Remembrance Published

A spot of remembrance in the latest Carte Blanche. Nonfiction.

Issue 9 is now online at www.carte-blanche.org

Thanks for listening.

m.

The Color of Spring

photo by Shaddam IV http://www.flickr.com/photos/41457884@N00/

Forcing the edge
is a silly thing to do

Fear of slowing down
of tumors in the cadance...

We need but stop
and see the voices here
have always rung out
in countless starry halls

And on clear summer nights
we add to them
our own left-handed
echo

for the Warrior

"Battles you win....wars, less so."

This line is for a warrior who may never see it. She is a silhouette on the hill, lightning flashing behind her in a Frazetta painting forced to life. She is a bona fide, sword-wielding fighter of the tide. Again and again she has proven herself in battles you have never seen, nor will ever read about. They are not the sort that are recorded for study or reflection. Our recorders of history do not believe there are things to learn from them. They are wrong.

I know what you are thinking. But do not for a moment think these are figurative, bloodless battles. There is blood and on both sides. She has killed and died many times over in the name of what matters. At the time of this writing she is down for the count, her vitals - negligible - and no one is betting on a comeback.

But they are wrong. She's got a backup plan, an auxiliary system kicking in as the crowd starts to disperse. Some call is a failsafe, as if failing were the endgame. No, she's failed before, but knows its all Nietzschian process through and through.

I'm kind of a fan. Win or lose, the battle is fought, and its very undertaking is the thing. Each brave stance against the All is no fools chance, but an empirical proof of life.

I will not hold her up as Hero. I refuse to do that to her. I have no need to commit her to that binary. Each time she wins, she is not elevated to some higher order, but rather is placed - like a suddenly more precious stone - deeper in the setting of the ring.

We've all had our Waterloos. We've lost innocences we can't keep track of. Entire species inside us have fallen or mutated, as needed. But in each of these trials there is a moment that defines not us, but the moment itself.

"Behind nothing, before nothing, worship it the zero."

It is an instant within which intersects victory, loss, and the dare. It is in this vital moment that life - its conscious enactment - is the thing. It is the difference between lying down your arms and the impossible leap forward that constitutes true courage.

I write this now not to spur her on, not to slap her back into consciousness. She does not need that. Though I have never spent a day in her shoes, I know the places over which she has tread. I write this to record a fraction, in infinitesimal cross-section our history books would otherwise leave fade in the horizon.

Do not pity her or worry. That will do no good. She will rise again or die a warrior's death. Either is acceptable to her. Better to put your energy into your own moments and move your own forward. This, this is what will help the whole of us. This is the moment which , in the end, is the difference between an honorable conclusion to our days and a forfeit truly worth lamenting.

National Poetry Month

Did you know April is National Poetry Month? That time of year when we stop for a moment and think about poetry, something most of us don't do. We think "Huh. Poetry. Yeah, I've read some." or "Poetry...yeesh. No thanks." or even "Pretentious poets. I'll go listen to Radio K instead."

I have been called a poet; sometimes I think I am, and I can be heard mumbling any of these on any given day.

The truth is, I find better poetry in the songs I hear on college radio than in the books of so-called popular poetry. Popular poetry seems so desparate in its attempt to be considered important or Poetic (in Zapf Chancery script) that it loses the balance needed to be...well, needed. It's like a friend who actually does pretty cool things, but is overshadowed by his incessant need to tell everyone that he does cool things, that he thinks deeply...a LOT.

This is what usually comes to mind when April rolls around. 

Usually.

But this year I'm trying something different. While I refuse to ignore the less palatable parts, I'm going to look on the sunny side. I'm going to look for what's good about poetry. I'm going to pitch in and try to do my part.

I was tapped at my place of employ, The Minnesota Humanities Center, to post on their blog on poetry for the month of April. Once a week I'll post something on some aspect of poetry, giving proper nods to the locals, in hopes of helping others get past the stereotypes (which are, indeed, rooted in reality) and find something about poetry that connects with them. The first post went up last week: http://blog.minnesotahumanities.org/2009/04/02/poetry-month-with-humanities-guest-blogger-michael-gause/. I encourage you to read it and leave a comment about what poetry means to you, about how you plan to celebrate National Poetry Month, or just about how you think its cool that your local humanities organization is featuring poetry on its blog. The second post should go up before week's end. Feel free to comment on all posts. If there is enough reaction, I may just get to keep doing it.

As the weather warms, let's take off our coats and do some stretches. Let's make things happen we've talked about forever. Let's do things we can raise a glass to this winter, when we're huddled around fires cursing the weather through chattering teeth. 

Let's at least be smiling through them.

m.

for Spring

If late autumn
pulls his eyes across sun rusted hills,
spring always returns him to the color of women.

Like now.
In the café a stranger's gaze moves slowly
above him to something he suddenly
wishes he were.

But turning he sees it is only the hills reborn,
so he smiles,
allows himself to begin,

Lucidity and Desire

"A.'s lucidity depends on a lack of desire. Mine is the result of an excess-undoubtedly it is also the only true lucidity. If it is only the negation of delerium, lucidity is not completely lucid, is still a bitt of the fear of going all the way-transposed into boredom, that is, into contempt for the object of an excessive desire. We reason with ourselves and we tell ourselves: this object doesn't have in itself the value that desire gives it. We don't see that mere lucidity, which we also attain, is still blind. We must see at the same time the delusion and the truth of the object. No doubt we have to know that we are deluding ourselves, that the object is first of all what is perceived by a desireless being, but it is also what a desire perceives in it. B. is also what is only attained by the extremity of delirium an dmy lucidity would not exist if my delirium were not so great. Just as it would not exist if the other, ridiculous sides of B. escaped me."

Georges Bataille
from The Impossible

On What Makes a Writer

In all the questioning about what makes a writer, and especially perhaps the personal essayist, I have seen little of reference to this fact; namely, that the brain has become a kind of unseen artist’s loft. There are pictures that hang askew, pictures with outlines barely chalked in, pictures torn, pictures, the artist has striven unsuccessfully to erase, pictures that only emerge and glow in a certain light. They have all been teleported, stolen, as it were, out of time. They represent no longer the sequential flow of ordinary memory. They can be pulled about on easels, examined within the mind itself. The act is not one of total recall like that of the professional mnemonist. Rather it is the use of the things extracted from their context in such a way that they have become the unique possession of a single life. The writer sees back to these transports alone, bare, perhaps few in number, but endowed with a symbolic life. He cannot obliterate them. He can only drag them about, magnify or reduce them as his artistic sense dictates, or juxtapose them in order to enhance a pattern. One thing he cannot do. He cannot destroy what will not be destroyed; he cannot determine in advance what will enter his mind.

Loren Eiseley
from All The Strange Hours