Folktale: Raven Returns the Water

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This is a Native American folktale whose tribal origin is unknown to me. It is rare in that Raven is female in this story. Most Alaskan and Northern stories have Raven as male.

Raven Returns the Water

In the old time, it happened that all of the water in the world had vanished. Rivers were nothing but bare stones. Lakes were reduced to dry dirt. Trees were losing their leaves and dying. Even the animals were beginning to die from thirst. Things were looking grim.

Raven, who had created the heavens and the earth, knew that she must do something to save her beautiful world. She flew far and wide over the dry earth. She flew over glacial mountains with no snow or ice. She flew over vast fields of dry brown grass. After many days, she finally found one green valley hidden away within a desert of dried up oceans.

In the middle of the valley sat a rather enormous frog. His belly was huge and round, filled with all the world's water. When the giant frog saw Raven approaching, he flicked his massive tongue and knocked Raven from the sky. The giant frog croaked, "I will never share!" Raven thought quickly and as Frog spoke, she placed a stone on his tongue that Frog then swallowed. Soon Frog felt bad in his stomach.

"I will help you, Frog," said Raven, "if you promise to share the water with the rest of the world." Frog agreed. He would do anything to stop the pain. So Raven pierced Frog's side with her beak, letting out all the water and the stone. She gathered the water together and tucked it under her wing. She is Raven, after all, and can do amazing things.

Raven immediately began to fly around her creation, letting drops fall, and slowly refilled the rivers, lakes, and oceans. Frog suddenly felt very sorry. He remembered how much he had enjoyed sitting on a rock in the water waiting for flies to come by. Even today, you can still hear him say, "Sor-ry, Sor-ry." And you can hear Raven's reply, as she flies through the sky, "Rock, rock, rock," a reminder to Frog to not be so greedy.


Technorati Tags: Raven, Folktale, Frog, Water, Greed, Drought

Parable: The Power of Thought

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PARABLE 093: EVERYTHING IS MIND

"There was once in China an expert archer. One day he went to a very high mountain with his bow on his back. While strolling on the mountain, he became thirsty and wanted some water to drink. Fortunately, he found a small spring under a bush, and he immediately bent over the water to drink it out of his hands until his thirst was quenched. However, when he finished drinking, he thought he saw a snake crawling in the water. He immediately felt sick and wanted to vomit the water he had drunk, but the water did not come out. He became seriously nervous about the water in his stomach, feeling something wriggling in it. When he got back home he became seriously ill. Numerous doctors gave him medical treatment, but in vain; finally, he became nothing but skin and bones, resigning himself to die.

One day a traveler stopped at his home. Seeing the condition of the patient, he asked the reason. The patient told him that he saw a snake crawling in the water of the spring and that he had swallowed the snake. The traveler said that he could cure the illness if the patient would do as he told him to do, taking him to the same spring where he had drunk the water.

He told the patient, who was bearing the same bow on his back, to take the same pose as he had before. The patient reluctantly bent over the water and was just going to scoop it up in his hands when he screamed out, that a snake was crawling in the water again. The man told him to be quiet and to observe the snake more closely. The archer got control of himself and found that it was not a snake at all, but the shadow of the bow he was carrying on his back.

The archer realized that the snake he thought he had swallowed before was only the shadow of his bow. After this, he felt quite relieved, and soon he regained his health.

Technorati Tags: Buddhism, Parable, Teaching, Thoughts, Mind

Poem: Ch'i-Chi (864-937)

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Little Pines

Poking up from the ground barely above my knees,
already there's holiness in their coiled roots.
Though harsh frost has whitened the hundred grasses,
deep in the courtyard, one grove of green!
In the late night long-legged spiders stir;
crickets are calling from empty stairs.
A thousand years from now who will stroll among these trees,
fashioning poems on their ancient dragon shapes?

Technorati Tags: Ch'i-Chi, Little Pines, Chinese poets, Poetry, Buddhism

Speedlinking 7/25/06 [Updated, 4 pm]

There might be a second installment today, but here is the morning's good stuff.

~ Even Native Americans destroyed their environment by using up the natural resources. The Hohokam died out around 1450 in somewhat mysterious circumstances, but it seems they simply dwindled in numbers as a result of their negative impact on the land.

