zenpundit.com

[ by Charles Cameron — carrying French mountaineering coals to a mountaineering Frenchman ]
.

As imagination can reach farther than spacecraft, so analogical mountains are at a higher elevation — indeed, a higher octave — than physical ones:

René Daumal‘s brilliant novel Mount Analogue was uncompleted, and fittingly so, at his death — the peak of the book’s arduous ascent being by necessity wordless.

Thete’s nothing non-Eucidean or metaphysical about Chouinard‘s RURP, however — it’s a piton so small that if you dare hang your life on it, you might well expect to achieve enlightenment. I was given mine as a keepsake by a hitchhiker on his way to try the lower slopes of Everest, while I was taking the hippie route through Turkey and Iran to Afghanistan, Pakistan and India in the early seventies. And yes, I confess I use it for exclusively analogical mountaineering.

**

This DoubleQuote is for my long-time boss and friend Victor d’Allant, who tweeted today:

Just reached summit of highest mountain in South East Asia despite low visibility, high winds, snow @BlackDiamond pic.twitter.com/UGeObnEck5

— Victor d'Allant (@dallant) April 1, 2016

Salut!

[ by Charles Cameron ]
.

As I’ve said on rare occasions before, Madhu, a wonderful friend of this blog, encouraged me some while back to post some of my poems here. I don’t do it often, and I hope you will at least tolerate it when I do.

**

Staring at a gravestone
.

Staring at a gravestone as though the dead might —
contrary to science, in line with hope – break through death,
through death writ in stone, to speak, loom
grey under the sun like a hard silk ghost emerging
from granite, half nowhere half here, speak
out of beyond the thoughts of ever and one and no-one,
chant, perhaps, in some dead tongue, language
of the dead, of death, of one’s own family, intimate,

vast and impersonal.. staring with hope, grief,
a touch of rage perhaps, melded in incomprehension,
listening without hearing, seeing, though
dumb, by doubt and shroud clouded, deluded:
and all this observed from that all-knowing other place, by
the all-giving nothing to which galaxies are specks, lives speak.

**

Of, by and for itself: the poem
.

Let me write a poem that has music to it, that conjures
images out of ink, that echoes into silence,
let it flow from me as the mind waves in the wind,
here and there, yet tethered, tethered, yet hither and yon,
veering away from and towards rhymes, swaying
itself, myself and the reader – your self, yourselves –
my son was pillowing his head on a weight-bar
a few minutes ago – drifting off topic and weaving

back in, let me write in such a way you will wonder,
will wander into wonder, whither wonder yonder hither,
torn, and suddenly so, asunder – may the poem
wrench me, wrench itself, wrench syntax, yourself, selves,
in the sheer mind play of itself on self, in the sheer
wind play, grass on grass, of itselves on our all selves..

**

Unbreakable mirror
.
.
There is such ghastly blood spurting at home and abroad
I must get back to Pasadena, walk again down Marengo, take joy
in the living shoots breaking up the concrete paving.
There are such foolish beheadings, blood spurting, abroad
I must close my eyelids like rose petals, discern petal from thorn.
There is so much hatred spurting blood lost to kin flesh and blood
in the passing down of abuse across generations here at home
I must get to the pool in mind where breath moves, motion is still.

I must get clear past understanding to peace, wherein the face
of understanding is seen in the beloved face, mirror, love, lake:
and what if yours is the divine face, and yourself at war, in grief,
broken in broken marriage, fragmented by frag-grenade, lost
in self-esteem high or low, in alcohol, lost in lust or unloved,
if it should be your broken face i see, in the unbreakable mirror?

**

On the Thursday before All and Everything
.

How sad can that woman be, painted, whose son’s eyes
know and convey that those creatures with bird wings and
Botticelli features who once told her “Fear Not”
arrived from a court or realm in which a higher octave
of fear named awe is the only octave ever sung,
came visiting a realm where the mother’s torn flesh
is the only sacrifice sufficient for the birth of the young,

how sad, seeing those eyes, can a woman be, her son next
to crucifixion, next to resurrection, next to literary
criticism, next to demythologization, next to indifference
by all but Bach, El Greco, Hopkins, Grunewald, how
lanced with grief can that mother be to see her son broken
and spilled, bones and blood, flesh and spirit, wine
and unleavened bread that is nonetheless risen, risen, risen?

**

One frail voice in a whirlwind
.

Okay I am joyed to overflowing that enough dust gathers
and swirls here to formulate a momentary dervish,
crying “for love’s sake, love” against the world’s maelstrom,
one frail voice in a whirlwind, one small silence
amidst such shouting, shooting, eardrum-piercing sound.
I will love you before and after I am gone, I will echo
love on the drumbeat of your heart, I will dance to Bach’s
bacchanalian orgy of the divine love crucified, seated

in lotus, absolute, incarnate, flexible to each soul’s need,
tireless, fatigued unto death, l will dance my dust
into full-throated voice for you, quiver or quaver my wings
faster than birds hum, stretch like the night, warm
your heart at my hearth, I am none and gone, I am here
only to toll and tell you, you are beyond boundlessly dear.

**

How best to crumple your face
.

Aging offers no guarantee of the desired effect
so clearly displayed in that photo of Jim Harrison — a poet
I’m told, and now I’ve seen that image a poet
I shall seek out and read – half blind, half drunk?
Withered as an old oak stump? Gnarly? A grump?

Attack through the voice, it strikes me, would be
the fast, best strategy – dumbfound but not dumb down
or out, soak voice in whiskies, wreathe it in smoke —
sing it — above all, doubtless and doubting — SHOUT!!

