Yesterday I had to attend the funeral of Liam’s great grandmother on his paternal side. It was only a graveside service as the family is not religious (or spiritual) in the slightest, nothing like the long full-service Catholic masses we have on our side of the family. So I decided, after discussing it with my father, to take Liam to the funeral. A 4 year old of course doesn’t understand and can’t comprehend death and funerals. Very simply I told him that we were going to say goodbye to her, and she would be in a box, which is a special room that takes her to heaven. He accepted that fully and comfortably. I am sure some people would be shocked at my decision to take a little boy to a funeral, but honestly I think we shield our children from too much in today’s society. Death is as natural a part of life as is birth. It is only in recent (relatively) years that in Western society we have sanitised it to a point where it is seen as dreadful and taboo. Also, I believe it helps to give children closure even though they might not fully understand what is going on, in that at least they are seeing people saying goodbye, and the person hasn’t just “disappeared”.
Month: August 2007
Never To Be
Yesterday I lost my Rackham Fairy locks and left the hairdresser feeling more like Sensuous Goddess Rock Chick with a return to my deep chocolate red wispiness and even some bangs. Today, I’m writing poetry. Ah me. Such are the vagaries of my existence on the earthly plane.
Moonbeams – Peter Mardon
Never To Be
Ah Muse, elusive drug of my desire
intoxicate
frustrate
cast your sensuous spell
Tease me, let me taste but then
coldly withdraw
just out of fingertips reach
And I …
finally …
come to know this …
“Never to be”.
Once I was a Hope
but now a mere side trip
on ramp/off ramp
you smile blithely “nice to meet you
but I now have newer faces better places to be
can we remain friends?”
But your lips aren’t moving.
Visitor to my soul
You left your rare illumined touch
embossed
in the depths of my being
as none have done before.
And oh how I grieve.
Never to be
My gates are closed to other fickle tourists
They will rust and gather dust and yet
I will drift forevermore
catch glimpses of me
within moonbeams
wisps of dreams and whispers of sound
if you but care to seek
I am there to be found
in the infinite astral
forever solitary
eternal melancholy.
In this life …
mere wraith to you
transient ephemeral
de peu d’régard
and yet I dare to Muse with wistful wish
Will you seek me in another existence?
Or will I remain in your disdain unworthy?
Never to be.
désolé
copyright 2007
The soul’s first need is poetic madness
A chapter from one of my favourite books that helps in times of turmoil. (“Original Self. Living with Paradox and Authenticity” – Thomas Moore.)
The soul is not nearly as rational as the ego
The soul is filled throughout with discord and dissonance,
and so its first need is poetic madness. That way through
musical sounds we can waken what is dormant, through
harmonies calm what is turbulent, and through the blending
of various elements quell the discord and temper the different
parts of the soul.
– Marsilio Ficino
“It is essential in modern life to adore the ego, to think that our social problems and our personal struggles will be resolved once we understand the situation and gain control of it. The current idea of a well-adjusted person is one who is unusually conscious and in charge. It is assumed that the purpose of life is to be more of an ego, successful in the eyes of the world and sanctioned by a swelling egotistic bank account.
Mad Girl’s Love Song (and more)
Mad Girl’s Love Song – Sylvia Plath
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell’s fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan’s men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you’d return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
(and some from Sharon Olds)
Stop the world I’m fed up to my eyeballs
What a day. What a lousy bloody day. If you don’t want to hear a whinge, move on now. You are forewarned.
We’ve got cabin fever. It’s been raining for days without end here. I’m bored shitless, and lonely, and tired of even reading. This rain needs to stop. I need a great, big, long walk on the beach–alone. I won’t get the chance until Tuesday most likely. That is, if it isn’t still raining. I’m even impatient with Anais Nin at the moment, judging her supremely narcissistic.
We found out that Glen’s father has bowel cancer. Glen has gone away for the weekend for his annual football trip with his mates. And tonight I had one very upset little boy who missed his daddy.
good things
Last night I won something on ebay which totally made me squee. An unusual and beautiful thing–a perfect present for someone. Something that should have cost four or five times the amount it did. I’m over the moon. A hardback copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, c1918, with 12 tipped-in colour plates, with tissue guards–illustrations by Edmund Dulac.
This is the actual book I won. It’s generally worth $130-$150 USD. I got it for approx $40 USD. Bargain. There is another version of around the same date with 20 illustration plates but it’s worth $600-700.
