Spiritual Murder of the Mythopoetic Role

Fuxi and Nuwa by Anonymous

"Mythopoeisis is the act of shaping a myth into a new form, of making it anew; now I believe each of us does this poetic act daily, only we are not conscious of it, but myths, if alive, are always being renegotiated; we cosign them once more each day we wake up and go about our lives; but the action is unconscious. Poetry makes these processes conscious."

"...the individual psyche cannot, much as often it would like to, to be separated from the collective. Understanding the archetypal nature of our waking life and of our dream life would go a long way to revealing this truth."

- Dennis P. Slattery, from an Interview with Archetype in Action

________

“I have never traveled through West Africa! I have only seen East Africa.” I shout to the unconcerned on a bus through mud flats on the outskirts of town in Ghana. “It’s more industrialized here.” Suburban homes, colorful and well-roofed lie interspersed atop the unstable ground. Nothing grows here.

The plains shake off their sanded winds out onto a horizon as flat and majestic as any under a dim gorge of sky above. We approach an underprivileged village. The beams of their homes show with skeletal fright, a ghost of a shelter buries the inhabitants under a schema of incongruous monetary divisiveness. I am let out here with a group of excitable travelers. After a few bitter hours gazing into the masked poverty, the rest saunter off, straight into the shale-thin horizon, across the plain desert, leaving me behind to my shameful enjoyment.

The first unusual occurrence I notice is an old man, an elder, conducting witchcraft rites from a burlap, animal hid covered hut, half-emerging from a height of wires in the modern town center. He presses his hand up against a carved, convex piece of bone and wood overhead, pressed into the ceiling of his dusty keep. With that, the town comes alive. Animate devotion is surpassed unto grandiose might through communal dance, a powerful music enticing all to couple and find happiness in group intercommunication through a thankful greeting of sprites.

Then, chaos breaks loose from the fire. I disentangle the group of its emotional stability. I use a dull knife, a metal shard from their central structure. Cutting off hands and brazenly ambushing in an intoxicated insanity, bloodthirsty, I drive the community from their healthy nest. Only a few bodies remain, hanging onto life with the remaining ligaments and tendons still connecting their pulse, vibrating with accepted fate, a spiritual murder.

I flee. Following what I had learned in the village, I begin to collect seeds in the wilderness, these are jujus of flight. I need a new identity. I received wind of another African meeting, in the next town. Before I can get there, the Red Cross identifies me, soon to be incarcerated, deadened with madness I swallow the seeds. My flesh speaks of me, it says, “I am guilty.”

________

Murder

"If you commit murder, it signifies that you are engaging in some dishonourable adventure, which will leave a stigma upon your name...If you have a dream of murdering another, this is a warning that you must keep in control of your temper and emotions at all times and not get enraged to the point of murderous intent...You may also have some repressed anger at yourself or at others." (iDream)

________

clockwork porridge

clockwork porridge
spread over an island tongue
marauding, blasphemous
across seven oceans

timely
with education's pandemic drug:
the book

compromising home speech
on the First People's sand-quipped names
harboring love in their own unique hearts
with a history untold,
forgotten and enslaved to foreign grammar
to safekeep continued histories
of colonial struggle
in the vault of young minds
playing sound asleep
in the therapeutic mud
of their own beautiful creation.

March 7, 2011

Chinatown Calgary

Borges On Volcanic Riddles of the Unconscious

“The great English writer and dreamer Thomas de Quincey, wrote in some of the thousands of pages of his 14 volumes wrote that to discover a new problem was quite as important as discovering the solution of an old one. But I cannot even offer you that. I can only offer you time-honored perplexities.”

“And in our less beautiful mythology we speak of the subliminal self, of the subconscious, of course those words are rather uncouth when we compared them with the muses or with the Holy Ghost, but still we have to put up with the mythology of our time.”

