a very long wait

I think it is not fear of death itself as much as
Fear of dying; death is a given, the psyche
Attuned to it since time beyond memory: all 

Archetypes of travel (companions, fellow solo
sojourners, boats, terminals, stop-overs...) 
Everyday, departures are what have come to be 

known like the pace of one's own breathing--
But who can tell of true arrivals?
Everyone has ideas, some more convincing

Than others; what may be more fearful is 
Living: that very long wait, so long 
We become desperate lovers of life itself.














  

consider utopia

Consider utopia and how it exists
only in the mind.  An elaborate system
fallible when set into form.  Governments
that rise and fall, imperfectly perfect
people with souls greater than their selves.

If we all are a reincarnate of previous 
souls or dust flecks from stars, are we all
but mere refuse
from utopia?








shane

writing for children

photo taken of a neighbor's wall a few months ago:  bright day at sea with a school of fish, a pink shark, and happy mermaid.

how do we tell our children about the world?

about its being a Neither place.  about the world-at-large only as good as our-world-within can get: the starry heaven above, the moral law within.

pink sharks do not and do exist. 
so do mermaids.  the happy ones.  those who do not  keep on singing about lost loves.

how do we tell our children about the world?
that it is only as beautiful as we will it to be so.

light reruns

When we came in to see the feature, two girls at the back row were already whispering to each other in a kind of annotated version about the film.  We caught the word "mind fuck".  So the movie was a mind fuck eh?  We settled on our seats.  Earlier, the poster near the counter had showed a large ship with a face that looked like a skull; something familiar in the countless times I've visited shops of videos-for-rent, looking for suspense thrillers and horror or action films (never gore) to kill time.  After watching these films for some time, one would notice running threads, both explicit and implicit, that one may actually read them anchoring on cultural theories.  How these films do not as much depict actual monsters than monsters as re-presentations of society's inherent, unarticulated fears.

Anyway.  

In the next few minutes it became apparent that the film, Ghost Ship (2011), wasn't the movie I've already seen, though they were of the same title.  This one wasn't remotely horror, but of something else more interesting.  My date and I would discuss the film soon after, and marvel at the movie's concept.  How the movie was not as much about the plot than it was about the concept.  Or the play of the concepts of fate, and choice, and possibilities lived out from the variations brought about by the "intervention" of human decisions in the grand scheme of things.

The ship in the movie was named Aeolus, of Greek mythology.  The name itself distinct; as Aeolus, in the mythology, were three separate characters whose lives became intertwined in a way that each Aeolus becomes indeterminable from the others.  That the characters boarded the ship sets the theme and tone of the film's entirety; though, of course, I also think that if we attempt further to "read" the ship, we may also most likely arrive at the idea that the ship, of course, could mean something else.  Like life per se, etc, considering that the ship as it is, and the sea, and the act of voyage, are themselves metaphors of something else.   

Then. 

So Jess, the character played by Melissa George, lives the varied, yet singular turn of events as a number of her selves attempted to make decisions to get out of the cycle.  In some instances, she watched these selves, and at some point, even engaged with them.  One always manages to follow a certain variation of events which inevitably leads to killing the other self; but always the cycle remains.     

What did the film say about fate?  About the power of choice?  About the metaphysical world and the so-believed parallel universes where each of the possibilities of our decisions are played out as lived?  About life in general?

We did not answer the questions and let them hang open and called it a night.  At home, the dogs welcomed, and they were let out into the humid, star-filled summer night.

I Learned That Her Name Was Proverb

I Learned That Her Name Was Proverb




And the secret names
of all we meet who led us deeper
into our labyrinth
of valleys and mountains, twisting valleys
and steeper mountains-
their hidden names are always,
like Proverb, promises:
Rune, Omen, Fable, Parable,
those we meet for only
one crucial moment, gaze to gaze,
or for years Know and don’t recognize

but of whom later a word
sings back to us
as if from high among leaves,
still near beyond sight

drawing us from tree to tree
towards the time and the unknown place
where we shall know
what it is to arrive.






by Denise Levertov