A Midwinter's Mantra

Midwinter!
And I welcome its coming
for I now know that this is the
Midwinter of my life
when the Sun has sunk as low as
he can get
And can go no lower.

Now all must change;
all must be made new.
I will no longer be that man
sinking into darkness,
but I will feel the new heat of my own rising.
Everyday I will commit to burning
brighter and brighter.

Ah, I will become a pirate and seize what I will!
let no man say it is not mine to take!
for I will take it and
make it mine or die trying,
and this shall be
my new mantra as I journey
into Summer.

Peter the Pirate: Christmas on the Moon

This story is in audio only. Grab a cup of tea and sit with a comforter, watch the snow falling outside, and plan to listen to a story in ballad form for about an hour. It is the third part of the Peter the Pirate St. Nicholas stories. I wrote these over the years as apart of our family's St. Nicholas Day celebrations.

In the first story, Peter the Pirate and the Christmas ship, St. Nicholas comes to Peter's Island and takes Peter away on an adventure on the Christmas ship. The Ship is a magic ship, and like magic ships in other stories, it can fly, not just in the air, but across celestial seas. It is in this first story that we first meet the children who man the crew of the Christmas ship

In the second story, Peter the Pirate and Christmas Island, we find out that these children come from a cursed land called Christmas Island that is frozen in time at one minute until 12 on Christmas Eve so that Christmas can never come! The Children were rescued by St. Nicholas on the Christmas ship, but the Saint, is unable to remove the curse. In this story, Peter travels to that land and finds a way to remove the curse on that Island. The children are finally returned to their parents and Christmas comes to Christmas Island at long last. It became a tradition then that the Children from Christmas Island should crew the Christmas ship thereafter. This third story takes place many, many years later.

For music, I have used clips from various songs by Blackmore's Night. (Awsome music! I hope you check them out.)

Kingstontown

My daughter recently visited her grandparents (my mom and dad) who gave her a bunch of photos that my mom took when she was little. She scanned them and sent them to me. My appologies to my son who appears in only two of the pictures here. If it is of any consolation to him, I have to say that the same thing happened to me. My older sister got all the press since she was the first born, so there are more photos of her than of me in my mother's scrap books and piles of photos.

One of the nice things about cyperspace and digital photos is that it frees room in the closets. I regard these videos as a kind of scrapbooking and journal keeping without all the bulk. I love my blog because I can't lose anything on it and the photos never grow dull or get beat up. It is also cool because I can share my life with people all over the world that I know and love.

Regarding the music in this video, I enjoy Harry Belafonte's singing. Kingstontown kind of conveys the feeling I have of being so far away during this season. The ship, the Rose also called the Surprise is from the movie Master and Commander the Far Side of the world, based on the books by Patrick O'Brian.

Thanksgiving Dinner.

I am entering a second holiday season away from my family. This is the hardest time of all to be away from them, but I am not about to let the season go by unmarked or with indifference like last year. Last year I had just arrived and was hoping that the expats who were here would have something organized that I could participate in. I was too fresh, too new and too poor to put much of anything together. This year I did my best to put a dinner together and to do it right. I intend to keep the holidays and the civilization that they represent to me. I was a bit busy and didn't get too many pictures, but I thought I would send a couple.

Reflection for the first Sunday of Advent.

That HE should come into our poverty and hopelessness—when we are in the dark of our mid-winter; when the moody sun becomes broody and miserly at a time when we are most in want of his light—that he should come now, of all times, is matter to be pondered. How shall we care for him in our poverty? Isn’t it better that he comes into the house of kings? Isn’t it better that he be educated in the best schools? Would it not serve the world for him to be a prince among men, high, proud, and powerful among the masses? What have we to offer him? What but love? And what is that against the raging of nations and the weight of history? What is love when we can barely feed him, clothe him and hardly keep a roof over him? What of love when we must watch him struggle under the oppression of the rich and the powerful as we have done? And yet, we do. Somehow we do. We love this baby, crying to be fed, like any other baby. We love him, find food somewhere for him, clothe him, house him and teach him. He grows up with the masses, dirty and running barefoot through the smelly, dusty, crowded streets. We love him. That is all we have. But how will the world be better for this?

Bicycles on the Corniche

Sometimes, the stress of the week is too much and I have to get out. It so happened that a handful of my friends here were getting together to go for a bike ride along the Corniche in Abu Dhabi on a Thursday night. Thursday nights are like Friday nights in the United States, people are done with the work week, are out and about, and in a good mood. The cost of renting a bike is 20 dirhams for the hour (about $5) so I decided it wouldn't break me to get out and go with them to enjoy the good weather and have a pleasant chat and a bit of fun and, frankly, I needed the exercize. It has been well over a year since I'd been on a bike.

Seasons

It is after the storm ,
when the hot
concrete of the sidewalks
sends up steam and the starlings
feast on the worms, that I
live. The clouds have
a tint of green
and my lawn, my trees, my skin
my dog, my children, my house
and all that is me
is verdant in their light.

It is the white ash
that is the first to
turn the color of
fire and embers and finally
to a deep peach, then
the maple’s glory starts exploding:
preaching of the beauty there is
in death with the eloquence
and the grace of
slow motion fireworks--a yellow
that changes my mood as I walk
down my street to the large confetti
coming down as if I were a hero
home from war.

It is waking up to the
silent, satisfying, fresh
deep, deep, downy layers
of sparkling snow, on my yard,
my bushes, my trees,
drifting across my driveway
curling around
the eves of my house where I
live, cozy in the warmth of
quilts and love. The rising sun
casts its Midas touch on the face
of my wife who is looking out
on a golden world.

It is in the red bud that
she begins her dance without
motion as she sends the purple
lace winding among the beaches
and oaks. She makes me stir. She calls to
the dogwood, and the lilac that
it is time to grace the
world with new colors.
She smells of fresh earth, mushrooms,
the decay of leaves, and
lily of the valley. In the
mornings she watches me in
the multitudes of
of droplets of dew
like a thousand cats’ eyes
on every spider’s web,
leaf, and blade of grass.
She does not linger:
brevity is intensity,
intensity is passion.
If you would take her,
take her now.

Party at Arak

There are times when I feel like I'm in the old television series, MASH. Instead of being surgeons in Korea, we are ESL teachers in the Emirates, but we are still doing a tour of duty over seas far away from our families. I'm more of a Honeycut (married with kids), than a Hawkeye (single but cynical). I fret and worry about what I'm missing out of at home, I have anxiety about the old roof on our house and the walnut tree's limbs not being trimmed, and how is that old double glider holding up? Those who have pets will also understand how much I miss my dark sheltie, Sammy. Ah, she's a beautiful creature, friendly but not fawning and the obedience of a sheep dog is deeply bred into her. But I won't bore you with tales of my dog. I just miss it all. So, being far away from friends, family and loved ones makes getting together and connecting with all the people here pretty important.

At the ESL program in our University, everyone is a temporary worker. People come and go. That's because there really isn't much incentive to stay long term. While the salary isn't bad, there are many places here that offer quite a bit more. There are no raises here, no retirement, only the minimum that is legal for health insurance is offered, no educational fee compensation, no married housing--and that's a big factor. People who have no commitment and only themselves to care for are free to leave at anytime and often "pull a runner"when they can't stand it any more. So when the going gets tough, the tough start going, as in leaving.

I'm afraid I've mentioned a lot of negative factors here. There is a lot I also like about working here. I love my students. The Emirati men are the best group of men I have ever met. I find them gracious, charming, and generous. When I first started teaching there, I was a bit put off by behaviours that I thought were rude, such as answering cell phones in class, talking while other students were presenting or getting up and walking out of class at odd times. But I have started to realize that this is a cultural phenomena, that rudeness is not intended, and the truth is that they are very respectful of the teacher according to the rules of their culture. In fact, respect for the teacher is a huge value. I am treated like a royal.