Zen it. Turn your head into the headwinds, face whatever
sandblasts you back to your original face. You, I
are forever baby-faced, mirror-faced, and wizened.
How best to crumple your face? How dare you even ask?
You think that life’s a whaddayacallit goddam task?

**

Assessment
,

Rough me up, chisel, throw me down, rampart, cliff,
brine me in and dry me out, season me, in and out and about
in all seasons, snow me under, bake, broil me, boil,
blister, shell-shock, shake, shellac me, chain, drain on me,
break, bust me, cake me in excremental blood, curse,
catcall me, caterwaul, blame, shame me, if I protest, bluster,
I am naked, spare, your slings and arrows wound me, you
have nothing on me, I am but better for your battering, bruising.

Brush me, wash, bathe, comb, coax me, clean me, I
shall remain pliant to your pleasing, soap, soft soap, sponge
me up and down, inside and within, I will respond
in response, loathe me — but clothe me, rob me
but robe me, foist your delusions on me, I am hoist
on my own penis, pride, flagpole, priesthood, petard.

**

Of Diotima and Beatrice
.

Who spawned Diotima of Mantinea? For Socrates
drank wisdom at her teats, Plato from Socrates, Aristotle
from Plato, Alexander from Aristotle, so who
was Diotima, what her thoughts, and who spawned
the thoughts which taught her? I have asked Siri,
I have interrogated Wolfram’s Alpha, have challenged
Googles AI to fight Wittgenstein’s PI to the death —
yet for me it suffices that she, Diotima was no he but a

she, female, a woman. To say more would be to
slather it on, mansplain, overtell, sell, hence overkill,
to say less would leave Aristotle with the boys,
and what could be worse? Think you on this: peace
outshines war by far; Venus is brighter than Mars.
Love’s gravity it is, spins hearts, the sun, all other stars.

**

I was writing these over Holy Week, four of them on Maundy Thursday, and the most recent one came through yesterday. Jim Morrison’s death was the occasion for th poem in which he is named.

Your comments are welcome.

[ by Charles Cameron — fitness landscapes and the Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond ]
.

With the rise and fall of sea levels, sky levels, land emerges or submerges, mountain ranges with scattered lakes in their valleys transform into archipelagos, island clusters surge up to become continents — rise and fall, ebb and flow, wave upon wave..

I mean, really, what of the moral high ground?

**

Consider these:

Adaptive Basins and Strange Peaks

Biologists talk about adaptive landscapes. In these metaphorical places, species climb uphill towards optimal fitness. Going up is a struggle. Climbing takes energy. Optimal peaks can be hard to attain. Many species are distracted by getting stuck on sub-optimal false peaks, or waylaid by the intervening rugged landscape.

Sources:

ResearchGate, Schematic “adaptive” or “fitness” landscape

The Technium, Adaptive Basins and Strange Peaks

**

Nemesis and the Prophets are agreed:

Every valley shall be exalted, every mountain and hill made low

— or as Mary said of her son’s father:

He buffets proud folk about like leaves in a gale.
He upsets those that hold themselves high and mighty
and rescues the least one of us.

Ursula le Guin voiced Lao Tzu for us in English:

True goodness
is like water.
Water’s good
for everything.
It doesn’t compete.

It goes right
to the low loathsome places,
and so finds the way.

Furthermore:

What’s softest in the world
rushes and runs
over what’s hardest in the world.

The immaterial
enters
the impenetrable.

**

O ye’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road, And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye

[ by Charles Cameron — executive summaries — aren’t they just babyfood for thought? ]
.

I have nothing against Alicia Silverstone, that’s the first thing:

What interests me more, though, is the necessity for executives to be fed (readers?) digests on matters of national security.

If I recall correctly, Jerome Ravetz once made the point that the chief executive charged with the oversight of dozens of nuclear power plants may well have to make multi-million dollar decisions very rapidly, after brief briefings, and with full confidence that his orders will be obeyed without question.. which is not a situation that encourages nuanced discussion.

Brevity may be the soul of executive decision-making, I can see that. I don’t have to like it.

[ by Charles Cameron — a little matter of rising (i trust) between the two stools of belief and unbelief ]
.

I have seen Christianity described as —

The popular belief that a celestial Jewish baby, who is also his own father, born from a virgin mother, died for three days so that he could ascend to heaven on a cloud and make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh, drink his blood, and telepathically tell him you accept him as your Lord and master, so he can remove an evil force from your spiritual being that is present in all humanity because an immoral woman made from a man’s rib was hoodwinked by a talking reptile possessed by a malicious angel to secretly eat forbidden fruit from a magical tree.

Don’t these atheists understand anything about poetry?

**

Don’t the Christians understand anything about poetry?

Try this as an exercise for the imagination — picture this —

To suppose the Eucharist

Suppose the hypothetical all of everything
in unspooling itself chose to exhibit itself in
one human, suppose further all the sun’s
light were caught in wheat and baked into
bread, all the world’s pains and passions
crushed like grapes into wine, suppose the
one person took loaf and cup and with
word and gesture raised them blood, body

of his own self to be supped and sipped,
thus woven into his one flesh, blood, mind —
just when his flesh is torn, blood spills —
suppose then that his mind to love were to
entrain this new body of many bodies to
heal with all radiance each instance of pain..

**

I offer this poem as a bridge in two directions — to allow the sensible atheist a means of glimpsing what might be admirable in his Christian friend’s faith.. — and to allow the Christian on the brink of leaving the faith for “sensible atheism” a means of retaining much of the deep beauty of that faith while leaving behind both the bribes of heaven and the threats of hell.