219. UNIVERSAL MUSIC

From the Archives
(May 2006) This just in:

The poet Muriel Rukeyser said the universe is composed of stories, not of atoms. The physicist Werner Heisenberg, on the other hand, declared that the universe is made of music, not of matter. And we believe that if you habitually expose yourself to toxic stories and music, you could wind up living in the wrong universe, where it’s impossible to become the gorgeous genius you were born to be. That’s why we implore you to nourish yourself with delicious, nutritious tales and tunes that inspire you to exercise your willpower for your highest good.

Astrologer Caroline Casey offers an apt metaphor to illustrate how crucial it is for us to hear and read good stories. She notes that if we don’t have enough of the normal, healthy kind of iodine in our bodies, we absorb radioactive iodine, which has entered the food chain through nuclear test explosions conducted in the atmosphere. Similarly, unless we fill ourselves up with stories that invigorate us, we’re more susceptible to sopping up the poisonous, degenerative narratives.

The preceding oracle comes from Rob Breszney’s new book PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

132. MIND THE GAP

From the Archives

(August 2005) Writer’s Almanac features the following:

REUNION
by Amber Coverdale Sumrall

In your old pickup we drive the length of the island looking for
blackberries and trails that lead to the lighthouse, tell stories
about our six cats, the ones we divided when I left. I took your
favorites, the ones that were mine before we met. Your fifth
marriage is faltering. I am falling in love for the third time since
we separated. All you want to do is fish in your father's rowboat,
build a small cabin on five acres of land. Beyond right now,
I don't know what I want. Somewhere on Orcas another woman
dreams of you, waits for you to enter her life.

We smoke from your well-seasoned pipe, nervous as new
lovers. Those last months I refused to get high with you; we
always fought afterward. I remember why I loved you and why,
after ten years, I left. The reasons blend together, rise with the
smoke and dissipate. You ask me to tell you why, once again.
Each time the story is different, a work in progress. Days pass
in one afternoon. Is there still a chance, you ask.

We smile at one another, our defenses down. No one knows
us better. At the trailhead you pick purple flowers, hand
them to me, suddenly shy. I trip over exposed roots as we walk,
instinctively take your outstretched hand then let it go. In the
lagoon a pair of herons dance for one another, lowering their
long necks in courtship. Hidden behind boulders, we watch in
silence until the birds lift and disappear beyond the lighthouse.
There is always a chance, I say.

I like a few images here, but those exposed roots are more than a little obvious. Ditto instinctively taking his hand.

I have a question though. Can someone tell me exactly what makes this thing a poem because it sure strikes me as three paragraphs of straight narrative. She’s telling a story and makes no use of the line breaks, which are, uh, a basic tool that poets use to further or create meaning. What's gained by using this form as opposed to a paragraph?

The poet may have used another format if she’d read Tuesday’s New York Times article about poet August Kleinzahler, who said “Most poets are shiftless, no account fools.”

(Actually, I believe it was this same poet who publicly criticized Garrison Keillor, the publisher of said Writer’s Almanac, for his middlebrow tastes in verse. Hmmm. It's all making sense now....)

Anyway, here’s my favorite Kleinzahler line: “If you’re a poet, you’ve earned the right to blow off whoever you want.”

(Very fortunate indeed that the New York Times did not drop that second three-letter word while typesetting this line.)

And now, a portion of the Kleinzahler poem “On Waking in a Room and Not Knowing Where One Is”—a poem that does make use of end stops:

In a moment or two you will know
exactly where you are,
on which side of the door,
your wallet, your shoes,
and what today you’ll have to do.
Cities each have a kind of light,
a color even,
or set of undertones
determined by the river or hills
as well as by the stone
of their countless buildings.
I cannot yet recall what city this is I’m in.
It must be close to dawn.

Have been thinking about a couple of things today. First, there’s this argument that we should downgrade Pluto to the status of icy sphere and admit that we were mistaken when we declared it a planet. Does this mean that we can downgrade, oh, idiots like GWB to low-wattage shrubbery and admit that we never should have elected (well) him president too?

I’m in favor of that, but worry that too many of us prefer a bobble-headed jingoistic cowboy for a prez.

(Guess I’ve ranted about that enough though for now though, huh?)

Rob Breszny refers to people whose “good intentions get derailed by modest challenges” as people who suffer from Intention Deficit Disorder. His brother, a realtor, frequently encounters IDD people who “act as if they really want to buy or sell a house, but then never get past the first few fledgling steps toward that end.”

My recent actions surrounding reimbursement of my new bifocal (sob) expenses fall into this category. See I requested the paperwork I need to obtain reimbursement from my vision insurance plan right after I got my glasses. No reply from the benefits office after a few days, so I surfed their site again but still couldn’t find the forms online. Left another voice-mail message, then got busy with deadlines and took a few days off. So now here I sit staring at my receipt, which has been sitting on my desk for over 2 weeks now waiting for me to file it.

The other thing on my mind is the Pacific NW (which I’m still willing to believe I can visit in November, even though financing a car for my mother will probably mean that I can no longer afford the trip).

