Poem

I have a poem up at Poetry Super Highway, which to me is THE poetry journal.  Check it out here.  Poetry Super Highway is run by Rick Lupert, who does more than anyone I can think of to promote poetry through a number of excellent projects (and is a very talented poet himself).

San Oscar Romero

Cuando se le da pan al que tiene hambre lo llaman a uno santo, pero si se pregunta por las causas de por qué el pueblo tiene hambre, lo llaman comunista, ateísta. Pero hay un ateísmo más cercano y más peligroso para nuestra Iglesia: el ateísmo del capitalismo cuando los bienes materiales se erigen en ídolos y sustituyen a Dios.

                                                                    --San Óscar Romero, Homilía, Septiembre 15 de 1978

A New Foundation

The Abbot Moses asked Abbot Sylvanus, “Can a person lay a new foundation every day?”

The old man said, “If they work hard, they can lay a new foundation at every moment of every day.”

        --Verba Seniorum (The Sayings of the Fathers)

To be renewed by the call of justice and service, by the care that others show us, by the beauty and harmony of nature, to at every moment overcome inertia, our own idle habits, the lack of real faith, the atmosphere of despair and indifference, the cruelty and corruption of those in power--rediscovering the secret at the heart of life: love.  Every moment a new birth, seeing the world with new eyes, leaving wrong and failure, fear and selfishness, behind.  To be transformed, with a new sense of purpose and joy.

Poetry

A line from the writer Elroy Bode that Novalis would have liked:

Poetry is what you see when you take one step to the side of a familiar path and look at ordinary things with suddenly extraordinary eyes.

Rosemary

Rosemary is a common, rather austere-looking herb, but it has many uses.  As a culinary herb, it adds a distinctive, fragrant, bitter-sweet flavor to food, and a little goes a long way.  Its oil is used in both hair and skin care, although some people show a marked sensitivity to it (it’s always good to test a small area of skin before using it or products that contain it).  As a medicinal herb, rosemary is useful for its antibacterial and antiviral properties, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects, antispasmolytic effects on the gallbladder and upper intestine, its ability to stimulate circulation when applied to the skin, and its ability improve rheumatic conditions when used in the same way.  The oil should only be used externally, (and then as a mixture of 10% essential rosemary oil to 90% olive oil or some other lipophilic oil), and when taking an extract of the leaves in the form of teas or tinctures, a little is usually better than a lot.  Like any medicine, overdose is possible.  Rosemary should never be taken during pregnancy.  Rosemary has been approved by Commission E for blood pressure problems (external application), dyspeptic complaints (internal consumption), loss of appetite (internal consumption), and rheumatism (external application).  The possible anti-mutagenic and tumor-inhibiting qualities of some of its chemical components are currently being studied.  Rosemary oil has mild insect repellent properties.  Some people claim that rosemary also improves memory, helps with headaches, and makes wounds heal faster when applied to them as a poultice.

Wild Strawberries and Moonlight

I am honored to have a story up at the always outstanding Bewildering Stories.  Here is a link to it.  This piece originally appeared in a truly lovely print journal, The Germ, which I don’t think is around anymore.

Sebastian im Traum

What did the great twentieth century Austrian poet Georg Trakl find in the works of Novalis?  Certainly, echoes of his own longing for a mystical death, for union with a beloved beyond the grave, and a special veneration for dreams and the dream state, though, in Trakl’s case, this was certainly mixed up with his relentless drug addiction. Trakl shares so much aesthetically with Novalis, even beyond the blue flower and the juice of the poppy, especially Hymnen an die Nacht (though not necessarily Novalis’ philosophy).  Trakl’s poem to Novalis, "An Novalis," is so opaque that it expresses little to me about how he actually viewed him and his work.  His cycle of poems Sebastian im Traum is where I find him closest to Novalis.  Personally, though, my favorite poem of Trakl's is the one below, which I believe was written before Sebastian im Traum.  Trakl, like Novalis, died young, but his tragedy was much greater, abetted by all the demons of the twentieth century.

Im roten Laubwerk voll Guitarren

Im roten Laubwerk voll Guitarren

Der Mädchen gelbe Haare wehen

Am Zaun, wo Sonnenblumen stehen.

Durch Wolken fährt ein goldener Karren.

