The Dream of the Blue Light

The Dream of the Blue Light

Last night as I called it the end of the day I had climbed into bed and read for a while - my usual habit.  I like to end the day by reading something - it helps me to unwind and relax.  My brain was spinning though - nothing particular, just that general feeling you get when your brain is moving things around trying to figure out where they fit.

I turned off the reading light and curled up under the covers.  I had learned that when the brain won't quite shut off rather than try and fight it the best approach is to just let it spin.  Sometimes it will spin itself out, find something and settle down.

About 11:00 Pacific Time, curled up, eyes closed, mind spinning it suddenly felt as if my thoughts were all surrounded by a soft, very faint, blue light - a very pale shade of blue.  It was such a vivid sensation that I opened my eyes and looked around the room to see if there was a blue light source (perhaps something off the street outside).  I was not dreaming, I was not even asleep, but it was as if my thoughts were encased in a blue light.

I don't think that peaceful is right word to describe the sensation that accompanied the light - it was more a sense of stillness.  As if all of the thoughts spinning in my mind were encased in some sort of contextual stillness.  That is the best way I can think of to describe the feeling.  It was not that everything made sense, but rather that all of the elements that did not make sense were, for a few minutes, placed in a much larger context.  As individual thoughts they had no more or less sense then they did a few minutes before - more of a reassurance that they would make sense.

I would not call it a spiritual experience - it was just the mental image of a soft blue light encasing the spinning thoughts in my mind.

It was pretty cool.  It lasted about five minutes, maybe a little longer and then gradually faded.  I did not fall right to sleep - I returned to the land of spinning thoughts and free associating images.  But, for a few minutes, there had been a stillness.  I refer to it as the dream of the blue light not because it was a dream, but because it had that dream like sensation, even though I was wide awake.

Tags: Dream, Blue Light

Books

The Soul Thief by Charles Baxter

As an individual it is very hard for me to even estimate the impact books have had on my life.  A love of reading is one of the many gifts that I am eternally grateful to my parents for.  One wall in the living room of the house on the ranch was a floor to ceiling bookshelf filled with many books.  The shelves were arranged by maturity level - the childrens books on the lower shelves, the teen books a little higher, then the popular novels and works, with classic literature on the upper shelves.  Life was a progression from the lower shelves to the upper and along the way I was exposed to many a great tale.

Currently I am reading Charles Baxter's "The Soul Thief".  Baxter is an excellent (and fairly prolific) writer. I am forcing myself to move slowly through "The Soul Theif" least I consume it in a single gulp.

Tags: Books, Charles Baxter, The Soul Theif

Seduction (Rain Quintet Part II)

Seduction

 

Where do we first go astray

Where do we start to just slip away

It's the flash of an eye

It's the graze of a hand

It's the slight whispered voice

It's the thrill that finds itself

Rising and rising and rising

 

Where do we first go astray

Where do we start to just slip away

It's the voice that rings out harshly

It's the unreturned caress

It's the kiss with out passion

It's the dying conversation

Falling and falling and falling

 

There is a thrill in seduction

when it brings fire to the heart

There is a sadness in seduction

When it tears a love apart

 

Where do we first go astray

Where do we start to just slip away

It's in the scent as they pass by

It's in the heat as they pause

It's in the trembling of the hand

It's the butterflies deep inside

That turn and turn and turn

 

Where do we first go astra

Where do we start to just slip away

It's waiting without reason

It's leaving without goodbye

It's the dismissive tone

It's the subtle cutting words

That burn and burn and burn

 

There is a thrill in seduction

when it brings fire to the heart

There is a sadness in seduction

When it tears a love apart

 

Where do we first go astray

Where do we start to just slip away

We might be true in everything we do

But its the things that we don't

We might be honest in all we say

But its the words that we don't

It's somewhere in the silence

 

Somewhere in the silence

There is a thrill in seduction

When it brings fire to the heart

somewhere in the silence

There is a sadness in seduction

When it tears a love apart

 

Seduction is the second of the quintet of lyrical poems. (Rain is the first of the quintet.)

Tags: Poetry, Rain Quintet

Tender Years

Tender Years
-John Cafferty

When the moon hung soft and low,
Catchin' stardust in the light
You held me closer and closer
There was magic in the night

A sweet love song, a melody
that I still can recall
Two young hearts filled with dreams
To walk away with it all

Whoa, whoa tender years
Won't you wash away my tears
How I wish you were here
Please don't go, tender years

A summer love, a beach romance
Sought her kisses in the sand
Two young hearts filled with fire
Lost in never-neverland.

