Gombrowicz and Masks

Well, gentle readers - if there are any of you out there - it appears that there is no reaction to Christmas. Perhaps it's been around so long that it has become something like a Wednesday, so prosaic that it gets no more reaction that a door, the ground, or your finger nail.

So we are on to another topic. Let's turn to Witold Gombrowicz, who has little to say about Christmas, but lots to say about many many other things. Gombrowicz is a Polish writer of novels, short stories, plays, and essays. He grew up in Poland, but spent most of the second part of his life, from 1939 onward (he was actually on a Polish cruise ship when Poland was invated by Germany) as a Polish ex-pat, who lived in Argentina, Germany, and Italy, where he died in 1969. His best known novels are Ferdydurke, Trans-Atlantyk, and Cosmos. Big Frank isn't going to attempt to any far reaching coverage of Gombrowicz - the web has lots of sites where you can get a better version than what Big Frank could provide. Big Frank, however, has been struck by one theme of Gombrowicz's that bears some examination: his concept of the immature and mature self and the masks of man.

The following passage is taken from his Diaries:

By virtue of the fact that I am always "for another", counting on someone else seeing me, being able to exist in a specific manner only for someone else, and by someone else, and existing - as a form - only through another. . . Why my man is created from the outside, that is he is inauthentic in essence - he is always not-himself, because he is determined by form, which is born between people. His "I" therefore is marked for him in that "interhumanity". An eternal actor, but a natural one, because his artificiality is inborn - it makes up a feature of his humanity - to be a man means to be an actor - to be a man means to pretend to be a man - to be a man means to "act like" a man, while not being one deep inside - to be a man is to recite humanity.

Gombrowicz called the man with the mask the mature man; and what was hidden - the truthful core of man - he called immature. All of culture and convention supported the mask and hid the truth, which led man to superimpose that mask on his inner self. The way out? He puts it this way:

Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act. Action will delineate and define you. You will find out from your actions. But you must act as an “I,” as an individual, because you can be certain only of your own needs, inclinations, passions, necessities. Only this kind of action is direct and is a genuine extricating of yourself from chaos, self-creation. As for the rest: isn’t it mere recitation, execution of a preordained plan, rubbish, kitsch?

In this way a certain hidden truth can emerge. He also believes that man can create his kind of "subculture" out of certain "immature myths" and "inadmissible passions". For him this is poetic and beautiful.

Man, tortured by his mask, fabricates secretly, for his own usage, a sort of “subculture”: a world made out of the refuse of a higher world of culture, a domain of trash, immature myths, inadmissible passions . . . a secondary domain of compensation. That is where a certain shameful poetry is born, a certain compromising beauty . . .

What's Your Reaction To Christmas?

Christmas: so many reactions, so many feels. How do You feel about it?

Please write in with your comments on your reaction to Christmas. We all know the official line, but there are so many more feelings wrapped up around this holiday. I would like to offer everyone out there an opportunity to express them. So please send in your reactions.

There is the Christian message of the hope of redemption: peace on earth and good will to men and all that. Then there is the crass materialism that has hitched a ride on this holiday, but which largely defines it today. Everyone's memories are punctuated by holidays - often exclamation points behind both the joyous and the sad. Our dreams have been invaded by Christmas; and for some it conjurs dread. Families create their own traditions, which then change as families grow, contract, and realign. Some think of food, others prayer, still others gifts, or family get-togethers, or debt, or perhaps loss. Write and share.

The Secret of the Holidays - What It Is!

The holidays are upon us. This time between Thanksgiving and New Years is in some ways one long holiday season. What is it? Holidays? Yeah, that's what it is. What it is indeed!

First of all there are all those childhood memories of the magic of those times. Even for those for whom the holidays of bygone days had some disappointments, the holidays still were believed in as promising to be a time of magic: gifts, happy family gatherings, Santa, surprises, hope, friendship, and the fullfilling of the dream. Hollywood does a good job of perpetuating this childhood dream with its movies and shmaltz. The cliches keep being repeated over and over again: "It's A Wonderful Life", "Miracle on 34th Street", "How the Grinch Stole Christmas", or "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "Home Alone", or any of the many many variations of Scrooge in a "A Christmas Carol". In all cases there is the ending - the sense the permeates the story and for which we all wait while watching - where the family comes together, love and goodwill ( a particularly holiday sentiment) triumphs. George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" questions the meaning of his life and discovers that he is a success because "No man is a failure who has friends." This is the very simple thread that runs through all these movies and is at the core of the holidays: friendship and belonging. Charlie Brown, in a Charlie Brown Christmas starts out wondering why he is so depressed at Christmas. He loses control of the Christmas play, is demoted to finding a Christmas tree. He resists the artificial and finds a pitiful but real tree, which is much ridiculed. But after hearing the Christmas story as told by Linus from the Gospel of St. Luke everyone gathers round and decorates the miserable Charlie Brown tree around which all gather in the end - including Charlie Brown - to sing and unite. In some way or other all these stories end in the same way. The lone figure realizes that he/she is not alone and in the company of friends discovers the meaning of Christmas/the holidays. So there it is: the holidays have this message that cuts two ways: we are saved by our sense of belonging. Yet we don't always feel that we belong and so the holidays come and remind us and prod us to make those connections and console ourselves. We feel disappointed because we can't constantly feel the joy of reconnection and the reassurance of belonging on a day-to-day basis. It is a feeling of returning, and sense of coming home - "I'll Be Home For Christmas" . . . "if only in my dreams". It is a dream and it is one that nobody can ever give up on. Whether or not it has anything whatsoever to do with the Christian story of Christmas it has everything to do with the hope of being delivered from our misery, whether through Christ's birth or through the secular promise of gifts and friends. In either case we want change - we want things to be much better. We want to be with others and to escape our singularity.

Big Frank hopes that all of you out there reach out to your friends and realize that it is one of the most beneficial things that one can do for oneself and for others. It is the way to happiness and that is the core of the holidays; that is why we have holidays: it is a way of reminding ourselves that only with others can we achieve that magic - not only the holiday magic, but the magic of life. We come into this life alone and we leave it alone; but that doesn't mean we have to spend the time in between those mile posts alone. Join hands - that's the holiday spirit.

Speak Memory - a review

Vladimir Nabokov's memory certainly does respond to his injunction that he gives it to speak. His memory is amazing. The book was originally published in 1947 when he was 48 and deals most extensively with the first 16 years of his life while he was still in Russia, along with a more cursory treatment of his time in exile in Great Britain, Germany, and France. He actually begins with an examination of his awakening consciousness! The real beginning of his sentient life he dates to an exact moment when on his fourth birthday he went for a walk, holding his parents' hands. Maybe this is what writers need in order to fill their store of material for writing. Nabokov's is brimming over with extraordinary detail.

His memory tells the story of his parents, their parents, along with a whole tree of aristocratic ancestors that anyone would be proud to be descended from. He has particular love for his parents and great admiration for his father. The rumble of the coming storm of communism is heard from the beginning of the book. Given the precipitous fall from all the comforts and excesses of the richly aristocratic life he was privilged to have, it is amazing that he recalls that fall with little more than a shrug. It is also amazing that given the long time that the storm clouds were seen that the family didn't have more foresight in preparing for the inevitable exile than to rely on a maid's gathering up of a few loose jewels.

