Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

(Unknown translator)

Every day is a day that comes from a finite number given to each life form and then it ends. Each morning it arrives in a unique and different guise. It won't come again. If we are lucky, we can remember the days. Some of us have certain medical conditions and we can't remember. Some of us don't want to remember for they have days that are too painful to recall. A man or a woman who survives the German Nazi Concentration Camps would not want to see their days there in memories although they would come back unbidden in nightmares.

Children who were severely abused often grow up to be adults who develop amnesia so they can forget the abuse. Many of the adults molested and abused as children often imagine themselves as survivors of German Concentration Camps. It is a way of surviving the horrible memories. Even the good days that come in the morning light of freedom cannot block those memories and many survivors cannot continue years after their abuse.

Each day comes floods of echoes of past memories and new ones often bring the old ones tagging behind. That is why some of us visit therapists for help in understanding that, if we are lucky. Old soldiers wake up in sweat soaked beds trying to forget the glory and the tears of battlefields.
Even the short lived butterfly has memories if not the caterpillar days, the lives before. No one knows who will walk through the door for there is no lock and no key. All will enter eventually.

It is best to offer your visitors some tea or coffee and a comfortable chair no matter who or why they come. It is also best to listen to them and what they have to say. Breath in and breath out the pain, sorrow and joy. They will keep coming until you do anyhow.

Michael Anania

from Stops Along the Western Bank of the Missouri River: of the River Itself

By Michael Anania

This is my advice to foreigners:
call it simply - the river;
never say old muddy
or even Missouri,
and except when it is necessary
ignore the fact that it moves.
It is the river, a singular,
stationary figure of division.
Do not allow the pre-Socratic
to enter your mind except
when thinking of clear water trout
streams in north central Wyoming.
The river is a variety of land,
a kind of dark sea or great bay,'
sea of greater ocean.
At times I find it good discipline
to think of it as a tree
rooted in the delta,
a snake on its topmost western branch.
These hills are not containers;
they give no vantage but that
looking out is an act of transit.
We are not confused,
we do not lose our place.


I was born and raised in San Diego, California. Rivers were dry empty beds of rock and brush in which bridges were placed over them with signs announcing this river or that. There was one I remembered the most in Mission Valley near Old Town. The sign said "San Diego River" and it never, to the best of my knowledge, had water in it.

Not far from San Diego was Los Angeles and they had rivers too except they were paved and had signs too such as the "Los Angeles River". Chaparral was all over the hills and dry creek beds were the norm. Reading about the Missouri River in school as a kid was to learn the history of this country and the river seemed so unreal and so far away.

Then I went to Oregon to visit an aunt who live on the high bank of a river that had water in it. It was the Rogue River and it changed forever what I thought a river was like. It was real and it was so beautiful, full of rapids, fish, and clear sparkling water. The only water I ever saw in San Diego was the water in the bathtub and the sea.

Then I moved to Topeka, Kansas where my first son was born. There was a river Missouri River. It, too, was muddy. It was powerful and brown.

I used to take my children down to the Ozarks and to Arkansas so they could swim in clear water. Even the lakes in Kansas were brown so that if you didn't paint your toe nails with clear polish your nails would turn brown. I even followed the Missouri River once to see the kind of people who lived along its banks and took pictures. I was surprised at the variety of animal life and people. The poet is right. Everyone just called the river just The River.

The poet was born and raised in Nebraska and now lives and teaches in Chicago. I found a lot to explore in the Midwest but I never felt at home there. The lakes and streams are pretty much like Korean lakes and streams, muddy. Some people get frustrated in not being able see through the center of it and it was muddy. I did not like it. I wanted a river that looked like the Rogue River. No one swam in it like they did the Rogue River nor do I remember anyone fishing from it. Then we moved to Kansas City and I saw the to swim and enjoy themselves like they do in clear stream and lakes in other countries. They fish here and use nets for they are very serious about the fishing. The sea when I have seen it is muddy too.

I coming back to California next week. The poet said that people are not confused and know their sense of place by The River and that is what I found when I explored its banks so many years ago. It was what I felt when the river seemed so strange to me. Home is the Rogue River with its rainbow trout and salmon. It is the Sacramento River with its full banks of flowing water making its way to the Pacific ocean and trees and rice fields on its banks. Rivers do not confuse us even the dry ones without any water as it did when I was a kid. With rivers, we do not lose our place.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Day In Autumn

by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Mary Kinzie

After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

I think the reader of the above poem will think this is a poem about the season of autumn until the last stanza. Then it becomes apparent, at least to me, that we are looking at a metaphor. This transforms the entire poem about someone who has reached the autumn of his or her life. The reader might even suspect this poem is about the poet.

After living one's life, it is time to let the time pass and those who come behind you play in the pastures of life because your summers are over now. You can take the fruit of those memories and make them into a wine to enjoy.

In the twilight of one's years, if you are alone you will stay alone. Sometimes at night, you wake up because like most of us when we get older we have trouble sleeping at night. When you do,you read a little, maybe draft long letters and wonder along the city's avenues looking at the people and seeing the wild leaves loosen knowing that someday your time will be over.

I know that memories are more important now to me as I am in the Autumn of my years although I am not looking at death but this poet did not live past middle age. I shift through these memories seeing meaning and connections that I did not see before and learning things from experiences that I had not thought about before. I don't see it as a sad exercise although if you had asked me whether I would enjoy this years ago I would have recoiled in horror. Now, I enjoy it.

