Blogging and “The Accident of Touching”

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Blog, Blogging, Jacque Lacan, online community, Online Writing, poetry, Shikibu Murasaki, touching and being touched, writing

“The accident of touching / is so rare! Sometimes / I pause my hand on purpose / and hope to find yours there.”

These are the last lines of a poem I wrote long ago.

But I realize now that’s what this blog is all about, a way of “pausing my hand on purpose,” and hoping to find you there.

It’s all about touching, isn’t it? Touching others with our lives, our insights and understanding, our memories and dreams, our poetry and art. Blogging meets this basic human need—to touch others and be touched in return.

We’ve all heard how physical touching is essential to human health and happiness. They say people can shrivel up and die for want of being touched or having someone to touch. A simple pat on the shoulder, a hug, a hand squeeze can make all the difference. Merely having a pet, they say, saves lives.

But there’s a basic human need for another kind of touching—from the inside out. Touching others with what means the most to us, our deepest responses to the world around us. Keeping those unspoken, unexpressed, can be as withering as being untouched physically. Which is why, perhaps, so many writers and artists will give their work away for free if need be, just to allow what’s inside out into the world where it can touch others, and “evoke responses.”

“The function of language is not to inform but to evoke . . . responses.”  – Jacques Lacan

It’s why, perhaps, art for art’s sake is a need for some. Art not to please others, but to evoke a response. To share something essential with others that must not go unspoken, unheard.

“Again and again something in one’s own life, or in the life around one, will seem so important that one cannot bear to let it pass into oblivion.

There must never come a time, the writer feels, when people do not know about this.”

Shikibu Murasaki, Tale of Genji (978 – 1014 AD)

Blogging is like those conversations we have in the wee hours of the morning, when the party is over and all have left except for those few lingering souls who find themselves opening up to each other in ways they could never do when meeting on the street or over dinner. Those 3 AM conversations, you know.

That’s how blogging often is done too, late at night when we can’t sleep, or after we’ve put our novel to bed, or when we wake early and are seeking the company of other early risers, or those living half-way round the world from us.

In person, we rarely have time to bare our souls this way in such depth without interruption. But here we can do it without disturbing anyone’s sleep or taking them away from their work or families.

We can share our thoughts and evoke responses in our own time, and others can respond in the same way, with a quick “like” or a longer comment. And we can respond in return.

For loners or social introverts like myself, it’s a way of reaching out to others that feels more comfortable than the spoken word. I feel I may be getting “the best” of them in those wee hour revelations, as they are getting the best I have to offer, a side of myself I seldom share apart from the written page.

It’s the reciprocity that I find so meaningful. Touching and being touched in return.

Here’s the rest of that poem I wrote so long ago, unshared, until today.

The Accident of Touching

Once, in some wild gesture,
Some random fancy
I found my hand stretched out,
Open and unprotected.
There, your hand paused,
Palm moist and heavy
Yet warm and lively.
Before I thought to clasp it
The moment passed and
You were gone.

Now, I watch hands
As they quickly dart and
Never cease to move.
The accident of touching
Is so rare! Sometimes
I pause my hand on purpose
And hope to find yours there.

by Deborah J. Brasket

More of my posts on blogging:

Blogging as Virtual Love-Making, and the Science Behind It

Is Blogging Orgasmic?  More on the Science of Sharing

More of my poetry:

The Geometry and Geography of Love

A Scattering of Rocks – Zen in the Garden of Eden

Hot Hills in Summer Heat

Walking Among Flowers

Photos & Poetry to Celebrate Earth Day

Tags

Earth Day, Gerald Manley Hopkins, inspiration, Nature, photography, poetry, Theodore Roethke, Thomas Merton

From “The Shape of Fire” by Theodore Roethke

To have the whole air!—
The light, the full sun
Coming down on the flowerheads,
The tendrils turning slowly,
A slow snail-lifting, liquescent;
To be by the rose
Rising slowly out of its bed,
Still as a child in its first loneliness;
To see cyclamen veins become clearer in early sunlight,
And mist lifting out of the brown cat-tails;
To stare into the after-light, the glitter left on the lake’s surface,
When the sun has fallen behind a wooded island;
To follow the drops sliding from a lifted oar,
Held up, while the rower breathes, and the small boat drifts quietly shoreward;
To know that light falls and fills, often without our knowing,
As an opaque vase fills to the brim from a quick pouring,
Fills and trembles at the edge yet does not flow over,
Still holding and feeding the stem of the contained flower.