~ 1,500-year-old Byzantine port discovered, an important site for understanding the history of ship-building and regional economic history. A quote from the article: "Archaeologists call it the "Port of Theodosius," after the emperor of Rome and Byzantium who died in A.D. 395. They expect to gain insights into ancient commercial life in the city, once called Constantinople, that was the capital of the eastern Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires."

~ Common Dreams reprints an article from OneWorld.net that argues the Earth is on the verge of a major biodiversity crisis. From the article:

Scientists say they understand that biodiversity cannot be measured by simple universal indicators such as temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide because it involves several levels of organization, such as genes, species, and ecosystems.

On the other hand, however, statistical facts on the loss of biodiversity suggest the imminent dangers of inaction, as two thirds of the services provided by nature to humankind are already in decline, with 12 percent of bird species, 23 percent of mammals, 25 percent of conifers, 32 percent of amphibians, and 52 percent of cycads (a type of evergreen plant similar to palms and ferns) continuing to face serious threats of extinction.

Moreover, according to scientific calculations, within the next 50 years, it is quite likely that up to another 37 percent of currently existing species might be gone due to climate change.

~ Key 23 is a strange little site claiming the title of Occulture Evolved. For those who have interest in such things, it looks like an interesting site. (They have a Douglas Rushkoff article, so they can't be all bad.) Besides the mandatory interest in fringe culture, there seems to be a genuine inquiry into occult practices for a post-modern reality.

~ MSNBC/Newsweek ran a cheesey Boomeritis article yesterday called The Faustian Generation.

New stuff:

~ Victoria has a nice post on the need for including types in stage development models.

~ Tom at Blogmandu is seeking input on how to improve his extremely helpful "roundups" when they return in September. [By the way, Tom, it's Integral Options Cafe. ;)]

~ The Pagan Bodhisattva is dumbfounded by George Michael's choice in an illicit sex partner. There's nothing integral about this, I just want to ditto Jay's sentiment.

~ BeliefNet has an interesting take on the Israeli assault on Hezbullah. The author thinks this is a prelude to a bigger and better war with Iran, a clearing away of possible retaliation before it can retaliate.

~ Molly Ivans wants to run Bill Moyers for president. No, really. She does. I swear. Moyers is an honest, intelligent man -- by definition he is not eligible to be a politician, let alone president. But she makes a good argument for why he should run anyway.


Technorati Tags: MSNBC, Newsweek, Key 23, Common Dreams, OneWorld.net, Archeology, Blogmandu, The Pagan Bodhisattva, BeliefNet, Israel, Molly Ivans, Bill Moyers, Victoria, Vblog

The Iraq Debacle Nears Total Chaos

From two very prominent bloggers, very similar opinions on the failed invasion of Iraq. It appears that while the world is focused on the Israeli-Hezbullah conflict, things in Iraq are deteriorating quickly.

Andrew Sullivan:

I fear the cycle of civil war is now beyond our control - or anyone's control. Here's an email from an American soldier in Northern Iraq about the fast-deteriorating situation:

Baghdad has descended into complete anarchy, as near as I can tell. We have police investigators in Northern Iraq who are scared to drive down there to attend an IPS investigator's course for fear that they will be stopped by Sunni or Shia checkpoints and killed. And these guys are police! I imagine the situation is terrible for ordinary citizens.

This is the dark side of the big shift in the U.S. strategy/presence over the last year. As we've reduced our forces, disengaged from the cities, and consolidated on massive super-FOBs like Balad and Camp Victory, we have lost the ability to impose our will on the streets of Iraq. At this point, I don't know how effective U.S. forces can/will be in imposing order. We just don't have the combat power, nor the presence in the city, nor the right mix of constabulary and civil affairs units. It's frustrating.

And so one of the biggest military fiascoes in American history lurches toward another down-draft.

And from Glenn Greenwald, the final paragraphs on his article:

So, to recap as dispassionately as possible -- Iraq is falling apart. There is apparently serious talk of dividing Baghdad, or even the country as a whole, along sectarian lines. Sectarian tension is at an all-time high, with continuous reprisal mass murders, and the government appears incapable of enforcing the law or maintaining even basic security, and worse, relies upon the good will of powerful, well-armed lawless militias and death squads just to maintain the level of chaos currently engulfing the country.