Two impressions of this book: first of all the extraordinary vocabulary Nabokov trots out - a reader's vocabulary can be enhanced by reading this book. See how many of these words, gentle reader, you know the definitions of: hypnagogic, photism, synesthete, chromatism, lamellate, serfage, regardant, ophryon, decalcomania, tarlatan, tabanid, dipterist, anastomosis, nicitating, massacrous, breloque, amelus, syncopal, and inanition.

Secondly, and more interestingly, his extraordinary insights. First of all his capturing of the confidence and rightness of childhood: "A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee enters the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die." His insights into the positional nature of poetry: " . . . the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time. Lost in thought he taps his knee with his wandlike pencil, and at the same time a car (New York license plate) passes along the road, a child bangs the screendoor of a neighboring porch, an old man yawns in a misty Turkestan orchard, a granule of cinder-gray sand is rolled by the wind on Venus, a Doctor Jacques Hirsch in Grenoble puts on his reading glasses, and trillions of other such trifles occur--all forming an instananeous and transparent organism of events of which the poet (sitting in a lawn chair in Ithica, N.Y) is the nucleus." And finally and most touching his thoughts on the radiant nature of love: "Whenever I start thinking of my love for a person, I am in the habit of immediately drawing radii from my love--to monstrously remote points of the universe. Somethings impels me to measure the consciousness of my love against such unimaginable and incalculable things as the behavior of nebulae (whose very remoteness seems a form of insanity), the dreadful pitfalls of eternity, the unknowledgeable beyond the unknown, the helpessness, the cold, the sickening involutions and interpenetrations of space and time. It is a pernicious habit, but I can do nothing about it. . . . I have to have all space and all time participate in my emotion, in my mortal love, so that the edge of its mortality is taken off, thus helping me to fight the utter degradation, ridicule, and horror of having developed an infinity of sensation and thought within a finite existence."

This is a memoir of exquisite precision, of uncanny insights, of remembrance without nostalgia. Reading it puts you in the company of an extraordinary writer with a unique history and equally unique view of existence: " . . . a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."

Biking with Carolyn

Stay
(for c)
- Big Frank Dickinson

You arrive so late and leave so early:
It seems like you just got here, and
You're in your car and gone.
I wish you could have stayed.

Book Reviews On The Way

Big Frank has heard from many saying that this blog has not lived up to its content description. For example, there have been very few book reviews. Big Frank does aim to please, and will be writing book reviews.

(Written in the tones of those baritone-voiced narrators of the previews of coming attractions) “In a world of infinite distractions where time is in short supply there comes a book review for everyone.” These reviews will be modeled after the wonderful collection of book reviews published by Wislawa Szymborska, nonrequired reading, wherein she covers a book in a completely subjective manner using it to skip into whatever strikes her fancy. So the forthcoming entries, for the time being, will be book reviews of the Szymborskan kind.

A prelude: Vladamir Nabokov states that a very good approach to any memoir is to follow themes that present themselves in your life. Which are bona fide and which bogus? I take the position that those that catch your attention are real themes: you see what you should. These can be themes that carry themselves out over long periods of time. They can also be poignant interludes inserted between the longer running pieces. Thus, as Big Frank was sitting outside this morning and pondering this that and the other; he had an epiphany that adherence to truth would carry him through. At this moment a hummingbird flew overhead, immediately followed by the sight of a school bus, and then in the distance a hawk slowly spiraling down upon its prey. These three images (choices from among an infinite number of competing sights, sounds, and smells) were taken in for reasons of their resonating as an interlude that could develop into a theme, or perhaps because they were connected to an unrecognized theme. What is their meaning? That is tied up with the kind of introspection and recall that memoirs explore. Few take the time to write them out in the same detail as Nabokov, but all to some extent create a narrative of their experiences – in many ways that is the “I” that we identify with. The first book review will be of Vladimir Nabokov's superb memoir: Speak Memory.

What would you do?

What if our universe were somebody else’s hobby. An Oxford University Professor has speculated that there is a reasonably good chance - an almost mathematical certainly – that we in fact are living in someone else’s computer simulation. He bases this on the assumption that technological advances will, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, lead to the development of a superduper computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world. These future people could conceivably run a kind of what he calls “ancestor simulation” of their history and create worlds inhabited by virtual people with complete nervous systems – just like ours. These ancestors would have no way of knowing for sure if they were virtual or real. This is because the feelings and sights they would experience would be indistinguishable. Aside from speculating on the likelihood of this happening – there are lots of practical questions on how to behave in a computer simulation. You might, at first say that, well, nothing matters anymore – nothing’s real. However, your feelings would be very real indeed. You would still want to live as long as you could in this virtual world – and any sequels or continuations thereafter. Perhaps following certain moral principles would lead the designer to reward you – or, possibly it wouldn’t be morality that got rewarded, but people who led interesting lives, who took chances, who maximized their enjoyment of life (cyber, nonetheless), who interacted with the most other beings, etc. etc. Would this change your life? What would you do?

The Peace of Love

Feelings Intertwine
(For C)
"I like the way I feel when we're together."
---- Big Frank Dickinson

Wrap your heart around mine
And feel the warmth and peace
Of me around you and you around me.
This comfort will lead us to love.

The Sweetness of Beginnings

Open the Door
(for C)
---- Big Frank Dickinson

Let's open the door and enter
The world that waits for us.
Let's hold hands and step
Ahead with confidence and

Let's keep pace with
Each other as we match
Steps to the beat of
Our hearts; the sweet beat.

Upside down

The Upside of the Downside
By Big Frank Dickinson

The upside of the downside of life
Is a crest that looks both ways.
It shows the path of sorrow can
Take us away; and if we follow
That path and don’t turn back,
We move on out of the forest
Of previous hardship into the
Plain of opportunity with its open vista.

The downside of the upside of life
Is a crest that looks both ways.
It shows the path of joy can
Take us back; and if we follow
That path and don’t turn back,
We move into the forest
Of previous hardship away from the
Plain of opportunity with its open vista.

Edginess

Edginess
By Big Frank Dickinson

The edge is sharp;
it cuts the fine line
between the old
and the new.

It is for that reason
that it's an ambiguous place;
we are warned not to dwell
on the edge; it's dangerous.
At the same time; it does
acquire a certain panache –
"Oh – he's really edgy –
He's not bound by the plane
That we live on".
One foot with us –
And one foot on the other side.

How daring to have the oomph that
puts you over the edge where
the rest of us stop.

Edges of views invite speculation;
the horizon binds us on all side.
Beyond it? . . .
The the imagination holds sway.

To live on the edge is to
embrace danger.
One person on the edge is
daring, full of adventure.
A group on the edge
not of their doing - lamentable.

These edge species may go
Over the edge; they not only
Are threatened but also isolated.
There is no close relative to help out.

The Sumatran rhinoceros,
The Cuban solenoden,
Riverine rabbit,
Red panda, and indri:
Living on the edge.

A predicament that
None of them chose.
None of them wants.

Going over that edge (for them) is oblivion.
Not just for them- but their childrens' children's children –
To the Nth generation –
For the rest of us – risking our own private oblivion:
that is exciting; brinksmanship; fringe.
The edge for one can be cutting and incisive;
maybe that is why the hero is always singular;
while the victims are grouped.

So when you go to the edge;
Go alone. Your children will
Thank you.

