Promised Poem 'o Promise

I did promise some time ago to share--or threatened to share--some piece of poetry from the remote past.

This is actually the last poem I wrote, probably around 1988 on a visit to Phoenix during the dry season--actually there's not much else, climate wise; but it wasn't cool at this park; intolerable actually; and the only shade was this mesquite tree--more of a large shrub actually, as described herein.

One other hint: this meditation was the result of a variance in the Gospels, or so it seemed at the time. Did Judas die by hanging or by falling and herniating? The answer is probably both/and but there are other considerations: The first line actually refers to the lame man going "through the roof" to get to Jesus and the last line to the Festival of Booths and to Peter's mountaintop proposition to Christ.

As best I can remember that is...............

"Akel Dama"

There's a hole in the roof.
Why don't you send up your man to fix it?

The ground squirrel sprawls under the Australian mesquite
as if to straddle the entire adobe wall
and crush it beneath his silent gnashing of teeth.
Tiny birds, tinier leaves, flecks of sunlight
converge and the cavity is evacuated.
The seed pod is broken
its contents consumed

and you want to stay here?

Each tear is
preserved in the eyes of God

Each seed
dies drooping from the mouth of the earth

Each booth tilted and
pierced by its very foundation.

HIPPY HOLLOWED [MEN] EVENING!!!

Dearest Editor Editing to y/our heart's content:

While I appreciate the schoolchildrens' letters to you on censorship, it might be better to put this in a larger context. I grew up in an ultraliberal home where we had all the books mentioned and a whole lot more. But as I grew older, I realized that while nothing, for instance, of a sexual nature was taboo, there were many many books and topics that were not at all welcome. And the more I see of, shall we say, "book clubs" (euphemistically called) and the more I study the human brain, the more I realize that censorship is something that we all do, all the time! It's still only as one caterpillar said, "The question is, who is to be master, that's all." To call exhibit A book selection/censorship a travesty is merely to try to elevate enculturated tastes to the plane of an ethical issue, which, while commonly done, has no scientific or rational basis. As Carroll implies, it can rise to no more than a Grade B political gambit.

This was pointed out forcefully by Aldous Huxley in "The Doors of Perception" as well as by implication in "Brave New World"...... we all have massive built-in filters that, by nature and nurture and choice, are the universal operational censors of the most open-minded (sic) brain systems. There are many books and magazines that we will rarely see even in large libraries or on sale at Borders--books which I hesitate to even mention because their very names elicit irrational rage in every level of our current version of "civilization". [ thank God for the internet--so far]

There is no inherent rational or scientific basis on which to gore someone elses's bull. But history shows that when one book is let out of the closet, thousands more go into recycle bin of the perceptions of men. And as usual, those who try so hard to loosen certain bodily and other cultural inhibitions are automatically censoring a vast array of other now-taboo subjects, thereby creating a vastly more inhibited empire than the one they supposedly displace; or subject to what is clearly "shunning", in the most postmodern and puritanical sense of the word.

It is clearly up to the reader to examine his herd of bull(s) and figure out the implications of the preceding....BOO!!!

YOU KNOW,YOU KNOW, YOU KNOW, LIKE, YOU KNOW? like maybe you do, already:

Just to keep it simple:
(A) Mark is now in Thailand. The whole story including his video blog is on his facebook site. His photographs are quite impressive, as I might have expected. Enjoy!!!

(B) Due to Uber-Business including many continuing med ed requirements, the posts on this blog have gone to seed! Just as many of you expected! (All two or three of you) Other Aspects Neglected include: music, recrational reading, sleep, sanity--all the little stuff.

(C) I just ate two sugar free chocolate peanut clusters and am now going home. If you want to know what I will eat for breakfast just ask--after the fact--you/I never know..........BUTTERFLY EFFECT!!!!!!!!

Mission Statement

From he who is called to utter non-sequiturs and non-starters; and who knows why?

For those who may not know the substance of "The Cocktail Party" by TSE, I will attempt to here recall it, having read it only once probably 10 years ago. But unlike most plays, it totally took me by surprise. It starts out in a common manner most rude about a small circle of friends who are being hosted by a couple whose marriage is most dysfunctional. So far, so much the usual. In fact its prologuish note is the predominant note of almost every contemporary genre of art in the Western world. Scratch almost any sitcom and you will, to mis-phrase H.L. Mencken, find the fundamentals of decay, disorder, and dysharmonics; everybody dissing everybody every minute of the media day. Is there no remedy?