- Borges, from his 1967-8 lectures "The Riddle of Poetry"

_________

An acquaintance, an intellectual from Latin America sends me an email bursting at the seams of the twenty-five megabyte limit. The prolific backlog of written research, charts, graphs and maps is stunning. He has proved, through simple correspondence, a scenario for the turn of the tide, an epochal shift in the geological age of the planet. The continents will roll, as on a dial, between the ocean currents. Coastal lands will be subsumed one on side by the leeching magma, on the other by tidal waves with enormity enough to swallow entire cities in a heartbeat’s notice. During this time, mythical beasts make themselves known, many from the below, many from above.

The Edge of Doom by Samuel Colman

The swirling aftermath of an ocean-swept city follows us upwards toward the mountain peaks. The shifting plates boom and gush, spitting fire and ash into the sunless sky, raining in metals and the boiling fury of an endless toxic night. We are protected by a subterranean demi-god, hidden to our waking eyes in the days of light. The simian beast grapples a crushing hammer, defeating a swimming ape three times his size emerging from the opaque, deathly soup of ocean water below. The battle is, to our human eyes, a goliath sight, many proportions beyond our own. Greedily, fear seizes as a last hope in the will to life. The blasting mountaintop seethes with equal force as the rising waters. 

________

Volcano

"To see a volcano in you dreams, signifies that you will be in violent disputes, which threaten your reputation as a fair dealing and honest citizen...Volcanic eruptions in dreams usually represent our erupting emotions. Feelings that you may be harbouring during the day might take the form of a volcanic eruption in a dream state. The unconscious psyche might be releasing positive or negative feelings in a safety of a dream (e.g. strong sexual feelings, passion, anger, rage, and fear). Superstition-based dream interpretations say that pouring lava is a warning about poor health. Dreaming about a volcano means the dreamer is in danger of losing a close friendship if she is not honest with that person." (iDream)

________

...
a planetary dissolution,
wavering on the edge,
deemed a wanderer,
stolen soul,
dreamer in artistic wonderland,
or violent binge-seeking parasite,
working miracles inside a silenced freedom,
without home, or conceived place
guiding mundane goals,
roaming vagrant, or seer,
yet still unripe,
recently fallen
from knowledge,
into wish, luck, intuition, and the all ecstatic
passion,
bellowing "good and evil are through"
impaled by the one breath,
strange yet true
...
throughout the known universe,
into the home of a single man,
living atop a mountain,
dreaming in the orbital spawn,
a satellite, the globe itself,
winding round, predictably,
to the course of light,
ending with beginning and finding us along the way
on the way,
all along

- excerpts from "Divorce & Diaspora" 

Reflection on Preisner's "Silence, Night and Dreams"

"Dreams and silence and night are the three elements, are very important for me. I just would like to in this album give it a question for the audience. What's happened, even in the 21st century we have this completely cosmic technology, and finally our life is longer but it is not so deep like it was, you know, 10, 20 years ago. What's happened is that this technology does not help for us in our life, that we are finally more alone." - Zbigniew Preisner

"Silence that arouses anxiety. Night that envelops sadness and despair. Dreams of hope for a transformation." - Lyrics form "Silence, Night and Dreams" sung in Latin and English, from Book of Job and Gospel of St. Matthew

Reflection on "Silence, Night and Dreams" by Zbigniew Preisner

This album stopped me dead in my tracks. In a pre-evening slump of energy, I dipped down into a reclining position, to receive the fullness of a truly heartened listening experience. There was no mediation, no other attention drawn, simply and fully, I became present in the music. And it took me there. The wave-like form of the movements called me into my own being. I lay, submerged in pure sonic form. An experience not yet had swept me into a simulacrum vortex, an open mind. I slipped as it were, directly into the centre of vacuum space. As I lay in my dark room, my eyes sank in the opaque mysteries of an unearthly darkness. The sopranos melted my heart and my body of water became as the grandiose demiurge of self-awareness.

One of my favourite aspects of Preisner's music is his use of silence. The storied conceptual sacrifice of John Cage flits in my mind, and then I hear a celestial soprano. What takes me away with this recording is how the singer, Teresa Salgueiro, of Madredeus had to learn to read music solely for this collaboration with Preisner, a self-taught musician himself!

