Year's End

The end is the beginning. Suddenly I discover a new perception of Time and Being. Being is Time and repetition of cycles is an illusion. The circle as a symbol of infinity is a fiction, because the "circle" is constantly moving, revolving and evolving through time and space. Our dimensional worlds are like cylinders and filaments in never-ending change or vibration. It might well be that consciousness is the collision of membranes oscillating and making parallel universes as they go along, appearing and reappearing in a vast infinitude of realities and universes.

Time Loss

All this time since the last entry...lost.

Why?

My inertia compounds the loss. Time looming large is more daunting than an empty page, an empty canvas, an empty space inviting, enticing... Time is the very stuff of existence, the essence of Being, more palpable than space. Being stuck in Time is like disappearing into a blackhole. That is where I have been... past the Event Horizon... into the jowls of the Time Grinder.

My Browser was set to open on this blog. Every time I opened it, this black hole of Jet Lag came up as a grim reminder of my stalled condition. It should have been Time Lag because my paralysis extended way beyond the conventions of travel disadvantages from point to point on our globe.

So now I open a new era. Somehow I have gone through an evolution from early enthusiasm, through the trying times of working through patches with no inspiration, to the recognition of my limits and a growing vision. Maybe this era will be open new insights and energies. I know I have lost the few readers I may have had, so now I write to the empty space, the empty page, the emptiness of an existential ennui that smiles as it advances for the kill.

Jet Lag

In my travels I have experienced what I thought was jet lag, a kind of sluggishness and fatigue that is somewhat annoying and is over in a few days. When I heard others who travel more than I complain of jet lag, I assumed they were speaking of this minor nuisance and I wondered about the basis of their difficulty.

However, the jet lag I experienced this time after returning from Korea was totally disabling, a major impediment to routine functioning. This was not something that I could ignore, since my energy was totally drained and I was thoroughly disoriented. Each day I would manage to get out of bed and get through the morning routine, but when I tried to leave the apartment, I would feel as though someone had hit me with a sledge hammer as I was trying to walk while dragging a three hundred pound weight. Each day I would try to return to work, I would be beaten back by a ruthless fatigue that resembled a drug-induced state. I would lay delirious in bed, voices on the radio blending with my fantasies in some bizarre narrative of intrigue and deception. Somehow I would find myself back in Korea in some back street pursuing some vague adventure that left me helpless and alone...descending into unconsciousness.

One friend advised me to "stay with the sun" and I thought he merely meant to adjust my sleeping habits to the local daylight hours. But I have since learned that the remedy is to absorb as much sunlight as possible as it creates a chemical response that counteracts the jet lag and enables you to adjust quickly. Alas! I learned this too late since I am now in the final stages of recovery. Yet, I have a new respect for those world travelers who seem to thrive in the changing zones of time and days perhaps creating a new species equipped for time travel.

Namsadang

When I travel, I always think there will be more free time than actually materializes. I thought I would have time for long, leisurely blogging about my visit to Korea. I have many notes and many thoughts, few of which have made it through my fingers to this Blog. It's okay. Right now I am trying to relish the moments and the people. Some of these experiences will eventually make their way to words, but others may slumber for another time.

One discovery that I cherish is Namsadang and the newly sculpted figures in Anseong that celebrate this entertainment and art genre. Apparently the film The King and the Clown (Wang-eui Nam-ja) is narrated through the context of Namsadang, so I look forward to seeing that film which apparently has had lasting impact on Koreans. It seems clear that effotrs such this are awakening many to the rich heritage and past of a country that is distinctively different from its Asian neighbors despite some obvious practices they share through interaction over centuries.

Namsadang (Namsadang Nori) represents a traveling group of entertainers much in the spirit of Commedia dell'arte that flourished as a traveling troupe of acrobats, dancers, and actors in Italy in the 1500s. The sculpted figures at Anseong convey the spontaneity and energy of this practice that has as its primary aim to entertain, and through the invention and imagination of its makers has risen to the status of a national art. These figures were installed this past July, so they have been a public fixture for about a month. They make an exciting contribution to Anseong and performance heritage of Namsadang.

Itaewon: Pul Hyanggi and the Grand Hyatt Terrace

Finally, Sang-chuel Choe and I made contact and arranged to get together on this day of Korean Independence. I had already had met for lunch with Professor Doo-jin Han, and with Youngju and Han went to the new National Museum of Korea, so the day had been rather full. Youngju shared some time as I waited for Sang-chuel in the lounge of the Seoul Plaza. (The day had brought one minor disaster: I lost my camera in a taxi without much hope of recovering it.)

As we waited in the lounge, Youngju pointed out a match-making date in progress, which I learned is a very common event in hotel lounges. Korea is filled with such elegant and fanciful lounges, so it seems a great ritual for seeking and finding the mate of your dreams.

Sang-chuel finally fought his way through the notorious Seoul traffic jams arriving slightly after 7 p.m. He drove to a restaurant just beside the Itaewon area, Pul Hyanggi, which he explained means the scent or fragrance of grasses. This was a traditional Korean restaurant and I am not sure exactly what Sang-chuel ordered, but the food kept coming for an hour and twenty minutes with delectable dishes I had never seen or tasted before. It was a fest for royalty and a truly unforgettable experience. The woman dressed in traditional Korean fashion who served as our host orchestrated the meal with grace and devotion, making each dish resonate with its own special meaning and aura.

Sang-chuel telephoned Insook and arranged for her to meet us at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in nearby (very nearby) Itaewon, a cosmopolitan, upscale district appealing to international travelers and Koreans seeking a more multicultural setting. We drove along the main street of Itaewon and I felt as though we were in another country. I had read about this thriving Itaewon section in the Korean Airline's magazine, Morning Calm, and in this brief sojourn it more than lived up to the promise of the article.

The Grand Hyatt was a blast. The moment you entered, you felt like you had entered a different world. It was pulsing with energy. The lounge was filled with young people bent on romance and celebration, aided and abetted by a piano player who pulled the essence of Korean dreamy pop from the ivories with an appropriate rubato spirit of wanderlust.

We went to Sang-chuel's favorite Hyatt hangout, The Terrace. I can only say that the view from the terrace was spectacular, a panoramic view of Seoul and the Han river. We looked south from Mount Namsan across the river to the new city, and I thought I had a sense of where COEX and Chungang University might be located in that distant view. While we waited for Insook a waiter walked around the restaurant with a sign that had little bells ringing. Sang- chuel explained it was another meeting of strangers hoping to meet their dreammate.

Insook joined us shortly and we invested some calories in the desserts and coffee. I had the Mango Cup which totally destroyed any hope I had of trying to stay within range of my diet. But what the heck...it's Korea, after all.

Jumping into the Seoul Scene

Sunday, Seoul time was an exhilarating trek through the streets and by-ways of a city bigger than New York that felt somehow more intimate and open. Maybe it was just the charm of my guide, Jungmin (later joined by another charming guide) and her shrewd maneuvering. However, nothing can be done to avoid the traffic jams of Seoul which are growing more and more severe even as I am typing this paragraph. It is one of those things that everyone complains about, but somehow seem to accept as a modern condition of city life. With 44 million people who own at least one car, driving is a challenge and you usually are trying to flee the city and the congestion for points south and the endless shores that outline the peninsula.

We went through some fashionable shopping malls to watch people and the gleaming and timely products, and ended up at Tani for lunch, a fusion eatery designed as an upscale but cozy retreat where conversation and idleness reign. It was difficult to disengage from this quiet oasis, but we were seeking to be in the streets and mingle with people and Korean Culture. It was extremely hot and humid, but nevertheless we headed for a landmark, Myeong Dong Catholic Cathedral, which was about 200 meters away. Our path led us through the street of youth, Myeong Dong, a boulevard without cars, inhabited by thousands of teenagers (and younger) with many shops and carts designed to lure them into sales, but they seemed especially savvy and out for other adventures. Walking this street gave new meaning to the phrase "strolling the boulevard..."

Eventually we came to the church, which because it was Sunday was filled with worshippers and tourists like myself. I took a few pictures but was fiercely attacked and admonished by a girl of about 15 years, who was supported by some man who appeared to be in charge of the back of the church. They were intent in herding people to the sides of the church where no one could see, while keeping the center of the sanctuary vacant.

Our real destination for the day was a martial arts musical show called Jumping that had been running for some time and became extremely popular after being acclaimed by a festival in Edinburgh. As it happened, we were to see the last performance of this show in the Cecil Theatre (a typical off-Broadway style space) before it began a national tour.

Upon leaving the church, we grabbed a taxi, and discovered that the driver did not have the slightest idea how to get to the theatre, even though it is a well-known destination and quite famous because of the hit shows that have played there. It was at this point, Jungmin pulled out her phone and called someone for directions, and then handed the phone to the driver, who despite this assistance seemed very reluctant to accept the directions.