Whoa, whoa tender years
Won't you wash away my tears
How I wish you were here
Please don't go, tender years

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7TnRnPma3k

Tags: Tender Years, Streets of Fire, John Cafferty, Lyrics

Rain (Rain Quintet Part I)

Rain

 

The sweetness of the moment dances in the rain

She slides her arms around me and pulls me in

I see her eyes, I smell her hair, and I taste

I taste her tender lips, sweet and soft as sin

 

The first moment of love, that brilliant falling in

The heat of her body, slender soft and strong

I feel her pressed against me, moving so slow

The rippling promise of passion all night long

 

Playing with the radio to find that special song

Laughing in the darkness laying side by side

Searching for the secrets we were longing to share

Opening up the heart that has nothing to hide

 

The sweetness of the moment, dances in the rain

She slides her arms around me and pulls me in

I see her eyes, I smell her hair, and I taste

I taste her tender lips, sweet and soft as sin

 

That first moment of love, that brilliant falling in

The heat of her body, slender soft and strong

I feel her pressed against me, moving so slow

The rippling promise of passion all night long

 

Playing with the radio to find that special song

Laughing in the darkness laying side by side

Searching for the secrets we were longing to share

Opening up the heart that has nothing to hide

 

Rain is written as the first part of a quintet of lyrical poems.  The others will follow as they are written.

Tags: Poetry, Rain Quintet

Spinning Black

Spinning Black

Let me tell you a little bit about this thing called "spinning black".  It is an expression I came up with a few years back to explain what it feels like when a dark mood slips over me.  There is a period of time before I am engulfed by the mood when I can feel myself entering it - that threshold, that twilight time, is the time I refer to as "spinning black". 

 

I can feel myself falling into that dark and cynical mood and it feels like I am spinning down into a bottomless well.  It is not depression - I don't feel either depressed or sad or helpless or hopeless.  (One of my brothers suffers from clinical depression - he describes it as being covered in wave after wave of excrement - spinning black in no way resembles that feeling.)

 

There is no bottom in the well.  At least I have never hit it.  I simply spin black until I am through spinning black.  One of the curious things is that, when the process of spinning black is finished, I am generally in a good mode.  I am cynical and skeptical, but basicallyin a good mood.  Not really gallows humor (though I can have my moments of gallows humor), but more of a sense of the physicality of the world stripped clean of its illusions - a pure state.

 

Horace always pops to mind - "we are dust and shadow".  When I spin black I spin into a world of dust and shadow.  There is a tremendous amount of clarity there, so the possibility has occurred to me that the physical sensation I describe as spinning black is my inner thought process clearing away the cobwebs and dross of our multitasking world to allow that clarity to surface.

 

I tend to write prolifically - non-fiction, fiction, poetry or lyrics following a period of spinning black.  I suspect that it also flows from the clarity that accompanies the sensation combined with deep emotions that are stirred by it.

 

The simplest things can set me spinning black.   There are a variety of triggers to the feeling. As I right this, I am on a cycle where I have spun black several times for the last couple of weeks.  Mostly it has been triggered by spring and spring related sensations.

 

I was walking at work, on lunch, when I passed down a corridor of white flowering trees.  As I walked through that corridor a breeze ruffles the trees and I was engulfed in a swirling storm ofwhite petals.  It was visually beautiful - and set me spinning black.

 

I was doing laundry and as I sat outside on the hood of my car, drinking a soda and watching the clouds try to crest the Santa Cruz Mountains, I started spinning black.

 

I was talking to a friend who was struggling with a personal challenge and I started spinning black. 

 

When I am primed and the mood is near, many things can trigger it - and off I go, spinning black.   For this round of spinning black I have tried to capture the feeling in lyrics, though I am not entirely satisfied with them.

 

The first attempt resulted in this:

 

Spinning Black I

 

I woke up Sunday and the world was spinning black

Halfway between the dream and the day

I looked around and the world was spinning black

I closed my eyes and I tried, tried to turn the clock back

But I woke up Sunday and the world was spinning black

 

I've been lied to and I have been betrayed

I've been twisted, I've been tangled, I've been swayed

I've put my head down, I've bulled my way through

I've kept on, I've fought on, I've been true

I've been lied to and I've been betrayed

I've been twisted, I've been tangled, I've been swayed

 

I woke upSunday and the world was spinning black

Halfway between the dream and the day

I looked around and the world was spinning black

I closed my eyes and I tried, tried to turn the clock back

But I woke up Sunday and the world was spinning black

 

Now, I kind of like it - it expresses the cynicism that comes with the feeling.  I am not entirely comfortable with the rhyme and meter, but that is more a question of careful analysis and rewriting. So, I carried this around in my head for a while.  (This was originally written having been triggered while doing laundry.)

