The Coats of Many Colors

By the end of January, I am always beginning to feel bedraggled and dragged down by my annual experiment in testing out what I hope will be finding the perfect winter coat. However, after the freezing temperature of January has me in its icy grip, this year's model, like all coats of all other years ....soon becomes the coat from Hell.

I loved the sporty hunter green coat when I bought it three months ago. It's generous length went down past my knees, it was surprisingly lightweight for being tested and guaranteed to be cozy and warm at subzero temperatures, and best of all, with multiple zippers, snap flaps, velcro closures in every conceivable place, and loose-fitting sleeves big enough to fit over multiple layers of clothing, Gortex fabric that was waterproof and windproof to boot, AND the hood was big enough to wear over my bicycle helmet! ...well, what more could I ask? It was the perfect winter coat to wear while commuting to work by bicycle.

That is what I thought in late November, even into late December; but, every year something mysterious happens in mid to late January when the coat and I become mortal enemies. It happens every year and you would think I would remember the solution to the problem. But I never do.

I suffer for several weeks in misery convinced that winter is never going to end and someone will find me buried in a snowbank, cold and dead under the crushing canabilstic weight of the coat from Hell.

It's always this time of year that I fantasize about the perfection of summer lightweight clothes. I remember with frost-bitten taste buds, the delectable savor of the tall glass of freshly-squeezed lemonade that the chef makes for me to quench my hot summer thirst at the French Vietnamese restaurant that I pedal to on my bike when there is still daylight outside at 8PM.

photo by Pardes

The coat revelation always happens when I'm looking for something in the deep pockets of the coat. Today it was a quarter to round out the bus fare. I sunk my hand deep into the right lower pocket of my coat where I generally dump loose change, Chapstick, and the crumpled GTD paper thingy with the list of 37 things I need to do and never will.

The pocket seemed to disappear into a black hole. The deeper I plunged my hand, the more items I found, none of which were a quarter. I could hear the loose change rattling in the depths of the pocket, but the flotsam and jetsam was so deep, I could not reach it. A sympathetic commuter flipped me a spare quarter.

While strapping my bike to the front of the bus for the Interstate highway part of my bike commute to work, I plotted the demise of my winter coat. I grouped the coat in the same class as the snowsuit from Hell, that my mother stuffed me in before releasing me from the house to play in the snow.

You may remember the experience of paralysis of movement from your own snowsuit. Remember the gloves that were clipped to your sleeve and flapped in the breeze while you attempted and failed in trying to bend over to make a snowball? You couldn't bend your knees or elbows. You couldn't turn your head in any direction. The only thing you could do in a snowsuit was breathe.

photo by brungrrl

Of course, once you get on the slippery slope of comparing the misery of winter with the perfection of summer, you begin to wallow in seasonal comparison that supports your contention that winter is surely going to kill all of us and no will live to see the summer sun again.

photo by Pardes

You long for the lithe responsive nature of the summery Trek road bike....

photo by Pardes

....and begrudge the lumbering nature of the Transeo winter mountain bike where you always seem to be biking in the dark...



photo by Pardes

You reminisce when you could swim with a horse....



photo by Pardes

....instead of cantering in a foot of snow.



photo by Pardes

....when you could walk barefoot in tender chartreuse grass ....



photo by Pardes

.... instead of freezing your toes while tracking runaway snowmen.



photo by Pardes

when you woke from a nap on the balmy August bank of the Delaware River as the Kalmar Nyckel silently docked fifty feet from where you slept ....



photo by Pardes

.... instead of commiserating with two seagulls who perhaps lost a leg to the now icy Delaware River waters.



photo by Pardes

The bellyaching doesn't last for long though because you know of a homeless person who does not have the luxury of middle-class whining. Swathed in so many conflicting layers of clothing, hats and scarves, slacks and skirts and sweatpants underneath a furry coat, you cannot tell the gender of this person; but you know for sure that dozens of forgotten quarters do not rattle in those pockets.

.... and then you pause for a moment of shame and promise to deliver all you other coats to the homeless shelter....

When I got to the lab, I decided to further explore the set of six deep pockets in my winter coat. No wonder I was feeling weighted down. The only thing I didn't find in those pockets was Jimmy Hoffa.

The items I piled onto the lab bench included: not one, not two, but TRHEE pairs of gloves; six tubes of Chapstick; two pairs of ear muffs; 22 voided bus tickets; one spare bicycle inner tube; 11 ballpoint pens; 2 CO2 cannisters for inflating bicycle tires; one completely flattened Reese's Peanut Butter Cup; an adjustable wrench; one Phillips head screwdriver; the iPod I've been trying to find for two months; a 4 GB flash drive; $14.27 in loose change; 2 letters I forgot to mail; 6 large rare earth magnets for an experiment in tripping traffic lights to change that the weight of a bike won't trip (the experiment failed); 2 sets of folding headphones (1 broken); 1 bottle of aspirin; 1 atomizer of Chanel No. 5; a Nikon point & shoot camera; 4 rechargeable AA batteries; and the most enigmatic of all, an unopened Christmas wrapped present the size of a matchbox. Some secret gift a friend of mine had left as a surprise for me.

For hoots, I piled the stuff on the analytical balance generally used in the lab for weighing cocaine and marijuana forensic evidence. All together the booty weighed a little under 7 pounds. When I added in the weight of the keys (lab, home and bicycle lock keys), wallet, Blackberry, and mini flashlight that I keep in my windproof, waterproof bicycle pants that I wear over my slacks, the grand total came to an extra ten pounds I was carrying around.

Consequently, like every previous year, I end up apologizing to my coat and assume full responsibility for the problem. Of course this will only last for a couple of weeks until the pockets get loaded down again; and I develop coat dementia again; and the coat and I will be back at odds with one another until Spring.