I also like my fellow teachers. Expat ESL teachers here come from all over the world and I have loved the cultural exchange that goes with it. I am so rich for knowing St. Joseph, from Kenya, Kyle from Texas, Jo Jo and Evans from Cameroon, Keveen was from France, people from, Canada, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, England, and everywhere in the world. It is so cool to go to parties like this one and have fun. It is a relief from the stress, isolation, and alienation that can happen while living for a long period of time in a country that is not one's own.

I've taken a long time to express my gratitude to the people who put these parties together. They are important.

A Reflection on the Brain, Mind, and Metaphor

The Date Palm Tree

You are a new palm leaf
Fresh and green
But I am old
And dates I’ve seen
And branches before me
Cut to the ground.
Generations lost
No longer around
Their memory there
Marked on the tree
Now stubs on the trunk
Of history.
And I see that our stories
Blend into one
With you at your height
And I, almost gone.
The man with the turban
Climbing so fast
He cuts me away
And into the past.

If they should write today

If William Carlos Williams
Wrote a poem today
Instead of ruddy wheelbarrows
For a poem, what would he say?

So much depends
on that black PC
Coated with dust
beside the stack of manuscripts?

What if Dickinson in 2008
with laptop by her lovely flowers
should sit word-processing her poems,
Dressed in white, for hours and hours?

There is no frigate like a Blog—
Linked to some grand websites!
Just move the Cursors down and click!
Heaven! –in those Byts and Bytes!

Eliot, alive right now,
Within his current rhymes,
What images would he relate,
In these post-modern times?

Kristoff Cat’s a computer hack
And steals identities!
He loves a world where nothing’s true—
Voiding all moralities!

I suppose we cannot know
Exactly what they’d say;
But I doubt they’d find a publisher
If they should write today.

Fujairah

NannyG invited us up to her new place in Fajairah, UAE. It was a wonderful place to visit and a very important break with some much needed R&R. Shokrun NannyG!

Michaelmas

Michaelmas is not a well-known feast day of the church, but it is one that our family adopted, along with Candlemas, St. Nicholas Day, and Santa Lucia Day, to celebrate in our own family context. We tended to have activities planned for St. Nicholas Day and Santa Lucia Day, but Candlemas and Michaelmas were simply in our remembrance. We called our house, Candlemas and meant for it to be a kind of sacred and peaceful place. We had read Thomas Howard’s book, “Hallowed Be This House” (long out of print now) and were very much influenced by it.

Michaelmas represented a dream for us as the name of a community, a commune of our old age in “the autumn of our lives” just as Michaelmas announces the fall. Whether this dream is ever realized or not, I still have this day in my eternal consciousness. This video is for my family on Michaelmas Day. It is my way of loving them from a great distance.

Dr. Who teaches the past tense

I used to love Dr. Who. PBS ran the series for a time. Tom Baker was the best Dr. Who ever, but I loved tje cheesy and cheap effects and the Dalacks. "Exterminate! Exterminate!" I thought I could use the time travel idea to talk about tense to ESL students This is mostly for fun though and a chance to be Dr. Who.

Going Home

I put the words to this song on my blog site a while back, but I thought I would put the song here now that I have finished it. I'm not a great musician. In fact, I don't think I'm a musician at all. I frequently go flat or sharp and I can't really keep a beat, but I like to tell stories. This is a story poem within a longer story poem called Peter the Pirate: the Commodore's Journey that I have been working on for years. I don't play any instruments, and the drum you hear is my fingers pounding on the desk. I have several "songs"in Peter the Pirate. This is the best of the bunch so far (which may not be saying much) For the sake of context, Peter and his Pirates sing this song to a ghost called Sammy Kirkendhal. It is a part of a rite that will allow Sammy to speak to them for a short period of time and give them guidance. I hope you enjoy it!

The Bower

I have seen an oriole’s nest; he weaves it as a bower.
And climbs inside where he can hide and keep his children safe.
The night is cold, the predators bold, and though they rant and rave
The birds keep their place, in warm sacred space: where wicked things hold no power.

Oriole, oriole, bright oriole! I beg you build me a nest!
The night, it is cold and the predators are bold, and sense my scent on the wind.
I pause and I hush. Do you hear? In the brush? And another beast--just round the bend!
And where will I go, my sweet oriole, as Panic pierces my chest?

The lanterns in the sky above are snuffed out one by one.
The moon is black, she’s turned her back; she doesn’t hear that growl.
Indifferent moon! Caring not how soon the dark thing on the prowl
Should come around and strike me down and rip flesh from my bone.

Ah, Oriole! Oriole—my Oriole! High in your holy Bower,
One last lantern lights the sky, enlightens me, and I know why!
Whom I have loved, has loved me back. In this I rest and die.
I see you Oriole and I know that yours--is the Kingdom and Power.

The Shuttle Driver

Sameer, my old shuttle driver was chatty and friendly and became something of a friend to me. He’d take me down to the bakery, or once he stopped so I could pick some dates from the palms on the side of the road. Whenever we went to town, I’d pick his brain for a different kind of date: Arabic words. Sometimes it was because I would try to read the Arabic road signs and wanted to check my pronunciation of the letters, or sometimes I was just curious to know how to say something. His English wasn’t great, but he had enough so that I could develop an amiable relationship with him. In the morning he would have the radio on and it would be playing middle-eastern music.

“That’s from Beruit,” he’d say, or “That’s Kuwaiti” or “Who is that singer? Remember Mr. Ken? I tell you twenty time! Remember?”

“Fay- Fay-“I’d try to remember.

“Fayrouz! Mr. Ken. Why! Why you no remember? Number 1 singer in Middle East! I tell you and tell you!”

“Bad brains.” I’d say apologetically, pointing at my temple.

“She come here—two, maybe three month ago. Emirates Palace.” Then he’d say, appalled, “2-3000 dirham! One ticket to see Fayrouz. Is too much! Too too much!”

That would be somewhere around 700 to 900 American dollars. I was impressed. And here I had never even heard of her and was lousy at remembering her name. But I did like her voice and her music.

Sameer is from Palestine. He is 57, smokes, has rather course skin on his face, a crudely trimmed moustache, and kind of squinty eyes. He wears a white shirt and an Al Ghazal stripped tie, (which looks just like one I wore in the cub scouts when I was a kid (not the neckerchief). He seems to be separated from his wife (I wasn’t too clear about that, and sensed I shouldn’t really ask.) He has a sister who has visited him here, and several children. One is a son who lives in Jordan. I didn’t find out too much about the rest. He had a nephew, I think it was, who was killed by Israeli missiles not long after he had married. “Why? Why they do?” he asked.

Sameer lost his job because he says he was getting too old. Mandatory retirement here is 60 and it is rather ambiguous why they let him go three years early. “What I can do?” He said to me resigned to it. I had lots of questions and shouldn’t have asked them, really, but I was concerned for him. "What will you do? Will you go back to Lebanon? Will you go to your son in Jordan? Do you have retirement?” He didn’t know, smiled sheepishly, and I was aware that my questions may have served to increase his own anxiety. He said he would get 10,000 dirham (1000 for each year of his ten years of service with Al Ghazal). He may not have known the meaning of the word “retirement”, but workers here, in fact have no social security or retirement in general. Businesses in the UAE hire cheap laborers from other countries, pay them a straight pre-negotiated salary, give them no raises, work them for twenty years and send them packing when they are too old to work, and they do this according to UAE labor law. Unlike foreign workers in America, who can apply for citizenship and reap the benefits that go with it, workers here go back to their countries with what they have saved, a ticket home and their yearly bonuses.

