Wyatt Wyatt

For some reason Wyatt has sprung to life in my memory. Once he was Lawrence Wyatt, who became my closest friend around the fifth grade when he entered Lee Bivens School and was assigned to my class. We instantly bonded as friends walking home from school.

This bond continued throughout school with our admiration for each other deepening and continuing even after we went to different colleges and pursued very different paths. Larry was a literature major at the University of Texas, and when he graduated he headed for New York to pursue an M.A. at Columbia University, arriving there slightly ahead of me.

Even though we were often separated for long intervals, we would resume conversations as though it were the next day. Wyatt became an ardent pursuer and writer of fiction. The catalyst intensifying his passion was Perle, the wife of a psychoanalyst who fancied himself the reincarnation of Freud, and who , of course, understood Perle's obsession with Larry. She had a deep knowledge of literature, was sexy as hell, and gave Larry his real education in writing and sexual intensity. Their affair was stormy and passionate, and was fully condoned by her husband. We often dined out together or went to Perle's place for drinks. It was all very urban and civilized.

Abruptly Larry left for Paris, as all good American writers should. This was an extension of a process that had begun with Perle, which could be best understood as abandoning his Texas past as being irrelevant. If nothing else, he was tracing the pathways of American writers, and he wore a beret (which he actually began wearing while in New York). In addition to a real commitment and passion for writing, he was also caught up in the drama and theatrics of his adventure.

He returned to New York and resumed a turbulent relationship with Perle. He urged her to flee with him to Alaska. He bought a motorcycle so they could experience traveling the countryside through a visceral immersion in the windblown senses. Perle took off with Larry, the epitome of an impetuous impulse to live like true romantics in the passion of the moment. However, after several days of travel, Perle returned to New York, and Larry continued alone to Alaska where he taught creative writing at the University of Alaska.

While in Alaska he fell into a relationship with a student who deeply admired Larry and always addressed him in third person. She was from Seattle, and immediately latched onto Larry who was ready for something different than a tempestuous relationship. There was an element of hero worship which fanned Larry's ego as she continued to call him Wyatt even in intimate moments. Thus Larry dropped his first name and became officially and legally Wyatt Wyatt, hoping somehow that this name would bring him fame as a writer. They went to Spain and to the tiny island of Ibiza, which at the time was relatively undiscovered, and they could live on pennies a day. This was an intense time of reading and writing. When they returned, Wyatt was appointed to run a program in creative writing in Florida. Eventually the student left Wyatt, and he was finally faced with the reality of himself and his writing.

Under that name, which was now his only name, Wyatt Wyatt brought forth Catching Fire and Deep in the Heart. Wyatt and I were in touch during the time he published Catching Fire with Random House in 1977. He spoke of selling rights for a film version, but apparently that never materialized. He gave me a copy of the book when he paid an impromptu visit to New York. There was something about that visit that altered the orbits of our universe. On his arrival, we resumed our intimate connection and conversation as before, but by the time he left New York, we were somehow strangers. I never heard from him again.

I found this lone review of Catching Fire on Amazon.com. It had been posted on my birthday, in 1999.

As southern as grits and beer for breakfast, this entertaining book is filled with odd-ball characters that grab and hold you. Very well written. Wyatt Wyatt uses humor and pathos to explore the human condition and he uses it well. If you can find this book, check it out.

I never had a copy of Deep in the Heart. It came out in 1980, and since our paths had swung in different directions, I never knew anything about the book or that it existed. There is no Amazon.com review. I feel compelled to search it out, because maybe Wyatt decided to write about a past that he had abandoned when he became involved with Perle and felt the need to be more urban, more cosmopolitan. There is no doubt that his New York experience with Perle was so momentous and potent that he must have felt that his real existence virtually began in the ethos of that time.

