3 Days in the Fall

Yellow Days

On this golden day of autumn
life is explosive with colours
and smiles are mellow.
All along my 3km walk there was
a furtive kind of bustle, in the ducks
circling in the coves, the few bees
lingering to see who last the longest,
the fisherfolk casting lines of hope
in the harbour, even the winds
seemed to aim for the underside
of leaves, hastening
to send them to their fate.

Or, perhaps
it is just the colour of my nature
that I saw out of, the rushing,
flashing chrome yellow of my compulsion
to take everything in, and never
miss a thing. Is there

a difference between zest for life
and greed for life?

On the outside, chrome yellow
and mellow yellow
look the same.
___________

Charles

You told me you could sew
that your dad was a tailor
he taught you how to
tack, and baste, and never be
without a set of skills for
a rainy day, with mouths
to feed, family hanging
off your belt.

I thought we had a master tailor
amongst us then
and felt hopeful for all
the loose buttons and fallen hems
years in my closet.

But you only laughed

sailed on out the door like a comet
trailing twinkling dust
the child who only wanted
to be a child.
___________

Reading “Soft Hay Will Catch You: Poems by Young People”, compiled by Sandford Lyne, and poem after poem, I am blown away. It isn’t just the beauty, it’s not the innocence. As adults we expect those things of children. In fact it’s the opposite. It’s the maturity of an astoundingly wisdom that came through these voices, at once ancient, ageless, and as familiar to me as my own childhood, no matter the subject.

What I feel is pathos, for a time when it was still safe and possible to have feelings such as these of a child, before door after door closed behind me, and the only light was always up ahead. Reading these words from the hearts and souls of children has stopped me in my tracks, made me turn around and look down the long dark corridor from which I’ve come. It’s possible and perhaps safe too, to go back into those times abandoned, now that I’m no longer afraid of the dark.


Sunday, October 17, 2010

Just read a blurb on “Gifted”, a coming-of-age novel by Nikita Lalwani, about a young India girl of an immigrant family who is a gifted mathematician, and her family poured everything into her academic development, sacrificing also her emotional life. I thought, this is my story, in a less dramatic telling (I was one of a small group of ‘gifted’ students in highschool, and my family didn’t put everything into my ‘making’, but definitely that was the direction of the tidal wave pushing behind me). So perhaps this is just a theme of an immigrant story, one amongst many. But it was a pebble moment for me – as if a pebble had been thrown into the little pool that is my consciousness – and I am feeling the rippling resonance still…

What’s resonating is the regret. Regret that the girl must’ve felt when she grew up and realized what had been lost. Maybe she was quicker than I and recognized the symptoms before she grew up, I’ve not read the book, but whenever it was and however long it took, that moment would eventually have come, on the wake of that wave, so much bigger than the young girl, carrying the force of countless generations of desperate hopes and dying dreams… Could she, could I, have withstood the power of that collective will? Perhaps if I had had more of a spiritual foundation… anyway, it took me a few more years to derail from that family fate, ironically it was my failure at giftedness that saved me, but the rippling effect from the tempest that erupted lasted for decades and I was so lost from being tossed about, I feel a bit dizzy even remembering all of that now… perhaps it was no less dramatic than the novel after all, and I am truly a daughter of Neptune…
____________

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Finally slept, after reading a little fantansy novel (Juniper) and watching “Ponyo”, an animated children’s film by Miyazaki, I was able to sleep as normal. Perhaps my mind really was over-stimulated, from reading a couple of good books that got me pretty thrilled, “Making the Gods Work for You” and “Healing Mind, Healing Body”. It was one too many at a time… Even though I’ve asked to be empty, I’m still hooked on finding and filling up on new brain candy, however much it resonated with the deeper part of me. Instead of deepened into the learning once I’ve found it, I gobbled it up and kept gobbling, as is my life-long habit. The excitement only brings more hunger: If I can find this here, there must be more to be found – and off I go, the insatiable little Seven.

I am addicted to pleasure, which is at the bottom of all addictions. But unlike most addictions to alcohol or drugs or sex or love or gambling, my choice of pleasure (and poison) is, and has to be changeable. In fact, it is change itself. I am addicted to the pleasure of the new and novel and exciting, particularly of the mental kind but not exclusively so. I know now that it is a major theme in my life and one that I am to spend my life deepening into and transforming for a higher purpose. It’s just that it was confusing there for a while because it seemed paradoxical that I needed to change my need for change, and I also had to get over my narcissistic pleasure of thinking that I am somewhat superior because I already love change (while the unwashed masses are afraid and can’t change), and that I am un-addictable. It’s not easy to see your own shadown until you’ve stopped moving for a while… Our greatest light also creates our greatest shadow…

This is, of course, yet another turn on the healing spiral of my journey, the subject being one I’ve visited and revisited before, and will visit again, though each time with new insight and wisdom. (See? Not all things new are bad for me, just as long as I do not mindlessly stuff my mind with it!)