Though I’m still following the election process, now that the choices have narrowed down considerably, and I’m not nearly as enthused about the remaining candidates, the blog won’t focus so much on the election.

I’m sure this news will relieve some of you no end, if you’re even still following the blog. But be warned, I will now and then post some politics, just as I have in the past. It’s too important to ignore completely.

I moved the dates forward on the previous two posts to help redirect the blog again to a primary focus on poetry, art, creativity, and alternative spirituality. I know, cheating. She’s too lazy to even write a new post.

Update 02-15-2008:

A belated

HAPPY LOSAR

to everyone. Februrary 7th was the Tibetan New Year, the start of year 2135 Male Earth Mouse. For more information about Losar, visit Wikipedia’s Losar page or this site.

For more information about Tibet and China, you might want to read TWELVE THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT TIBET AND CHINA.

I can’t believe it’s Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday again. Didn’t I just post a tribute to him? Wasn’t that, like, yesterday? My dad turned 85 two days ago, so maybe I’m feeling aware that time moves very swiftly, more so the older we get. I’m not sure why I mark Poe’s birthday and not the birthdays of other poets I love. Perhaps because he seems to have been such a mystery.

Today I’m fascinated by this mystery “Poe toaster” who visits Poe’s grave in Baltimore each year on his birthday, and leaves three red roses and 1/2 a bottle of cognac. Thanks to Brill Crider for the link.

You may not be aware that one of the mysteries surrounding Poe is that it isn’t known for certain what caused his death. A couple of years ago, I came across an online reference to Poe’s death, and a theory by a cardiologist that Poe died of rabies, possibly from a cat bite. He liked cats, and the theory is that he may have been bitten by one of his own pets, or a stray, and contracted the disease.

Our loss.

In any case, Happy 199th Birthday, Mr. Poe.

Poetry turns
an unshuttered eye
on beauty, on ugliness,
and everything between.

It translates the profound
through focus on
the loved, the reviled,
and everything between.

Not the driest news, nor
the most turgid
melodrama
have anything on this

passion expressed
in objectivity,
objectivity
in passion.

Copyright © 2007 Barbara W. Klaser

Today I did something I never did before. I asked a stranger to turn down his music. I didn’t want to do this, but there’s a threshold beyond which desire, reason, and tolerance clash and all inhibitions fall away. Action must be taken before the senses are taken leave of.

I’ve put up with loud noise before. I’ve made some loud noises myself. But I don’t think I’ve ever had another’s noise assail my senses in quite this way. Not without being paid to endure it, and even then protection or escape was provided.

It was so loud the walls vibrated with each bass pulse. This went on for a while, and I tried to ignore it, put it out of mind, thinking any minute it would stop. I finally went out and shouted to the person to turn it down. I was four feet away and he didn’t hear me until I waved my arm and he turned and saw me.

All day I’ve contemplated why anyone wants to listen to music at that volume. A volume beyond which nothing else can be heard. A volume at which it seems to me hearing loss isn’t just a threat but a certainty. With the bass turned up so high that anything but that part of the sound is lost beside the assault on every cell in one’s body.

The reason I thought so much about it is that I like to live and let live. I don’t like to ask that anyone change how they live, be it appearance, behavior, or tastes. And it appears loud music is a taste. But I was given no choice. Sound doesn’t stay on a leash like a dog. It crosses boundaries. I wasn’t able to go about my business without him changing his. I couldn’t keep my hearing healthy and intact, keep my blood pressure down, while putting up with his choice of loss and overexcitement, the price for his immersion in explosive sound.

Why do some people like their music so loud? Or anything so loud? Are some ears, some sensibilities, more sensitive to this? Or have the less easy with loudness simply not lost as much, are we less impaired as yet, so we hear it more acutely? I too want to hear all the notes, but I didn’t hear all his notes. I didn’t hear any notes, only noise. It wasn’t music to my ears. I wonder if mine would be music to his, or if they’re already deadened to it.

I have no answer. But in searching for one I came across a Stephen Dobyns poem online, on this very topic, Loud Music, in which he examines the difference between his favored volume for music (loud) and that of his four-year-old stepdaughter. Some compensation, at least. I got a good poetry fix out of it.

I planned to post a poem, about posting work on the internet before it’s really finished. Ironically, that poem is not yet finished enough even to post unfinished. (See the category “Poetry Sketchbook” for my poems posted to date.)

So instead I’ll post a few links to what others are saying, and my take on some of them:

One House wrote earlier this month about one of my favorite passages by Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, his advice on washing dishes, in More Dishes. I don’t have the book mentioned there, The Miracle of Mindfulness, but I have four of Thich Nhat Hanh’s other books, and his writings always bring me to a peaceful place. In particular I like his biography of Gautama Buddha titled Old Path White Clouds. The book I own that contains the dish washing essay is Peace Is Every Step, a compilation of short readings that can be opened to any page, any time. In the Foreword, the Dalai Lama voices his support of Nhat Hanh’s method of bringing about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals.