And that's okay, I tell myself as I plot not revenge on a coat this time, but a small gesture of surprise, perhaps even delight for someone else. I zip the still unopened Christmas gift inside the inner breast pocket to be discovered next winter when they pull this green coat off a rack at the Capuchin Friars Soup Kitchen Clothes Closet to be worn out into the frigid Wilmington night.

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Diskgrinder, All Together Now

photo collage by Diskgrinder

Diskgrinder is an enigma. Not the kind of enigma that you burn to solve; but the kind of enigma that you want to savor like a good bouillabaisse where each note of flavor presents itself in its own good time.

His Internet presence is known as Diskgrinder. I never thought to ask him his real name; possibly for fear of his response which would be so clever with his razor wit that I would be reminded that part of my fascination with him is his likeness to a grownup version of that kid we all knew in high school who could level you with one of his witticisms; but ahhhhhh if he liked you, it made you feel special and as witty and charming as he was.

You know the kid I'm talking about. The one who could even intimidate the teachers, the Principal of the school, the traffic cop who stopped him for a moving violation. He made the girls blush and the boy envious of his intellect, his feigned apathy, his extreme and unique coolness, and the creative spark that fired his interest in getting to the bottom of what he considered outrageous socially accepted norms. He was a mirror to our own insecurities so we kept him at a distance; far enough away to feel comfortable without the need to actualize ourselves; but close enough to garner the treasures he revealed.

I first found him on Twitter where we traded clever and terrible puns. Unlike many punsters, he is not a bully and often reveals his softer side; although, make no mistake, it sometimes takes spelunking to find it hidden in a cavern where fish are blind and echoes remain from the ancient ones.

We traded visits to each other's websites. I considered him somewhat bizarre, prone to swearing a lot, an artist, a musician, a perceptive observer of the human condition, a loving father, and most of all, an adult who never forgot how to play, and play with total abandonment of any worry of looking foolish to others. I'm not sure, but I think he considered me a 63 year old woman who possibly smells like Ben Gay, but one who also knows how to play.

I issued a "call for papers" to write about a hermit, mystic, or eccentric person and Diskgrinder responded with a wholly-unique Diskgrinder view of the eccentric known as Reg. It is an exercise in absurdity, irony, and reveals perhaps more about Diskgrinder than it does about Reg.

Impartial journalism can be a wonderful thing; but give me personal observations any day of the week. Sidney Jourard, the Humanist Psychologist, remarked that "disclosure begets disclosure." The limited expressions of Diskgrinder on the web consists of a few hundred often mysterious blog entries, a few YouTube videos, several scores of Flickr photos which is certainly not enough to fill out an accurate biography, not that the world is waiting with bated breath for a Disgrinder biography, nor is that my intention.

What I do note however, is that through Diskgrinder's description of Reg, the Hermit, and Diskgrinder's enigmatic presence on the web, the eccentric nature of the author himself is revealed and it makes the world a much less lonely place where we too as readers can be brave enough to reveal our own eccentric selves.

Reg said, "Most people think of the mind as being an intangible halo around their head, from which they call facts from the hot sponge in their skull. Like the brain is a bunch of liquid and dirty meat that keeps track, but the mind is this pristine glow that sees the track. But a recent theory is that the mind is Extended into legs and arms and maybe notes you write on the fridge, thinking's done within a yard. Your mind is in your fingers when you touch, in your local motion when you walk, there when you sniff. Which is why scent evokes memory." As Reg once said, "If your mind is in your head, why do you see everything outside, and not contemplate scenes inside?"

~~ Diskgrinder Tweets 2009

Art by Diskgrinder

Meeting a hermit

by Diskgrinder 2009

Back in the early eighties, when I was variously unemployed (an unemployed labourer, railway trackman, kitchen porter, painter) I met a man called Reg. He was an artist. He lived in Somerby, Rutland and refused electricity or gas, preferring instead to light his house with Gales honey jars filled with paraffin with a wick poked through the lid.

He was a mystic and a hippie, which in eighties East Midlands bitter bleakosity was unwelcomed by most (remember that the Vale of Catmose is in the lee of Lincolnshire, flat panned reclaimed fens where the wind is directly funnelled from the Urals).

He was a fellow of the Royal Academy, and once drank an oak tree*** off a high shelf with Craig Martin.

His paintings were abstract, and fairly fucked philosophically by his insistence on parallels with eastern mysticism and overdosing on cough medicine. Had he referenced Lacan, structuralism and maybe the decentered self he could have been successful. As he claimed his inspiration came from Kundalini, Gurdjieff and kif, he was deeply unfashionable.

But still he had a kind of scrawny integrity. He was a mountaineer, a painter and spliffster; a Barnsley ugly man with a feeling for colour, but no taste for the wank of art criticism.

