Watermark

Snapshot Poem

Another soggy day, 
air thickly inhabited
with portents

of coming change.
There, at the edge
of the visual field,

the far distance
of the audible wave,
a motion, a whisper

just caught 
by diminishing senses.
A touch at the earlobe,

a flicker on the eyelash.
I brush it away
with my fingertip.

Quiet

   
     Photo by Cousin Sue Pinkerton

 

Yes, as a few of you have noticed, I have been quiet lately. I'm not writing -- but I am reading.

I'm reading:

Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions

The universe has many secrets. It may hide additional dimensions of space other than the familier three we recognize. There might even be another universe adjacent to ours, invisible and unattainable . . . for now.

Sent from BlueOrganizer
 

and:

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

In his widely praised book, award-winning psychologist  Jonathan Haidt examines the world's philosophical wisdom through the lens  of psychological science, showing how a deeper understanding of enduring  maxims-like Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, or What  doesn't kill you makes you stronger-can enrich and even transform our  lives.

Sent from BlueOrganizer

The first is a challenge to the brain, and I'm taking it slowly. The second is, I suspect, more a challenge to the will. I'm liking them both very much, lots of mind churning going on. I'm also thinking about:

NOVA | Ape Genius | PBS

In this companion Web site to the NOVA program Ape Genius, learn about the differences between human and ape minds, read an interview with MIT cognitive scientist Rebecca Saxe on the neural and psychological basis of social thought, explore an interactive primate family tree, view a slide show about an extraordinary linguistic bonobo named Kanzi, and watch two short video outtakes from the NOVA film.

Sent from BlueOrganizer

I'm especially thinking about the chimp who could not delay gratification when presented with the choice of two M&M's now, or five M&M's later -- until she learned her numbers, and was offered a choice of 2 or 5. The symbol gave her, apparently, the emotional distance required to make the more sensible (gratifying) choice.

I'm thinking about that a lot. Symbols are, after all, the poet's tools.

Snapshot Poem

Photo by uncle mike in knoxville

Lunar Eclipse

Snow Moon, Hunger Moon,
for too long, the larders
have been empty.

The dead come to us
in dreams. They speak
but we cannot hear them.

The woods are quiet.
Only the hiss of spiders
in the snow.

The fire is banked.
The children sleep.
Cold sighs at the door.

Snow Moon,
Hunger Moon,
tonight the sky

will eat you.

Boo. Hiss.

It is possible to do everything right -- to get the flu shot, to eat your fruits & vegetables -- and still get the stomach flu.

It is possible to recover from the stomach flu, only to come down with a cold.

It is possible to write with the stomach flu, as one's head is clear.

It is probably possible, but very difficult, to write with a stuffy, slow head and watery eyes.

It is unlikely that I shall attempt something so difficult.

Valentine

 

. . . and a poem from Anne B. Grote:

Valentine Evening

Roses, wine, your love
We are like aging seasons
as the lutes play on

Do you have a Valentine haiku? Add it in comments -- or email it to me -- and I'll bring it up to this post. Any kind of haiku is welcome.

And, if you haven't yet, INTRODUCE YOURSELF! and get acquainted with other Watermark visitors.

Snapshot Poem 13 February 02008

winter rain
unsheathing

winter rain
brown ground emerges
from its snowy scabbard

goldfish rise drowsy
to the rippling surface
of their small pond
drift back down

puddles and dirty runnels
soak the flower beds
a woodpecker searches
under the shingles

the city sends its workers 
out in white trucks
to cut back and collect
ice broken branches

mud on the fenders
mud on the hubcaps
mud on the winter boots
mud on the carpet

life is busy in the underground
it reaches up, it reaches down
it makes its little tunnels
it takes what is left over
it takes what is spit out
what is buried and denied
it takes it all, it drinks the rain

feed it ashes and snow
shit and shriveled rinds
gristle and coffee grinds
feed it blood and bone, your own
seed, your own cut nails
it takes it all, it drinks it down

crows celebrate in the bare trees
sparrows fly to the river by hundreds
the snow geese will come, they will
come back to the river, to the marshes
winter rain, winter rain, winter rain

Dialog

Will you speak the name?
                I do not know it.
Is it one name, or ten thousand?
                It is ten thousand names.
                It is uncountable names.
                Each knows its own name.
What is my name?
                Do you not know it?
I do not know it.
                Choose, then.
What shall I choose?
                There is a universe of names.
                    Anger, Joy, Grief, Sorrow,
                    Delight, Revelation . . .
I choose Revelation.
                You choose well.
What will be revealed?
                Only you.