I am not sure what has brought Wyatt back into my memory after 25 years. Perhaps, somehow, my links with this particular past are active once more. I don't know if Wyatt is still alive as web searches only yield minor references to him as author of these two volumes composed at the zenith of his journey more than 25 years ago. In this same period, Perle published work on the Kabbalah and Malcolm Lowry, but was even more prolific publishing under her maiden name. Perle's husband was also a highly productive author, publishing many books, including a book about healing through visual imagery and establishing a foundation and website devoted to healing yourself through visual imagery. I hadn't thought much about Wyatt until today, when suddenly he seemed to be in the room, an old friend intimately bridging the abyss of time.
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Addendum: After writing the above, I did a rigorous search and finally tracked down the following obituary:

Wyatt Wyatt was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma and has lived in Oklahoma, Texas, New York, Paris, Alaska, Spain, the Yukon Territory, and Florida. Wyatt has held jobs as a bag-worm picker, popcorn popper, tractor driver, window washer, library janitor, traffic counter, street sweeper, cat skinner, goldminer, woodcutter, teacher, and writer. Wyatt previously taught literature at the University of Central Florida before his early retirement in 1998. Including two novels, Wyatt has published short stories, drama, poetry, television scripts, book reviews, criticism, articles, and political speeches. Wyatt passed away August 8th, 2002, after a lengthy battle with cancer.

So Wyatt is gone... irretrievably, sadly, and so final that I feel a great radiance has flickered and failed... This sudden knowledge penetrates to the core of my being ... painfully... permanently...

Yet, today he has been vividly present.

Perhaps he has been looking over my shoulder, nudging me to remember. Now I realize the impediment that his memory has breached was far greater than I knew. From other sources I discovered that he had brain cancer in 1988, but he fought it off and returned to teach a course on death and dying. From the above notice, he continued to teach until 1998 when he took "early retirement." Wyatt confronted his ultimate demons. While in high school, his stepfather underwent a tortuous, fatal siege of cancer that was very painful for Wyatt. Wyatt also harbored deep forboding that he would one day face his own battle. Yet, his best trait was to summon courage to confront his deepest fears and carry on with dignity and resolute resolve.

Writing of his adventures today brought me such pleasure, and I remember his great affection and sense of humor. I know he must have had a hand in his own obituary...as nothing to him was ever trivial.

My deep regret is that we lost touch in those final years. I still have a date with Deep in the Heart, as I realize that Wyatt has returned to a place deep in my heart... in fact, he never left.

The Little House

For his livelihood, my father served as one of the early efficiency experts emerging in 1930s, for a large multistate electrical power company, and in fact, saved the company from bankruptcy by reorganizing different practices and structures so that the company was able to cut costs dramatically.

But for his well-being, Dad pursued carpentry and philosophy. Having grown up on a farm, he had learned that we are empowered to improve our physical world by using our minds and hands to effect change. Consequently, when I was entering my teens, he decided to redesign and reconstruct the house and the garage.

Before this extravagant undertaking, he had built a small house in the backyard that served as a laundry room, a workbench for woodworking, a printshop for my newspaper ventures, and a small library of books on history, science, and philosophy, which my Dad avidly pursued. To put this in perspective, this was during the Korean War, and my news source was the Associated Press via the old radio we kept in "The Little House." As an aside, that radio gave me the shock of my life (and one of my first lessons in physics when I grabbed the metal stump of the tuner [the wooden knob had fallen off] while in my bare feet on a wet floor).

For Dad, The Little House. was a retreat for his pursuit of history and philosophy (he would include science as a part of philosophy). He would buy books from estates for his library in the Little House, and began to amass a distinctive collection. He had never gone to college, but had completed studies by correspondence school in accounting, history, and philosophy from LaSalle, a prominent pioneer in distance education.

Now, as I was in middle school, he began his significant project of expanding our dwellings, enlisting my help as an extra hand where I learned how to build things. Briefly, he completely changed the front entrance of the house, combined the dining and living rooms into an enormous room for formal entertaining with a prominent place for the Knabe Piano, remodeled the kitchen to include a counter for eating and food preparation, and constructed a large dining/recreation room as a multipurpose space, including a new invention that was becoming popular: television.

Rather than attach the garage to this new home, he built a creative open port that could be used as a garage or a rehearsal and dance space with a side that could open to the backyard where an audience could gather. At the back of this space he build a new "Little House" which could double as a guest room, with its own bathroom. and library-like shelving to house his growing collection of books. Even after he tore down the original "Little House" we referred to this new room as The Little House, which in the spirit of Darwin's theory had evolved to a new species. On many an evening and well into the night, my Father would disappear to this sanctuary in pursuit of knowledge, but ultimately, I believe, he found wisdom.

Of course, it wasn't until later years when I read Hemingway's "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" that I fully understood my Father's urgent need for this clean, well-lighted room. Like Hemingway and all of us, he felt confronted by the looming nothingness.

