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Winter Solstice
Writing from the Winter of 2017-18
By Don Gerz
Winter Solstice
Writing from the Winter of 2017-18
By Don Gerz
Photo by Don Gerz
© 2017 by Don Gerz
All rights reserved
including the rightof
reproduction in whole
or in part in any form.
Out of the Head
What do you do
when you like
the idea
of riding the bike
more than
riding the bike?
Ride.
What do you do
when you like
the idea
of swimming
more than
swimming?
Swim.
What do you do
when you like
the idea
of reading
more than
reading?
Read.
What do you do
when you like
the idea
of writing
more than
writing?
Write.
What do you do
when you like
the idea
of living
more than
living?
Live.
December 24, 2017
Happy New Year
As years pile onto years
like greasy dishes,
it is easy yet a mistake
to see life as only that which inevitably
slides into the soundless abyss.
It is our fate to linger on the bank
until we are endless rivers of
clinical lab results,
each doctor’s diagnosis
reducing us to how well
our hearts, brains,
kidneys, thyroids, livers,
and other vital organs
function…or not.
In the end,
our bodies find
their eventual homes
in graves and urns.
------
But we are not merely
a collection of organs,
vital or not,
and no pathology
can lasso the ultimate truth
of our absolute being…
certainly not Being itself.
Being is not a sometime or somewhere thing
subject to blood and flesh.
It is subject to spirit through Spirit,
the eternal fulfillment of a climax without organs,
one that groans through pure will
and perpetuates itself through
an unquenchable and orgasmic fire of
unending and unyielding desire…
a yearning that will be fulfilled
in spite of pathology and death itself.
Being is achieved
not through the body
but in spite of it.
And every year is a happy new one
because you are eternally you.
January 1, 2018
Ash Wednesday and Saint Valentine's Day in 2018
Ash Wednesday falling on Valentine's Day this year is not as weird as it might seem.
Ashes in the sign of the Cross on the foreheads of Christians remind us that all the jewels of life, especially love, are to be pursued with great vigor NOW because life is so short.
After all, as priests and ministers say each year, "We are made of dust, and to dust we shall return." True, of course, for both Christian and non-Christian alike.
We must love NOW and pursue virtue NOW while there is still time and before our bodies return to dust and ash.
We must love one another not only on Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine's Day but on all days.
Ash Wednesday >
Saint Valentine >
Easter and April Fools' Day in 2018
It's interesting that Easter this year falls on April Fools' Day!
Many non-Christians hold that a man being resurrected after 3-days of death is a belief only fools would cherish!
It does seem like a foolish belief.
But Christians remain the largest religious group in the world, making up 31% of the Earth's 7.3 billion people, according to a new Pew Research Center demographic analysis (April 5, 2017).
31% of our world population equals 2.26-billion individuals!
2.26-billion Christians are fools, fools for Christ!
And that's no April Fools' Day joke!
"List of Notable Christians in Science and Technology"
January 6, 2018
So Much
We have so much to say
and so little time to say it in,
so much that cannot be said for fear
of breaking oaths still in force,
oaths still fervent, still alive, still beyond logic
but well within the limitless confines of love.
So much irrational love, so much
in this little rational, nonsensical world
that seems so large but is so small.
So much to say that we will make some lives
and break others if we say it wrong.
So much to say that
we cannot say it all unless
we say what we do not even
know what we will say until we say it.
So much to say that will elate one
yet deflate another despite our best intentions.
So much of loving one while appearing
to spurn another when rejection
had never been on our minds.
We were not made to live
in this micro-universe where whole galaxies
are only a few oaths and many true loves away,
where our souls are too large to be closeted
in this tiny cosmos we call here.
So much that one day
we will find all the room we need
to make everyone happy
and proud of us.
So much that we will explode
out of ourselves and into all,
where what was, is, and will be
will have plenty of room to always be.
So much that we will love those
whom we promised everything,
those whom we loved
when the universe seemed so large.
So much that we will finally
no longer disappoint others and ourselves.
So much that we will become
who we already are and have always been.
So much, so much.
January 8, 2018
The Filthy, Filthy Borages
From the oily green garages
come the filthy, filthy Borages
who beg your pardon
as they stomp
on your bloody knuckles,
the red-celled Borages who expertly wield
the implements of disgrace,
those who reflexively command
cabinet members in your face,
those subtle appointed justices of
casual increase and desired addiction
to unlimited objects of mortal desire
and eternal benediction.
And no one can ever tell
how many of them bear arms
or how many of them disarm coats of harms
among the bloody schools of scandal,
schools of ill repute and red, red envy
creeping in the English Ivy,
slithering up crumbling walls of justice
into the mouths of abject hunger and disease.
But the green and oily garages,
the harbingers of stealthy harbors
of yellow waves abound
around a lighthouse
for the deaf and blind,
beguiling the innocent
and the old and infirm,
charming babies and elders
out of their birthrights
as supreme courts
of expedience
spend our futures
on waste and power
for the sake of the Borages,
the filthy, filthy Borages.