Navigating Life

GPS for Life
by Big Frank Dickinson

Is there a global positioning system
for all topographies in life?
Where am I in relationship
to what I seek?
Am I on the right road to
contentment or is this a dead end?
How do I get to the state of satisfaction?
Do these destinations even exist?
Maps of places we’ve never been
(Whitehorse, Asunción, and Kyzyl)
not only show the destination, but
also how to get there.
Take the right road;
(Look it’s noted right there on the map!)
and you will arrive; it’s assured.
What about self-fulfillment, equanimity,
or a mutually satisfying relationship?
Is this the road to a rewarding friendship?
Does that alley really lead me to religious faith?
Will that u-turn recapture love?
Unfortunately the terrain is too fickle;
mountains of despair sprout without warning;
oceans of doubt flow in and out of the landscape;
and rivers of opportunity spring up quickly,
and just as quickly dry out and disappear.
No, it’s point to point navigation:
know where you are, and know where you want to be.
Those are your two fixed points.
That is all the map you’ll ever get.
What lies in between -
No roads or trails . . .
just you and your position.
But it's not any global one.
Maybe not even a system.

Tautologies of Summer
By Lorna Crozier

Every morning there are sparrows
and rhubarb leaves. Somewhere
a heron mimics shadows

while desire moves
just below the surface.
In spite of pain

desire repeats itself
again and again
like the snake who

looking for its lost skin
traces its shape in the sand
simply by moving forward.

This is a beautiful poem. Let’s take a look at Big Franks’s travesty or homage to this. It's the repetition that captures Big Frank's imagination. It's entitled:

Whirl
by Big Frank Dickinson

Every whirl brings continuance
and duration. Under
us the earth shines

like a strobe light;
in the fullness of time
a wink at eternity.

Squirrels climb to descend
to repeat again and again.
Hawks to the sky and down.
The lungs breathe in and out.

We turn on our beds;
our great expectations
followed by the unexpected,
with revisions of greatness.

Turn, turn turn;
always the same
even when not.

For every deviation,
for every ending,
for every abnormality

is followed eventually
by its own known beginning,
returning again.

In this way we gain
the only way to
measure our days.

Two By Two

Here's Big Frank's latest poem. It harkens back to the discussion on symmetry and the dichotomous view of the world that we all love so much.

Two by Two
By Big Frank Dickinson

Two kinds of universes: you and the rest;
Two kinds of fear: courted - suppressed;
Two kinds of thoughts: welcome and tossed;
Two kinds of hope: realized and lost;
Two kinds of seasons: onward and old;
Two kinds of miracles: humdrum - untold;
Two kinds of journeys: away and return;
Two kinds of memories: savored and burned;
Two kinds of substances: solid and foam;
Two kinds of love: delusion and home;
Two kinds of shouts: yippee and oy;
Two kinds of songs: sorrow and joy;
Two kinds of desire: hidden - disclosed;
Two kinds of past: constructed - imposed.
A flood of confusion predates their arrival.
The neatness of pairs ensures their survival.

Commencement Addresses

We are in the midst of graduation ceremonies. A traditional – necessary part of that is The Commencement Address. Typically a person of some success speaks to the graduates and imparts some wisdom. Many are platitudinously boring and patronizing. Some avoid this, and writers tend to be better than most. Big Frank, who, by the way, has yet to be asked to deliver such an address, shares a few of his favorites below. There are a couple of threads in common among them: learn to express yourself, develop compassion, and choosing to have control over how and what you think. The excerpts are a little on the long side – but they are very good – you won’t regret having read them. When possible I’ve included a website where you can read the entire address. As always, I invite you to send in your favorites.

William Gass "Learning to Talk"
Writer
Washington University, 1979
http://www.humanity.org/voices/commencements/speeches/index.php?page=gass_at_washington

“It can't be helped. We are made of layers of language like a Viennese torte. We are a Freudian dessert. My dinner companion, the lady who lent me her smile, has raised her goblet in a quiet toast. It is as though its rim had touched me, and I try to find words for the feeling, and for the wine which glows like molten rubies in her glass; because if I can do that, I can take away more than a memory which will fade faster than a winter footprint; I can take away an intense and interpreted description, a record as tough to erase as a relief, since without words what can be well and richly remembered? Yesterdays are gone like drying mist. Without our histories, without the conservation, which concepts nearly alone make possible, we could not preserve our lives as were the bodies of the pharaohs, the present would soon be as clear of the past as a bright day, and we would be innocent arboreals again. . . .

To think for yourself -- not narrowly, but rather as a mind -- you must be able to talk to yourself: well, openly, and at length. You must come in from the rain of requests and responses. You must take and employ your time as if it were your life. And that side of you which speaks must be prepared to say anything so long as it is so -- is seen so, felt so, thought so -- and that side of you which listens must be ready to hear horrors, for much of what is so is horrible -- horrible to see, horrible to feel, horrible to consider. But at length, and honestly -- that is not enough. To speak well to oneself . . . to speak well we must go down as far as the bucket can be lowered. Every thought must be thought through from its ultimate cost back to its cheap beginnings; every perception, however profound and distant, must be as clear and easy as the moon; every desire must be recognized as a relative and named as fearlessly as Satan named his angels; finally, every feeling must be felt to its bottom where the bucket rests in the silt and water rises like a tower around it. To talk to ourselves well requires, then, endless rehearsals -- rehearsals in which we revise, and the revision of the inner life strikes many people as hypocritical; but to think how to express some passion properly is the only way to be possessed by it, for unformed feelings lack impact, just as unfelt ideas lose weight. So walk around unrewritten, if you like. Live on broken phrases and syllable gristle, telegraphese and film reviews. No one will suspect . . . until you speak.”

________________________________________________________________________
Martha C. Nussbaum
“Compassion and Global Responsibility”
Commencement address at Georgetown University
Washington D.C.
May 16, 2003
Dr Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago.
http://www.humanity.org/voices/commencements/speeches/index.php?page=nussbaum_at_georgetown

“Compassion is an emotion rooted, probably, in our biological heritage. But this history does not mean that compassion is devoid of thought. In fact, as Aristotle argued long ago, human compassion standardly requires three thoughts: that a serious bad thing has happened to someone else; that this bad event was not (or not entirely) the person's own fault; and that we ourselves are vulnerable in similar ways. Thus compassion forms a psychological link between our own self-interest and the reality of another person's good or ill. For that reason it is a morally valuable emotion - when it gets things right.

To begin extending compassion as best we can, we need to ask how and why local loyalties and attachments come to take in some instances an especially virulent and aggressive form, militating against a more general sympathy. I would suggest that one problem we particularly need to watch out for is a type of pathological narcissism in which the person demands complete control over all the sources of good, and a complete self-sufficiency in consequence. This pathology occurs repeatedly in human life, but perhaps it occurs with particular regularity in America, where young people are brought up to think that they are part of a nation that is on top of the world, and that they should expect to be completely in control of everything important in their lives, in consequence. Recent studies of troubled teens in America, particularly the impressive work of Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, in their book Raising Cain, has given strong support to this idea. Kindlon and Thompson focus on boys, and they do believe that the problems they bring to light have a gendered aspect, but they are also signs of more general cultural problems. The boys that Kindlon and Thompson study have learned from their culture that real men should be controlling, self-sufficient, dominant. They should never have, and certainly never admit to, fear and weakness. The consequence of this deformed expectation, Kindlon and Thompson show, is that these boys come to lack an understanding of their own vulnerabilities, needs and fears, weaknesses that all human beings share. They lack the language in which to characterize their own inner world, and they are by the same token clumsy interpreters of the emotions and inner lives of others. This emotional illiteracy is closely connected to aggression, as fear is turned outward, with little real understanding of the meaning of aggressive words and acts for the feelings of others. It is more than a little unfortunate that the foreign policy of our nation is at times expressed, today, in terms that reinforce these pathologies: we won't let anyone threaten our preeminence, we'll strike first against them, etc.

