is,"  says Stephen.  "And if I am real, everything is."  It's true, though, I thought as I read that.  We construct our own 'realities.'  The past is an integral part of Stephen's reality and his identity as well. "It would be healthier," he admits, "to let go" of it.  But he can't.  Stephen, like his mother with whom he visits on a weekend described in the book, feels "obliged to take care of things"--the way his father did, and the imagined loss of the family home, as with his loss of Mary,  to him signified  "there would be no meaningful place left to go."   Home, family, one's traditions and memorabilia and routine, are everything.  You lose that, and you become unanchored, the "I" part of you suddenly severed from the "we" or "us" that's been dissolved or taken away.

I found in this novel unexpectedly significant little nuggets of perception vis-a-vis universal parallels above and beyond the confines of the narrative, echoing what Tim Hinshaw (the author Michaelian's friend who died last year), noted about the book's "insight into the human condition." How many of us attempt to understand, much less reflect on why we "always do" what we always do, or question who we really are.   "You failed, son", Stephen imagines his father saying; "You always put your foot in your mouth", an everybody's grandmother scolds;  "You always say it's your fault", says his ex-wife.  Always, in all ways, that "always" part exudes.  Everyone screws up at one time or another - who can  not-relate to that?  We disappoint and hurt people, without intending to.  Stephen struggles with a sense of failure and the need to make things okay again.  Unlike his parents' house ("a tight little ship that could weather any storm"), his is on shaky ground. And Stephen is sometimes his own worst enemy, it seems, because his own brain "instinctively ridicules" his efforts.  "Think before you speak!" he reminds himself.

I had to laugh at Mary's habit of piling stacks of Readers Digests next to the toilet.  My mother did the exact same thing!  Reading Stephen's hilarious account of his dread of visiting the bathroom because of those hated magazines and his playful accusations that Mary just did that to annoy him made me think of the idiosyncracies we lovingly tolerate in our loved ones--and those habits we can no longer abide, and in ourselves as well.  In Stephen's and Mary's case it resulted in what Stephen calls "an intellectual divorce." 

Mary chose to leave; Stephen chose not to let her go, even though he couldn't prevent it.  The novel also illustrates something we all recognize but which brings little consolation when returning to an empty life:  the fact that both parties still love one another, that it may be nobody's fault, doesn't change anything. Some things can't be worked out, "fixed", or ever solved.  That, too, is part of life.  All we can do, as human beings, is "muddle through, the best we can."  For some this means changing course; for others, staying put, even if staying put means mostly "Stuck"; and comes a time when we might get tired of words like muddle through, which grip like a verbal harness we wish could be replaced by images of flow or glide or soar.  Can one just decide not to be miserable? Stephen asks.  (Is chronic sadness or clinical depression a choice?)  His reflections elicit even more reflections.  

Just as there's more to the problem of depression than one of attitude, so is there more to reluctant but necessary departures to escape what amounts to an emotional vacuum.  I love you but I can't help you. And he loves her but he can't help being who he is.   Stephen confesses to not understanding what "love" is.  Upon which an image of Tina Turner singing "What's love got to do with it?" immediately began ringing in my mind--and here came another unexpected idea--that maybe, if both parties still love one another, maybe it's not really about love but about . . . self preservation.

What makes A Listening Thing something which its author says we should read?  Because, he explains, "we need an honest look at ourselves, and the freedom of a second chance."   Michaelian took an honest look at himself--and wove a story around it.   It's not autobiographical, he states, but "the personal experiences and past events related by Stephen are really my own."  ("Life is fiction and fiction is life." )


Michaelian and Stephen Monroe invite us to listen as they tell his story, cautioning that if you think you know the answers, well, you're to be pitied. You don't.  This is said with love.  (Psycho-nibbler-babblers, take note:  Stephen Monroe is not a psychological "project", as he was, for years, to his ex-wife.  He's simply a man explaining who he is.  He's brutally frank about it, and intends to devote his life to exploring and maintaining that sense of self and to his writing.  "I am Stephen Monroe.  I am Stephen Monroe!")

Longing for a second chance free of failure and depression, he harbors hope, though neither one is going to cancel out the other.  Which made me think of the sheer duality of all that is, hinted at in this passage where Stephen is reminiscing about "Uncle Leo":

Poor Uncle Leo.  Poor everyone.  Not a happy thing exists that is untouched by sorrow. And yet, there isn't a sad thing we know that isn't sweetened by laughter and light.  Triumph and downfall . . . Love and hate.  Confusion and enlightenment.  Jealousy and serenity.