I think if I could classify writers according to seasons, I would be an autumn writer which would always been alright with me as it was my favorite season. I like stories and novels where are a past and a mystery that started years before. I like to think of myself as Sherlock Holmes investigating why a character is acting the way they do. And come up with hints, evidence and finally the real reason they do what they do.

When I was a kid, I was famished for some experience, adventure. Oh, I got some alright. I am still getting some which is a surprise. In my childhood, I wanted to run down into the valley below where I lived and see what the houses, churches, buildings were really like. I wanted to travel and see what was on the other side of the ocean, lakes continents. If I could have done it, I would like to have traveled to other worlds. I did it in books.

Autumn was the season I have been waiting for all of my life. I made it and darn if I am going to be pessimistic about it. So what if I have a few age spots on my hands. So what if society and culture views me as less valuable as a senior citizen than when I was young and alluring. I like it this way better. I think Rainer Maria Rilke would have liked it too if he only lived long enough to enjoy it.

Li Po

The Solitude of Night
By Li Po
Translated by Shigeyoshi Obata

It was at a wine party-
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled by lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river - alone in the moonlight


I think we have all been at wine parties such as the one outlined above. It starts off with all of us toasting each other, laughing and feeling grand about the world and the fact that we are together. Then when the alcohol seeps into our bloodstream and dulls our senses enough we all fall into a slumber except for one or two and we wake in the midst of people but very much alone. The alcohol is still in the system but no one else is awake. The birds are silent. The singing that would go on forever has stopped. The usual condition of all of us is to be alone.

Night time is a hard time for many of us because that is when it becomes apparent that we as human beings exists as individuals, not in groups. We are born alone and we die alone. We can drink alcohol, take drugs and do all sorts of things to remove that knowledge from the mind and heart but it is only temporary. The oneness returns as it always does. There is a choice. You can relish the solitude as many learn to do or you can run away to another wine party.

Kobayashi Issa

(all the time I pray to Buddha)
By Kobayashi Issa
Translated by Robert Hass

All the time I pray to Buddha
I keep on
Killing mosquitoes.

I don't understand this poem fully but I can understand the irony that it seems to have. Buddhists as a rule do not pray. They meditate which is very different from praying. I would have liked to have seen other translations of this poem. It should read:

All the time I meditate (on the Buddha?)
I keep on
Killing mosquitoes.

Maybe Issa meant to use 'pray'. Buddha never thought of himself as a god and said many times that he was not a god but awake. Killing or destroying life is something that Buddhists try not to do, but I will kill a mosquito if it is in my room although I normally don't as they don't bother me very much. This sounds odd which is OK since my name is not on this blog, but there was this fly that was in my room for about a week. I tried not to kill it and it did bother me. Finally, it just disappeared. I missed it a little and never did find its "body". I was sick with the flu and it was my only visitor. It reminded me of the moth that was in the cockpit of Charles Lindbergh when he crossed the Atlantic Ocean.

Issa maybe telling us that we can be zen-like and meditate in our lotus position but mosquitoes still bother us and we all reach up and slap them when they bite. There are stories of masters who would meditate and nothing would disturb them. Gandhi was in deep meditation while on a train that was derailed and he never woke up until people shook him awake. This was an accident that killed many people. Most of us, however, are not holy men or women with deep powers of concentration and we tend to notice the discomforts of life.

Issa was a Japanese poet also known as Kobayashi Yataro and Kobayashi and took the pen name of Issa which means roughly a "cup of tea". He lived from 1763 to 1828.

D.H. Lawrence

PEOPLE
By D. H. Lawrence

The great gold apples of night
Hang from the street's long bough
Dripping their light
On the faces that drift and blow
Down the night-time, out of sight
In the wind's sad sough.

The ripeness of these apples of night
Distilling over me
Makes sickening the white
Ghost-flux by faces that hie
Them endlessly, endlessly by
Without meaning or reason why
They ever should be.

I have recorded this poem before on one my blogs, but I felt like it this evening as I came home from a evening function. I looked at the street lights in Daejeon, Korea and the people walking beneath the city lights and the glow from all of the shops and I was reminded of this poem first without realizing it and then when I found it again I knew. Of course, D. H. Lawrence and his gold apples of the night.

It is Sunday evening and it reminded me of the nights of my youth when I walked down street lanes in Chula Vista and watched the sun sink over the Pacific Ocean and the street lights would suddenly come on. I was not yet 13 years old. This was before I had read Lawrence and even before I knew he had existed. I can remember those lights as I walked and the glow from the television sets through the windows of suburban houses lying head to toe and the sounds of canned laughter of the "I love Lucy " and "Jackie Gleason" shows. I was alone as I walked. My father was drinking and on a rampage. It was best to walk in the evening. I was also feeling guilt for leaving my mother at the mercy of my father's anger.

I am also reminded of some Edward Hopper paintings and the lonely people sitting in cafes having cups of coffee, those nameless faces that I saw in my mind's eye in Chula Vista and the actual nameless faces I did see this evening except in Korea no one is alone like they are in the US. Where are all of the lonely people here? In their rooms? Sitting in places filled with family?No one is allowed to be alone. I knew a lady who was mentally ill here and she was always surrounded by her family although she was confused most of the time. She was swept up and carried along because in Korea everyone exists as a unit of people. Even if a family was too busy for their children, there are plenty of other family members who would take them in. No one would be walking the streets like I did growing up because the father was also the tyrant of the family or at least that is the theory.