What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada.

In history, science, and philosophy, Dad was seeking an answer to the void, to nada. Somehow, in the quietness of The Little House, he found brief glimpses of answers, moments of conscious awareness that gleam in the darkness like distant galaxies.

Washington Square Park

Washington Square Park has been the heart of Greenwich Village for more than a century. It sits at the south end of Fifth Avenue, a timeless jewel in the bosom of the city. It is still a gathering place for people with causes and people who are interested only in people watching. It is a place for musicians to bring out their instruments for a trial run, for joggers who trace paths around the perimeter (always counter clockwise), for politicians and birthday parties, for chess players and kibitzers, for dogs and dog lovers, for strollers and sun bathers, for entertainers and outdoor concerts, for hotdog stands and water fountains, for onlookers content to watch the world go by. The list could go on and on.

It is a Damon-Runyon/O'Henry paradise, where stories abound in volumes not yet written. Surprises happen every day, every moment. At the turn of the 19th into the 20th century, O' Henry started romancing New York through his imaginative short stories with surprise endings. A little later, Damon Runyon made his way to New York City to work for Hearst as a reporter. His favorite hangout was Broadway, and his story "The Idylls of Miss Sarah Brown" appeared in his 1932 book Guys and Dolls, written in the Broadway slang of the time, which caught the ear and imagination of Abe Burrows and Frank Loesser who transformed it into one of the all-time great classic Broadway musicals.

Henry James (1843-1916) wrote Washington Square, a novel depicting the 1840s when the brownstones across from the park were a fashionable haven for the wealthy. Henry James was born in Washington Square. James strips the glamour from Washington Square in his story of disappointment and unfulfillment. He wrote the novel from a distance, while in London and later, Paris. It has been made into an opera and a film. Composed by Thomas Pasatieri, the opera Washington Square premiered in Detroit in 1976. The opera was revised. In 1977, the New York Lyric Opera, in residence at New York University, gave the new premiere of Pasatieri's opera in what is now Loewe Theatre on West 4th, about 50 yards from Washington Square Park.

While Henry James wrote of a fading aristocratic class in Washington Square in the 19th Century, O.Henry and Damon Runyon were the chroniclers of New York's coming of age in the 20th century, of the colorful characters that made up the city with their millions of stories erupting every minute.

Washington Square Park is a miniature, a mircrocosm of the great engine that is New York City. It has gone through many transformations. There were once luxury hotels that lined several sides of the park. I have roamed through the underground catacombs of these old hotels that the university had commandeered to use as offices and classrooms. There was a labyrinth of tunnels connecting the buildings, and I came upon the underground quarters of the valets and maids. I found kitchens and ironing boards, and the remnants of laundries. Entering these quarters was like descending into the past. These rooms had not been touched for more than half a century. There were clothes left on the floor, and old bottles and glasses on counters. I felt as though any moment someone might walk through the door from this past, this lost civilization of a vanishing aristocracy and its servant class. I wondered how these rooms had come to be abandoned. Why were they left in such disarray?

Sadly, I think we have lost our taste for short stories, for those prose portraits of vibrant people in the throes of life. The 20th century was an age of innocence, a coming of age. 9/11 2001 ushered in a new era, tough, impervious, and so brittle we appear always on the verge of shattering into incoherent fragments.

Mercer Street Bookstore

No matter how great the technological incursion into our lives, one prediction that has not proven true for me has been that books, as such, would begin to disappear and become obsolete as electronic text became universally available for all such "books." It has also been suggested that electronic media would become so pervasive that ultimately less and less paper would be needed. We would eventually emerge as a paperless society.

Well, not for me.

While I admit that most of my research and inquiry utilizes acquiring and reading text on the internet, and benefiting from the recent advances in instant translation of documents in foreign languages, I had almost forgotten the romance of the printed word and books as a physical presence. Then I wandered into the Mercer Street Bookstore, a place for second-hand books and old vinyl LP recordings.

There is a certain majesty in the variety of paper and bindings you encounter with books. There is a special smell of paper, and the tactile experience of leafing through pages of volumes of books you never knew even existed can be intoxicating. And the textures of paper are so rich and varied! I am always drawn to the poetry section of such stores. Poetry passes into the "second-hand" status more rapidly than most books. Calling them "used" books is often misleading, because most of the books have been rarely touched, although there are notable exceptions.