I think he had a daughter, who lived in an inaccessible valley in Wales; inaccessible to him at least, as they were estranged.

~~~

***an oak tree: the text
reproduced by Ian Grant, Cambridge 8/7/2002 Michael Craig-Martin. An oak tree, 1973. In a room at Tate Modern there is a three-quarter full glass of water on a high shelf. It is a work by Michael Craig-Martin called An oak tree. Beside it there is the following text:

Q. To begin with, could you describe this work?
A. Yes, of course. What I've done is change a glass of water into a full-grown oak tree without altering the accidents of the glass of water.

Q. The accidents?
A. Yes. The colour, feel, weight, size ...

Q. Do you mean that the glass of water is a symbol of an oak tree?
A. No. It's not a symbol. I've changed the physical substance of the glass of water into that of an oak tree.

Q. It looks like a glass of water.
A. Of course it does. I didn't change its appearance. But it's not a glass of water, it's an oak tree.

Q. Can you prove what you've claimed to have done?
A. Well, yes and no. I claim to have maintained the physical form of the glass of water and, as you can see, I have. However, as one normally looks for evidence of physical change in terms of altered form, no such proof exists.

Q. Haven't you simply called this glass of water an oak tree?
A. Absolutely not. It is not a glass of water anymore. I have changed its actual substance. It would no longer be accurate to call it a glass of water. One could call it anything one wished but that would not alter the fact that it is an oak tree.

Q. Isn't this just a case of the emperor's new clothes?
A. No. With the emperor's new clothes people claimed to see something that wasn't there because they felt they should. I would be very surprised if anyone told me they saw an oak tree.

Q. Was it difficult to effect the change?
A. No effort at all. But it took me years of work before I realised I could do it.

Q. When precisely did the glass of water become an oak tree?
A. When I put the water in the glass.

Q. Does this happen every time you fill a glass with water?
A. No, of course not. Only when I intend to change it into an oak tree.

Q. Then intention causes the change?
A. I would say it precipitates the change.

Q. You don't know how you do it?
A. It contradicts what I feel I know about cause and effect.

Q. It seems to me that you are claiming to have worked a miracle. Isn't that the case?
A. I'm flattered that you think so.

Q. But aren't you the only person who can do something like this?
A. How could I know?

Q. Could you teach others to do it?
A. No, it's not something one can teach.

Q. Do you consider that changing the glass of water into an oak tree constitutes an art work?
A. Yes.

Q. What precisely is the art work? The glass of water?
A. There is no glass of water anymore.

Q. The process of change?
A. There is no process involved in the change.

Q. The oak tree?
A. Yes. The oak tree.

Q. But the oak tree only exists in the mind.
A. No. The actual oak tree is physically present but in the form of the glass of water. As the glass of water was a particular glass of water, the oak tree is also a particular oak tree. To conceive the category 'oak tree' or to picture a particular oak tree is not to understand and experience what appears to be a glass of water as an oak tree. Just as it is imperceivable it also inconceivable.

Q. Did the particular oak tree exist somewhere else before it took the form of a glass of water?
A. No. This particular oak tree did not exist previously. I should also point out that it does not and will not ever have any other form than that of a glass of water.

Q. How long will it continue to be an oak tree?
A. Until I change it.

As I understand it, this text is not in itself the work of art, so I am at liberty to reproduce it here. Ian Grant, Cambridge 8/7/2002

~~~

And that is the end of words about Reg. Let us now return to Diskgrinder.

The corporate world was taken by storm with David Allen's, "Getting Things Done," GTD strategies to ... well, get things done. Diskgrinder levels both his barrels on the GTD hype with this blog entry. Only those of us, like myself, who have spent hours and days playing with the GTD paper thingy can appreciate the humor.

Trouble fuck to-do list GTD taskpaper

As you all know. Each of you have your own spiky thorns in your metaphoric pants. Clearly, you need to divest yourselves of the spiky-thorn-pant thing. How should we do that? I hear you ask. In fact demand.

Here's my to-do list of GTD spiky-thorn-pant issue resolution:

* Download the latest GTD application to your iPhone

* Fiddle with that for about an hour: set some contexts; pinch some overviews; swipe some goals; above all, do that lip-sucking typy touchscreen thing inputting all your to-dos in before you realise it syncs with OmniFracas

* Download OmniFracas

* Marvel at its intuitive interface

* Don't open it for a month; shit, now it's expired

* Zero inbox your inbox

* Read every email in the trash

* Print out the tiny list paper foldy thing to-do list

* Realize you're not a twat

* Screw it up and throw it in the fire (if you wrote anything on it you will get a MOMENTARY sense of closure)

