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Friday, October 31, 2008

Emily Dickinson - when needs must

254

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Necessary noise ... part 2

More Gaiman ... literary genius

A field mouse found a fallen hazelnut and began to bite into the hard shell of the nut with its sharp, ever-growing front teeth, not because it was hungry, but because it was a prince under an enchantment who could not regain his outer form until he chewed the Nut of Wisdom. But its excitement made it careless, and only the shadow that blotted out the moonlight warned it of the descent of a huge grey owl, who caught the mouse in its sharp talons and rose again into the night.

The mouse dropped the nut, which fell into the brook and was carried away, to be swallowed by a salmon. The owl swallowed the mouse in just a couple of gulps, leaving just its tail trailing from her mouth, like a length of bootlace. Something snuffled and grunted as it pushed through the thicket – a badger, thought the owl (herself under a curse, and only able to resume her rightful shape if she consumed a mouse who had eaten the Nut of Wisdom), or perhaps a badger.

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I am that field mouse.

Monday, October 27, 2008

Neil Gaiman


I’m not quite sure how I got to be fifty-one years old without even knowing about Neil Gaiman (never mind reading him). He wrote the following extract in Stardust:

The moon was setting.

Dunstan raised his hand to his mouth and hooted. There was no response; the sky above was a deep colour – blue perhaps, or purple, not black – sprinkled with more stars than the mind could hold.

He hooted once more.

“That,” she said severely in his ear, “is nothing like a little owl. A snowy owl, it could be, a barn owl even. If my ears were stopped up with twigs perhaps I’d imagine it an eagle owl. But it’s not a little owl.’

Dunstan shrugged, and grinned, a little foolishly. The faerie woman sat down beside him. She intoxicated him: he was breathing her, sensing her through the pores of his skin. She leaned close to him.

“Do you think you are under a spell, pretty Dunstan?’

“I do not know.’

She laughed, and the sound was a clear rill bubbling over rocks and stones.

“You are under no spell, pretty boy, pretty boy.” She lay back in the grass and stared up at the sky. “Your stars, she asked. “What are they like?” Dunstan lay beside her in the cool grass, and stared up at the night sky. There was certainly something odd about the stars: perhaps there was more colour in them, for they glittered like tiny gems; perhaps there was something about the number of tiny stars, the constellations; something was strange and wonderful about the stars. But then …

They lay back to back, staring up at the sky.

“What do you want from life?” asked the faerie lass.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “You, I think.”

“I want my freedom,” she said.

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Listen to the faerie lass, Douglas


Thank fuck for T S Eliot

From Four Quartets

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.


From Preludes

I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

and from one of mine ...

"I think the technical term is fucked!" (alright, not poetic. It's from my great, unpublished novel)

if ever a word applied ... verbosse

verbosse - A long-winded employer who never stops talking.

e.g., The staff meeting ran an hour longer than usual. The verbosse department head decided to read to us every single word in our Corporate Ethics Policy manual.

From pseudodictionary.com

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Necessary noise ... part 1

Will by Christopher Rush

A richly rewarding read; heavy going at times, crammed with detail. The early descriptions of Roman Catholics burning at stakes are truly shocking.

Funnily enough (don't know why I see this as odd) my favourite passage is the epilogue, which begins:

"It's not the fashion, I know, to have the Ghost speak the epilogue, but being now freed from all temporal restraints, I am well placed to do so. And what better voice than the unfettered soul of the subject of this story? No more muddy vesture of decay, my masters. I can speak directly to you all - whenever, wherever and whoever you may be."

There then follows 15 pages of brilliance.

Will is published by Beautiful Books

A sharp-edged paring knife

Left alone
with too much time on your hands
you cannot help yourself

but stumble
over one
or maybe more than one

of those rare moments
of piercing clarity
in which you see

perhaps
the
truth

and there before you
lies still
the carcase

of what might have been;
eviscerated,
filleted

using a sharp-edged paring
knife,
serrated for its ease of entry

and escape
but leaving
an open wound,

inevitable,
unavoidable
despite the best intention

of the cosmic surgeon
whose skill and scalpel
were insufficient for the task

so that there
before you
on a polished kitchen floor

love lies bleeding
where once upon a time
in that land

far, far away
you watched a young woman,
her long brown hair

tumbling
over a blood red dress,
bathed in bronze and copper tones

of Autumn’s sunset
fading,
slice a lemon.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Don't think Douglas. Dance like the nineteen year old you were.

Flow



















Love
runs riot

through the soul,
exciting dreams and possibility,
fixing not
on idle fantasy

nor egotistic
misappropriation
of emotion’s truth,
love’s sacred source

but giving voice
to joy
uncontainable;

spilling
into many lives
with laughter
echoing
through time and space;
tumbling down
cascading life’s dramatic courses
seaward,

heading home;
forever
gaining depth
so that through love,
love's steady flow,

we share
what comes to pass
through love
that builds in power,
swells
by loving deeply

so that
as love broadens,

deepens,
grows forever stronger,
we carry with us
each
and every possibility of love
towards the sea
where all loves meet
at last
to merge and mix,
to move
as love’s eternal tides
have merged
and mixed
and moved
through all the ages
past

and yet to come.


Life’s tides

command attention
to the never-ending flow
of love
which forces
life’s

inexorable
passage home

through landscapes of eternity.


Friday, October 24, 2008

When love leaves

I shall write a lot more poetry; enough to fill
the library at Alexandria. And I will read much more:
at least one anthology of Billy Collins
and everything that Neil Gaiman has written.

When things get tough from time to time
I will take refuge in a lemon and all the rest
of Pablo Neruda, without whom I would be nothing.
I may even return to the science fantasy of my youth.

I will eat well and make time each day
for aerobic exercise. And I will sleep much more:
at least the recommended daily dose
and not too late on Saturdays I’ll fill productively.

I’ll work as hard as I can to the best of my ability
at a job I hate. And I will achieve modest success,
although I doubt that anyone will care
a thousand years from now (and maybe less than that).

I will try to follow the advice of the Foresight report
as summarised in The Times of London, which tells me
to connect, be active and curious and learn and give.
So I will make a lot of lists to guide me as I go.

There’s much that I can do. I’ll fix my wheelchair,
learn how to bend blue notes on the chromatic harp,
complete the latest edit of my unpublishable novel,
sail, visit art galleries and read star maps in situ.

I will be kind to old ladies and mindful of others
at all times (although I may have to count to ten
now and again). And if some people say he lives
a decent life, a good one; I shall not contradict them.