My imagination is ignited by such encounters. Titles are leaping out at me with such explosiveness. "Incredible," I think, "Why didn't I think of that!" There are authors I have never heard of, and books have such variety of sizes and styles! I think of my experience with electronic print media and suddenly realize that text is reduced to a certain monotonous sameness, with occasional deviation of fonts and backgrounds. And there is no equivalent tactile sense of how books feel as I sort randomly through a volume.

After poetry, I head for philosophy, then to arts and humanities, then to fiction, then history, and science. I replace Internet Explorer and Firefox with myself as browser with a certain built-in intelligence (I hope) as I search, although what actually alerts me is some sensibility not immediately understood, an awareness that grows as I leaf through pages... words and phrases grab me and awaken some dark mysterious recess of myself that was waiting for some such signal.

Mercer Street Bookstore... Not a bookstore at all but a place where ideas occupy three dimensional space, slumbering on shelves until some intelligence stumbles upon them and discovers new constellations, new galaxies of thoughts formed and flung to the wilderness waiting to be deciphered and filtered through the mind.

Walking into the bookstore I enter a universe that is dazzling, an underlying order that structures knowledge. Bookshelves line the walls to the ceiling around the perimeter, with smaller shelves and bins in the front. It is a cozy, comfortable space, with an open central area that contains recent arrivals, LPs, odd-sized art books, books of poetry, with little anarchic pockets here and there inviting scrutiny. At the back of this open space, the room narrows to the right and continues back, a literary gravity pulling you to the furthermost wall. There is just enough chaos, scattered blackholes that connect to the vortex of my imagination and drag me irresistibly into the increasing density of inspiration and human achievement.

Time is suspended. Books beckon me with silent and persuasive seductiveness as I discover that this realm of mental activity emerges as a kingdom, a landscape where I can wander among the volumes like an adventurer from another planet... exploring alien terrain with such abundant awareness that I abandon my routine digital domain for an idle Saturday afternoon among the ancient tomes and printed manuscripts of Mercer Street.

What Do You Mean By That?

Maybe you have noticed the same rhetorical device that I experience on a somewhat regular basis: "What do you mean by that?" It is a clever device when critiquing written materials since you can pretend to have read something and you put the pressure on the person to find other words to somehow clarify something that already may be perfectly obvious. It is also useful in face to face exchanges in diverting the discussion away from your own arguments and creating new territory for exchange.

A corollary phrase is "I don't know what you mean by this." This is, of course, much more aggressive, since it implies an accusation that someone has not made things crystal clear. This is, in modern circles, a grievous error, except when you are writing poetry or philosophy.

The reality may be that as marvelous as language is, we may never fully know what is in the minds of others who are speaking and writing. This is part of the human dilemma. We never know ourselves fully, and whatever we disclose in a particular moment is enclosed and relevant to that moment. How it relates to past and future is a process of discovery, and is never fully revealed.

In fact, isn't that the miracle of language and words? Words in combination are a way of making meaning through extending ordinary meaning into extraordinary combinations that become new knowledge in the world. This is true of poetry and of creative writing where words are tools of extension that produce original ideas. In the act of uttering, we are in the dynamic disclosure of creating meaning from moment to moment...

...and yes, I am not sure what I mean by that...

A Class Act: Anything Goes!

A group of music education majors from New York University under the leadership of Candace Parr formed a student production group called A Class Act and on April 7-9th demonstrated they rated that designation and more. They transformed a space at Thompson Center into a Broadway Theatre, complete with their own improvised orchestra pit and proceeded to perform an inspired production of Cole Porter's Anything Goes, even exceeding to some degree the professional training programs in musical theatre at New York University. What they lacked in financial and institutional support, they made up for with imagination and inventiveness.

Producer Danielle Lazarowitz, who may be our next David Merrick, helped Candace maneuver through all of the obstacles of producing a musical with absolutely no financial support from the unversity as well as no support in providing space. But the driving force was the vision of Candace Parr and the talents of everyone involved.

The scene was set by the pianist/accompanist Kyle Henry who was playing at the "piano bar" as the audience arrived. He has a genuine connection with the audience, and is one of the few left-foot pedal pushers you will find, which gives the impression that he is always poised and ready to leap off the bench to take care of some musical problem.

