Versatile Blogger Award

Tags

2013, being, writing

The rules are:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you
2. Nominate fifteen bloggers for the Award – link to their site (and notify them)
3. State seven things about yourself

                                                                      ~~~ “O” ~~~

1. Tazein gets up every morning and showers in … awards!   She is inundated with them at the moment (have a look at her site).   She has bestowed one of them on me, which is very sweet of her.

2. I would consider a versatile blogger one who plays with the endless diversity of being in all the forms it comes in.   It is not necessarily a blogger who treats of a wide range of topics.   Here are my nominations; I am not sure I will get to fifteen of them:

Daphne Ogyen
omrum
Jessica leBaron
bussokuseki
miriam louisa
ania
not all the English drink tea
emina redzic

3. Acceptance Speech (including – possibly – seven things about myself, or at least my writing; or not)

I think there is a symbiotic connection between writing and being.   By themselves, writing is just reporting and being is unnoticed.   When writing and being come together there is … breathing.   And poetry.   There is a marvellous alchemy that takes place when the word is invoked on the [inner or outer] breath, whether it is written or sung ‘makes no difference; the word coagulates the reality like a culture in yogurt (‘in the beginning was the word …’); to be ‘inspired’ – etymologically – is to breathe in the smoke of the offerings to gods; I started writing when JD Salinger offered me a blooming bunch of parentheses, when Steve Englehart included me as integral to the climax of Dr Strange #9 (Aug 1975), when Basho’s frog jumped into the old pond, when Allen Ginsberg showed me what it meant to be angel-headed in utter candour; these eminences showed me that there was an immanence in words which I could explore … which I could be; later (… rather, eventually) I began to sit and found that the being that I sought to am [sic] was the very words I wrote to see               sometimes, when it came together (when it stayed on the spot and I didn’t blow it all by trying too hard to write).   Therefore the practice of poetry is neither to report, nor to forget, but to create reality aware-ingly.   Not egomaniacally (which is impossibly omnipotent) and neither psychotically (a box trapped by its own six walls) but aware-ingly – the centre-less play, endlessly (here it comes …) VERSATILE, between the mind and the endless void of potential it finds itself in.   This is a theme I am fascinated with and have collected a lot of the more ostensible pieces together: writing and being

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

being wormhole: nightmare
writing wormhole: preoccupied

 

Shine On Award

Tags

Bowie, Edward Hopper, Herge, light, Neal Adams, Pink Floyd, Salinger, Sylvia Plath

AHhh …

… there I was, all ready to curl up in my own spot of light there, when from out of the rumbling of the city, from out of the sky, came the voice of Tazein, ‘My dear!   I have nominated you for Shine On Award’; … wha- whosaidthat – turning quickly around, nothing.   But I heard …; what can it all mean?   Am I already shining?   Do I have light to shine?   If so, where is it – turning back, quickly, again?   Am I doing it now?   Was I about to stop doing it?   Quick, gather (are there any dragons in the corner?): what do I know?   Who can help me …?   Buddy?   Seymour?

Buddy: ‘Franny was staring at the little blotch of sunshine with a special intensity, as if she were considering lying down in it’¹ so I have to find the light, outside, get in it … get in it! … no that can’t be right, that’s when you’ve lost it (‘always, always referring every goddam thing that happens right back to our lousy little egos’); it’s inside …

Seymour: ‘She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apartment when she was four and no one was home.   The new announcer is worse than Grant — if possible, even worse than Sullivan in the old days.   He said she surely dreamt that she was able to fly.   The baby stood her ground like an angel.   She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the lightbulbs’².   So it is inside, but … ‘Remember when you were young, you shone like the sun // blown on the steel breeze’³, what is the use of light (inside) if it does not shine – if it cannot shine – (on the outside)?   OK, ok, let’sthinknow – light makes no sense just by itself, it is just neurosis, there is no yin to receive it (to be), the light was separated from the darkness for a reason on the first day …

