Promise

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every now and then i fall
apart at the seams, it seems

only held together by
the promise of a new day

and the words i want to say
to you tucked underneath
the floorboards of my sanity

Come out

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let the clouds
bounce off
of my coffee

the black birds
blast chilling night
mares in the grass

the rotten wood
shudders in the garden

the yard can’t come
out to play

Light the world

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This morning came home my fine Camlett cloak, with gold buttons, and a silk suit, which cost me much money, and I pray God to make me able to pay for it. I went to the cook’s and got a good joint of meat, and my wife and I dined at home alone.

In the afternoon to the Abbey, where a good sermon by a stranger, but no Common Prayer yet.

After sermon called in at Mrs. Crisp’s, where I saw Mynheer Roder, that is to marry Sam Hartlib’s sister, a great fortune for her to light on, she is worth nothing in the world. Here I also saw Mrs. Greenlife, who is come again to live in Axe Yard with her new husband Mr. Adams. Then to my Lord’s, where I stayed a while. So to see for Mr. Creed to speak about getting a copy of Barlow’s patent. To my Lord’s, where late at night comes Mr. Morland, whom I left prating with my Lord, and so home.

with a silk suit,
money, and a good joint,
i pray

i saw fortune
light the world with
her creed at night

note: This erasure poem is derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday, 1 July 1660

The Sparrow

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I’m a sucker for the broken and the beautiful. I
met you on a random Tuesday. You said hi or
something like that, but all I could see were your lips.

Lips that spoke in code; lips of imagined lust
lips begging and pleading for me to linger longer
lips pouting and preening, a warning sign for me to go.

Seeing you, standing there, in the corner of the room
reminded me of the sparrow I found in my garden once.
It’s little wing broken. Honour demanded I rescue it

from a potentially grim fate, one grey, one tabby,
one black and white. I found an old shoebox, scooped
the bird up, squawking and panting, it cowered in the

corner of the box all feathers, fear, and desperation.
I secured the lid on the box, poked a few breathing holes
in the side. The bird would be safe to heal its wounds.

Your lips demanded I do the (dis) honorable thing
with you despite the ring around your finger.

Awe

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When was the
last time
you walked
around in a
sublime state
of awe?

Still working on the groove

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I didn’t blog as much as wanted to this week. My notebook is full of scribbles, but I haven’t digested them yet. Nor I have I edited all of the photos, but here a few from mu Batsford walk and my wanderings around the paths that lead out from my town.

Friday, 3 July 2020

Worked all morning. Went for a bike ride in the rain, I was desperate for motion and I haven’t been on my bike for several days now because of the rain. Cycling is definitely much more fun in the sun.

At lunch, I heard a loud crash downstairs, like something had fallen off a shelf. My immediate thought was, we must have left a window open and the wind knocked something off of the windowsill. I needed another coffee anyway so I went downstairs to investigate.

It turns out, Shika (our pet tortoise) has figured out how to climb out of her enclosure. Who knew tortoises could climb!

I’ve been dipping in and out of Paul Zweig’s biography of Walt Whitman: The Making of a Poet. I’m also bouncing back and forth from Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within, by Kim Addonizio (whom I have a huge crush on), and drinking from the river of light: the life of expression, by Mark Nepo. Collectively, these are entertaining my current mood.

Watched Hamiliton on the Disney Channel with the family. Watching the film of a play is odd. You definitely have to watch Hamiliton in the theatre if you haven’t seen it already. If fact, I would say, save the experience for live and only watch the recorded version if you’ve seen it performed on the stage in person.

 

I think that catches me up for now.

no glory

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so i lay there
playing with splinters
in the late afternoon

the angels of paradise,
hidden in the mystery
of my days leaning
on worn-out wings, sang to me

sticks lie broken,
dead leaves gather dust,
i am homesick here
in the ashes

all i wanted was
glory, found only
strange sadness instead

More self-reliance, please

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Watched Black Summer on Netflix. The only thing it has going for itself is the zombies. They have more character than the humans we are meant to care about. Black Summer is the prequel spinoff of Z Nation. If I had known that beforehand, I would never have started watching it. I didn’t enjoy Z-Nation and I’m struggling with this one, but feel compelled to watch ’till the end. I love a good zombie story, but these two shows leave me cold. Apologies if you’re a fan of either show.

So Walt Whitman laid down this challenge, One I am eager to accept:

“You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the specters in books; You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me; You shall listen to all sides, and filter them from yourself. 

It’s a challenge to see the world through your own eyes, filtered through the lens of your experiences and hard-won knowledge. There seems to be no lack of individuals who want to do this for you, to tell you what you should do, how you should live, and how you should think. And being herd animals, it’s easy to get caught up in the endless procession of life gurus telling you how to live your best life and have everything you want. 

On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with getting help from teachers, mentors, coaches, and gurus. Where it falls down for me is that many of these folks are as clueless as the rest of us in figuring life out. More than a fair few are just clever marketers who know how to tug on our heartstrings of pleasure and pain in order to separate the unsuspecting and those who lack self-awareness from their hard-earned money.

