Monthly Archives: April 2005

Seed Thought: Page 43

I wonder why it is that the folks over at 43 Things picked the number 43. Could it be related to my favorite David Crosby song?

Page 43

Look around again
It’s the same old circle
You see, it’s got to be –
It says right here on page forty three …
That you should grab a hold of it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

Rainbows all around
Can you find the silver and gold –
it’ll make you old
The river can be hot or cold …
And you should dive right into it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

Pass it around one more time
I think I’ll have a swallow of wine –
life is fine
Even with the ups and downs …
And you should have a sip of it
Else you’ll find
It’s passed you by

— David Crosby, Stay Straight Music

David Crosby, in the liner notes for the CSN boxed set, says about his song “Page 43”:

It’s about the mythical instruction booklet to life that we all wish we had and don’t. An optimistic song nonetheless.

While I agree that the song does present an optimistic outlook on life, particularly if you adhere to the “Be Here Now” philosophy as espoused most popularly by Ram Dass (a.k.a. Richard Alpert), I think that far too many people on this earth feel that their particular “instruction book” is somehow applicable to a wide range of individuals with which they have little, if anything, in common except their humanity and the natural milieu upon which their lives are dependent and inter-related with (which in fact is quite a lot, when placed into perspective against their cultural and societal differences). In any case, it is my philosophy that each person must write their own guidebook, and that “book” must be by default more a memoir than a practical “how to” reference. You can investigate and evaluate the memoirs of others, hoping for a bit of insight into some of your commonalities, but, as they say, the Divine is in the details, and there’s where it’s always necessary to stray from the recipe. Then, too, Mark Twain commented once that if you truly want to describe a person so that another would recognize them without question, you cannot paint them using only their good points as a reference. The individuality of humankind is determined by its flaws, the aberrations from the norm that make us each unique.

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I Want to Tell You Something

I want to tell you something
in a few short locking lines;
you may find the concept shocking,
or reject it, but that’s fine.

You may not think it a poem,
for it doesn’t show a thing;
it does not just throw out pictures
like a TV set with springs.

It employs some form and function
(precepts you may not embrace),
and provides no shallow unction
or catharsis, on its face.

There will be no critics fawning
on its radical design,
its unorthodox construction
or bold use of the sublime.

It will never make a journal,
never win a poet’s prize;
it is far too straight and simple
and wears no arty disguise.

You may not think it a poem,
if you trust your teachers’ rules,
or judge it by its reception
from most modern writing schools.

I want to tell you something;
that’s my sole intent and aim.
Whether you accept the message
or not, to me it’s the same.

For I do not write for your sake,
to mesh neatly with your truth;
that you out of hand reject it,
without thinking, is my proof.

I want to tell you something,
but if you choose not to hear
it doesn’t really matter
for it’s only art, my dear.

It is not a revolution,
nor a glimpse of the divine;
not a new proposed solution
for the trouble of these times.

It is not some tortured pretext
by which I excuse my rage;
just a small and rusted latchkey
that I’ve used on my own cage.

I want to tell you something:
if you read between the lines
you’ll find I’ve communicated
more than these few words of mine.

26 APR 2005

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Let Words Escape

Rescind your tortured sentences; let words
escape like AWOL soldiers past the fence,
like sullen rocks that would grow wings like birds
and fly out into fresh experience.

Rethink your injured poems; let each line
cascade in a cacophony of sound
where all the images you dare define
in simple rhythm’s ancient tongues resound.

Don’t cast your works in broken, fragile stone;
they will not last beyond the dusting brush.
Instead, seek for the essence that alone
reduces recent shouts and cheers in hush.

The modern lasts no more than single days;
its history a palimpsest of mist.
If you would build a temple worth more praise,
you must do more than exercise the wrists.

What vision can withstand the critic’s bile
unless the artist draws it from within?
What good to end up in some dusty file
where fickle fancy’s fads end and begin?

Let no one else restrict the words you choose,
nor help you seek the spirit of the age;
If you would seek to please others, refuse
to put another letter on the page.

24 APR 2005

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Redefining My Peer Group

When you think about it, what does a jury of one’s peers really mean? Legally, I suppose it means that because all individuals are theoretically equal under the law, one’s peers in a litigious sense means other equally theoretical equals.

A peer might be anyone who shares with me age, gender, ethnicity, race, education, geography, nationality or religion, in some combination. But considering any of these factors in isolation does not make sense to me. This does not seem to be the basis by which I identify my peers on a daily basis. For example I do not consider all men to be my peers, nor all southerners, nor all people who did not quite graduate from college? Not on a typical day.