‘Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers.   When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers.   But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest.   For it’s just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers’⁴; so, to ‘shine’ is to ‘know’ (the mountains and rivers …), if I just search for the light I will lose the mountains and rivers, if I keep the light for myself, they will lose me … I have to shine the light while looking for it because it never was un-separate in the first place …

… ‘Anyway, I started bitching one night before the broadcast.   Seymour’d told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Waker.   I was furious.   The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour.   I said they couldn’t see them anyway, where we sat.   He said to shine them anyway.   He said to shine them for the Fat Lady’¹ … ‘the least of these’⁵

¹ J.D. Salinger, “Franny and Zooey”
² J.D. Salinger, “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters”
³ Pink Floyd, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”
⁴ Qingyuan Weixin, translated D.T. Suzuki, “Essays in Zen Buddhism”
⁵ The Gospel of Matthew

OK, I get it now: I accept.    Here are a blooming bunch of shining lights for the Fat Lady –

sunlight: the long road
traffic lights: ‘at the traffic lights …’
moonlight: ‘the moonlight …’
twilight: twilight
lightning: ‘she shook the sweets …’
streetlight: write / by the / night / of the / lamp

The rules for the Shine On Award are:

1. Link back to the blogger who nominated you – done and done, thank you again for your faith Tazein
2. Offer the Award to ‘Shine On’ to other bloggers you know to shine – I’m supposed to do 15 but I’ll do just those I can see in all this darkness
3. Answer the questions given to you – I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to change the questions to answer; and answer them – make them more to do with shining; light …

1. what is your favourite colour (or combination of colours)?   why?

I must admit I’m rather partial to a big glob of charcoal grey with ANY shade of green; I like a nice aperitif of the brightest blue with squiffs of white; I used to like deep purple (dh’ dng danng, dh’dh’ dng danng, dh’ dng danng, dnng dngdng) and black, but now prefer mauve stirred once with thick yellow although it’s bad for my heart; I’ve become rather fond of olive mist before a lemon sunrise on spring heathland these days; and then some lime hints in a deep blue sky through the power cables at midday

2. what is your favourite light of the day/year?   why?

car lights that hang and rise in one corner of the room and then play across the room like a UFO when the car passes; I also like the sun settling orange diagonal across the dining table on an early Saturday evening at the beginning of a school holiday; and don’t forget the very first piece of sun across any old meadow that knows in its heart that spring is here, even if it’s wrong

3. when was the last time you ‘saw the light’?

when I recently re-joined a sitting class: I was asked why I came back (after an absence of about two years); I said I felt I needed to meditate with others – it’s what all the books keep telling me; my questioner responded that I need to meditate for others … bing; thanks Jay

4. who, for you, is the craziest diamond in music?

David Bowie CAME BACK!   Once I get over this and the familiar but awkward music has soaked into my skin a little, then the nuggets are to be found – the ‘flinks’ of certain phrases/music/delivery will make a ‘nick’ in the fabric letting something shiney out – which I will SING

5. who, for you, is the craziest diamond in art?

Neal Adams CAME BACK to Batman!   A barking mad story in itself – the Odyssey – but some of the panels are teeth-gritted visceral as they ‘step’ ever tantalisingly into whatif-possibility; … oh, alright, Herge’s street scenes as well; and his stairwell landings; and Hopper’s opened windows

6. who, for you, is the craziest diamond in literature?

I have recently found, and fallen in love with, the work of Sylvia Plath; yes, she shines best when it is most dark but she telescopes into her darkness with such tendril and overlap that it is like a sinewy muscular arm which you can’t help wish your arms looked like that; and she also has the perkiest little humour at times

7. are you a crazy diamond?

Nope: I am a piece of coal that has yet to be given to Superman to crush in his Krypton fingers.   Actually I suspect Supes would hand it back to me and ask why I was wasting his time with the cleanest of hands!   And I still wouldn’t get it.