And so, Sameer has been replaced by Nasser, who is a much better and safer driver, but who speaks even less English, is very quiet, and has the radio tuned to a Hip Hop station—nothing Middle Eastern at all--not even Indian music or Bollywood. I’ve wondered if he plays it because he likes it, or if he thinks I will be more comfortable with American music. He drives me to the very back door of my villa, whereas Sameer only drove me to the curb. I kind of get the feeling that Nasser expects to be treated as a servant, and with the impersonal distance that goes with it. But that’s not what I want. I came here to teach English, but I really came here to find out about people and their cultures and to make friends with people from every station in life.

I’ve tried to chat with Nasser. Perhaps he is shy, I can’t say, but I don’t think I’m going to be able to make friends with him. He is from Southern India and speaks a language I’ve never heard of. I asked him to repeat it, tried to pronounce it, butchered it badly, until he finally said, “I speak Hindi.” I’m guessing his language is close to Hindi, but he was trying to save me the trouble of butchering it. But, somehow, the way he said it brought the conversation to and abrupt end.

So I sit in the passenger seat of the shuttle, where I always sat when I drove with Sameer. I sit in silence, without worrying about getting into an accident, the gears of the van not winding up to a near explosive level as when Sameer drove, not nearly being hurtled through the window every time we approach a speed bump as I did when Sameer drove, and in silence I watch the Palm trees along the road, as I listen to Hip Hop, which I can’t stand, and I find that I am very upset.

There is a graveyard on the landscape of my heart that seems to be ever expanding and full of people who haven’t died, but have moved on to another world all the same. They are empty graves with tombstones. They are empty because there is nothing to fill them with. They have tombstones because I must remember.

The life of an ex-pat, ESL teacher is the life of a loner, but human beings require relationships. Those relationships sometimes happen before we even know it. As if invisible tendrils flow out of us all the time, without our knowledge, and catch, somewhere, with someone--and then, suddenly the someone is gone and we feel the tendrils snap, and we didn’t realize we had become so attached, but we know it now.

So it has been with me and Sameer.

A Tribute to Keveen

Life is a path on a journey to a place that we know not of.

I want to walk it slowly, patiently with my head up, attentive to the landscape.

In the end it is a path that we must all walk alone. That is not to say that we don’t meet people on the way. Our paths run parallel to others and they seem to walk with us for a while. Some walk with us and, for a time amuse us, but they are quickly forgotten in the shadows of our past.

Others we will never forget.

I walked a while, a very short while, with Keveen Gabet, The Unforgettable, The Brightly Burning Candle, The Explorer; and I enjoyed the exchange. He is on a grand journey both literal and metaphorical. In his mid-twenties he has seen more of the world than I ever will. And he will go even farther—a lot farther, I think. He must be Thursday’s child.
Did I just meet a cheerful version of Lord Byron? A happy Thoreau? A gleeful Emersonian Man? In the end, I think I met a Keveen Gabet! A new and unique person, who is pushing the limits of what is possible in a human lifetime. He is a true and authentic, bohemian, explorer, poet, writer, and filmmaker who is figuring it all out as he goes. His teacher is the wind, the sand, the sea, the road, and all the people he meets and the places he sees.

As I said, Life is a path on a journey to a place that we know not of. That is not to say that we are not drawn to a certain end. The place we are going is already in us, and yet it is drawing us to where it is. It is a great tragedy, as Emerson noted, that conformity has wasted so many lives that have been lost to mediocre existence. We know, we sense, beyond reason what we should do, must do, but we don’t follow that pull, because people tell us how foolish we are, and they seem so sure that they know the right way for us to live our lives, they convince us to turn aside and do the sensible thing. And so we live lives that are empty, but we make enough money, do our duty, grow old and die, having lived “lives of quiet desperation.”
Keveen just goes where he wants to go, and does what he wants to do and is just crazy enough to take great risks, and with a certain ease walks into the hearts and lives of people, rich and poor, all around the world, with good humor, a charming smile and the innocence of a child.

And so Keveen, my blessing, for I was a priest, once:

May Love follow you, dwell in you, guide you, and protect you;
May Love take you far away and bring you home again.
Love be your mission and Love be your message,
Love be your companion
And Love be your champion,
Until I see you again, inshallah, my friend.

Mynah Bird

Mynah bird, mynah bird
How do you do?
A peckin’ and a pluckin'
On my old black shoe.

Mynah bird, mynah bird
Perchin’ on my fence
I just can’t understand you
‘cause you make no sense.

O the things that I’ve forgotten!
And O the things that I have lost!
The things I’ve buried: dead and rottin’
The things I’ve done and what they cost.

Mynah bird, mynah bird
A stranger in your land,
I’m tryin’ hard to listen hard
So I can understand.

Mynah bird, Minah bird
What did you say?
Was it supplication?
What’d you pray?

Memories like puzzle pieces
Scatter on the wooden floor
Or like cut crystal glasses

That shatter loudly all the more.

Mynah bird, Mynah bird
There’s something that I lack
Mynah bird, myna bird
Take me back!
Mynah bird, mynah bird
Take me back!
Take me back!
Take me back!

Miracles

I was looking at the desert today as the military bus took us to the base to teach English. In other places the dunes are exotic, grand and sweeping and graceful as the curves of a nude beauty. But here, today, it was just barren and skuzzy with dried brush. I wondered what this area was like hundreds of thousands of years ago when there must have been fertile lands, long before the desert killed it all off. I wondered if the land could be reawakened and I imagined that I would walk and sing the song of ancient word and melody; and I imagined the rain falling and deciduous forest springing up around me. And I wondered: if I walked in swaths across the desert like a rewind of a slow moving scythe putting the forest in place rather than cutting it all down: How long would it take me to change the land and alter the climate? If only I knew the right words and the melody! And I thought: if only the power of God resided within me to do such a thing.

Then something inside me said: “but such power does reside in you.”
And I responded that I had no idea how to tap into such power.
“That isn’t how you should think about it.”
And how should I think about it? I asked.
“You shouldn’t exactly think at all. The power of God is in everyone, waiting.”
And how do I wake it up then?
“It is your self you must wake.”

When I was a child, I had a canary I called, “Tony.” I don’t know what possessed me to give a canary a name like “Tony” but I did. I liked that bird and sometimes I would let him out of the cage to fly around the room even if it meant having to clean bird crap off the walls and the floor. Eventually he would be ready to return to his cage and he would let me catch him and I’d put him away. He sang the sweetest songs as he swung on his swing. Sometimes I let him bite my finger to see how hard he could do it, and his little tongue would lick my finger as he bit.

One day I came into my room to find Tony on his back on the bottom of the cage. I knew he was dead, but I stuck my hand in to nudge him a bit to see if he would get up. I even pushed on his chest as if to resuscitate him, but he was stiff and motionless. I cried a while about it and then I prayed to God: “O, God, if you just bring him back to life, I’ll go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life.” What can I say? I was a child and I figured God would make deals with people. What did I know of theology? My bird was dead and only the Master of Life, Death and All Miracles could bring him back.

I’m glad we didn’t bury him right away, because about a half an hour later he was up swinging and singing as usual. I was astonished, and I went and told my mother that he was alive. She came to my room and did not respond to the “miracle” that I had just witnessed. She calmly gave me a couple of rational alternatives: “Perhaps he had had a seizure, or, even more likely, that he was spooked and flew around his cage and knocked himself out.”

The bird was dead, mom. Sorry, but he was stiff with what I now know is rigor mortis. But the need we have to give rational explanations for things like that is very telling. We will see only what we believe in, or want to believe in. You tell a kid there is a God who is master of life and death, that walking on water and passing through walls is possible and he will believe it until, the real thing happens, and then we explain the miracle away, because we don’t really believe in them or that they are really possible. Why would the God of the Universe be bothered to resurrect a kid’s canary? Aren’t there more important miracles needed in this world?