The illustrations are here. Edmund Dulac is one of the illustrators from the Golden Age of Illustration along with Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen (oh how beautiful his are) and others.
This is going to be hard to gift I tell you 🙂
* * *
I’m feeling the urge to use my hands again in ‘feminine pastimes’. It might be shocking (*gasp*) for some people here to learn that I actually do things like knitting, and embroidery. And making jewellery – I particularly like wire wrapping (google it). For all I say I’m not girly. This time last year I started work on a bag I just HAD to make, even though I am very much a novice knitter (you see–here’s another girly admission–I have a TOTAL handbag fetish). The picture below is how it is supposed to look when it’s finished lol. It’s made out of denim cotton with hundreds of glass beads, which have to be pre-strung onto each ball of cotton before you start knitting. It’s not as bad as it looks really–it just entails lots of careful counting (sigh). I’m thinking it’s time I finished the thing off.
* * *
“We thought of life via an analogy with a journey, with a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end and the thing was to get at that end — success or whatever it is, or maybe heaven after you’re dead.
But, we missed the point the whole way along….
It was a musical thing — and you were supposed to sing, or dance, while the music was being played.”
~ Alan Watts
* * *
And of course the Daily Nin:
“I stand before each new world, new person, new country, hesitant, unsure, hating new obstacles, new mysteries, new possibilities of pain, of blunders from lack of courage. Fear, lack of confidence, has narrowed my world, limited the people I have known intimately. The difficulty of communion. Je vous présente mes hommages, Madam. Politeness like a shield. Culture is a shield.”
“i am but a silky fragment of a woman.”
Because I am feeling edgy and cynical … another lazy post of Anais Nin extracts that speak to me personally. One where I do none of the writing. Because if I write I’ll just be dark. Damn the traitorous organs to hell. I watch too much … I watch other people’s sighs and lusts and yearnings and love. And I wonder what illusions fill the world. “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” I want to be hard-hearted, contemptuous and yell “fuck that shit”. How many people have I shocked today with my melanchonic misanthropic mien? Where’s the grace you may ask? You also might say I am being scornful and sarcastic. And I might say that I am being realistic and rational. But I’m really just being bleak and forlorn. Never mind me. I’m sure my moods will change again as the breeze frivolously decides to change direction.
And there … I said I wouldn’t write. Sorry ’bout that.
Tidal waves, evil houses and kinky sex games…
Nothing is as revealing of the darkest recesses of a persons psyche than their dreams and here I guess I’m going to be brave (or incredibly stupid) and expose some of my recesses.
Recurring dreams in particular serve to give us a message about something important – they are powerful and won’t go away. The frequent repetition of these dreams force us to pay attention and confront the dream which is trying to tell us something. In my experience, these dreams aren’t usually very happy or comfortable dreams.
Tidbits
A scrapbooky type of post.
You are The High Priestess
Science, Wisdom, Knowledge, Education.
The High Priestess is the card of knowledge, instinctual, supernatural, secret knowledge. She holds scrolls of arcane information that she might, or might not reveal to you. The moon crown on her head as well as the crescent by her foot indicates her willingness to illuminate what you otherwise might not see, reveal the secrets you need to know. The High Priestess is also associated with the moon however and can also indicate change or fluctuation, particularly when it comes to your moods.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
**************
“There are continents and seas in the moral worlds, to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals … than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.”
~ Andrea Barrett, The Voyage of the Narwahl
(Thanks to Rena for this quote)
******************
Anais Nin quotes for Dan, because he asked, and the passages about the diary in particular for Rena …
“Now he [Dr Allendy, Nin’s therapist] is probing the splitting of personalities, the imaginative poetic writing on the one hand, and the realistic writing in the diary. He begins to sense the importance of my work. Meanwhile I am saying to myself that he is telling me little that I do not know, little that I have not written already. But this is not true, because he has made clear to me the idea of guilt, of guilt and punishment.”
One ought every day at least…
(With huge kudos to Rena for this one).
What a wonderful, beautiful day!
Today was cold and rainy. A good day to stay inside and read, and read I did. Starting off with a morning perusal of my usual (non-myspace) blogs. I came across this by Goethe:
One ought every day at least,
to hear a little song,
read a good poem,
see a fine picture,
and, if it were possible,
to speak a few reasonable words.