So the first recommendation I would make for a culture of extended compassion is one that was also made by Rousseau. It is, that an education in common human weakness and vulnerability should be a very profound part of the education of all young people. Especially when they are at the crucial time when they are on the verge of adulthood, young people should learn to be tragic spectators, and to understand with increasing subtlety and responsiveness the predicaments to which human life is prone. Through stories and dramas, history, film, the study of philosophical and religious ethics, and the study of the global economic system, they should get the habit of decoding the suffering of another, and this decoding should deliberately lead them into lives both near and far.”

________________________________________________________________________
David Foster Wallace
Writer
2005 Kenyon Commencement Address
http://www.marginalia.org/dfw_kenyon_commencement.html

The point here is that I think this is one part of what teaching me how to think is really supposed to mean. To be just a little less arrogant. To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties. Because a huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. I have learned this the hard way, as I predict you graduates will, too.

Here is just one example of the total wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe; the realist, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive. But it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR TV or YOUR monitor. And so on. Other people's thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real.

Please don't worry that I'm getting ready to lecture you about compassion or other-directedness or all the so-called virtues. This is not a matter of virtue. It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self. People who can adjust their natural default setting this way are often described as being "well-adjusted", which I suggest to you is not an accidental term.

Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education -- least in my own case -- is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in abstract argument inside my head, instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotized by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

And I submit that this is what the real, no bullshit value of your liberal arts education is supposed to be about: how to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone day in and day out. That may sound like hyperbole, or abstract nonsense. Let's get concrete. The plain fact is that you graduating seniors do not yet have any clue what "day in day out" really means. There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine, and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know . . .

The thing is that, of course, there are totally different ways to think about these kinds of situations. In this traffic, all these vehicles stopped and idling in my way, it's not impossible that some of these people in SUV's have been in horrible auto accidents in the past, and now find driving so terrifying that their therapist has all but ordered them to get a huge, heavy SUV so they can feel safe enough to drive. Or that the Hummer that just cut me off is maybe being driven by a father whose little child is hurt or sick in the seat next to him, and he's trying to get this kid to the hospital, and he's in a bigger, more legitimate hurry than I am: it is actually I who am in HIS way.

Or I can choose to force myself to consider the likelihood that everyone else in the supermarket's checkout line is just as bored and frustrated as I am, and that some of these people probably have harder, more tedious and painful lives than I do.
Again, please don't think that I'm giving you moral advice, or that I'm saying you are supposed to think this way, or that anyone expects you to just automatically do it. Because it's hard. It takes will and effort, and if you are like me, some days you won't be able to do it, or you just flat out won't want to.

But most days, if you're aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed

_______________________________________________________________________
Joseph Brodsky
Writer – Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
Speech at the Stadium

Now, and in the time to be, I think it will pay for you to zero in on being precise with your language. Try to build and treat your vocabulary the way you are to treat your checking account. Pay every attention to it and try to increase your earnings. The purpose here is not to boost your bedroom eloquence or your professional success – although those, too, can be consequences – nor is it to turn you into parlor sophisticates. The purpose is to enable you to articulate yourselves as fully and precisely as possible; in a word, the purpose is your balance. For the accumulation of things not spelled out, not proplerly articulated, may result in neurosis. On a daily basis, a lot is happening to one’s psyche; the mode of one’s expression, however, often remains the same. Articulation lags behind experience. That doesn’t go well with the psyche. Sentiments, nuances, thoughts, perceptions that remain nameless, unable to be voiced and dissatisfied with approximations, get pent up within an individual and may lead to a psychological explosion or implosion. To avoid that, one needn’t turn into a bookworm. One should simply acquire a dictionary and read it on the same daily basis – and, on and off, books of poetry. Dictionaries, however, are of primary importance. There are a lot of them around; some of them even come with a magnifying glass. They are reasonably cheap, but even the most expensive among them (those equipped with a magnifying glass) cost far less than a single visit to a psychiatrist. If you are going to visit one nevertheless, go with the symptoms of a dictionary junkie. . . .

It is a jungle out there, as well as a desert, a slippery slope, a swamp, etc. – literally – but what’s worse, metaphorically, too. Yet, as Robert Frost has said, “The best way out is always through.” He also said, in a different poem though, that “to be social is to be forgiving.” It’s with a few remarks about this business of getting through that I would like to close.

Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those – in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed. Suffer them if you can’t escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible. Above all, try to avoid telling stories about the unjust treatment you received at their hands; avoid it not matter how receptive your audience may be. Tales of this sort extend the existence of your antagonists; most likely they are counting on you being talkative and relating your experience to others. . . .

What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react. Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yeloow and not red lights. Don’t linger on them mentally or verbally; don’t pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them – worse come to worse, do the forgetting first. This way you’ll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation.”

What Do These Songs Mean??

The song – it make no sense. Well maybe not in a typical story kind of way; but in others it makes all kinds of sense. These are those songs that you listen to and say – what a great song . . . what does it mean? You delight in the images, the catchy lines, the confusion, and the feeling – yes the feeling that in the end it makes all kinds of sense. The song is poetry and doesn’t need to tell a story – it rather paints a picture. You remember the picture and the music imprints it in your mind.

Big Frank presents his favorites. First of all the great – “She Came In Through The Bathroom Window”. There is the drama of the entrance – through the bathroom window; probably up to no good. She should have been told – but nobody said anything to her. She depends on him, but he is having trouble delivering. But, wait, he depends on her – and she can’t deliver. Oh woe!


SHE CAME IN THROUGH THE BATHROOM WINDOW
By John Lennon and Paul McCartney

Oh,look out!!...
She came in through the bathroom window
Protected by a silver spoon
But now she sucks her thumb and wonders
By the banks of her own lagoon

Didn't anybody tell her
Didn't anybody see
Sunday's on the phone to Monday
Tuesday's on the phone to me

She said she'd always been a dancer
She worked at fifteen clubs a day
And though she thought I knew the answer
Well I knew, but I could not say

And so I quit the police department
And got myself a steady job
And though she tried her best to help me
She could steal, but she could not rob

Then there is Neil Young’s “Broken Arrow”. Once again a very dramatic beginning; literally some kind of show – or was it. Perhaps it was just a dream. The mysterious “they” waiting at the melancholy stage door with the impressive but ominous “black limousine”. Abrupt switch to a different “them” now at the river with the empty quiver and the Indian, with the broken arrow (we are in a dream now, and as in a dream the scene now abruptly shifts to a kind of family nightmare). Then we are back in the river again but now someone is waving, and the Indian and the quiver are still there with that broken arrow. Then another dream sequence, this time a wedding. However with black caissons?! Not to worry it was for peace and then they were gone. Where to – back to the river, the Indian, the quiver, and that sad broken arrow. What a beautiful sad lament.