Preisner's compositional style, ever-unique, reminds me more of landscape, at once abstract, at once pointedly accurate to the infinitesimal temporality. In my ear, it skies beyond "music" as knowably defined, and in a sense becomes likened to the essence of human experience, beyond expected form, the disquiet of artistic convention. For this reason, it is a personification of dream, a direct rendering of the heart of the maker. For more listening into Preisner's dream mind, listen to "Like a Dream"

Infinitely more could be expressed, for every one of the multiple listenings I've had since the full album's played through my airwaves, though I'll let your experience and mine to be yet further fulfilled in silence, night and dreams. Such is the character of night.

_______

Night on the bus route is darker than usual. It must be a new moon, or heavy unseen cloud cover. Friends sneer at my withdrawn attitude. “What is he concealing?” the fantasize grotesque in the bored clashing of spatial insensitivity. The mood is young and innocence carries a deft presence of unsightly, childish greed. I keep to myself. “Where do I get out?” I implore into the obscure open, unrecognized concrete slabs give the lonely night its shape. We are way out past our usual neighborhoods. I am afraid, though I hardly show it. The others step down at an abandoned building leading to a bridge into parkland, a notorious breeding ground of mischief for those called into the night. I get out at the next stop. As I cross the bridge, I am encroached on all sides by my jeering friends on the bus. They ask where I’m going, what I’m doing. I simply tell them that I’ve been working at a hardware store. The tower above me, they know I’m hiding something. The hallucinogens pulsate in my sleeves with the rumble of their own palpable life, an energy known by my night wandering guests as any intoxicating scent, wafting into their needful minds with a strength beyond another human presence.

_______

Night

"If you are surrounded by night in your dreams, you may expect unusual oppression and hardships in business...To dream of night time signifies obstacles in achieving your goals. You may find that some issues you are facing are still unclear. Take more time before making a decision...extreme darkness suggests that you are hiding something or are unwilling to see things clearly...The darkness represents a lack of awareness or illumination." (iDream)

_______

"you are as a message,
complete
full
with clarity & goodness in substance

a sleeping vessel,
purified constantly with the freshest, pure oxygen
gifted from up on high

a spiritual life force known only in the most ancient virgin forests,
an ecosystem wise with earthly pleasure,
swaying to magic rhythms

you bend your heart
scaling every obstacle
materialized by mortal touch

miraculous and soothing, not tempting but calm,
an emergent glow breaks the great fever
making modern man delirious with repeated history

your very being is the cure, and every expression a sacred step
bringing us closer to a shared peace among all humanity and all universal creation,
uniting us through a creative spark"

- excerpt from "you are as a message"

The Archaic Rape of Earthly Society

"Society is designed so people are free to choose their own interests, develop formerly hidden potential, and pursue dreams without government intervention or financial constraint." (p. 78)

- Final sentence (before the conclusion) in Jacque Fresco's book, "Designing the Future" of The Venus Project

_______

I can see the eye of the storm. The massive plain tumbles and writhes under the violent sky. Winds frost and spit with ferocity over the engulfed earth. With dramatic sweeps, I gesture into the monstrous movement, the land hurricane slows with animated motion with my every beckoning.

In a torrent, I glide effortlessly directly into the eye of the storm. Debris swirls about at lightning speeds, coins engraved with headdress-adorned figures move into my vision with holographic reality.

In a misdirected bout of blind seizing into the frothy gusts, I grab onto a globular orb. A living replica of Earth, the orb is with piercing light, vibrant with enduring mystery. As I begin to recognize continental form within the orb, gazing with absolute absorption, the storm subsides overhead.

I am safe, overlooking a ruined high plain fever of ancient life. Aztec, Mayan and African features bedeck a man and his two women-wives. There is a striking, volatile cruelty in the air; survivors of the apocalyptic storm are moved to a traumatic escalation of end rites. The man is fully armed and adorned in ceremonial dress. He forces one woman to dig in the mud.

