Spinning Tales, It’s in our Bones

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Lisel Mueller, poetry, stories, story-telling, Why We Tell stories, why we write, writing

Illustration by James Gurney

Story-telling is in our bones. It rises through us like sap through roots and leaves into the air. It began when galaxies spun star-dust into the atoms that spin still through our bodies, reminding us that the stories of our births go back eons and stretch far away into a future we are spinning still.

The poem below by Lisel Mueller says it all, and inspired this post.

Why We Tell Stories

I
Because we used to have leaves
and on damp days
our muscles feel a tug,
painful now, from when roots
pulled us into the ground

and because our children believe
they can fly, an instinct retained
from when the bones in our arms
were shaped like zithers and broke
neatly under their feathers

and because before we had lungs
we knew how far it was to the bottom
as we floated open-eyed
like painted scarves through the scenery
of dreams, and because we awakened

and learned to speak

2
We sat by the fire in our caves,
and because we were poor, we made up a tale
about a treasure mountain
that would open only for us

and because we were always defeated,
we invented impossible riddles
only we could solve,
monsters only we could kill,
women who could love no one else
and because we had survived
sisters and brothers, daughters and sons,
we discovered bones that rose
from the dark earth and sang
as white birds in the trees

3
Because the story of our life
becomes our life

Because each of us tells
the same story
but tells it differently

and none of us tells it
the same way twice

Because grandmothers looking like spiders
want to enchant the children
and grandfathers need to convince us
what happened happened because of them

and though we listen only
haphazardly, with one ear,
we will begin our story
with the word and …

Lisel Mueller, Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. (LSU Press October 1, 1996)

Poetry Making and the Art of Awe

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Awe, creative process, creativity, Deborah J. Brasket, Field Notes From Within, imagination, poem, poetry, Poetry-making, revision, wonder

“Spirit of the Night”, 1879, John Atkinson Grimshaw

I’ve been working on a poem I began here on this blog. It is a process, a gentle undoing and reweaving. An opening and letting go.

Recently a confluence of events inspired me to write a new ending. First I read an article on the importance of helping children discover a sense of awe and how beneficial that is, making us more curious, more humble and altruistic. Taking them on nature walks was one way it suggested.

Then only days after I learned about my 9-year old granddaughter’s startling discovery that Santa isn’t real. It was a blow to her, although she had begged to know the truth. What about the Easter Bunny? she asked. Horror upon horrors. The Tooth Fairy? she cried in alarm. Even the Elf on a Shelf, alas, poor dear.

I shared her pain. It seems only yesterday I took her for a walk in the meadow behind our home after it had rained the night before. We were searching for toadstools to see if fairies might still be sheltering beneath them. We found patches of bright green moss and ran our fingers along the soft furry carpet knowing how fairies like to danced there in moonlight. We imagined them wearing the silvery, pearl-studded gowns made from the spider webs glittering with raindrops we found nearby.

Why does the mind devise such dreamy comparisons? What is its purpose? To inculcate the capacity to marvel? To help us see beyond the ordinary sense of things (moss, toadstools) to their vast potential? To encourage us to see the fractal similarities between disparate things? There is something important and necessary in such devising. It feeds the soul by giving free rein to the imagination. It helps us to see beyond the surface of things, to look for the invisible within the seen, and inspires us to create our own works of wonders.

To marvel at a tree, to find awe in it, we must see it with new eyes. It must come alive in our minds. We must see the sap flowing upward beneath the bark from root to leaves. We must see the dark labyrinth of gnarled roots below the ground. We must hear the whisper of voices flowing through the neural-like network of fungi as one tree communes with another. We must see autumn leaves like high-wire dancers letting go of all they’ve ever known so they can twirl for one endless moment in the air before falling gently on their sleeping sisters. All of this is true, scientifically speaking. None of it is false.

I wrote the poem Field Notes from Within as if I was a student of physiology wandering through the fields of my own body, looking for those awesome wonders within, noting how well the part serves the whole. Just as we might when taking a child into the forest as that article suggested to discover for herself a sense of wonder in the world that envelopes and sustains us.

What could be more awe-inspiring than the human body? Than a beating heart? Than the twirling atoms that comprise the very substance of all that exists? We, ourselves, are a marvel.

I’ve been searching for a way to end my poem, to perhaps make it more comprehensible to the reader. Do I end it as I did the first time, with “dervishes of devotion“? Or do I add clarity to that as I did in the second re-making? Is doing so like painting a second tail on a dragon, a redundant addition? Or does doing so make its eyes come alive and breath fire?