I walked underneath those metal trees with their fruit of glass shinning in the night as the stars appeared. I watched the sun vanish and the moon glide across the sky. When you are alone, you learn to depend on yourself as your best friend and loneliness is not something to fear but to be cherished. Not a bad thing in itself. Lawrence understood this too.

William Carlos Williams

Blizzard
By WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

Snow:
years of anger following
hours that float idly down -
the blizzard
drifts its weight
deeper and deeper for three days
or sixty years, eh? Then
the sun! a clutter of
yellow and blue flakes -
Hairy looking trees stand out
in long alleys
over a wild solitude.
The man turns and there -
his solitary track stretched out
upon the world.

I have always felt that Williams is most zen of all of the poets. His poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow" is my favorite poem. In this poem, the poet shows the uselessness of anger. It really reflects what I have been feeling of late. I have been living my life feeling so much anger at people, events, situations that have occurred in my life. Although I am not at the end of my life as the person in this poem, the man in the poem finds that with all of his anger it has served nothing and that it served to keep him alone. I have found this to be so true.

I would think the poet's experiences as a working doctor really helped him see the futility of anger.( The above picture is one of my favorite of him on his house calls with one of his sons.) I really think he cared a great deal about his patients and about life and poetry. He worked at writing poems in between seeing patients and often used prescription pads to write his poems. He also wrote novels, short stories, critical essays and much more.

Carl Sandburg

Choose
By CARL SANDBURG

The single fist and ready,
Or the open hand held out waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

I am an American so November means a month of in which Thanksgiving Day appears, but I am not always full of gratitude. Sometimes I am angry. The last election in the United States shows that I am not the only person angry at the way things are right now. I suspect there will be many angry people carving the Thanksgiving Day turkey if they are lucky enough to have one.

The other day I was looking at some old journals that I kept when I worked at the welfare office in a Midwestern city years ago. I thought it was cute that I put a sign up on my desk that read, "It's hard to soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys." Good heavens, what a hostile thing to put on my desk. There was a lot of hostility on that job site and I certainly did not improve matters.

My fist has been closed for most of my life and I have been in denial of it. I choose that way and wondered why people reacted to me in anger. Golly gee. As Mark Twain said: "Denial is not a river in Egypt." I was in denial for most of my life. People have been shrinking back from me and my anger for some time and I have been getting more angrier as they did. I reasoned they had no reason to. Yeah,right.

I have been going to church of late. I am not a Christian but they speak English and I am in a country that I have few people I can talk to. There is no danger that I will convert, but I have been listening to the message of the Bible. One of them is that God is love and that if you know God you must know love. As a Buddhist, I thought I felt my faith was superior to theirs. I was wrong. Love is important to both religions. I have been dealing too long with the closed fist. Its time I opened my hand and choose for Sandburg was right. We meet by one or the other. I am tired of being angry.

Thank you, Mr. Sandburg.

Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
By Emily Dickinson

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest- in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I've heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet -never- in Extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.



I was in a church meeting and the speaker was talking about metaphor. He said it was a figure of speech or phrase that is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denotes in order to imply a resemblance such as He is the lamb of God.

I still have trouble distinguishing metaphor from simile because both are figures of speech but the simile is comparing two essentially unlike things but is often introduced in a phrase such as like or as such as "how like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life."

The above poem uses the metaphor in which hope is compared to a bird and its song. It is a delightful poem as all poems by Dickinson are. In this case hope sits in our soul and sings its song without words and never ceases even in the strongest storms that humans experience and even shame won't stop hope's song. It keeps us warm in the coldest of times and in the worst of places and it never asks for a sacrifice of anyone.

There has been times in my life in which things looked pretty bleak. I would look around and think there was no one in my corner and I was very alone. Some people have their faith in religion and some in other things. I don't think it matters what it is but I have found great amount of strength in hope that things will change and they do. My faith relies on the inner spiritual guidance of my relationship with the Cosmos and the Bodhidharma. Like hope, my faith asks nothing from me.

Whatever one's faith or belief structure is, hope is a necessary ingredient. I don't believe that one faith is right while another is wrong. All pathways lead to Enlightenment. This poem is part of the process.

Sunflower by Andre Breton

SUNFLOWER
by Andre Breton (1896-1966)
translated by Mark Polizzolti

The traveler who crossed Les Halles(1.) at summer's end'
Walked on tiptoe
Despair rolled it's great handsome lilies across the sky
And in her handbag was my dream that flask of salts
That only God's godmother had breathed
Torpors unfurled like mist
At the Chien qui Fume(2.)
Where pro and con had just entered
They could hardly see the young woman and then only at an angle
Was I dealing with the ambassadress of saltpeter(3.)
Or with the white curve on black background we call thought
The Innocents' Ball(4.) was in full swing
The Chinese lanterns slowly caught fire in chestnut trees
The shadowless lady knelt on the Pont-au-Change(5.)
on Rue Git-le-Coeur(6.) the stamps had changed
The night's promises had been kept at last
The carrier pigeons and emergency kisses
Merged with the beautiful stranger's breasts
Jutting beneath the crepe of perfect meanings
A farm prospered in the heart of Paris
And its windows looked out on the Milky Way
But no one lived there yet because of the guests
Guests who are known to be more faithful than ghosts
Some like that woman appear to be swimming
And a bit of their substance becomes part of love
She internalizes them
I am the plaything of no sensory power
And yet the cricket who sang in hair of ash
One evening near the statue of Etienne Marcel
Threw me a knowing glance
Andre Breton it said pass.