As I observe, I feel a heavy weight around my neck. I look down at my breast to find a brilliant necklace, of thick girth, bejeweled with precious, exotic stone, around my neck. The woman, bent over, with bottom up, is penetrated violently by the man, thumping into her so hard that blood streaks down her thighs. She continues to dig at his command, while she is raped.

In horror, no one notices I am present, watching the stubborn abuse, shocked. The man grabs her vagina as he continues to penetrate her, wiping his face in the putrid blood. “This will make me young again! Whore!” he yells in wild abandon.

As the hole she’s dug becomes large enough for her to sit in, he pushes her, laughingly in the subsurface mud. Other men walk over, sick with tortured minds, they lower their loin cloths and ejaculate into the mud pit, as more and more men fill the woman’s pit, others pour in creamy goat’s milk.

The lady, neck-high in the lowering goop, cries in terror, her psychotic eye gleans a ghastly stare into my eyes. She’s the only one who notices my innocent presence. The other lady then climbs atop her head, naked from the waist down; she begins menstruating a gorge of blood into the pit.

Speechless, I race forward with the orb in hand, and leap over the menstruating woman on top, stabbing her in the back. Impaled, the woman immediately becomes a skeleton. All the others follow, becoming the shallow dust of incinerated, skeletal remains. The orb transforms from its metal shaft, on top a gold coin forms.

The entire ritual site is then swept in the height of the storm once more, as I look into the engraving on the gold coin topping the orb, swirls of coins and debris, with feathery headdresses and ancient icons flash and flicker in the fading mud of ground, disappearing below me. 

_______

Rape

"In a dream, as in real life, rape has very little to do with sex. It is about power, control, anger, and other very destructive emotions. In order to understand this dream, you may need to think about the areas of your life that causes you great anxiety and fear. If you are superstitious, take this dream as a warning. Take precautions, protect yourself emotionally and physically and don't engage in careless behaviours. A dream about rape (whether it was you or someone else being attacked in the dream) suggests that you are feeling violated in some way. Something or someone is jeopardizing your self-esteem and emotional well-being." (iDream)

_______

once travel to a foreign country becomes reminiscent of that
one too-many,
that last girl
before profound commitment
to feminine and masculine union

in the outer-penetrated world,
that person must begin anew to create novels;
i.e. the moment's performance in novelty

a historic moment, the duration of time itself,
temporal currency formed and formless together,
emboldening our hands

sweet as the dreaming, unborn child,
in mother's prophetic womb

lit with raw desire
to fill the inward sky with primordial flight
bringing life to a boiling gamble

...

smoothed over with aged, colonial bureaucracy
craving selfless deserts
to be in solace,
yet drained with inhuman night

an eclipse spans this biblical day
cast over a rude Mesoamerican eye

...

a near-rape
whose victimized lover embodied human love
with the animalistic need to survive,

and the virgin blood
glutted in cults

alive with a supernal darkness
unto depths that thrive on the breast milk of Mother Earth's deeply passed esophagus
drawing aphrodisiac urges

to thrill onlooker's gods with human creation,
flooding the universe
as lactations' milk warms the needful infant's belly
still dripping from the inner womb
flowing with primordial goo,
their warmth is the bed in which we feel unprotected

sex

losing grain
as the foreigner's sites are exhausted before the eternal Altar,
whispering "Create!"

- excerpts from "travel to a foreign country" 

Woolf, Submerged In Idleness

Christiaan Tonnis - Virginia Woolf (1998)

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

- Virginia Woolf (Source)

Idleness is the parent of all psychology

- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (Source) 

"The statements of every religion, of many poets, and so on, are statements about the inner mythological process which is a necessity because Man is not complete if he is not conscious of that aspect of things." C.G. Jung from "Matter of Heart" (Part 8)

_______

A friend from Central African Republic invites me to follow him as he runs through the jungle, practicing for a race. I watch him tread the waking ground, a delicate step, and light footprints on the unsteady ground. A narrow tunnel opens through the thick upturned ground and low-lying canopy. An old, very tall Caucasian man runs alongside, in exercise clothes, drenched in sweat. The sun boils the moisture, even through the dense layers of African rainforest. He races on, continuing without me, full of life and vigor. Later, we both sit at a cheap restaurant. The city around us is gray and bitter. A host of flies mocks our enjoyment with pointed annoyance. The man from the C.A.R. is grounded, with a strong smile, though uncomfortable in the restaurant for foreigners. I walk home after, alone, through the sickly grass aside a highway. My building lies ahead, embedded in patchwork concrete, almost unlivable, weak with age.