* Send yourself increasingly sweary post-dated emails

* Stack bills behind the biggest ornament you have on your mantelpiece

OR

* Keep on keeping on

* Occasionally apologise for not having done whatever the fuck it was

Oh, and change your pants

~~~

Diskgrinder's rapier wit is not only directed outward at the frailties of mankind. He is not above making fun of himself. Music is another important aspect of his life that he shares with his boys. However, as father, as mentor, as comedian to his boys he also demonstrates the absurdity and humor that comes with the hobby of music. Sigh #4 is the fourth in a series of videos about a musician who takes himself far too seriously.

Diskgrinder's boys, his little chaps who call him "Dad-face," are central to his life. I envy the noisy, racuous, musical fun they have on the weekends they spend with him.

There is music, there are light sabers, there is giggling humor and 24 karat gold memories being laid down for the future...

There is all of that before it is time to say goodbye for another week.

Diskgrinder said that he hopes that his kids say one day, "I grew up in a house full of music."

Indeed, his boys will say that. And they will also say that they grew up in a house full of magic and full of love.

Sony Digital Recorder and a Dragon - A Writer's Best Friends

photo by Kevin Labianco

Writing nonfiction articles for a blog cam be laborious if you collect a lot of references to use in the blog. First you search for the references that are on target, and then you dump them into a subdirectory to be combed through later.

The problem is that going through them for nuggets of gold is a drag when you know you have hours of reading, highlighting ideas, developing the concepts into your own words, typing them into a draft file, and hoping that at the end of all of this you still even care about the subject.

I can't tell you how many subdirectories I have containing research material. They gather dust. The Kelpius subdirectory alone spurred the need to buy multiple flash drive to store all the data. I managed to squeeze out one paltry blog about Kelpius but it didn't satisfy me since so much of the material I had collected was just too cumbersome to review all of it.

Then I bought the Sony digital recorder and Dragon Naturally Speaking Recorder Edition version 9.5 voice recognition software. I was suspicious at first. I get a lot of "brilliant" organizational ideas that in actuality are sometimes just a ploy to avoid doing the actual writing. I am happy to report that in this case, that is not true.

Over the weekend, I've been thinking about an article titled, "The Memory of Water" that explores the mysterious, magical, mythical, and scientific anomalies about water. Good little researcher that I am, I compiled a subdirectory of about 100 references on "water."

You know how those subdirectories look with unintelligible filenames and sub-subdirecotries with miscellaneous gif files and the like that are part of saving a website view. It's enough to discourage anyone to look back at the garbled list of files and figure out how to begin.

No problem. I had Sony Dragon on my side. I just started at the top of the list of files, opened them one by one, scanned through them for ideas, put the concepts in my own words, and dictated it into the digital recorder. And then on to the next file and the next...

I then fed the file into the Dragon software and watched with amazement as my words were turned into text and magically typed themselves across the screen. Painlessly you have a workable draft file that avoids that "blank screen" terror when you are beginning a new piece of writing. After that, it's all downhill coasting as you edit, rearrange, re-edit, and finalize your piece of writing. Writing can be a solitary business but with the Sony Dragon you feel as if you have collaborators who are always willing to help you out at any time of day or night; they never get tired and cranky, and they never make fun of your writing.

However, there are moments of amusement while Dragon is getting used to recognizing your voice. This is when I discovered that Dragon is a hawk while I am clearly a dove.

I spoke the words, "The unique physical and aesthetic properties of water give it a mysterious component that fires mythological and religious ideas about water." (Okay, it's not deathless prose, it was a DRAFT, remember? Dragon doesn't give me a hard time like YOU do!)

I found it very sweet that Dragon didn't roll it's eyes at my draft copy; it just did its darnedest to accurately transcribe what I had said. Clearly though, Dragon still has memories of spitting fire and annihilating enemies because this is what it thought I said, "The unique physical and aesthetic properties of water give it a mysterious component that fires missiles and religious ideas about water."

Of course, now I have a new hobby...how to trick Dragon into saying the most bizarre things. There ARE rules however to this game. No lisping is allowed (wouldn't that be like kicking someone in a wheelchair?) No foreign words are allowed which is good since I can't speak any. Of course Middle English is fair game. "Here Dragon, transcribe this: "Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote, the droghte of March hath perced to the roote, and bathed every veyne in swich licour...."

A Dragon Teaching Pardes to Sing

photo by Kellybug

Sometimes there are concessions that need to be made. Sometimes these concessions, originally thought to be a trade-off of something not quite so good for a more coveted thing that we must give up are thought to be bad-tasting medicine that we must endure. Sometimes that is not true and the concession actually turns out to be a gift.

I took up commuting to work on a bicycle as a trade-off for not being able to walk to the bus stop due to the ravages of arthritis. (I had taken up walking to the bus stop in protest of rising gas prices and the desire to be more physically fit as well as to re-connect with my environment, the weather, and seasonal changes that I'd lost in the comatose practice of driving to work on the same road for twenty-five years.) It turned out to be one of the most profitable "concessions" that I've ever made. Imagine. Something good for me, and good for the environment turns out to be one of the most pleasurable activities of my life.

This triggered another concession that needed to be made. Spending more time on a bicycle means spending less time doing the other things I love. Like writing. Add to this the fact that cramped, arthritic hands can't keep up with the right lobe of my brain that floods the left part of my brain with more images and ideas than can be recorded.

Enter the Sony ICD SX68 DRG digital voice recorder to catch all those loose ends when my fingers can't. Stir the pot also with the bundled software that came with it. Dragon Naturally Speaking 9.5.

The result? While I'm trying to teach the Dragon to speak, I am hoping that the Dragon, in turn, will teach me how to sing.

The learning curve for both of us is steep. It irritates me that Dragon insists and demands that I speak each necessary punctuation mark and that I take the time to spell difficult words slowly and distinctly. I'm sure that my penchant for adverbs and sentences longer than most paragraphs irritates Dragon. Our irritation with one another is not toxic. Indeed, it's more like making a new friend who has to learn the nuances of each other's voice.

