Tag Archives: the way of expression through language

Book launch this week ~ 15 March 2016

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I have special news this week to share with you all. Please join in my excitement as I announce that two works of my poetry, a visual poem and a collaborative poem, are included in One Way to Ask, an unusually delightful and innovative book of poetry and art by poet Daniel Ari and his 67 artist collaborators. (Norfolk Press, San Francisco 2016)

One Way To Ask book cover

The innovation in this book is many things, but a prominent and specific one is a new form of poetry created by Daniel called the queron. What is queron, you might ask?

“Queron is a form that emerged from my poetry practice to match the way my creativity dances, curiously and deliberately, with my experience. Querons have seventeen lines grouped into three quintets and a final couplet. The rhyme scheme is ababa bcbca cdcdb dd. I prefer subtle rhyme.” ~ an excerpt on queron from the book

• • •

My collaborative poem (with Daniel Ari) is called “What Experiences” and the “artwork” that accompanies this penned collaboration is a visual poem in its own (w)right: “Where is the line drawn?” Daniel included these works as the end piece, as we delved into a unique level of collaboration, for this book, inspired by our years of writing together on a group blog of Daniel’s called IMUNURI. (I have posted/published many innovative poems on that blog, some of which I have linked to here on Contemplative Fire.)

Kudos, Daniel Ari!

And congrats to all the artists/illustrators included in this unique book of #poetry!

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See a preview of the book or purchase a copy of this cool book for yourself, both on the Norfolk Press website.

Check out One Way to Ask on Facebook to see posts about the launch.

Check out Daniel Ari’s blog: Fights With Poems.

Or if you’d like a special author signed copy, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Daniel.

• • •

“Reading Daniel Ari‘s poems, juxtaposed with artwork by an impressive roster of talented graphisticators, is like entering a cultural Whirlpool washer. Set to the final spin cycle. Everything comes out clean at the end, but your underwear and your socks may have switched identities.”  -Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead

 

At the Portal

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Best description I have here is that I’m at or aware of some kind of portal. I drew this portal today, which is what tells me it has some presence, some existence somewhere in my being, in the psyche that I resonate with energetically, something of that order.

At this opening, sometimes there is a force pulling me in, sometimes it is something pressing out or visceral pressure as if pushing against. It can change in a millisecond and that’s when it’s most felt, in that fluctuation. A whole other array of energies come into play in that second, as if there is an acute sensate awareness of what is both above and below simultaneously.

Yes, it’s as if the two distinct realities have gotten mixed and some alchemical reaction occurs in that instant. So much information floods through somatically. My brain triggers chemicals left and right, consciousness is in its feasting season, the Beloved has appeared and disappeared both, leaving a wave of breathlessness, insight, exhaustion, and longing all rolled into one.

What feels so appropriate in this drawing is that what is pointed to is the portal, not that which exists or is sensed or felt on either side of it, above or below or even through. It comes to me why some religions have approached the subject of depicting the image of the Beloved, of God and been unable to come up with anything but outright forbidding of such a practice. That which is felt here certainly feels sacred, pure beingness, that which remains unnamed.

And yet, the draw is so very real, the draw to see, to know, to behold, to understand, and to reemerge. For me, these actions are beautifully interwoven, such that one without the rest is essentially partial, not complete. The work of this place is work without working for or towards something. Things happen, but nothing can be done. Things come, the work is resting in What Is.

I had a dream on the evening of March 31st that throngs of people were moving toward me through a narrow passage and I was making my way in the opposite direction. If I were to continue on my way, I was literally having to walk on, climb over others or over their legs and shoulders, squeezing through with some kind of drive that seemed pure spirit. The intensity of this convergence has marked me in some way.

Where is the surrender? Surrender to the drive of spirit, to the nearly inhuman urge forward, to something that seems so single minded or certain that it can withstand such force? And may it be possible as I become one with it all, each element in its place is an aspect of this extraordinary confluence of energies as perceived by this consciousness.

aBOUT wRITING

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This thing, writing, how is it really any different than thinking, turning introspectively inward, or even self inquiry? What is this stuff of light, frequency, felt sense, understanding ~ the body such an exquisite vehicle for collecting and concentrating all this phenomena ~ changing or not, differentiating or not, being discerned or not? The stuff of consciousness, Already Fulfilled and Not Yet Fulfilled, hexagrams 63 and 64 respectively, are like polar opposite contacts in an electrical circuit: the energy or consciousness stream depends on contact with both points, nodes, or touchstones.