In brauner Schatten Ruh verstummen

Die Alten, die sich blöd umschlingen.

Die Waisen süß zur Vesper singen.

In gelben Dünsten Fliegen summen.

Am Bache waschen noch die Frauen.

Die aufgehängten Linnen wallen.

Die Kleine, die mir lang gefallen,

Kommt wieder durch das Abendgrauen.

Vom lauen Himmel Spatzen stürzen

In grüne Löcher voll Verwesung.

Dem Hungrigen täuscht vor Genesung

Ein Duft von Brot und herben Würzen.

Der Magische Idealismus

The essence of Novalis’ Magical Idealism is this: that we can transform our reality through the power of imagination.  Imagination is often called the fourth power of the soul, alongside memory, understanding, and will.  Imagination is also called the mirror of reality, but the Magical Idealist believes that it is a mirror world we have the power to enter.  Who has not entered, through imagination, into the world of a book so completely that it drew real tears from our eyes, filled our heart with dread, or gave us hope that could not be extinguished?  How many houses in Balzac’s novels do I know as well as any I have lived in!  I’ve never seen Henry V performed on stage, but I have performed it in my head many times.  And beyond the visions of others in books, my imagination has taken me to so many places.  I have often visited new cities or landscapes that I had previously known only in my imagination and discovered that the imaginary visit matched the “real” one down to the smallest details.  How many stories have I created in my head that I felt I was actually living in time and space, in the here and now; how many stories have I written that consisted of taking everyday reality and rearranging it in my imagination--creating a new reality out of the very building blocks of reality itself.

     One might argue that equating the products of the imagination with reality is sheer escapism, a fleeing from life’s real difficulties and conflicts--that a hungry man may imagine he has a loaf of bread, but in reality, he is still hungry.  Aside from the fact that there are people who have suffered hunger in battles and concentration camps and other circumstances who claimed they were able to bear their hunger better when they daydreamed about food, it must be said that the purpose of imagination is not to escape the duty of providing one’s own body and that of others with necessary nutrition.  The imagination is not meant to feed the body, but the soul.  Novalis said, “Die Philosophie kann kein Brot backen, aber sie kann uns Gott, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit verschaffen.”  (“Philosophy can bake no bread, but it may give us God, freedom, and immortality.”)  The imagination, too, bakes no bread, but it can give us insight, wonder, and beauty, it can give us peace, courage, and openness.  The bread (or perhaps madeleines) that we eat in imagination may not nourish our physical bodies, but it (or they), can still give us pleasure. 

     When we dream, what we experience at the moment of dreaming is indistinguishable from everyday reality, at least most of the time.  Novalis said, “Wir sind dem Aufwachen nah, wenn wir träumen, daß wir träumen.” (“We are closest to waking up when we dream that we are dreaming.”)  Sleep becomes a doorway to another world, the world of dreams.  Is not imagination also a door to another world?  And when we consciously construct a world of our own imagining, is that not when the imagined world is in fact most real?  This is the validation of the philosophy of Magical Idealism, of the power of the imagination to transform our reality. 

     In Heinrich von Ofterdingen, Novalis wrote: “Mich dünkt der Traum eine Schutzwehr gegen die Regelmäßigkeit und Gewöhnlichkeit des Lebens, eine freie Erholung der gebundenen Fantasie, wo sie alle Bilder des Lebens durcheinanderwirft, und die beständige Ernsthaftigkeit des erwachsenen Menschen durch ein fröhliches Kinderspiel unterbricht. Ohne die Träume würden wir gewiß früher alt, und so kann man den Traum, wenn auch nicht als unmittelbar von oben gegeben, doch als eine göttliche Mitgabe, einen freundlichen Begleiter auf der Wallfahrt zum heiligen Grabe betrachten.”  (“The dream seems to me to be a defense against the regularity and normality of life, a free recovery of bound fantasy, where it brings up all images of life, and interrupts the constant sincerity of the adult human being through a cheerful child's play. Without dreams, we would surely grow old earlier, and so the dream, though not as directly from above, may be regarded as a divine gift, a friendly companion on the pilgrimage to the holy grave.”)  What Novalis says of dreams is certainly true of imagination as well.

Pentecost 2018

the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

--Galatians 5:22-23

The Song of Kabīr

The shadows of evening fall thick and deep,

   and the darkness of love 

   envelops the body and the mind.

