As I sit in turmoil over my novel, scratching out the words like my fingernail's etching on a rock, quieting my madness in hopes of grace each morning in the sacred space over the what nexts...
As I labor away whole entire days in the back room of Ocean Pines cataloguing poetry and editing and envisioning this chapbook of mine...
Ha ha ha the Duende. Ah god the sacred devil, o here we go again anyway, in this epic eternal artistic creation and battle of self vs self...as always the descent brings, in the fall...
Last year around this time me and this guy were all jazzed up about the Duende.
Now Icarus, who's been in and out of my head as of late, shows up today on Mike's blog and the conversation starts again... It is this, the Duende, the descent-ion of Presence that so enraptures, no? That avowes us of the devotion towards the act of soaring. That in-moment bliss thing. But to get there yes we first must meet every flaming sword at the gate, every masked form of burden and challenge our egos devise and create as our selves in demon form. Fear is the Devil, as Erika has said...if only it were that simple? Which fixture do we operate from, is the golden medicine injested today, in front of screen, that which will make me yeild to the riches or poison me in my steps? Right now writing five fucking pages feels like pushing boulders through a peehole...so you tell me. What if the demon of self is pride? What if it's pride that says the answer is to not be fearful--conviction of knowing the answer... Then of course I fall before the sun. What if the demon is our angel, too? As me: self-awareness=Self-obsession.
It's all the same. I don't know the answer, I know only that I am born of this, to this, obsession. I want the grace that comes with yielding as much as it delivers the bliss of catching an upwell of wind: floating on the air because hard work suddenly made me hit that right curve with such divine precision that it all, every bloody cut step and bruise was worth it. But maybe not? Last winter was so intense, the introspection, that my dear friend Beth actually likened me to Campbell Scott's cracked-up character on Singles after they trash his supertrain plan and he loses Kyra Sedgwick and locks himself in his place for like three weeks and doesn't shower and only eats pizza off cold greasy flat cardboard boxends. Maybe it was all that snow? The lack of light? I dont know. My wings got singed. For suuuure.
Ahh, to soulspeak and the writing nuts. Ah to the crazy mad tribe. Ahh, to the circles, to a new ethics of fearlessness...? As it goes...and here we go...
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3 comments:
This is beautiful. Icarus is one of those cats that I always come back to and he's always pissed me off as well. The singed wings but being able to return. That balance, but is it lesser for that restraint, that return? Did Icarus have his moment only when he realized he wasn't making the trip home? I don't like to think so. I think, hope, you can follow the Duende, go after it, embrace it, with only singed wings. But man, the singed wings...:)
Your references to pride reminds me of Bob Dylan's little noticed but very powerful song, Foot of Pride:
Yes, I guess I loved him too
I can still see him in my mind climbin’ that hill
Did he make it to the top, well he probably did and dropped
Struck down by the strength of the will
Ain’t nothin’ left here partner, just the dust of a plague
that has left this whole town afraid
From now on, this’ll be where you’re from
Let the dead bury the dead. Your time will come
Let hot iron blow as he raised the shade
Well, there ain’t no goin’ back
When your foot of pride come down
Ain’t no goin’ back
-Bob Dylan, Foot of Pride
I guess he (and I) would say to let go of the pride and focus on the process. The art will emerge.
Jeff, thank you. That means a lot, a great deal coming from you (no matter how much a friend--you, Susan, always as teachers, first.) Mike, thank you. It was yesterday's process--your post included--that re-opened me to the memory, real and present, of flight. Equal part voyager, and voyage. I am Icarus in deep great love affair, symbiosis, with the Wind...You, too, can, my friend. To wings right, no matter how singed.
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