"Broken Arrow"
By Neil Young

The lights turned on
and the curtain fell down,
And when it was over
it felt like a dream,
They stood at the stage door
and begged for a scream,
The agents had paid
for the black limousine
That waited outside in the rain.
Did you see them,
did you see them?
Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that
the empty quivered,
Brown skinned Indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?

Eighteen years of American dream,
He saw that his brother
had sworn on the wall.
He hung up his eyelids
and ran down the hall,
His mother had told him
a trip was a fall,
And don't mention babies at all.
Did you see him, did you see him?
Did you see him in the river?
He were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that
the empty quivered,
Brown skinned Indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?

The streets were lined
for the wedding parade,
The Queen wore the white gloves,
the county of song,
The black covered caisson
her horses had drawn
Protected her King
from the sun rays of dawn.
They married for peace
and were gone.
Did you see them,
did you see them?
Did you see them in the river?
They were there to wave to you.
Could you tell that
the empty quivered,
Brown skinned Indian on the banks
That were crowded and narrow,
Held a broken arrow?

Finally, there is Paul Simon’s “Senorita With a Necklace”
Here the refrain is “That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the way I like” and then finally “that’s the way I want it to be”. So the thread of acceptance winds its way through. But what a wild road it takes: the wisdom tooth, tangled intricacies of reincarnation, the miracles of nature, the amazing contrarieties of humans, the beautiful sad regretful memories, and the perseverance of some – “That’s the way it’s always been, And that’s the way I like it, And that’s how I want it to be.” What a terrific affirming and accepting song about the wonder of this life on earth – wisdom teeth and frogs and all.

Senorita With A Necklace
By Paul Simon

I have a wisdom tooth
Inside my crowed face
I have a friend who is born again
Found his savior's grace
I was born before my father
And my children before me
We are born and born again
Like the waves in the sea
That's the way it's always been
And that's how I want it to be

Nothing but good news
There is a frog in South America
Whose venom is a cure
For all the suffering that mankind
Must endure
More powerful than morphine
And soothing as the rain
A frog in south america
Has the antidote to pain
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it

Some people never say no
Some people never complain
Some folks have no idea
And others will never explain
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be

If I could play all the memories
In the neck of my guitar
I'd write a song called
Senorita with a necklace of tears
And every tear a sin I'd committed
Oh these many years
That's who I was
That's the way it's always been

Some people always want more
Some people are what they
Some folks open a door
Walk away and never look back
I don't want to be a judge
And I don't want to be a jury
I know who I am
Lord knows who I will be
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be
That's the way it's always been
And that's the way I like it
And that's how I want it to be

OK, send in your favorites. What songs on the surface seem nonsensical. Big Frank expect lots of Bob Dylan, there are more Neil Young – what about Leonard Cohen? Send in your favorites and I’ll post them.

Love Poetry

Love Poetry

Big Frank has been reading James Fenton’s excellent anthology of love poetry, entitled "The New Faber Book of Love Poems". It is a hefty tome that arranges the poetry by authors, alphabetically. He included everything from Amercian folk songs (Frankie and Johnny) to blues licks, the usual list of great lyric poets (Burns, Blake, Shakespeare, Rossetti, etc.), and many many new discoveries. What he does especially well is to capture the full scope of love better than most anthologies. Typically you get the ying and yang of love: the wild passion accompanying its birth, and the woe after it has collapsed. Fenton includes the poems reflecting what lies between the 'I love you.”, and the ‘Oh, no; it’s all over now.’ It is this fullness that gives the anthology its richness.

In the introduction Fenton summarizes this quite well: “I love you. You love me. I used to love you. You don’t love me. I want to sleep with you. Here we are in bed together. I hate you. You betrayed me. I’ve betrayed you. I want to kill you. Oh no! I have killed you. Such are the simple propositions on which these lyrics elaborate.”

Perhaps it would do well to start at the end of the progression - an end that becomes a beginning. Here is W.D. Snodgrass on the lingering introspective reflection of lost love. A poem that captures the spurned lover in yet another of his backward glances – his revery of “what if”:

The Last Time

Three years ago one last time, you forgot
Yourself and let your hand, all gentleness
Move to my hair, then slip down to caress
My cheek, my neck. My breath failed me; I thought

It might all come back yet, believed you might
Turn back. You turned, then, once more to your own
Talk with that tall young man in whom you’d shown
In front of all our friends such clear delight

All afternoon. You, recalled then the long
Love you had held for me was changed. You threw
Both arms around him, kissed him, and then you
Said you were ready and we went along.

In Siegfried Sassoon’s poem The Dug-Out we have a different kind of fear expressed than the oft-expressed fear of loss. Here it is not the loss of the lover’s love; it is not the lover going off with someone else, or leaving for loss of feelings. Here it is the fear of the loss of one’s lover through the death of one’s lover. The knowledge that, with certainty it will happen makes it all the more disturbing as Sassoon expresses so well.

The Dug-Out

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen cold,
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep shadow’d from the candle’s guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head . . .
You are too young to fall asleep forever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.


Don Patterson’s “The Gift” expresses the horrible emerging from the well intentioned gesture – the gift. Here it is almost like Blake’s “The Rose” – love’s fragility and the parallel destroyers that accompany us in life – even when in love:

The Gift

That night she called his name, not mine
and could not call it back
I shamed myself and thought of that blind
girl in Kodiak

who sat on the stoop each night
to watch the daylight fade
and lift her child down to the gate cut
in the palisade

and what old caution love resigned
when through that misty stare
she passed the boy to not her bearskinned
husband but the bear.


Alice Oswald has a sonnet that takes a brighter look at love: love expanding into everything. Here it’s like an inhalation and exhalation; love’s private present luck-blessed alarm that echoes back off everything and is reflective of everything.

Wedding

From time to time our love is like a sail
And when the sail begins to alternate
From tack to tack, it’s like a swallowtail
And when the swallow flies it’s like a coat;
And if the coat is yours, it has a tear
Like a wide mouth and when the mouth begins
To draw the wind, it’s like a trumpeter
And when the trumpet blows, it blows like millions . . .
And this, my love, when millions come and go
Beyond the need of us, is like a trick;
And when the trick begins, it’s like a toe
Tip-toeing on a rope, which is like luck;
And when the luck begins, it’s like a wedding,
Which is like love, which is like everything.

John Fuller captures the ambiguity of love in “Two Voices”. Here is the dichotomous full view of love – a Blakean voice reminiscent of “The Clod and the Pebble” or “Thel’s Motto".

Two Voices

Love is a large hope in what,
Unfound, imaginary, leaves us
With a beautifying presence.
Love always grieves us.’
So sang youth to the consenting air
While age in deathly silence, thus:

‘Love is a regret for what,
Lost or never was, assails us
With a beautifying presence.
Love never fails us.’

James Fenton’s “The Alibi” humorously and poignantly captures the alienation of love and the ridiculousness of haughty smugness:

The Alibi

My mind was racing
It was some years from now.
We were together again in our old flat.
You were admiring yourself adjusting your hat.
‘Oh of course I was mad then,’ you said with a
Forgiving smile,
‘Something snapped in me and I was mad for a
While.’