I know that Christian Church people of the Restoration Movement are proud of being sensible people who don’t go in for all that emotional Pentecostal kind of stuff. God gave us a mind and expects us to use it and all that. And that is how I was raised. Yes, yes, miracles took place in the bible, back in Bible days and then they stopped because you can’t really trust anything that’s not in the Bible and the world is full of crazy religious people and if they aren’t crazy, then they’re charlatans.

All the same, Tony was alive and I suddenly realized, with a quickly falling visage, that I had promised God that I would go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. You know…church isn’t a lot of fun for a kid. As an adult, I can’t say it is a very thrilling experience either, but for a kid it means dressing up in ill-fitting, uncomfortable clothing and having to stifle unlimited energy for hours on end, listening to a preacher use long meaningless words, while sitting on pews that were not made for a human rump, let alone a child whose legs cannot even reach the floor. I’m afraid to say, that in the course of my life, I have failed, miserably and egregiously, to keep my childhood promise to God. I don’t think he ever believed I would keep that promise. I think, sometimes that God has a kind of perverse sense of humor (as anthropomorphic as that may sound). I imagine him chuckling, good humouredly, at my foolishness. Beyond my anthropomorphic projections, God is Love. I can pray to Love, I can pray to God: “Same, same” as my Arab students say. Love Loves me and Loves through me. I say he chuckles because he didn’t care about the promise I had made, and he showed me how foolish such promises are.

So why did he bring my canary back to life? Well, I think it was to teach me something. I have learned two things from this event: one is that God is pretty good at keeping promises, but I really suck at it. And secondly, that what we believe is what we will see. I saw a bird come back to life. My mom saw a canary that was unconscious for a while.

What is real?
And what does that voice in me mean when it says, “It is your self you must wake.”

Mind Photos

The longest days of the year are at hand and the temperatures are rising here on the Arabian Peninsula.109 degrees is the hottest day I have experienced so far, but I am told it will get much hotter. Funny, but I want to know what 120 degrees is like. I’m crazy, I know, but it is my curiosity that wants to be satisfied in this matter. I also have a kind of longing for new experiences. I can tolerate the heat when it is dry, but not when it gets humid, and Abu Dhabi being right on the gulf, it can get very humid. On days like that, I come home from work and take a nap in the comfort of air-conditioning, and I wonder how the Arabs did it not-so-many-years-ago, living and traveling in the sun day in and day out.

What I didn’t realize is how much dust in the air can keep the temperature down. Imagine living in a murky fish bowl and that is a bit what it is like when the dust is hanging in the air. It has the feel of an over-cast sky but it is just dust in the air. But lose the dust and the temperature sky-rockets. I am reminded of the great cloud over the Israelites in the wilderness that camped over them. I understand its importance a little better now.

What is nice is, in the cool of the evening when sunset comes and the call to prayer resounds through the air, I feel a kind of peace. I know then, that sometimes it is the harsh severities that we experience that make us feel alive. The heat and the humidity can deaden me, sap my energy to work and think, but it passes and I perk up later.

I went back to Sharjah this weekend and went through the Blue Souq. Most of the shops were closed as is the custom between the hours of 1:00 and 4:30. I passed a place on the second floor near a stairway, and saw shoes placed on the steps and around about. I wondered if the shop workers were at prayer, but as I came closer, I realized that they were sleeping on the carpet. I was tempted to take a picture of this scene, but it seemed rude, so I took a picture with my mind instead. I take a lot of pictures with my mind: Old men in turbans and head cloths, women moving like shadows in their long, black abayas, Pakistani workers squatting, men walking down the street holding hands, dust and dirt, Emirati men dressed in their pure white dish dashes, sitting in coffee shops plugged into their cell phones, sipping coffee. I have mind photos of sunsets, the jade moons, crowds of men sitting on the city grass at night socializing and on and on.

Mind photos might be better than real photos. Mind photos show me the things the camera can’t explain. Indeed a picture of such a thing steals the reality of what is in the mind. Best of all, mind photos may, just may, last for eternity.

The Bridge

I built a bridge to Alpha-Centauri.
I won’t go into the details of the technology.
I made it look just like the Brooklyn Bridge
But it doesn’t go to Manhattan, of course
I’ve already told you it goes to Alpha-Centauri.

Really. It does.

I’ve crossed it myself and back again.
And I just left it there for others to cross.
No, no, no, I’m not going to charge.
I don’t believe in that sort of thing.
I’ve always believed that if we all just gave freely,

We would have no need for money...imagine that!

Some people believe in love, others believe in money,
But we’re a long way from Alpha-Centauri.
So let me show you the bridge I built.
I realize there are dangers for Alpha-Centaurians,
Once humans start to go there.

What will they think of us?

We will likely bring our pollution and diseases,
And worst of all our entrepreneurs!
But we may well take our art, our music, and our poetry
And other vestigial remnants from quaint days
When we believed in the existence of a thing called a soul.

And there might be dangers!

Who knows what good and evil they may bring to us?
Who knows if Alpha-Centaruians are safe?
Should I have done it? Should I have built my bridge?
Eve and the apple? Pandora and the box?
And just who am I to risk the security of all humanity?

Ah, now, that is the question isn’t it?

God@yahoo.com

Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 00:16:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Nemo Ogle
Subject: Do you think of me?
To: God@yahoo.com

Dear Almighty,

I e-mailed you a few years ago. Apparently you have a yahoo account because the mailer daemon didn't tell me at that time that he couldn't deliver your mail. But you know daemons, unreliable creatures really. But you never e-mailed me back. I find this typical of your behavior. Billions of people crying out to you every day eon after eon. If good happens they credit you as having answered, if bad happens they credit you with having answered in a way they didn't like. It is when nothing happens at all that people begin to doubt, and wonder where you are.

I have had several encounters with you in my life where you did speak to me in that "still, small voice". And sometimes not so small voice. "The kingdom of heaven is in you." So I listen to that voice that is in me, combining it with Emerson's input to become more reliant on what I hear there and trust it. I know that such things are very subjective. Yet I wonder, which is more true: the subjective or the objective? Objective is just facts, not truth. Truth has a lot more to do with how the facts are interpreted. I think that subjective truth has a lot more going for it.

Emerson said that "intuition is the highest faculty of the soul." "Know yourself" is something else that he said. But a self is a very subjective thing. Can't see it. Can't smell it, taste it, or touch it, like you can the body. But a self--the observer who thinks and responds to other selves-- well now that is a mystery not so easily washed away by those who believe in objectivity, in spite of all their theories of being and consciousness.

Why am I telling the All-knowing these things? I don't know. I am a human being, and though you are a divine being, you are still being. In my own human way, I guess, sometimes I don't really want anything from you other than to just talk. I know that people ask you for things all the time. Can you please heal my 96 year old grand mother from her heart trouble? Can you send me money: I'm in dire straights? Can you send me a perfect husband who will love me? Can you make me rich and prosperous? If you just let me win that lottery I will go to church every Sunday and give money to the poor etc., etc. Can you please take me back in time for five minutes so I can undo the stupid thing I just did? Everybody wants something from you. As Janis put it: "O Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz..."

But today, all I really want is you. Just you, just to talk to you, I think. At least you are a good listener.

I guess I thought you should know.

By the way, Happy Father's day.


Date: 10 Jun 2008 07:16:44 -0000
From: MAILER-DAEMON@yahoo.com
To: Nemo
Subject: failure notice

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com. I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses. This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
"context": "209.191.118.103 failed after I sent the message. Remote host said: 554 delivery error: dd Sorry your message to god@yahoo.com cannot be delivered. This account has been disabled or discontinued [#101]. - mta489.mail.mud.yahoo.com

The Land was Harsh

Did you think the land was harsh
Because it did not want your plow?
And to your soiled, calloused hands
It would not yield, nor would it bow.