Meanwhile, for the very first serious crisis which arises in the Middle East, the Iraqi Government is on the opposite side of the U.S., condemning Israel's actions with increasing fervor. All the while, the government does not hide its intent to maintain strong alliances with Iran, the country we are told is now the worst threat to American interests and world peace. And all of this is occurring while we have 140,000 troops occupying the country and the Iraqi government is dependent upon them. Imagine what will happen in terms of Iraq's allegiances if we ever actually leave that country and that dependence no longer exists.

Our invasion of Iraq certainly ousted Saddam Hussein from power, but in his place will be a government that is a close ally of Iran, our new arch enemy, and which appears incapable of maintaining even basic stability for a long time to come, if it ever can. And we are told that Al Qaeda-type terrorists thrive in environments where there is a weak government and chaos, which happens to be exactly what we created in Iraq for the foreseeable future -- at the cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars, and counting. Is there even a single theoretical benefit to American security that we derived from our invasion and occupation of that country in exchange for the immeasurable damage we created and are enduring?

The Iraq invasion has been an egregious mistake at every step, but having created this mess and put the stability of the entire region at risk, failure cannot be an option.

If Iran is our new enemy, an Iranian-Iraqi alliance would be disastrous for the entire Middle East. Rather than spreading democracy, they would spread fundamenalist Islam among a population that really does not want to live such a repressive regime.

I certainly don't know what the answers are, but a divided Iraq would be exactly what the Iranians have been seeking. And that can't be good.


Technorati Tags: Iraq, Iran, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, Middle East

Choosing Our Responses

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This was yesterday's Daily Om. This is good advice for all of us who seek to know ourselves and to become the best people we can be. Overcoming fears is a big step toward becoming better people. The only way out is through.

Choosing A New Response
Common Fears

Everyone has fears-it is a natural part of being human. Fear can protect us from harm by sending a rush of adrenaline to help us physically deal with potential danger. But there are times when fear may keep us from participating fully in life. Once we realize that fear is a state of mind, we can choose to face our fears, change our minds, and create the life we want to live.

Our minds are powerful tools to be used by our higher selves; like computers, storing and using data to make certain connections between thought and response. We have the ability to observe these and choose differently. No matter where the fear came from, we can create new connections by choosing new thoughts. When our souls and minds are in alignment, we create a new experience of reality. This journey requires many small steps, as well as patience and courage through the process. Here's an example: You decide to overcome your fear of driving on the freeway. Your plan of action starts with examining your thoughts and finding a new way of seeing the situation. When you're ready, you enlist a calm companion to support you as you take the first step of merging into the slow lane and using the first exit. Your heart may be racing, but your confidence will be boosted by the accomplishment. Repeat this until you are comfortable, with or without help, and then drive one exit furth! er. When you are ready, you can try driving in the middle lane, for longer periods each time, until you find yourself going where you want to go. This gradual process is similar for conquering any fear, but if you find it overwhelming, you can always seek the help of a professional.

You may think that you are the only one with a particular fear, that nobody else could possibly be scared of ordinary things such as water, heights, public speaking, or flying. These types of fears are very common, and you can have great success overcoming them. Remember, it is not the absence of the fear but the courage to take action anyway that determines success. When we learn to face our fears, we learn to observe our thoughts and feelings but not be ruled by them. Instead we choose how to shape the lives we want.

Technorati Tags: Daily Om, Buddhism, Choices, Responses, Choosing A New Response

Speedlinking 7/24/06

A mostly quiet day, again, but there are a few good things to rest your eyes upon.

~ Mushin has posted an article by Don Beck that addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Substitue Hezbullah for Palestinian and the ideas are still very applicable to the current conflict.

~ PaperFrog issues its last call. It's a sad day in the Buddhist blogosphere.

~ The Daily Goose posts a moving video of Tiger Woods' emotional win at the British Open.

~ Mike at Unknowing Mind had a good post a couple of days ago on Spiritual Seeking and Buddhism that I missed. Get the feed for this site if you like Buddhist blogs -- this one is very good.

~ Gareth at Green Clouds has a nice post called Zen and the Art of Killing.

One final note, then I have to go back to work.

Matthew Dallman (The Daily Goose) just found out that he has a Wikipedia page -- and he didn't create it. That's a major achievement, so let's extend our congratulations to him.

Tags: Mushin, Don Beck, PaperFrog, The Daily Goose, Unknowing Mind, Green Clouds, Matthew Dallman

Poem: Al Hallaj

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Kill Me, My Faithful Friends

Kill me, my faithful friends,
For in my being killed is my life.