Notes:
(1.)Les Halles was and is an area of Paris, France that is located in the 1er arrondissemont just south of the fashionable rue Montorgueil. It is name for the large central wholesale market place which was demolished in 1971 and this was no doubt the Les Halles of this poem. It was the traditional central market of Paris and was known as the "belly of Paris".

(2.) Chien qui Fume is a restaurant in Paris and it was founded in 1740. Its name translates to "Dog Smokes" and its web site has a dog with a smoking tobacco pipe in its mouth. It is considered a typical restaurant in Les Halles at the time.

(3.)Saltpeter: potassium nitrate used in the manufacture of gunpowder and fireworks.

(4.)Innocents Ball may be connected to the "Fountain of Nymphs" created by Jean Goujon on the occasion of the French King Henry II's entry into Paris in 1549. It might have been done with collaboration with Pierre Lescot. It is also called the Fountain of the Innocents. This information is from the book, "Mad Love" by the poet. He mentions the alchemist Nicholas Flemel who is famous for the "philosopher's stone" and who lived with his wife another alchemist. Flemel is also tied to this fountain or the area as well.

The Innocents Ball, according to the poet in his book "Mad Love" associates this ball to the Saint-Jacques Tower which stands today.

(5.) Pont au Change is a bridge over the Seine River in Paris, France.

(6.) Rue Git-le Coeur: a narrow medieval lane running down to the Sein from the rue St. Andre des Arts to the quai Augustine in the oldest part of the Latin Quarter. In the 13th century, the street was called rue de Gilles-le-Quez or Guy-le-Preux. Over the centuries this name transformed into Git-le-Coeur, which some claim is a pun on the street name made in the early 17th century by Henri IV, the first Bourbon King of France, whose mistress lived on the street: "Ici git mon coeur". Another story is found in "The Nichol's Guide To Paris". This claims that the street name commemorates the murder of Elienne Marcel, Provost of the Merchants and one of the fathers of Paris on July 31, 1358 by the Mercenary Jean Maillart in the pay of the Dauphin Charles. The word, 'git', means 'lies' as on a tombstone and the name Marcel does appear in this poem.


I like to chose a theme of the day and put it on my Google page and even on my Foxfire page and wall paper and try to coordinate them as much as possible. Somedays it works very well. Today, it is sunflowers. They remind me of the years I spent in Kansas where they grow abundantly and very beautifully. I found this poem by Andre Breton. I enjoyed looking up some of the things in the poem that I did not understand.

William Shakespeare

Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun
By William Shakespeare

Guiderius. Feare no more the heate o' th' Sun,
Nor the furious Winter rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast don,
Home are gon,and tane thy wages.
Golden Lads and Girles all must,
As Chimney-Sweepers come to dust.

Arviragus. Feare no more the frowne o' th' Great
Thou art past the tirants stroake,
Care no more to cloath and eate,
To thee the Reede is as the Oake:
The Scepter, Learning, Physicke must,
All follow this and come to dust.

Guiderius. Feare no more the Lightning flash.

Arbiragus. Nor th all-dreaded Thunderd thunderstone

Guiderius. Feare not Slander, Censure rash.

Arbiragus. Thou has finish'd Joy and more.

Both. All Louers youg all Louers must,
Consigne to this and come to dust.

Guiderius. No exorcisor harme thee,

Arberagus. No no witch-craft charme thee.

Guiderius. Ghost vnlaid forbeare thee.

Arberagus. Nothing ill come neere thee.

Both. Quiet consumation haue,
And renowned be the graue.

It is hot, darn hot here in Korea, but it takes William Shakespeare to put it all into perspective. Guiderius was a legendary British king who was slain on the battlefield by the invading Romans. His brother, Arberagus, took over as king during the battle. Guiderius after death did not have to worry about the heat of the sun or anything else.

I remember putting the ashes of my mother into the Pacific Ocean at Crescent City, California and it occurred to me that her biggest concern at the time of her death was her knees and it was her insistence of an operation to correct them that caused her death. Then, as I put her ashes into the receding waves, I thought she did not have to worry about her knees again. It seemed like supreme irony, one that I did not appreciate.

The other day, I went to Home Plus to get out of the heat. Unfortunately, many other people did the same. It was wall to wall people doing the same thing I was. The small restaurants in the store were full. The tables were full of people as they sat there with their families trying so hard to stay cool for the store was decent although just barely.

One of the things you have to say about the sales people in Korea is that are uncommonly kind and friendly even under the most trying of circumstances. There is never a shortage of staff to help the customers which is a very nice feature of Korean life. Unfortunately, few Koreans can speak English, but why should they since this is their country. The point is the store was full of people as we all tried to escape the heat and have the cool drink and enjoy each other or in my case read and write as I tried to stay cool. The sales people tried so hard to understand what I was trying to order even when a friend of mine got short with them when she could not get milk for her coffee. Like me, she did not speak Korean. For some reason, it is very hard to get milk for coffee here. I drink coffee at home for that reason.

Not too many years ago, I used to have a job in the States that involved working for the state of California. I liked the work since it involved helping people but the particular work site was made dysfunctional by an out of control manager. Before the state finally made him retire, he made things very difficult for the employees and for the people who came in for services. The job had a great retirement plan and I was getting up there in years so I was not going to quit. The union was doing all that it could. It took a trip to a nearby cemetery that I took for exercise one day to put it all in perspective as Shakespeare did for me now. I looked at all of the markers with all of the names with dates of births and deaths and I realized that I had no idea what their problems were at the time of their deaths. Being an older cemetery, no one knew since many of them have been dead for over 100 years. What I thought was earth shockingly important really wasn't.