January 11, 2018
Out of the Office
and into the World
Yesterday, a friend was surprised that I no longer write in my office with any degree of regularity.
I've written 8 anthologies (and am working on a 9th) in various coffee shops and other locations in many cities and areas here in the country and abroad, some while on vacation in places like Prague, Austin, Houston, Branson (MO), Nashville, Memphis, Columbus (OH), Worthington (OH), Amsterdam, Frankfurt, South Texas, Dallas, and many other places in and out of the U.S.
Each anthology is 20-to-30 pages long and filled with poems and short prose works of non-fiction. None of them were written in my office. All of them were written "in the wild"!
All individual works in the anthologies reflect what I experience in the places where they were written.
At present, I'm here at Starbucks on Sandy Plains Road, Marietta, Georgia, working on anthology number 9.
I don't write in my isolated office anymore. I write in public places, usually coffee shops, where actual life is going on right in front of me, to the right and left of me, and in back of me.
All the works reflect life right in front of my nose...behaviors, conversations, choices, rejections, acceptances, surprises, revulsions, delights, and, most especially, revelations...all that life has to offer, not just what I and others may think it is. In order to capture this life in words, I rub shoulders with it daily.
I never know what I will find until life finds me. It always does!
(Continued)
9 RECENT ANTHOLOGIES:
The Coffee Shop
Poems and Incidental Pieces Written in Coffee Shops
from June to August 2016
Cutting Room Floors
Poems and Incidental Pieces
from August 2015 to June 2016
Fruition
Poems and Incidental Pieces
from the Autumn of 2016
Heat
Poems and Incidental Pieces from
the Summer of 2017
Parades
Poems and Incidental Pieces
from August to October 2016
Spring Rites
Poems and Incidental Pieces from
the Spring of 2017
Winter Solstice
Writing from the Winter of 2017-18
(In Progress)
Winter Tales
Poems and Incidental Pieces from
the Winter of 2016-17
Writing in Generaland Poetry in Particular
from the Autumn of 2017
January 13, 2018
Suddenly
I awoke with a start
at two this morning.
Everything was clear,
a line drawn sharply
and distinctly between
faith and logic,
belief and reason,
oil and water.
Every religion and every spirituality
suddenly made perfect sense
because none of them made any sense
except through spirit,
and until they were believed through
religious experience and hope…
Then they made perfect sense,
and the logic of spirit became crystal without flaw, fallacy, and heresy
to those who already believed what they already believed.
------
We believe what we believe
and let reality take shape before reason can affirm it.
Reason and logic are left in the dust far behind faith and belief.
And faith sustains belief for the believer and for all
who believe whatever religion or philosophy they believe at the time,
and there are many:
Christianity (2.1 billion) / Islam (1.3 billion) / Nonreligious (Secular/Agnostic/Atheist) (1.1 billion)Hinduism (900 million) / Chinese traditional religion (394 million) / Buddhism (376 million) Primal-indigenous (300 million) / African traditional and Diaspora (100 million) / Sikhism (23 million)Juche (19 million) / Spiritism (15 million) / Judaism (14 million) / Bahai (7 million) / Jainism (4.2 million) / Shinto (4 million) / Cao Dai (4 million) / Zoroastrianism (2.6 million) / Tenrikyo (2 million) Neo-Paganism (1 million) / Unitarian-Universalism (800,000) / Other…
For no single religion or non-religion has a lock on assumed truth,
belief, faith, spirit, soul, and things both seen and unseen…especially things unseen.
Principio principii begs its own question.
And suddenly it all made sense:
One cannot come to a specific religious belief
through reason, through logic, and through the intellect
until after spirit, belief, and experience have cultivated
an adherent’s mindset, outlook, inclinations, perspective, and more.
One comes to spirit through
belief sustained by faith, experience, and hope,
not through reason and logic.
One comes to understand the main tenets of
any religion or non-religion
through belief fed by the grace of faith, hope, and experience…
and belief is not logical.
Neither is it all illogical or a crock.
Belief, faith, spirit, and hope are all a-logical.
In fact, belief and its infinite spiritual components are as logical
as pink is to hardness
and as up is to carrots.
It all became clear…
suddenly.
January 18, 2018
Letting It Fly:
The Nature of Creative Writing
Compared to other kinds of writing, creative writing is susceptible to unfettered acts of random and offbeat conceptions and cock-eyed perceptions often leading to abnormal linguistic births that routinely contradict orthodoxy, convention, and normalcy.
The births from creative writing conceptions are often prose and poetry bastards, but interesting and hopefully captivating illegitimate offspring birthed by artists who honestly try to arrive at something fresh, innovative, and consciously beyond the staid boundaries of tradition.
With creative writing, inadvertently offending the reader with misperceived heresy is always a possibility. In fact, careless readers’ misperceptions are often the norm. Unfounded charges of blasphemy, apostasy, and other negative reactions of the reader are never striven for by the serious writer, but they inevitably occur whenever he or she writes creatively and authentically, whenever he or she swings for the fences and “lets it fly.”