Love is that you remain standing
In front of your Beloved
When you are stripped of all your attributes;
Then His attributes become your qualities.

Between me and You, there is only me.
Take away the me, so only You remain.

~ Al Hallaj

Technorati Tags: Al Hallaj, Kill Me My Faithful Friends, Sufism, Poetry, Sufi Poetry

Nature Wisdom

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Experiencing the present purely is being empty and hollow; you catch grace as a man fills his cup under a waterfall.

~ Annie Dillard

Technorati Tags: Annie Dillard, Nature, Waterfall, Emptiness, The Present

The Human Spirit in Sport

We hear a lot of negative things about athletes lately, from steroid scandals to spousal abuse to simple greed. But over the weekend there were two stories that can restore some faith in the spirit of athletes to overcome obstacles when few think they can.


First, Tiger Woods won his third British Open, and his second in a row, with a brilliant strategy and his trademark tenacity on the final round (he is 11-0 in majors when leading going into the final round). No big deal, you say, he is the best golfer in the world. But it is a big deal.

On May 3 of this year, Tiger's father and best friend passed after a long battle with cancer. Tiger has been deeply impacted by this loss. Only nine weeks after losing his father, playing at the US Open, Tiger missed the cut in a major for the first time in his career. Most thought he had come back too soon. Few gave him a chance of winning the British Open after that performance.

After the final putt had sealed the victory, Woods shouted a defiant YES! then sobbed into the shoulder of his caddy, then cried again with his wife. It was a show of emotion we are not used to seeing with Tiger -- the passion that made him great but has been missing in recent years.

Said Tiger:

"After the last putt, I realized my dad's never going to see this again, and I wish he could have seen this one last time," Woods said at the trophy presentation. "He was out there today keeping me calm. I had a very calm feeling the entire week, especially today."

[Tiger Woods photo from Sports Illustrated.]

Meanwhile, also in Europe -- France to be precise -- an American cyclist few would have picked to be in contention for the Tour de France title, became the third American to win the sport's biggest race.


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Floyd Landis, a former teammate of Lance Armstrong, won his first Tour this weekend, finishing the race on Sunday with the traditionally ceremonial ride into Paris. But the race was really won last week, with one of the greatest comebacks ever seen in the Tour or in any cycling event.

After riding a strong stage on Tuesday up the L'Alpe d'Huez, Landis was in the yellow leader's jersey and did not plan to give it back. But the very next day disaster struck as Landis was dropped on the final climb and lost more than ten minutes to the other contenders. Now sitting more than 8 minutes back, the race seemed over. British oddsmakers dropped him to a 1 in 200+ chance of winning.

But on Thursday, Landis's Phonak team attacked from the beginning. They split the field early and put pressure on the top riders to keep pace on a hot day with many climbs ahead. With still 80 miles to go, Landis was 8 minutes clear of the leaders, but few thought he could keep that pace. Soon he had caught the early break-away, a group of riders not in contention for the overall title who were trying for the glory of a stage win. They helped him stay clear until it was just Landis and the last climb. He finished far enough in front that, with time bonuses added, he now only trailed the leaders for 35 seconds or so. An amazing turn of events.

At this point, with still three stages left, including a time trial on Saturday, the race was Landis's to lose. After nearly falling so far behind that everyone had written him off, he pulled the most amazing rebound I have ever seen in cycling. His stage win on Thursday is the stuff that true champions are made of.

And, one final note. Landis did all of this while riding on a hip that will have to be replaced soon, probably during the off-season. The pain on some of those climbs must have been incredible. But so was Landis's spirit.


Technorati Tags: Tiger Woods, British Open, Floyd Landis, Tour de France

Washing of the Water: Part I

the small rodent skull
sat atop the fence post for months,
bleached white, eyeless,
teeth clenched,
a reminder of what awaits

Someday, sooner or later, my heart will stop beating. Doctors and coroners can talk about all the different causes of death, but in the end there is only one cause -- the heart stops.

We celebrate the heart in this culture. Of a brave person, we say s/he has heart. When we are emotionally hurt, we say our heart is broken. When we hold something as true, we take it to heart. But mostly, we see the heart as the seat of love. So, in essence, if death is finally just the cessation of a heartbeat, and the heart is love, then death is to stop loving. Life as eros.

