Only now do I know what purity is,
Free from the dilution of life,
And yet I’ve never seen anyone so full of life either,
With you I am at a mountain lake,
Where “civilization” is not in its vocabulary,
With you I am at an amusement park,
Teeming with joy, fun and smiles,
Lost in a moment, in a day that we hope never ends
I dreamed last night I was crying,
From a love that made each cell in my body,
Vibrate to the point I was changing phase,
And the liquid poured out of me,
Just as your sweet little kisses poured over me,
Your smile and laughter bathed me,
Like particles of light in the morning sun,
Dancing on my skin to a timeless symphony.
You remind me that I am mammal,
Not animal in the way that people usually mean it,
Not primitive or violently struggling to survive,
But natural, wild, inseparable from this world,
Your head nestles under the curve of my neck,
I can feel the warmth of your blood, pulsating,
Flowing with mine, in tune with the beat of Earth’s heart,
The ebb and flow of life enveloping us both.
There is a closeness that no force can destroy,
It may stretch, it may tear, it may hurt,
It persists even through the veil of death,
No matter the physical distance I know,
There will be moments where we look for each other,
And in those moments we will find each other
For I am responsible for you, and though you don’t know it,
You are responsible for me too.
The world is wonderful to you right now,
I know it’s not going stay that way,
The pain in life percolates through the bliss,
But that does not mean that bliss disappears,
Above those clouds there is always the sun, the stars,
The weather changes, but that does not,
I promise to never fail in reminding you of this,
For it’s because of you, I will always know beauty.
Shame is the topic today. I’ve decided though that I want practice being more creative with my writing. While I enjoy writing out my thoughts in essay form, and many of you have been kind of enough to appreciate it as well, variety is the spice of life, and I need to practice more variety of expression. Especially I still have this dream of one day writing some sort of work of fiction, and so I need to practice wordcraft and storytelling more. And I venture it to such an area, I risk making myself more vulnerable as I express a part of myself I am less confidence in my ability to express. The connection between vulnerability and shame was brought to my attention this week through a wonderful TED talk. This culture of shaming,
especially through social media has been on my mind a lot over the past year or so, since I saw an excellent interview on the Daily Show with Jon Ronson. An article on the book he has published is here. So I shall let the talk and the article do the intellectual speaking for me, and I will instead put forth this poem on the subject. In my head this poetry would be expressed as a rap, or rather a dialogue between two rappers. In my head are a lot of the songs from the musical Hamilton which I am sure had somewhat of influence on my mode of expression. lol Also, fear not, in my head I also know I have the least amount of street cred to be rapping. 🙂
I’m not a lynch mob, I’m just here all alone, Reading about things that I don’t condone, Concerning people I’ve never really known, And shaming them from behind my telephone
You’re fat, you’re ugly, and you’re a fool, You’re so fucking dumb, didn’t you go to school? Are you even dimly aware of the newest rule? Exposing what you are, makes me look cool.
You see, I’ve made the world a better place, By showing you don’t belong in the human race I got no time to check the facts of your case, You can try to efface, but mistakes won’t erase
Each like I get invigorates me, And helps me hide my vulnerability, I don’t make mistakes, you want civility? It’s curt, but your hurt’s not my responsibility.
A million views, the shares have swirled, Filled with mocking laughter, insults hurled, I’m a link in this chain of shame that’s unfurled, A virtual crowd that’s crushing your world
Do you like what I said, do you feel remorse, Do you feel bad enough to correct your course? I scream and scream until my voice is hoarse, Shame is my game, I’m a dangerous force.
But what if you’ve not made anything better?
Addicted to shaming, bound by a fetter,
You’re just another follower, not a jet-setter,
Passing judgment on others letter by letter
Shame never informs, has little to tell,
Gives you nothing to build, and nothing to sell,
There’s no way it will ever serve you well,
Don’t be a part of that shaming carousel.
Was that 8 second verdict more than it seemed?
Shame them to goodness, is that what you schemed?
They’d learn their lesson, is this what you dreamed?
Do you think that’s how souls are really redeemed?
Instead you put a hole in the soul of those that you shame,
Anger, isolation, depression just fan the flame,
Of violence and hurt, now you’re partly to blame,
Should you make a mistake, do you deserve the same?
We need to focus on things that make us whole,
Don’t stride to divide, and stop being a troll,
Kindness and charity, let that be your goal,
Be a model of compassion, let that be your role
So you see with such ease we’re blind to the pain,
That we cause for momentary emotional gain,
In a world filled with hurt it’s so hard to stay sane,
Shaming doesn’t help, we’ve got to refrain
I speak from experience, I know how you feel,
To stare at the screen and think it’s all real,
But what part of the heart do your actions reveal?
Forsaking personal growth for mass appeal.