 

The second attempt looks like this:

 

Spinning Black II

 

Six o'clock in the morning

I am tangled in a dream

A single chord reaches me

And pulls me into you

 

I am spinning black

The world is not real

I struggle for the core

To find something to feel

 

The second chord slices me

So swift I burn and bleed

Like a cutthroat razor

That opens up my need

I lay there in the darkness

Touching the ghosts of you

The lingering core of heat

That fades away like dew

 

The third chord rings out

And wraps me in the strings

Thin and tasting of steel

The welling tears it brings

 

I am spinning black

The world is not real

I struggle for the core

To find something to feel

 

There is a final chord

That simply waits to be

I know that when it echoes

It will spin the end of me

 

I am spinning black

The world is not real

I struggle for the core

To find something to feel

 

The trigger behind this version was slightly more complex.  We have all had the experience in our lives of having friends or loved ones in a place of pain - either physical or emotional - and known that sense of helplessness because there is really very little we can do except express to them our love and support.  By luck of the draw and cycle of the world, it seems that several people close to me are in those places.  All I can do is express my support and love.  So, if you are one of those folks, and you happen to read this, just know that you are in my thoughts and prayers - even as I am spinning black and dreaming of Horace's "pulvis et umbra summus".

 

Now, besides some expansion and rewriting on Spinning Black I and II, I suspect I have not quite yet managed to wrap my thoughts entirely around spinning black. There will be a Spinning Black III…maybe even a IV and V.  We'll see.

Tags: Poetry, Essay, Black

The Secret of Dust and Shadows

The Secret of Dust and Shadows

 

The dead are merciless. 

 

They remain in our memories and haunt us through our lives.  They left this world through a rip or a slip. Depending on how they left us, they become faded images conjured without conscious thought, or they become vivid images that move through our dreams like small storms.

 

The years of my youth were timeless.  They were filled with perfect moments.  I moved through every day with a sense of immortality, though I was often enough injured that the delusion of invulnerability never accompanied it.

 

Her name was Grace. 

 

Just invoking her name brings her image into my minds eye. She was five foot three.  She had brown skin, black hair, black eyes and full soft lips.  I remember her as a combination of smooth curves and lean strength.  She was a runner and we often ran together along the highway in the river bottom.  It was a three or four mile course, enough for us to build to a good sweat, enough for us to feel the strength and vibrancy of youth.

 

Becoming lovers bore with it a sense of the inevitable.  It seemed a natural outcome. I close my eyes and easily remember the day she knelt above me and stripped her shirt off.  Her skin glowed.  Her eyes flashed. Her smile foretold all the secrets we would share.

 

She hung herself in her bedroom in 1984, a few years after we had drifted apart.  Once the CI's had gathered their evidence, taken their photographs, bagged their exemplars and fibers and substances, I held her in my arms while Val cut her down.  Together, we laid her on the stretcher and wrapped her in a blanket.  I remember Val tucking her black hair inside of that temporary shroud.

 

That was the last secret we shared.

 

Horace writes "pulvis et umbra summus"- we are dust and shadow.  Sometimes I dream of the dust and shadow that was Grace.  We were lovers but never loved. In those perfect moments of youth, in those days of immortality, we were flawed, badly, but alive.  We bore stoically the wounds of our misadventures, entertained with aplomb the demons of our failures.  They gnawed at us.  They ate away in the dark of the night and in the quiet of the day.  They taunted us with our sins and recited in our ears the litany of our betrayals with murderous intent.

 

I see Grace in my dreams every now and then.  She is never a central character.  Usually she is somewhere in the cast of characters.  Sometimes I just see her.  She looks happy.  Sometimes we make eye contact in the dream and she will inevitably smile.  In her smile I see that she has one last secret.  It is the secret of dust and shadows. In time, she will share it with me. 

 

Just not yet.

 

The dead are merciless.

Tags: Essay, Memory, Secrets

The Dream of the Foxes Parasol

The Dream of the Foxes Parasol

Sometimes you have dreams that are fraught with symbolism or rich with particularly vivid imagery.  I had one of those dreams last night.  I dreamt that I was wandering a street marker in the industrial portion of a city - a collection of vendor booths and tables scattered among warehouses and light industrial buildings.  It was a gray day, overcast, and though the day and the location had a gritty feel the mood of the people was light and friendly.  It reminded me of the floating market in Neil Gaiman's "Neverwhere" (or at least it reminded me of how I had always visualized it).