Even though we inched our way through traffic, we made it to the theatre much too early and were told about a nearby cafeteria where we might spend some time and find some refreshment. But the cafeteria was closed for Sunday, so we wandered a long the street and stumbled upon a true national treasure that had been named by an international group of architects as the most impressive and beautiful building in Seoul, the Seoul Anglican Church.
This was an extraordinary discovery, and although the sanctuary was closed, a very kind gentleman unlocked the doors and gave us a personal tour. The architecture is Anglican gothic mixed with Korean, the only such structure of its kind. Even as I write this in the plaza of the Seoul Plaza Hotel, I am looking at this idyllic structure with the deep earthern orange roofs and light brown stone that sits in the center of the city, out of the way but also deeply in the midst of the life of Seoul. Begun in 1924, the church took more than 70 years to complete, and saw Seoul survive some of its most tempestuous times.

After leaving the church, we discovered a gallery maintained by one of Korea's largest newspapers, Chosan. In the gallery we found a very tasteful snackbar where we tried a beverage Clearly Canadian and a mango frappe. This turned out to be a great spot to talk politics, and I discovered that Korea's president is not well thought of (to say the least).

We then headed for the Cecil Theatre and watched a wonderful display of energy and imagination called Jumping, and by the time the show was over the whole place was jumping. A highlight of the event was after the show when the entire cast lined up to give autographs and pose for pictures. Jungmin collected all the autographs as I served as the historian/researcher.

You might think that would be the finish of a wonder-filled day, but we were joined by Youngju and headed for the Samsung Tower and a restaurant/bar known as Top Cloud. There we had impressive French Cuisine and shared ice cream and cake to finish the meal. The manager of the restaurant and our waiter were rather smitten by my guides, so we were treated to a tour and pictures before we finally left and called it a day.

An American in Seoul

Coming into Seoul from Anseong, I felt the energy of a city tuned to the present but steeped in the rich heritage and tradition of a past that stretches into the remote past and included regions that extended out as far as Manchuria.

As we approached City Hall, we could see the building decorated in anticipation of the upcoming national holiday on Tuesday, August 15th of Kwangbok-jol, Korean Liberation and the establishment of the first Korean government in 1948. The building was completely covered with materials replicating the Korean flag Tae-kuk with intense red, white, and blue with the black characters framing the central red and blue yin and yang symbol. Workers were busily constructing a stage to the side of the building.

Fortunately my hotel room looks out over this scene from the 20th floor where I look northward to the mountains that surround Seoul. As I look on the grounds before me, I see the great lawn in front of the City Hall Building. In the states, this area would be sealed off with a "Keep Off the Grass" sign, but here in Seoul families are enjoying the lawn, strolling and sitting, with children running and playing.

To my left as I look at the circular grounds below is a square with about 64 water fountains that shoot out various patterns as children run into the square to be doused with water. They are having such fun. What a great idea!

The stage has been comleted and chairs set for musicians. In front of the soundstage is a circular stage, which will likely be for speakers, performers, dancers, and whatever will comprise the official celebration.

From the intense activity, I wonder if there will be some event today, Sunday, in anticipation of the Tuesday holiday. I have just finished breakfast and will be going out in the city with some adventure ahead. Last night I went to the Korean Traditional Theatre with a friend. We had been led to believe that the top performer of Pansori, An Sook Sun, would perform that night, but as it turned out, it was her students, who were fine, but still growing. We watched the Pansori for about an hour. It is an epic work that is deeply ingrained in the Korean Psyche. The entire performance is usually about four hours.

JFK-KAL-KOREA

I am sitting here, half a world away from my destination: Seoul, Korea. I am in the Korean Airlines Lounge looking across to the waterway that skirts the runway at JFK. In Korea it is half past midnight, August 5th. Here is it is not yet noon, August 4th, Eastern Daylight Time. I will go through an enormous afternoon in which Friday will morph into Saturday and I will step off the plane around 5 p.m. Saturday, fully convinced that I have taken a long summer's day into evening.

This is the miracle of travel, a phenomenon that makes us aware of the relativity of Time. Even on our little blue marble planet we experience time warping through space, the delay of Time filtered through the array of Space, slipping into dimensions of consciousness not fully comprehended, too easily dismissed as "jet lag."

My taxi to JFK was through a different time warp. The driver was pure Indian, with full Indian regalia, and he was intent on avoiding the bottleneck where the LIE joins the Cross Island Expressway. This took him on a journey past LaGuardia Airport, and I thought for a moment that I must have muttered the wrong airport as I recovered from the trauma of lifting and loading my extremely heavy bag into the trunk. Given the high humdity, there was a mess of fluids dripping from me and hitting the cold air conditioning of the cab like a miniature weatherfront.

"Are we going to JFK?" I managed, but the driver was silent, and in my weakened immune state, I began to imagine I was being abducted. Such moments are heady fantasies since it requires an audacious leap of faith that you are someone worthy of abduction... a boost to the old self-esteem...

I looked at all of the familiar ramp exits of LaGuardia and was thoroughly convinced I would never make it to Korea.

"Are you going to JFK?" I repeated, with somewhat more authority than before.

The driver glanced back at me and nodded.

There was surprisingly little traffic as we literally flew along the Van Wyck, usually the nemesis of every driver attempting to reach JFK by automobile.

And now, here I sit, listening to the distant roar of jets coming in and out of JFK, sipping some coffee courtesy of KAL and beginning the first Blog of my journey to the East, which amazingly takes me to the north and west to a world of serene mountains, robust people, beautiful lakes, and a city that never stops, but literally stretches out to the mountains all around in a pose of foreverness.

My friends in Korea are mostly asleep by now. I won't sleep for a whole day, because I can never sleep when I travel, but my psyche will pretend that it is just one long, beautiful day stretched out in the twilight of summer, and we can blame my drowsiness on the heat and the humidity.

Pershing Square

Walking along 42nd street, looking for some place to land around Grand Central Station. Discouraged by the cold store fronts of fast food chains designed to force you through their calorie-ridden food fare at a break-neck pace. Tired. Feeling the sultry air of a city summer morning. Sunday. Lazy and lax.

There under the viaduct of Park Avenue, tucked away like a pre-war mirage, Pershing Square beckoned, calling me like a black and white movie, full of intrigue and mystery.

I crossed the street, somewhat wary. Pershing Square seemed both out-of-place and strangely familiar. I had the eerie feeling that if I walked through the door, I would enter the world of Bogart and Bergman. I half expected that Peter Lorre would greet me with his fiendish smile and hand me a menu as he escorts me to an out of the way table surrounded by characters from Casablanca. Lorre leans over to me, shielding his face with the menu, and whispers that he can get me out of here to a safe place, for a price.

I push through the fantasy and enter Pershing Square. It is a large space, the front inhabited by cane-backed chairs and tables set for a continental-style breakfast. Looking past this vesitbule, I find a huge restaurant with a sumptious bar to the right. Somehow I have tumbled into a wonderland of the forties. It is quiet, as though waiting for something, for someone. For me, maybe. Mostly empty. A few people give me the once over as I am taken to a prominent table across from the bar.

Almost mysteriously, coffee is poured and water placed to the side, setting the stage for the waiter, an Eastern European from Hungary or Romania, looking like a young Peter Lorre. He regards me suspiciously, asking me if I am ready to order. I order eggs over easy with sausage. He takes the menu from me and asks "you mean instead of bacon?" I nod. "That's right, sausages." He gives a look of approval as though I had successfully said the right code word and disappears.

I pour the cream into the coffee and slowly stir as I look around the dining room. It has a confortable feeling, in spite of its size, and although there about twenty-five people, the restaurant seems strikingly empty. There is a man at the bar, watching some soccer game, some world "football" fare, while the bartender moves about his business. Both men appear to glance over at me, noting my presence while pretending to ignore me.

More quickly than I had expected, the food arrives, the waiter whisking the plate from behind me to the table in an almost frantic gesture while he half whispers urgently, "...careful...the plate is very hot!" He gives a glance and disappears.

I try to understand the meaning of this and begin to carve up the sausages. The plate IS very hot, and I figure this is a common practice of the restaurant to ensure that the food arrives at the table piping hot. The breakfast is excellent, laid out as extravagant fare, a separate dish of strawberry jam and a slab of butter, and an endless supply of coffee.

Suddenly I am struck by the intense silence of the room, punctuated by murmurs and laughter from several tables. No background music!

I look around. I am disappointed that there is no piano near the bar. It is too quiet. Pershing Square is the epitome of another time, a time gone by, and I want to lean over and whisper to the piano player, "Play it again, Sam, for old time's sake, play it again."