Naturally, such a friendship takes time. I'll be missing in action for a few days while the Dragon and I are holed up in a cave marveling at the echoes of our voices, discovering the real meaning of our words, and watching the shadows illuminated by the fire that dance on the walls.

Call for Papers

I have added another blog, Cloister Voices, as a magazine style blog, a collection of stories and encounters with the unusual people we meet in our lives whether they be hermits, mystics, eccentrics, or a stranger who captivates us. I would love to add your stories and encounters to this "call for papers."

Scientific journals bulge with announcements for a "call for papers" so that scientists around the world can raise their heads from test tubes and standard deviation calculations and share their latest work with their colleagues around the world.

As a chemist, I've always been most interested in reading about the first stages of research where the final answer is not known yet and where hope and exhilaration of "the thrill of the hunt" activates the mind and imagination.

Cloister Voices would also like to announce a "call for papers" of another kind, an investigation into our memories of catalytic encounters with unusual people. When and where did you meet someone unique who provided you with synchronistic synergism enough to excite the electrons of your life into a higher orbital, perhaps even to the point where your life began to glow.

Please share these stories with Cloister Voices by submitting them to cloistervoices at gmail dot com.

The Women's Gallery of the Shul

As soon as I was old enough to speak, I invited myself along to the churches, secret meditation spots, or on the spiritual adventures of friends, neighbors, and even strangers. Most of them were flattered by the request, if not amused.

I was escorted to Kingdom Hall, Presbyterian buffets, Baptist "dinner on the grounds," fundamentalist snake-handler revivals,Catholic funerals, Buddhist sesshins, and Wiccan solstice celebrations. Some of my hosts tried to convert me to their "truth" but I remained the same within, the solitary daughter of an Agnostic who embraced the transcendent spirit without the need to name it.

The last of my forays into religious adventures was by far the most unsettling and ultimately the most fruitful in raising my heart from the dead. A Chosen One took me to his shul for a Resurrection.

The Women's Gallery of the Shul

where wives and children are sequestered witnesses
behind a door that groans each time it opens
to the second floor above male voices rising up incensed
and swirling round the rustling of long black
Sephardic Orthodox dresses with wigged tresses
bending to caresses of chanted Hebrew words.

In a charcoal ember skirt, the likes of which
I have not worn in thirty years, I contemplate
in quiet stillness and in reverent tears the primal
imprinting brand of the voice of man upon a woman.

Drawn to the railing of a sea of kippas and prayer shawls
below the wailing of the cantor orchestrates
the moments of harmony, the rhythmic movements of awe
in a controlled chaotic rendering of the Shema prayer
to "love with all your heart, all your might, all your soul."

In a slice of silence all women rise and bend as one
as they lean into the yearning to hear with discerning
that one voice rise above the others, standing out
in a whispered intimacy they've known since before
they were born. Their bashert and destiny.

I am torn between traditions, not of God
or burning bushes "as above, so below," but of man and woman
and the wishes of love so rarely spoken of and only known
by the separation of concessions made by the women
who will never hear that one voice and by their choice
are left to walk the second floor gallery railing of the shul
with nervous fingers and idle chatter that is so loud

I cannot hear the tenor bravissimo voice I strain to hear and know
who asked me to reveal the secret of women on a lake
moored where two loons floated round the point of his youth
spent in a summer home of adolescent discovery
and a lifetime of recovery from love now locked up tight
just beyond "no trespassing signs."

By design we are meant to love "with all our heart, all our might,
all our soul," but in a boat on the sea his kippa is no match
for the starboard breeze that lulls and rocks us to toasted
Carmel Kosher wine and I cannot define what is meant to be
for him, for me, or the ancient smile on a matron's face,
who as with me, strained to hear that one voice meant
just for her. Her bashert, her destiny.

By her choice in fantasy she scaled the railing
of the gallery ledge that is precisely a wedge the width
of a young woman's slender foot. She did a pirouette
and twirled on point. She danced the dance of seven veils,
let down her curls no longer gray but auburn now and full of lights

and when she stopped in front of me to bow the mirrors
of her Moroccan prayer cap reflected a sun warmed lake,
the echo of a gentle breeze, promises broken, promises made
while below in a sea of kippas and knotted prayer shawls
the Torah, Magic now unlocked was carried in love by men
with adoration while above two loons rose and took to wing,
banked and turned, and in their shimmering Shema prayer
rounded the point again.

~ Pardes 2006 ~

Meme Eccentrics

Meme? I didn't know what it was either but Trulyana's post cleared things up.

Meme Challenge: Describe your first encounter with a hermit, mystic, or an unusually eccentric person. Those I've tagged are listed below.

Ches McCartney, The Goat Man, lay fallow in my memory as my own personal property. Prone to extravagant thoughts and debatable visions in childhood, I was never quite sure if the Goat Man was real.

He seemed real enough with his small junk-laden wagon pulled by goats when he took up temporary residence in an empty lot across from my home in central Florida in 1959. The odor of his clothing was real enough, stringent and potent. The smile that crinkled his eyes under his railroad cap was real enough.

I was thirteen, my father had just died, my mother and I were living on the outskirts of poverty, so is it any wonder that I was profoundly moved by the freedom of this wandering Goat Man who spent a lifetime moving on. Forever moving away quickly enough that pain could not settle around him.

I hung out behind a crepe myrtle bus for several days before gathering the nerve to speak to him and learn his secret of how to escape the world. I clutched the last box of Brownie Scout cookies under my arm, a gift, a token of exchange for the Goat Man to tell me his secrets.

He refused to accept the gift and insisted upon a barter. The cookies in exchange for a postcard of him traveling down the road. There were other terms too. I had to agree to eat the cookies with him.

Was it goat milk that he served with the cookies? I don't remember. It tasted of garlic and was on the verge of curdling. The cookies were stale but sweet.

We sat silent and watched the sun go down behind the centuries old live oak tree that was as gnarled as his hands and as lightning-struck as my heart.

In the morning, he was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~

I'm tagging the following people to tell us about their first encounter with a hermit, mystic, or an unusually eccentric person.

http://expressiveworld.com/
http://urbansitspot.blogspot.com/
http://boomerbabyboomer.blogspot.com/
http://theblackbuscompany.blogspot.com/