Oppose what is wrong, but don’t dehumanize,
Know your own imperfections, try to empathize,
Keep on yearning for learning and you’ll grow to be wise,
Add joy to the world and watch your spirit rise
When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer by Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
A friend of mine and I had a wonderful discussion about magic and perfection the other day. It got me thinking about what it means to appreciate the magic something. For her it was about the pure and the simple. On a wonderful little gift she gave me, the tag on the gift had the line from the following Walt Whitman poem above “from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars”. When I looked up the entire poem and read the words (as I had never read it before) I found it funny how much the meaning of the poem had to do with what I was sorting through in my mind (by the way this friend was a student in my Introduction to Earth Science class and wonder if there isn’t more of a message in there for me lol). The words from the poem she shared with me are good advice. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I could no longer follow such advice. Have I lost something? Have I lost the appreciation for magic? Am I unable to enjoy things in perfect silence? My mind singular on the beauty I behold? Not too long ago another blogger I follow who writes poetry that I always connect with wrote a poem about missing when life was simple called Old Happy Stars. I do long for that. I think we all do to a certain degree. I also know that you can’t go back and making things feel so simple an amazing is very hard for me.
This discussion about magic came up because we were discussing Santa Claus. She was a firm believer in Santa Claus until the 4th grade, and is raising her daughter, like many people, to see all the magic that is Santa Claus. I am someone who never once believed in Santa Claus, and thus even I were to want to give my son Santa Claus at Christmas there would be no level where I could really fake it. I have no memories of any magic associated with Santa. She said it’s important for children to have those magical things. And I have to say I agree with her. After the conversation I started to ponder what the magic was in my childhood. I remember looking at lightning in thunderstorms and feel that it was absolutely magical. Thunder seemed magical, the smell of rain seemed magical. For me there was a lot of magic in the sky and I am certain I had some moments of perfect silence, even if it wasn’t actually silent. I think sometimes in such moments we feel perfect silence because we are in perfect solitude, shutting out the rest of the world while we are singular in our focus. When I came home I started watching my son and how amazed he is by things, whether it’s trains or the planes up in the sky. It seems to me that even they begin to learn what these things are and what their purpose might be, they have no idea how they work. Something that seems to moving but has no muscles, no animal-like locomotion, no feathers for flying must seem like absolute magic. If I wasn’t forming a lot of long term memories, and I saw this metal object flying in the sky I would be pointing up every single time too in excitement. I think, at least I hope, kids always see things as magical, even if you don’t give them Santa. For them, every object that they’ve dropped or thrown up in the air comes down. That plane up in the sky has to be some pretty crazy stuff to them, and what other choice do they have but to take it on faith that it will not fall down from the sky.
That thought made me happy, but I started to get a little bit sad, because I am not sure that I could just gaze at the stars in perfect silence. Because in that poem I am the Learn’d Astronomer, and if I was a student in that class I would be enthralled by the equations, the figures, and the charts. When I look at the stars I can’t help but think what the humidity might be that is impacting their twinkle. I would think about how far away those stars are, and how trigonometry gives us a way of telling how far away they are through stellar parallax. I would think about how the stars are like a portal back in time, knowing that I am seeing what a star looked like 10,000 years ago, and how at that time human civilization was just dawning. If you can’t tell already, it’s hard to quiet my mind. I look at everything like that. Sometimes I am wondering and questioning, maybe coming up with some hypothesis to explain what I’m seeing. Perhaps I would make an analogy. Or perhaps I would simply think about all the forces at work, or the history of the object, the big picture, the detailed picture, related pictures. Sometimes I contemplate all the connections that one thing has to others. All that comes to me in a flood and I feel overwhelmed by how amazing this universe is. And then I started to smile, because maybe it’s not magic, but it’s still amazing. It’s still beautiful. I t still leaves me in awe and wonder even if I know exactly how it works and think about every variable in the equation. And maybe for every person that walks out on the Learn’d Astronomer and enjoys that perfect silence at the stars, there is a student who stays and listens and just takes it all in and the amount of seemingly simultaneous thoughts grow like the branches of a tree. And I’m not making a comment about level of intelligence because my friend is extremely intelligent and I feel like she experiences those moments of perfect silence frequently, perhaps even at will when she needs to. But maybe it’s just really a different way of approaching the same beauty in life. There are truly times when I wish I could experience such moments that Whitman describes, and so I envy her. But maybe the beauty I see is just as enviable.
So as I began to smile I thought back to just that morning and how when I drove in to work just sliver of the crescent moon was visible as the moon waned. Often, at about an hour before sunrise, there is enough reflection of the Earth back to the moon and you can see the rest of the lunar sphere, even though it’s featureless. Then I thought in my mind about the geometry of all 3 objects and had this model in my head. And I decided to write a poem. The one I just posted a few days ago. And like magic I took all those thoughts and imagined almost like a love affair between the Earth and the moon. So even if I stare at the moon and explain its beauty while also appreciating it, such thoughts can still inspire, still create, and still bring me a great deal of wonder that I think can be considered a type of magic. And maybe that Learn’d Astronomer is just as lost in his world of equations and charts as the star gazer is lost in his moment of perfect silence. Maybe it’s not so important how you experience magic in the world, but that you do experience it and never lose that ability to get lost in wonder and awe at beauty.
A charming blogger I follow who is full of sharp wit, emotional depth, and genuine kindness recently posted a poem called What is Life? Her answers to that question follow and are an enjoyable read. Someone in the comments of that post asked the question, “What then is NOT life?” and that question had me thinking. So I thought in response to her poem, I would write a quick one of my own, which is not nearly as clever or humorous, but hopefully at least makes you ponder the question that I did. 🙂
Only now do I know what purity is,
Cloak Unfurled 