But this madness of yours disgusted me,
This alibi,
This gorgeous madness like a tinkling sleigh,
It carried you away
Snug in your fur, snug in your muff and cape.
You made your escape
Through the night, over the dry powdery snow.
I watched you go.

Turly the mad deserve our sympathy.
And you were driven mad you said by me
And then you drove away
The cushions and the furs piled high,
Snug with your madness alibi,
Injured and forgiven on your loaded sleigh.

And then we have Robert Burns, he of the “And I will luve thee still, my dear,/ Till a’ the seas gang dry.” Well, maybe not quite that long. For in addition to “A Red, Red Rose” Burns also wrote “Wantonness”.

Wantonness

Wantonness for every mair,
Wantonnes has been my ruin;
Wety for a’ my dool and care,
It’s wantonness for ever!

I hae lov’d the Black, the Brown,
I hae lov’d the Fair, the Gowden:
A’ the colours in the town
I hae won their wanton favour.

W.H. Auden often writes of the grief of love: :”I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.” In “The More Loving One” he confirms his choice to be “the more loving one” even if it be in the indifferent gaze of the loved one.

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark subline,
Though this might take me a little time.

Well then, not all are as willing to be “the more loving one”. Take Elizabeth Thomas, for example in the aptly titled “The Execration”. This well addresses the “I hate you” – phase of love – not often included in such anthologies.

The Execration

Enslaved by passions, swelled with pride,
In love with one whom all deride;
A carcase well, yet mind in pain,
Reduced to beg, but beg in vain;
To live reserved and free from blame,
And yet incur an evil fame:
Let this! This be the wretched fate
Of Rosalinda, whom I hate.

However, we can't leave the great anthology on such a note. Let's part with an unexpected treat, ironically from the first poet included in this book, Fleur Adcock. This poem speaks well of our time perhaps more than of times past: the emphasis and value of friendship in love.

Happy Ending

After they had not made love
she pulled the sheet up over her eyes
until he was buttoning his shirt:
not shyness for their bodies - those
they had willingly displayed - but a frail
endeavour to apologise.

Later, though, drawn together by
a distaste for such 'untidy ends'
they agreed to meet again; whereupon
as though what they had made was love -
and not that happier outcome, friends.

Bifurcation

One looks at the world and is immediately struck by the image of bifurcation, symmetry, and duality. You see things are set up pretty much with one side balanced by the other. Look at yourself – at your body: you have a right arm and a left arm; you have ears on either side of your head; a left eye and a right eye. Similarly with trees, the moon, birds, crystals, seashells, crosses, the Star of David, pottery, quilts, musical scales, tit for tat, the Golden Rule, etc. etc. In all these cases we broadly see that one side is equal to the other; however, a closer view reveals that, in fact, the two are not equal. In all cases at the macro-level the symmetry is only approximate. Side A is different from side B. Look at your right arm and you will see that it differs in many respects from your left arm. Similarly your right eye from you left; one side of the moon from the other, the top of the quilt from the bottom, etc. etc. Without getting into great detail, which would take us beyond Big Frank’s capabilities, symmetry is exact at the micro level, where quantum mechanics kicks in; it is approximate at the macro level.

What does this mean? It means that at the micro level where there is exact symmetry that those objects, those particles are exact duplicates of each other – and as such are better viewed as waves rather than as particles. Think of the waves of the ocean, or of sound waves and how they duplicate each other. They can do this because, in a sense, they are the same – just in different places. At the macro level there cannot be exact symmetry because the two sides are two not one – as a wave is.

OK, so what does this mean for the proverbial man in the street. Well, that’s what this entry is all about. Note that it is called bifurcation; it is not called symmetry. And. . . the reason for that is that what we think of as symmetry is better expressed as a kind of duality, and forked separation. And here is where Big Frank strikes out on his own. He thinks that because of this pervasive bifurcation: symmetry just ever so slightly off that people have taken this imbued duality of existence and they have expressed in the way that they see the world. There are two kinds of everything that hing on a single category, but they swing apart at that hinge into not close approximations of each other, but radically different approaches to the category in question. What we are talking about here is the ever present: “There are two kinds of people in the world – those who ________ and those who ________.”

A cursory examination of any dictionary of quotations reveals a rich mine of such quotations:

There are two kinds of people in the world. Those who walk into a room and say, "There you are" and those who say, "Here I am"”
Abigail Van Buren

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating—people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.
Oscar Wilde

There are two kinds of music. Good music, and the other kind.
Charles Mingus

There are two kinds of people in the world, those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
Clint Eastwood aka Blondie in “The Good the Bad and the Ugly”

At every party there are two kinds of people—those who want to go home and those who don’t. The trouble is, they are usually married to each other.
Ann Landers

Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth’s surface relatively to other such matters; second, telling other people to do so.
Bertrand Russell

In all the above we note that at a certain simplistic level we can agree with all of the above. At another level, however, we note that this simplification is ridiculous and so we chuckle. This leads into the whole rich field of jokes that start: “There are two kinds of .. .

There are two kinds of lawyers. Those who know the law, and those who know the judge.

There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.

There are two kinds of people: those who blog and those who don’t.

There are two kinds of people: those who are from North Dakota and those who wish they were.

OK, so these are not so funny. You can probably make up better ones yourself. Give it a whirl and send in as comments. Big Frank will then compile and post in one long list. There are two kinds of ________: _________ and _________. That’s the formula and the inclination is built in – so go with the flow. There are two kinds of people in the world: those who will respond and write in and . . . . those who won’t. Be of the first group.

A Travesty of Poetry

Here is an experiment. Take a poem and then hold as close to the original in terms of the lines, number of syllables, number of stanzas, but change the words and the meanings to create a wholly new poem. In this way you are creating a travesty of the original. By definition a travesty is a grotesque or absurd imitation. However, it's fun and the results can be surprising. Here is an example. The first is a wonderful poem by Philip Larkin entitled Talking in Bed. This is a poem about the irony of closeness, how the closer one get to another (talking in bed) the harder it is to maintain if not truth and kindness - at least not untruth and unkindness. Here's the Larkin:

Talking In Bed
By Philip Larkin

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.

Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,

And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing show why
At this unique distance from isolation

It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.

The travesty now. Here the general outline in terms of lines, stanzas, and general grammatical phrase structure has been adhered to. The content is different. Big Frank is writing about the pain of maintaining truth with the world. The connection is internally constructed, but externally validated, and has no absolute. On the other hand - external reality is what it is.

Keeping Your Head
By Big Frank Dickinson

Keeping your head is fraught with pain,
Holding together there reaches only so far,
A measure of one person being true.

Still more and more people choose convenience.
The architecture belies a calculated balance
That says absolutely nothing about you,

The skyscape captures the beauty of posture.
Each has an enduring true connection to all others.
Every variation and change is as true as the next,

Inside it becomes much more difficult to find
Connections both agreeably true
And truly agreeable.

Appropriateness

Big Frank has been thinking (yeah, I know - look out!). We bundles of isolated awareness trudge through life with asperations of connections. The appropriate thing is to be connected, but there are so many choices to make. Among the situations we encounter there come times when it is expected that a connection should be made. So we have in the great U. S. of A. certain agreed upon responses, and we even have a business to lay it all out. Hence the next poem - Big Frank's first in quite some time:

The Appropriate Thing

Sympathetic shoppers
Carrying tunes in the heart,
Seek harmonious cards
That hit just the right mark.