Unmoved, you moved to slice the ground,
And scarred the earth to meet your need.
Heedless of the pain you caused
And threw, on virgin soil, your seed.

Where once the wild weeds would bloom
Tall tame plants have come to grow—
Those stiff straight soldiers march
In row, on row, on row, on row.

Wind

Wind wants to talk
When it whips around the stones
Or rattles the locks
Or bangs the shutters

Wind wants to talk
When it moans in the window
Or whispers in the palm fronds
And hisses in the sand

Wind wants to talk
And its warnings are ignored
It is only the wind we say
But I know better

King Solomon, The Queen and the Hood Hood

Once there was a powerful, wise, and wealthy king by the name of Solomon. Allah favored this king and lavished on him great prosperity, and placed in his power the ranks of all the jinn, men and animals. Allah also gave to Solomon the gift of the language of the Animals so that he could understand their speech and speak to them in return.

So it was that Solomon assembled all his hosts to order and inspect them. Such a large gathering it was that the queen of the ants cried out to her armies, “Run down into the earth or Solomon and his hosts will surely trample us!” Solomon actually heard her when she said this, and he smiled to himself. Was he a powerful King? It was Allah who made him so. He was nothing but an aunt compared to Allah. “So order me and my hosts!” he prayed.

Then Solomon passed by his armies. He strode past rank upon rank of human men, rank upon rank of jinn, rank upon rank of animals, seeing that all were assembled except:

“Where is the hood hood?” he asked. “Why is the hood hood among those who are absent today? Surely I will have to punish him!”

But in a little while the hood hood came down before Solomon who was not happy with him. “Well, bird, what is your excuse?”

“A’asaff my lord,” He gave apology bowing low. “I have been scouting in far away lands and I wish to report to you of my findings.”

“Excuses, excuses,” said the irritated king. The hood hood could not reply, but simply stood at attention waiting, inshalla, for a chance to speak further. Solomon considered the bird, and being a wise king decided to hear him out. “Speak, hood hood, your king is listening.

The hood hood cleared his throat and spoke: “I flew to place called Saba, and this land was ruled by a woman who sat on a most magnificent throne. I have never seen a throne like this. It was fashioned with ebony and gold, and set with jewels and precious gemstones! The queen herself seemed worthy to sit upon such a throne for she was fair and wise to my mind except…”

When the bird hesitated, Solomon, still a little irritated, said, “Do go on, bird, I still have armies to inspect!”

“Yes, your grace. Truly, there is only one God! But in the land of Saba they worship Allah and the sun god!”

At this Solomon took note: “Surely Shaytaan has deceived them!” But Solomon, being wise as well as prudent was not quick to trust the bird. The hood hood may have been just making excuses for being tardy. He said to the bird, loudly enough to be heard in the assembly, “I will have to see whether what he tells me is true or not!”

He whispered a few words to an assistant who quickly brought him parchment and pen. Solomon took a few moments to jot a hasty note. The sun was warm, the zebras swatted flies with their tails, the spider monkeys tried not to fidget too much, and all the ranks of men, jinn, and animals simply had to wait.

When he finished, he rolled the parchment up and put it into the beak of the hood hood. “Deliver this to the Queen of Saba. Once it is in her hand, fly off into some nearby branches and hide, then listen carefully to what she says to her advisors. Then return to me.”

The hood hood took the parchment, bowed and flew up over the palace walls and was gone.

In the cool of the evening the Queen of Saba stood near her window in her palace chamber. There was a sweet smell on the breeze that she couldn’t quite recognize. It drew her heart and mind to a peaceful place—a distant land of goodness, adventure, and mystery. Did such a place exist, she wondered? She hoped so. But suddenly her thoughts were interrupted when a hood hood flew down onto her window ledge with a parchment in its beak.

The hood hood didn’t run from her nor fly away. The Queen was astonished but carefully reached out and stroked the bird’s soft down before she took the parchment.

“Shokrun,” she said to the bird.

“Afwan” replied the hood hood, but all the queen could hear was the bird making the call for which he was named. The hood hood then flew off and settled and hid in the branches of a palm tree, where he could see and listen to what took place next.

Having read the note, the Queen quickly assembled her advisors. “It is from Solomon, the wise king. He greets me in the name of Allah, most merciful, and tells me that he expects me to worship none but Allah alone. This troubles me and, since I always rely on your advice, which I value, I ask you what sort of response I should give.”

The advisors muttered among themselves before giving their opinion. They were not quite sure either, having heard only rumors of the greatness of this king. Still, they believed that they were wealthy, wise, and powerful enough to match any kingdom.

“Good queen, we are willing to war with this king, if need be, we have wealth and resources enough, but the decision is yours to make. Do as you will.”

She was loath to do so.

“Kings, when they wage war, trample the country side, and ruin villages and crops, and leave behind a bloody mess. I will reserve this action for the last and only at great need. No, I will try another approach first. “Let us prepare a gift to give to this King Solomon that will impress upon him that we, too, are wealthy and powerful. Besides, what will all the nations think if we give so great a gift, showing our generous and gracious benevolence? It would be unwise for a king to trouble a country that has shown only kindness. Perhaps too, it may be that we will buy peace and he will leave us alone.”

And so it was that the hood hood reported back to Solomon all that he had seen and heard.


Sometime later, the emissaries from Saba arrived at Solomon’s Palace. They were dressed in fine silk robes embroidered with gold threads, jewels on their fingers and toes, and rubies in their turbans. They had meant to make an impression, but when they came into Solomon’s palace of cedar and gold, they felt somehow small and poor. They presented the treasure all-the-same and noted to themselves that, when they left, they had thought that it was an overly extravagant offering, but now it seemed a rather meager thing indeed. But still they tried to present it as if it were a very great offering.

“Hmmm” said Solomon. “Hmmm” he said again. “Your gift is great in your own eyes, but I have no need of this. I have not asked for gifts! I have asked for only one gift alone and that is that all Saba should worship Allah, the one true god, and serve him only. Go your way. It may be that I will come against you with a very great host.”

So the ambassadors went away, having seen Solomon’s wealth and his armies including the powerful Ifrits (very strong jinn) among the Jinn. Who could stand against Solomon?

When they were gone, Solomon wondered what he should do. He needed to know more about this queen of Saba. He turned to his jinn. “Who among you can bring me the wondrous throne of this queen of which the hood hood spoke?

One ifrit was more than eager to do it and was rather aggressive and boastful about it, but another jinni, who had knowledge of the holy book, said, humbly, that he could bring the throne to Solomon in the blink of an eye. So Solomon sent the more humble jinn, and immediately the throne appeared in his palace. It truly was a dazzling throne.

“This comes to me by the gift of Allah,’ he said quietly to himself. “I must not forget to be thankful for his blessing.”

“Now,” said the wise king, “we shall test this queen to see if she can see the truth of things! If so, perhaps there is hope that she may see what is false and what is true regarding Allah!” And he commanded his jinn to transform the throne and make it completely unrecognizable to the queen’s human eyes.


When at last the Queen of Saba arrived she saw, and understood that Allah had given everything to Solomon. This was no ordinary wealth and power, for no one can command the jinn and the animals but by the grace and will of Allah. Inshalla. She knew in her heart the truth of things and so Allah opened her eyes. And when she and King Solomon passed by her throne she stopped. So Solomon asked her, “Is this your throne?”

“Indeed, my lord, it is, or else is the exact image of it.”

“Come,” he said to her, “let me show you my palace.” When she came to the great hall she descended the steps but paused before stepping down. She pulled up her dress a bit exposing her ankles before stepping onto the floor. Some in the court were a bit scandalized by this, but Solomon understood what she was doing and said, “It is not water you will step in. Perhaps you have never seen polished glass!” And he chuckled a bit.

