Meteor

To Kim Mosley’s “Meteor” on the Eve of the Election

Ooh, coming right at us
the slam!

It
hurls us upside
down
and sideways
splashes a thousand
ponds
into the clouds

steams us
wrings us

topples
buildings to house-
shapes
under the sand
walls
the archaeologists can puzzle over—
why?

Oh, why not?
mutter lava
and melted coins

A tree stands here and a
segment of
brook

Maybe a mountain range
can make it through
a child
a deer
or two.

—Sarah Webb, 11/2/20

++++++++++

Meteor Sent on Monday….
by Martha Ward 11.2.20 ODD as ever

The meteor was sent on Monday,
a prompt to Earthlings that we must
improve our state. We’ve been measured
and found wanting. We're in bad shape.
Our humanity, about which, we once,
had a clue, has gone missing.

The meteor's strange encounter, will
take us back to dust. Its angst fueled
with full blown disgust, for what
we’ve done to this planet & to us.

Our current steep climb up the COVID
record chart shows we’ve wandered way,
way, away from doing our rightful part,
simple & needed each day.
For good?

Wait, Meteor! Before you start smashing
things & fall apart, note the many
of us making poetic art! We grapple
with truths, ponder each word & phrase.
Note our creative endeavors on full display!
Meteor, please, radiate a message back
the other way.

Messy as we are, we are doing our part,
creating for us Earthlings, all, a renewed
humane & healing start.

++++++++++

METEOR

i
Stardust streaking through
space. Hale-bopp—the
sweetest trace of rock
I’ve seen. It felt like
a gentle love light
falling through that late
summer night. Or was
autumn and does it matter
that I can’t recall the season?
I was alone and on a high
hill and I’ll never see it
again but it burned in my
heart, it seared, seres,
stays.

ii
He had a meteoric
rise and then fell as young
men do, too quickly rich,
too dark, too drawn to
women who care for
such men. I truly know
nothing of meteors or
quick rises to fame.

iii
I know how spiked the
bluejay is after having
his bath. And how the
dove, having splashed
and cleaned her brown
body, looks like a sodden
heap of feathers. Someone
needs to wring her out if
she’s to fly again. I could
use her as a chamois
and clean my car while she
coos and mourns as only
a dove can do.

I know about the hyacinth bean,
deep mulberry on the vine and
the morning glory who’s never
come to my garden but showed up
last week, hidden in the pittosporum.

I know the names of every dog on
my street and most of the
children as well. The parents’
names, not so much.

iv
I walk around skirting the fear
our country holds, trying to
breathe in hope and not despair.

v
I would not mind at some future
time, leaving this blue orb as a
meteor myself, burning through
the atmosphere of all our sorrows,
rising to the dark of all things.
Disappearing behind the moon.

—Beverly Voss, 11/2/20

++++++++++

Meteor

Mutated corona,
meteoric diversion,
humanity imperiled
by divergent realities,
truth trumped by propaganda,
ill will goes viral,
the weary dare not inhale
the fiery breath of fools.

Powerlessness breeds anxiety,
anxiety breeds fear,
fear feeds on insecurity,
proliferation of ill-bred emotions
that become prey to
the baser impulses of
human nature.

But fear that spins
through the dark spaces
between good and evil
in meteoric reversion
can perhaps shed its prickly crown
and settle gently on the
edges of a new reality.

—Marilyn Duncan
ODD Monday prompt poem, 11-2-20

++++++++++

A bell rings …
Silently I turn my attention from the quiet outer world to the bustling inner chitter-chatter.
And, with one clear breath I invite that inner world to calm, to simply consider stillness for a moment.
But the clamor within won’t submit so easily.
Perhaps they will align on the task of sensation…
Where is my resting point of balance?
Where is my being sensing the environment I displace?
Indeed, where am I in touch with this earth and this life?
And, now with less sloshing about within, I open my eyes to see with more curiosity.
And my attention begins to popcorn again and outward thought conversations ramp up.
Noticing it doesn't even require another person to have this sort of conversation: I smile having seen myself.
And another breath, I close my eyes and find inner conversations were induced. Now calming again.
Alternating inner gaze with outer attention I begin to appreciate this inter-being.
Freedom from reaction, more clarity toward truth.

