August and the Death of Summer

My last post was about the end of August and destitute destinies.

It was actually an attempt for the finale of A Song for Second Avenue, which I rejected. Even so, there is something of Suna and something of my muse embedded in this failed lyric. I have struggled through this linguistic meandering so much and so often, it is easy to get lost in parallel paths along the way, stumbling into some blackhole of forgetfulness where I can't remember why I am there.

None of this matters very much anyway, except to say that today there was a breakthrough. I did finish the tragic ending and now have started upon the alternate paths. It is just a draft, I know. It is just a draft---it will change, I know. But it is there. The words mask the ideas, and the foundations of awareness seek out words adequate to the vision. That is always the task... a language adequate to the moment. Thought structures transcend language, but are intimately associated with the languaging of emerging reality.

I think of my friends now struggling to know English more thoroughly, and I say to them, I am with you on that struggle. You are forging new paths through consciousness. Even though you think you follow the trails of others who have gone before, you are unique, alone with your reality. Say something to me. Anything. ...and I will learn.

Here as I struggle to chart my own paths, I walk by a table of books for sale on West Fourth Street... and there is The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison: Wilderness. I discover he is a fellow traveller. He also lost his way, but he had the perception of mind to say "Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything, it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through any one that suits you." I find Morrison opens many doors for me, and I fall through them like Alice in Wonderland. Words and metaphors spill across my mind in a myriad of kaleidoscopic images.

Jim Morrison was waiting for me to pick up loose ends. Here I am... Here he is, saying the same thing I was muttering in my last post in his own eloquent elegy:

The Endless quest a vigil
of watchtowers and fortresses
against the sea and time.
Have they won? Perhaps.
They still stand and in
their silent room still wander
the souls of the dead.
who keep their watch on the living.
Soon enough we shall join them.
Soon enough we shall walk
the walls of time. We shall
miss nothing
except each other.