It was at this point that the Queen of Saba, overwhelmed by the blessings that had been conferred upon Solomon by God, confessed to Solomon that there was only one deity: Solomon’s god. And she submitted herself to Solomon and vowed to worship only Allah.


So it was that Solomon, may his name be blessed forever, led the Queen of Saba to faith in the One True God.

The End.

Based on the Qur'an Chapter 27

To sleep, perchance to dream…

There are so many theories about dreams and what they are. There are also just as many ideas about how to interpret them. Some scientists whom I have heard speak, have commented on the subject, and I think they tend to dismiss dreams as nothing but random discharges of the neurons and we simply ascribe a narrative to them and call it a dream. Frankly, I think that because there is so little that can be empirically verified, the dream experience is dismissed and not dealt with by a great many scientists. You can’t really verify what is in a dream. You can see that the brain is active during REM with an MRI and this is about all you can see. Only the dreamer can tell you what he or she dreamed. The MRI and neuroscience will never be able to verify the existence of a thought or a dream in terms of its content and process. One can only trust what the “observer” the thinker or dreamer says about it. And the observer’s subjective experience is practically worthless to a scientist.

What came first, I wonder, the thought or the neuron charge? Is the thought the result of the neurons discharging as the response to an external stimulus? I don’t think any credible scientist would say otherwise. But I do. The thought, the dream, and the unverifiable invisible person who had the thought, existed before the body or brain reacted to them and their initiative. Then the brain responded to the invisible “observer” and it lights up the MRI scan. The person has had a thought and the body has responded. We are all incarnate. We are all infleshed. But we are something else too. Our existence lies beyond the neurons.

What are dreams? Dreams are sometimes bereft of much meaning. But sometimes they are loaded with profound meaning. We all know this. A great truth or self-revelation lies just under the surface, down in what Freud and Jung first referred to as the subconscious or the unconscious. And it bubbles up to the surface in a dream. We sense meaning in it, we tell it to another who sees the obvious meaning and reflects it back to us. Then we have this epiphany—this revelation experience. We see the truth of the dream and it is often a relief to us.

I have begun to migrate away from the term “subconscious” and say only that there is something there—in the layers of our being--that is very mysterious and that we cannot understand in any scientific terms. There is a part of our self that remains beyond the brain. A self that doesn’t know the very language we use. Language is in the brain. It is mostly trapped in Broca’s area. But the part of the self that doesn’t know English has other means of communication to the infleshed self. This self has observed all that our eyes have seen and ears have heard, but which the brain is too limited in focus to catch. This aspect of our self does not have words but uses a language of image and metaphor. It uses the language of dreams. Dreams are a metaphorical language: series of images strung together in a narrative. That invisible part of us is using the substance of our daily experiences—things we didn’t see “consciously” we say, but that another part of our self picked up on it and sent it back to us in dream metaphor.

I am convinced that when we die and the brain goes, our learned language will go with it, but not the metaphorical language. It is a start—a beginning of a new, yet most ancient language from before the dawn of language itself. And I should say there is yet another language beyond the language of metaphor and that is the language of love. How do we find our way in the underworld? Understand Metaphor. Dante chose Virgil! A Poet! Who else knows the language of the heart? The Metaphor is the poet’s great tool. Let me then use poetry to develop my thought.

Here is yet another selection from Peter the Pirate that perhaps is a better way of stating what I’m after, than I can at this moment in an essay. Forgive a spoiler for a story you may likely never read. This section comes just after the death of Peter the Pirate:



From part 11: The Dreams that Come

Now what is death? And what is life?
And what is time and space?
It is a dream that we all share
A myth that we all chase.

And though life seems so very real
It is a metaphor;
A shadow of the bigger things
That hide behind death’s door.

And when we sleep we dream of things
Too hard to understand.
And harder still to keep those dreams
When daylight’s close at hand.

The things that made us weep at night
Vanish from the mind.
And little heed we give to them,
And to these dreams are blind.

And yet they speak to us, these dreams,
In a language we should learn.
That we should know the way to go
And which way not to turn.

Words we hold within our brains
And when we die they rot
But dreams come from the soul and so
We die, but they do not.

And so the dream of Peter lived
That language he did learn
And thus he knew which way to go
And on which path to turn.

And guides he had, that he knew well,
Who helped him on his way
His heart he had, and life he had
And beauty—that did stay.

Faith, and hope, and love he had
And there were several more
That helped him then through every gate
And every room and door.

A Sea Shanty

I have always enjoyed story poems. In fact one of the first books I ever bought was a collection of story poems when I was in the seventh grade. I was a lousy reader in the seventh grade, and I can’t say that I read all of the poems in the book. I’ll confess I wasn’t quite ready for Keats’ La Belle Dame Sans Merci or Byron’s Childe Herald, but I did read some of the others.

The oldest of all literature is the story poem, really. The epic of Gilgamesh, the story of Job, the Iliad and the Odyssey are a few examples of what I am talking about. Some of the greatest works of literature are story poems: The Inferno, Paradise Lost, The Aeneid and many more. But, in the west, I can’t say that I have seen a lot of poets striving to create a great epic poem for our times. And I have often thought that it is not a poet that produces great poetry, but it is a culture that writes it through the chosen poets of its time. I have my doubts about the greatness of our current western world and doubts about it being able to produce great poetry, let alone a great epic poem. As for America, I don’t think there is a great epic poem for it, even though America has produced some very fine poets.

I have been working on an epic poem for some time. Not epic in the grand sense of a story for a culture. I won’t even pretend to be a Homer or a Virgil (I am prone to delusion, but I’m not that delusional) but epic in the sense that it is a story of an adventure that takes place over a span of years. I have mentioned this poem before in my blog. It is called Peter the Pirate: the Commodore’s Journey and it is becoming a life-long effort to write. It is going to be the world’s longest ballad, I think. I may have to check the Guinness Book of World Records to see. While Peter the Pirate is in ballad form, I interject a song from time to time, that is not in ballad stanza, to break up the monotony. I thought I might share one of these songs here. It is in italics, because it is one of the ways I distinguish songs in the story from the story itself. And this song is a story poem from a story poem.

Going Home

Now I left a maid in London town
Said, ‘I’ll be back, if’n I don’t drown.
It’s a brand new ship and she won’t go down.’

O, I was at sea for many a day
What did she do while I was away?
Did she think of me, o, and did she pray?

Sing Sally, hey, I miss you so,
If I had my way I wouldn’t go!
Some day I’m going home, my dear
Some day I’m going home.

Off Greenland’s coast we found a whale.
We hauled her in and we then set sail.
But it did no good for the wind did fail.

And after weeks, when we found our wind—
‘Twas a nasty gale, that the wind did send.
It tore the sails, which we had to mend.

Sing Sally, hey, I miss you so,
If I had my way I wouldn’t go!
Some day I’m going home, my dear
Some day I’m going home.

When we came to the coast of Ireland,
We were attacked by a pirate band!
And they drove our ship into the sand.

And since we lost near half our crew.
It took some time to fix our ship anew.
And a single mast would have to do.

Sing Sally, hey, I miss you so,
If I had my way I wouldn’t go!
Some day I’m going home, my dear
Some day I’m going home.

And then with Cornwall’s coast in sight,
‘Twas hard to see for it was night,
And we wrecked for want of lighthouse light.

And so the new ship did go down.
Captain, crew, and I did drown.
Nay, we never came to London town.

Sing Sally, hey, I miss you so,
If I had my way I wouldn’t go!
Some day I’m going home, my dear
Some day I’m going home.
Some day I'm going home.


I realize that some people do not care for the implausibility of a speaker who tells his story from beyond the grave: “How can Moses write about his own death” so to speak. But sea-shanties, such as this, allow for such a thing, I think. And in the context of the story of the Commodore’s journey, the song is sung to a ghost, so why not have a poem by a ghost?

