The Moment

The soaring eagle, in yearning flight

Spends all its days to buy the far horizon

Though all broad flapping of its wings

Halts not the sun’s relentless course

Nor stays night’s final victory

Its bones will lie on some tomorrow’s hill

Grey, half hidden in the dingy turf

And rot beside the dead sheep’s corpse

But now the sky is blue, the white clouds pure

And from the dizzy height it sneers down

To where earth’s weighty crawlers plod

Blinking dull eyes in useless envy

The moment is victory, free of care

And all else but a dismal dream

A Howl From a Keyboard

I am giving birth. I am in labour. I am groaning and bathed in sweat.

I need helpers.

For too long I’ve submitted my novel, “Wake of the Raven,” to agents, only to have them tell me “they like it, but it’s not one for them.” Finally – I’m a slow learner – it dawned on me that these guys – few of whom have written anything worthwhile themselves – are really not very professional. A line of comment on a thousand hours of work? And such insolences as requests “not to offer the work to any other agent whilst we are considering it,” followed by anything up to two months to reply?

Enough. Hopefully, these guys are part of the old world of publishing that is now vanishing, where an author had to spend more time dancing to please them than he did writing.

So I decided to self-publish my first novel about three weeks ago, and started the whole business of final editing, which involves checking the spelling etc, and cleaning up all those horrid little plot details that don’t quite fit, those tricky little out of sequence bits and all the other stuff that I’d said I’d handle “later.” Plus of course I must select a publisher and design a cover.

I thought this would take about a week.

Three weeks of torment have passed, and more to come, for the more I do, the more I find still to do.

I am giving birth. I am in labour. I am groaning and bathed in sweat. I am in need.

I badly need and urgently request helpers to attend to my needs.

I need coffee, and at least six people to make it. Also sandwich makers who will make me nourishing little snacks that will be just what I want, but without asking annoying questions like “do you want mayo on this?” They must be telepathic, a minimum qualification, or they are likely to be answered with a blow on the head from the printer. A personal trainer – better; several – who will bring me my running gear, say wise things like “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” patiently deal with my bellows of “I’m too fucking busy!” and accompany me on brisk runs whilst carrying neat little pads to take notes on my thoughts. Another team of helpers must attend to the communications side, welcoming door-to-door salesmen with a baseball bat, answering the phone with cries of “what the hell do you want,” and paying those annoying bills that the mailman insists on giving to me. Bring your own money by the way; you can’t expect me to do your job for you.

Occasional relaxation is essential to success. My helpers must be willing to foot it from bar to bar, ensuring that a drink is always at my elbow and that the mobs of sightseers are sorted into the cute and the fuggly, and the latter kept at a kept at a safe distance. Dealing with big burly chuckers-out, crack dealers, Hell’s Angel’s etc will be their responsibility in the event that my frazzled self gets into a fight; my fragile genius must be respected even at the cost of your lives.

Alternatively, we can stay home, then I can continue to work whilst my helpers go out for six-packs and pizza, and some chicken wings and garlic bread would be nice too. Later, when we are all weary with this endless toil, the night shift can take over, and this class of helpers must be exceptionally skilled in the art of massage whilst making intelligent coversation, as I get these awful neck pains from crouching over the keyboard. Whilst I‘m not a demanding person, I must insist that cuteness is essential here, and other useful attributes would be the ownership of bunny costumes, skill in carrying drinks trays and familiarity with the art of twirling around a brass pole. As I’m an equal-opportunities employer I won’t discriminate here as to gender, but energy and endurance will be essential in all cases.

Now don’t be intimidated at being honoured with such an opportunity, but write out your qualifications below in detail, together with the hourly rate you expect to pay for participating in this act of creation.

I am a simple man, and my needs are not unreasonable. As I struggle with the pain of my final edit, surely I can expect this much of life?

Why Not?

The Clowns

      It’s the clowns who make the circus, not the guys who put up the tent.