For me, a peer is a fellow traveler. Not someone on the same path as I am, nor someone who has been where I’ve been, but someone who has been faced with the same kinds of dilemmas, made similar choices, and lived with the consequences of those choices in order to a achieve a similar goal. That means that in order to decide who my peer group is, I have got to get the order of the questions right. Often, we ask “who is going with me?” before we ask “where am I going?” As a result, whether or not the traveling companion is suitable, advantageous or even compatible for the journey cannot be in any way intelligently determined.

Who are my peers, then?

People who have lived in more than one state. People who have been divorced. People who read books daily. Curious people. People who vote their conscience and intelligence and not the party line. People who believe that life and death can be defined as energy borrowed, energy returned. People who feel that art, beauty, kindness, compassion and doubt are essential elements of human existence. People willing to get their hands dirty. People who recognize that all ethical systems are based on the principle Thou Before I and actually, where possible, live according to that standard. People who believe that love is not ownership. People who seek commonalities, rather than differences. People who seek beyond institutionalized anything (schools, churches, governments) in order to discover how Universal Truth becomes Personal Truth. People who see beyond all of these Aristotaliarian compartmentalizations. People who know there is no such thing as prehistory, who draw outside the lines, who accept personal responsibility for who they are, where they are, and how they got there, who believe that a meritocritous egalitarian society is not only possible, but achievable, one person at a time.

If my life were on trial, I would insist that 12 such individuals be found to weigh my fate.

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A Sense of Touch

Reach down to touch the waiting earth
that there beneath your feet, alive,
in constant movement hurls through space
and yet seems solid in the place
where through your bones, like vibrant roots
its energy expands and shoots,
infusing marrow, flesh and bone
with strength from every tree and stone.

Reach up into the far flung sky
that just beyond your tiptoed grasp
becomes the wind that pulls you on
and turns to clouds, and then is gone
until you slowly breathe it back
to watch the gap begin to slack
between each molecule of air
until there’s only one space there.

Reach in beneath your surface skin
under the epidermis where
a million cells each pulse with life;
dig deeper, like your mind’s a knife
that probes each inch of sinew, vein,
and stretch of bone from toe to brain,
until you find your inner core
that will live on when you’re no more.

Reach out just past your fingertips
and touch the edge your sense permits
where science teaches your range ends
and leaves to faith what there begins
connected by some unseen thread
that spins between the live and dead
transcending time, and thought, and space
in patterns saints and madmen trace.

Reach all around, hands outstretched wide
and offer out what is inside
Push up what fills you from below
Pull down an armful, then let go
Expand in all directions, free,
Beyond logic and sanity
Past expectations, good and ill
Grasp all of life. Come, get your fill.

23 APR 2005

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Wanting what you have vs having what you want

I paraphrase the Dalai Lama a bit here, but the gist of it is that most of the world focuses on having what you want— which is a constant state of acquisition, of needing to augment with more, of rampant consumerism that ultimately ends in devaluation of anything that is not imminently disposable.

If you find satisfaction in what you are, where you are, who you are right now, that is peace of mind that is not illusive, transitory or subject to entropy. Wanting what you have is the ultimate expression of living in the moment. The goal is to be here now, not to dwell on how much better your life could be if only …

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What is the Secret Song?

What is secret song that the whole world
hums underneath its breath, too soft to hear
unless you sit in silence, in the dark
and listen as intently as you can?

And when you hear it once, why it is so
that its refrain eludes your memory’s grasp?
Does it vibrate on some harmonic scale
that with its very echo self-destructs?

The melody, so simple and so pure,
seems to be shifting constantly in flux
so that each phrase is new; no line repeats,
nor lends itself to rote and mindless chant.

The rhythm pulses static long enough
to catch your heartbeat’s diastolic thump,
but suddenly it swells in pregnant pause
to fill all time in but a moment’s breath.

I have heard music played beyond my ken,
so wild and free it stretched my sonic grasp
to breaking; and then all the pieces slipped
back to their assigned cells of time and space.

Long past that last note’s echo I will know
what symphony the universe conducts;
and in that gaping chasm, my small voice
awaits the cue to loose its single note.

What secret song is known to the whole world,
yet takes a lifetime’s listening to hear?
The sound of living, one breath at a time,
and finding sacred every sip of air.

20 APR 2005

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