The Song

Every now and then I write a poem and I just don’t care what anyone thinks of it. I don’t care if I don’t follow the rules that make a good poem. But then in poetry there really aren’t any rules, are there? It seems like the moment someone tries to contain it or capture it, as it nears a definition; a poet comes along who bashes their too small container all to hell. And rightly so! Can you build a coffin for God? The Poetry is just too big and too full of life to ever be contained. Poets never do well with rules. They are too crazy, wild and irrepressible, and always have been, to ever follow rules. They are always on the fringe of society and often cross the line. Ovid was exiled for “the Art of Love” and for his womanizing of the wrong women, Percy Shelly left his wife and ran off with a teenage Mary Shelly, the extreme antics of Lord Byron are famous. (Pardon my gross over-generalizations here; I’m trying to make a point here, damn it!) Poets just never accept rules or limits and always have a passion and an awake-ness to living, a kind of intense, intentional desire to live, fully alert, to all the details and sensations of life. And sometimes because that flame burns so brightly and so passionately it burns all that they are, and all that they have in them, in a very short time. They will have it no other way though. They have made Achilles’ choice: it is better to have died young and gloriously.

I agree with Ezra Pound and the imagists that it is images that make good poetry. I also love rhyme, rhythm and lyricism and sounds and sensations. (One of my favorite poets is Keats for his youthful sensuality.) But sometimes I have something to say and an essay isn’t right, a story is too long, and I don’t have a pulpit to preach from anymore, so a sermon is out of the question. So I crank out a short rhetorical poem full of the much maligned use of anaphora, end stops and a deplorable lack of images. And other than the anaphora, I have no meter; neither do I use rhyme, metaphor, simile, or a host of other poetic devices. It’s didactic; it’s just preaching, but at least it is short and to the point. Heck, it isn’t even new or original. That’s the point of the anaphora. It is an echoing of all the voices from beyond time itself that urge us, merge us into life out of our slumber; or liberate us from the slumped shoulders of a life lived according to a notion of how someone else thinks we should live and according to their estimation of who we are.

The Song:

Everyone’s gotta’ song in them to sing.
If only they will listen to it.
If only they won’t compromise it.
Just sing it.
Sing it out.
Out beyond the local laughter
Of the people who know them.
‘cause only strangers can hear the greatness of
That song that is in them
That song that is in you
That song that is in me.
Thus spoke Emerson
Thus spoke Thoreau
Thus spoke Whitman
Thus spoke Ghandi,
Thus spoke Jesus
The Kingdom is in you
Let it out—sing it into the world
Give it birth.
Incarnate it.

Eulogy for a Mouse

I wrote “Eulogy for a Mouse” about three years ago and, in this case, the voice or speaker of the poem is that of my own and the event is real. In writing it, I had every intention of echoing a certain well-known poem by Robert Burns. If I have learned anything from the romantic poets, it is that I must rebel with them against a view of nature that is dominated by cold empiricism. It is a view that says that all matter is just “materials” as Mary Shelly put it in Frankenstein. There is nothing sacred in anything. But Romaticism sees a mysterious sacredness that is present in nature. In Coleridge, for instance, one should note that the Albatross dropped from the ancient mariner’s neck precisely on his epiphany regarding his view nature—when the slimy things of the sea were no longer just slimy things, but beautiful fellow creatures sharing with us in the experience of life itself:

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:
A spring of love gusht from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware!
Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
And I bless'd them unaware.

The self-same moment I could pray;
And from my neck so free
The Albatross fell off, and sank
Like lead into the sea.

Being a Black Elk fan, I recall him talking about thanking the animals that were killed for providing food for him. The deer, the bison and all living things are brothers who gave up their lives to provide food for the humans who kill them. And, in a completion of the cycle, when humans die, they also gave life back by returning to the soil, which fertilizes the grass that feeds the bison and the deer. The animal and the material that he is made of are as sacred as the material of our own human composition. We are all cut and carved of the same stuff, and we are all connected, "mitak oyasin" say the Lakota: we are all related.


Eulogy for a Mouse

Overrun with vermin
and their little turds left all over the stove top,
and the holes they would bore in the bread and boxes of cereal,
I started killing them in those little traps that snap,
Hoping that it is a quick and humane death they bring.
I flushed their remains down the toilet without a ceremony
And with about as much remorse as a sociopathic killer,
until I got up early one day and startled one
on the stove coils.
With a wooden spoon in my hand,
I hit her before I really saw her.
Two quick reflexive smacks
terminated all that she was.
No more would she sniff for the bits of bacon
my son left on the table,
or nibble the dried romano cheese crumbs
my wife missed when she cleaned
off the counter from last night’s pasta dish,
nor see, with those dark beads she had for eyes,
the nocturnal visions so familiar to her
along her route behind the back of the refrigerator,
under the cabinets and in the oven.
Vanished were anything resembling thoughts she might have had
of mates, children, or those fearful shadows that pass at night when she was at her most alert.
All that was invisible to me and known only to her kind, all that she knew, sensed, took pleasure in, dissolved.
Her creamy coffee-colored carcass lying still and limber
on the stove top.
Her underside was eggshell white
and complimented the pink of her feet,
The others had been gray or brown or a vulgar color
but she was uncommon in color and form,
In a quick review of my actions
I realized that in her last moment she had looked at me,
had hesitated,
stopped,
stood on her hind legs as if to say,
you took my children
take me too.
Pure anthropomorphic projection on my part and
I should rest in the science that says mice do not think.
But I do not rest,
and I do feel guilt,
and I cannot account for why will not forget her.

Letter to Penelope

The Ides of March have passed, and now we come to the day the world first glimpsed your radiant face! O face more lovely to me than that of Helen to her Paris! O face that sweetly haunts me and compels me to go on in spite of all that I have suffered. Home to Ithica! Home to Penelope! And so I write and cast this letter to Poseidon my enemy who will deliver it. Aye, will sink it to the very depths, as lost and dissolved parchment, but write it I must! What else is my heart to do?


My Dearest Penelope,

For ten long, hard years I battled at Troy, witnessed the heroics of Achilles, and his death by the coward, Paris. I saw, with my own eyes, the deeds and death of Hector, the burning of Troy, the lamenting of Cassandra and the crazed Helen carried off in tears. Nothing but grief! Grief! Grief! And death! Death! Death! And for what? The trysts of a woman?

I was so glad to have started the journey home at long last and I looked forward to nothing more than your fair face and loving arms! Things were going well. The contrary winds were contained in a great bag given to me by the god of the winds, and, in spite of Poseidon’s raging, we made fair sail.

Ithica was in site! And I thought I was safe and could take a moment's rest from guarding that damn bag of wind. But as I slept, curiosity got the better of my men who found a way to open the bag only to find that the winds escaped! And the captive, contrary, angry winds, fed on the milk of Poseidon’s wrath and blew and raged till Ithaca was lost to us and we were driven back, so far back, that I fear it may be another ten years just to find you again.

The Fates are cruel—the hags! I wonder…is there purpose in their spinning, measuring and cutting? Do they think about a man’s life? Or is it whimsy? Do they laugh, light heartedly, as the thread is snipped—unconcerned that the slightest palsy or slip of the hand could rob a man of years from his lifespan? What is it to them? O, to have Ithica in site! The prize and meaning of my life at my very finger tips and to have it snatched away suddenly with such seeming spite!

They say that a man cannot fight the fates! Perhaps it is so. And Yet I will fight them, Penelope, with every last breath that I breathe, my dear heart, that I may return to you. Because you are Ithica to me. You are the land to which I will return. I am no king but for your love. Aye it is your heart for me that makes me king of that land! It is your heart for me that makes me long for Ithica!