Marking Time

Music has always meant so much to me because of its immediacy, a felt connection with Time that vividly etches a streaming existence --- a metaphor of melody unfolding from the silence in a declaration of being. Music is Being.

I suspect it is this quality of immediacy that gives music its special niche in contemporary life. Music made in the moment makes us feel our authentic selves. Even recorded music provides a window of connection with our primal beat, our pulse shaped as the musical evocation of Now. Music is Now.

Music and dance are inseparable. Moving to music has become the social norm, mutual connection to the beat is a form of greeting and acceptance. The essence of musical movement is shaped moment to moment, and correctness is the hipness of Now. Ringtones are the new musical mantras, and dance is the tribal gesture of life. Music is Dance. Music is Life.

In the frightening zero state of ourselves, we are compelled to make music to cover the silence of non-existence. Music marks Time, reminding us that we Are. Music is Time.

The Troubador

Sitting there in Silver Spurs with steaming coffee, a trunk and guitar to the right, the Troubador took a sip and looked straight at me. I recognized the songster surrounded by everything defining a musical identity. In a five-foot square of space, all of the Troubador's belongings sat neatly tucked away alongside the small square black table. A wardrobe trunk, a guitar case and satchel, all black, carved out a space in the diner like a moveable office or studio, the top of the trunk holding the business of the day. On the table with the coffee, lay a gleaming white laptop. and on the laptop lay a mobil phone, silent but poised for action.

The Troubador smiled and moved to the music playing in the background, grooving with the mood, the tempo, and zeitgeist of the moment, perfectly content and comfortable as though this space was a permanent haven. Thoughts surfaced like music rippling through the diner in counterpoint to the countless conversations of customers at nearby tables.

The phone rang and the Troubador flipped open the phone and quietly streamed a phrase, the patterns connecting with sounds defining the perimeter, music flowing in and out of the moment. It was though everything the Troubador touched turned to music. A stranded song maker, caught in the routine of a Monday morning, shaping time with the rhythm of ideas bursting from the imagination.

The food came...eggs over easy with sausage, homefries, and toast. Without missing a beat, the Troubador incorporated the breakfast into the routine, even this was a musical texture weaving a web around the space, a place for music as presence, as sounding silently in the immediacy of awareness, torso dancing in place to the tune of a different drummer.

Putting down the phone, the Troubador connected with the music in the background, arms waving to the beat. I looked at the Troubador and saw a child of the future bursting through all impediments to become a singing poet of a new age. I looked at her, a youngling barely eighteen, long black flowing hair, intense dark eyes, music pulsing through her like sonic circulation.

She looked at me, and for an instant, we recognized each other, troubadors passing through time to different refrains and distant destinations.

Morphing into There

There is nothing new under the sun" was a mantra that my mother often used, usually an assurance that comforted her that there was nothing really to worry about. Like many truisms, the surface glistens with the self evident "truth", but underneath are the shadows of reality looming ever larger. Actually, there is nothing old under the sun. Time and Space are dimensions of change, and we are in the midst of such transformations. Even growing older is a newness of sorts.

So I come to realize that age itself is an agent of Time just as our body is an agent of Space. My perception is an awareness of morphing, for as Time and Space move through us, we are changing into some newness that we do not yet recognize. I don't mean this in the biblical sense of "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:", but rather in a more cosmic sense, fashioned from the debris of the space/time eruption sometimes called the "big bang" ---just another foolish notion from our limited understanding that something must have started things.

I experience this in a phenomenon akin to phasing in sound. My phase cycle is changing, expanding. I am becoming more and more out of phase with what one might perceive as the present (actually it is just a sense of the present that specific people inhabit). There is a subtle likeness between phases of being and orbits of spheres. In my expansion, my phase, my orbit is elongating into unknown regions, eliciting entirely new awareness, briefly, but soon, more and more. Mostly I am here, but I am gradually morphing into there.

I like to think of the "mansion with many rooms" as actually the universe with many dimensions, which may exist as intersecting and parallel universes. But maybe this kind of thought is just another manifestation of morphing into the thereness of myself.

Kill Memory

I just finished reading Kill Memory, a novel by William Herrick. The title attracted me because the problem of reality and memory has always been a theme in the context of my own thinking, which was why Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind has been one of my favorite films. The title is from a Russian poet:

. . . Kill Memory . . .'' (the title comes from the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova - ''So much to do today: / kill memory, kill pain, / turn heart into a stone'')

The novel deals with Elizabeth, in her 70s, and not growing old gracefully. She is tormented by her memories. The novel begins with "Elizabeth was not crazy, she was old." Thus we enter her world where her memories range from her lovers, and perhaps one true love she betrayed for the war, to the atrocities she performed in the name of a cause that was the revolution of the masses, that was itself betrayed.

The book is taut, economical, and well written. We glide effortlessly between her meaningless rituals of the present and her memories of the past that ultimately become too much to bear. It is a stream of consciousness narrative that is treated effectively by an experienced and accomplished author, who has been described by some as an American Orwell.

Even though we intimately share Elizabeth's thoughts, it is difficult to become emotionally involved with her plight. Herrick has been careful to provide an objective distance so that we can consider her life intelligently and understand the issues from an intellectual perspective.

Often I am attracted to a title such as Kill Memory as I project what I might create in the context of such a provocative depiction. Might memories be so full of rich experiences and emotions that they torment us as we grow old because they are becoming more and more distant and are ultimately facing extinction? Or might the killing of memory be an involuntary act in which the past crumbles in the onslaught of time and human frailty? Or maybe we have a character who battles the ravages of Time on a quest to Save Memory, to resurrect moments that continue to exist even as constellations still radiate their light from the remote and vivid past of the big bang.

Think Coffee

Just when I thought there was a conspiracy to rid the Village of its best coffee retreats (Space Untitled became a polyglot, music blaring, product showcase, and Coffee Cuisine surrendered to Leo's Place which then went out of business), Think Coffee quietly appears, almost like an afterthought, an "oh, by-the-way" place that makes its predecessors seem childish and awkward.

I'm not talking about a Starbucks kind of place which has become such a formula that you can almost measure the smiles and hospitality, or the first genuine coffee houses in the Village like Caffe Reggio and Cafe Figaro. I'm talking about the new-style, Internet-savvy hangout where coffee, conversation, and connectivity are all part of the same process.

Perhaps there is nothing suspicious about Think Coffee inconspicuously appearing across the street from the Courant Institute of Mathematics where physicists and mathematicians have been working on String Theory as it has evolved to M Theory with the discovery and validation of the 11th Dimension. Perhaps... and yet...

My own discovery of the place was through a colleague who was openly hostile to the thought of Starbucks. We were meeting for coffee and conversation. It was raining, and we were about to settle for Starbucks a half a block away, when she remarked that there was a new coffee shop "over there" and waved her arm in a south easterly direction. I followed her hand and surmised the street she meant. I remarked "I think you must be hallucinating because I know that street very well and there's nothing there but a Gristedes and a few closed storefronts. She insisted, "Well it's there. It's narrow in the front, but then opens into a huge space in the back."

So we struck out in the rain, and as we reached the corner of the next block and looked south, there was the simple, unassuming marquee proclaiming "Think Coffee." We made a run for it, using the marvelous trees in front of Courant as umbrellas (I am from Texas and she is from Colorado, so neither of us have any respect for carrying umbrellas---but that's another blog).

Inside, it was just as she described except that everywhere I looked I saw people sitting with their laptops and coffee, and others engaged in deep conversation. Suddenly I knew I was home. In fact, I am writing this blog from Think Coffee and enjoying my iced coffee at a table tucked away in the back. Tonight there is a free showing of a film and animation, so it looks like I've found the reason I was headed for New York City so many years ago...

Yet, I am somewhat certain that this Think Coffee is actually a portal to the eleventh dimension that the folks from Courant use as a front for their comings and goings as they journey through that fantastical new universe. You can see someone peering from behind a laptop, and then surreptitiously slip away for a while, disappearing unceremoniously, and returning later with a look of mysterious satisfaction. That is, of course, how they are coming up with such exciting visuals for those specials on the Science Channel.

Happy Birthday, Margaret

Today is my Mother's birthday. I honor this day along with my Father's birthday, December 18th. Of course, one honors one's parents, but in our case we were like fellow travelers in life, intent to discover and make meaning of our lives. They were always introducing me to new things, long after I had left home, and I was also sharing books, films, poems, and ideas.

I have blogged about my Mother's visit to New York. It was the last time that I spent significant time with her.

She grew up in the wilds of Missouri and Oklahoma. Her father was struck by lightning when she was about two. It was a large family, as her mother continued to have children with her second husband. I don't really know how many children were in the family, but there were at least ten, maybe more than a dozen. There were so many children that my mother would forage for food and sleep under the stars. There simply was no room and no resources in the home. As it turned out, she was raised mostly by neighbors who lived several doors down from the family.

