Mapping Simon

Here’s the passage in Alice that follows the full moon gathering.

xxx

“What are you doing?” asked Alice.

Christopher looked up from his task. He was in Alice and Evelyn’s garden, crouched between a row of cabbages and a row of fine hot serrano peppers. Fairies hummed in the not-too-distant woods and ladybugs flitted unobtrusively. Lying in the rut between the rows was Simon, his small deformed body naked to the sun and the sky and the sportive play of bugs. He was face down, but his gargantuan hands, his uneven buttocks and bowling ball head, all indicated restfulness.

“I’m mapping Simon,” Christopher said.

“Look at him,” said Alice. Then she leaned over and kissed Christopher on the lips.

“You have such a way of putting people at ease,” Alice said. “Sometimes I think your thing isn’t mapmaking but putting people at ease.”

Christopher went back to work with his tools and widgets.

“Why are you mapping Simon anyway?” Alice asked.

“John Wilson asked me to,” said Christopher.

Interesting, thought Alice. John Wilson never asked for anyone to be mapped before. He mainly just ran things, walked around and got input from the different New Arcadians, and then ran things some more. Why does he want Christopher to map Simon?

She received a clue to this mystery later that afternoon. Simon had come in and was in a warm bath. Christopher had gone into the room with Evelyn to rub her legs and possibly make love. And TOCK-TOCK-TOCK, John Wilson was at the door.

“Come in, John Wilson,” said Alice. “Why did you want Christopher to map Simon?”

“I don’t trust Simon,” said John Wilson. “Where did he come from and why? No one seems to ask the right questions around here.”

John Wilson seemed irritated, which amused Alice. Of course, he was right. No one knew where Simon had come from or why. It might be good to find these things out.

Later, after Christopher had returned to Freyda the white witch and John Wilson had returned to his live-in wing behind the communal hall, Alice lay in Evelyn’s arms enjoying the night – the smells in the window, the hum of fairies and other sounds of small birds and animals. Simon was sleeping on the box in the corner of the bedroom where she had propped him up. Where was he from? And why was he here? Where was he from? And why was he here? Where was he from?

She must have fallen asleep like her namesake who went through the looking-glass, because soon it wasn’t her asking the two questions, but a figure in the darkest corner of the room, a hooded figure, sitting in an old rocking chair that had come down to Alice from God knows when.

xxx

Ok, that’s enough for now. Just click the cover and buy the book before it’s too late.

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Shibuya Crossing and a Close Call

Up to 3000 people cross on a single walk sign at Shibuya Crossing, the world’s busiest pedestrian crosswalk.

For comparison, note that for about 100,000 years (roughly 900,000 to 800,000 years ago), the entire population of our human ancestors was reduced to about half that. I’d say that’s a close call.

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Isolation and connection

We are thrown into the world with no rhyme or reason, say Martin Heidegger (Being and Time) and the existentialists. Presumably, this arbitrary and inscrutable “thrownness” is a big source of the anxiety and isolation that condition our existence. Gloomy lot, these existentialists.

But is there an antidote to the gloom? If so, maybe it comes from hippie philosopher par excellence, Alan Watts. The idea that we “come into the world” as “isolated egos .. who confront an external world of people and things, making contact through the senses with a universe both alien and strange” — all of that is a hallucination, says Watts. And we can dissolve the hallucination with one simple fact: “We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree” (The Book).

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

So much depends upon

 

 

 

 

 

Image from melo03.wordpress.com/2010/01/13/william-carlos-williams-the-red-wheelbarrow.

so much to say
about

a simple
image

glazed with something
more

despite the old
poet

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

NOMA in the trees

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Uncle Jack’s discussion

For the radio podcast to go with the image of yesterday’s post per my novels, Hippies and Alice, click HERE. My bit is at 15:30-24:00 😊

 * * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Uncle Jack’s

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Cold flower

Cold flower
sprung of youth and blood
hearth and shadow, wilderness

we know nothing of the prodigal son
except that he returned
we don’t know
says Rilke

if he stayed

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Food for thought from Rainer Maria Rilke

Rilke on the prodigal son  (Luke 15:11–32):

“We don’t know whether he stayed there; we only know that he came back.”

(To paraphrase my previous post, Rilke’s remark is actually more suggestive than propositional, a good tool for the creative reader/writer to run with.)

* * * Click covers for links * * *

            

Reading poetry

Different things work for different people. Which makes it hard to respond when people say, “I wish I could understand poetry.” They sense they are missing out on something but don’t know where to start. Different things work for different people. But here’s a suggestion that I think might work for some of them.

If poetry gives you difficulty, it could be that you’re accustomed to think of knowledge as something that comes in the scientific way. You study the evidence closely and find the answer. But poetry has a whole different epistemology. You might think of it this way: The language of poetry is not propositional but suggestive. Propositional language, as you see in most of your school subjects, looks for solid, fixed answers. Poetry often avoids solid, fixed answers. It is not about solutions but about suggestiveness. It’s a way of liberating you from fixed meanings and stimulating the imagination to explore possibilities, even contradictory possibilities.

So don’t try too hard to figure it out, just let yourself get carried away into the landscape of the poem. Think of a garden. When you walk through a garden, you don’t ask what the flowers mean. You just enjoy the beauty, the smells, the contrasts and surprises as you turn down a path. Think of poetry that way. Let yourself get lost in it.

Some poetry, of course, does rely on meaning, but it’s usually not a fixed meaning. It’s more like a cloud of meaning that condenses around the words, the history of words and phrases, the lines, the sounds.  A well-written poem is layered with possible meanings, many of which the poet knew nothing about. Each reader brings the poem to life and imbues it with meaning from their own orientation point on life.

To use another metaphor, a poem is a toolbox readers can use to create beauty and/or meaning. So don’t worry too much over what the poet intended. What really counts it what you can do with it. Has the poet given you a rich set of materials – images, sounds, ideas, emotional triggers – for reflection? If so, run with it. If you really want to, you can go back later and revisit those building blocks, the tools in the toolbox, to see how they fit together and carry possible meanings and values. But you don’t have to😊

Forgive me if this seems patronizing. It’s just that the question comes up often from friends who are not as invested in poetry as I am, so I thought I’d give it a try 😊

* * * Click covers for links * * *