Hate Me

It wasn't my intention to cast a pall. In truth, I was searching for a particular poem about flowers. I kid you not.

In the process, I came across a poem I wrote a few years ago. Those of you who know me (if only just a little bit) know that I don't often post a poem that I, myself, have composed. It's just 'cuz I'm no poet...
and friends don't let friends read bad poetry.

Still.

I decided to post this particular poem. Not that it's good. 'Cuz it's not. Not that it's sophisticated. No. It's doggerel.

But it's honest and true. Sometimes, that's enough. Sometimes...
there's precious little else.

HATE ME

Hate me for my sins
Hate me for my flaws
Hate me for my doubts and failures
Hate me for my fears and weakness
Hate me for the man I was
Hate me for the man I am
Damn it, hate ME!

I am not a fabrication
Not your wayward father
Nor a resurrected ghost
Not a best-forgotten lover
Nor a nightmare
Or a scapegoat
I am not a machination
I am NOT your creation

Go ahead and

Hate me

Hate me with fire
Hate me with passion
Hate me with fists
And curses and venom
Hate me intensely
But, damn it!
Hate ME!

* * *

Musical Musings

I’ve experienced a musical renaissance of sorts. I truly have. Aided and abetted by the likes of Crazy Diamond and mysterious Mary, I’ve started listening to music again. Really listening. More than listening, actually...thinking a bit, too.

* * *

Studies indicate that a human fetus begins to hear/perceive external sounds in its fifth month of development.

Imagine that.

Sonograms, holograms, technomagicwhatever...we can now observe the embryo react to music and sound as the neural networks grow and develop and imbed themselves within that incredibly sensitive fetal brain.

And I wonder.

There was a time (’bout 200,000 years ago), when the developing proto-human dimly heard the sounds of Nature as it was developing a brain, growing in its own awareness. Now, granted, the sounds of Nature are not always soothing and benign (have you ever heard a rabbit scream?). Still. There was a time when the only sounds to be heard were songs, chirps, whispers, growls, thunder, rustles, rain and the hum of the cosmos.

And then I think of a fetus growing within a contemporary womb
(say in Baghdad or Kabul) where screams and gunshots, bombs and wails pierce the silence...and I wonder...

Does the modern newborn cry louder with the first breath, having already heard and felt the terror?

* * *

Studies show that music and language "light up" different regions of the brain, sharing a few neural connections to be sure, but altogether different, nonetheless.

I descended from the vaguely suspect Aeroflot jet that carried me from Moscow to Vilnius and traipsed dazedly into the bland, cinder-blocked, oh-so-tired airport lobby.

Two elderly women approached each other. They could have been sisters. Couldda been twins. The first had flown with me. Arrived and traipsed with me. The second stood there waiting.

They came within arm’s length of each other. Both stopped. Tears streaming down both pairs of cheeks, they began to sing. A peasant’s song of love. And as they sang, they began to sway from side to side, weight shifting from the right leg to the left and back again. And they sang. Softly. Beautifully.

I stood there. Dumbstruck.

My mother explained. “There are peasants from the highlands who traditionally sing their greetings.”

Music and language different, eh? Not that day. I’ve never heard love expressed as beautifully as I did that day.

* * *

Quantum physicists have their “string theory”. They believe that the essence of an atom is a “string”. A vibration, a sound, a note.

Imagine that.

I’ve stated often (and with absolute scientific certainty) that we are all stardust and infinity. I’d like to amend my definition:

In essence, we are all stardust, music and infinity.

Yes. We are.

Do we truly need more reason to love one another?


* * *

Connections

I’ve loved this poem from the very first read some three decades and countless connections ago:

The Silken Tent
By Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

* * *

I think about connections often. Not in any epistemological sorta way, no sirree...it’s always passion over pedantry for this pilgrim.
I think about the human connections that keep us tethered, grounded, rooted to the earth. Without them we’d surely be mere dander in the breeze. Our connections keep us sane and standing upright when we’ve lost our compass, our strength, our very will.

I think about connections and how they may begin with such amazing raw potential that one would swear the cables will come to be the stuff of braided steel. It’s a shock to find the ties were mere (or mebbe mutual) illusion/delusion...or expressions of hope beyond hope...
or...or...inexplicably keyed to bedrock of smoke.

The only connections that count are the true and time-tested bonds. The connections that we so desperately rely upon are those that have been tried and proven countless times, battered by both tempers and tempests, yet found ever resilient (though often frayed).

We need these tethers and the comforts they bring.

* * *

Gratuitous non-sequitor

Things that kinda rattle in my brain:

"I was gonna send you a thank you card, but I remembered I forgot to buy stamps"

* * *

In the Distance

The windows were openly welcoming the breeze. Somewhere in the distance, I thought I heard a piccolo play. I found the notion both beguiling and strange. You see, I rarely pay piccolos much due.

It was a sweet ditty. Repeated over and time again. I pictured a small child, sitting on the edge of a bed, sheet music arrayed on a stand before her. She practices making soft sounds...music. Again and again and over again. This fugue of mine was comforting. These innate qualities of the human soul...to create, to strive, to pursue beauty...constitute a bedrock of comfort and hope. To serve us (as needed).

So there I sat, lost in a sweet dream, when the ditty grew appreciably louder...then much louder still. I heard the motor of our friendly neighborhood ice cream vendor’s wagon mutter its way down my drive. Those soft and plaintive piccolo notes were synthesized, digitized and amplified tones cheaply replicating an organ-grinder’s repertoire.

Funny how things change, yet every moment remains so very real.

* * *

And now, for those of you who wish to spend nine minutes with eyes gently closed and ears wide open (and let’s toss in sweet breezes at your cheek while we’re at it), here is the “Scene aux champs” from Hector Belioz’s Symphonie Fantastique (one of my most beloved passages in classical music):

* * *