Writing is the stuff of making manifest and fixing something that otherwise exists on its own in a subtle and mutable form, giving the impression that once fixed in writing, there is something real to be grasped. Thus the risk inherent in writing that makes the writing seem more important that what it is a trace of or what it aims to point to. These are marks. That fact can be pointed to easily by simply changing the order of the marks around such that something can still be read, but no sense or meaning can be made of it: t.xyoi liif s;lk  fielkb wor nd sook l llll fhk,k.

So what comes before or during writing? Does anything come after? Can what is being pointed to, actually be touched, felt, understood, perceived or is it merely a potential? And if writing is the making of marks, what then is the organization of those marks and what is the perceiver of that of organization, such that the matching of the order of marks may then open out the possibility for a new seeing or a new understanding of consciousness within itself, of itself?

Vunerability Within

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29 September ~

My writing calls me, calls me here to place words outwardly that otherwise are fluid within. Vulnerabilities within anchor me, without hand holds, to the vastness of space within my heart and beingness. Sometimes this spaciousness is so vast, I can feel lost even when there is no where to go.

My contemplative fire within burns as an ember, low, gently warm, waiting to be rekindled in this autumn moon. It feels both awkward and tender, to write now. Coaxing something of that which is waiting to revive. I read the words of others, tenderness arising as the recognition of spirit in the life lived.

30 September ~ the following morning ~ The sun is softened, softened by somewhat heavy skies. The morning has a timeless quality, still under covers. I wake later than usual and my body/mind has a harder time sleeping late. It’s as if there is some deep confusion between waking and sleeping. The body aches, which gives a feeling to stay in bed. Staying in bed brings a different kind of weight, which impacts the whole. The house is quiet. I’m not the only one sleeping later today.

I long to write about the simple, everyday things on the material plane. I often write from the more subtle regions of the consciousness, the awareness of all that is. Then the object of awareness becomes the expression and the way of expression through language. This object is not so satisfying to the actual, physical life, the beingness in the body and of the body. And yet, these two are inextricably joined.

Instead, I take up a book with words written in the way that soothes and nourishes my soul and being. I can enjoy these writings. Maybe I don’t have to be the one who writes in that way. I live that way, so it’s there; that day to day touching in, with tenderness, to the material plane. I feel the elementals there with me. I love to acknowledge that connection. I don’t always acknowledge them, but when I do, I really love it and there is communion instantly!

[The song In Everything (Momosona) by Chris Rosser comes up on Pandora: https://www.pandora.com/#!/music/song/chris+rosser/in+everything+momosona ~ check it out, if you like.]

Its Own Wonder

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i.

The dark left as itself
impresses upon me a whole,
a depth incomparable,
a wonderment beyond
what typically is taken
as the simple absence of light

For the dark is itself
a deep nourishing, a salve
to my bones and beingness as
I walk in the dark, sampling
this exquisite treat of the
unnameable senses

True would be the loss
to suffer nyctalopia, although
many do without knowing
this condition is theirs,
we’ve become so blind
within the hierarchy of light

ii.

Dusk finds the ground within
such that surfaces dissolve
give way to the softer core heat
This communication begins
its emanation, naming each
thing anew as dark arises

In contrast, intentioned light
overshadows and can carelessly enter
the exquisiteness of the dark
where naturally listening things
recede into their essential
incognito. The dusk is that listening

iii.

What do we have in common
with the dark? Are we not dark,
dark in our marrow, in our quiet,
in so many yet to be
realized ways?

And how are we similar to a flame?
The flame, kin to the dark, is it not
ever tender to the shadows?
Lighting a flame, our dark
dances within, with, and around us.

iiii.

As a sweet melancholy
unlike anything
I am drawn to take to the dark,
an exquisite entry

A prescription unique,
a remembering
timeless
walking forward looking deeply
eyes open and open again,

The vastness of the dark field,
to deeply see
what cannot be seen
what cannot
be perceived
through a different wonder.