The self-help industry, in this way,  is a blessing and a curse. I believe many of the folks get into the game with good intentions, but they are driven by the same system of lack that fuels the anxiety of the folks that seek them out.

I like Walt Whitman’ s encouragement for us to do it for ourselves, to be self-reliant in the spirit of Emerson and Thoreau. The true path to liberation is an inward journey. One we must make on our own. 

Speaking of Emerson, he had this to say to about trusting in yourself:

Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought because it is his. In every work of genius, we recognize majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

Lean unto your own understanding is the goal.

Last thing, ponder this:

Which should you listen to, your soul or your will?

Re-inventing myself

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“Like the legend of the phoenix, all ends with beginnings” – Daft Punk

This is my first entry on the new soulcruzer site. I am not new to blogging. I’ve been in the game since 2004.

My most consistent trait as a blogger has been experimentation. If you’ve been a solid follower of this blog (or any of my others), then you’ll know every few years I blow the site up and completely redesign and re-invent what it is about and who I am in relationship to it. I’d like to say I am through with all of that and this is the last iteration of the blog, but knowing myself, as I do, I can hardly make that promise to you, nor to myself. All I can do is follow the flow and see where it takes me.

This iteration of the blog marks a return to my roots as a philosophical thinker and reflector in search of the good, the true, and the beautiful in life.

I feel compelled to emancipate my spirit and focus on the pure joy of living while maintaining, as Plato taught, a balance between my desires, my emotions, and my thoughts.

I am currently working my way back through Lin Yutang’s wonderful book, The Importance of living. He always reminds me of the joys of practicing philosophy with an Eastern mindset.

As he writes in The Importance of Living:

“…the Chinese philosopher’s view of life is essentially the poet’s view of life, and that in China, philosophy is married to poetry rather than to science as it is in the West.”

This philosophy is:

“characterised by: first, a gift for seeing life whole in art; secondly, a conscious return to simplicity in philosophy; and thirdly, an ideal of reasonable living. The end product is, strange to say, a worship of the poet, the peasant, and the vagabond.”

Something else I picked up from Lin Yutang is the idea of the “laughing philosopher” whose only function is “to teach us to take life more lightly and gayly than the average business person does. “We moderns take life far too seriously and as a consequence, the world is full of troubles.” My present direction of travel very much has me aligned with the laughing philosopher.

My intent with the re-invention of this site, and therefore myself, is to move away from the abstract outlines of wisdom and move towards the art of living in a more visible, palpable and understandable way.

“The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.” – John Ruskin

Playing with the imagination for personal growth

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Fired off episode 3 of the new podcast series I’ve been working on with Naomi. We’re beginning to find our natural cadence and rhythm as co-hosts. The podcast too is beginning to morph into what I believe it’s destined to be, which is ostensibly The Journey:

The Wisdom Experience Podcast is the place where the quest for myths and meaning meet. Each of us is on a journey to discover who we truly are. We use stories and myths to help guide us on the journey. Our personal myths and stories fuel our behaviors, test our limitations and deepen our connections with others.

Working on the podcast has also reawakened in me the desire to pursue work in the transpersonal and transformational space, as a practitioner and journeyman.

Anyway, here’s the episode. Please let me know what you think. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Zombied out on fear – #AudioMo Day 10

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music from @zoltandekany

Zombied out on fear
my friends gave me a medal for digging
a hole with my bare hands and walking
on water like the messiah when she was lonely
and thirsty for politicians, generals and reporters

locking and loading the sign of the cross gave
me goosebumps and butterflies like before a big
football game, the world knew i was sick, served
me up anyway like a rusty can of c-rations

my friends, adrenaline junkies, zombied out on fear,
shuffled about their business making life out of
anxiety and death, a pursuit they felt better than sex
until beetles ate their flesh and they drowned.

cl lowe

Zombied out on fear

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Zombied out on fear
my friends gave me a medal for digging 
a hole with my bare hands and walking
on water like the messiah when she was lonely
and thirsty for politicians, generals and reporters

locking and loading the sign of the cross gave 
me goosebumps and butterflies like before a big 
football game, the world knew i was sick, served 
me up anyway like a rusty can of c-rations

my friends, adrenaline junkies, zombied out on fear,
shuffled about their business making life out of
anxiety and death, a pursuit they felt better than sex
until beetles ate their flesh and they drowned

cl lowe

Man, myth, and magic

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I spent most of today researching the idea of the mythic imagination. It’s the topic of our podcast on Wednesday. It’s an area that has long fascinated me. As a boy, I grew up reading heroic fantasy novels, comics, and history. I loved epic stories of good versus evil, the lone solemn warrior, the protector, and the fair maiden, and the wise old man, and the savior of the free world.

Although I must say, I always fancied being the companion to the champion, especially the wise old man figure in the form of the wizard. Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings is a perfect example. My favorite scene in the LOR movie was the scene where Gandalf goes to the library to research the Ring – drinking coffee, smoking his pipe, and reading ancient scrolls!

I’m looking forward to taking a deep dive in mythic imagination with Naomi.