http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/
http://intothehermitage.blogspot.com/
http://wclwood.blogspot.com/
http://monasterywithin.blogspot.com/
http://www.oddthingsiveseen.com/
http://www.writingtosurvive.com/
http://stars-burn.net/ink/

If you name is not on the list, it should have been. I welcome your participation.

Weekday Evenings at the Kirkwood Spa

The Jacuzzi is littered
with amorphous female bodies
too old for mating.
Like beached sea lions,
half-submerged and languid,
we rock against each,
gazing through papyrus eyelids
into effervescent water.

Only our diamonds still sparkle
and have kept their shape.

Displaced by bantering bulls
and the liquid iridescence
of adolescent females,
we ancient ones retire,
single file and silent
to the Desert Room
for a touching ritual
where postulants,
terry-turbaned kneel,
offering a cup of spring water
to the rocky gods of gravity and guilt.

Steaming rising, we are anointed
into the Chrism of Oil of Olay
while twenty feet away
in chlorinated deep waters
a rising, diving youth
arches her back
and breaks the surface.

~Pardes 2006 -

I went back to work after a nine day Christmas Holiday vacation and was greeted by multiple expressions of "my my my but you look rested." It was so frequent a phrase that I wondered how bad I must have appeared before I left. I know that I felt exhausted and wore the dilapidated musculature of a 63 year old in the body of an 83 year old.

However, the other actions of touching my shoulders, or gazing at my form with the other multiple comments of "you have to have lost 10 pounds!" intrigued me. Weight is weight and it never concerned me other than as a curious wonderment how gravity and gluttony can ravage a body on the outside while inside you still feel lithe and young. But this statement puzzled me. For the nine days of my vacation I did nothing but sit in a zazen position on my bed and watch movies, write blogs, answer emails from fellow bloggers, or sleep (not in zazen position). How is it possible that I could lose 8 pounds (verified on the morgue scales) in a mere 9 days of physical inactivity.

It's a mystery.

I used to belong to the Kirkwood Spa and would religiously swim every day and walk for miles around the track littered with other male and female bodies exuding a mixture of testosterone, estrogen, and that astringent odor of fresh sweat. All to no avail in terms of losing weight. I would shrug it off since in the old days when I looked like Twiggy, I felt like me and despite my growth sideways, I still feel like me. Feeling like me is a good thing and I wasn't about to make the chlorinated waters murky with the media's version of what "me" should look like.

Life got complicated with an advancement of work that left only complete exhaustion at the end of the day, certainly no time for a two hour trip to swim and surrepitiously observe the drama, not to mention the lovely forms of others. Then I discovered the joy of riding a bicycle which wasn't experienced as "exercise" but as a joy of remembering the wind in your hair innocence of childhood.

I rode for miles and miles and was transported to another realm of the sheer delight of how a body can perform when left alone, when not picked at with circuit repetitions on sweaty stainless steel machines, but just left alone to ride the wind.

I'm still me. I'm still the shape of a fireplug, just a smaller fireplug these days. I don't swim anymore but if you notice an older lady wearing a gold helmet on a silver bicycle adorned with panniers and flashing lights, that will be me. The real me. The one that will always be me. The one that never ages.

The Passion of Trees

What is there to do with a runaway poem that's out of control and refuses to be edited? How do you cover the mistakes in lines that do not scan properly, or how do you define or defend phrases you have no idea as to their meaning?

If chefs can cover their mistakes, their culinary oversights with mayonnaise, then a poet geek can cover her shortcomings with photos and music. It's debatable if I write poetry any better than I cook. (Shrug.) Please allow a bit of time for the video to load .... oh ... and pass the mayonnaise.

text & photos by Pardes

Alone Under the Mistletoe

On this major Holiday of Christmas typically spent with family and friends, I have to note that once again I am alone by choice. I stand alone under the mistletoe.

Mistletoe grew in the trees of my childhood home in central Florida and inflamed me with its rich mythology I found in the latest stack of books dragged home from the Ocala public library. Prepubescent, I didn't care much for the kissing lore, but learning that it was a hemi-parasitic plant fascinated my budding scientific mind.

The other, more pensive part of my mind that studied the migration of ants and squirrels and flamingos as a secret journey to the truth of their “home” was mystification enough to climb the trees for a sample of this hermetic plant when I also discovered that it was a symbol of immortality and if enemies met under a tree with mistletoe, they laid down their arms and maintained a true. It seemed worth a try to risk standing on the tree's frail limbs to gather mistletoe for my family in great need of immortality and truce.

I do not know or desire the need for the community experience that moves family and acquaintances to gather together. In the past when I have dabbled with mingling in the midst of communal festivities, I’ve always found it to be a mildly pleasant but unmeaningful experience. I seemed to be unable to find any sense of truthful bonding, just pretense and a dramatic effort by everyone that they were living out what it means to be “family.”

This insight, whether true gift or not, was given to me in 1959 when my father died just a few weeks before Christmas. At thirteen years of age, I was already established in the family circle as the quiet, reclusive child who said very little yet seemed to unsettle others with the way I wordlessly studied people and things around me. Each would try in their own individual way to find common ground with me but their attention span seemed short and their eyes and heart would rest instead upon the cousins and grandchildren who fawned for them, sang for them, danced for them, and who would give me a secret nod of superiority at the new game of “family” they had just won.

The death of my father, a pivotal authority figure in the family circle, left everyone at a loss. However, rather than address the angst swirling around us all, like the blue smoke hallucination that I saw as my father's spirit torn between wanting to stay and wanting to go to his final peace, we all, in our grief reverted to the cliché roles we'd been assigned or adopted on our own.

It was a relief for all of us and mostly for me. Viewed as transparent and unimportant to the clan, I had the freedom to watch the dynamics of how a family operates as a finely-honed mechanism of natural selection to protect itself from extinction. The dramas of falsehood that had originally offended me as untruthful suddenly took on new meaning and poignancy. It was just as much a matter of survival for me as it was for them. Playing the role of widowed fragile mother, bad boy brother, jocular uncle, snippy niece, grumpy grandmother, salacious aunt, and half-orphaned pensive daughter became so poignant to me that I could barely bare the intensity of watching it, swirling within it, and hearing my own silent soliloquy in counterpoint time to the practiced lines of others.