And why does this nest of brooding vipers not even reflect "real life"; and why does art not imitate "real life" according to the apologetics of the wise? Working decade after decade in a hospital, what strikes me again and again is how little the actual course of life follows, shall we say, "House" or "LA Law." Life unfortunately imitates art in various crude ways; just as most "culture" while being produced exclusively by people (?) for the purposes of social control, has almost every individual by the throat, so it is that culture provides its own vultures too, as a snake devouring its own self starting at the lowest end. Anal,eh? The seeds and eggs of destruction are both hidden in our cosy "love nests." (Never go to bed with the cockatrises) (Or ligers)

But I editorialize....

To be simplistic about it, the tale of TSE probably reflected his own considerable marital difficulties and the problems of diffidence (dry art, dry salvages?) towards those who needs be closest to our hearts. One of the younger female guests, an aspiring actress, Celia, who is being wooed by a future producer, becomes disillusioned by the unhealthy relationships even among the wisest among the elite. Act 2 is, I believe, a reunion in which it is discovered that Celia has forsaken all and gone to a savage isle as a missionary; and suffered a martyr's death most cruel and quite graphic by Eliot's standards. By Act 3, the marriage has been mysteriously restored by Celia's postmortem influence. This is not a story of Christian conversion, although by the time this was written, Eliot had suffered exactly that, tho we know not whether this was by desire for restoration of culture and tradition, v.s. actual contacts with a God not just literal but hyper-real. But it seems to be an uncharacteristic portrayal of the source of all love and truth and higher orders impressing themselves upon a lower order--i.e. most of us and I certainly would include myself.

My life has had the characteristic of self-centeredness and bookishness. And perhaps this was also the case with Eliot and his first tortured wife. There is even a movie that takes Eliot to task for, well, repressing her and institutionalizing her. Yet the strongest influences on my soul have not been philo-sophers or soph-ists or soph-o-mores (less would be more in the latter case) but those who have sacrificed such things and agendas as these for, well, relationships; the more substantial and genuine and durable type above all. Not sublimating, as Freud saw relationships and art itself; but another form of sub-sumation, in the Percian sense of the word--see previous blogs about Percy, Walker.

I realize I have not blogger'd for over 10 days now. However this is not because I want to sacrifice but because I have been inundated with doctor-patient relationships. So much so that I had to put aside my Advanced Cardiac Life Support re-cert and many other things as well, including any exercise. But the other major relationship that is taking a major turn in my life is the imminent departure of our son Mark to the mission field. He will live in Bangkok but will be going to remote areas while learning one or two new languages. As most of you know, Thailand is not stable any more, and there are riots, some deadly, and bombings going on in Bangkok as I speak.

The advent of Skype into our lives couldn't have come at a more opportune moment!!!! (insert grin emoticon here)

He will be leaving next Tuesday, and hopes to be working with children. He leaves behind a significant other, namely Allison Ryan, who writes for our local paper. So for those who pray, please do!!! For them both, for safety and to be Spirit-led, if I may use an overused but significant phrase.

I will come forth with more thoughts this weekend, if I have time. (Prognosis:Guarded)

"If it's not too personal a question!!!" --Mandy, Brian's Mum

I think this is a Dennis question, since Dennis once helped me find out if the sky from Mars was a whiter shade of pale. I think he said it was a lighter shade of blue.

A two-pronger:

[A] Why is it that we never see the center of the galaxy? The theoretical pictures from outside our galaxy make the nucleus look blindingly bright, and we are a lot closer to the center than the point of view of these depictions, which are in turn probably--fancifully?--based on our views of other visible galactic whirls and clusters. The Milky Way is as dense or as bright as it gets? Why don't we have better pictures of the center of our galaxy? Is it too close!?

[B] Has anyone tried to picture what a sky, night or day, might look like from a vantage point in the very center of our galaxy?

ode to a local lat

"Liger, liger, learning lite

in the lunches of the bite."

(From news item on the proliferation of ligers. El Tigre del Norte sends his salutations)

Items for future consideration:

Departure of Mark Schuler to Bangkok; which currently is host to bombings and street riots.

T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Party"

"Nicer people with better morals"