I do not know. But here is my latest trial and error. We’ll let it sit a moment and see.

I don’t know when this poem will ever be finished.

And that’s the marvel of every living thing that longs to be.

Field Notes from Within

My heart is a staunch defender of all
I am, beating with relentless passion
the wherewithal of my being.

My bowels are alchemists skilled in
diplomacy, sifting silver from dross
passing peacefully away.

My cells are seeds of a pomegranate,
deftly designed for simple pleasures,
lushly dense and sweetly sated.

My atoms are ballerinas, twirling
on ecstatic toes, arms flung wide,
faces like suns, dervishes of devotion.

Marvelous is the kingdom within and
without all things. Marvelous the Mind
that designs such things and marvels.

by Deborah J. Brasket, Revised December 2021

Field Notes From Within, Take Two

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body, creative process, creativity, Deborah J. Brasket, Field Notes From Within, I AM, identity, Metaphysics, personal, poem, poetry, revision, writing process

by Odilon Redon, 1904

I’ve revised the poem I posted yesterday. I think this version better captures the heart of it. Let me know what you think.

Field Notes From Within

Our heart is a staunch defender of all

we are, beating with relentless passion

the wherewithal of our being.

Our bowels are alchemists skilled in

diplomacy, sifting silver from dross

passing peacefully away.

Our cells are seeds of pomegranates,

deftly designed for simple pleasures,

lushly dense and sweetly sated.

Our atoms are ballerinas, twirling

on ecstatic toes, arms flung wide,

faces like suns, dervishes of devotion.

Our body is like a tree full of leaves,

bark, sap, lichen—tiny worlds, seemingly

separate. Yet called to serve one

great and common purpose—I Am

–by Deborah J. Brasket (2021 – revised)

Dervishes of Devotion, A Poem

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Deborah J. Brasket, inspiration, poem, poetry, writing

Detail from Edgar Degas painting

Field Notes from Within

My heart is a staunch defender of all
I am, beating with relentless passion
the wherewithal of my being.

My bowels are alchemists skilled in
diplomacy, sifting silver from dross
passing peacefully away.

My cells are seeds of a pomegranate,
deftly designed for simple pleasures,
lushly dense and sweetly sated.

My atoms are ballerinas, twirling
on ecstatic toes, arms flung wide,
faces like suns, dervishes of devotion.

by Deborah J. Brasket, 2021

I’ve revised this poem to better capture the heart of it, if you’d like to take a look and let me know what you think:

Field Notes From Within, Take Two

Wet, Raw, Unfinished

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Aging, Instructions for the Journey, Pat Schneider, poem, poetry, renewal, self, transformation, unfolding

Instructions for the Journey

The self you leave behind
is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don’t grieve for it.
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished
self, the one you are becoming.
The world, too, sheds its skin:
politicians, cataclysms, ordinary days.
It’s easy to lose this tenderly
unfolding moment. Look for it
as if it were the first green blade
after a long winter. Listen for it
as if it were the first clear tone
in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.

And if all that fails,
wash your own dishes.
Rinse them.
Stand in your kitchen at your sink.
Let cold water run between your fingers.
Feel it.

By Pat Schneider

This poem speaks to me. The older I become in years, the rawer and newer I feel, the more unfinished. The more expansive. As if there never will be an end to me, and I will ever be unfolding in some time out of mind, or mind out of time.

Yes, cold water running between my fingers.
I’m like that.
The cold, the water, the fingers.
The wet, raw, feel of it all.
Just like that.

Brimless Being, A Poem

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Being, discovery, fulfillment, inspiration, Metaphysics, poem, poetry, self realization, spirituality

Photo by Katy Silberg – Creative Common

Brimless Being

Sharp edges, sharp endings, things
that shatter like teacups on tiled floors,
hurt feelings, resentments, things that
bind like too-tight shoes. Let them go.

All that doesn’t fit hand in glove,
The not-me’s, not-us, the no’s and
nevers, let it all go. It never was nor is.
These negations of the positive, like

The negatives of photographs, or
shadows of trees, are what trail
behind and never touches,
never stains. Pay it no mind.

It will be what it will be when
looking askance, outside ourselves.
We’ll never find what’s real there.
Instead, let all sharp edges and endings

Dissolve into such lush spaciousness
that every falling cup is caught
with soft hands. And filled to the brim
with brimless being.