______

Race
"To dream that you are in a race, foretells that others will aspire to the things you are working to possess...Dreaming that you are in a race signifies that others are envious of your achievements and want what you have...Running in your dreams may also symbolize the energy levels, the strength, or the force that you have to get through life." (iDream)

______

as moment's inspiration passes,
across from me, an embodiment,
that is love.

dreaming in seeds 

( ,,,***... )
browned, cooked nights,
leading my eyes into the unwavering boundless beyond,
outside our balcony

...

raised with ephemeral delight,
a turning of the road commences,
our path clarifies as it dims to an other,
though faring bold, with an immense laughter,
a humbling draws one in,
to the other

- excerpts from "silent trust"

Poet-Doctor, Drugs and Dreams Are Your Friend

Le Rêve du docteur by Albrecht Dürer

"I never dream. When you’re psychotic, you don’t dream. Mugwort is an herb you can pick up at any local herbal shop. Although the tea is mildly poisonous, it can be drunk. Mugwort tea induces vivid, memorable dreams. Dreaming makes me feel normal. I feel connected with everyone through dreaming."

- from a conversation with a local poet and friend, David Rhoads

_______

Night in the suburbs, I jangle out onto the main road in a banged up old Volvo. The car is full of assorted items, the floors are mostly covered in piles of junk and the like. As I step on the gas, I see I’m driving unusually fast, though only about five mph above the speed limit. My lights are never working fine; I’m usually pulled over every time a cruiser spots me. 

In a shadowy nook, I see the dimmed lights of police, out for the catch. As I approach, the lights whir and sound. Still, I am in disbelief. “Again!” They must know me well by now. The cop who stops me perks with dissatisfied boredom as she clambers around awkwardly in the car for an extended time. My friend and I stand outside the car, weary and stung with silent cursing. Then, the overweight female cop raises one finger; it is covered with a green dust in the blaring flashlight. 

She inspects the dust carefully before swiftly grabbing my arms and locking them in a tight hold. “I’ve found marijuana in your car, you are under arrest!” I fight with murderous intensity. “What! All you found was a fingertip swipe of dust!” I am in awe of the local law’s asinine decision-making. As I squirm in contempt, defiant with unforgiving intensity, the lady cop calls for backup. 

In a matter of seconds, an SUV pulls up ahead of the first cruiser with two large, burly officers emerging in a torrent of violent forewarning. They attempt to handcuff me with riot strength, steaming in a haze of purposeless might. I loosen myself easily and struggle with unmatched will. Suddenly, I’m thrown back ten feet with a blood concussion, face puffed with blood, roughed up interminably by a single blow. 

On my way from a police car onto the steps of the police station and courthouse, I regain consciousness. A man on the sidewalk recognizes me. “Remember your permanent residency application!” he advises warmly. I am put before an authoritative lawman. I state my case. “Sir, this is an unjust conviction, I am on my way to gaining residency to live with my wife, this will put me under, don’t let a finger swipe of dust ruin this man’s life.” He takes pity on me. 

Later, I go on to liberate the entire northeast of North America from its bitter criminalization of personal marijuana use.

______

Drugs
"The interpretation of drugs in your dreams depends on the relationship you have with the drugs in your daily life and if they are doctor prescribed or not...The drugs could be suggesting a need for healing and getting in balance. Your unconscious mind may be suggesting outrageous things in hopes that you get the message to 'have fun, dream dreams, and get out of your own head!' Please keep in mind that the purpose of dreams is to raise our consciousness and to assist us in having better lives." (iDream)

______

"preposterous!"
said the proud visiting Englishman
in dismay,
"the army and police force will be trained
by the crown herself,
and no undue report will become of any loyal
to the blank calm
that befuddles our propaganda-fed livestock population"

- excerpt from "preposterous!"