Care for Telemacus! I should be there for him. Do you see me in him? He is the promise of my return. Give him my love. Did I say wait for me only until he is man enough to grow a beard? All the more urgency to fight my fate! O Penelope, wait and engage no suitor, for your lord, Odysseus will return!

The Turning of the Page

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is a last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson—Self Reliance

Upon first reading those words, I had lots of questions. How does one know what is right and good? How should one live? What makes a thing right or wrong? Do we believe something is good, bad, right or wrong from what we read in holy books, or what preachers tell us, or from ecclesiastical tradition? Does it come from the general consensus of society? Is it simply a relative and arbitrary set of rules, customs, and mores that can be manipulated by mass media over time?

As I read Emerson, it isn’t any of the above. In his view, whatever is true and good is already there whether we bother to perceive it or not. But certainly Emerson would have contempt for anyone who thinks that the way to know what is good could be known by simply letting someone else dictate it to us. We have to look for it ourselves and perceive it on our own, and then learn to live according to our internal sense—our intuition—of what is there. And we have to trust our intuition in spite of all the flack and pressure to conform to what some book, some preacher, some social group or some tradition dictates. Emerson says in his essay on self-reliance: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.” And later he adds: “For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure.” Perhaps there comes a time when the non-conformist whips back:


The Turning of the Page
March 4, 2008

I turn the page; I turn it good.
I turn the page; just like I should.
I read the words; I read them well.
I read the words; I read like hell.
I sit and think about the page.
And as I think I fill with rage!
Don’t mess with me; don’t bend my brain
Don’t preach at me; don’t threaten pain
Don’t tell me what I ought to do,
Or what to drink, or what to chew.
I think I know what works for me
I think I know how it should be.
So I write words; they are my own
I’ll strip the truth down to the bone!
It’s time for me to preach at you
And tell you off, and what to do!
Then turn THAT page, and turn it good!
And read the words, just like you should
And sit and think about that page!
Then maybe YOU will fill with rage.

Prologue to The Commodore's Journey

I have written a series of stories in ballad form that I have called the Peter the Pirate stories. I have been writing them for many years, long before Johnny Dep hit the scene. Five of these stories are short stories in ballad form, but one is becoming an epic poem called Peter the Pirate: The Commodore’s Journey. I thought I would share the prologue with you all. I should let you know that I have studied Virgil’s Aeneid a bit and couldn’t help but echo his prologue. Any one out there who had to memorize “Arma virumque cano…” will smile at the reference or groan with the horrible memory, but I loved the Aeneid and I love this most ancient means of story telling: the epic poem. Long before writing, there was poetry and story. Whoever first uttered the epic of Gilgamesh, or the book of Job long ago vanished into dust; and their name, once uttered to the winds is now long gone and blown away, but the stories and poems that sprung from their minds are still carried on the winds of time and haunt us even now. They are my teachers, these old ghosts, and they are still my inspiration.

The prologue
Peter the Pirate:Commodore’s Journey


I will sing a sea shanty
About the Mora May
And one who sailed that noble ship
To lands so far away.

And may the muses of the sea
Help me tell my tale,
Of how this pirate lost his ship
And men and mast and sail!

How he endured the mist maid’s wrath
And came to distant shores
And saved his men as best he could
In spite of wounds and sores.

And help me find the words to sing
Just why he went away.
‘Twas not for gold, nor glory gained
That he set sail that day.

‘Twas something deep inside of him
That called him out to sea—
A voice that few men dare to hear
Though it would set them free.

And if it cost him everything,
To follow that strange voice—
His men, his ship, his gold, his life
Then that would be his choice.

Persephone

Gentle Souls,

I thought I would share a poem this week. Being in a far away land where there is no real winter, I kind of miss the experience of spring a bit. Wordsworth felt that poetry should find inspiration from memories that are recollected in a place far from the event in time and place. He discusses this in his intro to Lyrical Ballads.

Tintern Abby is a primary example of what he means by that. I didn’t like the poem when I read it the first time through, but now I love it and consider it one of my favorites. Even so, I thought I would put one of my own poems, recollecting a memory of spring,on my blog. I realize that hardly anyone will ever read the stuff I put here, but all the same, I “send forth filament, filament, filament. Seeking the spheres to connect them.”

Regarding my rather archaic tone, Jared Carter once told me that he wanted to get me into the modern world. My poetry could have been written in the days of the Romantics. (Keats, Shelly, Byron, etc) I have tried to get into modern and postmodern poetry in writing and reading, and I do enjoy it enough, but I keep having relapses. All the same, if you happen to read these words, enjoy.

When the maple tree
Is copper green,
And mushrooms in
The wood are seen,
My soul, she comes alive.

What cruel intrigue
Of the gods,
To which the Lord
Of heaven nods,
Did steal my soul from me?

But green, she comes
From Hades’ caves,
And leaves behind
The frozen graves,
Far brighter than before.

A Reflection on Teaching.

Having taught in another country now, it occurs to me that there are some very great flaws in our thinking regarding how we teach. I have been reflecting on just how punitive our system of education is. I would like to propose the following:

1. There is a difference between a mistake and a crime. Western education does not understand this important distinction
2. Mistakes should be corrected.
3. Crimes should be punished.
4. When, as educators, we punish students for mistakes, we encourage them to commit crime.

Mistakes are important. They tell us where a student needs help and where, as teachers, we need to put more of our energy. When a student makes a mistake, we should only have them correct it. If we treat them like a criminal and punish them through a bad grade, by shame, or by any other psychological means. We will make them avoid the pain in the future, and they will simply copy or cheat to do it. Teachers tend to believe that the student will avoid being punished by working harder and doing better next time. I do not believe that is so.

When I was in college, the student paper did a very extensive study on cheating. About 65% of my fellow students self-confessed to cheating. (They are the honest ones.) I recall a certain class I was in as a freshman. It was one of those large survey classes you take where the grade is based on five major tests and only the four best tests are averaged for a final. The class was packed on the first day and dwindled down to about ten or fifteen of us. But on exam day the place would be packed. This went on for most of the semester and finally at the end, I asked someone, whom I knew had never been there and got an "A" on all the tests, how they did it. She said it was easy. "You just go down to the local copy store and ask for copies of the tests from last semester, study the answers, and take the test."

By crime, I mean the breaking of basic human ethical codes, or legal codes. Cheating, in that sense, like plagerism, is a crime, and that is not the same thing as a mistake. And yet cheating is a rampant practice among the students who are in our schools and universities. I have begun to wonder what we, as educators, are doing, because we seem to show moral disdain for such practices, and yet we perpetuate a system that rewards it, and the cleverness of students who seem to find more and more ingenuous ways to cheat.

I have been talking mostly about tests, really. We are test crazy and yet I have completely lost my faith in tests as having any meaning at all. I no longer believe that are an effective means of evaluating anything and they certainly have no value to the student for learning much of anything. A student retains very little from cramming in the long term, and seldom really looks at the specifics of the results which might help them, but why should they? It will not change the grade that punised them for the error they made.

It might seem silly, but I propose that if a teacher is going to offer a test, he or she should grade the test, enter the results, hand the tests back, ask the students to correct the errors and pass them in , check to see that the mistakes are corrected and give full points for all corrected errors.

If that is too much work, then the teacher should give the test and have the students correct their own work when they have finished. That way the students can see what they are doing wrong, and have a chance to learn from their mistakes, and get immediate, direct feedback; while at the same time, the teacher can see where the students need more work and adjust his or her planning accordingly.

But they might all get "A's"!

What's wrong with that? Too easy for them? Do we think the quality of education will suffer? Or is there something darker going on with a statement like that? Like we expect only a few to truly succeed. Perhaps the truth is we expect education to be a cruel, sadistic, soul draining proposition where only the fittest survive.