By this somewhat convoluted definition I was dead for many years -- most of my adult life. I was like the skull of that squirrel, eyeless, teeth clenched, enduring each new day completely void of feeling.

My heart had stopped by virtue of having been frozen. Not dead, but not beating either. Encased in an icy refusal to feel anything, to be touched by anything or anyone.

Years later, when I was in my early twenties, I tried to use the incantations of poetry to revive the lost organ. I thought that if I could find the right combination of words, it would be magically healed.

because it is dry and bitter and tastes
like the dirt in which it lay, found
after twelve long years, I eat
all of it, moistening the dust
with saliva, chewing every piece

I swallow but feel the fleshy
sustenance catch in my chest
and stop; it is warm and grows
solid, fills a space where only
icy winds have howled in silence

~ from "liturgy for twelve years," everything comes undone, 1994

In my youthful impatience, I thought that writing those words would help heal the wound. But I sadly underestimated the depth of the hurt. Mere words can only scratch the surface. As a function of intellect, words are insufficient to the challenge.

__________

In ways I can only intuit, some form of love is the impulse behind all of existence. But it remains a mystery to me most days. I get a glimpse here and there, especially in nature or when I am with my beloved, but I seldom can hold it as an experience. Too much wounding. Too much separate ego keeping me trapped in duality, experiencing myself as separate from that love.

Our birthright as human beings is to have direct access to perfect love, and our privilege is to serve as a channel through which it flows.

~ John Welwood, Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships

I crave that experience, being the channel for the eros that is everything. But I am seldom quiet enough to feel what is always already there.

damp musk of desert rain

moistens dry earth,

droplets reflecting a cool sunrise

fall from fresh ocotillo leaves,

while a cardinal and his mate

make the morning rounds:

nothing is out of place

So rarely do those moments come -- so peaceful when they do.

__________

After so many years of trying to stay numb by any means possible -- all of them a way of wooing death -- I now seek out feeling, life, wherever I can find it.

Whether through music, movies, poetry, or even television, I seek out things that can thaw the ice in my chest. And it works.

At first all that came was pain -- years and years of buried pain all needing to be released. So many tears, so much hurt. All the childhood wounds never given expression because boys don't cry. All the teen angst never acknowledged because I had to be cool and confident. All the sorrow of first love gone wrong then drowned in gallons of alcohol.

A lot of the pain was aloneness, a deeply painful isolation from myself, from the world, from life, but most of all, from love. I felt abandoned by everything and everyone, especially myself.

Over time however, something has changed. The pain is no longer of abandonment, but of separateness. There is a great river of life flowing beneath the surface of things -- a river I know but that I am not of.

River, river carry me on
Living river carry me on
River, river carry me on
To the place where I come from

So deep, so wide, will you take me on
your back for a ride
If I should fall, would you swallow me
deep inside

River, show me how to float
I feel like I'm sinking down
Thought that I could get along
But here in this water
My feet won't touch the ground
I need something to turn myself around

~ Peter Gabriel, "Washing of the Water," from Us

Retreating again to the language of symbolism, water is the realm of the emotions. The river I sense and that Gabriel sings about is the the truth beneath the rational mind. Intellect is great, but the realm of the heart, of life, is in the feeling. It can keep us afloat, or we can freeze it and suffer the loss of life that choice entails.

I didn't trust feeling because, in part, I was taught not to trust it. So I froze it out. But as it thaws, what I realize is that feeling is what connects us with other people.

The separation I feel sometimes, that pain that comes up, is the recognition that we are all linked in ways we can never understand with our minds. When women grieve the loss of children in some far away place, I feel their loss. When a man looks on in horror at the lifeless bodies of his family, I feel his suffering. When an animal is caught in a trap, I feel its fear. When a man beats his girlfriend, I understand his lack of self-esteem, his loss of control over his fear.

I am a man; nothing human is alien to me.

~ Terence, Heuton Timoroumenos

And with that recognition comes humility. I am a human being capable of all things human beings are capable of -- good and bad.

This kind of questioning is the journey itself. The fruition lies in beginning to realize our kinship with all humanity. We realize that we have a share in whatever everyone else has and is.

~ Pema Chodron, Awakening Loving-Kindness

Think about that statement: we have a share in whatever everyone else has and is. How do we let that in, fully, and not be overwhelmed by its truth?

Stay tuned for Part II.