Tarkovsky and the Living Dream of Cinema

"Tarkovsky for me is the greatest [director], the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." - from Wikipedia

"Thinks he’s a writer, too, by the way. He just can’t understand that a book’s a deed, not a paycheck. A poet must stir the soul, not nurture idolaters.

I keep having my dream. When I dream of the log walls and dark pantry, I sense that it’s only a dream. Then my joy is clouded, for I know I’ll wake up. Sometimes something happens, I stop dreaming of the house and the pines by the house of my childhood. Then I grieve and wait for the dream, that will make me a child again, and I’ll be happy again knowing that all still lies ahead and nothing is impossible…"

- from Tarkovsky's film, "Mirror"

Read "Dream Come True" an essay on Tarkovsky's film "Ivan's Childhood"

_______

I plunge headlong into the rocky ledge, a violent overfull valley, spilling into a mountainous void. I roll with the water amid the fixed stones, at the lip of a great waterfall. The pristine water is translucent. I am enwrapped in its confident downward pressure, to another world below.

At an Iranian friend’s house, I gaze at his wall of historical Persian metal wares, ancient pitchers and serving plates. They are bedecked with vibrant floral patterns, subdued with aging pigments amid a host of cultural décor. I notice one plate, standing against the wall behind most with an unusual patterning and coloration. “That one is Iraqi,” my friend confirms. A mysterious air breathes into our space as I gaze wearily into the Iraqi plate. 

The house opens into a full party, with laser neon club lights and steam flashing in a cacophony of mixed emotion and volatile potency from a youth desiring some greater fame than their abundant cultural upbringing. Tired of their unmatched indecision, wallowing in a spiritual squalor of heady daze, I shrink back outside into the unseen fold.

As I exit, I am at the entrance of the Amazon River basin as it snakes through the city of Iquitos. Looking forward through the dense canopy horizon, spindly serpent branches reach with emerald fire into the painstaking honesty of life and death. The humidity, secreted as from the pores of a mythic dragon, interchanges with the burly clouds shading the triumphant waterways. A diamond white streak of light, a perpetual lightning strike, an unwavering sunbeam, steals a path in the river, filling its surface with a radiant sheen from bank to bank. A path is lit toward the horizon beyond, where the river snakes into the pure touch of jungle, a celestial calling, a way out.

_______

Valley
"If the valley is barren, the reverse is predicted. If marshy, illness or vexations may follow. Vistas of green valleys with pleasant streams running through them show that you are embarking on a wonderful change that will bring you only happiness and much peace." (iDream)

_______

to catapult mind's range beyond all unknowing

further than the outermost reaches where our love, once was gone,
and now with her,
returned

- excerpt from "She with graying hair"

Sufi Poetics: Spontaneity and Oration in Rumi's Verse

(Found at "Awakening the Dreamer")

“Someone may be clairvoyant, able to see the future, and yet have very little wisdom. Like the man who saw water in his dream and began leading everyone toward the mirage…Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way, maybe some traveler will wake you.” – Rumi, translated and read by Coleman Barks

“Be loyal to your daily practice keep working and keep knocking on the door, as you’ll remember as it is said in one of Rumi’s most pithy moments that the door we’re knocking on opens from the inside...These poems were spoken spontaneously.” - Coleman Barks

The generation of dreaming is the door opening from the inside, the spontaneous voice is the mysterious wisdom reminding us that at the moment when the way is clear, it is not we who enter.

