NOVEMBER TIME

These posts are a way of noting Time and its passage. I have been pursuing the passing of Time on Facebook, where I write a new poem each day throughout 2024. I am currently proofreading FACE BOOK POEMS, a book that includes poems written during the first half of the year.

This Facebook project has taken away from my posts hereon Wizard Ways, and I regret that I have allowed that distraction to deter posting on this site, since this Blog represents a large segment of my life and activity. On the other hand, I have only one reader of this Blog, and Google has discouraged comments by its rigorous sign-in procedure. My main regret is that I used Google for blogging. At the time, I had no idea how sinister and manipulative Google would turn out to be.I am sure they regularly scan these blogs and develop profiles on each contributor.

But here we are in November, and the greatest development for me has been to become immersive in sonority and musical sound. I'm not sure where this will lead, but as always, music becomes structure that can lead to discovery.  

Improvisation is a way of traveling through Time, and it is productive when I become obsessive in exploring musical ideas at the keyboard.  My mantra has been "fingers on the keys"... sometimes I come upon an idea that takes me down a musical path. I'm surprised, because I thought that time was over. 

I'm in the midst of revisiting past songs. Thanks to a colleague, Dr. Ulrich Hartung, a number of my songs have been salvaged, but  there's still so many that are gone. All of the songs I wrote for the album Prayer are lost from the several computer crashes I have experienced over the years. 

But November has somehow brought a new resonance to my creative process, and in the midst of all that is going on, I relish a journey through the contours of musical thinking. I like to listen to fading sonorities where I sometimes detect a musical gesture that becomes a song.

THE CLEARING

I have been away for some time. But I have been on a voyage of discovery, a time of recovery, and now I am pausing in a clearing where everything is new. 

I look around at the terrain. I am always cognizant of my terrain as it defines the journey. This terrain is jagged, with giant mountains, deep valleys, and treacherous trails. I struggle to travel a few years, and I must rest. Hidden in these mountains are ancient monasteries with inhabitants who have lived for ages articulating and demonstrating the Truth of Being. 

My existence is so temporal, caught in the web of confusion, of the Maya, of the illusion that diverts us from tending to the reality of ourselves. It is a trap that most of us struggle against, a reality that is oppressive and pessimistic. We are pushed to extremes to the point that we can only focus on trivial minutiae. I have to admit I have been diverted by the illusion, despite my understanding of the Maya as a trap. 

But why? Somewhere in the vast conscious awareness, we are the reality of Here and Now. It is right here, seemingly within (although inner and outer are just binary constructs). 

But here in The Clearing I have discovered that Silence is an infinite domain of discovery. Everything comes from the Silence, in the quietness of our Being Time itself is being created filled with infinite imaginings that will never end.

The Clearing is a node of Infinity where in a infinite pause, becoming is a perpetual delight.

BEING HERE

I have been so delinquent from this site, even though I have been writing in multiple media. I have been writing a new poem everyday for Facebook, and have committed to complete this year with an original work each day. The first six months of Facebook poems have been collected into a volume that should be published in the next few weeks. 

I am committed to finishing my manuscripts of New York short-short stories by September, even though the last two stories have been extremely challenging. Mulberry Days is a work based on an experience of living on Mulberry Street in the context of rich history of that famous street. I am happy to say that book should be available in the next few weeks.

My long awaited phenomenological experiment Making Music has been set and should be available sometime this Fall. A project which is still in a speculation stage is a souvenir book for IMPACT with pictures and text on the experimental workshop in collaboration conducted at New York University for ten years.

This is a challenging time for me. For some reason, ideas have been streaking through my mind like comets, representing the culmination of years of exploration and research. I have been fortunate to have an excellent book designer, Oksana Tykha, who has piloted my two poetry manuscripts, Tilting Time and Remnants of Being, into books available on Amazon.

In the meantime, I have been listening deeply to the music makers of the American Song, especially Neil Diamond and Carly Simon. This has awakened my musical wandering, and I have no idea where this may take me.

My first tendency has been to focus on "Being There" as a mode of of awareness. But I can see how a shift to "Being Here" provokes a new dimension of exploration. This shift promises a new artistic energy that may uncover new works and new directions.

BEING THERE

So much time has passed and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed to still be here at this post. Actually, I have been away for some time, so returning is a bittersweet moment as I know that time away might have been posted here as the experiences of my journey. That time is past. But maybe I am here at last.

This could be among the last transmissions of my journey. Time has been flying by at a seemingly increasing pace. In recent days, I have been writing and posting new poems to Facebook every day. These Facebook Poems have collected as a daily publication since the end of December.  

So this is about friends this year, and how the project of writing a poem each day on Facebook has deepened my sense of the friends that share my life and my limited awareness of the wide range of activities going on with my friends. I have come to realize how much we take for granted in friendships, and how fragile they really are. Facebook can seduce you into believing your friendships are active, even intense. But it really is a substitute for actually BEING THERE. 

Time splashes through our fingers like water, intensely present but flowing past us. In an instant the moment is gone, lingering as the mere shadow of itself slowly decaying. Opportunities abound as an infinite array of possibilities, but only "Being There" shapes the reality of the moment, and we may never fully understand how rare true friendships really are. 

For me, those intense friendships are fading as the reality of now pushes our intimate contact with each other further away. I regret we cannot be fully present in the moment with each other, and that somehow, the intensity dwindles with the passage of Time.

But I am grateful for the combustion of our encounters and how they have created who I appear to be. I wonder if in the distant future that we imagine exists, we will meet again. Maybe this leg of the journey is to learn the meaning of BEING THERE. There was a film with Peter Sellers devoted to such an adventure and the superiority of experience over identity. But I think even that great film missed the mark in deepening our understanding of being in the moment.