I watched the Rachel Maddow Show the other day as the US troops involved in combat rolled out of Iraq and into Kuwait. Her program is one of the ones I can watch on the Internet. She was sitting in the heat and describing how hot it was and the fact that getting electricity for even a fan was very difficult if not impossible for most people of Iraq. Dr. Maddow was broadcasting from a site that was not the one MSNBC wanted because the one they wanted had rocket attacks there just hours before. She had no make-up and the viewer could tell she was sweating in the heat. This is a country where women have to keep covered up. The heat can go up to 125 degrees F. Then there is the danger of being blown up. Even if one's husband can't get a job, a woman still has to work all of the time and dress in bundles of clothes.

It is true that as hot as it is here in Korea, it is hotter in other places and someday it won't matter at all as it does not matter to Shakespeare whether or not there is global warming in England. He is dust as "Chimney -Sweepers come to dust." I went to church yesterday and the sermon talked about living forever. Well, I am not there now. The poets remind us of where we are now even if they have gone on, their words still live on the page. For now, I will sweat the heat because it is better than being cool in the grave.

"The Pleasure of The Dance"

About ten years ago, I had a dream that was so real that it stayed with me since then. I was driving in my car and going on some city streets and I noticed that I was going down the same streets over and over again. I noticed it because the same houses and churches were appearing. Since there were no other cars, I stopped in front of this church. I walked to it and its door was on the second story. I walked up the steps. Just as I opened the door I saw someone standing there who seemed very attractive and interesting. I was standing in the loft of a choir. He came up to me and started to teach me to dance. It was wonderful.

I was in a difficult time in my life then. I started to see a therapist in order to deal with a bad work site. Being a good Freudian psychologist, she interpreted my dream that I was looking for someone to have a relationship with. I knew she was wrong. I did not know the meaning of that dream but it wasn't that. I soon stopped seeing her and solved the problems on the work site. I did not find a meaningful relationship although I did make some friends. The meaning still escaped me, but I knew it was important.

Then something changed in my life this year. I had retired and felt lost. All of my life, I had looked forward to retirement but had not planned beyond that. Now that retirement was here, I was watching my life disappearing and I had no idea what I needed to do about it. Then I came to work as a visiting professor at a national university in Korea. What changed in my life was discovering the meaning of that dream and my suspicion that it was important was correct.

Being in Korea meant not being able to read what I wanted to. Getting books in English is very difficult. There is also the space problem. I live in a very small studio apartment and have to make due with few possessions. I found a book in the English library of the university where I teach. It was "The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge" by Rainer Maria Rilke. This is the only novel of a great poet and it includes his poetic vision and his experiences in Paris and so much more. The prose flows and is rich with the details, stories as well as the fears and joys of Rilke. It is a remarkable book.

Then in rapid succession, I read W. Somerset Maugham's novel, "The Moon and Sixpence". I had read this book as a teenager and then forgot it. It is about Charles Strickland who left his dull, bourgeois life and devoted the rest of his short life to painting. It was supposedly inspired by the life of Paul Gauguin.

One might question what these two books have to do with my dream and dancing. A lot really. When I was in the throes of that miserable situation at my government job, I was trying to survive. I concentrated on breathing, walking by placing one foot in front of the other. I had forgot the pleasures of the poetic dance.

Coming to Korea has given this back to me because I no longer am distracted by television and other things and I know that there is no chance whatsoever of running into the people I worked with on my last work site. I am in a country where I can't speak the language and I have to pay attention to the few books I can find and most importantly, write. My writer's block is totally gone.

The poet, Billy Collins, in his essay "Poetry, Pleasure, and the Hedonist Reader" calls poetry the pleasure of the dance. We circle and walk around a poem looking for a way in and when we do, it becomes the pleasure of the dance as we read it. It becomes the music that lets us slow down the pace of our thoughts so we can enjoy the rhythm. We join together as lovers entwined as we dance "somewhere else" and enjoy the sensations we would never have felt without the poem.

The novel, the painting takes each of us to unknown places and enriches our lives in ways we did not think possible before. The sculpture in an art gallery or one of the temporary sculptures that are done in the park using people or a Buddhist Tibetan sand painting are just a few examples of this artistic vision.

This was what I had forgot but remembered now. The artistic music that I used to dance with so many years ago had been forgotten. It drove Rilke to write his novel so he could understand his fears of death and loneliness. It drove Strickland to abandon his middle class life and family so he could paint.

Introduction to Poetry
By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press and ear against its hive

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to water-ski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Poetry along with other forms of artistic expression gives us pleasures. It is light, feathery and gets our feet to move so we can enjoy the dance of life. Too often, we are tied to a chair and tortured when instead we need to skate across the surface of a poem and just enjoy it or in my case to dance and feel our selves unite so we can soar into the heavens.

Rainer Maria Rilke

A Walk

By Rainer Maria Rilke 1875-1926
Translated by Robert Bly

My eyes already touch the sunny hill
going far ahead of the road I have began.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and changes us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which hardly sensing it,
we already are: a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.


One of the realities of the country that I am in, is the amount of walking that everyone does including me. I walk to work and then back home five days a week. I walk to the grocery stores and to anyplace I want to go. I take the bus but walk once I get off a bus stop. When I begin my walk, I walk a one lane road along a iron fence that has climbing roses when in bloom. I also walk along a golf course with tall bamboo and trees on one side and gardens that a corporation cultivates on the other side. People are often on their hands and knees weeding the gardens and I have seen elderly men with small scissors cutting excess grass. Such is the life here in Korea.

