The Anatomy of Tragedy

Let’s mingle some death with our lovely myths
And take a page or two of papyrus, or stone.
Beware of flying things bearing strange gifts
Wrote no man yet I have yet to know.

From hoary Athens to the relic of Rome,
An eagle on high carried hard carrion.
Terrestrially bound below, a poets poor dome
Was strong eye spied, a thing to be smashed upon.

The talon claws acted like yawning jaws
Unloosing the clasped terrapin in shell
So that, now grasped under natural laws
And the full felt weight of earth, he fell

Down upon, crashing upon, the poet’s poor pate.
Dull thud, echo-eeking, calamitous knock,
Aeschylus could not write, but lived, this mistake;
The sad, sorry fate of a head for a rock.

Cracked and halved, the tortoise split for the feed.
The sharp beak and eye to tear and devour.
The skull, too, in mirror of the thing, lay cleaved 

As if opened and splayed on a dangerous hour

Like curtains that part for the act that brings death.

His cold ruddy blood flowed from a place
Winding round and down and round toward Lethe
Washing ashore on the hard banks of fate.

Plays upon a stage are often written this way.

Nature, when true, keeping all creatures in mind,
Unmaliced and free of care, simply throws her clay; 

As free from bound earth, her seeing is blind.

So in this new time of old wars waged for crowns,

While those who care less and less yet by degrees,
And try, as once was said, to ‘drink life to the lees,’
Good nature toasts to those follies of tragedy.

The Artist, The Art Critic, and Innocence Lost

I always fancied myself an artist even at an early age.  I was naturally adept at drawing and painting and unlike those things I was not particularly good at—school work comes to mind—I actually enjoyed doing it.  I could with a certain amount of easeful sweeps of the wrist characterize the essence of ordinary objects around the house.  Give me some fruit and a bowl and I would give the very same back, on paper, or canvas, with the added feature that it all arose from my burgeoning, artistic soul.  I could depict the same with people as I loved doing portraits of friends and family expressing their wonderful flaws and features.  I was very good at drawing faces.  All this flowed from the well-spring of a young artistic mind.   All this was artistic expression enjoyed immensely.  That is, until Ms. Ferguson became an art critic.

Note her title. I didn’t know it then but the woman was unmarried. This may say something. It may not. However, this is neither here nor there and in fact, may be unfair of me. To the point:

All this creativity, mind you, was, as mentioned, largely due to an unself-conscious artistic youth.  It was before any seeds of doubt supplanted those notions that criticism brings as an inner mirror and forces one to reflect on a self not yet known.  The artistic expression I enjoyed ‘immensely’ might have had to have been wrestled away. This had to happen sometime.  Some of the greats like Picasso may have successfully continued the work in that child-like ability to create art uninhibited, but most of us are shaken out of that beautiful slumber.  We are taken like virginity.  Unwittingly or not, Ms. Ferguson sowed these seeds of doubt for me and, though I knew it had to happen, she became the reaper in the haunting of my memory.  It did have to happen!  I know this.  We cannot sustain it.  We may get too big for our britches.  It is, after all, as the philosopher man once said, the unfurled, proud white sail that is first blown away by a powerful wind.  I did not want to be lost at sea. I would be at the mercy of her harsh wind.

I had her for my fifth year at school at the unripe age of ten years old.  Ms. Ferguson was not an art teacher but a science one.  It did not matter.  If she had taught the ways of sprinkling fairy dust coupled with the fine art of tiptoeing through day-lilies, she would have been just as harsh and unbending.   She was just too exacting and much too demanding in a way that spilled into a certain kind of rigid dogmatism for which she was ruthless.  It is difficult to say science can be dogmatic. But I think it’s important to remember she touched me subjectively where I lived. It may have only seemed dogmatic to the naked ten year old ego. But then again, as you’ll see, I may have touched her, too. The never ending dance around that eternal flame vanity.  Notwithstanding, she knew not the art of compassionate teaching and owned none of the tactful grace that lends itself to open -mindedness.  She did not practice gentleness.  She declared things (and facts) quite matter of factly and if one deviated, as I dared do once, one paid the price with a ruthless single-mindedness. This single-mindedness, I picked up on then, did in fact stand shoulder to shoulder with dogma.
 “Children, you see God has made the grass a soothing colour our eyes can enjoy,” she once declared. I innocently cut out the middleman by cheerfully suggesting something else.  “Maybe our eyes just learned to like it!” I gleefully shared.  I was met by a condescending stare seemingly fit with child crushing capacities.  I was told I talked nonsense and clearly spoke before I had formed ideas correctly.  More than this, she sadistically expected consensus.  “Isn’t it, children?  Isn’t it nonsense?” she asked aloud as if compelled by a teacherly duty to make my shame public.

