It hung on a hook,
on the wall near the door.
Quick access for a visit to the “outer world”,
that mask fit my soul like a kiss.
Unexpected door bells caused panic and confusion
that sorted themselves,
as the mask told me what I must do.
Inside was stark,
with rooms both bright and dark,
horrible, yet ecstatic,
threatening, yet titillating.
In one spartan tower
the poet suffered
the sure and certain knowledge
that he should never write again.
In the ballroom, the grande dame
told all what to believe,
how to behave.
The lower level prison
held one who had forgotten
all he ever knew.
The madman smiled,
striding corridors of opportunity,
and planning...planning...
The hermit meditated,
becoming something completely strange,
and different,
from his enlightened self.
The acceptable mask
awaits on a hook,
on the wall near the door.
The occupants are restless:
which shall don the “acceptable” mask,
and face the world?
Grey wrinkles on a pallid face,
eroded by the wearing pace
of life,
and the arrow of time.
Deep pathways carved by tears
for loved ones gone for years:
in memory
living proud and strong.
Captured on our aging skin,
echoes of love that dwell within
carve deep
our sense of loss.
Ancient canyons wrought by grief,
as time rushed by us like a thief:
a monument
to loss, and love.
I have never had looks,
and have long had no hair.
My feet are malformed
from a childhood of wearing
small shoes, for too long.
Struggles with my weight
have always been with me,
and my eyes are failing,
as my hearing fades.
Rosacea blots my wrinkled skin,
and my eyebrows are bushy, unruly,
and white.
My faults are self-catalogued,
and I’ve learned to embrace them,
and have come to accept
who I am.
What I have going for me,
that gives me much joy,
is a Mensa entry test
in top one percent.
My vocabulary,
though archaic, and dull,
is vast, relentlessly controlled
by grammar police within.
My quest for knowledge
is constant, epistemologically based.
Ontology is a recent friend,
with whom I spend much time.
Philosophy, cosmology,
and quantum physics
vie for my fickle attention.
So much to think about,
and so little time,
that I often become overwhelmed.
So when you say that my musings
may be considered grandiose by some,
I think your horizons are nearer than mine,
and you have no idea just who I am.
I feel the chill wind
of irrelevance
drafting under the door
of my reality.
Trapped in the slipstream
from the cannonball of time,
I am swept along,
battered by objects
that I cannot avoid.
A frail transparency
envelopes me,
and the strength of my youth
is but a memory
that smells of past summers.
My focus fades,
as dark clouds block the sun,
and I am unable to recover
a smile that has been missing
far too long.
Tomorrow will be different
I say, wondering as I speak,
if I can escape the vortex
of today, to bask in the light
of a sun just faintly remembered.
Looking in a mirror
I see an old man
who is almost translucent,
and not quite here.
It is easier to have a routine,
but easy is an ugly word,
and my life has never
been routine.
Walking the dog
through snow-clogged lanes,
I dance between
Northern Ontario,
and the mountains
above Srinagar.
Treading lightly,
I walk through the pines
of Desierto de los Leones,
above Mexico City,
and walk the treeline
at Popocatépetl,
stunned at being,
amazed at being here,
overwhelmed at being here, now.
Dog and I return,
through our own pines,
and check the bird feeders.
A time lurch,
and I am on the verandah
at the Asa Wright Centre
in Trinidad,
watching the birds feeding:
neon colours on wings.
Glitch...and I silently watch
a dancing peacock
in Yala National Park,
in Sri Lanka,
only a kilometre away
from a beach where waves break
in an ocean that stretches
to Antarctica.
Inside, with fresh coffee,
I am shifted to a hotel
on the ski slopes of
Ceausescu’s Romania,
drinking a cappuccino
the taste of which
I shall never forget.
It is easier to have a routine,
to stay focussed on the present,
but easy was never the name
of the highways
upon which I have travelled.
This is the frame:
Soft semi-tropical night,
clear, star-speckled,
a magical backdrop
for a platinum moon as large as a dream;
a muted band plays in a distance
that is punctuated by gentle laughter.
The song is Stoloff: Moonglow/Theme from “Picnic”.
This is the picture:
Small boy, dressed in old worn clothes.
Poor boy, but in a caring family
where life was no more
than subsistence, leavened by love.
This is the wall upon which the picture hangs:
Flags on battlements, crises, pain.
False prophets, monsters, sterile plains.
Struggle, anguish, loss, and fear.
Knowledge, travel, learning, growing.
Love, and the beginning of understanding.
Peace, with tranquillity on the top of a hill,
overlooking a harbour
on the North Atlantic.
I feel if I could,
suddenly and completely,
engage
with this Cosmic Aum,
I would.
If I focus deep enough
to hear harmonic
variations,
Mandelbrot would explain
All.
It is always there:
a friend, confidant, co-conspirator,
dancing life’s dance
with you
as partner.
The high hissing cacaphony
of frequencies only seen
within your mind:
observing? controlling?
created? sentient?
As individual as fingerprints,
does this chorus
sing just for you,
or does it rejoice,
triumphantly,
in a place beyond Time?
Aging is that biological evil
we all must bear
as we are swept along
with the arrow of time.
Knowledge comes with the journey:
we are all damaged and worn
by life, and the people and events
contributing to, and molding, that life.
We all bear our grotesque tattoos,
some hidden, some blatantly obvious,
and others interpret only those illustrations
they can see through the haze,
the light, the pain,
of their own picture-books.
We hobble on towards an end
that we either accept as natural,
or, girded by ancient superstition,
embrace as our just reward
for a good life, well lived.
We suffer, yet within that pain
there shines a light of joy,
engraving an epitaph
that will continue to glow
long after our illustrations
have returned to star dust.
He was a well read, and self-educated man.
His grasp of basic quantum mechanics,
and cosmology, was phenomenal.
An advocate of progress and scientific development,
he abhorred retrogression in a society.
As an intelligent man he understood
that our highest accolade was to learn,
and to teach.
Alone, in a religious society,
he came to understand, and embrace,
the concept of atheism, and humanism.
His life reflected these concepts.
He did not reject religious superstition willy-nilly,
but only after careful thought, study,
and multitudinous discussions,
some heated, some calm and reasoned.
He was content with his decisions,
and his life reflected that contentment.
Diminished by his insidious disease
with the pain roaring through mind and body,
he had no strength to reflect, to contemplate,
to regret.
His family stayed near, but ultimately
he was alone with his anguish.
The whispered prayers, and quiet sadness
of religious kin, dripped into his failing consciousness
as, with a final act of love,
he accepted the exhortations,
and let their Jesus offer them,
not him, a final comfort.
Somewhere in the multiverse,
he hunts duck, moose, deer,
and converses with Bertrand Russell,
and Robert Service and Jack London
are pleased to receive his critique
of their work.
There is no sign, in this iteration,
of manna,
of harps,
of milk and honey.
Elsewhere, through time and
Mandelbrot spirals,
a grandson recognises and
accepts the greatness,
the strength, the determination,
the intelligence
of this good man,
and continues to think,
and to question.
Always.
Welcome, and Namaste
Greetings fellow travellers,
For you American friends visiting, you will notice that this old Canadian uses Canadian English in this blog: kindly bear with me. As I blog primarily on subjects that are vitally interesting to me, I appreciate all feedback.
As I tend to be a bit of a language usage freak, I will, as required, edit obscenity and rude comments. That said, I welcome your opinions and discussion.
May your Dharma be clear
Peace
"If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended:
That you have but slumb'red here,
While these visions did appear."
Puck’s epilogue to A Midsummer Night’s Dream