Growing up she lived somewhat wild and untamed . Schools at that time put all ages in one room, but Mother could not be corralled and confined. Instead she would climb on top of the school house and stomp on the roof. When they searched for her, she would spend the night in a cistern in water up to her neck.

She often wondered how she ever survived that time. Living with my Father, she had a volatile temper, but he knew how to calm her. But she and I had many violent clashes. However, after I left home, she mellowed, and traveled a lot with my Father. They built a get away home in the Ozark Mountains which became my destination every summer. With his influence she read philosophy and books expressing religious ideas. Her thinking had always revealed a deep curiosity and wonder of life. Now this part of her matured and deepened. I still have a few books of hers where she wrote comments and questions in the margins.

Somehow she had been able to emerge into the fullness of herself...into a thinker and reader who celebrated life, I remember her commenting one time shortly after my Father had passed away, "It took me a lifetime to grow up..."

So I celebrate this day... knowing that somehow she is continuing her journey of growing into the fullness of her being.

Fluxus1 Releases Alternate

I have mentioned Fluxus1 as a Blogger with imagination and talent.

Now on Summer Solstice, Fluxus1 has released a stunning podcast entitled Alternate, a fusion of styles that you will find exciting, inspiring, and entertaining.

The following podcast entitled ALTERNATE is presented as a first step in unifying my interest in ambient sound and popular song. As on the LONGTIME CD, my method was recording technology. The works on this album were created in a variety of formats: 4-track cassette, 8-track analog, 16-track ADAT, 16-track analog, 24-track analog, and digital multi-track. Many of the tracks were then augmented using Logic, Audacity, and Garageband.

Thom MacFarlane

This is an outstanding effort that holds together from the first to last selection. Go to the website to print out the names of the pieces and credits. You will be glad you downloaded this podcast. The style fuses the best of past practices with new ideas. After an Entrée, Free Danny moves things along, and pieces like Mr. Memory will blow you away with its sadly nostalgic narrative blindly dancing on. There is a cameo-like appearance of A Child in A Chocolate Shop, "the victim of a cosmic joke" complete with the laughter of innocence. Little Girl is fresh and evokes such delight that you can imagine building a movie around the song. State of Mind is catchy and beautifully rendered, followed by Melt Into Your Arms, a kind of quiet confrontation, building to Gone So Long, a fatalistic remembrance of times past, rising to Dysfunctional Town, another movie-like composition fraught with climactic extremes, eventually collapsing to Pretty Little Fingers, as nice an exit as anyone can imagine. Throughout there is a significant social comment underlying the musc and lyrics. Each element of the music contributes to the commentary, couching the lyrics in an ambiguous context, and throughout there is often a sense of regret and irony.

After listening to this album, I was struck by the coherence of the album as a whole. I vaguely felt I had just heard the sound track of a new Charlie Kaufman film, and thinking "How did I miss that?"

Great work guys! Kudos, Thom!

Summer Solstice and the Passage of Naomi

Solstice means "sun stands still," defining a moment of change, and so summer solstice celebrates the moment of entering the fullness of summer, a pause in our passage to a new era, which despite our names and sense of cycles has never been and will not be again. Such passage is unique.

Through the portal of my awareness, Naomi was always present as a distant recognition of a time gone by when she was just beginning to recognize the journey she would take to remote and unexpected adventures. The images of her youth and energy that echo in my memory of times in the past were restored relatively recently as somehow we reconnected through the fabric of cyberspace. I picked up the threads of her journey as she became aware that there were new regions of experience awaiting her, a deeper fulfillment of an expedition begun long ago. Our messages began and continue in a natural and unforced exchange, as though we are on the crest of a dynamic expansive wave cycle whose frequencies are measured in decades rather than seconds. After decades of absence, our worlds coincided once again, revived by these new communal powers of the Internet.

On this day of summer solstice, our orbits brought us face to face. We met in the lobby of the building that had served as a mutual enclave, where our pursuit of wisdom was tempered by the ravages of the 70s. We also shared in a distant way a musical odyssey, which would serve as the crazy glue binding the parallel paths that were separate and highly divergent.

Her musical sensibility would continue to inform her future, even when she pursued a world of advising and coaching leaders of business. She understood the performance values of her own work and the performance needs of her clients.

Hers has been a search for clarity, enduring the brambles and pitfalls that obscure our vision, fighting through to the clearing just ahead. I am reminded of Robert Frost's In the Clearing, his last volume of poems with a metaphor of discovery just up ahead, in the clearing. For me, the metaphor extends to the solstice as the "sun stands still" in a moment of clarity before moving on.

Naomi has reached a clearing, the passage to her renaissance. She has founded her own company, Practice Clarity, which reveals her passion for guiding others through the brambles and thickets to their own clear places where they are empowered to understand and act in the fullness of all they can become.

But perhaps the crowning centerpiece of Naomi's passage is that she is in the final stages of completing her Ph.D. As she pauses in this clearing and looks back over the rugged terrain she has had to endure, she appears to look in wonder and amazement as she enters this final phase of academia while launching an entirely new season of creativeness.

The Agony of Love

We sometimes develop relationships that define us to ourselves. Who knows the intricate mechanisms of obsessions, but I have found myself driven and inspired by distant and not so distant passions. These painful rejections (real or imagined) once resulted in some of my most inspired work. But I know it is out of character for our time.

Yet this has been the convention of the world. Unrequited love often results in masterpieces of art. The agony of love creates a vacuum, a void that must be filled. Agony once was not merely intense pain or suffering. It comes from the Greek agonia "a (mental) struggle for victory," originally "a struggle for victory in the games," from agon "assembly for a contest," from agein "to lead".

Agony is not only deep suffering, but a vying for victory, a conquest over the rejected love, not physically, but through the triumph of what emerges spiritually and artistically. Thus Beethoven in his agony and despair over the unreturned love of his distant beloved creates the first song cycle, An Die Ferne Geliebte, transcending the moment and living on in perpetuity.

Looking back, I am deeply indebted to all those stunning creatures who spurned me, rejected me, and treated me like dirt (knowingly or inadvertently). They triggered my most creative and original outbursts. Without them my life would have been mundane and colorless. It has been a joy to undergo such agony. To those who gave their love, I regret that my interior map was charted to agonize my way through relationships. The journey has been painful, but not without its moments. There is nothing like pain to let you know you are alive.

There really is no room for such agony in modern times.

The Substance of Time

Time and the experience of Time continue to elude me. Somehow, I understand Time to be the basis of all experience that stands outside of the senses and yet contains us within some illusionary cube without walls.

Space and Time appear to be the same reality experienced by the senses as two different modalities. But when we look through powerful telescopes into the far reaches of space, we look into the past, and the theory is that with a powerful enough looking glass we will actually be able to look back to the big bang. We peer into Time itself.

The clock of Time is light which ticks at the rate of 186,000 miles per second. Mathematics has given us glimpses of reality. We know that the dimensions perceived by senses imprison us within primitive strictures. The deception of the senses that space and time are separate domains is a convenience for human coherence.

Space expanding is Time Being. The main limitation of human physics is that it cannot truly accommodate Infinity. Infinity is the zero state. The substance of Time is the universe with all its spinning parts. In the final analysis Time and Space are the same energy, and All is infinite energy. This is in direct contradiction to Newton's laws since his reality never included consciousness but was stated as though reality could be described independent of consciousness.

Consilience

Consilience, the sudden "jumping together of everything " as Edward O. Wilson describes it in his book is a work of extraordinary insight and vision. Wilson is on a quest for the new golden grail, the unity of all knowledge, which has been the dream and inspiration of scientists, artists, and philosophers for ages. Einstein yearned for a theory of everything, and String Theory of the physicists metamorphed into M Theory as an explanation of all things cosmic and microscopic.

But Wilson sees the 21st century as an opportunity for the true unification of all knowledge, in which our understanding of genetic codes evolve into epigenetic rules that explain evolution, human nature, society, and culture, providing an undergirding of the physical sciences to support the social sciences, the arts, and humanities.

In the 21st Century there will be two ways to know the world absolutely: Science and the Arts. This is the culmination of the age of enlightenment begun in the 16th Century, but betrayed by those who stole the Enlightenment for the sake of seizing power.

Coevolution is an ongoing process and becomes a way of describing from a scientific perspective the interaction of genes with the environment to create the mind, and ultimately culture itself.

Wilson's work is compelling and elegant. It is a book about everything. but posited on a scientific structural foundation. Consilience is the recognition and understanding that everything is profoundly connected and can be perceived and described from any point in the spectrum of our knowledge and understanding.

Moonlight

In the moonlight, mystery awaits like a mystical messenger.