“Letting it fly” is the norm for all creative prose and poetry. After all, swinging for the fences is the norm for all creative acts, indeed, the norm for all art.
Just what “it” is that flies remains a mystery, but that “it” produces a definitely surprised and often delighted reaction if the writing is intrinsically creative, honest, and authentic.
The attempt at creating something new, genuine, and true is of greater concern to the innovative writer than accidentally offending even tolerant readers. In fact, creative writing is often produced out of provocation to awaken and stir the reader to new points of view…to challenge traditional mores and sacred cows that long ago ran dry of the milk of human kindness.
In its essence, creative writing is provocative---not by design, but by its nature. Provocation is not a goal of creative writing yet one of several other unintended by-products…unintended by-products such as chagrin, dismay, impatience, and even anger.
But the real question is why write creatively at all---or at least why try to discover new frontiers of human experience and perception through the artful conjuring of words?
Perhaps it is the nature of creative writers and artists in general to “let it fly” in order to see where and how far the ball of life and human experience goes.
Perhaps.
January 22-23, 2018
I Don’t Know Why
For forty years,
I have provided my family with
enough firewood to last through each winter.
We never ran out until this year.
I don’t know why,
but this year was different.
I was thirty-one when I started my four-decade streak
of chainsawing, hauling, splitting, and stacking
endless pieces of firewood…
when I started building up piles and piles
of fresh hardwood every season…
four piles, five piles, six piles,
and even seven neatly stacked piles
of elm, oak, hickory, and sometimes maple.
I find firewood in and out of town.
I drive around, get out of the truck,
ring doorbells and ask landowners
what they are going to do with their newly felled trees.
You only have to get lucky once to win free firewood for a year.
I take pictures of my neatly stacked woodpiles,
chipmunks appearing out of nowhere,
scampering through the logs,
peeping like striped mice in the blonde wood.
I didn’t take any pictures this year
because last summer
I gathered no wood...not one stick.
I don’t know why.
I do have thirteen giant chunks of oak from two-years ago
on four-by-fours by the side of the house waiting to be split.
They’re so large and heavy, I doubt I can lift them.
The oak chunks are no longer fresh,
and the chipmunks will not be interested
when I finally get out there with my ax and log-splitter.
It’s cold now, and I build a fire.
I am down to five small pieces of wood as I write.
I place these last offerings in the hearth stove
and realize I am seventy-one as I close its door.
I don’t know why the thought passed through my mind
like a wren that flies away as quickly as it appears.
And I don't know why I did not gather wood last summer.
I don't know why.
February 4, 2018
On Not Picking Up
I’m sorry
I haven’t been able
to pick up lately.
Bad timing.
Keep trying.
In the doctor’s office.
In traffic.
With someone I can’t remember anymore.
With the builders.
On the landline with marketers who have such a deal.
With the electrician.
With the siding people.
With the window people.
With the contractor.
With a sub-contractor.
Bad timing because
I want you all to myself…
not with the cardiologist,
not with his nurse,
not with the physician’s assistant,
not with the nurse practitioner,
not with the marketing pest on the landline with such a deal.
I want to be with you…
not with
the traffic,
the builders,
the window people,
the electrician,
and the other this and that’s
always in the way…
always between you and me.
Bad timing.
Keep trying.
I will pick up when I can.
I promise.
I want you all to myself.
February 8, 2018
Apple Frittering
I
just
ate
four
apple
fritters,
and
I’m
sick.
February 15, 2018
Fired
Never complaining, always perplexed,
never making excuses, always creating solutions,
solutions that have been ignored for months,
my friend Larry has been confiding to me
that his boss Nancy has been giving him fits…
fits of frustration
when Nancy doesn’t return his calls,
perplexed when she dictates
how Larry should handle his customer,
a customer Larry has been servicing
successfully and profitably for years…
a customer Nancy knows nothing about,
not even the decision-maker’s name, Marty,
or his wife’s name, Carol,
not to mention the names of
Marty and Carol’s two children, Helen and Michael.
Larry’s boss Nancy does not know
that Marty and Carol’s son is autistic,
that Michael will always be autistic.
Larry’s boss does not know many other things
that Larry knows about his customers.
Larry is hurt that Nancy
has taken some of his best accounts,
customers he won for the company
and has cultivated for over a decade,
accounts Nancy transferred to other sales reps,
reps young and green to the business.
Nancy is distracted when Larry talks to her.
She seems to want to be anywhere Larry isn’t.
My friend Larry has been summoned
to Manhattan tomorrow morning,
to his company’s human resources office
for a half-hour meeting.
Tomorrow will be February 22nd.
Manhattan is usually cold at this time of year.
Manhattan is usually cold on most February days.
My friend Larry will probably be fired tomorrow
on February 22nd, on George Washington’s Day,
and Larry’s human resources
will probably be resourced elsewhere.
One thing I’m sure of is that
my friend Larry will land on his feet.
People like Larry,
people who care about people like