With this, I gave up on her class and went inward.  What was waiting for me there was a pencil, a clean white sheet of paper, and a thought of the near ecstatic activity of drawing something.  With no intent of listening to the lesson but absolutely no conscious intent towards revenge (and this is true!) I decided to attempt my hand at drawing Ms. Ferguson. 

Despite her almost unnatural inability to be humane, I was for reasons even an artist cannot explain, quite taken by her visage.  In my clandestine way, I started sketching her doing my best to catch her very essence.  I sketched the way her hair, cut straight to the shoulders, framed a bony, sharp face.  I managed to create a beautiful shadow where her cheekbones protruded like the rigid rocks from craggy cliffs.  It was as if a person could stand under them in a rain storm and manage to stay dry.  I captured them as if in flesh.  I also captured a protruding nose of which the bridge created cavernous depressions that housed deep set, darkened eyes.   I enjoyed sketching her eyes with her lazy, drooping eyelids that effectively seemed the control center of her overpowering condescension.  I could not help but notice (the artistic eye!) that one of her lids slightly drooped lower than the other.  They reminded me of entering a room with two windows where one of the window shades was pulled subtly lower than the other causing a case of strange equilibrium in the viewer.  That was it!  I realized why I liked her face!  It was asymmetrical and interesting, qualities I could not bestow on her as a teacher.  She was depth at least written in the physical.  I thought I had captured her and was again proud of my ability to imitate life in art.  But it was short lived.

My self-congratulatory artistic expression was indeed short lived.  The model, the muse, the inspiration, and very soon the critic, all encompassing the one person, stood behind me ready to extinguish it. She caught me just as I finished.  Ms. Ferguson did not take kindly to the drawing.  She actually claimed I was making a caricature of her (what’s a caricature?) and, in the process, poking fun at her features like---dare I say it?---like a common doodler!  My artistic pride slowly fizzled to shame and it was this display planted the seed that I was just not nearly as good as only I thought.   How I wanted to tell her it was actually a loving expression to how I saw things! Is that not scientific? May be not.

            But at that moment, it did not matter how I saw things.  What was in charge as a matter of ‘seeing’ the situation were a pair of droopy but sharp eyes.  As I said, I any artist must face this situation to be shaken out of his own comfortable consciousness, and certainly at a young age this can be traumatic. So be it. That’s life.  Before I ask again if Ms. Ferguson had to be this harsh, I might meditate on the possibility that she did me a favour.  After all, she may have caused me to plant my own seed of doubt that now seems an engine of improvement.  Is it possible I owe her thanks more than I owe her condemnation?  The slow and linear artistic strokes of time soften even the hardest edges of memory.

            However, I still do wonder if she really thought what she claimed.  Was her criticism a reflection that my art was less than stellar?  Or did I do such a good job that I created an ugly feeling in an ugly lady who may have finally saw herself mirrored in some energetic and youthful art?   It certainly amplified my self-consciousness, but maybe, just maybe, I did the same to her.

Rider and Horse

I sat with a small child on my knee who
Rode my knee like a rider who knew not
Yet the importance of how she must trust
The horse.

Yet she did and did not know it. I sat with this
Small child who taught me more about me even
Than she presently knew. That is what she presently
Knew of me

As well as the teaching of it (This, I
Laugh, would make a Zen master blush) . And how
Is this to be? The paradox may fall
Like a riddled

Rain bathing both. She trusts the horse without
The knowledge of the expression of trust
Yet the expression is felt while the definition
Is not. And must the

Definition ever be? If no, that is
Alright with me. For the expression,
Like the rainless blue inside her eyes,
Clears all the contradictions

And suns me in a riddle of infinity.
She has wrapped me in an immeasurable
Aspect in unbounded ways and I trust her
For I know she will not let me

Fall despite the infinite chances in
This timeless infinite moment.
We two are only brought to a halt
With a wrap on the door. Neither has

Fallen. I catch myself inside her eyes.
My nose is larger than I thought. I check
My hair, the part is fine. We grasp the reins
And ride to infinity over again.

Little girl, there is boundless time in front
Of us and illimitable time behind. But in the

Space of a moment can we ride towards
The very notion of what we want to call
Eternity.

Amor et Infinitatum

Full felt fast is fire's desire,

Round and round and round again,

Hot turning like lively ashes atop a pyre.