All roles in a family have their own psychological pathology if plumbed deeply enough. I've never been able to assess if this “wisdom” I gained at thirteen was a gift or a curse, a fantasy, a hallucination as a way to deal with grief; but nonetheless it was wholly mine and it has colored the remainder of my life, for better or worse.

It is a misplaced emotion to pity others who are “alone at Christmas.” By choice. I do not feel proud of my holiday solitude. It's simply a facet of my life. I am a better me by bowing to this need, embracing this need, and reveling in what it reveals to me as countless gifts from within to within which then are translated into outward gestures of love and compassion to other strangers.

My family seems to be strangers, animals, nature, and words that fly across the page of a book or journal as they follow the river of white space toward ultimate truth. It is the nature of words that they will never quite reach the “end” and that too is part of my choice to be alone. It’s not perfect and it won’t give me the ultimate answer but there is the sure knowledge that the very truth itself is a companion on the journey often disguised as a stranger, a good experience, a bad experience, whatever. If I am alone, I have the time and the quiet privacy to notice the clues, to appreciate the process, and to recognize the journey as a part of the destination.

We are all strangers. We are all family. Gather with me under the Grace of mistletoe as I wish all of you, my family, a very Merry Christmas.

Johannes Kelpius, A Mystic Amid William Penn's Holy Experiment

"For my country, I eyed the Lord, in obtaining it;

And more was I drawn inward to look to him;

And to owe it to his hand and power, than to any other way;

I have so obtained it, and desire to keep it;

That I may not be unworthy of his love;

But do that, which may answer his kind Providence;

And serve his truth and people;

That an example may be set up to the nations;

There may be room there, though not here,

For such an holy experiment."

William Penn

Over a decade ago I became fascinated with a little-known Pietist Mystic, Johannes Kelpius, who settled a band of intellectual monks in the wilderness surrounding Philadelphia in 1694.

I discovered mention of him during a road trip to Ephrata Cloister near Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The gigantic egoism of Ephrata’s Conrad Beisell left me cold but the frail, pale, “madness” of Kelpius led me down the path of exploring the mystical settlement of Colonial Pennsylvania amid William Penn’s Holy Experiment that continues to this day….both the Holy Experiment and my exploration of it.

I wanted to understand how such a young man at Kelpius barely in his twenties felt the world was coming to an end soon and he wanted to experience it as “The Woman of the Wilderness” in the brave new world of America.

I wanted to know what he was thinking in his heart of hearts when only a few years later he would die before his Millennialist dream came true. From the fragments of history that I have found, I believe he died in peace and with a greater understanding of his transcendental fevers that still leave their mark today upon American mystics of every stripe.

I feel very protective of his memory and legacy and chafe at the multitude who claim him for themselves from the Rosicrucians to modern Peitists and to every flavor of New Age babes who follow the ley lines of his life with their trembling dowsing rods.

I believe Johannes Kelpius would like to be left in peace with no marker at his cave and only the sound of the river and the bird calls to sing praises with him of their celebration of the union of all things with the architect of the cosmos.

Or painful Kelpius [13] from his hermit den
By Wissahickon, maddest of good men,
Dreamed o'er the Chiliast dreams of Petersen.

Deep in the woods, where the small river slid
Snake-like in shade, the Helmstadt Mystic hid,
Weird as a wizard, over arts forbid,

Reading the books of Daniel and of John,
And Behmen's Morning-Redness, through the Stone
Of Wisdom, vouchsafed to his eyes alone,

Whereby he read what man ne'er read before,
And saw the visions man shall see no more,
Till the great angel, striding sea and shore,

Shall bid all flesh await, on land or ships,
The warning trump of the Apocalypse,
Shattering the heavens before the dread eclipse.

from “The Pennsylvania Pilgrim” by John Greenleaf Whittier

“As early as 1700 there were four hermits living near Germantown -- John Seelig, Kelpius, Bony, and Conrad Mathias. They lived near Wissahiccon and the Ridge. Benjamin Lay lived in a cave near the York Road at Branchtown.
John Kelpius, the hermit, was a German of Sieburgen in Transylvania, of an eminent family (tradition says he was noble) and a student of Dr. John Fabritius at Helmstadt. He was also a correspondent of Maecken, chaplain to the Prince of Denmark in London. He came to this country in 1694 with John Seelig, Barnard Kuster (Coster), Daniel Falkener, and about forty-two others, being generally men of education and learning, to devote themselves, for piety's sake, to a solitary or single life; and receiving the appellation of the "Society of the Woman in the wilderness". They first arrived among the Germans at Germantown, where they shone awhile "as a peculiar light" but they settled chiefly "on the Ridge", then a wilderness. In 1708, Kelpius, who was regarded as their leader, died "in the midst of his days", (said to be 35) -- after his death the members began to fall in with the world around them, and some of them to break their avowed religious intentions by marrying. Thus the society lost it distinctive character and died away; but previous to their dispersion they were joined about the year 1704 by some others among whom was Conrad Mathias (the last of the Ridge hermits) a Switzer, and by Christopher Witt (sometimes called Dr. Witt of Germantown) a professor of medicine, and a "magus" or diviner.
After the death of Kelpius, the faith was continued in the person of John Seelig who had been his companion, and was also a scholar. Seelig lived many years after him as a hermit, and was remarkable for resisting the offers of the world, and for wearing a coarse garment like that of Kelpius. This Seelig records the death of his friend Kelpius in 1708, in a MS. Hymn Book of Kelpius', (set to music) which I have seen -- saying he died in his garden, and attended by all his children, (spiritual ones, and children whom he taught gratis) weeping as for the loss of a father. That Kelpius was a man of learning is tested by some of his writings; a very small-written book of one hundred pages, once in my possession. It contains his writings in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, German and English; and this last (which is very remarkable, he being a foreigner) is very free and pure. The journal of his voyage to this country, in sixteen pages, is all in Latin; some of his letters (of which there are several in German, and two in English) are in Latin; they are all on religious topics, and saving his peculiar religious opinions, reason very acutely and soberly. From venturing with the thousands of his day to give spiritual interpretations to Scripture, where it was not so intended, he fell upon a scheme of religion which drove him and other students from the Universities of Germany, and under the