Sitting in the audience and inspired by these young song and dance actors, I thought back on the early efforts of those who went on to fame, and saw that same potential in all the talent on stage. I couldn't help seeing analogies of actors who have gone from their initial efforts to full careers.

Michael Holder playing Billy Crocker combines the looks of Sam Shepard and Richard Gere, but brings his own distinctive style to the role, with a wonderful voice and deft character. There were also elements of Fred Astaire as he shaped an utterly convincing portrait of a schemer and dreamer who has fallen in love with Hope Harcourt.

Joe Piccirillo as Moonface Martin could be the double of a young Robert De Niro who brings sleight of hand, humor, and perhaps the best performance of "Be Like the Bluebird" that is on record. His performance and his character were classic. He has an instinctive comedic flair, but also has the natural tools of an actor. I doubt that he studied the moves of De Niro in The King Of Comedy, but he has them in his vocabulary.

The Ethel Merman role, Reno Sweeney, played by Jaclyn Altieri, at times must carry the show with numbers like "I Get a Kick Out of You," "You're The Top," "Anything Goes," and "Blow, Gabriel, Blow," to name a few. Not only does she manage this feat, but she has a presence that reminds me of a mix of Mitzi Gaynor and Debbie Reynolds.

A vivacious Heather Wilson playing Bonnie Le Tour could be how Laura Dern must have looked in her early acting days... fresh, energetic and enthusiastic... she brightened the stage with a dazzling incandescence. And Christina Kompar played mother Harcourt with all of the comic panache of Peggy Cass as Agnes Gooch in Mame. And while we are at it, Jim Kuerschner reminds me of how Eric Roberts looked in his first days as a professional, projecting a kind of lyrical devil-may-care cynicism. His portrayal of Elisha J. Whitney was superb.

Darrell Dumas as Sir Evelyn Oakleigh turned in a performance that was as masterful as anything David Hyde Pierce has done, bringing a great deal of detail to the role with a distinctive flair. Everything he does has a sense of connection and secure control, as was always apparent in "Let's Misbehave." His work gives us a sense of immediacy and spontaneity. He has a comic imagination that seems inexhaustible, tempered with the craft of an actor.

Jeanne Cascio's Hope Harcourt, reminiscent of Leslie Caron or Anne Baxter, captures the essence of the ingenue lead. winning the day along with Michael Holder in "DeLovely" and "All Through the Night."

Proving it is true that "there are no small roles" were the likes of Sutton Stewart (Captain), Louis Winsberg (Purser), Meghan Phadke (Stewardess), Richard Vagnigno (Bishop), Natalie Nachimson (Soloist), Jennie Chiaramonte (Reporter/Ling), Megan Himel (Cameraperson /Ching), and Lianna Purjes, Julia Rosenfeld (Sailors). The performance was marked by the synchronicity of a total ensemble effort.

Certainly Cole Porter's lyrics and music of this 1936 musical astound us with how well they wear, even when they are topical. The ever lyrical "All Through the Night" as a duet of separated lovers heightens their separation through its spiraling downward flow, but we are lifted up by Reno's Angels (Laura Chzaszcz, Courtney Marello, Amy Rosenfield, Marissa Ur) in a show stopper "Take Me Back to Manhattan." Cole Porter would be proud.

Anything Goes goes because of Candace Parr who masterfully directs the production with a sense of fun, pace, and style. Candace is a budding Hal Prince, with that rare combination of production sense, performance savvy, and a conceptual approach to staging and direction. Anything Goes goes because of the talented students on stage, and the talents of student instrumentalists supporting them in the pit. Conductor Tammy Edwards is poised and keeps the orchestra cohesive and balanced, and even makes a cameo appearance in the second act. The rich choreographic touch of Jeanne Cascio finds just the right moves for the actors and ensemble.

By now, you may have forgotten that this started as a project of music education students who are A Class Act, and who from my perspective are "the top... the Coliseum... The Louvre Museum... the top!" If the future of music education is in the hands of these resourceful, musical, enterprising students, music education is in for a renaissance such as we have never seen before. Look out world...cause here they come! They're the top!

Coffee Times

My mother loved coffee. Mostly it was the idea of coffee. Sipping coffee as she watched the weather and the world go by.