By Deborah J. Brasket, October 2021

The Joy of Sailing in Song, Poetry & Art

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art, Joy, music, poetry, sailing, sea, songs, summer, Winslow Homer

I came across this much beloved sailing poem recently, which captures so beautifully and vividly my own exuberant experiences at sea aboard La Gitana. I’ve paired it with paintings by the “Poet of the Sea” Winslow Homer, along with some classic sailing songs: Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” and Loggins and Messina’s “Vahevala,” which includes some beautiful sailing video as well as some amazing guitar, flute, and violin riffs.

There’s noting that captures the joy of summer more than sailing.

Sea Fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
A gray mist on the sea’s face and gray dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.
I must down to the seas to the vagrant gypsy life.
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And quiet sleep and sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

by John Edward Masefield (English poet, writer 1878-1967)

Poem: A Prodigal Turns Prophet

Tags

art, enlightenment, Homelessness, Oneness, poem, poetry, prophet, spirituality, Tao, The Prodigal Son, transformation, Zen

Three summers I spent by the river in the heat of a homeless camp. (Having left my father’s home, which was my home, though I knew it not.)

Three summers of night terrors howling through my tent as the stars threw down their furious spears. (Having left my mother’s home, which was my home, though I knew it not.)

Three summers trolling the streets in blistered feet while eyes turned sideways at my glance. (Having lost all I loved, which loved me still, though I knew it not.)

As I walked the flesh melted from my bones, my teeth melted from my mouth. My thoughts dried up and blew away. Past and present dried up and blew away.

Nothing was left behind to claim a name, to know what I was or wasn’t.

Empty, careless and carefree, I danced along the street like a wind-tossed leaf, like a moon-mad fool, marveling at how all I saw danced with me.

Now my tent is my temple and the river flowing past me washes through me—mother and father and all I love and always was and ever will be.

Now as I walk the streets flowers grow at my feet, and every eye turned toward me is mine.

By Deborah J. Brasket

The story of the Prodigal is a favorite found in almost every faith because it tells deep truths we all recognize. We are all prodigals in some ways, whether living homeless on the streets or in the home of our dreams, if we have not, as this Prodigal has, returned home to our true self. If we have not gone through the weaning process that strips us of all we never were and gives back to us all we are, the magnificence of our oneness with the All-in-all.

This poem, too, is influenced by the tales of the old Zen Masters, relating their journey to enlightenment, a process known as “losing and losing.” Often they began their journey in abject poverty. Chuang Tzu describes how he was able to free himself from the limitations of the finite mind and gain an insight into his innermost being: First freeing himself from the concerns of the world, then from all externalities, from gain and loss, right and wrong, past and present. Finally he was freed from his own existence, from birth and death, I and Other. He sees the One and becomes part of the One. At that point, he was able again to enter again into the world of men, but this time with “bliss-bestowing hands.”

The photo above is one I took at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. I wrote a blog post about that visit called “Fascinating Faces, Tao and the Arts.” I wrote: “Some works of art speak to you on a level that is hard to define. You gaze and are drawn inward. Something in you identifies with what you see there. It’s not outside, it’s in here. It was there before you saw it, and the seeing is just a reminder of its presence.” I felt an especial affinity with this face.

Three by Langston Hughs on Juneteenth

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America, Black, civil rights, home of the free, Juneteenth, Langston Hughs, Liberation, poetry

Thomas Hart Benton, 1945

The Negro Speaks of Rivers

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

From Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

. . . . .

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Mother to Son

Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It’s had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor—
Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now—
For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.

Under the Midnight Blues Painting by Colin Bootman

In Defense of Joy

Tags

beauty, delight, inspiration, Jack Gilbert, Joy, life, Philosophy, poetry, spirituality, Zen

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert, from “A Brief for the Defense“

The title of this poem is so interesting. How sometimes we feel we must defend our pleasures, our moments of delight, in the face of so much suffering in the world.

Finding the balance between wanting to save the world (as if I could) and wanting to lay all that aside and just savor it while I can, has been a lasting theme in my life.

More and more I’m tending toward the latter.

My favorite treatise on the subject is the tale of the Zen monk being chased over a cliff by a tiger. He grabs hold of a vine to keep from falling, while a hungry alligator snaps at his heels in the river below. Just then, he spies a juicy red strawberry hanging nearby. He reaches out with one hand to pop it into his mouth.

“Oh, so delicious!” he sighs.

As do I.