      It’s the jugglers who throw the bright balls into the air, and catch them easily to throw them high again; it’s the shapely, smooth skinned girls in spangles and feathers, posing, one knee pushed dramatically forth as they extend an arm gracefully, pointing to where the wire bodied young men hurtle from one swinging trapeze to the next, summersaulting high above us in the narrow canvas heaven. It’s the leaping acrobats, cartwheeling across the sawdust where next a buckskinned man cracks a whip and commands the snarling tiger to leap from stool to stool.

      They make the circus, not the grumbling guys who put up the tent.

      One of our eagles has laid an egg, and now stands over it victorious, cawing to the world to bring meat to feed the coming chick.

http://www.xanga.com/The_Church_of_Fat

      So put your hand in your pocket, and do not explore the little hole through which you may scratch and post you findings in a blog, for we all have one, and don’t need to know.

      Instead draw out a few bucks and buy John’s book, for like me he has tired of submitting to agents, that loathsome crew of long dead zombies, whose maggot riddled corpses will not fall from their swivel chairs to the rat infested floors of their dingy offices, but instead hang on to a semblance of life as they send out polite little format letters of refusal, saying that the work of their betters is ‘interesting, but not for them,’ and suchlike dreary evasions.

      And he has self-published, and needs a pitifully small portion of your entertainment cash to applaud his juggling, and buy old dried crusts to raise the strength for more efforts.

      And I have demonstrated in a brief string of words how to go completely crimson-clad over the top.

Last night on AIM a learned Xanga colleague and I discussed questions of personal hygiene, especialy on behaviour in the shower. He gave his opinions convincingly in flowery language, but later a second friend more bluntly expressed different opinions.

I was very torn and confused between the two, but later remembered that Shakespear had once attempted to solve a similar question, so I opened a copy of his ‘Hamlet,’ which gave me the guidance that I reproduce below >>>>>>>>

To Pee Or Not To Pee

To pee, or not to pee – that is the question

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to step

Out of the shower all soapy and wet

Or say ‘fuck this, no one’s watching’

And peeing on the floor, save precious time

That could be spent in viewing porn

This question – and a whole bunch more –

That people bug me with, I wish I could

Ignore. To pee, to smile, to gush and escape

The dumb opinions of others. To pee: but there’s a catch

For in that quick relief what else may come?

When I have thus let my sloth reign

What farts may press from my relaxed ass

And in their unchecked haste blast out

Turds long and brown and hideous

That I must snatch up in dismay

And juggling them in panic to the shitter

Risk slipping on the tiles, and by 

So unwanted a fall, crush them to my

New-washed self, whilst through the door

My sister cries ‘aren’t you done yet?’

But that this thought has seized my mind

I would risk peeing in the shower

An untried pleasure, whose simple delight

No one I know will speak of

But rather do they glare, and loud insist

That only pigs pee in the shower

Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all

And thus the natural love of ease

Is screwed by the pale sneer of thought

And I do find I’ve lost the soap

And lost also in useless thought

Have peed unthinking in the shower

Due To….

Due to the dehydrating effect of the long, hot summer  I have on some evenings wandered around Toronto looking for some type of cool liquid suitable for relieving thirst

This has caused me to notice some of the crap that goes on in this city  and last night I thought of posting a blog about that crap

But that’s soooooooo negative, and just adds to the general whining that we all do from time to time, so instead I’ll post something positive  >>>>>>>>>>

Not by me, but by…….

‘Love That Which Is Within’, by Prem Rawat

I was driving recently in a place where there were mango trees, palm trees, and pine trees. And I started thinking, if somebody were to shape a mango tree so that it looked like a palm tree, would it change its nature? Would it start giving dates? No. You can try to change its appearance, but you cannot change its nature.

Yet, sometimes we think that if we can change our appearance, we will change our nature. We give ourselves labels: I’m a father, mother, son, doctor, lawyer. But who are we?

On one hand, we seem to have the potential to move mountains, go to the moon, create huge cities, and we try to alter nature. We seem to know so much about so many things. But when it comes to us, to our nature, we have no idea. Who are we?

I raise these questions because the answer, surprisingly enough, is beautiful. When we look for our truest nature, we will find that there is peace, understanding. There is the truest love.