Occasions in categories,
Planted orderly in aisles;
Each an attempt
To hit the right style.

Birthdays are joyful;
Setbacks a pain.
New babies delightful;
And sickness will wane.

“I know what you’re feeling;
This card is our link.”
There may be more to it
But such we won’t think.

To go there will take us
Outside of this store,
To fields full of weeds;
Uncultivated spore.

Leadership on the Lam

Big Frank has been on the move lately and when one is moving matter, well then, matter takes precedence. As a result boxes were arranged and rearranged but words were not. While some may think that Big Frank is on the lam - not true; he's just moved. However speaking of "on the lam". What a great expression. It's also quite old with a kind of gangster connotation going back over one hundred years. Its origin goes back to the 16th century and stems from the Old English meaning of lam - "to beat". So as with 'beat it' so lam also has the allusion to leave, beating a path away.

One wouldn't think that someone "on the lam" would be capable of leadership. What are the implications of a leader who is not physically within the same context as those being led. In this present age where "global" becomes the recognized context that we all acknowledge, we all potentially could be leaders of any group. That is, the present technological aids to communication enable just about anyone anywhere to influence anyone else anywhere else. This is the productive capablity. Perhaps even more important is the receptive authority - the desire by the audience to be led by the person in exile. There are people who at times look only to the absent for leadership - looking to the person in exile - the leader on the lam.

There are situations where the audience - the followers - imbue a leader with even more potential power than that leader in fact claims. For example the Dalai Lama could have autocratic control over Tibetans if he wanted. Similarly Pope John Paul II during the 1980s in Poland could have been crowned king had he so desired. In these cases it is only the restraint of the leader that curtails their control of the self-captive group.

On the other hand there are examples where the leader in exile is in essence granted less real power by the target followers than the leader claims. Good examples of these are, for examaple the widow of the Shah of Iran between 1979 and 1980, Regent-in-exile Dowager Empress Shabanou Farah Pahlavi of Iran. Similarly Jaroslawa Stecko while living in Germany took over from her husband as President of the Ukrainian State between 1986 and 1991. Neither of these had much of any authority or audience among the group they claimed to lead.

Three of the above 4, all but the Pope, could be described as "Leaders on the Lam". These are leaders who are kicked out, replaced or banned from the group that they claim to lead. Yet they don't accpet that change. It's as though the president of a company would claim after having been fired to not accept the change in position. So, for example, the CEO of Exon could be fired, yet still calim to lead that company. This, as far as Big Frank knows, has never happened. Why is that? What is there about political and religious leadership that makes them less willing to reliquish control than in business or education. I think the answer is moral authority. When morality raises its head, it then can trump all others.

So what does this mean for the man in the street? How about the kid in the alley, or the grandma in the restaurant? This is something that Big Frank notes that few have been talking about lately. Perhaps its time to start the ball rolling. Leadership on the Lam - is it a good thing? Perhaps its time to examine this. With all the leadership training programs, leadership degrees, and leadership books, Big Frank throws Leadership on the Lam into the mix. There is a spiritual analogy both internally and externally that can be drawn on for precedence and for efficacy. The One who calls the shots - he/she who got this all started - that One initiated and then withdrew and all have been looking to that One for guidance ever since the withdrawal - typically dated as post Big Bang, but given that nobody really knows if that One was around prior to the Big Bang - or for that matter whether there even was a pre-Big Bang then we shall have to confine our speculation to the post-Big Bang era. So within the external spiritual world the Leader is viewed by many as being "On the Lam". And yet, the whole universal unit is working - and many would say that the kit and kaboodle is getting better and better - so the leader seems to be doing an OK job - I mean - this is some big organization to run and it is running - 13 billion years and counting. OK, what about the internal spiritual ones - divine spark within and all that. Here again it's "Leadership on the Lam" in that the vast majority of us are not enlightened and really not in control of what happens in our lives. Our minds think they are, and can spin very rational sounding explanations for why we do what we do and why others do what they do etc. etc., but this has little relationship to the true nature of events. However, our true "Self" knows all and like a guardian angel looks after the remainder of us - all those other bits besides the "Self". After all just like a driver needs a car so to the "Self" needs a body, mind, etc. to get around in. And even though many of us feel like we are going to hell in a handbasket we are moving ahead and will in time learn what to do and what not to do. We will learn this not through the acknowledgements of the car we ride around in; no, we will learn this from our leader on the lam - our Self. The truly best leaders are those "ON THE LAM".

And that then turn this all upside down. Look at the Leader on the Lam - he won't abandon the flock - even if its in another country, continent, or (spiritually speaking) universe/dimension or whatever. It is the leader who needs the audience, the governed, the followers - even if they rarely follow; still the leader will labor to effect the group he feels are in need of his leadership. There is a symbiotic relationship here. These leaders on the lam have to pick there messages carefully. The best of them only communicate when the context merits it and the message is most appropriately capable of being received. It is much like the limited moments of 'soulfulness' that punctuate one's life. Wislawa Szymborska expresses this exquisitely in the following poem:

A Few Words on the Soul—
By Wislawa Szymborska

We have a soul at times.
No one's got it non-stop,
for keeps.

Day after day,
year after year
may pass without it.

Sometimes
it will settle for awhile
only in childhood's fears and raptures.
Sometimes only in astonishment
that we are old.

It rarely lends a hand
in uphill tasks,
like moving furniture,
or lifting luggage,
or going miles in shoes that pinch.

It usually steps out
whenever meat needs chopping
or forms have to be filled.

For every thousand conversations
it participates in one,
if even that,
since it prefers silence.

Just when our body goes from ache to pain,
it slips off-duty.

It's picky:
it doesn't like seeing us in crowds,
our hustling for a dubious advantage
and creaky machinations make it sick.

Joy and sorrow
aren't two different feelings for it.
It attends us
only when the two are joined.

We can count on it
when we're sure of nothing
and curious about everything.

Among the material objects
it favors clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which keep on working
even when no one is looking.

It won't say where it comes from
or when it's taking off again,
though it's clearly expecting such questions.

We need it
but apparently
it needs us
for some reason too.

Lost Poetry Found

Big Frank Dickinson in his recent trip to the town of his youth discovered some poetry that had been forgotten in the attic. These were Big Frank scribbles from his grad school days - yes, there are advanced degrees in both Mayoral Comportment and Jewel Thievery. Be that as it may, below are four artifacts.

THE PIG
While in a field collecting colors,
I saw a pig fall in a stream.
I ran for rope,
And he found grey-gold-green.


CREATIVITY
This bowl cannot be filled,
Lines fall off the page.
Like rabbits reared in cages,
Store-bought lettuce fed,
They don't so much produce as
Repeat.


WE
Though we will be
What we are not.
Still,
We will be
What we are.


PLAY
While playing as a child,
I never understood the smile
On my grandmother's face.
She was only watching.

I didn't know then
That a raindrop striking a window
Expands not to itself,
But to the beholder.

INSIDE DRAGONS' TEETH
Inside dragons' teeth they find
Intense desire,
Compacted climb.

Inside dragons' teeth they find
A weightless feeling,
Without time.

Inside dragons' teeth they find
Controlled seance,
Sheets unwound.