name of Pietists, &c., to seek for some immediate and strange revelations. He and his friends therefore expected the millennium year was close at hand -- so near that he told the first Alex. Mack (the first of the Germantown Tunkers) that he should not die till he saw it ! He believed also that "the woman in the wilderness" mentioned in the Revelations, was prefigurative of the great deliverance that was then soon to be displayed for the church of Christ. As she was "to come up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved," so the beloved in the wilderness, laid aside all other engagements (i.e. being hermits, and trimming their lamps and adorning themselves with holiness, that they may be prepared to meet the same with joy), Therefore they did well to observe the signs of the time, and every new phenomenon(whether moral or preternatural) of meteors, stars, or colours of the skies, if peradventure the harbinger may appear". He argued too, that there was a three-fold wilderness, like state of progression in spiritual holiness : to wit, "the barren, the fruitful and the wilderness state of the elect of God". In the last state, after which he was seeking, as a highest degree of holiness, he believed it very essential to attain it by dwelling in solitude or in the wilderness; therefore he argues Moses' holiness by being prepared forty years in the wilderness -- Christ's being tempted forty days in the wilderness as an epitome of the other -- John the Baptist coming from the wilderness, &c. He thought it thus proved that holy men might be thus qualified to come forth among men again, to convert whole cities, and to work signs and wonders. He was much visited by religious persons. Kelpius professed love and charity with all -- but desired to live without a name or sect. The name they obtained was given by others. There are two of Kelpius' MS Hymn books still extant in Germantown; one of his own composing, in German, is called elegant; they are curious too, because they are all translated into English poetry (line for line) by Dr. C. Witt, the diviner or magus. The titles of some of them may exhibit the mind of the author :
"Of the wilderness -- or Virgin-Cross love"
"The contentment of the God-loving soul"
"Of the power of the new virgin-body wherein the Lord revealeth his mysteries"
"A loving moan of the disconsolate soul"
"Upon `Rest' after he had been wearied with `Labour' in the wilderness" Although he looked for a qualification to go forth and convert towns and cities in the name of the Lord, it is manifest, that neither he nor his companions were enthusiastic enough to go into the world without such endowment. They often held religious meetings in their hermitage, with people who solicited to come to them for the purpose. Kelpius' hut or house stood on the hill where the widow Phoebe Riter now lives. Her log house has now stood more than forty years on the same cellar foundation which was his; it is on a steep descending grassy hill, well exposed to the sun for warmth in the winter, and has a spring of the hermit's making, half down the hill, shaded by a very stout cedar tree. After Kelpius' hut went down, the foxes used to burrow in his cellar; he called the place the "Burrow of Rocks, or Rocksburrow" -- now Roxborough.”

read more of the fascinating early Philadelphia history at: Area History: Watson's Annals, Vol II: Chapter 2 - Pennsylvania Inland - Part I: Philadelphia Co, PA

read more about Kelpius’ voyage to America in “Stories of Pennsylvania….”

A superb presentation, “Bacon’s “Secret Society”: The Ephrata Connection, A Slide-Show Tour of Esoteric History” put together by Linda S. Santucci that links the Ephrata Cloister to Kelpius

Joe Tyson, an even more serious Kelpius buff has written a succinct and intriguing biography of Kelpius and his band of “The Monks of the Ridge”

Skirting the Fringes of Copyright

Image via WikipediaI have a bulging folder of my favorite poems written by famous and not so famous poets. I have been wanting to add a periodic blog of these poems but I still haven’t figured out how to handle the copyright issues.

After finding yet another favorite poem today, this time William Meredith’s poem, “A Vision of Good Secrets,” the urge to post it was strong. Why not? After all, the author is dead and besides that I found it on someone else’s blog! Yet it still didn’t seem right.

So I did a little more research on copyright infringement on the internet and added those pages to yet another bulging folder to try and find a definitive answer. The issue to me is wondering how bloggers rationalize posting the creative work of others on their blog. I’m not pointing fingers as much as I’m curious about how blogging has stretched the limits of what used to be taken for granted as an unbreakable rule, an honor code punishable by heaps of shame and shunning if not by judicial process.

Rose DesRochers at “World Outside my Window” offers straightforward wisdom on the topic in her blog, “Copyright Infringement: Request Permission,” while Bobby Revell at “Revellian dot com” takes a more humorous (and completely ethical) approach in his blog, “How to Steal Blog Content: Ethically.”

However, neither of their thoughtful posts were on target with my dilemma: how can I post my favorite poems without spending eons tracking down permission to use them? I’m waiting for a reply from the Special Collections Librarian at Connecticut College where they host a website of William Meredith poetry. Perhaps they have some sage advice since they had to tackle it themselves a few years ago when posting a tribute to William Meredith.

Meanwhile, to pacify myself I’ll post two poems from two of my favorite mystical poets Emily Dickinson and Rainer Maria Rilke where copyright infringement isn’t an issue…at least I don’t think so…..oh great, now I have myself wondering…….

Hopefully I’ll have an answer soon and will be able to share the gems written by William Meredith with you.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Nearly every writer has at least heard of Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” if not own a copy of it. It’s a gem of a book, thin, yet rich with his love of writing and his compassion for others. However, his mystical poetry shares the searching of his spirit for union with the divine through sublime imagery that is timeless.

Image via Wikipedia

Falling Stars

Do you remember still the falling stars
that like swift horses through the heavens raced
and suddenly leaped across the hurdles
of our wishes--do you recall? And we
did make so many! For there were countless numbers
of stars: each time we looked above we were
astounded by the swiftness of their daring play,
while in our hearts we felt safe and secure
watching these brilliant bodies disintegrate,
knowing somehow we had survived their fall.

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson often gets dismissed as an eccentric agoraphobic poetess until you take a few minutes or hours or days to study the precision with which she articulates her world of ideas. Take a look yourself at her work as an audio or text file at Project Gutenberg.

You’ll know it – as you know ‘tis noon

By intuition, Mighty Things
Assert themselves – and not by terms –
“I”m Midnight” – need the Midnight say –
“I”m Sunrise” – Need the Majesty?
Omnipotence – had not a Tongue –
His lisp – is lightning – and the sun –
His Conversation– with Sea –
“How shall you know”?
Consult your eye!