Time

Perhaps time really is as simple as we used to think. The wise ones tell us that all we have is this moment; this moment is all there is.

Maybe time is a bubble. This moment (moment meaning: the smallest possible increment of time, so vastly small that our limited minds cannot encompass it) replaced the one before, and is replaced by the next. There is no extant past in which my grandmother still prunes her garden; our lost ones are truly lost.

I imagine a kettle on the boil, but there is just one bubble at a time. It bursts as the next rises to the surface. There is no past time to travel to. It's gone. All that is left is its consequences.

Each bubble creates infinite possible futures. The next bubble creates its own infinite possible futures; some are the same as the last, some are not. With each new bubble, an infinite number of possible futures vanishes, and others take their place. It might be, theoretically, possible to travel to the future, to some possible future, and even to arrive there.

But, unless our time traveler is very lucky, she may land in a possible future that then becomes impossible. It vanishes around her. It suddenly disappears (and she along with it) or perhaps it fades, slowly, in and out, as possibilities change with each new moment of time. Our imagined time traveler would have to be impossibly lucky to land in a future that endures.

This (this metaphysical nonsense) is what happens when one watches too much Doctor Who and Torchwood, which is -- don't you think? -- becoming very sexy, and very dark. Are these inextricably entwined?

No doubt a physicist or mathematician could easily disprove my amateur theory.

Still, I like it.

Hope & Fear

Listening to Barack Obama, I discover that I am feeling -- fear. I am afraid to hope. Some of this may be due to my personal circumstances, but much is, I believe, due to long years of observation of American public life.

This is not the first candidate in my lifetime to speak of hope; we had the president from Hope, Arkansas.

I remember being in Santa Fe in the spring of 1992, mourning the death of a friend, listening to the radio, when President Clinton came on the air. He was speaking about domestic violence, and I wept. Grief, yes -- and hope. I suddenly felt, this is not only the President; this is my President. This President speaks to the issues and the people close to my life. This is the first president to have done so.

When my President was discovered to be a sexual predator, the disillusion was intense. Now, I know well that a sexual predator is rarely only that. He may be an intelligent and complex person, and even a relatively good president -- but also, still, a predator. The betrayal felt personal; that a man who won my vote at least partly due to his commitment to women's rights lived his life with such disregard for the most personal of those rights.

And I had learned long before to beware the man with honey in his mouth. But -- that's a different issue, another story.

I have experienced political hope before, younger. In my teens, JFK was president. Then there was the long, dark week, the whole country grieving.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was the beacon a few years later. Courage, daring, hope re-lit -- and grief and rage to follow. Then Bobby Kennedy. I was not a supporter, but still, I felt -- intensely -- the killing of yet another light. The dangers of a strong voice; the precarious call to change.

So I listen to Obama, and I fear my own capacity to believe, to hope. I am not speaking of reason, here; of the arguments for experience, for and against incremental versus deep change; the concerns inherent in yet another candidate who presents himself as an inspirational rather than an executive, managerial leader. These are important arguments, and I don't discount them.

But Obama speaks to that part of me that believes -- that wants to believe -- in my country, in my Constitution, in the values -- equality, freedom, opportunity, community -- with which I was raised. Those crucial, but elusive, principles we are, presumably, striving for, and standing on.

Strong as stone, fragile as gauze, those principles; so easily bent, distorted, ignored.

Especially when, as Obama points out, we are afraid.

So why is it that when I listen to those on the right, who try to frighten me with apocalyptic images, I feel only disgust and contempt for such political maneuvering; but when I listen to Obama speak of hope and change, I feel fear?

I fear disappointment, disillusionment, and violence against this man who calls us to be our best. I fear another loss, another national loss. It is possible to murder hope; some deep part of me believes this.

Why is it not possible to murder despair?

Friday Cat Blogging

 

You will find this week's cats here:

• The Carnival of the Cats, now at 203rd Carnival of the Cats; this Sunday it will be at Pet’s Garden Blog
  
• Weekend Cat Blogging last weekend was at WCB: Two Very Special Photographs; this weekend you will find it at PaulChens Food Blog
• Bad Kitty Cats Festival of Chaos is at Edition 30 Bad Kitty Festival of Chaos and will be at Mom Robyn & The Hotties at Cat Blogosphere; and, last but certainly not least,
  
• Friday Ark #177 at Modulator