Do you know that wherever you go, whatever you do, there is love in you, and there is hate in you? There is pain in you, and there is joy in you. Do not be under the misunderstanding that the love is in someone else. No, love is in you.

There are catalysts. Today, they spark love in you; tomorrow, they could spark hate in you. But when you are in pain, joy is really close. When you are confused, absolute clarity is not that far away. When you are lost, being found is very close. When you are suffering, relief is as close as it can be. And in this world, the one that we are looking for is always within us—not where we think, but inside.

Have you searched for that which has always been within you? You have searched outside, but have you searched inside? This is why my message is so different, because everybody points outside; I point inside. I say: what you need, you already have.

People want a magic formula. We have faster chariots, better forms of communication, big houses, but we still don’t have peace. And the request for peace has been there as long as there have been human beings. This is the accomplishment that has to happen. There has to be peace. No exceptions. No excuses. The time has come to stop making excuses.

This is where peace begins. It doesn’t begin with big buildings or with big government. Unrest begins with you, and peace begins with you, with every single human being on the face of this earth. It is not the palm trees that need peace; it is not the whales that need peace; it is not the North Pole that needs peace; and it is not the equator that needs peace. We, the human beings, we are the ones who need peace.

Search. Whatever it takes, find peace in your life. This is what’s important. If you cannot find peace, come to me. I can help. As one human being to another, one to one, I go to people and say, “If you need this, here it is.”

Understand your true nature. Understand what this life is. Understand what you have been given because it is magnificent. Be in love with this life, which means see the good in this life of yours.

If you want to be in love, begin by loving each breath. Begin by falling in love with understanding, with clarity, with the truest sincerity. These are the angels in your life. When all is dark, they come—all lit, graceful, beautiful with clarity. One second of clarity, and all the darkness vaporizes. Don’t try to remove the darkness—it won’t work. All you have to do is usher in the light. Fall in love with living. Fall in love with that which is within you.

Prem Rawat

www.voiceofmaharaji.info

I was most offended; ‘you’re arrogant,’ he said to me.

Which isn’t true. I certainly believe in the virtue of humility.

But it is nice to occasionally cry, like Tolkien’s Galadriel –

‘And now at last it comes.

You will give me the Ring freely!

In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen.

And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night!

Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain!

Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning!

Stronger than the foundations of the earth!

All shall love me and despair!’

And now its time for lunch

There is a pox in Toronto. But more of that later.

Wilfred Owen, not me

Wilfred Owen, the British war poet, was killed by machine gun fire in France in 1918, one week before the end of the second world war. He was age twenty-five and was awarded the Military Cross shortly before his death.

This, perhaps his best know poem, describes an attack by biological warfare – gas – which caused the lungs of victims to rot swiftly.

Owen attacks one of the patriotic mottos – given in Latin, as such things often are – under cover of which war is praised.

A site I recently visited brough this poem to mind, and it seemed appropriate considering the situation in places like Iraq and Lebanon, on which I don’t take sides but just comment on the general folly.

As I’m too busy to prepare anything of my own, and I’m sick of looking at my last entry, I thought I’d post it.

Dulce et Decorum est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame, all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in.
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

The translation, as exactly as I can remember, is -

‘It is sweet and noble to die for one’s country.’

…and Roknor Bay wins over Saint Marie Sur La Mer by nine votes to five

….which I thought it would, in fact I’m surprised it was so close.

Thanks for the feedback, which was useful, and confirmed the reactions I had expected, which makes an author feel all warm and fuzzy and superior, and say ‘thank God I don’t have to re-write.’

Kisses all around, one each, but none for Lilly as he has hauled his unholy ass off to the Holy Land, from where he now mocks at us.

Roknor Bay was generally found to be gripping, easy and memorable, whilst Saint Marie Sur La Mer was found to be a little intriguing and exotic, as a dash of a foreign language always is. But the latter doesn’t cut it over the former.

So regretfully my bit of amateur French is dumped, and the manuscript now sits on my desk with ‘Roknor Bay’ in bold on the front.

Now I’ll see if some Guardian of Hell – an agent – is interested, after which I’ll post an excerpt.