My nominations are:

joe2poetry: straight and sincere blue light / through a glass of beer
emina redzic: light through the trees erasing all lapse of time and place
omrum: a tall apartment building bathed in red light as the residents variably get up for the day
suzy blue: actually blue with a hint of green; just look at her header pic and logo background
bruce ruston platypiphotography – especially when he mucks around with new colour app-thingies
Betty Generic: catalogues the changing light from her bedroom window every day; it has a ‘drawing in’ effect
miguel: sees the light of the city and the twists of his words through the drawn curtains of his bedroom … ‘blue, blue, ‘lectric blue, that’s the colour of the room where I shall live’
susan sweetland garay: has some beautiful light all over her site, never night
dieu on the grass: speaks through all the light in the champ de mars gardens on an early misty morning … although she lives in Canada
waywardspirit: every once in a while, while you’re happily drifting along in a poetic haze (streaked mauve with hints of lemon), wayward snaps on the overhead light of day and says ‘oi, have a look at this, you great poetic shirt’s blouse’ – harsh light with a smile and wonder

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Bowie wormhole: 1972
light wormhole: Saturday / afternoon
Salinger wormhole: all

 

the Dragon’s Loyalty Award

Tags

poetry

Lookit!

I’ve got one of these: …

I’m not sure what it means yet, but I’m willing to take it on …

“Yeh Kung-tzu was a man who loved dragons.   He studied dragon lore and decorated his home with paintings and statues of dragons.   He would talk on and on about dragons to anyone who would listen.   One day a dragon heard about Yeh Kung-tzu and thought, how lovely that this man appreciates us.   It would surely make him happy to meet a true dragon.   The kindly dragon flew to Yeh Kung-tzu’s house and went inside, to find Yeh Kung-tzu asleep.   Then Yeh Kung-tzu woke up and saw the dragon coiled by his bed, its scales and teeth glittering in the moonlight.   And Yeh Kung-tzu screamed in terror.   Before the dragon could introduce himself, Yeh Kung-tzu grabbed a sword and lunged at the dragon.   The dragon flew away.”

Dogen said in Funkanzazengi, “I beseech you, learn through experience, do not become so accustomed to images that you are dismayed by the true dragon.”   So I will gladly accept this award if it be recognition that poetry/writing is a means of facing the dragon, and that loyalty to the dragon means ‘eyes wide open’.   This is more than recognising it (recognising is only done with white elephants in rooms), this is living with it, this is breathing its acrid stench, this is keeping your hand on the scales even though the instinct is to vomit.   This is staying with it – bound to the mast – despite the fact that it’s beautiful eyes lure you to the rocks.   This is staying with it EVEN THOUGH YOU DOUBT IT IS THERE AT ALL.   It is ugly, it is beautiful, it is evanescent – loyalty to it is cultivation of courage, compassion and wisdom // Sylvia Plath, Allen Ginsberg and William Carlos Williams …

… I’m so excited now I’m going to do a Halle Berry: I’d like to thank my muse (in all her terrible guises); I’d like to thank my Mum who showed me how to stay true to life; I’d like to thank my Nan who initiated me in how to be; I’d like to thank my father who manifested the spectre of pointlessness; many thanks to Tazein Mirza Saad at http://transcendingbordersblog.wordpress.com/ for the nom: Tazein has made it the mission of her blog to do a lot of her own facing the dragon on behalf of others, she has wide open-eyed love for the world.