Moonlight is more like sound than light, sound we hear with our eyes, delicate decibels echoing across the terrain in the fragile shadows of the new moon, and the clarion call of the full moon that floods the earth with the gigantic resonance of a celestial organ...

The moon casts an eloquent spell over the earth, over those who watch the cycles of the moon work their magic on the tides and those of us tuned to its inspiring tones... the nuances shaping the night and those who watch in the shadow of the moon. Without the night and moonlight there would be no mystery.

There in the shadows is the birth of mystery and wonder, and the awesome presence of the moon adds incalculable intimacy and lustre to the worlding of ourselves...

Discovering a Poet

One of my favorite adventures is to raid the poem bin in a used-books bookstore. Small volumes of poems abound in these bins, and most of them have never been opened. Books of poems are always the first to be discarded, and usually the least regarded inventory with little attention paid to the upkeep of the books.

Yet waiting there are such wonderful explorations where words create new dimensions of experience, new insights, and explore deeper awareness of an elusive reality. One thing you know about these books. They come into being because someone loves words and the insights that poetic vision yields. My rule for choosing one book over another is that something must instantly grab my interest... a book title...a metaphor...a line....

...books like Glyn Maxwell's The Nerve with lines that tug at the imagination such as

Nothing that's been does anything but dance.
Nothing that blinked did anything but stare,
now being over, though the merest sense
of over is strange there.

The Structures of What Was

Or lines like:

The corners of our eyes,
cold and alert to missing them, report
a flash, and in the breeze
we turn our heads
to where the stars are quiet.

The Leonids

Leonids are meteor showers that appear to emanate from the constellation Leo.

Poets take us to new dimensions of ourselves and create new worlds from words colliding in new connections with each other. Maxwell sees the world differently, and his vision expands my world and my awareness. His is a world rich in structure, rhythm, flow, and metaphoric vision. There is economy of expression which always seems to find the perfect combination to generate new structures of meaning.

Coming upon Maxwell's poems in the piles and piles of discarded volumes was like discovering a parallel universe buried beneath crumbling constellations of words and letters. Here was a new sensibility, and my newly found windfall would take me many places where I could savor the work of an explorer of a universe that did not exist until Glyn Maxwell crafted and shared this miracle of his own making.

In his simplicity is such elegance that the lines continue to resonate long after the book is closed:

THE SNOW VILLAGE

In the age of pen and paper,
when the page was a snow village,
when days the light was leafing through
descended without message,

the nib that struck from heaven
was the sight of a cottage window
lit by the only certain
sign of life, a candle,

glimpsed by a stranger walking
at a loss through the snow village.
All that can flow can follow
that sighting, though no image,

no face appear -- not even
the hand that draws across it --
though the curtains close the vision,
though the stranger end his visit,

though the snow erase all traces
of his passage through the village,
though his step become unknowable
and the whiteness knowledge.

Glyn Maxwell

Kicking the Can

In the evenings in summer as we were growing up, we loved strategy games such as Kick the Can and Capture the Flag. These were the wargames of our youth.

These games were played usually in the late afternoons, when the heat of the day was beginning to yield to the approaching night. Choosing who was IT or captains and teams was always a ritual that had the trappings of spontaneity, but were usually just variations of the same theme. Kick the Can was like Hide and Seek with the taking of "prisoners." Everyone would hide while the person who was IT counted to a hundred. If IT spied any one and called their name, they became prisoners. Prisoners could get released if one of the hiders could reach the can and kick it before being seen by IT. If you beat IT to the can and kicked it, he must start counting again while everyone hides, but if IT reached the can first, the person trying to kick the can became the new IT.

Capture the Flag was a more elaborate game. You needed a minimum of six players (three to a side), but it was much more fun if you had many players. Each side would hide its flag, and the opposition would send forays into enemy territory to find the flag. Touching the enemy while they were in your territory made them prisoners. Finding the flag and bringing it to your territory constituted a victory. This was a game that was especially fun at night. I remember countless nights beneath the bright Texas sky with moonlight flooding the terrain where we vied against each other.

This was what we did in the days before television. We made our own entertainment and found ways to engage with each other. Such times led to many side excursions, stumbling upon adventures and dangerous liaisons. As we grew older, we played these games with much more at stake. Our movements were in automobiles, and the city was the playground. These were dangerous times, since nearly everyone carried guns. Now real enemies emerged and often, lives literally hung in the balance. The innocence of youth dissolved into the bravado of many who had become so bored with life that the only excitement to be had was seeing how close you could come to death and still survive. Now it would take much more than Kicking the Can to escape to freedom.

Forever Young

Greenwich Village is ageless, forever young. No one has really deciphered the secret of its perpetual youth. The Village holds onto this vigor, despite the meddling of outsiders and many challenges to the integrity of its existence.

Currently Greenwich Village is in the stranglehold of newstyle yuppies, and corporate America (including that wild and greedy private corporation, New York University), determined to choke the life out of the dynamism of this area that has always existed as a country within a country. At the moment, these challengers to the creative milieu of the Village appear to be winning on all fronts. In addition to the expanding tentacles of NYU, CVS and Duane Reade have replaced jazz and theatre landmarks on Bleecker street. An apartment building replaces the innovative presence of Theatre in the Square (which had been chased away from Washington Square by NYU) on Bleecker, a condominium appears to be replacing the tiny theatre on Sullivan Street that gave birth to The Fantasticks. NYU managed to drive the Bottom Line out of business so that great Village Landmark could be replaced by classrooms and a lecture hall. Even the Provincetown Playhouse is now under the aegis of NYU. The city, distressed by the lack of symmetry in Washington Square Park, is spending millions of dollars in public funds to move the central fountain a few feet in order to align it with the Arch and Fifth Avenue.

The Village has been the birthplace of many ideas that have challenged America and created a new culture. In the 1630s Dutch settlers cleared the land and named their settlement Noortwyck. To the north, the Village Grin'wich (1713) was once a rural hamlet, separate from New York City. When it was incorporated into the city, it retained the layout of streets, which was angular and antithetical to the logical square grid layout of the rest of the city. This lack of conformity geographically to the rest of the city reflects the divergent stance of the residents and artists who found the Village as a resonator for their progressive ideas.

The Village has been the Bohemia of the country, the home for the avant-gard and alternative culture with the small presses, art galleries, and experimental theatre and music. Every generation has found an important oulet there until now. Greats such as Maxwell Bodenheim, Eugene O'Neill, Jack Kerouac, Marcel Duchamp, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Bob Dylan flourished in the Village because the open spirit invited change.

Youth, more than anything is characterized by change. The Village has been the homeplace of our young thinkers and artists, and even now they flock to this historical birthplace of their predecessors. They have been forced underground by the establishment, and perhaps they are surfacing in newer progressive communities elsewhere.

But the beat goes on. Walk down any street in the Village and you will sense the underlying energy. Its eternal youth is vibrating all around you. In a matter of time, something wonderful will erupt once more, spawned in some movement on some tiny side street in the Village on the fringe of the corporate shadows that currently obscure the rich tradition of a continually changing and vibrant culture.

Tan Dun: A Shaman of Music Making

Tan Dun, who is known throughout the world for his film music (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has been commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to compose The First Emperor. The opera will premiere December 21 with Placido Domingo in the title role. It will be conducted by Tan Dun, who also wrote the libretto along with the noted novelist Ha Jin, whose first full-length novel, Waiting is the winner of the 1999 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The opera will be directed by the celebrated film director Zhang Yimou, confirming Tan Dun's vision that cinema is the opera of our time.

Tan Dun has always approached his projects with fanatic energy and inspiration that fashions new forms and structures challenging the premises and fabric of the past. His "out of town try-out" took place about a month ago in Shanghai, and it was clear from the outset that Tan Dun had brought a new voice to the Metropolitan Opera:

The run-through began with pulsating drums. Singing in the style of Beijing opera, an ‘official geomancer’ introduced the story of Qin Shi Huangdi, the visionary and brutal warlord who unified China in 221 B.C …the music rose from the orchestra, alternately heroic, lyrical and haunting. Voices wove through the gongs, the bass flute and the plucked strings of ancient instruments as well as the orchestra’s standard violins and cellos, woodwinds and brasses.

--Sunday New York Times, May 14, 2006

Tan Dun is a shaman of music, where sound, text, visual art, video, and movement merge as a single entity, a magical and mystical expression that transforms time and space. Opera is the most extreme form of artistic collaboration --- the essence of art comes from opera, and such opera is the crystallization of life itself. Tan Dun delves into the spiritual realm of creation, penetrating and connecting many seemingly disparate realities into a new holistic and inspiring vision. He has a way of defining, connecting, and mapping the world that suggests a new paradigm for the 21st Century.