Inside the dragon's tooth
My mind

The Unity of Opposites - or - Symmetry Rules, But it Hurts so Good

"Tweedledum and Tweedledee
Agreed to have a battle;
For Tweedledum said Tweedledee
Had spoiled his nice new rattle.
Just then flew down a monstrous crow,
As black as a tar-barrel;
Which frightened both the heroes so,
They quite forgot their quarrel."

I think we all remember these contrary twins who battle each other out of their similarities. Alan Watts in “The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are” writes that:
“. . . for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict,a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white. . . . As when Tweedledum and Tweedledee agreed to have a battle, the essential trick of The Game of Black and White is a most tacit conspiracy for the partners to conceal their unity, and to look as different as possible. It is like a stage fight so well acted that the audience is willing to believe that it is a real fight. Hidden beneath their explicit differences is the implicit unity of what Vedanta calls the Self, the oneness-without-a-second, the what there is and the all that there is which conceals itself in the form of you.”

This sure sounds a lot to Big Frank like WHAT IT IS.

The Chinese Zen Poet Shitou Xiqian captures this in his poem:
The Harmony of Difference and Sameness

In the light there is darkness,
but don't take it as darkness;
In the dark there is light,
but don't see it as light.
Light and dark oppose one another
like the front and back foot in walking.
Each of the myriad things has its merit,
expressed according to function and place.
Phenomena exist; box and lid fit;
principle responds; arrow points meet.
Hearing the words, understand the meaning;
don't set up standards of your own.
If you don't understand the Way right before you,
how will you know the path as you walk?
Progress is not a matter of far or near,
but if you are confused, mountains and rivers block your way.
I respectfully urge you who study the mystery,
do not pass your days and nights in vain.

Friedrich Nietzsche:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
— Beyond Good and Evil

Robert Frost viewed poetry itself as an expression of the unity of opposites, as perhaps best exemplified in the following poem.

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

And now we have come full circle for Big Frank points out that it is worthwhile remembering that after a somewhat longish conversation with the contrary Tweedledee and Tweedledum Alice had the following thought: "I wish the monstrous crow would come!"

To Organize or Not To Organize?

January is, Big Frank kids you not, 'Get Organized Month', so designated by none other than The National Association of Professional Organizers. Right, this is the month to get yourself organiz-ized. There are tons of books, websites, speakers, seminars, tips, and rejoinders to help you get the task done. You have to let go of all that clutter - just let it go. Go to www.messies.com, or www.organizedtimes.com, or www.shoptogetorganized.com, or www.get-organized.com, - this last site actually has a get-organized poem. It is an amazing piece of literature. Here it is:

How To Do SomethingA poem from the Zine "Oop" (Joey Harrison, Editor, JoeyHarrison@usa.net) to subscribe).

HOW TO DO SOMETHING
First, begin.
That's the first thing.
You begin and then you proceed.
Proceed is next.
Proceed for quite a while.
This is the main part:
The proceeding.
The proceeding is actually the meat of doing something.
If something gets done,
Credit the proceeding.
After awhile the proceeding gives way to the wind-up --
The finishing.
This transition is delicate.
Too soon is bad,
Too late expends needless energy.
At the very instant something is at last done,
Fade the proceeding and move directly to finishing.
Finish instantly.

There is a certain minimalist beauty here - at first glance anyway. It reads something along the lines of a Dick and Jane reader. Here's Big Frank's Dick and Jane version:

Oh See Dick Do Something

First Dick begins.
That's what Dick does first.
Dick begins and then Dick proceeds.
See Dick proceed.
Dick is still Proceeding.
Still Dick proceeds.
Dick is proceeding and proceeding.
Now Dick is not proceeding.
Dick is winding up.
Dick is asking Jane.
He wants to know if it is too soon to finish.
Jane knows too soon is bad.
Bad, bad bad to finish too soon.
Jane says too late is bad too.
Too late is bad.
Too soon is bad too.
Dick is worried.
Jane says "finish".
Dick must finish now.
Dick finishes now.

However, as we know from Niels Bohr all profound ideas have equally profound opposite ideas. And so it is with getting organized. Look at the classic organiz-ized person in Taxi Driver - Travis Bickle. His mantra was to get organiz-ized. And look where it took him - into madness and mahem. And so the recent book in praise of messiness - A Perfect Mess. It turns out that, according to the authors - David Freedman and Eric Abrahamson - there are certain benefits from letting randomness into your lives. First of all you have access to all that stuff that otherwise would be unretrievably filed/boxed/stored away - god-knows-where. Instead it's all out there in front of you, and everytime that you look for anything you get to review everything, which, of course, then reminds you of all the tasks that you should be doing and then spurs you on to do them, but in a random sort of creative manner. That's benefit number one. Yet another benefit accrues from not having to waste all that time figuring out where to put everything and then actually putting it there. What a wonderful idea. So can we make February 'Get Unorganiz-ized Month' - or in other words "Just Let It Be"?

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Big Frank Dickinson like all of you enters the new year with the resolve to be a better person and to do his best to bring improvements to the world and his relationships within it. This is, of course, following in the traditions of the ages. Some common themes for the New Year’s Resolutions include improving vitality, fitness or appearance. Those more altruistic may resolve to give more to those less fortunate, or to become more socially conscious. We all feel the need to pick up the burden of improvement in search of progress. The accent often is on doing.

There are things that your govenment would like you to do. The United States government suggests the following for the new year:

Lose Weight
Pay Off Debt
Save Money
Get a Better Job
Get Fit
Eat Right
Get a Better Education
Drink Less Alcohol
Quit Smoking
Now
Reduce Stress Overall
Reduce Stress at Work
Take a Trip
Volunteer to Help Others

Washington notwithstanding the most popular resolutions are in order of popularity:

1. Lose Weight and Get in Better Physical Shape
2. Stick to a Budget.
3. Debt Reduction
4. Enjoy More Quality Time with Family & Friends
5. Find My Soul Mate
6. Quit Smoking
7. Find a Better Job
8. Learn Something New
9. Volunteer and Help Others
10. Get Organized

So most of us will make some permutation of the above lists. It is an affirmation of your individuality – of our control of our own lives; belief that neither the stars, nor victimization, nor behavioral ruts, nor genetic predetermination, nor anything can trump our own free will and determination. There is joy in setting out secure in the strength and contentment of oneself. Walt Whitman is the supreme New Year’s poet. However, Walt has welcome news for all of us. Take the hand of your camerado - love each other - don't wish for the stars - no more complaints - no more needs - set out - the road is open. Let’s follow him:

Song of the Open Road
by Walt Whitman

1
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.

Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.

The earth, that is sufficient,
I do not want the constellations any nearer,
I know they are very well where they are,
I know they suffice for those who belong to them.

(Still here I carry my old delicious burdens,
I carry them, men and women, I carry them with me wherever I go,
I swear it is impossible for me to get rid of them,
I am fill’d with them, and I will fill them in return.)


15
Allons! the road is before us!
It is safe—I have tried it—my own feet have tried it well—be not detain’d!

Let the paper remain on the desk unwritten, and the book on the shelf unopen’d!
Let the tools remain in the workshop! let the money remain unearn’d!
Let the school stand! mind not the cry of the teacher!
Let the preacher preach in his pulpit! let the lawyer plead in the court, and the judge expound the law.

Camerado, I give you my hand!
I give you my love more precious than money,
I give you myself before preaching or law;
Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?
Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?