Those words reflect a personal belief of mine that the universe is held together by energy that’s a form of divine love, and that each of us is a conduit for that perfect, unconditional love. Each of us in this world, in our imperfection, has our little (or big) blockages and resistances to that energy. What I consider a very important purpose in my life is to gradually work out those resistances in myself, to let love flow freely, in me, in my life, and thus in my little part of the world.

I’m sure that seems simplistic to some, maybe even a little “goody-two-shoes.” I’m certainly not perfect at this. I have so many flaws, if they were physical holes I’d be see-through—and leaking like a sieve! But everyone needs a goal, something to work toward, right? That work can take me into the shadows, and it used to startle me when that happened, but I’ve learned that in order to clear out my resistance, I have to understand where it is, why it is, and what to do with it. That last part, what to do with it, can be the real trick. But for some of us, in some circumstances, acknowledging the resistance is there to begin with is the trickiest.

One of the best ways I know to encourage and spread love is through creativity. The language of art is universal. By showing others what we see, what our personal world looks and feels like, we encourage understanding, sharing, and taking an interest in what’s really happening — both inward and outward. Awareness of ourselves and each other can’t be a bad thing, provided we respect one another, and each other’s personal boundaries.

Kerrdelune, at Beyond the Fields We Know always leaves me a little breathless with her nature photographs, poetry and prose, and she did it again with The View From Here, which just sort of stopped me in my web-browsing tracks. No explanation needed. But she also posted recently in response to a prompt of “shoes” a photo and blog post that, well, resembled me. I don’t own any boots or snowshoes, don’t need them here. But like her, I used to think high heels were a necessary part of my life, especially when I worked in an office. I never could manage the really high ones, even then. Two inches were my limit. These days, my shoes are all flat, out of respect for my poor aching back, and those that I wear most days, if I wear shoes, are primarily functional. If they happen to look nice too, that’s a bonus. I like it that way! No more torture for beauty, especially a particular flavor of beauty — that state of fashionable or popular showboat perfection (always youthful and symmetrical and airbrushed) which, no matter what you do, only lasts a few years anyway, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to have it to begin with. Even if you have it, it’s way too much work to maintain, and not worth the trouble unless you’re a fashion model or making movies, and I’m not making movies, I’m living a life. My beauty priority at the moment is eating right and working very slowly and without undue pressure on losing weight — without dieting, without guilt, and being healthy, without shame over how I look right now. In fact, guilt has nothing to do with it. I’m losing it to help me feel better and be healthier, and that’s all. I have, by the way, declared a moratorium on guilt of all kinds. Beauty is a process to me now, a more authentic way of living my life.

When I turned 40, a friend of mine several years older told me that 40 was his best year. That was the year he finally stopped feeling it was more important to please others than to be himself. Maybe 50 is that year for me. Maybe I’m a slow learner. Maybe it’s something about being on the downhill slide of life. A slide should be fun. Even if I live to 100, it’s more than halfway over. Why spend it trying to be someone or something I’m not? Ah, it feels good just to say that.

I took a class once, provided by my employer, that was unusual as government-contracted classes go, in that the teacher asked us questions such as whether we could remember being born (one woman in class did remember her birth), whether we’d ever seen the human aura. He also taught us some things that were of a psychospiritual nature. If I remember correctly, the class was stress management, and not the half-day stress management class. This one was three days. I was in a stressful job at the time, and my boss knew it, acknowledged it, and — bless her heart — did what she could to help.

At one point the teacher asked if anyone in class was prone to migraines. When I raised my hand he fixed his gaze on me in a way that was almost mesmerizing, and asked why I thought I was responsible for everything, why I thought I had to be perfect. I nearly fell over. He’d nailed me. That is a tendency of mine, and I was in a job at the time that fed that tendency. It’s a losing place to be, because of course you never succeed. I always felt like a failure, no matter how much I did or how well I did it. Everything that went wrong filled me with remorse, guilt — even if I had nothing directly to do with it. And I’d been that way all my life. The fact that I remember that moment so clearly, five years or so later, is at least a good sign that I took him seriously, that I’ve been thinking about it, working on it. I have no idea how I got that way to begin with, maybe a nasty configuration of planets when I was born. I’ll blame Saturn and Mars this time around.

Dear Mr. Poe,

Thank you for the poetry, the stories, the mystery.

Happy Birthday.

Respectfully,
a fan

* * *

The Raven (excerpt)

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

* * *

Israfel (excerpt)

If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.

* * *

Alone

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov’d, I loved alone.
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

(The above three poems were written by Edgar Allan Poe.)