—Ed Pierce
++++++++++

My mom insisted that we be home before dark. She also insisted that my dad be home at 6pm. If any of us didn’t follow the law, she was a raging maniac. We had to be home before dark because it was the South Side of Chicago and she didn’t want us to be …. With my dad, it was that we needed to have a family dinner. There was fierce intention in her wishes. I’ve been thinking about presence and intention as I tear up my photos and then staple them back together. Sometimes the intention that is contrived. I try not to do that. I do try to be deliberate in my choices. I imagine a Flamingo dancer. There are pauses and sweeping movements. Everything is planned and everything is smooth. But it is the dance itself that we see, not the individual steps.

Tomorrow, Nov. 3, 2020, is the election. That’s what everyone thinks. But actually the election is over in the sense that the work for the Bodhisattva has been defined. Even if the good guy wins, tens of millions of people will have indicated that they need to go back to school. There are character issues, there are science issues, there is a Covid storm that is taking the lives of many people. Our work is cut out for us. We are like the captain of a ship in rough waters. Maybe we’ll need to steer a little to the right or maybe a little to the left. But we as educators and we as parents and we as citizens have failed miserably and we have to pause and look carefully and what needs to be done now to save the democracy, to save its citizens, and to save the earth.

Buddhists talk of equanimity. In rough times is a difficult challenge to to be equanimous. It does not mean to be unaffected by whatever happens. It is better illustrated by the doctors and nurses in ER. They may be fairly calm even as they deal with life and death situations. They don’t need to increase fear around us nor do they bypass the fear and turn everyone into smiling zombies. We have work to do, whether it is feeding the poor or making a good connection with our neighbor. We need to begin the process of transforming our country to respect life of all forms.

Back to the art work, “Meteor.” I’ve often though about how I might create a dirty dinner plate. No matter how hard I tried, could I replicate the perfection of what is left when a meal is eaten. No. I try to give up control with my pictures. My best work comes when I’m having a conversation with someone or watching TV. There have been a number of artists who listened to music or watched TV when they worked. It might seem counterproductive… but my thinking is a culprit that I have to constantly avoid.

Our meteor whirls through space. It may hit the earth or not. It either case we need to prepare. Maybe we need to lay down a formless field of benefaction, as we say in our robe chant, so that we can open our arm as it graces the earth. This is a time to embrace, not to say, should Biden win, “ha, ha, we beat you.”

—Kim Mosley

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Enso Two

 

Enso One

 

Worms

Rectangle

Remnants

a modest rose

flowering, because that is its nature

energy springing out to be

but not claiming attention or demanding

tattered, tentative

but fully itself

—Sarah Webb

Jesus in Milan

Social Distancing in Milan Church

Ivanka and Kim

Covid Chart

Ruben E. Farias, COVID

Scraps for Last Piece

Starry Nite

The earth is a collection of discrete objects, each of which is a collection of discrete objects, until finally we just have energy. This is the way of the universe. And these collections are constructed. When some say "no thing" maybe they should say "no thing, just collections" while recognizing that the collections aren't really there but are just in our minds.

Dog

Nail Clipper

Man on Side

Teeth

To Kim Mosley's “Teeth” 

Lively, happy, the Earth. 

But, no, a screaming face 

a furry man with an extra arm sending out waves of energy

a gaping whale and a gaping ghost.

Near them, coming up and out, a camel 

a man-phoenix 

a slug, a horn, the numerals 2 2 7.

Reality in all its ways—real and unreal,

spinning into numbers and dunes

breakfast and the phantasmagoria of the mind.

Out of the movement of water 

a whole that lasts a moment or a day.

—Sarah Webb

Crowd

My Kandinsky... from point to line to space

Magnifier

Sprayer and Woman

Sprayer

Lid

Mona

Buddha's Flower

I’m not sure how this all happened. I started school when I was three or so. Now it is 71 years later and I’m still in school. I wonder what it would be like to not be in school, to not be learning, to not be starting from zero every morning? I wonder what it would be like to know something? To really know something? Not to just repeat what someone has told me but to understand it deep in the recesses of my heart and soul? Like “intimacy.” I probably first heard that word in my teens. And I’ve had some brief glimpses of connection. But being intimate with life itself is especially trying. There are those precious moments but I also feel like there are a million miles between where I am and the connection for which I long.