As I wandered among the booths I found a table that was selling the remnants of an estate sale.  As I prowled through the assorted boxes and containers I discovered a rather dingy looking gray parasol.  After a bit of negotiation with the seller, I bought the parasol for $50.00.  I spent the rest of the day wandering the street market and then wondered home.  Once I was home I settled in at the kitchen table and carefully opened the parasol.  It was very grimy, coated with what appeared to be thick black dust.  It opened fine and I carefully inspected the mechanism.  It all appeared to be in very good shape - just dirty.

I prepared a bowl of warm soapy water and laid out an array of cleaning tools - small tools, small brushes, different types of cleaning cloths and began to patiently clean the parasol.  I discovered as I cleaned that it was a far nicer piece than I had initially imagined - the was a layer of detail completely covered beneath the grim on the handle and shaft and, after a careful application of soapy water, I discovered that the parasol itself was made of good quality silk.  I patiently coaxed the grim away and unveiled what lay beneath.

I had initially thought it was an English parasol but, as I cleaned it, slowly came to the conclusion that it was mostly likely Japanese - from the materials, from the art work.  The shaft and handle of the parasol was delicately carved with a scene depicting the Foxes Wedding* (a classic Japanese folktale and No drama, you may have seen a variation of it if you happened to Akira Kurosawa's "August Rain").  The silk of the parasol, which I had originally thought was a light gray, turned out to be a shade of blue, like a birds feathers, that shimmered depending on how the light struck it.

In the dream I spent the entire evening working on the parasol, through the evening and into the night, lost in the timeless zen concentration of the delicate cleaning that is required to restore something.  When the morning sun shined brightly into the kitchen I stopped and stretched, my back sore for sitting, semi-hunched over, all night.  I rolled the chair back so I sat in the full light of the golden morning sun and opened the parasol.  As it was opened the sunlight cascaded across the silk like a ripple of lightning.  The visual effect was surprising and unexpectedly delightful.  I opened and re-opened the parasol to watch the lighting flow like a sheet of water.

Finished and excited by what I had found I carefully wrapped the parasol and drove to the shop of a friend who specializes in Asian collectables.  (California has a very large Japanese population, several generations, and has a significant market in japanese cultural artifacts, due to long ties with Japan.)  I exchanged small talk with my friend, the owner of the small shop, and then opened the parasol so he and his wife could get a good look at it.  Their reaction was immediate and excited.  After a careful examination they decided to call an associate at the Japanese embassy.

We sat in the shop, chatting and eating pizza (there is a small pizza place around the corner from the shop) until the representative arrived.  He quickly examined the parasol, comparing it to notes in a small book he carried.  He measured it.  He checked craftsman marks.  He counted foxes.  He inspected the mechanism.  He found the craftsman stamp on the handle.  He counted the threads per inch. 

Finally finished, he sat down, took a slice of the pizza, and confirmed that the parasol had been a gift from the Japanese Ambassador to the wife of the governor of California in the late 1800's, and was one of two matching parasols, the other of which resided in a museum in Japan.  The parasol had been reported lost in a fire at the Japanese consulate in San Francisco.  He advised me that he was prepared to offer me a finders fee of $5,000 for the return of the parasol.  I immediately returned it and declined the finders fee.  He then offered to return my original $50, which I also declined.  I did accept another slice of pizza.

After returning the parasol, I drovehome.  When I got home I walked up to my department to discover, sitting on the steps, was a small japanese gift box.  In the box was a tanto style knife of exquisite craftsmanship, wrapped in a red silk scarf with the kanji symbol for fox (kitsune**) in black. I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and turned to see a flash of red as a fox disappeared in the hedgerow.

I woke from the dream, impressed with it's vividness and jotted down the notes surrounding it.

*Kitsune (Fox).  In Japanese folklore the Kitsune are magical creatures of great wisdom and mischief.  They often have multiple tails and can shapeshift into human form. The multiple tales and the shapeshifting are what differentiate between the Kitsune and the regular fox.