_______

At an outdoor music festival, there is chaos. My wife and I gear up to perform together, though there is tension. As we sit and watch the festivities surrounding, we are as encased in a fog gloom. I forecast a no-show or gong show somewhere between us, usually from my end, the weak one. We see likely faces around, old friends at work on their instruments, in bands, invigorating the public eye. One of our friends, a burly Latin man sits at our spot with us. I walk away, fading. I begin to overhear their conversation. “He’s unwilling to learn from any classical training…” In my high paranoia, I only hear my depressed interpretation. I wallow in self-pity before confronting my love. She is already up on stage, interviewed in the drinkable light, interred in a media pandemic. Defeated, I find our Latin friend, and talk about my troubles. He is extremely accepting and friendly. I am comforted by his freewill offerings of friendship in numerous forms as he helps me overcome my difficulties. I become excited again to play purely improvisational music. Our music is from the spontaneous breath of the heart, an instantaneous intuitive wresting of the mind from earthly clamor. My love sits fixated, unwilling to go about her interview smoothly, she points me out in the crowd. Soon I am onstage. She holds me up, a flamingo above the shallow water, with a stilt leg, barely seen in the shimmering gold seascape horizon.

______ 

Performing
"In general, to dream of performing means you have been dishonest, with others or yourself. If it's a pleasant dream, lying has worked in your favour, but it could have bad consequences. This is also a common dream of performers who are 'practicing' a routine in their sleep." (iDream)

Stage
"If you dream of being onstage, you crave more attention and drama in your life. Good times are coming, but you will have to work hard to get there." (iDream)

In light of the Sama'a or the Sufi practice of listening to supernal harmonies through various meditative means, mostly through music and poetry, the practice of turning the ear to hear the inborn harmonics of spirit, i.e. listening to the one listening, may be an antidote to the psychological sufferings of the performing artist.

______

whose secret existence frightens no one
...instantaneous
...insignificant
yet to always be present,
in the moment,
never born nor witnessed by any thing manifest,
whispering from a most minute creation,
a passing glut,
forgotten by the entire visible universe,
only to return through a remembering

heard in voiceless rhythm,
to create from nothing!
an identity beyond the mimicking mold,
shaped by more hands.

- excerpt from "shaped by more hands"

Borges and The Ancestral Mirror of World Literacy

"Childhood passed away and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged, or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep some dream beguiles and suddenly I know I’m dreaming, then I think: this is a dream, a pure diversion of my will and now that I have unlimited power I am going to cause a tiger.

Oh incompetence, my dreams never manage to breed forth a longed for beast.”

[From “Dreamtigers”]

Narrator

"Borges dream world extended from the house in Palermo to the city around it and out into the endless continuity of the pampas. Here in the open country he discovered another aspect of Argentina’s mythology. The land where his ancestors had fought, the vast sky and the gauchos..." 

From “Jorge Luis Borges: The Mirror Man” 

_______

The dark forest leads under a storm-cast flood of opaque black cloud above the dimly lit cabin, barely in sight. Leaves, burnt by the frozen winds crumple with delicacy under our unforgiving step. Sense-deprived, we share the hollow bitterness of the cold mystery ahead. With Mexican friends, we enter the home of the recluse. Maps of Metis land and the intriguing sizzle of wild game invite us onto the weathered upholstery of inspired comfort. Indrawn, yet tempting, the host’s gaze is untamed, always welcoming. As friends and I sit around the country table, the food begins with due presentation, decadent meats and thick bean dishes melt in a haze of tantalizing scents. Conversation ensues. Drink follows. I’m ridiculed for my lack of Spanish. Dejected, I comb the ghastly wilderness, alone under the silent, new moon. Pitch darkness swallows me in a mutual fight with my emotional vacuum, self-trust extinguished with each step upon the unknown forest ground. I walk until dawn. On my own, I know the comfort of the empty sky, the abandoned railways, and graffiti concrete beside shallow streams. All are mere steps towards the final return, to where I used to be.

_______

Dark

"A dream of the dark is never a good aspected omen as after such a dream you are in danger of losing control of your temper and causing yourself a lot of hardships and losses. If you dream that dark is falling while you are traveling it is an ill omen for any business you try to conduct unless the journey is finished before it gets dark." (iDream)

_______

I revere my Jewish ancestors over the Hebrew G-D,
that is to say:
the personal history and presence of my ancestors are closer to me in bond
and in the formation of my living human identity
than are the laws prescribed in Hebrew society,
for we are of a greater human community

- excerpt from "Jewish ancestors"