Needless to say the ten of us in the circle were wondering were this was gong to lead. We will come out of the four sessions this week with two creations, the second draft of our first is due tomorrow morning and I share it with you below. Jaime, is kind and helpful as we read our first tries, many unfinished in 40 minutes. This should be fun. So hold your nose, plug your ears, my offering....
How does it go? By ko shin, Bob Hanson, June 15, 2010, Naropa Summer Writing Program
How does it go?
It's not over until it’s over, right?
I remember Grandma Olson, when taken to their grave yard where she and grandpa were to be buried she said, "I don't know anyone here" my mom replied, "There is no coffee and cookies at 10 each morning here mom"
Is that true? I hope not.
Not easy assignment, write about someone's death or mine, but it happens, death that is.
I have been with folks when they cross over, held my mom's hand and never believed this was it, Or Jim, blown away by a drug deal gone bad, his head spread with his body on the lawn in front of his mom's house, a bright summer morning. Is that all there is?
How many life times do we have?
Just this morning I was thinking about being buried, although I want to be burned ashes thrown in Japan, WI and elsewhere,
I was thinking as I discovered my cell died, only works when plugged in, I would want my cell buried with me and I am going to call my wife and friends,
Won't they be surprised…?
The cold, cold ground, the worms, the roots from the trees, the floods that could send me swimming, at least I do not have to worry about drowning. I feel that sense of what it would be like to be eaten when you’re not there…
You have seen the sand on a beautiful shore; it is almost like each grain of sand is rolling up to your feet. So, as they spread my ashes, and the small bones that do not burn around the forest near my house, somewhere at Mt. Aso in Japan, the Island of Kyushu where I spend so many years, and where ever they like, each grain of me will meet the earth and be absorbed into the universe.
As you cannot even count the grains of sand on a clean beach, not in the Gulf right now, so, your grains of ash and mine only join the earth again.
The silence, like the woods around my home, no sound, then a bird, a cricket, a sand hill but silence. The time to rehearse or to forget, I wonder.
Given the ash, no form, no content what about the next life?
Not the bull shit about heaven or eternal life or eternal heat & pain, but the next showed-upness, I often thought about being a sheep dog, but now I am not sure, just my ash and I...
Have you thought about showing up again, not in a new you, but in a new form, new being,
What will it be?
You know that old phrase, death where is your sting?
There ain't no pain buddy, I am not afraid of my dead time, however long it is, there is nothing to worry about, nothing to solve, just lay there or ash there and be silent
It is not over until it is over. Then it begins all over again, ash to ash, to ash, to ash...
[Neshkoro Pops in the tradition of American Pops- thanks Jack!]
Cold ground,
A stone with a name
That's it?
Hell no
I invited the worms
Yes, those fishing worms
To feast a bit,
For the body will disappear
The coffins float down the Mississippi
Where do they go? Heaven?
Yes, New Orleans!
Talk to the dead?
Why not
They finally hear you
Death, endings
Ground welcomes you
Wait, am I dead?
Can't you tell?
Reminds me of a mulch pile
Lots of worms
Funny you should ask
Strange you should care
I'm gone, bye!
Join me?
The rest of the day was formed by a panel lead by Anna Waldman on Personal Ethos: Coteries, Infrastructure, and Gossip. What was fun abut this one is the history of the Beat movement and pre-Beat movement, Joanne Kyger was part of the birth in the SF area. David Trinidad is a researcher and added some very funny things about Gossip and the role it played with the Beats and their followers, showing up in their poems as well.
The 3pm Lecture for MFA students was by a Professor from Denver U, Brian Kiteley on "Narrative Spaces between Sentences" Even used Kierkegaard as an example a few times. Very technical but helpful.
They give you old bikes for free to use while here, so I did some exploring on a bike that fits Anika and William better then me, but it's free and it gets me around. A Lot better than walking.
I am tired, excited and wish I had come for the month, next year! I suppose you might say that most of the stuff here is over my head or not tools I will use in the last 40, but the the place, the spirits of 37 years and more of great and crazy writers is worth the price many times over. The energy here, the young people, the excitement about our world, caring for it, and being artists blows your mind. Anna invited us many times as we began, "If there is something you want to do, organize, create, do it, that is what Naropa is about." Dam, no one ever said that at St.Olaf, or Luther Seminary, not in that spirit. But those places and my journey as strange and wonderful as it has been brings me right to this MOMENT! I thank the Gods!
Oh we saw the sun and the mountains today, their hope for more tomorrow, and 90 degree weather by the end of the week. Sleep well my friends...please comment if you visit the blog, we might even have a conversation.
In the Mean Time, by Roger Sween (rev. 17 June 2010)
ReplyDeleteThe other side yawns, empty in silent stillness,
inert and thoughtless, helplessly routine
despite whirling atomies; fixed, that is,
without volition except at the will of others.
What else could it mean?
The dead, as we have heard, have only their shadows,
no actual life of their own beyond our wish to reflect them.
To be alive is to clamor against the bounds of life
and its “target” in someone’s term for inevitable death.
Perhaps he meant a target for those lost to direction:
doors and windows closed, passages blocked with inattention
until every pinnacle topples into the dreadful waste
of meaninglessness, of abysmal nothingness.
Might I welcome a hastening death, and chastened
move onwards to fulfillment at my every best?
May then thought and action measure life
in fruits pressed together, overflowing.
For death remains the inevitable, stealthy one,
taking its ease in denial and obsequious ignorance,
quietly subliminal in each short life until it takes command.
Faceless death, hooded and obscure in its fog
of failed attention, becomes the living, unspoken subtext,
ever present, ever at work, swallowing
even as the masquerade ends: it is time.