She was a passionate watcher. She loved whatever was unexpected. Coffee was the great mediator of the unexpected. The first time she visited me in the Village after my Father died, we celebrated New York over coffee. Although we went to all the coffee houses in Village (before Starbucks), we also sat on the terrace, which overlooked a garden and included a view of the Empire State Building some thirty blocks away. With our coffee we would watch the clouds marking time, and the glow of sunset over the Hudson, with the shores and cliffs of New Jersey accenting the dwindling light.

Once, a sudden thunderstorm swept through the skyline. It was one of those August electrical displays with lightning crackling all around and thunderclaps exploding in cataclysmic eruptions and rumbling across the sky in fading fierceness. Inevitably, shafts of lightning bolts attacked the top of the Empire State Building. My mother insisted in sitting on the terrace, delighting in the display, despite the driving rain which was soaking the terrace, including us. For her this was a thrilling light show. This was all the more remarkable because I remembered her being afraid of the lightning since as a child she had seen her father struck by lightning while standing in the screendoor during such a thunderburst. Somehow she had overcome that fear. She always was seeking the unusual, such as abruptly driving to Colorado in late August in hopes of finding an early snow among the mountain peaks. She usually found them, and was always exhilerated by such impromptu discoveries.

Just before she visited that August, I had watched a local entrepreneur put together a new coffee place around the corner from our building. It was in a garden-like spot, and the businessman was something of a craftsman as he completely constructed the space over the course of about a month, finishing with a wonderful outdoor terrace in front, a perfect place to watch the Village pass by. I thought of my mother, and wrote to her about the new space which was then called "Coffee Cuisine."

When she arrived, Coffee Cuisine had just opened and proved to be our favorite place aside from the apartment terrace. The weather was idyllic and we sat for hours with our lattes and capuccinos remembering past times and absorbing the spirit of the Village. In fact, if I went out on some business and returned, I would usually finding her sitting outside at Coffee Cuisine. This visit was to be the last time I would see her, and so these times and that place take on a special luster in my memory.

Coffee Cuisine went through several transitions after that, becoming Internet Cafe, and then briefly Leo's Place. Now it is empty, for rent. But as I pass by, I see her sitting there with her coffee, watching the weather and the world go by, and probably wishing for a thunderstorm with snow.

Silence

For me, eloquence is born out of silence.

Everything emanates from the point of nothingness, a dot of infinity, an infinite void... out of which time and being emerge in continuous streaming. We have created a metaphor of this streaming with our electronic media flowing across cyberspace, light and shadow flickering on screens around the world, performing their magic as fast as our connectedness can download successive moments.

For many today, inspiration comes out of the multisensory overload, a kind of Ivesian collage of competing, even conflicting elements vying for dominance among the senses. Out of this pandemonium some grab handfuls of meaning, reshaping experience by remixing the sources. This is the age of remixing. Art has become the sampling of moments. Our process now culminates in the layering of images and sounds, often thick and dense, with a compelling driving rhythm that melds the diversity into a cohesive whole. Rhythm has become a visceral link to a fundamental essence.

Yet, I still listen for the silence.

I have often wondered about the idea of creation being the suddenness of light. Perhaps before the darkness, there was silence, and out of the infinite emptiness came the sounds of beingness, sounds so profound that they shaped order from chaos, modulating the debris of constellations into patterns of delight.

Rain

The rain falls like a mist over everything, an April rain, artful and deceiving.

I walk through the mist of April and look at people hurrying by, shielding themselves from the rain with whatever is handy. Some have umbrellas.

Night is coming with the rain, and the lights of the Village blend and blur with the lights of cars going by. The lamppost through the rain seems almost as though it has been sketched by someone. The wind blows, and gusts shake the trees and street lamps. The trees are leafless, but tiny buds are starting to open. Here and there are cherry and dogwood trees with a certain splendor against a grey and dimming night.

I dreamed of such rainswept nights long ago and far away, when the city gleamed in my consciousness like a distant dream about to happen. I dreamed of the rain. The rain was always the beginning, setting the stage. A story would unfold, slipping from the mystery of the rain like a phantom. The rain is like a curtain opening, and we can see the characters dimly. There they are, waiting for some destiny to tap them on the shoulder.

Now I dream of other cities. The world beckons and I know there are other cities waiting for me in the rain, perhaps in other lifetimes.

