05/01/08 9:24 PM Bersone:I've been enthralled by what Lawrence called "the insideous mastery of song / my manhood cast down" in a poem wherein he remembers back to sitting with his mother at the piano, singing, the thread of smoke from a cigarette reminding him of one of her gray hairs he pulled off his coat, as he buried her, I believe: but there it is: the insideous mastery of song: in my case the turbulent emotions evoked by the Time / Life best of Country Love songs offered on TV: then the movie about Bob Dylan, evoking images of Jesus, and an old memory of me in Korea during a rainstorm, huddled under a poncho, reading the bible with a flashlight, thinking about what I was going to do when I returned to the United States. I went to my computer, thinking to add to my memoir, starting with this scene, which I liken as a prelude to a period similar to what you went through in Ft. Bragg, a point where we had the chance to set our lives strategically. These turning points, whether we were able to spirit ually pivot or not, are points of great clarity, portals almost, which we can revisit for a perspective on the universe because they offer clarity, clarity usually obscured by the necessities of the moment, our need to get a job or whatever. But I could not find my memoirs in my computer (I'm sure because I'm not looking in quite the right place) and will have to bring it up tomorrow. But in my looking I came up with an old poem I wrote about being with Carolina in Maccu Piccu which I will attach. (when I can find it)
05/02/08 12:49 PM Buff:
Piano
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cozy parlor, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamor
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamor
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
D.H. Lawrence
Music is a strange alchemy. It's completely invisible, passing through all the physical senses without hesitation, directly to the soul. It's effects cannot be measured and often not even verbalized. It is tonal abstraction, a manner of fucking with the emotions. It can be dangerous, boring and monotonous, while it can also be enlivening, thoughtful, moving, and satisfying. It can trigger otherwise lost memories in their truest essence, an essence that may have been originally missed. I think Lawrence used the word "insidious" because the memory worked on him until it wore him down and "betrayed" him back to his now lost childhood where his "manhood is cast down", dissolved, leaving him a weeping child in a man's body. This is as close to sentimentality that one will ever see Lawrence be. But, yes, I can hear you, it is beyond sentimentality, past that sometimes frivolous emotion to something much more tangible, a specter that once recalled from the darkness refuses to leave, a dark and stubborn spirit. One can be haunted by music, by a memory the music brings up. Lawrence was delicate and fragile, while he was also huge and thundering. I think I can say that I love Lawrence as a man in a way that I have not loved any other artist I do not know, whose work has touched me, including Henry. Lawrence never gave an inch, never worked to cover anything, always revealing, revealing, peeling away layer by layer infinitely working toward the truth, the core of the truth. He can know the spirit of a snake, and he can weep like a child.
Yes, the image of you in Korea is a great subject for meditation. I hope you do go back there to see what you find. This is the clarity I seek, not what I have called the unbearable clarity one finds in modern society where truth is intentionally obscured to bolster the bottom line. The clarity of truth is like spring water alongside a hot and dusty road. Refreshing in the deepest sense. It is only in the realm of my imagination that I have found this quality of truth, clarity of truth. One day I will go there and never ever return. You will understand, and perhaps join me.
I am trying to regain control of my life, live in the moment, dream while awake, travel to worlds that have no boundaries. Suddenly I know what they mean when they say, Dancing on the head of a pin. I think that one day I will be able to do it. We shall see.
Buff
05/02/08 12:52 Buff:
Conceit
It is conceit that kills us
and makes us cowards instead of gods.
Under the great Command: Know thy self, and that thou art mortal!
we have become fatally self-conscious, fatally self-important,
fatally entangled in the cocoon coils of our conceit.
Now we have to admit we can't know ourselves, we can only know about ourselves.
And I am not interested to know about myself any more,
I only entangle myself in the knowing.
Now let me be myself,
now let me be myself, and flicker forth,
now let me be myself, in the being, one of the gods.
D H Lawrence
05/02/08 3:51 PM Bersone:April has drawn its mood around us with a close sky, disturbed by wind alternated with premonitions of heat: I can see why it is Hank's favorite season here: no tourists of course, but green, sedated by green, enlivened by green. Today he and Larry are walking Steven's Trail. I stayed home, having written past midnight and my time growing short, since I return Sunday. I wish I had had your mother's training concerning money, and had the discipline she instilled in you. Still, thinking of Huck Finn lying on his raft, watching the smoke from his pipe rise into the overarching trees, I remember him saying, "I like to lazy on my raft like this . . ." And so the balance, like a bucket, brimmed with water, trembles at a breeze yet does not spill over. Such is my life: full to overfull, yet held at the brim. The structure has held.