Included at the end of this passage is the word Possibility, italicized.  ("Possibility.  Dear Uncle Leo.  Dear Everyone.")   Stephen admits he has trouble maintaining optimism, but the mere entertainment of the possibility of Possibility trumps pessimism, one would think.  So too, even with Stephen's daily struggle with depression as a down/up, up/down, down/up, up/down affair; its eradication is graspable.

This is turning out to be far more detailed than I'd intended.  Like the fictional Stephen Monroe, it is in writing, that I am able to figure things out (although he actually said "speaking", not writing).  When a reader listens, not just to the story but to the thoughts that arrive while reading the story, connections can be made, parallels discovered, differences noted--in short, there is engagement on a second level corresponding to the fictional character's own introspections.  A very wordy way to simply say that much of what Michaelian wrote (in the voice of Stephen Monroe) soundly resonated.

So, three things I took away from reading this book:  (1) a reminder of what it's like to have been Stuck in a "harrowing" situation, unable to change things no matter how hard one tried;  (2) that things don't go well when you are prevented from, chastised for, or not accepted as . . . being who you truly are (and no amount of compromise or suppression or denial will keep that self from resurfacing); and (3) who you seem to be--even to yourself--as Stephen Monroe pondered,  may have nothing to do with who you really are.  He likens this to "an identity comprised of layers pretty much all the same"--like an onion!--whose skin you have to peel, one fragile piece at a time, to get to the inside.  And depending on how close you get, what's there might make you cry.

Michaelian's novel made me aware that choosing to be who you are can be revolutionary--and life altering, not only for you but for others.  Whoever said life was easy. "Life itself is a work in progress."   Stephen Monroe's story is just one example.   But somewhere in the process of listening to the listening things, whispers of connections to something larger emerged, kind of like hidden voices beyond the written voice, threading through to make themselves heard.  I'm not saying if you read A Listening Thing you will start hearing voices.   But reading is a form of hearing, no?  Words on a page are like songs to the eyes.

Wait, wait, I hear a voice from behind the fig tree:

 "I will go on singing"

William Michaelian - July 24, 2011

I rest my case, ha ha.

By the way, there's an excellent interview at the end of the book worthy of its own special mention, of particular interest to writers -  of William Michaelian in conversation with Paul L. Martin, teacher and writer, whose excellent 'observations on literature, culture and the life of the mind' can be found over at  The Teacher's View.

End-of-Year Ruminations -- Yours, Theirs, and Mine

 The year 2010 is almost done and while some are busy making New Year's resolutions, others express year's end with an essay or a poem.  The two examples below, although not written this year, seem annually relevant.  I like their humor, creativeness, and spirit--they make me smile, they remind me of shared musings, of yearned-for blessings.  How can one not share them?

What December Said to January

Let the record
show I did
not go willingly.

Nor am I impressed
by the ruse you
call “The First,”
which you use
to hide the fact
I passed this way.

I am offended,
not ended.

Do not forget,
I have frozen ponds
and cast blood-red berries
to the ground; I have
blotted out the sun.

You have crocuses,
I’ll grant you that;
but I have summoned them;
the rest you leave for
spring to solve.

My advice to you?

Take pride in what you do
and never follow suit;
your days are numbered;
be true to them.


From Poems, Slightly Used, by William Michaelian

Infinite Gratitude

For all those events, people, and experiences in this life and all others, that have helped me to grow and change and evolve, I give gratitude. Where I am is what I am.

For all of you, your infinite variety, your innate and beautiful diversity, and all that you have taught me, whether joyous or saddening, I give infinite gratitude.

For everything you have ever given me, will give me, or have never and never will give me, I return infinite gratitude. There is no loss, no absence, and nothing missing. Nothing is ever lost.

For everything that challenges me to grow, release, clear, and Just Get Over It, I give endless thanks. For those moments that offer me endless opportunities to clear and release judgments, hatred, and close-mindedness, I give deep and infinite gratitude. For those reflections in the mirrors of xenophobia and self-delusion, I return peace and light. For those victimologies and woundologies projected outwards onto the mirror of the world, I reflect only clear light. The moon reflecting in still water.

For everything that bleeds, infinite peace.

For everyone whose heart has not yet fully opened, because of fear, misunderstanding, hate, or desperation, infinite layers of white light. For every closed mind and closed heart I have ever encountered, infinite layers of the highest form in the Universe of the bright blue light of compassionate lovingkindess.