Being Wildered

Maybe it is just the approach of Daylight Savings Time, which is always more traumatic for me than any of the solstices. Maybe it is the intrusion of the light of dawn and the light of dusk into the thick of night. Maybe it's the rush of things that always accompany the beginning of spring, when there seems to be so much to do, but your instincts are quietly urging you to celebrate life in ways that depart from your daily routine.

Whatever it is, I find I am bewildered. I wonder what this means, actually. In some way it must mean that I have become wildered. And what is it to be wildered, because wildered is certainly what I am. Answer.com suggests that I am "baffled, befuddled, bemused, confounded, confused, lost, mazed, mixed-up, and at sea." Elsewhere, I discovered it is archaic and wilder once meant to lead astray, and elsewhere bewilder means "to confuse or befuddle, especially with numerous conflicting situations." No wonder this archaic word has persisted into the modern day. Nothing could fit more appropriately with our accelerated times.

Yes, I know the song Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered brought the word back into modern parlance. Yet no one has really parsed the meaning of bewildered in terms of our times and mindset. I have heard the party discussions that suggest that the word means to be "wild," which means to be "out of control." Maybe there is an element of wild in being wildered, but certainly not to the extent of "a walk on the wild side" ---which might be an excursion into the darker side of our being.

Whatever it means, I recognize when I am wildered, and I don't need the dictionary to know that I seem to be wildering more and more as time goes by. My theory is that the older we become, the harder it is to be fully in sync with Now, because the past becomes such heavy baggage that is harder and harder to pull into the present. In sync with Now allows us to filter the barrage of the present, while an enlarged domain that encompasses the past with Now interferes with those filters, since experience brings a deeper set of values to the same incident. We just keep getting wilder and wildered the deeper we go into the infinity of ourselves.

A Wash of Light

i visited what I think of as my singapore muse and found this provocative entry by ismene:

i don't want to be cool.
i want to be a wash of light.

we wrap and unwrap ourselves many times over.

her images are breathtaking... and i find myself in the midst of this wash of light from the east... like a brushstroke of early morning wakening me to the newness of another day unfolding... imagine a shaft of light diffusing and bathing the world in the substance of dawn... imagine the fresh scent of morning bursting into consciousness like a delicious aroma of some exotic condiment of beauty...

if the earth didn't spin creating the cycles of day and night, we would have to invent the night and morning, for we require the renaissance of recurring days... we must "wrap and unwrap ourselves" in a festival of renewal... a wash of light that cleanses the soul and renews the spirit....

Magnificent Sound

The first moment he heard her sing, he was astonished.

Her singing filled the space so completely that there was no sense of location, no voice coming from the direction of a person...just the full, mystifying presence of singing sounding in the fullness of the room. In fact the area was actually a sanctuary, and although it was spacious, the deep contralto voice filling the space seemed to resonate beyond the walls and spill outward.

He had never heard such richness of tone, or smoothness of texture. He thought at first he must be bewitched. He was certain that he must be under some spell, such perfection could only be a magical manifestation.

It was his nature to idolize her because of her singing. He developed his obsession through all the newness that her presence brought to his life. He researched everything he could regarding repertoire for contraltos, great recordings of contraltos, and used these findings to add to her aura.

She had one other irresistible feature that fired his imagination and obsession: she was unattainable---or at least unavailable.

So he began to compose music for her, songs, solos, and cycles. Some of his best work came from that time when he was under the spell of her remarkable voice. They would go through many difficulties, and they were destined to enter forbidden territory. But through all of the turmoil, and hanging on the outskirts of Time itself, the integrity of his discovery remained untouched.

Her musical pervasiveness that had captured his imagination, totally invaded his very existence at a time when he was most vulernable. Ultimately their mutual fragility would doom them. But in the meantime, they would endure and survive in the essence of her magnificent sound, which somehow inextricably bound them in a shared journey of discovery.

Spring is Here

Why doesn't my heart go dancing?

Spring arrived masquerading as winter.

But in my heart, I hear grass greening, see trees leafing, smell shimmering spring showers, taste tanging strawberry tarts , and feel the sunning of the sun. Spring is like the contagion of hope, infecting us with delight and expectation. But winter betrays our trust, and spring delayed paralyzes our reawakening to life renewed, rendering us immobile, ineloquent, and impatient.

