The Wakeful Dreamer

[Medusa]

Just wanted to share this little poem I wrote last week - still needs a lot of work I think, but practice makes perfect .... so they say

The Wakeful Dreamer

Day is over, all becomes still
Midnight moment poised for refill.
'Neath the cover of darkness, like waves
uneasy dreamers wrythe and flail
t?ward mara captivating jail.

What dream fathers this racing heart
or storm which pulls the tide apart?
Hurried nightmares of hunt without spoils;
Phantoms of loss and of no body
Where none is still or plain to see

Through wakefulness comes peacefulness -
with wisdom that dreams are nought to possess.

[Scott Hutton]

Rewrite entirely:  get rid of the clunky rhymes and develop the insights.  Too many "perfect" rhymes in English are shilled as poetry - what they really are is garbage.

Hold on to the insight; rewrite from scratch.

Poetry occurs during the re-writes, NEVER during the initial jottings down, and one must be ruthless:  cut it all down to the essential - it doesn't matter what you have to throw away.

You touched on the real but you covered it up with notions of what poetry should be.

Fling back the covers! Let us see what you saw!

Scott

[Medusa]

Hey Scott - I'm no poet,
Words are not my talent.
My skill lies with fabric.
Manipulation of the weave
Organic sculptures.
Rough, smooth, silky gauze;
Dull shining.
Problems only occur at the edge.

Think it's probably best to leave the poems to the poets.    *blush* I'll stick to what I'm good at.  Thanks for the criticism though - always useful to have a firm swift kick back into reality

I can't tell you what I saw - I saw nothing.

[Scott Hutton]

Nonsense.

I demand a re-write.

Why must you tempt me to violence?

Gal, you got somethin' to say...now say it.

And stop with the "I can't" stuff.  That's for wusses.

s

[Medusa]

Ok, i'll give it another go. Watch this space.

In the meantime - this is what I have to say via the medium of art:  www.clarefergusson.com

[Crazywisdom]

There are a lot of colours i accociate with tibetant culture in your gallery.....
Who knows?

cw

[Medusa]

Fling back the covers! Let us see what you saw!

What I Saw
----------------------

What I saw is dead.

With eyes alive
I saw
the eternal life of death.

Now those eyes then
are yet dead -
for those were never the eyes through which I saw.

And those are never the eyes through which I see.

[Medusa]

Scott - I think I need some more direction   

[Medusa]

There are a lot of colours i accociate with tibetant culture in your gallery.....
Who knows?

cw

Who knows what?  All art is inspired from the same ultimate subjective perception don't you think?

I've given up on all that now ... it became too much of a chore when I was trying to make a career of it but I might still take it up again soon - it's a very meditative activity actually

[Scott Hutton]

Med, ol' bud =

Here's your direction:

Call an ambulance.  Get in, have them take you to the nearest fine book store.  Find "Proust was a Neuroscientist" by Jonah Lehrer.

It's a thin book of essays published only recently.  Proust isn't the only one.  He also discusses Walt Whitman, George Eliot, Escoffier, Cezanne, Stravinksy and others...what makes the book a blast is not only does he know his artists, he knows how to articulate what the artists were "seeing" before science was seeing what they were seeing or discovered how/why they were so seeing, then he is able to explicate the neural-processes involved.  All in a fine clear English, elegant, simple and informing.

Example:  Cezanne was very into blank spaces on his canvasses.  A single line however makes us see a whole mountain.  When light hits the retina, it is an abstract set of globs out of which the brain constructs a "picture" (including filling in the blind spot we all have), and Cezanne is painting what's on the retina, teaching us that we create the "painting" as we do create every moment with our ordinary senses.  During Escoffier's time, science assumed that there were only four tastes recognized by the palate - he ignored the dogma and cooked up a storm such as Europe had never previously known...and later it was discovered that we do have all sorts of taste sensors, which Escoffier simply KNEW were there and conjured up.

This leads to the observation that we are blind to our blind spots including other epiphanies Dharmic in nature if not by label.


I sense you'd enjoy this book a lot, and I commend it to you.  It's available at Amazon.  I read it a few pages at a time - it's like eating caviar.

Your poem showed an nascent yet intense awareness of Perception, and I expect it would greatly profit you to follow that intensity.  This little book will help.

Scott

[Medusa]

Scott I think you know me better than I know myself - so I'm absolutely without a shadow of a doubt going to purchase this book and read it.

Thanks for the recommendation.

As for "following the intensity" - I think that the intensity of the intensity makes it impossible to ignore and not to follow    I really do hope to one day reach a position where I can become a nun ... this has got to be one of the most important and worthwhile things one can ever do in life - but my question remains ... a nun of which tradition?

[Scott Hutton]

I once knew, in Woodstock, New York, a young woman very near to you in age, a nun.  Head shaved, robes,  wondrous empty (in the most wondrous sense of that word) face, a grand smile, and a motorcycle.  Oh she was a wonder: sort of a contemporary Western Buddhist version of Margaret Rutherford.   Absolutely great with kids.  Karmapa's lamas considered her, and I did not disagree or doubt for a moment, that she was a wonder-being wandering in from some other blessed time and place.

Sometime in the early 80's, she went into a three year retreat in the woods of upstate New York, and was visited only by the likes of the khenpo and the Karmapa.  I heard later that after three years she came out briefly, only to go back in for another ten.  The lamas there tend to her daily needs, which, one assumes, are very simple.

Absent the samsaric hurley burley of Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (all centers have such hurley burley), away from us...out of our sight...she remains a grand inspiration to this day...I think I recall hearing that she came out after the ten years and then went in again...whatever:  about 100 miles north of me in New York State is a grand Buddhist saint, as American as apple pie and as holy a being as ever was.

I think sometimes the effects of her practice are with me every day.

All this is by way of saying I do hope your karma allows you to bring your nun calling to full bloom, in whatever tradition.

Perhaps the wisest course right now would not be to shop around and make a rational decision...perhaps the wisest course would be to approach becoming a nun as you would approach a rare wildflower:  keep your eyes wide open and allow the beauty to appear.

When the nun is ready, the order appears.

Or something like that.

You have my full emotive support.

Much love,

Scott

[Scott Hutton]

PS:

Ani-la once confided to me, after an especially long tsog or something (I forget what, it was over 25 years ago!), "My brain?  My brain is moosh!"  And then, a smile whose radiance would put to shame a sunset....

s

[Medusa]

Haven't got time for a full response to any of the posts right now but I have one question for you Scott .... if I were to say Plexi to you would it mean anything?

Have you ever considered that you are also the source of such astounding inspiration? 

[Scott Hutton]

I am NOT the source; I am merely a conduit.

A conduit for what/whom?  Damned if I know.  I just work here, and lost interest in the question a long time ago.

Not willing the share the "plexi" associations right now...they're coming all from ego...and of use to no one.

s