The Grand Opera of the 19th Century dominated the 20th Century, and premieres of contemporary works at the Met were often pale replicas of the past. Tan Dun is proposing a new direction, one in which the content of antiquity fuses with the dynamics of contemporary cross-cultural life. What may emerge anticipates the longing of our time for an authentic voice that assembles the unfolding worlds of East, West, North, and South, in cataclysmic collisions that tear off and shape chunks of past remote worlds into new spheres of influence and expression, much as the moon was created from the earth in a catastrophic episode with a rogue planet.

Tan Dun, as the rogue shaman who has infiltrated the establishment, may have the magic touch of an alchemist, transforming the wornout relics of the past into pure gold.

3 Zins Later

Once an inhabitant of Des Moines, 3 Zins Later (VJM) found herself plopped down in Fort Smith, Arkansas (You're not in Kansas anymore!) The spirit of her Blog, 3 Zins Later: "Etta James sings in the background, I love you circles the friendship, and Wine Night continues..." is an intriguing premise, born of the spirit of Des Moines, but now growing in the remote fields of a different place and sensibility.

Adjusting to suddenly being transplanted into a different place is usually not an easy transition for anyone, and VJM confronts these issues head on, but many remain unresolved. There is no question the stories are there, waiting to be discovered, uncovered from memory and imagination. But her Blog reveals that there are also new stories bubbling over in the context of personal crises. VJM is a story teller, and all we need are the 3 Zinfandels and candles burning, and the stories will rise like smoke from the candles filling the air with scents and textures of the past. I sense a reticence to embrace the level of intimacy that 3 Zins Later's banner suggests, almost in a whisper...

We are invited to lean forward. Stretch out our hands, and maybe she will read our story from the Tarot cards that are part of her personal treasure. These are more than cards. Through the Tarot she connects with a deep awareness of spiritual forces linking us to one another and to destiny itself.

She has slowly expanded her presence in her blog. Her style is starting to shine through. She is easing into the space, observations spilling out in increments. Reality intrudes as a tyrannical diversion, and her energy is directed at day-to-day survival. Even so, we long for the chance to turn down the lights and discover the quiet revelations of her world still in the act of becoming.

Catching Up With the Blackholes

Something there is about "being behind" that is part of the human condition in modern times. It is a terrible way to live, because such a sensibility robs me of the abundance of Now, and divides my attention so that my energy is diverted and blunted. I suppose this comes from the obsession of list-making for the sake of being organized and efficient. These lists live in our heads and guide us through our tasks, each path focused on clear destinations.

So I find myself running through this gauntlet of lists, of dividing the lists into personal lists and work lists, and gauging my success as to how many tasks I have crossed off, but always adding more in the process. And when I am idle, I find myself creating lists... just for the sake of lists. Lists are linear, and at heart, I am not really a linear person.

I am a broad spectrum person, a person who functions best when on the edge of chaos, and I delight in seeing the debris of order crumble at the edges like the huge sheets of ice at the polar caps that sheer off from the mainland and disappear into the global-warmed ocean. Yet, if I exist in the aleatoric, non-ordered world, I know it is an illusion. Isn't chaos merely the mirrored reflection of order? Chaos IS Order.

Without the linear lists, what paths would I take through the murky haze of the not-knowing Now? Yet, I discover more moving through the fragments and madness of my personal blackholes that stand between me my singularity. Once thought of as the ultimate destructive force in the universe, blackholes have been discovered to be the source for the creation of all galaxies. So I am delightfully adrift in the disarray of my own new galaxies now ready to burst into being.

Lightning

Lightning is the universe energizing the earth, the dynamism of solar forces ripping through the fabric of the planet with dazzling vigor. It is more than just the discharge of negative and positive ions, and we are just now learning that although we have regarded the earth as self-contained eco-system, it is deeply and tangibly affected by the many forces in the solar system, the galaxies, and the universe. We simply have lacked the means to detect and measure such energy. My intuition is that lightning will be discovered as one way of capturing and renewing energies of the earth. Energy flows into the atmosphere from outer space and finally is released through turbulent storms of lightning. Yes, I know this is counter to conventional wisdom, but I have detected acknowledgements here and there of forces from outerspace impacting on the eco-system of the globe in ways not yet fully understood.

The other evening we were treated to a brilliant lightning storm. Looking north from the apartment, we could see the storm approaching, see the flashes of lighting in the distance, and hear the far away rumbling of thunder. The flashes created arcs across the sky and tumbled down to the earth in multiple jagged spears that disappeared behind the skyline.

As the storm approached, the thunder grew louder and the lightning spears more intense in electrifying incandescence. Don't say that lightning never strikes twice, as I watched the Empire State building absorb several bolts, so fierce that I thought I could feel the electricity coursing down through the wires to the ground.

What was so fascinating about this display? There is no question that the discharge of such power evokes our riveted attention. But equally attractive is the unpredictability of the moment. Anticipating the next strike, you hang on the quiet pauses in between (I call them pausations), and when the storm is upon us, we feel each crashing intrusion into the moment as an explosion, an invasion that crashes through us as a visceral blow. Somehow our environment has become an awesome bully, threatening us to take note of our place or face instant extinction.

I have noticed that as science and technology have attained greater influence on our thinking, a cult of extinction has emerged. The new priests look ahead to the death of planets, the death of stars, the death of the universe itself. Extinction is the natural order. It was time for the dinosaurs to die, and soon, we will lose the moon, or be destroyed by a random rolling stone from the asteroid belt, or the sun will spear us with a devastating flare.

Our fate is sealed, or so the new high priests of science and technology would have us believe. And yet, even as we think we know everything, we may have entered an enormous Dark Age in which too much information is more stifling than no information. We have always had the doomsdayer, who like Robert Herrick reminds us that the time for living is Now and only Now:

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

Yet, I know that even now, our concepts of the universe, generated from shopworn equations in physics are giving way to perceptions of parallel universes and the existence of time before the big bang.

Maybe there is hope for us yet.

Beyond Borders

Although some favorite places for me are "used" bookstores such as Strands or the Mercer Street Bookstore, an even headier afternoon is spent at new bookstores. Borders is nearby, so is Barnes & Noble, and Shakespeare & Company Booksellers. Although Shakespeare's remains in the vein of a classical bookstore, Barnes & Noble and Borders are a new breed, a kind of comfortable library for browsing in the hopes that we will decide to buy. In many communities, these bookstores become cultural meeting places and have served to underscore the importance of books in our lives. If anything, digital technology has made the book format even more popular and readily available.

Walking into such a place, seeing the Starbucks-like atmosphere, people lounging in easy chairs and sofas with stacks of books, others in the coffee-shop area with stacks of books on tables and lattes in hand, makes me want to read everything at once. First the titles beckon, urging me to discover their hidden meanings, and artwork abounds with seductive shapes and colors. I grow drunk with expectation.

I attack the books randomly, going first to the tables filled with new fiction. I open a book to some random page and begin reading, after several paragraphs or pages, depending on how the prose grabs me, I go on to another book, and another book... a literal infusion of words, a transfusion of prose, an array of styles, all coming together with abrupt swiftness and opening my mind, expanding me to places beyond... Time is suspended and I am immersed in the miracle of writing... transported beyond the borders of my own confines into the minds and sensibilities of many authors.

There are so many new and good writers, all deserving to be read. Such great styles, and so many ways to invent new worlds. I carry out these maneuvers every Saturday in some unsuspecting frontier of literature. The words lay between covers, waiting to ignite the passions of browsers, to convert them to readers and advocates. Words and phrases are waiting to unleash the energy of the imagination in countless ways. And I am poisd on the brink of new adventures all erupting beyond the borders of my mind.

"I Don't Know": The Genius of Kim Myung Sook

I Do Not Know
Poem by Han Yong-un performed by Youngju Kang


I have commented on this beautiful poem in an earlier blog, "I Do Not Know." Now I will describe a work of art that has subsequently emerged from this poem, the creation of Kim Myung Sook, an inspired dance that relies on the poem as a point of departure and celebrates the Korean experience, identity, and the fabric of life as humans existing as elemental earth. Recently the Korean government gave a special award to Dr. Kim for the outstanding contrbution of this work to Korean culture.

This remarkable artist has painted a masterpiece of dance where movement unfolds like brushstrokes and choreographic calligraphy... her dance group is Nuhui, a dance troup that has served as the canvas for Kim's explorations of movement, color, space, and structure. Kim has fashioned a cultural icon in her realization of the poem, extracting profound elements of Zen Buddhism to explore the essence of the poem and the spirituality of the Korean Psyche.

Kim has always had a sensitive eye, designing her own graphics and controlling every nuance of color and costume much as the great film director Antonioni. Her choreography frequently takes on the vocabulary of cinema, and Kim often creates video versions of the dances that employ cinematic effects such as cross dissolve and superimposed images.