I am reading the only novel," The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge", that Rilke ever wrote. I am half way through this haunting book and am enjoying it very much. I thought I would look at his biography and his poetry. I found this poem and thought about the walking that I do everyday.

The protagonist in Rilke novel walks around Paris with a hate/love affection. I hate to walk to work, too, as the days are full of humidity and often it rains. The umbrella can protect one, but there nothing one can do to protect against humidity. Yet the university where I teach is nestled in sharp but beautiful mountain peaks that are close to the campus. Often the fog or clouds hug the summits in such a way that it takes my breath away.

There are interesting people who toil the gardens of the university and one of them last week was a Buddhist monk. During the last election, there were lots of people handing out literature but of course they ignored me. That is the first time I did not worry about what I was going to do with stuff handed to me as there is no trash cans nearby. There were a labor demonstration with signs and everything but since the signs were in Korean I had no idea what the issue was. I asked one person but he did not speak English. There are people from Christian organizations handing out religious tracks but again they ignore me as the tracks are in Korean.

Often people come up to me and say hello. Sometimes I know them and sometimes I do not. Most students do not have cars and are walking as I am. Cars are not charged parking fees but they are parked everywhere including the crosswalks. Cars never stop for pedestrians in crosswalks which makes one wonder why they are painted in the first place. Buses never do either. They also never stop for people who are only a few feet away. You are either at the door getting in or you catch the next bus.

Then there is the road of life. Mine lies in Korea at the moment. I have learned to look only a few feet and not think too much about the destination. Who knows how long I will be here. In the meantime, I am finally enjoying myself here. I used to think I had people against my staying here as the poem says: "a gesture waves us on answering our own wave...but what we feel is the wind in our faces." Indeed, what I am feeling is karma in my face or just plain life happening as it does everywhere else.

Our destination does change us even if we do not reach it. I don't know where I am going or when I will reach it, but my eyes already touch the sunny hills.

Walt Whitman

No. 12 of Song of the Road
By Walt Whitman 1819-1892

Allons! After the great Companions and to belong to them!
They too are on the road-they are the swift and majestic man-they are the greatest woman,
Enjoyers of calms of seas and storms of seas,
Sailors of many a ship, walkers of many a mile of land,
Habitues of many distant countries, habitues of far-distant dwellings,

Trusters of men and women: observers of cities; solitary toilers,
Pausers and contemplators of tufts: blossoms, shells of the shores,
Dancers at weddings-dances, kissers of brides, tender helpers of children, bearers of children,
Soldiers of revolts, standers by gaping graves, lowerers-down of coffins,

Journeyers over consecutive seasons over the years, the curious years each emerging from that which preceded it,
Journeyers as with companions, namely their own diverse phases,
Forth-steppers from the latent unrealized baby-days,
Journeyers gayly with their own youth, journeyers with their bearded and well-grain'd manhood,
Journeyers with their womanhood, ample unsurpass'd content,
Journeyers with their own sublime old age of manhood or womanhood,
Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe,
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death.

Sometimes, I lose the magic of this life. I feel the gathering of the years as now and the ageism type of prejudice that comes with my job and life and I look out on the road that I am traveling and feel depressed. I walk to work everyday and have never missed one class. I get my assignments and the things I need to do on time; but I can't escape from the realization that I am viewed as a senior citizen. In other words, I am an old lady. I look in the mirror and wonder who took my youth away, who stole my identity as a young woman? I look in the faces and eyes of the people I work for and they, too, see just one more old lady.

Then I read Walt Whitman especially his "Song of Myself" and I feel again the magic. I am one of the journeyers with my own sublime old age of womanhood walking the long road of life. Whitman had discovered the power of the universe and let it filter through him and into his poetry. I, too, have the calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe flowing free as I walk. I had forgotten this.

Death is one of those things that all seniors have to walk with. We can't avoid it, but most of us realize that Death becomes a friend in our later years. Many people in the last days long for the presence of it. According to Whitman, death can help enjoy the freedom that we have when we live our lives. We could never have done that when we were younger. I am not ready to make that final exit right now, but it is nice to enjoy a talk or two with my neighbor who is never very far.

I remember all too well when I was a dancer at weddings, tender helpers of children and bearers of children. Now, I am a grandmother of children. I have also seen too many gaping graves and too many coffins lowered of soldiers before their time. I can remember my past memories and still enjoy the stars and seas, mountains and streams of a world still very much alive as I am for now. I am content now to remember the joys that Whitman gives me in his poetry and grateful that he did. Reading him, you can still hear him from where ever he is still walking his road and telling us all what a wonderful world we live in. That is a very rare talent.

Sir Phillip Sidney

Sonnet 102: Wher Be Those Roses Gone

By Sir Phillip Sidney 1554-1586

Where be those rose gone, which sweeten'd so our eyes?
Where those red cheeks, where oft with fair increase did frame
The height of honor in the kindly badge of shame?
Who hath the crimson weeds stol'n from my morning skies?

How did the color fade of those vermillion dyes
Which Nature self did make, and self engrain'd the same?
I would know by what right this palenese overcame
That hue, whose force my heart still unto thraldom ties.

Galen's adoptive sons who by a beaten way
Their judgements harkney on the fault of sickness lay,
But feeling proof makes me say theymistake it furre.

it is but Love, which makes his paper perfect while
to write therein more fresh the story of delight
while Beauty's reddest ink Venus for him doth stir.