The rules are:

• Display the Award Certificate – natch
• Declare your award with a written post and link to whoever offered your award – doing and done; thanks again Tazein
• Nominate further awards to deserving bloggers and let them know what you’ve done – watch out, here comes a thunder roll right across the sky and down behind the hills!
• Declare seven ‘dragons’ which you have learnt through direct experience –

 

1. you know you’re gonna have to face it you’re addicted to love – 16
2. I’ve known always when I have arrived in my life – it’s unmistakable – but I have been terrible at knowing when to get off; I never know when to get off – backseat
3. I stopped thinking I was ten years younger than I was when I started working in my career full time; now I count how many years I have left before I can be young again – becoming old
4. not ‘seawrecked’ not ‘marooned’ not ‘despair’ and certainly not ‘drowning’; but never entirely convinced that it’s not any of these either – buoying
5. the most staggeringly beautiful (and useful) lessons in life are those which I seem to teach to myself mostly because they were right under my nose all the time and not because I am a great teacher – clues
6. now all I’ve got to do is stop enough to actually do it; it helps a bit when everything comes crashing down by itself; actually it doesn’t; actually it makes no difference either way; unless I sit still – “don’t move / just die / over and over … / be true to / yourself / and don’t move” // – Suzuki Roshi
7.  the beauty of watching Hammer Horror films on tv late at night with the sound down was that the drama happened by atmosphere rather than script; how else would a young man learn about love in this world too full of plenty … – footfall

My nominations are:

• Bruce Ruston is more like a phoenix than a dragon, he recreates himself often and continuously in search of his muse and himself
• Suzy Blue is as constant as the beach whose sky inexorably passes through all of its seasons
• Omrum opens her eyes every morning and finds herself yet deeper into the same life than she was the morning before
• Johnny Crabcakes can distill an evening universe down into a few delicately-put-together word-strokes that float around on the water
• Bussokuseki learns all the lessons he needs in life from observing that very life that his children give back to him by their being
• Dizzy is a whole audience by herself – she really is – but she has let go the tail of her dragon and I would like to encourage her to come back
• Singing Pigs has advice about pigs in education which could easily apply to dragons: “Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.”
• Assailedteacher will not stop shouting that the Emperor (the Pharaoh) has no clothes no matter how much he is banned shushed
• Waywardspirit is a true dragon chaser, she won’t leave the bloody thing alone, it tries to hide in all sorts of places and she just seeks it out
• Lazywednesdays creates her own dragons in the very act of writing ‘a quiet place to create an escape’
• Emina Redzic just writes the most beautifully observed pieces from time and land passed, now
• Sunny Days in DC is one of the few people who can consistently laugh at her dragons … AND BE FUNNY ABOUT IT; I think she is a dragon but she’s house-trained

one lovely blog award

the Wayward Spirit wafts through my window on those occasional days when the pattern of weeks, or even months previous, lets go and shifts.   She moves around the corners of the room and makes one or two things flutter a bit, and is gone.   Usually out past my shoulder as I turn, to notice things in my room which were always there but I hadn’t been noticing for weeks or maybe even months – and which were obviously there for a purpose.   I was contemplating the books on my shelf today and noticed a stray bookmark which looked suspiciously like:

I looked on the back and there was what looked to be a description of a latterday-mexicanpink autumnal ritual – seven parts revelation-initiation and fifteen parts flutterby-bestowal.   Curiouser and curiouser the ways of this spirit, I thought, if I follow it will I flutter, will I perch or will I fall?   Either way … I’ll still be pink.

Here are some pink leaves about m lewis redford

1. I drew my Gravatar image on 10th August 1978.   I haven’t aged since then although I look quite different now
2. the Redfords – a withering breed, an eye for fine and beauty, but nothing to say- vor that is not
3. I vacuumed downstairs, had a fine coffee and some lemon marmalade on toast between 1. and  2.
4. I lived my childhood and emergenthood in Plumstead, SE London, working my way up and down the hill to Woolwich and back looking for ways and significance – from this I have an abiding love of green and grey
5. I have long thought that I am Batman (it’s what got me out of childhood); imagine my surprise when I discovered I was actually the Riddler all along!
6. I watched the rain against a window one Sunday afternoon; one of the drops suddenly angled away from its course downwards and then turned again to continue parallel for a long time – flow, hold … hold … trickle – but then it eventually rejoined its original flow; I thought that this portended my future life; I went to university and got involved with a Buddhist group and it took a good thirty years to wriggle my way through it and renew my way again: zen against / the window
7. I cannot accept a ‘one lovely blog’ award without mentioning my ‘one lovely companion’ in life for the past thirty one years – she is handsome, she wears a wild of undyed grey hair with a candy-pink scarf, and she sorts me out (sometimes even when I want her to)