This new work is closely related to the narrative structure of Han Yong-un's poem. As we listen to the performance of the poem, we can hear the textures and rhythms that find their way into movement and sound. Youngju Kang's eloquent rendering of Han's poem creates a sense of wonder and awe, and the sheer beauty of the language permeates our sensibiity in a profound awareness of mystery and revelation.

Here is a synopsis of the dance structure:
Prologue.
Dancers : Kim Yul Hee, Pak Koung Eun, Kim Whal Ran, Bea Jin Yl, Lee Jung Min, Lee Eun Jung, Lee Yoon Kyoung, O Ji Young, Kim Yuen Hee, Yoon Ji Yang. Musician : Son Bum Ju playing a reed instrument (sort of traditional pipe)
Act I. [Sae Oul] - green fountain from east / sound of water and rainfall...
Dancers : Yoon Jueng Min, Kim Yul Hee, Pak Koung Eun, Kim Whal Ran, Bea Jin Yl, Lee Jung Min, Lee Eun Jung
Act II. [Mu Ji Gae Sal] - over the rainbow / Gayageum
Act III. [Nat Dal] - moon rising in the afternoon / Voice
Act IV. [Mu Geoung Ji Hea] - everlasting being / Korean traditional fiddle (violin)

Prologue -- Kim draws upon an austere palette for sound, the sounds of an ancient windpipe, as though summoning the spirit of Korea to attend a celebration. Sun Bum Ju produces an inspired melody that penetrates and envelops the emptiness. The dancers awaken to discover themselves in the midst of antiquity merging with the present..not only awaken but seem to be created out of the mists and textures of the infinite moment. The sounds of the windpipe are evocative, as though Silence itself had discovered its own true voice. The music fades into darkness dissolved by a steady, refreshing rain.

Act I -- The rain brings new images of dancers around fountains flowing from some infinite wellspring... the dancers are vertical with an outstretched arms extending their reach as though gathering the rain. The way they surround the fountains evokes the image of a temple, the guardians of the flowing force of life...Sounds of distant thunder welcome the ritual, the quiet celebration of an undefined presence... the rain yields to the sound of water flowing...


Act II -- a cascade of sounds, the ancient harplike sounds of the Kayageum spill through the space while a lone traditional flute soars through the texture like a rainbow. Flowing water in fountains sustain us, the ebb and flow of life reach to the source of our identity in a cold and alien universe. The water welcomes us, nourishes us, delights in our delight. A swirl of sound encasing the flute...dancers swirling...lingering...in final gestures of celebration...a final touch of the fountain... withdrawing and fading into the clouds concealing a revelation...

Act III -- Wind and the sound of the surf rip through the terrain, the dancers run forward like the wind sweeping the ocean... and in the wind we hear the voice of I Don't Know, the text now transformed into a profound prayer in a most expressive and sustained performance, beautifully drawn out in a flowing musical line sustained by the wind and waves in lingering counterpoint.The dancers attend the poem in awe as worshippers of the source of wonder... reaching a sense of supreme ecstacy... above, butteflies hover in evocation of an endless sky...

Act IV -- A harbor bell sounds in the night... we see the ocean in the distance and the waves upon the beach, accompanied by the incessant sounds of the surf... almost imperceptibly we see the dawn slowly glowing and dancers emerging from the ocean like life itself...the dancers are part of the ocean... a Korean fiddle creates a soliloquy with the surf, a comment on the mystery and awe of the night, the endless ocean, and the slowly emerging enlightenment of the dawn... a light in the center of the stage flickers through the shadows and movements of the dancers and we sense this to be the source of ourselves, forever enclosed within our wonder and embrace... and yet, in the enveloping darkness our wonder continues and echoes... I Do Not Know... I Do Not Know... I Do Not Know...

The sculpture work of You, Young-kyo is inspired, the stone pools and butterflies add to the spiritual presence of the work. The composer and music director Hwang, Byoung-ki helps set the musical texture that melds with the layers of visual richness and structured movement.

Yuoul, the Kayageum ensemble, adds color and antiquity to the over all impression of sound. The sound design by Kim, Tae-gun establishes an ambience that envelops in the dance in the resonance of rain, wind, thunder, and silence. The baritone Sin Kyoung-ok provided one of the most remarkable performances in his singing of the poem, an inspired and inspiring performance. The poem was set to music by Hwang, Byoung-ki(he put the rhythm on the poem as lylic song). Jeung, Soo-nyun's Korean fiddle cuts through the surf and wind of the final movement like a spontaneous prayer. These artists and the dancers provided an extraordinary immediacy that transformed the many parts into an integral whole.

Kim Myung Sook has created a tour de force of movement, sound, and shape that provides a framework of introspection and revelation. The dancers combine with the musicians, the sculptor, the sound and light designers to weave an inspired tapestry of a work that fuses the past and present, the unique with the universal. The grace, agility, and sheer virtuosity of the dancers is tempered by the deep respect bestowed upon the work by these performing artists. Each dancer establishes a distinct individual quality while contributing to the whole.

Kim does not attempt to answer the questions of the poem. She goes beneath the answers to the essence of the questions themselves and provides insights into the fundamental resonance of ourselves within the world that is our dwelling place.

159 Years of Liederkranz

Liederkranz of the City of New York presented its 159th annual concert and gala evening on Saturday, May 20th. This is a venerable cultural club of the kind that began to emerge in the United States during the middle and late 19th century. Liederkranz was founded in 1847 as a male choral society. Now it has spanned the 19th and 20th centuries, and emerges in the 21st century as a full society of men and women with male and female choruses that also combine as a mixed choir. The purpose continues to celebrate German culture, but also promotes musical talent through competitions, scholarships, recitals, and concerts involving musicians from around the world.

The concert featured the combined chorus and the men's and women's groups, along with the New York Concert Opera Chamber Orchestra, led by their talented and resourceful music director, Dr. Ulrich Hartung. Not only did he direct the chorus, but he was also responsible for a number of the orchestral settings and choral arrangements.

The chorus has approximately fifty members, and Dr. Hartung was masterful in leading them through an ambitious and delightful program. Although the chorus is no longer the dominant choral organization in the city, the performances were sensitive and musical. One highlight of the evening was the winner of the Liederkranz vocal competition, Mari Moriya, who is joining the MET in several roles including Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte. Her performance of Der Hölle Rache was simply stunning for its clarity, range, and power. The chamber orchestra led by Hartung provided a spirited performance of Die Zauberflöte's overture.

This was a mix of works such as Beethoven's Die Ehre Gottes in der Natur, Mendelssohn's Auf Flügeln des Gesanges to a medley of Broadway hits, and a finale of works from Strauss's Zigeunerbaron that brought the guest artists together with the chorus and orchestra for a memorable and rousing close. The baritone Laszlo Fogel and soprano Mari Moriya added to the rich Strauss texture and the gypsy spirit as they performed excerpts with the chorus in an inspired abbreviated version of the work as selected by Maestro Hartung.

Liederkranz has played an important role in the musical life of New York and the nation through its close association with the Metropolitan Opera. The chorus once was so select that it performed with the New York Philharmonic, and performed with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. The organization has hosted guest artists such as Jenny Lind, Frederuccio Busoni, Victor Herbert, Lilli Lehmann, and Helen Traubel, to name a few.

Liederkranz has had an impressive and illustrious history, and one hopes this cultural society has the imagination and energy to endure another 150 years. The Liederkranz building is a treasure, but it looks as though it is in need of an overhaul and a creative touch to align its facilities with its expanded cultural role. Formerly the organization was located in a much larger building on 58th street that included a full stage. The society moved to its current quarters on 87th street in 1948. Up until about that time, the organization continued to be a male chorus, but around 1949 women joined Liederkranz as was the practice of many cultural clubs throughout the country.

The challenge for the organization is whether its greatest days are in the past or whether it can rise to the demands of modern musical practice and establish a new dynasty in a multicultural world. There is clearly a need for cultural societies such as Liederkranz to maintain ties with a rich past and an important cultural tradition while forging new standards through imaginative concerts, recitals, and staged performances. Currently, it is but an echo of its past, but Liederkranz could be poised for a new era of excellence. Certainly the musical guidance of Ulrich Hartung inspires a new level of achievement, but serious recruitment from the younger generation of music lovers is greatly needed. Whether the organization has the will and dedication to renew itself remains an open question.

One notable feature of the concert was the elaborate printed program which served as a souvenir for the occasion. The person to be credited for this expanded version is Trudy Sczesny, and the quality of this brochure-like program added to ambiance of this gala event.

Many Happy Returns

Thanks to all my friends who have commented on my absence from the cyber world. It was a sobering experience to face the prospect of not being able to work in this medium that I have come to love.