Astrophel and Stella XXXIX

By Sir Philip Sidney

Come Sleep! O Sleep, the certain knot of peace,
The baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe,
The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release,
Th' indifferent judge between the high and low.
With shield of proof shield me doth the prease
Of these fierce darts despair at me doth throw:
O make in me these civil wars to cease;
I will good tribute pay, if thou do so.
Take thou of me smooth pillows, sweetest bed,
A chamber deaf to noise and blind to light,
A rosy garland and a weary head:
And if these things, as being thine by right,
Move not thy heavy grace, thou shalt in me,
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see.

Sidney was a wonderful poet, but because he lived so long ago under the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in England many people don't read him. That is a shame because many of his poems have echoes that have found themselves in our language today. He lived only into his 30's but left a rich legacy of writings and poetry.

Anyone who has ever had trouble sleeping can understand his second poem only too well. In a sense, it speaks of sleep as the "baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release." It can also speak of death in the same voice. Indeed, it is the poor man's wealth as the ability to sleep deeply and well is not dependent on wealth and position so that the gift of sleep belongs to no one. I suspect that the man or woman who works hard in the fields come home and sleeps very well at night while the more wealthier man who works very little has more trouble achieving that restful time.

All of Sidney's poetry and writings are on the Internet free for all as it is in the public domain. It was not hard to find the two poems I wanted to find. I was thinking of roses as I was working on a story that had roses in it. I really recommend Sidney to all people who read poetry as a wonderful exercise in beauty and achievement. It is also free to download and easy to find.

Basho

By Basho
Translated by Sam Hamill

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers'
imperial dreams.

From "The Essential Basho" Shambala: 1999

Today I was on Route 104 returning home and the bus went by the bus stop for the National Cemetery and in the covered bus stop was a woman with a baby in her lap. The woman's face at first was very impassive as she sat there alone and then her face collapsed into tears and she hugged her ten month child.

I thought about the poem above written by Basho so many years ago and wondered if the young woman was one of the ones whose husband had been buried in the National Cemetery recently because of the sinking of the ship a few months ago by North Korea.

That baby will never know his father and the young woman will raise him without his father because some one ordered a topedo to plow into a ship carrying him. All men must serve in the military when reaching the age of 18 years in Korea. It is the law and they all do it. The sailors on that ship had no choice but to serve their country.

I just wish those responsible would have seen the face on that woman as I did this afternoon. It was heartbreaking.

Anna Akhmatova

In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
By Anna Akhmatova

Translated by Stephen Edgar

We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.

The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring
Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.
And so I covered up my face, imploring
God to destroy me before battle fell.

And from my memory the shadows vanished
Of songs and passions-burdens I'd not need.
The Almighty bade it be-with all else banished-
A book of portents terrible to read.

Anna Akhmatova is the pen name of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko and was born in Odessa in 1889. Her birthday was yesterday, June 23rd. She died in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) on March 5, 1966. She is considered one of the greatest 20th Century Russian poets.

It is hard for me to visualize this poet's experiences during the invasion of her country by Germany and during the awful years of Joseph Stalin for I was born and lived in a country most of my life that never knew war first hand as she did. I only heard about those years from other people and from books. She had refused to emigrate from her country to the West when others left. She was considered an enemy of the State by Stalin. Many people including herself suffered greatly and her husband, who she divorced, was later executed. Her son was jailed many times.

About three weeks ago, I attended a festival in Seoul in which there were pictures of the Korean War in the 1950's and the occupation of Korea by Japan earlier. People filed past the devastating pictures silently and it had to be hard for them as it affected relatives, fellow Koreans and some of those pictures were horrible. Korea is a country that knows war and continues to be aware of the threat of war especially by irresponsible people in leadership roles.

I can't see how anyone can voluntarily bring war to anyone especially their own people. Reading Akhmatova's poetry especially the above poem brings this incredibility to my mind even more. It is as if some people operate without hearts, without feelings, without a conscience, without love. It happens,as we all know, and especially the people here in this country can wage war without considering the real price of war. I wish it weren't so; but it is. It is up to such poets as Akhmatova to bring the real price of war into a language that at least some of us can understand. Sometimes, that is all that can be done.

(Sources: Wikipedia and Poetry Foundation)

Queen Elizabeth I

On Monsieur's Departure
By Queen Elizabeth I

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet are not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breasts,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Many people forget that before Elizabeth(1533-1603) became queen, she spent time in the Tower of London as a prisoner. There were times that many wanted her to be executed so she could not achieve the crown. She learned strength in those dark days. She also knew that her father, King Henry the 8th executed her mother so he could get a new queen. Court politics could be deadly. Anne Boleyn could have saved her head if she would have agreed to take her daughter, Elizabeth out of the line of succession and declare her a bastard.

During her long life, Elizabeth pretended she would marry if she could find someone to marry. I don't think she ever had the intention of doing that. She would lose the power she had and end up back as someone's property to do as they wished as was done to her mother. She learned to be very careful and kept her own counsel. She could not trust anyone. If she loved, she had to do it in secret and she could not be alone with her amour. She slept with her ladies in waiting. She had to be above all gossip. That still did not keep the gossip from linking her with different men in her life, but nothing could be proved.

In this poem, she tells of her love but never says who. That would give too much power to someone. She had to sign the death warrant of her cousin Mary Queen of Scots and yet she agreed to the succession of Mary's son years later as her heir after her own death. People were happy that they would finally have a man as king but he was not as good as a king as Queen Elizabeth was as a ruler.