But I still remember the countless solstices of spring restoring the cycle of being alive, urging me to explore life and love with greater passion and commitment. I still remember the music spilling from the soul in a festival of song. I still remember the feast of fantasies that fueled my imagination with the celebration of spring.

Spring might be a little late this year.

I Do Not Know

Whose footprint is that paulonia leaf
That drops softly, rousing ripples in the windless air?

whose face is that blue sky
Glimpsed between the threatening, dark clouds
Blown by the west wind after a long rain?

Whose breath is that fragrance in the sky
Over the flowerless tree, over the old tower?

Whose song is that bickering stream
That quietly flows, starting from nowhere
And making the stones weep?

Whose poem is that evening glow
That adorns the fading day,
Its lotus feet standing on the endless sea,
And its jade hands patting the sky?

Burnt ashes become fuel again.
My endlessly burning heart,
Whose night does this
Flickering lamp illumine?

...Yong-Woon Han (1879-1944)
(translated by Chi-Hwan Yu)

Two additional translations of I Don't Know can be found at Pilgrim Priest, an attractive blog about the journey of life.

This poem was the catalyst for a major dance work by Kim Myung-sook which premiered in Seoul, October 2005, and has been officially recognized for its contribution to Korean cultural life. Kim's dance company, Nulhui, has explored Korean cultural values and aesthetic ideas with stunning success in the past and has projected its work through performances incorporating ancient practices and modern technology. Kim's new work will be described in a later blog, but for now, the poem speaks from its time to ours. Han was a Korean Zen Buddhist whose poetry provides a legacy in the context of the resistance to Japan's occupation of Korea.

The poem's shifting images raise questions of identity, ownership, and belonging. At first we might think we are being led into meditation that awakes us to the source of Being. But there are disturbing images "threatening, dark clouds...the flowerless tree...the old tower...the stones weep...burnt ashes..." This is much more than meditation. There is a confrontation that emerges from the stillness. The past is recycled and renewed, and a core of being burns endlessly, while a flickering lamp illumines the night, but just whose night is this? This emergence of the underlying Korean spirit denying the subjugation of foreign occupation is an eloquent image. Inside is the "endlessly burning heart," the passion and identity of the Korean psyche, while outwardly the lamp may illumine, but its light is flickering... perhaps ebbing ... perhaps yielding to the spiritual intensity within.

The poem celebrates the timeless Korean environment: the "paulonia leaf...the blue sky...the dark clouds...the west wind...the long rain...the stream...the stones...the evening glow...the lotus...the endless sea...the night..." the quiet and awesome wonder anticipated by the title, I Do Not Know.

Who owns this night? Whose footprint...whose face...whose breath...whose song...whose poem...whose night...? these images silently tear the soul...

Underneath the text, the poet seems to be asking Have we forgotten who we are? The underlying answer to each question is that these all belong to and emanate from the Korean Spirit.

No Accidents

There are many that argue that the universe is a chaotic chance generator, that the creation of life itself was simply an accident, and that accidents drive the sequence of events despite all the "best laid plans."

They may be confusing the element of surprise with accidents. Surprise can be part of the joy of living, when the unexpected erupts into the moment catching us unawares. The present may be the leading edge of existence, and yet, my sense of accidents is that they "happen" for a reason, and if that is true, they are not accidents at all.

People come into our lives seemingly by chance, simply sharing proximity, or mistaken identity, or colliding physically or mentally, and as time unfolds, we make meaning from such aleatoric encounters, often suddenly understanding that our lives have been immensely transformed in ways that are meaningful and decisive. Chance was the catalyst for change.

Was this predetermined? Pre-ordained? Events in motion, like filaments in an infinite tapestry shape the present in extraodinary ways. However, this is much different than cosmic events in which comets may collide with planets whether or not we are witness to the event. The difference of accidents within the domain of human experience is the conscious awareness of humanity experiencing and interpreting Time as emerging reality, a reality that is necessarily ambigious. The ambiguity provides a point of departure, so that our knowledge of the moment and truth is personal.

In one sense it is simultaneously "accident/no accident" and our experience and consciousness shapes this balanced yin and yang into some interpretation of the moment according to our predisposition. Since accident always includes its opposite, the debate of a universe governed by chance or structure is an inexhaustible discourse whose rhetoric may influence us in vacillating directions over time--never reaching a final resolution.