Even though there appears to be an physical explanation of the difficulties I have faced, I can't help but note that my difficulty occurred in the context of learning of Wyatt's death. The loss of such a good friend underscored my own mortality and whispered of the tentative and tenuous existence that frames each passing day. In these days I have discovered how the presence of all those I know defines my experience and illuminates who I am. The context of my life has been essentially one of aloneness, and I haved counted being "alone" as a virtue of being "all one."

Yet, now I see that all those who define my space and time constitute my awareness of being, and my aloneness includes the interpenetration of each of you. The reality of what we are to one another continues to unfold in this mysterious medium of Time. I have always regarded the notion of Time and Being as redundant, as Being is the expression of Time. My electronic presence extends my reach and reflects my growing awareness. Yet, I am involved with your journey which is continually defining my own. The intervention of this new medium has created new opportunities of discovery, and somehow we are all moving to a new place in which the boundaries that have served to define us are yielding to new horizons that invoke the emerging reality of our continual and constant becoming.

To this sensibility I now return in the climate of new awareness and commitment.

Wyatt Back Deep in the Heart

My copy of Wyatt's Deep in The Heart contains an inscription by the author:

for Elizabeth---
who will surely go to Texas before long. It's terrible and beautiful -- as I hope this book shows. I also hope you enjoy the people here, who, troubled as they are, are close to me.

Wyatt Wyatt
20 March 1981

I had been thrilled to learn that he had written a second novel, and was struck by the title because it seemed to indicate that he was at last returning to a part of himself he had disowned when he went to New York and became enthralled with Perle and the romance of becoming an author.

The setting is the town that Wyatt and I grew up in, during an intense drought in summer:

It was the beginning of the dog days. Amarillo was bone dry. In the throat of the afternoon the temperature stuck at a hundred and eleven degrees Fahrenheit -- in the shade --if you could find shade. Between noon and six, you couldn't touch the door handle of your car without a glove or a handkerchief, and the ground had slowly cooked into a friable crust that flaked off and rose in the wind and tinted it. People said there was blood in the sky. On restless days -- nearly every day -- the wind beat at the town with the hack hack of a great rusty blade, flinging out a spray of dust that settled like a dry red mist down over everything whether it was alive or still.

This review can be found on Amazon.com:

Wyatt Wyatt (author of "Catching Fire") scores big in his second novel "Deep in the Heart"--- a well-crafted tale of sex, love, and violence in the heart of the Texas Panhandle, Amarillo. His prose is rich and imaginative and deserves a wider audience. Boone Randolf is the central character who struggles with his emotions and his friends in a personal quest for sanity in the midst of irrational and tormented characters. His people ring true, and yet, loom larger than life: Grady Hornsby, a legend of fiery wildness, a volcano always on the verge of eruption; Rowena, Grady's love, a sultry goddess tormented by a desire to control, Sue Pam, a 19-year-old sexual feast eager to live life fully; Dennis, Sue Pam's husband, protected and sheltered by wealth; and Lloyd Hollister, a cynic corrupted by power. Full of surprises, Wyatt Wyatt mixes these ingredients with abandon and shrewd observations that will stay with you long after you finish the book. But the real star is Texas itself, and Wyatt spins us through a devastating summer drought and welcomed respite of September rain. His descriptions weave an unforgettable texture of torrid temperatures and temperaments.

Wyatt Wyatt was a Texan who ran from his heritage most of his life and returned to himself in this wonderful tribute to a vanishing frontier of the freedom to be wild. Reading this book makes you wish for more, but sadly Wyatt Wyatt passed away in 2002, which makes this book all the more poignant and precious.

It really is a wonderful second novel, full of promise for a third, which was not to be. If there are flaws, they might be traceable to a tendency to be too driven by the plot, keeping the characters encased in the narrative. As though he was aware of this trap, Wyatt wrote "Already, I've been tempted to explain more than is necessary, to justify or ameliorate." He always ties up the loose ends, and life is never quite that orderly.

Wyatt writes of an Amarillo of the 1970s, and it is a city full of contradictions and wild living. The people are struggling to find an identity in a Texas that cannot come to grips with its heroic past and estrangement from modern life. It is a Texas that yearns to be the wild west, but is caught in the throes of a betrayal of itself. This treachery is manifest in Boone's deception of his best friend Grady, and through this deceit the extraordinary becomes merely ordinary. "The wild, reckless, best part of him had dried up, it had split off and blown tumbling across the plains in the wind until it vanished."

United 93 and American 11

The recent showing of the film United 93 has brought back the morning of 9/11 with startling clarity.

September 11, 2001 was a beautiful Tuesday morning, possessing a splendor and elegance that only September can distill as an idyllic memory --- the kind of day that poems are made of.

On that morning, I walked out of the market on La Guardia Place across from my apartment and looked up to see an airplane flying south so low that I could see it was an American Airlines commercial flight. The plane was flying full-throttle, and the engines sounded loud and laboring, an eerie, sinister whine that knifed through the September stillness with alarming swiftness and in a matter of seconds disappeared into the north tower of the World Trade Center some 30 blocks away in a flash of smoke and flames. The world changed in that instant, and I was stunned by the smoke pouring out of the north tower and the solemnity that cloaked the collision's aftermath in the semblance of silence. I was too far away to hear the screams of death and horror.

Minutes later, the world watched in terror as a second commercial airline approached from the southwest and erupted through the southern tower in a cataclysmic explosion magnified by telephoto lenses and television coverage. Throughout the day there would be repeated airings of this brutal attack, and when the towers collapsed, frequent relentless showings indelibly etched this catastrophe on our collective consciousness, including the ghastly images of people leaping to their deaths to avoid being burned alive. We also were intensely aware that when the planes struck the towers, countless numbers of people were instantly incinerated, including those ill-fated inhabitants aboard the hi-jacked airliners. Yet, minutes later, another commercial jet crashed into the Pentagon, and to my amazement, the media still seemed to be wondering if these events were related.

As these events were unfolding, passengers of United 93 discovered through their cell phones that they were destined to die as the others in the three flights that had been commandeered as volatile missiles by terrorists. This knowledge empowered them to act, in an attempt to take the plane from control of the terrorists, but their awareness of their situation had materialized too late for them to do anything but cause a premature crash, diverting the plane from its likely target in Washington D.C.: The White House. It crashed in an "empty" field in Pennsylvania.

An excellent writer of The American Digest, Vanderleun, places United 93 in context (Of a Fire in a Field). Fires continued to burn for many days in the subterannean aftermath of the collapse of the towers:

Inside the wire under the hole in the sky was, in time, a growing hole in the ground as the rubble was cleared away and, after many months, the last fire was put out. Often at first, but with slowly diminishing frequency, all the work to clear out the rubble and the wreckage would come to a halt... Far away on that day, far from the pillar of flame and plume of ash at the foot of the island, there was another fire in a field in Pennsylvania. Those nearby felt the shudder in the earth and saw the smoke, but it would be some days before we understood what it was, and longer still until we began to know what it meant.

...The film I saw by myself tonight expands that meaning and brings a human face to the acts by the passengers of United 93 that endure only in that rare atmosphere that heroes inhabit. What I know in my heart, but what always escapes my understanding until something like this film renews it, is that heroism is a virtue that most often appears among us not descending from some mythic pantheon, but rising up out of the ordinary earth and ordinary hearts when the moment calls for actions extraordinary.

In the days that followed the collapse of the twin towers, those of us who lived below 14th street, found ourselves in a war zone. Hordes of people wandered about this war zone. They collected in parks and along streets, stunned by the sudden and swift calamity that had befallen the nation. Strangers met and talked, and support groups and vigils met in parks and other public areas. Along walls and fences, pictures of people were posted in a desperate attempt to account for those missing who were thought to be in the vicinity of the attack. As time passed, these were transformed into walls of rememberance for those who were believed to have persihed, and were strewn with flowers and candles. As these postings were ripped from the walls by wind or passersby, the authors would repost and add to the text and images (including laminating them), a ritual that clung to the hope that some miracle might restore everything.

In the meantime, the war zone had been clearly mapped. The air still retained the smell of death, and the dust of pulverized remains were still sifting, drifting, and settling on the terrain. Residents had to be identified before they could enter the area, and shipments of goods such as groceries, magazines, and newspapers were curtailed. I had to go above 14th street to get a newspaper. There were shortages of bread and milk. None were permitted into this downtown zone unless they could demonstrate that they had legitimate business and had acceptable ID. Vehicular travel was limited to emergency vehicles, and troops were stationed throughout the area with deployment of heavy armament on strategic streets such as Houston, Broadway, and the entire downtown Wall street area.

As the time of this vicious attack has grown more distant, many seem oblivious to opposing worlds on the verge of collision and collapse. We have insulated ourselves from the impending violence and danger. Yet, we know that in the blink of an eye, at any moment, our fragile world may disappear in an act of hatred and devastation, as it did on that idyllic September morn of 2001.