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

O Sweet Irrational Worship by Thomas Merton

Wind and a bobwhite
And the afternoon sun.

By ceasing to question the sun
I have become light,

Bird and wind.

My leaves sing.

I am earth, earth

All these lighted things
Grow from my heart.

A tall, spare pine
Stands like the initial of my first
Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,
When I was on fire
When this valley was
Made out of fresh air
You spoke my name
In naming Your silence:
O sweet, irrational worship!

I am earth, earth

My heart’s love
Bursts with hay and flowers.
I am a lake of blue air
In which my own appointed place
Field and valley
Stand reflected.

I am earth, earth

Out of my grass heart
Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds
His foolish worship.

The Green Fuse that Drives the Flowers

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California, green fuse, inspiration, Nature, nature walk, oak trees, photography, spring flowers

The green fuse that Dylan Thomas wrote about in “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” is what drove my walk on Easter morning through the green wonderland behind our home.

All the rain we’ve been having here in California after the long drought has stirred those life forces, painted the oak trees with mosses, covered them with the rich pollen-full blossoms, created rivers of tall grasses to wade through, stirred wild flowers into riotous bloom, created soft green beds for deer to dream in. Lush landscapes for my eye and feet to roam and know how blessed I am.

Travelers on a Cosmic Journey

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cosmic, cosmic journey, inspiration, journey, life, life journey, poetry, spirituality, travel, travelers

By Odilon Redon

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust,
swirling and dancing in the eddies and
whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal.
We have stopped for a moment to encounter
each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is
a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis
in eternity.

—By Paulo Coelho

Fortunately, some are born with spiritual
immune systems that sooner or later give
rejection to the illusory worldview grafted
upon them from birth through social
conditioning. They begin sensing that
something is amiss, and start looking
for answers. Inner knowledge and
anomalous outer experiences show
them a side of reality others are oblivious to,
and so begins the journey of awakening.
Each step of the journey is made by
following the heart instead of the crowd,
and by choosing knowledge over
veils of ignorance.

—By Henri Bergson

Evolution Entwined with Love

Tags

Brian Swimme, Cosmogenisis, death, emergence, Evolution, Immortality, inspiration, Love, Philosophy, Pierre Teilhard, Science, spirtiuality, universe

Paul Bates Photography

I like to think this all has meaning, this grand scope of things from the birth of stars to the greening of earth to the emergence of mankind to me. And even beyond me. To whatever lies beyond my passing or circles around me like a cocoon, just out of reach or past memory. What emerges next? I like to think there’s “more to us than time allows to be,” as I wrote in Epitaph for a Tombstone. That “exploring infinity” is not just a real option, but a certainty.

That’s why this quote about philosopher-scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin resonates with me.

For Teilhard, development through time is the primary revelation. It is the fundamental source of meaning in the universe. By development he means the cosmic and organic evolution as discovered by scientists, but he includes his conviction that the process of evolution is entwined with the process of love, an idea he attempts to capture in his neologism, ‘amorization.’

Teilhard’s thinking is that a complete annihilation at death cannot be the case because in order for humans to embrace the evolutionary challenges, they must have the sense that there is a way forward, that the future is open. If humans came to regard death as their end, they could still find value in caring for their families and others in need, certainly, but it would be nothing like what they would experience were they convinced their actions had eternal significance.

In his later years, Teilhard’s deep concern became the activation of energy. He saw nihilism not as a moral mistake but as a cosmological dead end. His primary objection to the notion that the universe is meaningless is that such a conviction enervates humanity.

There you have it. Teilhard’s faith in the universe’s development leads to his sense of immortality. Teilhard felt humanity as a whole will one day achieve a deep conviction of immortality and this will be on the order of a major evolutionary achievement, along the lines of aerobic respiration or photosynthesis. It will lead to a massive influx of energy into the human adventure.

from Cosmogenisis, An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe by Brian Swimme

I love the idea that the process of evolution is entwined with love. How could it not be? All this budding forth, all these repeating patterns, all this superabundance of being bursting out so gloriously, endlessly.

