Fall

In the promising light
of a cloudless morning
rich in symbol
in early September
a city's hidden vertigo
dances out between
rippling waves of heat
shaken
by improbable fire
and much more basic
imponderables
until
mirrored towers shiver
sway
tremble
lurch against gravity
like drunks
on their morning way
home
groan
then fall
to the curbstones
raining shattered glass
steel
and life
down to the streets
boiling chalky choking dust
out from the centre.

Dazed night falls too
as people pick
frantically
uncertainly
through the
still smoking shifting
heap
of what once was
for survivors
where there are none
under emergency lights.

That first night
at the edge of their glare
one camera's
recording eye
gropes blindly
past a billboard
from a
jauntier time
lost only hours before
still standing
impossibly
on the rim
of ground zero:
"A hit from
way
off Broadway..."

Plutonic relations

Pity poor Pluto. For more than 75 years it held the enviable status of ninth planet from the sun. Then the International Astronomical Union comes along and demotes Pluto to dwarf planet (no offence, Dwarfie). And the space scientists compound the humiliation by assigning the once-proud sphere the nondescript identifier 134340.

It must be unsettling to go through life thinking you are one thing, then waking up to find you have been pigeonholed by others as something else entirely.

We may not be able to guide our personal fates, but we can sure try. So when the Muse picks herself up, dusts herself off and makes a new go of it, that is to be applauded. In crafting a life with R she has surrendered a measure of control over her destiny. But she has embarked on a journey in the hope of something better. And no one can take that away.

The meaning of life

With this title, I figure BlogAdmin will fire up that antique Monty Python Cam any sec...

But really. Humans' wanting meaning to exist, and being disposed to look for meaning, doesn't always mean that it's there. Maybe it just means they're being particularly over-ingenious at pattern recognition. I'll make a small nod here to Sartre as a quotable authority on life's meaninglessness. 'Small' because while I began Being and Nothingness, I didn't finish it. It was giving me nausea... but the guy did have an argument.

I've been reading the Muse's last few entries with a certain puzzlement. I'm not a very bright coyote, but it seems to me that some of this stuff about life's circles within circles, karmic payback, &cetera, may come from the vantage point -- that of having achieved the longed-for great love and marriage, after going through relationship hell. Oh, I'm big on karma and the circle(s) of life myself. Having figured somewhat in one or two local creation myths, a coyote of my ilk can barely do otherwise. But what about that PA guy, who has not found his own blessed state? And come to it, was she quite so certain of life's karmic gyres back she she was feeling desperate herself?

"I understand PA's desire to "settle" and find ground. For so long, I too was looking for that. I was desperate for it. Now, I can just focus on making this work, which is a much more rewarding process than trying to find someone to work with," she says.

Uh, exactly. I'm sceptical that her current high cycle may have been pre-ordained by the low that preceded it. Could just be dumb luck, appropos of no cosmic plan whatever. She's an undeniably bright one, but the gloppy and sticky goo of sentiment soaking through the reasoning here is musielage.

(Image: thecakelady.ca)

Labour Day Epiphany

Epiphany: 3 a (1) : a usually sudden manifestation or perception of the essential nature or meaning of something (2) : an intuitive grasp of reality through something (as an event) usually simple and striking (3) : an illuminating discovery, realization, or disclosure b : a revealing scene or moment

First, I want to apologize for not attending the Emergency ESI meeting. As 4D mentioned below in the meeting minutes, my excuse was shoddy. The truth is, I continue to have trouble coming off of vacation: my health has gone into decline, and my spirits have been low. However,there was a gradual upturn on the weekend, punctuated by an epiphany. The epiphany came out of three unrelated things -- Musie's recent blog postings, a singer/songwriter I saw on the weekend, and a conversation I had with a young mystery writer last week. The epiphany was this: One of the great struggles of life is knowing when to work and when not to work. Overworking can be as bad as underworking. But, underworking can be bad, too! Pretty deep, eh?

Musie is doing well right now because she is not working so hard. She is learning to relax and enjoy the details of her life. Like many of us, her natural inclination is to overwork. She worked far too hard on the "M" relationship. That was not good. Relationships may be 'work' sometimes, but they should not be that much work. The relationship with "R" seems easy right now. I like that the man got them a dishwasher. Again... less work!! I also like that "R" is sleeping a lot and is still managing to fix things around the house.

Second event. I saw a really intelligent, great singer/songwriter on the weekend. Unfortunately, I felt that he ruined two potentially great songs by overworking them. They were too much. He didn't give his listeners enough credit, and they came across a bit wanky. Another example of how things can be ruined by overwork.

Third thing. A conversation with a young mystery writer. Here was the conversation:
Young mystery writer: What do you think I should do?
Agatha: Why are you asking me?
YMW: Because I want your opinion.
Agatha: OK. I think you need to work your ass off and stop asking people what you should do.

My goal for the next few months--figure out where I need to work more and where I need to work less.

On diaries and diarists

As a reflective kinda coyote, I understand the journal keeping impulse. Kept one, on and off, myself, for dog's years...

Yet as one who is also somewhat retiring, I don't think I am able to fully appreciate why so many people blog their innermost thoughts on this internet thingy. I prefer to keep my innermost thoughts innermost, rather than inter-most. Posting some of the things our Muse has written in the past takes a certain kind of courage, and her candour has occasionally left me breathless.

'Course, some would say that with a dog's breath, that's an improvement... oh, nertz! As usual, I digress before I get to the heart of the thing. We semimythical, animistic, shamanistic dogs have attention-span issues...

What I started to say was that in my experiences with journals and diaries, many, if not all, seem to be written in a spirit of self-exploration. Stated bluntly, diarists flow most when issues abrade 'em, and ebb again when things smooth out. Human nature. The sincerer sort of diaries and journals are attempts to work out that most vexing of problems -- "What the f*** makes me tick? How do I fit into all of this?!". Certainly, her epic struggle with He Whose Initial Shall Nevermore be Blogged (HWISNBB? Oh, crap, it's more convenient to keep calling him 'M'...) was a case in point.

Agatha, always perceptive, and sometimes eerily prescient, has said more than once that the Muse cannot stay away from blogging, and the Muse's own recent behaviour now lends proof. I note that her three-month hiatus from her site approximately coincides with what relationship mavens say is the average 'honeymoon period' of 90-odd days -- that blessed period when everything is viewed from atop a pink cloud of bliss. After that, one begins to settle toward a more realistic perspective.

Now, notwithstanding the fact that our girl was marrying, moving house and wrapping up a thesis, and doing, uh, all sortsa other stuff during that time (and congratulations to her, by the way), I'm sure that there was a honeymoon happening. R sounds like a decent sort -- whatever scurrilous things the Dwarf and Chair may impute. (We do have an image as unconscionably rude pranksters to preserve, don't we?)

But I'm thinking that now that all of this is out of the way, she's reflecting again. She is of that nature. Now, she says that R. isn't fully comfortable with her blog, and has asked for some privacy. If there were any relationship issues, we'd likely not hear them, and I'm okay with that. The man stated his wish, and one respects that. But she can't not write somewhere, and I don't have a sense that she journals offline. Sooo, gratitude, happiness and Top Ten 'I Love You' lists aside, I'm wondering what our Muse is really thinking about these days. I await with interest the unfolding of her full reasons for surfing back into the domaigne publick...

(Image: Mills 1983, Creative Commons)