Open the window to the west, 

   and be lost in the sky of love;

Drink the sweet honey 

   that steeps the petals of the lotus of the heart.

Receive the waves in your body: 

   what splendor is in the region of the sea!

Hark! the sounds of conches and bells are rising.

 Kabīr says: "O brother, behold! 

   the Lord is in this vessel of my body."

            -- Kabīr, translated by Rabindranath Tagore  

I still think that this is the greatest poem I have ever read!    
  
                                                                      

Helen Waddell

There are certain deceased writers who I feel would have been wonderful to know in person.  Helen Waddell is one of them.  I, too, love so many of the people and things she wrote about so devotedly—the Desert Fathers, the goliard phenomenon, medieval lyrics, Japanese culture, Chinese poetry.  She always combined deep scholarship with a brilliant sense of language.  I also admire her personal courage in speaking out about what she thought was right, even when it was controversial or inconvenient.  Like other writers whose personal character and integrity shines as brightly as their work (I’m thinking of people like Chinua Achebe, Pramoedya Ananta Toer [who both just passed away recently], the Čapek brothers, Walter Benjamin, Kant [we would have had some lively arguments], Halldór Laxness, Bettina Von Arnim [of course]—the list goes on and on), Helen Waddell seems like a person who would have been delightful to spend a few hours with in friendly conversation.

Beauty

Thomas Aquinas defined beauty as “that which pleases upon being perceived.”  This definition, which on the surface seems both simple and more than a little obvious, brings forth the question: why does one thing and not another bring forth pleasure upon being perceived?  Perhaps another definition from the age of the Scholastics can help to answer that question, “Art is that which is beautiful because it is true.”  The idea that beauty is a sensible manifestation of the truth, which upon being perceived gives pleasure, explains why a painting like Rembrandt’s Slaughtered Ox, which depicts an unpleasant, and perhaps even repellent, type of subject, can nevertheless be called beautiful, or a book like Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate (Жизнь и судьба), which has as its subject the most atrocious battle of World War II, as well as the concentration camps and state-sponsored terror of one of the darkest periods of human history, can still be referred to as beautifully written.  Truth and honesty are the soul of art, and when they are present, a terrible beauty shines.

Museums

Two of my short stories that have recently appeared online are set primarily in museums. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone who knew me as a child. As a kid, I volunteered at a museum—as does the main character in one of the stories—and I also had my own museum in a little storage building behind our house. I took my museum very seriously. It was filled with displays of minerals and fossils, as well as other natural objects like bird’s nests and insects. I also had a certain number of ethnological artifacts including prehistoric arrowheads and traditional pottery from Mexico, and “Old West” objects like antique bottles and buttons. Other kids in the neighborhood would also donate interesting specimens, and visitors to our house always got a tour of the museum. Whenever I visited another city, the first thing that I wanted to do was see the museums. I actually didn’t visit the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago until I was an adult, though. One of the stories is set in the Field Museum. At one point in my life, I really wanted to work in a museum when I grew up. But other interests intervened. However, the years I spent running a fair trade store were in many ways like managing a continually changing folk art museum. And I certainly still love visiting museums.

Hymne au Soleil

I was thinking about Lili Boulanger’s Hymne au Soleil today.  So filled with the glory of the dawn, of magical childhood, of new beginnings.  So renewing—for good or for ill, it could only have been written by someone in the flower of youth.  I think of Mozart’s words to Harry in Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf:

Wenn sie auch noch allerlei sehr Menschliches in sich hat, man spürt doch schon das Jenseits heraus, das Lachen—nicht?  (Even if there are all sorts of very human things in it, you can feel the other world, too, the laughter—no?)

The human and the divine, nature and grace—and the laughter, the joy.

Like Novalis and Philipp Otto Runge, Lili Boulanger was barely out of adolescence when she died, but she left us a whole universe of light.

Los Angeles

The Sonoran Desert from the base of the Little Harquahala Mountains.

This week, I rode along through deserts and cities with our younger child, who is moving to Los Angeles to go to graduate film school at USC.  I'm happy that he will have the experience of L.A., arguably the craziest city on earth, but also one of the most magical.  Despite the traffic, the litter, and the smog (which is a lot better now than when I was a youngster), the city has always felt like home.  What I wouldn't give to return there permanently!