I like to think that I and everyone I know is part of it, and essential to it, and that what brought us into being here and now will carry us forth to there and then, as it has already done every nanosecond of our lives.

Immortality. Eternity. Such lush words fraught with so many religious and spiritual connotations, we rear away from them—they seem too rare and precious to utter beyond a whisper. Yet, lush they remain. They fit right in to what we see all around us—the lushness of the Earth, of the universe, of each one of us, our bodies teeming with countless atoms and so much energy we could set the world afire is only we knew how to tap into it.

What is more rare and precious and mysterious than a single human being?

I like to think that this “deep conviction of immortality” that Teilhard likens to “a major evolutionary achievement” is well on its way. And that I’m part of it.

Joy Not Shared, Dies Young

Tags

Anne Sexton, flowering plum tree, inspiration, Joy, Nature, photography, poetry, Welcome Morning

A lovely reminder from Anne Sexton to share our joys–the simple pleasures of life. So I’m sharing with you her poem and these photos I took yesterday of our flowering plum tree. Enjoy!

Welcome Morning

There is joy
in all:
in the hair I brush each morning,
in the Cannon towel, newly washed,
that I rub my body with each morning,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry “hello there, Anne”
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn’t shared, I’ve heard,
dies young.

By Anne Sexton

Touching and Being Touched: The Rainforests of Costa Rica

Tags

Corcovado National Park, Costa Rica, Ficus trees, Nature, photography, rainforest, Sirena Ranger Station, spider monkeys, travel, wildlife

The presence of the world is precisely the presence of its flesh to my flesh.

–Maurice Merleau-Ponty, from The Visible and Invisible

This is precisely how I felt hiking through the rainforests of the Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica a few weeks ago. “The Lungs of the World” is what they call these forests, so vital to human life.

In one way I was just an intruder, a foreigner, a tourist, led by the gentle hand of our guide into an exotic world outside myself or anything I’d experienced before. In another way, it was like entering a vast green breathing world that embraced and pervaded me even as I embraced and pervaded it with my presence.

I was like a single thread weaving its way through this vast tapestry of trees, taking it in as it took me in. I walked beneath a broad canopy of leaves, trampling through layers of dank, damp leaves, and stepping carefully between gnarled roots that snaked up the trunks of trees. Weaving my way through this woven world and being enveloped by it at the same time: My lungs breathing in what its lungs released. My skin absorbing its moist breath. My scent mingling with its heady aroma: a wild herbal tea with hints of mint and moldy leaves, punctuated by sharp whiffs of piss from animals marking territory.

And all that awash in the sounds of the sea lapping its shores, and the ripples of rivers and streams that ran like veins through it, reflecting back images of itself.

I was entranced by the Ficus trees, these huge abstract sculptures, so elegantly shaped with their deeply fissured trunks and roots spreading like giant octopus arms. I loved to run my fingers over its rough texture splashed with paint. One giant Ficus root, like an elephant’s back, rose twice as high as me, so tall I could not see its top.

Often along the trail we would still, listening intently while gazing upward and around us for animal sightings. And sometimes we found them: Two ibis with their long thin beaks wading in a stream.

A toucan half-hidden among the palm fronds.

The slick backs of tapirs napping in shallow streams.

A thin green snake swallowing a fat toad.

And then there were the spider monkeys, so many swinging by their tails through the trees or quietly watching us with their big yellow-ringed eyes. As one such mama did so, her baby gleefully romped across her body as if it was a jungle-gym, recalling similar moments with my own youngsters so long ago, feeling that shared weight of motherhood. (I have the video but was unable to embed it here.)

I remember all this now as if a distant dream, the flesh of the rainforest impressing itself upon my flesh, touching me as I touched it. I remember too our indigenous guide Bolo, holding my hand as he helped me over some of the steeper trails and across rocky streams, pointing out different sights and setting up his telescope so I could see them better, cupping his mouth to imitate the sounds of birds and howler monkeys.

I remember how the heat and humidity weighed me down by the end of our hikes, how eager I was to reach the Sirena Ranger Station’s wide veranda, where we could sit and rest between hikes, and how the cooks piled our lunch plates so high with beans and rice and pork and plantains, I thought I’d never be able to eat it all. But I did.