Sunday Poet: C.K. Williams

The Doe

Near dusk, near a path, near a brook,
we stopped, I in disquiet and dismay
for the suffering of someone I loved,
the doe in her always incipient alarm.

All that moved was her pivoting ear
the reddening sun shining through
transformed to a color I'd only seen
in a photo of a child in a womb.

Nothing else stirred, not a leaf,
not the air, but she startled and bolted
away from me into the crackling brush.

The part of my pain which sometimes
releases me from it fled with her, the rest,
in the rake of the late light, stayed.

<<-->>

Bialystok, or Lvov

A squalid wayside inn, reeking barn-brewed vodka,
cornhusk cigarettes that cloy like acrid incense
in a village church, kegs of rotten, watered wine,
but then a prayer book's worn-thin pages,
and over them, as though afloat in all that fetidness,
my great-grandfather's disembodied head.

Cacophonous drunkenness, lakes of vomit
and oceans of obscenities; the smallpox pocked
salacious peasant faces whose carious breath
clots one's own; and violence, the scorpion-
brutal violence of nothing else, to do, to have,
then the prayers again, that tormented face,

its shattered gaze, and that's all I have,
of whence I came, of where the blood came from
that made my blood, and the tale's not even mine,
I have it from a poet, the Russian-Jewish then
Israeli Bialik, and from my father speaking of
his father's father dying in his miserable tavern,

in a fight, my father said, with berserk Cossacks,
but my father fabulated, so I omit all that,
and share the poet's forebears, because mine
only wanted to forget their past of poverty
and pogrom, so said nothing, or perhaps
where someone came from, a lost name,

otherwise nothing, leaving me less
history than a dog, just the poet's father's
and my great-grandfather's inn, that sty,
the poet called it, that abyss of silence, I'd say,
and that soul, like snow, the poet wrote,
with tears of blood, I'd add, for me and mine.

<<-->>

The Inn
by Emmanuel Moses
Translated by C. K. Williams

A little wine
on this deep wound
that opens in the evening
when outside the cars honk
and passerbys laugh
shouting to one another
animated by a gaity
incomprehensible to the one
who watches from behind the shutters.

He daydreams, suddenly absent-minded,
of that woman he met two days before
and murmurs her limpid name
to hear it spread through the bedroom.

Suffering comes from elsewhere,
what matter if is reflected
in each word
he has learned a certain number of
things,
helped by aging,
noteably that it’s necessary to love
who’s with us, who goes before
and awaits us,
seated at the nocturnal inn.

<<-->>

THE SINGING

I was walking home down a hill near our house on a balmy afternoon under the blossoms
Of the pear trees that go flamboyantly mad here every spring with their burgeoning forth

When a young man turned in from a corner singing no it was more of a cadenced shouting
Most of which I couldn't catch I thought because the young man was black speaking black

It didn't matter I could tell he was making his song up which pleased me he was nice-looking
Husky dressed in some style of big pants obviously full of himself hence his lyrical flowing over

We went along in the same direction then he noticed me there almost beside him and "Big"
He shouted-sang "Big" and I thought how droll to have my height incorporated in his song

So I smiled but the face of the young man showed nothing he looked in fact pointedly away
And his song changed "I'm not a nice person" he chanted "I'm not I'm not a nice person"

No menace was meant I gathered no particular threat but he did want to be certain I knew
That if my smile implied I conceived of anything like concord between us I should forget it

That's all nothing else happened his song became indecipherable to me again he arrived
Where he was going a house where a girl in braids waited for him on the porch that was all

No one saw no one heard all the unasked and unanswered questions were left where they were
It occurred to me to sing back "I'm not a nice person either" but I couldn't come up with a tune

Besides I wouldn't have meant it nor he have believed it both of us knew just where we were
In the duet we composed the equation we made the conventions to which we were condemned

Sometimes it feels even when no one is there that someone something is watching and listening
Someone to rectify redo remake this time again though no one saw nor heard no one was there

Some biographical information from the author's website:

C. K. Williams is the author of nine books of poetry, the most recent of which, The Singing, won the National Book Award for 2003. His previous book, Repair, was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, as well as the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and his collection Flesh and Blood received the National Book Critics Circle Award. He published a memoir, Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself, in 2000, and has published translations of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Euripides’ Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, among others. A book of essays, Poetry and Consciousness, appeared in 1998. Recently he was awarded the Twentieth Annual Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, an honor given to an American poet in recognition of extraordinary accomplishement. Among his honors are awards in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Voelcker Career Achievement Award, and fellowships from the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003, and teaches in the Writing Program at Princeton University.