I don’t really want this challenge to be met. What would I do then? I thought that I wanted knowledge. Later I would have settled with understanding. Now it is something different. I think the best way I can describe it would be “not separate.” The Buddha held up a flower. One of the monk “gets it.” Can anyone else really “get it”? It is one of those teachings, without a word, where there are connections ad in·fi·ni·tum. Is that intimacy? Did Buddha and his monk share a realization with a glance. Was there any separation? Was the Buddha the flower? Was the monk the flower? Was the flower the flower? Were they all one, not separate, and also not one? So back to school now, feeling like the greyhound that is just inches away from that rabbit. So close and yet the faster he runs, the faster it runs. Is that fair?

3 Sleeping Screws

Jesus's Elixir

Face

Curvilinear/Rectilinear

Breaking

The curve of the earth has broken

under a weight of thought.

Stone holds fast

as it has from ancient beginning

but the world of soft bodies

townships, leaves and blossoms

is slashed and scattered.

We have given our faith

to what can be explained,

lay thought over living reality.

Plan and ambition justify

fire and boiling flood and poison,

the death of the land.

Spirit withdraws.

—Sarah Webb

Another View

dark waves, everything changing, fragments of an old life carried along

—Sarah Webb

Kim: Nice. I keep messing around until I see something that speaks to me. I guess it would be like throwing scraps of paper down until you like the arrangement. 

Sarah: That make sense, a bit of a found art process.

Kim:  Is it different than writing? You throw down words until they make sense. Or is there more?

Sarah: You have hit a button for me. I am often thinking where do the words come from, the poem comes from. And who writes it. It's not that different from visual art. Where did that image come from? what does it mean for you and why did it come up?

As for writing being throwing down words until they make sense, I would say, that's not it at all. 

We can make found-writing poems, but that's only one corner of writing. I did one out of a state sign on a creek that had a history related to the Civil War and another about statements and objects in a classroom related to the theme of apathy. Much like your nephew(?) selecting from data until a point emerges. But what we are responding to is a similarity to forms we use in created writing and a meaning that emerges. You in your present artistic project look at a series of randomly (?) created images and pick one that resonates. It resonates because you can see a symbolism in it or point to it and at least an impact from the visual composition. So in that one little corner of art and of writing, it's a lot alike. I guess I'd say that's letting a lot of random input come in until something flows by that grabs you because it doesn't feel random, but, as you say, makes sense. 

But as far as writing created from scratch (as opposed to found), there's no throwing down words at random. Even the first beginning phrase or word, which might come to you, comes with at least unconscious sense to it. Or at most, if it is truly random, is immediately connected with symbolism and associations. We react to a found object or a random word with a Rorshach connection--the shape becomes a butterfly or 2 faces or whatever, constant creating of meaning. And from that seed a sentence forms and then another, following the meaning that appears. 

I would say words do not come at random. They are meanings that elaborate themselves through associations and memories and ideas and rhetorical structures (like story or contrast or cause and effect or description or image) and even things like sound similarities. And they originate below the conscious mind out of something that is not yet words (T.S. Eliot--"a frog voice waiting to be born"). Perhaps from the primal void, the dynamism that is constantly spilling from formless potentiality into being. That surge becomes partially formed into emotion or dream-image or movement. and then it comes more fully into form shaped by words and structures. 

A found poem or found art would have to be a variation on that. Something in the unconscious recognizes a correspondence between the random image and some emotion or imagistic symbol that it can give voice to. It "makes sense." We agree on that part, the image making sense to us. I just disagree with the throwing words at random part. 

Hope that is not just a big jumble of words.

Kim: I love what you wrote… and I disagree, of course. At least I think it is not either or. Just take the thoughts that pop into our head. They seem random, but we can follow them or ignore them or something in between.

It St. Louis, sometimes our writing group would pick a book randomly and pick a page and paragraph randomly and then that would be our prompt.

But that’s just the beginning. It would be like dropping a photographer out of an airplane. That’s the beginning. Then she would explore that landscape and develop it from his random beginnings.