I think this poem shows that Elizabeth was a talented poet. England was well served by her rule as queen and few if any rulers performed their job as well as she did. Elizabeth is the author of speeches and letters as well as poems and they were crafted with great rhetorical skill and, in some cases, revised for publication. She was highly skilled in oration and the epistle and they were the basis in which she communicated her power. She had to walk the tightrobe of being the mother of her people, womanly and yet the master and in power without seemingly masculine. Many people felt she did so extremely well.

Overall, Queen Elizabeth was a signicant author in her own right as well as a major influence of the flowering of a great literary age known as the Elizabethan Age. It would be a mistake to downplay her influence during this important time.

Robinson Jeffers

The Beauty of Things

By Robinson Jeffers


To feel and speak the astonishing beauty of things-earth, stone and water,
Beast, man and woman, sun and moon and stars-
The blood-shot beauty of human nature, its thoughts, frenzies and passions,
And unhuman nature its towering reality-
For man's half dream; man, you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are content-to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
The rest's diversion: those holy or noble sentiments, the intricate ideas,
The love, lust, longing: reasons, but not the reason.




I am not going to replay the life of this remarkable man and poet who lived from 1887 to 1962 although if the reader is not acquainted with this man's work and life he or she should visit some of the web sites that contain his life story and of course read his other poems as I did. I chose the above poem only because I love it and it speaks of my own love of nature.

I have been to Carmel, California where the author spent his last years. I envied his time there for when I was there it was very commercial and full of tourists. Still, any area along the Big Sur is still very lovely. As a child I used to travel up and down the spine of California from San Diego to Oregon to visit an aunt. I like that part of California too although many people do not. I also like taking the train which travels along the coast more which is also stunning.

Korea is pleasing to the eye too. Much of the countryside is empty of people for the most part although the trees are young as I have mentioned. Korea has been ravaged through the centuries by war both from without and within. The mountains are sharp and angular but no ice caps as there are in California at least none that I have seen. I think I miss Mt. Shasta as far as nature is concerned.

I like Daejeon for its closeness to the mountains and for me mountains mean nature although I have loved the deserts of California and the Southwestern United States for that very reason. The mountains, rocks, streams will all be here long after I am gone. Korea is an example of the fragileness of nature in that the trees had to be planted again by humans after humans burned them all down in a war against each other. Yet, it is the remarkableness of human beings that people from all walks of life went out during their spare time to do it and it was hard work.

"Beauty, is the sole business of poetry."

It is poets like Robinson Jeffers and Walt Whitman that can see the beauty in everything around them and then translate it all into words so we as readers and listeners can understand what we have and appreciate it. Yesterday, my purse got stolen from and it was really nothing very valuable but it was ugly in that the thief called me back and wanted a reward. It all worked out in the end. It was only a small tragedy and greater ones no doubt happened yesterday. I looked for a poem to remind me of the beauty of this world that is really here and found it in Robinson Jeffers' poem. It is very good we have poets in this world. We really need them.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Bed in Summer
By Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people's feet
Still past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

It's a children's poem, one that I knew well growing up. I also read "Treasure Island" as a child by Robert Louis Stevenson and many other books by this author. Reading him always brings those memories back and all of the movies that were made of "Treasure Island". I was lucky in that the library was full of his books and no one minded when I checked them out as some of them were in the adult section. It took me many years to understand why I found "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" so horrifying. It took a therapist to tie the alcoholic father and the main character who drank a substance that turned him into a monster as something that was too close to reality for me as a child.

In Korea, the time does not change so daylight savings time is something that is not a concern. Still, I remember as a child going to bed in the daytime when I desperately wanted to stay up and play some more. Now, of course I go to bed when I want or need to. In the United States few people were walking on the street anymore anyhow. It was the loud cars that raced up and down the streets. My apartment here is not close to the street, but I can still hear the buses running all night. The university is across the street and not that many students have cars here.

My apartment is surrounded by parks created by a large corporation who has a office next door and the parks consists of a soccer field, basketball court, tennis courts and a place to ride bikes. They often play games at night. The gardens are beautiful and there is a place for a picnic. It was there that I discovered that there are cuckoo birds. I was astonished for it sounded as if the surrounded woods were filled with cuckoo clocks. I always thought they made up that bird. Korea is full of birds and it is fun to watch and hear them.

Sometimes reading a poem written so many years ago is like opening a time capsule. It is hearing and feeling someone who has since past away. I can still feel the delight Stevenson must have still felt as an adult in looking at life through the eyes of a child.

I think it is important to read children's literature even as adults and certainly poetry meant for children. It is important that we never lose that delight that Stevenson so evidently had and to remember the poems that we read and enjoyed as children. I read these poems to my children and grandchildren myself. I still read them to myself and I hope we all still read them as we read Stevenson's books over and over again.

Jorge Luis Borges

The Art of Poetry
By Jorge Luis Borges

To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
nto a muic, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness-such is poetry
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
dislosing to each ofus his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

(I did not find a translator's name .)

In this poem, I found poetry, art, life, dreams and blended together into one; and I believe that life is that way and that we drift into one dream and then into another and we call it life. Life is the poetry that makes up our dreams, our world both out there in the heavens, the world around us and the world within. Borges who became blind must have felt the line between the outer and inner worlds disappear even more than many of us. As I grow older, I float through this life more and more as in a dream.