“Sky-Circles” by Rumi

 

The way of love is not

a subtle argument.

The door there

is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles

of their freedom

How do they learn that?

They fall, and falling,

they are given wings.

Image: "Birds flying at sun set” by Chukwu Chibueze Pascal (Kingaustin07), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Note: Translated by Coleman Banks. Collected in A Year with Rumi - Daily Readings (2006).

Readers Theatre on the Horizon???

I haven’t been active in my Casey persona in recent years (as a writer, that is!) for two reasons:

I have been focussing on my Brigit writings, as Mael Brigde, and this has taken a lot of time and energy. (You can find a link to my book, blogs, etc. here.)

VCon, our annual SF convention here in Vancouver, Canada, has been absent for several years. Over the last year or two, volunteers have been hosting events in order to rebuild toward VCon, and I’ve enjoyed these very much, but as a regular attendee, not as a panelist. In November, they are presenting a one day convention called CONnections, and I have decided to pitch a readers theatre, as we have done in previous years as the Pallahaxi Players Readers Theatre. 

I hope this happens. I haven’t volunteered this time around to be on panels, and with the very sad and sudden death of Fran Skene, there is not likely to be a Turkey Reading (one of the greatest delights of VCons past, for me, at least), but I would love to sit down with fellow writers and read out something delightful for the audience.

We may have something in the can already, but if you have a short, stirring or humorous, play that would suit readers theatre*, we would be happy to see if your writing would be a fit for us. Or if you know of something in the public domain that would work well for an audience of SF and fantasy fans, we'd be interested in knowing about that, too.

If you are interested in participating at CONnections, you can pitch your idea here:

https://www.zeffy.com/en-CA/ticketing/connections-program-guest-inquiry

* Unlike actors memorising lines and acting with a set, we sit at a table together and read out our parts.

Image: “Alien Amor” by Laura Molina (Laura Molina/National Museum of Mexican Art) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Lava Cameo by Eavan Boland

 

Lava Cameo

by Eavan Boland

I like this story -

My grandfather was a sea captain.
My grandmother always met him when his ship docked.
She feared the women at the ports -

except that it is not a true story,
more a rumour or a folk memory,
something thrown out once in a random conversation,
a hint merely.

If I say wool and lace for her skirt and
crepe for her blouse
in the neck of which is pinned a cameo,
carved out of black, volcanic rock;

if I make her pace the Cork docks, stopping
to take down her parasol as a gust catches
the silk tassels of it -

then consider this:

there is a way of making free with the past,
a pastiche of what is
real and what is
not, which can only be
justified if you think of it

not as sculpture or syntax:

a structure extrinsic to meaning which uncovers
the inner secret of it.

She will die at thirty-one in a fever ward.
He will drown nine years later in the Bay of Biscay.
They will never even be
sepia, and so I put down
the gangplank now between the ship and the ground.
In the story, late afternoon has become evening.
They kiss once, their hands touching briefly.
Please.

Look at me, I want to say to her: show me
the obduracy of an art which can
arrest a profile in the flux of hell.

Inscribe catastrophe

Image: Italian Bracelet 41269, Walters Art Museum, LA. Public domain. Diana, Pompeii.

Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules

Listen to this. It always makes me think of you when I hear this because of that band you were in so long ago, man does not become wolf. I have so many things I want to say and and nothing, all at the same time. I have nothing at all to say because everything I have said up until now has been meaningless. It's never exactly what I want it to be and how do I even know what it ought to be let alone what I want? I just wish I could play this song for you and have you be as enthusiastic about it as I am.

Wolves actually do live by very strict rules. But they're not the rules we put on them. And man never does become wolf. Quite right about that.

Fuck, I miss you. Now, listen to this.

Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules

Willie Thrasher 

[Chorus]
Wolves don't live by the rules
Wolves don't live by the rules

[Verse 1]
Down eastern hills you can hear them crying
They have to fight to stay alive
No one can change it
Mother nature knows the reason why

[Chorus]
Oh, wolves don't live by the rules
Wolves don't live by the rules

[Verse 2]
They're born to kill and to be free
Their lives are hard but they're meant to be
The cry of the wild and the unaware
They can't see

[Chorus]
Oh, wolves don't live by the rules
Wolves don't live by the rules

"Wolves Don’t Live By the Rules" by Willie Thrasher on Spirit Child album. 1 January 1981.

Image: Christian Mehlführer, User:Chmehl, CC BY 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons

A Reflection on the Five Remembrances

 

The Five Remembrances

I am of the nature to grow old.

There is no way to escape growing old. 

 

I am of the nature to have ill health.

There is no way to escape ill health. 