I love the Pacific NW and am concerned about the news that unusual weather patterns have disrupted the marine ecosystem all the way from CA to BC this year. And scientists don’t know why. Water temperatures are higher than normal, so fish catches are low. Unusual wind conditions have resulted in very little plankton, so dead birds litter the beaches at 4 times the usual rate in some areas.

“The bottom has fallen out of the coastal food chain, and there’s just not enough food out there,” says Julia Parrish (UWA seabird ecologist).

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh. I plan to scream at the first SUV driver I see on my lunch break today, but know this means absofuckinglutely nothing. And the measly funds I donate to preserve the place are no match for a president who's loosening the few protections that were in place.

So what exactly do folks believe will happen when the fish and birds die? That we’ll be so preoccupied with our Nintendos or some computer-generated cartoon animals that we’ll fail to notice that the real thing is gone?

I want to go to Whidbey Island and hear the owls. I want to smell Douglas firs. Soon.

126. REPEAT AFTER ME: DESPAIR IS LAZY

From the Archives

(July 2005) I told myself on the way into work today that I will post a blog entry even if it causes me to miss a deadline. I like stepping back for a few minutes to ponder my life instead of just living on frantic autopilot but, right now, life is interfering with my ability to contemplate at all.

I returned to town last week, but have been so slammed with commitments ever since that I’ve barely written anything. This is exactly what I want to change in my life.

I wrote earlier about Rob Brezsny’s book Pronoia , of which one reviewer wrote:

Human beings are selfish, small-minded, violence-prone savages; civilization is a blight on the earth; the rising tide of chaos that surrounds us on all sides ensures that everything's going to fall apart any day now. Right? Wrong, says Rob Brezsny. In fact, evil is boring. Cynicism is stupid. Despair is lazy. The truth is that the universe is inherently friendly. Life is a sublime game created for our amusement and illumination, and it always gives us exactly what we need, exactly when we need it.

But Brezsny's buoyant perspective is not rooted in denial. On the contrary, he builds a case for a cagey optimism that does not require a repression of difficulty but rather seeks a vigorous engagement with it.

Brezsny's rowdy and erudite astrology column, Free Will Astrology, has been the most widely syndicated feature in North America's alternative newsweeklies for years. In this book, he unfurls the fullness of the subversive compassion that underlies the column.

Life is created for our amusement? I believe that the earth is, if anything, indifferent to humans and that, frankly, it really ought to be trying to actively get rid of us before we completely destroy it. So no, I don’t believe that the Earth exists for our amusement. I do find illumination in nature, however.

Of course, Rob was probably saying that the purpose of our lives, which exist in nature, is illumination—which nature can provide. If that’s the case, then I’m down with him.

Relationships, connection, illumination, creation, insight really do seem to be all that matter in the end, and everything else is just fluff that will float away like so many dandelion blooms when we come face to face with our core selves or the cold hard hand of death or fatal illness.

MORE FROM PRONOIA

”If you bring forth the genius within you," said Jesus in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, "it will free you. If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy you." Is there any aspect of the genius within you that you're not bringing forth? If so, what can you do to change that?

I’m trying, trying, trying to bring forth the genius within me and to get back to a place where I can write and make art and have a family and still pay my bills. There MUST be a way!

Meanwhile, here’s another of Rob’s Sacred Advertisements:

You're a star—and so am I. I'm a genius—and so are you. Your success encourages my brilliance, and my charisma enhances your power. Your victory doesn't require my defeat, and vice versa. Those are the rules in the New World—quite unlike the rules in the Old World, where zero-sum games are the norm, and only one of us can win each time we play. In the New World, you don't have to play down or apologize for your prowess, because you love it when other people shine. You exult in your own excellence without regarding it as a sign of inherent superiority. As you ripen more and more of your latent aptitude, you inspire the rest of us to claim our own idiosyncratic magnificence.

also

Even if you're an intellectual atheist who doesn't believe in mysteries you can't see, I encourage you to make Artemis your ally. The goddess of wild places, she asks you to believe that the best place to rest and recharge is not a luxurious spa where all your needs are attended to, but rather a lush wilderness deep in the middle of nowhere. Artemis loves the animals, and she loves the animal in you. She arouses your instinctual fertility, which may fill you with a kind of longing that awakens your creativity. A fierce nurturer, she feeds your soul by stirring your sense of adventure. She unleashes the wild woman within you, even if you're a man.

and

At the heart of the pronoiac way of life is an apparent conundrum: You can have anything you want if you'll just ask for it in an unselfish way. The trick to making this work is to locate where your deepest ambition coincides with the greatest gift you have to give. Figure out exactly how the universe, by providing you with abundance, can improve the lot of everyone whose life you touch. Seek the fulfillment of your fondest desires in such a way that you become a fount of blessings.

BEST-OF SPAM: bark, you maybe need ittt

LISTENING TO: Sibelius, the Swan of Tuonela, Op. 22, No. 3, Andante moto sostenuto