For every soul whose sacred contracts have not yet been fulfilled, infinite time and infinite patience. From this life, to the next. We journey together. For every kindred soul, born again and again, till we get it right, thanks for playing the Game. You are all expert players, and you all, always, win in the end. We go forward together. For every player of the Game, there are no wrong choices, and we all return to Union, in the end. Not one soul shall be lost. For every bond of karma not yet formed and for every bond already released, infinite learning, infinite grace, infinite love. The Buddha and the Cosmic Christ are not-two.

For every aid and comfort, infinite gratitude. For every act of tough love, infinite gratitude. For every moment of utter goofy hilarity—that laughter which brings us into the Universe of Essences—infinite gratitude. For every mutual shedding of tears, whether from suffering or from laughter, infinite gratitude.

For every pointless moment of ecstasy or despair, infinite gratitude. For every curse and vow and damning, infinite compassion. For every unnecessary lover, infinite transcendence. For every senseless act of beauty, infinite gratitude. For every meaningless suffering caused by lack, infinite abundance. For every random act of kindness, infinite awareness of the larger pattern. For every absurd and illicit and senseless desire, infinite fulfillment. We create our own realities, and so does everyone else.

For every word and world of blessing and hope, infinite gratitude. For every word and world of hurt, infinite gratitude. For every bridge between words and worlds, infinite gratitude. The Way is Light, and Love, and Truth, even when the Way is Dark, and Pain, and Obscure. Guidance comes from inside and from outside, there is no separation. The natural world is the supernatural world.

May we all receive blessings of perfect protection, grace and ease, and Light for the highest good for all concerned!


~~ A personal essay by writer/ artist/ musician Art Durkee, originally posted on December 24, 2006, on his blog Dragoncave.

some trees in my back yard

SUMMING UP

Blogging this past year has introduced me to a truckload of good writing, a virtual Arena full of fiction, poetry, art and music I might never have discovered were it not for fellow bloggers.  I've gained a friendship or two from writerly communications with some of you and have benefited enormously from your occasional feedback, advice and/or encouragement, as well as the random remark here, indelible impression there, and remembered, oft-repeated sayings of what seems to me a summing-up of a worldview with which I  find connection--little life mantras as spontaneous affirmations, not merely said, but lived.  For example:  Art Durkee's "It is what it is" and Bob Arnold's signatory "All's well."   

These are not just unconscious sayings.  It takes some people years and years to come to the level of acceptance of life as it "is", not how one wishes it to be; to habituate to a view of life that enables you to greet every single setback or hardship or calamity with the attitude that despite everything, life's still "well"--all of it.   

I mention this here in detail because these two simple phrases somehow this past year bore themselves into my subconscious, over time replacing a long-ingrained auto-response that always seemed somehow to start with the question "Why?", dwelling too much on life's unfairness, settling for life's limitations instead of imagining its possibilities.  But most of all, not understanding its ... Isness.  You end up somehow concentrating on the separate parts, the good, the bad, the gray, the  inconceivable, not seeing the whole picture, how it all fits together, etc., always trying to make sense of it, never succeeding.  And along comes:  "It is what it is."  Period.  And:  "All's well."  Seven words, from two people I have never met, caught in my consciousness, from fishing the waters of the Internet. 

I don't understand the How, and will never probably figure out the Why.  Especially the Why.  Doesn't mean I intend to stop asking.  But it no longer seems important that I KNOW.  I still want to.  Heck, who wouldn't?  But it always seemed somehow so important to arrive at that information before I died.  Dying and not knowing--that, for me, was my idea of Hell, the laughing parting gesture of the trickster, the ultimate cruel joke.  But now, the sheer thatness of what is, is enough.  (Cue from the curtain master:  You're readers are squirming.. Wind it up already!).

My year-end gratitudes won't be as eloquent as Art Durkee's above but it seems a fine tradition to emulate. So I thank all the bloggers, writers, poets, artists, truth & justice seekers, animal lovers, free spirits, spiritual soul mates and fellow planet dwellers who have energized and inspired me in this past year--Thanks for making me laugh, for teaching me things, for showing by example how to be a better person, for sharing your thoughts and the wonderful products of your creativity.  I won't even attempt to name you all, there are just too too many.  I go plunging into the new year with all my hopes and flaws, my verbosity meter furiously clicking away--'keepitshort keepitshort keepitshort Keep-it-SHORT", proving that Awareness by itself is not enough.   Another lesson noted.

Goodbye 2010.  Hello to Whatever.  I'm ready.

In the early morning write

Gordon Lightfoot has a song that begins "In the early morning rain ..."    Was up by 6:00 A.M. as usual.  No rain this morning, only clouds, and a bit of sun pushing through.  I stopped by some fellow bloggers' blogs and saw that a few more "morning people" had already posted the day's words.