 

I am of the nature to die.

There is no way to escape death. 

 

All that is dear to me and everyone I love

are the nature to change.

There is no way to escape

being separated from them. 

 

My actions are my only true belongings.

I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

The Five Remembrances is my very favourite gattha. It might seem gloomy but in fact I find it very reassuring. I think for me the scariest thing is feeling like I might fail to prevent something (illness, etc.) or fail to do something important. This gattha tells me that I can't truly prevent them and so I am allowed to stop trying.

I'm really not explaining that well. Perhaps it makes better sense to say that they reassure me that all of these things are natural and not disasters to be prevented. So I can begin to accept them more. I can say that the first time I started reciting it to myself, when I was driving on a highway I didn't know and was feeling anxious, it calmed me right down. Well, not right down. But it helped. The thing I fear most in that situation is having a car crash and dying or suffering greatly. In that moment, allowing myself to accept that death is inevitable helped me let go of some of my fear in driving at that moment.

I decided when I was extremely young that since I couldn't know whether or not there was life after death there was no point in contemplating it further. It seemed like there were enough things to worry about that were more concrete. As time went on even that fell away. I just can't believe in heaven or hell or any sort of afterlife. And I'm actually fine with that.

For me, when I say goodbye to this life, and everyone and everything in it, that is final, which makes it all the more poignant. Being able even for a fraction of a moment to see my death in the context of all those other deaths, the small and vast deaths that are happening all around me every moment of the day, even the small and larger deaths that are happening inside my body every moment of the day, to see time unroll before me and after me, makes it less sad and more beautiful.

I do like the focus of taking care of yourself so that old age is as pleasant as possible. I don't manage to do all of the things I know would help me in that regard but I do keep it as a main focus, if not the main focus. Shifting more and more to that being the main focus as time goes on. Mama needs more rest!

For Sr Thuận Nghiêm's dharma talk on the Five Remembrances, click here.

Image: of Irish crane, back after 300 years of their absence on the island. From ireland.com

"You must set out now” by Anne Kathleen McLaughlin

 

You must set out now.

Gather your belongings.

Take only what you need:

A journal, a pen, water colours,

A change of clothing, warm socks,

Woollen cloak with hood.

The currach awaits you.

Show your bundle.

Climb in.

Here are the oars.

Push away from shore.

Leave what holds you.

Seek no promise of safety.

Set your face to the boundless sea,

The wind in your left eye. Go.

In the pre-dawn darkness

One light shines:

Seven pointed star.

You do not know the way.

There is no way to where you must go.

Trust your life to this star.

Here is a journey prayer:

Star of the Sea

Seven arms encircle my soul.

A body to dance

A heart to know

Inner light to guide

Inner fire to impassion

Earth to birth me

Sea to hold me

Wind to carry me Home.

From Singing the Dawn – Rebirth of the Sacred Feminine

by Anne Kathleen McLaughlin 

Image: "Sea at night” by Władysław Ślewiński.

When the Old Oak Tries to Emulate the Willow

 The sun sets on another day.🌄

It's been such a hard week and a half. I will tell you what's gotten me through: my spiritual practice, my teachers’ wisdom, which I have heard over and over again until I've integrated a tiny portion of it into myself; listening to a LOT more of it over the last few days; my friends – some of whom I didn't know before this week; reaching out for help instead of curling up into a ball and waiting to die. (I did curl up for half a day. I needed to absorb the shock before beginning to act. And then I needed help looking at everything from different perpectives till I decided what I would do. I was still more intensely stunned because the worst of this news arrived on the morning after the US election, when I was already rocked back and struggling against despair.)

I won't go into the details of what upset me so much these two weeks, but I will say that I end this week stronger and — key here — more flexible than I began it, because I got to decide from a position of wisdom, acceptance, and support whether I was going to fight a particularly hard unfairness or whether I was going to shift in myself. In this case I decided not to fight but not to lie down and be rolled over either. Not to frame choosing my mental and physical health over fighting a war with my landlord — someone who holds great power over this aged, unwell, and, most importantly, moneyless person — as submission on my part, not to frame it in a way that shamed me for “failing” to fight. That left me able to agree to some things and — !!! — to negotiate others.

It may still transpire that I “win” nothing, but at the moment some of the worst of the order is possibly withdrawn. I wrote it all up, too, in an email, and the landlord’s sheriff didn’t disagree with my summary of our agreement. Fingers crossed.

Slowly my perspective shifts until I begin to see myself as a person with choice even when it doesn't seem like it, a person with help around me even when I can't see them right away, or can’t see what they can do.

Thank you to my friends and my communities. You are good. We are good together. 🫂