The elegance of Williams' long poetic lines does not translate well to the internet -- you'll need to truly experience his work on the page. Perhaps that is why so few of his poems are available on the web.

He is one of the most recognized poets in America if you simply look at his awards, but he is seldom read and does not even appear on the Modern American Poetry website. That lack of acknowledgement is strange. Perhaps he is a challenging poet, one who makes the reader think too much? I don't think that can explain it.

Williams is one of my all-time favorite poets, one of the few that I come back to first when I have not read poetry in a long time. I love his lines, his imagery, the way he embeds phrases within phrases, deepening the language, building associations, making visible what is only felt. He sees behind the surfaces in his verse, and offers us an understanding of ourselves we do not always welcome, but are often glad to have.

On the Metro

On the metro, I have to ask a young woman to move the packages beside her to make room for me;
she’s reading, her foot propped on the seat in front of her, and barely looks up as she pulls them to her.
I sit, take out my own book—Cioran, The Temptation to Exist—and notice her glancing up from hers
to take in the title of mine, and then, as Gombrowicz puts it, she “affirms herself physically,” that is,
becomes present in a way she hadn’t been before: though she hasn’t moved, she’s allowed herself
to come more sharply into focus, be more accessible to my sensual perception, so I can’t help but remark
her strong figure and very tan skin—(how literally golden young women can look at the end of summer.)
She leans back now, and as the train rocks and her arm brushes mine she doesn’t pull it away;
she seems to be allowing our surfaces to unite: the fine hairs on both our forearms, sensitive, alive,
achingly alive, bring news of someone touched, someone sensed, and thus acknowledged, known.

I understand that in no way is she offering more than this, and in truth I have no desire for more,
but it’s still enough for me to be taken by a surge, first of warmth then of something like its opposite:
a memory—a girl I’d mooned for from afar, across the table from me in the library in school now,
our feet I thought touching, touching even again, and then, with all I craved that touch to mean,
my having to realize it wasn’t her flesh my flesh for that gleaming time had pressed, but a table leg.
The young woman today removes her arm now, stands, swaying against the lurch of the slowing train,
and crossing before me brushes my knee and does that thing again, asserts her bodily being again,
(Gombrowicz again), then quickly moves to the door of the car and descends, not once looking back,
(to my relief not looking back), and I allow myself the thought that though I must be to her again
as senseless as that table of my youth, as wooden, as unfeeling, perhaps there was a moment I was not.

C. K. Williams on the web:
National Book Award Foundation
Threepenny Review
Poetry Magazine
Academy of American Poets
C. K. Williams page at Blue Flower Arts

Speedlinking 7/23/06

Not a lot of new stuff in the last 24 hours, but here are a few posts worth your time.

~ Colmar continues his series of posts on the Israeli-Arab war with Placing the Blame Where it Belongs . . . .

~ Nagarjuna's post, Point-Counterpoint, offered this quote from Jim Wallis:

"Religious wisdom suggests that the more overwhelming the military might, the more dangerous its capacity for self- and public deception. If evil in this world is deeply human and very real, and religious people believe it is, it just doesn't make spiritual sense to suggest that the evil all lies "out there" with our adversaries and enemies, and none of it is "in here" with us--embedded in our own attitudes, behaviors, and policies. Powerful nations dangerously claim to "rid the world of evil" but often do enormous harm in their self-appointed vocation." -- Jim Wallis

~ Tom, over at Thoughts Chasing Thoughts, thinks Buddhists should suppport a de-Christianized version of intelligent design. Personally, I think we should teach all the creation myths of the world, including ID and evolution. Leave the actual science of evolution in the science classroom, but teach ALL the great stories supposing to claim how we got here.

~ At Open Integral, Ray Harris and Mark Edwards seem to be having a disagreement over Ray's Age of Consent posts (and here, too). Mostly miscommunication it seems from here.

~ Katherine shares a night of beer, music, and dancing with us. What is integral about that, you ask? Read her post. She has something to say that -- man or woman -- resonates with the heart, and as we are all human, we all can identify with her feelings if we are open to letting another person in.

~ From the GoodNewsNetwork, the top 10 good news stories of the week.

Have fun!