I remember the rows of bunkbeds and their white mosquito nettings, so neat and tidy, and how I lay there in the dark, breathless nights listening to the sounds of the jungle.

Even as I left the rainforest for the sea and boat ride back to Drakes Bay, I still felt embedded in the world around me, still had the sense that I was its perceiving self, the part of the world that reflected back on itself.

This is true, even now as I recollect in tranquility those raw experiences, processing them and shaping them into images, into a language others will understand and draw upon to recreate their own images of similar experiences. Even now it all seems so rich and alive and vital, this shared experience of what it means to be human in a more-than-human world.

Costa Rica: A Gem Among a Trail of Tears

Tags

beauty, Central America, Costa Rica, democracy, Drakes Bay, ecotourism, Nature, Oso Peninsula, photography, travel

How did Costa Rica escape the fate of its neighbors?

How does this haven of democracy (devoid a standing army) survive, sounded as it is by the corrupt dictatorships, cruel cartels, and trails of emigrants fleeing the violence and exploitation of their native countries?

Why did the Spanish Conquistadors, European colonists, and US industrialists leave this piece of paradise in comparative peace?

Why are the massive ruins of ancient Mayan cities and temples not found here?

Why is Costa Rica the one country along this slender waist connecting two great continents that boasts a thriving tourist economy? Why is it considered one of the most biodiverse regions in the entire world?

None of the research I did before travelling here three weeks ago adequately answers these questions. But once I arrived I realized some mysteries could be savored without solving when basking in the beauty of the landscape and the generous hospitality of the gentle people who live here.

I travelled with my brother and sister-in-law, landing in the capital of San Jose and taking a small plane to Drakes Bay on the Osa Peninsula. The views from the plane of cloud-dappled mountaintops and turquoise-rimmed coastline were breathtaking.

Drakes Bay is a tiny remote village named for the famous captain who anchored here while provisioning for his voyages. The unpaved roads are rough and deeply rutted, the landscape a tangle of trees with occasional glimpses of the bay between, the air hot and heavy with humidity, wrapping everything in a warm, wet blanket.

The little house we rented had a stunning view of the bay, where we watched entranced as flocks of red-tailed Macaws flew over head and yellow parakeets bobbled among the branches of flowing bushes. As the hot night fell, music would flow from far below where people gathered for song and dance before the politicos took over, their ardent voices seeking votes. Elections were held the next day: democracy in action.

We spent three days exploring Drakes Bay and the surrounding countryside before wading through the waves to board a boat that would take us into the heart of this magnificent country, the Corcovado National Park. There we would spend the night at the Sirena Ranger Station and two days hiking through the rainforests. Our next adventure: to be continued.

Traveling Below the Border: Costa Rica, Ecotourism, and Politics

Tags

Central America, Costa Rica, democracy, immigration, Politics, tourism, travel, US foreign policy

Volcano Arenal, Costa Rica, by Arturo Sotillo

I’ll be traveling to Costa Rica tomorrow to spend two weeks exploring one of the most beautiful and biodiverse countries in the world. As well as the most stable democratic nation in Central America. I’ll also be doing research for a novel I’ve been writing about Central America in the turbulent 70s, when so many people were rising up to overthrow corrupt dictators propped up by the US.

What we see at the US southern border these days is so sad and disheartening. I fear it is the result of failed US foreign policy over the past two centuries in that part of the world, starting with the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Originally the policy was meant to stop further European colonization in the region. But eventually it led to treating our southern neighbors as “our backyard” to wield our power and influence and enrich our corporate interests at the expense of the people living there. Again and again we intervened in internal politics, propping us corrupt dictators who would allow us to syphon off the natural wealth and resources of those countries. We used our military to protect those dictators, who treated their own people as vassals to feed their greed and ambition.

It’s no wonder the people who rose up to fight against these dictators saw Capitalism as a great evil, since it served only the interests of the wealthy; and saw Communism, that promised to serve all the people, as a beacon of hope. Unfortunately, it turned out that the Communism they thought would help them was just another way to serve a different elite, the Party Leaders, who syphoned off the wealth for themselves, just as the Capitalists and Dictators had done.

It’s no wonder that over the decades a culture of authoritarianism and strong-arm tactics would lead to the rise of Cartels, and lead to people fleeing for their lives to what is seen as the promised land of freedom and opportunity in the North.

