The Last Voices from Heaven

Work is really catching up on me, and I am hardly in the mood to relax totally sometimes. But I guess in this case, being able writing is really purgatory, as Aristotle would say of drama.

I happen to catch this documentary Last Voices From Heaven on discovery channel that day. Show is basically about music producer Anthony Copping continuing his search to record an album of traditional Melanesian songs before they disappear. But it is the songs and the people's way of life that really left a deep impression on me. One can practically distill this awing simplicity from their music which is devoid of metallic notes. Sometimes it makes you wonder how far we have come, and how much we have lost, like how interactions break down, and how little music we share and how better are our lives.

Okay... jorie graham.. i must get back to reading David Lodge soon.....


Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of
themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water's downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers) a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change--
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

Speak again, speak like rain

Sometimes poetry is anything and everything plus magic. Its like Isak Dinesen described in Out Of Africa,

"As they had become used to the idea of poetry, they begged: "Speak again. Speak like rain." Why they should feel verse to be like rain I do not know. It must have been, however, an expression of applause, since in Africa rain is always longed for and welcomed. "

Reading a great poem just halts you for this moment and touches something textural inside. The intensity of the language grips you but at the same time, the wonder of thought and expansive imagination liberates and sets free.



Keeping Quiet
by Pablo Neruda.

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve,
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Friday for friends

Friday is always a good day to meet friends for lunch. Sort of slaved and toiled for the whole week in exchange for this fresh and relieved mind, to attend literature class and (of course) to talk to friends over lunch. Sometimes I really feel this elation and exuberance when I am able to sit down and talk to my friends. It’s a wonderful experience, especially with friends who understand the immensity in me and can relate to what I feel so intensely for – commitment and will.

Sometimes I guess others are afraid of immensity, which is often misunderstood or misappropriated for insanity, empathy or what else I cannot imagine. The mind is so easily twisted into skepticism, for when imagination fails to create a niche for people who are different, you lose this ability to look outside out of self and to accept the other. This social psychology is all the more confusing and frustrating when you think about it.

But really, I truly love and treasure each and every moment I get to spend with my friends. It is really when you can be truly free and without inhibitions. The propinquity of thoughts, the affinity for beautiful blossoms upon their hearts. It is as aptly as i can descibe, the airy lightness that seeps into my heart, when people really reach out to me, and touch my heart.

SOME TREES
John Ashbery

These are amazing: each
Joining a neighbor, as though speech
Were a still performance.
Arranging by chance

To meet as far this morning
From the world as agreeing
With it, you and I
Are suddenly what the trees try

To tell us we are:
That their merely being there
Means something; that soon
We may touch, love, explain.

And glad not to have invented
Some comeliness, we are surrounded:
A silence already filled with noises,
A canvas on which emerges

A chorus of smiles, a winter morning.
Place in a puzzling light, and moving,
Our days put on such reticence
These accents seem their own defense.