**The Foxes Wedding.  Like many folktales, the Foxes Wedding appears in literally dozens of variants.  Kurosawa, in August Rain, tells a variant of the core tale.  The core tale can be found in Algernon Betram Freeman-Mitford's "Tales of Old Japan" and involves the wedding and life of Fukuyemon, a white fox.  In Kurosawa's tale a young human boy, wandering the woods, comes upon the Foxes Wedding and spies upon the ceremonies.  When he is spotted he flees home to his mother and tell her what he witnessed.  His mother, shocked and frightened by his behavior, gives the boy a lunch box and a knife and sends him back into the woods to find the foxes and apologize for dishonoring them by spying on the wedding.  The purpose of the knife is that the apology will take the form of the classic japanese apology for dishonoring someone - seppuku.

Tags: Dream, Fox, Kitsune

Gypsy

Gypsy
10-25-2007

listening to the gypsy music
basking in the falling sun
i remember your taste
my hands steady at the gun

i was half a breath
away from a dream
something soft and sweet
strawberries and cream

i could hear the diesals
as they roar to life
i clung to the moment
i held back the strife

listening to the gypsy music
basking in the falling sun
i remember your taste
my hands steady on the gun

i feel like i've been pounded
by all the hammers of hell
they shattered every illusion
but that's just as well

how sweet is the water
how soft is the kiss
how far is the world
and all the things i miss

i can hear the diesals
as they roar to life
i clung to the moment
i held back the strife

listening to the gypsy music
basking in the falling sun
i remember your taste
my hands steady on the gun

Tags: poetry, gypsy, memories

Isolations Worth

ISOLATIONS WORTH
(Feb 2003 - San Jose, CA)

Sometimes I catch her,
crying all alone,
when she thinks no one is watching.
I am just a stranger
she never notices me
I carefully turn and look away.
But it tears me up inside
to see the tears in her eyes
and I often wish
I was another man.
Someone who could hold her,
someone who could reach her,
someone who could wipe those tears away.
But I'm not.
The lessons I have learned
in the places where the darkest light burns
have taught me well
isolations worth.
We live and die alone
whether we like or we don't
it simply is the way of this world.
We learn to stand or we learn to fall
we learn somewhere to make our way
or we wander without end.
We can care about each other
We can try to make things right,
but who are we really trying to help?
We're nothing more then strangers
wandering through this life
wondering if we'll find our way
through the brilliant maze of mirrors
through the fire and and the smoke.
We'll be poured into the crucible
we'll be hammered on the anvil
by the Smith of Dream and Destiny.
But I question isolations worth
when I catch her crying all alone
and I carefully turn and look away.

Tags: Poetry

That Bitter Dawn

THAT BITTER DAWN
(Jan 2003 - San Jose, CA)

Chorus

In a cold and bitter dawn
we will remember those who've gone
down that long road that divides
choices of who lives and dies.

The summer of nineteen eighty one
In the shadow of the gun
A young man without a plan
Just working for the man.

I never dreamed of the places
or all the shadowed faces
that I left somewhere behind
each time I moved across the line.

We were children of the light
who swore we owned the night,
playing a game of bitter ends
with our enemies and friends.

In a cold and bitter dawn
we will remember those who've gone
down that long road that divides
choices of who lives and dies.

Now I am an older man
Who wrestles demons when he can
otherwise he hides their ways
moving through indifferent days.

Chasing down shallow dreams,
more or less or so it seems,
I often stop and wonder
where I lost the lightning and the thunder.

Now we've all searched for the meaning
between the living and the dreaming
where shadows play against the walls
while the hunters moon rises and falls.

In a cold and bitter dawn
we will remember those who've gone
down the long road that divides
choices of who lives and dies

We were children of the light
who swore we owned the night
playing a game of bitter ends
with our enemies and friends

In a cold and bitter dawn
we will remember those who've gone
down the long road that divides
choices of who lives and dies

In a cold and bitter dawn...

Tags: Poetry

Within The Truce of Night

WITHIN THE TRUCE OF NIGHT
(Jan 2003 - San Jose, CA)

She would sit up late at night
in the living room of her grandparents house
chain smoking marlboro lights
and drinking black coffee.
We would watch old TV shows
McMillan & Wife, Columbo, The Saint,
and talk about whatever came to mind,
she on the couch,
I on the floor in front of her.
Even then there was a difference
that stood between us like a door,
she spoke of the things she would not do,
while I spoke of the things I would.
We'd never been particularly easy friends.
We were cast from different metals -
she of silver, soft, gleaming
susceptible to corruption -
I of iron, brittle and cold,
ragged edged and prone to break.
Within the truce of night
we found an uneasy peace with each other,
in company, conversation, and coffee.
Morning always brought us closer
to the breaking of that sacred truce.
It was only in the shattered years
that followed upon that bitter dawn
that I realized I had loved her.

Tags: Poetry