Your comments are deeply informed with an aesthetic knowledge earned by a lifetime of paying attention. Who would have guessed? Such attention has done life honor.
The cat is at home on the deck, reclining sensuously in the sun or closed into herself during a breeze. The hummingbirds thrum the air like rubber bands. I am grateful for you, my friend. I have been reading my work outloud, and am excited about it. I have done a lot more than I have shown.
05/05/08 7:55 PM Buff:
Life is an art form of the highest order. We are here to live, nothing more. There is nothing to learn and nothing to teach. All essential parts are included in the package. Here you are; now go for it. Make a world of joy, make a hell of torture. Whatever. We are born illusionists. Magicians. You’ve got a life, now go out and play. No whining, no pleading or wishing, prayer is a waste of time. Huck Finn had it all figured out: “I like to laze on my raft”, there is nothing better to do, and strum your lute while you’re at it. All this crap about achievements is just honky bullshit, a form of enslavement. It took me almost 70 years to figure this shit out. A little slow on the up take, to say the least. No matter, every moment is a new life, a new song to sing, a new illusion to conjure. Life is joy, pure unadulterated joy! Delicious! Mmmmmm!
05/10/08 6:25 PM Bersone
Buff,
My father had a fire engine red 1951 Studebaker, designed by a famous industrial designer, I forget his name,
who placed a propeller at the nose; it was a car ahead of its time. I knew a guy who owned a 1947 Studebaker tow truck, also. Eventually the Studebaker gave way to the big three automakers of the fifties. I know something about this heart problem because my old real estate partner had a lot of problems involving his heart, brought on by smoking. He had a device implanted that would go off once in awhile, because his heartbeat would take off. He had had a heart attack and had some damaged cells which, every now and then, would get confused and thought that maybe they should take off, which threw the heart rhythm off and it would pound like mad until the defibrillator would race ahead of the heart, go off, and gradually ratchet the whole thing back down into a normal rhythmic range. This was the least of his problems: he had had cancer, from which they told him he would die twentyfive years before he did die, heart disease, and significant lung damage from heavy smoking. The last episode left him with an oxygen tank which he was supposed to use constantly but he eventually cast it aside. He was in the hallway of his apartment building, which he was remodeling, a massive job, when he suddenly needed his air. He yelled for his air to the speedfreak who helped him to get the tank but he had failed to educate the man as to which tank was full and which empty.Unfortunately, the guy grabbed the wrong one. I showed up after he had been lying without air for at least three minutes and accompanied him to the hospital but he never recovered consciousness. I never knew a man who endured so many physical ailments without ever losing the twinkle in his eye.
His life story was a movie to behold. He was about ten years older than me and, during the Korean war, lied about his age and went off to war in an engineering unit. There was about eighteen guys stuck on a small rock island, under fire, and they had looped a cable through an eye hook in the rock and the engineers were attempting to drive sections of bridge powered by outboard motors to the cable to hook it up and gradually create the bridge. My friend told his partner, "You know it's our turn next and you can see that everybody's getting killed; so when I drive over there pretend to hook up and we'll be carried down river and get the fuck out of here." This is what happened but they realized then, after washing ashore miles away that they were deserters in the middle of a war halfway around the world from home. They fell in with a bunch of prostitutes, their contribution being that because they knew how to get onto bases and camps, they were able to make off with chickens, foodstuffs and various uniforms and clothing.
Eventually the other guy turned himself in but my partner kept up his lifestyle for some months. Eventually he traded for a water truck, which was a great advantage to the whores who weren't allowed past the frontlines, where all the money was. He'd drain off a quarter of the water and fill the truck with women, their heads just above water so they could breathe, and he'd be waived through, no problem. Once out of sight, he'd let them out to ply their trade and gradually make their way back to where they all lived. Eventually, he climbed up a pagoda and pretended he was going to jump off the roof. This brought in psychiatrists whom he allowed to gradually talk him down. Once down, he feigned amnesia to avoid desertion charges, and was hospitalized for several months where he gradually allowed his memory to return. Once it all came back to him the medical authorities proclaimed him a success story and sent him back to the states.
I spent a couple of nights with him, taking his pulse and counting the time between beats -- the whole thing was amazing that he lived through. From what I know of this, you probably have a long way to go, but who knows? I certainly hope so. One thing for sure -- we did it our way!
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