I write about some of this in my novel This Sea Within. Set in the 70s, it’s about a young idealistic woman from California who travels to a fictional country in Central America and falls in love with the rebel leader with his dream of democracy as he fights to overthrow the corrupt regime.

I can’t help wondering what Latin America would be like today if our foreign policy back then was more like it is today–to nurture and defend democracies around the world. If instead of treating our neighboring countries as “our backyard”–a rich, undeveloped resource to exploit, we had treated them as true neighbors in the pioneering spirit, helping them to prosper and grow, I doubt we’d be seeing the flood of immigrants at our southern border seeking refuge and a better life.

Perhaps we deserve this. Perhaps we’re reaping what was sown. Hopefully our new foreign policy with its emphasis on protecting democracy and human rights will eventually help people in those regions find the kind of stability and safety they need to remain where they are and prosper.

Costa Rica is one of the few countries below our border that managed to create and sustain a democracy during all those troubling times. Today it’s one the most peaceful and politically stable nation in the region. Eco-tourism is the fastest growing segment of its economy. I like to think the dollars I spend there will contribute to keeping this democracy stable and prosperous, as well as provide funds for continued ecological conservation. I’ll be back in two weeks with tons of photos (I hope) to share with you of this beautiful, richly biodiverse, country.

A Kind of Love: How the Cup Holds Tea

Tags

inspiration, Love, Pat Schneider, poetry, The Patience of Ordinary Things

I’ve been thinking about this poem ever since I found it on The Vale of the Soul-Making. The way ordinary objects around us are choreographed for our comfort and pleasure. How too often we take them for granted. Fail to appreciate these simple offerings, the way they bless our lives. How they are imbued with a kind of love. And how our days might be lightened and deepened if we took note of such things.

A simple thank you would do.

The Patience of Ordinary Things

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

—Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things,” Another River: New and Selected Poems. © Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005.

O Holy Night, What Stars Give Birth To

Tags

art, Birth, books, Christ, Christmas, inspiration, photography, rebirth, renewal, spirituality, starry night, travel, writing

Star_birth_in_Messier_83_(captured_by_the_Hubble_Space_Telescope)

“Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright.”

The single-most, salient symbol of Christmas, for me, is a shining star in the night sky.

It’s what wakened the shepherds and fell them to their knees, what mesmerized the Magi and led them across a wild desert with precious gifts in hand. It’s what shone above a humble dwelling, revealing a holy trinity–mother, father, child. It’s what revealed the Christ, a promise of hope, salvation, peace on earth, and goodwill toward all.

It’s what leads us each year away from our mundane, daily lives to a world full of wonder, magic, and mystery. It’s what drops us to our knees in recognition of the vastness and beauty of the universe, and our own humble and radiant place within it.

For me Christmas will forever be wrapped in the silence of a starry night, the background against which the beautiful pageantry and rituals and traditions of Christmas unfold.

All unite in igniting that sense of awe and wonder and delight, of humility and holiness:

The Christmas tree all aglow in the dark, pointing upward to the heavens.

The magical whimsy of that great gifter, Santa, driving his sleigh across a night full of stars.

The children tucked in their beds as their fondest wishes magically descend in the night to await the first light.

Whole streets full of houses ablaze in the night, inviting the gasps of wonder and delight in the young at heart.

Candles shining in a still, dark church as voices unite and rise in songs of joy and adoration.

All are mere reflections and whimsical mimicry of that first night of wonder so long ago. It’s what brought us, and still brings us, to our knees when we realize all that childlike wonder and delight, humility and awe, generosity and love and innocence, lies deeply embedded in each one of us.

It signifies a promise of hope, salvation, and wholeness. Of identity with out own Christ-like nature, our own unity with the divine.

We are that shining star in a dark night.

We are those humble shepherds and adoring Magi.

We are that infant cradled in the holy Trinity.

We are that promise of hope and salvation and holiness.

Christmas is the Christ, and a bright star in a dark night is what leads us to him, to our own humble rebirth full of awe and wonder: the recognition of the Christ in each of us.

May the peace and power and glory of the Christ be with you all this Christmas.

Walters, “The Adoration of the Shepherds”

From “Christmas throughout Christendom – The Christmas Tree”