Check out this haunting Armenian melody played on the duduk by Djivan Gasparyan over at Bob Arnold's July 31st Longhouse Birdhouse  (posted at 6:22 A.M.).   (Mornin', Bob!   :)

and Tom (The Middlewesterner)  Montag's latest "Three from the Old Poet",  posted at 4:37 A.M.   (An excerpt:

As if I've
worked my whole life
becoming someone

I can admire.

Or poet/writer/blogger Linh Dinh, whose political essays, astute comments and ongoing State of the Union photo documentation of America in decline; the homeless, disenfranchised, tent cities, urban blight, etc. telling you far more than you'll ever get from CNN. (He posted today at 1:57 A.M.     I'm guessing that's not when he got up and that he's really more a "night" person.)

Another morning person, up by 5 A.M. with a new poem, is William Michaelian, reminding me that thought-out poems that don't get writ remain just that: words in transit, not yet extracted, much less parked.

Today we have the annual family picnic, again this year out in St. Louis-de-France.  Last year, about 40 people came, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, cousins, in-laws, significant others, and friends, and it lasted from early afternoon until nearly midnight, the evening spent on the patio to the sounds of guitar and keyboard, everyone singing along to old, familiar tunes.  It poured rain pretty much the entire day but nobody left, and when the downpour subsided, the mosquitoes came out. 

This year the weather promises to behave and allow a more pleasant time of it, the barbeque taking place outdoors (instead of in the garage) and dips in the pool.  Last time people brought about 8 different salads, and of course a big pot of Michel's famous baked beans and the usual grilled delights (even salmon burgers  for the semi-vegetarians).  (Our local supermarket last week carried imported frozen fish-kebobs from China--something I'd not seen there before.  Why this particular local market offers only imported Chinese garlic and not the fresher, more readily available and less-expensive-to-transport garlic from neighboring farms, is a mystery.)

Back to the writing thing again. This, of course, is no excuse--activities in general, social obligations, daily tasks, etc.--for not writing. It's perhaps cyclical, or so it seems at times--more time spent this summer on reading than writing, more hours internally absorbing, mentally archiving, "saving up", almost, for when the time is right, which for me is Fall and Winter. But this is absurd, the writer self argues. Sounds more like an excuse, chimes the neglected pen.

They may be right, and it's not a question of season, or intervening activities, or habitual proscrastinaton but something more baldly basic: simple discipline. I envy poets who can come up with a new poem every single day and offer it, in finished form. And then there're those naggy fictional characters nagging, nagging, nagging at you to finish their story, the one you've been working on for months--YEARS--and have put aside, like unfinished paintings waiting for the most conducive lighting, the right color mix, the optimal circumstance, the perfect conditions. This has got to change, scoldy self says to lazy self. I mean, really. Why are you blogging, instead of writing?!!!

My fingers have no answer. It's like being stuck in ... the Waiting Box--waiting. But for what?

Painting One's Mother, Preserving One's Youness

A wonderful little book you might like to read, called The Painting of You, by writer, poet and fellow blogger William Michaelian of Recently Banned Literature.

What can I say about The Painting of You except--go read it!  Once you open it up to the first page you will not be able to put it down.  There is something for everyone here--for poets, writers, mothers and sons, children and parents, caretakers, and readers of memoirs alike.

What's the book about?  It's an autobiographical account of a man caring for his mother who has Alzheimer's Disease; about his and her dreams, their family history, the struggle to maintain communication, the pain of watching a loved one slowly disappear as you become a stranger to them. 

In the book, Michaelian asks, in a poem, how he should paint his mother...

As a puzzled soul
looking out the window,
or a curious girl,
looking in?

And suppose the two
are friends--what then?

Does one begin
where the other ends?

Or must I paint them
both again, one as the other,
each as they have
always been?

The book is also about fatigue and weariness, aching limbs and decades-old dishtowels, and tea stains and powder clouds, "far too little and far too much", and ...  fleeting glimpses of grace.

Imagine a writer--any writer's--happiness at having been able to preserve, and share the moments of those difficult but important years, and to pass them on, as legacy, not only of the time and person written about ...  but the words themselves, as legacies.  Like threads being spun on a loom, each generation a band of connection, as if when one thread becomes tangled, or severed, an invisible hand emerges to find the missing loop, reconnect the link again, so that the whole of the picture remains forever intact.

I thought to write a review of this book but it would be really really difficult to top the one already written by Paul Martin over at The Teacher's View.   Read Paul's review here--he says it so much better than I ever could.

But truly--this is a very special book that one can read again and again.  If you want to get a copy,  information on ordering it in either print copy or as an ebook, can be found here.