Here are some blogs that spin love in their webs and their words:

1. very precise notice of place and people made in love and through which to find love: Emina Redzic http://elimelike.wordpress.com/
2. the Blue Girl who keeps finding her love beside her no matter where she looks http://bluegirlpoems.wordpress.com/
3. one who loves a dizzying panoply of place, time and music enough to become a whole audience herself; she even writes in little hearts  http://dizzyet.wordpress.com/
4. omrum delves deep through the shrubs tracing the gnarly branches lovingly back to where they came http://omrumsworld.wordpress.com/
5. Tazein Mirza Saad takes the happiness and suffering of her life and magnifies it through God’s eyes to a planet’s happiness and suffering   http://transcendingbordersblog.wordpress.com/
6. Moriah LaChapell continues ‘to pour / my life / into those / I love’ – her family and her plants – as a challenge and question to the world  http://godscoffeetable.com/
7. Lazy Wednesdays loves the way that the spaces between words jump through all boundaries, all horizons   http://lazywednesdays.wordpress.com/
8. Bruce Ruston loves to pick up a thread and follow it to a propinquitant point http://inkineticapoetry.wordpress.com/
9. Philip Vermaas runs a virtual hotel in his own heart of 9, rue Gît-le-Cœur for all the literary itinerants who wander poetry cities of the world; he lets them board for nothing and even offers them soup and bread http://misfitsmiscellany.wordpress.com/
10. David Archer looks with such metaphor between himself and other that he finds love everywhere, even in love lost, even in himself  http://kiteflyingformanicdepression.wordpress.com/
11. John Weeran has a thousand stories that take you on a journey to the self you always had but didn’t have the love to be  http://aboutzen.wordpress.com/
12. lesley carter loves travelling, and when she can’t cross borders she wanders through all sorts of blogs, I see her paddling around all over the place http://lesleycarter.wordpress.com/
13. Joe shows love of place and close experience unadorned through words smeared on a microscope slide http://joe2poetry.wordpress.com/
14. Anne Bradshaw loves to travel in a custom-built image which has been built by a word or two all over the time  http://shrewdbanana.wordpress.com/
15. the love of seventeen syllables and other fish: http://leander42.wordpress.com/

It’s taken the best part of a day to put this together but a creeping pinkness has coloured it all enough so that everything can breathe …

thought-provoking blog

Dear old leander42.wordpress.com/awards/ went and nominated me for an award.   First one I’ve had.   Thank you very much.   To get my hands on the sucker I have to do some stuff (tell seven things about myself; nominate five more sites and let them know):

• one of my ears sticks out more than the other and I’m never sure which one it is
• I was unbeaten champion at throwing the cricket ball in primary school – but I don’t play cricket
• I am extremely clever but usually get hold of the wrong end of the stick
• my thought and creation have been systematically ignored at work for 11 years and it is making me disappear
• I have played guitar for thirty five years and have one – somewhat familiar – blues piece to my repetoire
• my favourite poets are among Allen Ginsberg, William Carlos Williams, Leonard Cohen, Roger McGough, Philip Whalen, JD Salinger, Joni Mitchell, ani difranco and David Bowie (I know, I know)
• I weighed 12.27 stone this morning

I have to pyramidically nominate some others for this award so I’ll put down those to whom I return daily to read – they often make me think:

• misfitsmiscellany.wordpress.com/
• blogintomystery.com/
• longboxgraveyard.com/
• bowiesongs.wordpress.com/
• theassailedteacher.com/