In streamlined whip of unending spin

Love's flames lick no cornered edges tips

And fail to find an end, nor no finite wall.

Nowhere is there times hard held grip

But like the smooth sphere of a shiny ball 

Revealing no terrestrial marks,

Movement enshrouds illusory sight

Of no end or germinating spark;

Where there is no future or a past much like

The circling of two single snakes,

Concave things contoured north to south

Where each a link of chain, aligned, do take

The others taut tail within their mouth.

And so we walk in love from anywhere

Arched in infinite curves we do not see

And, though limitless, leaves a center bare.

It is when that finite space is filled we

Sense our time and take a nauseous turn.

And in the snuff of a mortal gust

We then know, within, it will fail to burn.

Love does not die but will go on without us.

Jerusalem: Fragments

Some definitions that may help meaning:

Kippah; An informal name for a yarmulke, the small rounded headwear worn by males in Jewish ceremonies

Uzzah;  Uzzah was a 1010 BC Israelite who, among many more, entered into Jerusalem with King David.

Zion; In many cases, this can mean the Jewish people or the Israeli state as whole.  In this case, I use it as a nickname for Jerusalem.

Lime; Limestone; a chalky stone containing calcium; this stone is commonly used in buildings in Jerusalem; the Wailing Wall is an example (see also 'alabaster' in Part I).

Some descriptions explained:

"sons of the commandments” (Part III) The 'bar' in Bar Mitzvah literally means 'son'.  'Mitzvah' means law or commandment.  The main thrust is that a boy becomes a man and is responsible for his actions and behaviour under the law.

"gendered partition" (Part III) In many Orthodox Bar Mitzvah ceremonies, the women can be commonly separated (partitioned) by a makeshift wall, males on one side and females on the other.  In large part, the men are on the side with the more favourable view. 

"upon the shrine" (Part III)  In this context, I mean the Ark of the Covenant.  This was a large chest that is believed to have held the tablets of the Ten Commandments inside. In other chapters of the Bible, it says it housed the scrolls of the Torah.

"Hora's circling steps" (Part IV) The "Hora" is the name of a Jewish dance often witnessed at a Bar Mitzvah.  The'Hora' is usually exemplified by an energetic group dancing in a circle.

"Tree had lit on fire" (Part V)  This is a humorous (I hope) allusion to the biblical story of the Burning Bush.

Quick note:  This was also a true story. We actually heard firetrucks but all the commotion was beyond our view of vision.  We were told quite earnestly that a tree was on fire.  This amused me greatly.  When I heard of no rational explanation for this fire, I was amused all the more (and, of course, I 'catalogued' it in hopes it could be part of a poem). 

Jerusalem: Fragments 

I. First Night

The moon sits bright in an eastern sky.

The moon is in the sky. Projecting

Cold, clear beams, she eyes in objective

Nowhere stares of glimmered chance

To spy upon what beauty may be

Found. Here upon contoured corpse of land,

Her piercing glare of crystal white does

Fall upon each and all bejeweled

Rocks and stones that lay upon the bosom

Of breasted earth glowing everyone

A pearl. And upon the loam rise those

Stones hewn, brick to brick, white on white,

Alabaster necks of splendor that stem

From embroidered body of antique earth.

No nightly veil can hide the modest

Means. The sister satellite in the

Sky does amplify the gems that sit

On sacred flesh and those calcite necks

Above, the works of praising man. Here

Lies aged allure in palling light; bones

And stones to be admired or feared;

Ghosted; ornamented; beauty still.

II. Bar Mitzvah for Two

Twins stand on the brink what with a double

Shuffle of a holy book. Sweeping from

Right to left, they sway destined to be the sons

Of the commandments and the heirs of a

Long hauled history soon to claim them men.

They mumble in dusty tones the old voices.

Twin-round kippah’s, cocked and white on sandy

Heads, two of an age, shift and move like the

Eyeballs of a suspicious face. My red face,

Marked by the sun, or the burning notion

I could bump heads with my reading neighbour

Like magnetic worlds in a collision,

Peers down. Here I stand amongst the rest with

Books. I stand with solemn men in a

Hotel basement observing the reading

Rites of tradition twice and two holy

Boys. The pages peer up from my hand,

Lifeless, dull, aged in colour, like a dead

Canary, a hue like the yellowing teeth

Of old piano keys. But I burn bright

As I watch our opposites, those female

Creatures as bejeweled as the earth, decked

On top, all, hiding scalps from God, spill past

The gendered partition like lovely lemmings

To get a closer glimpse. They jockey for

A look at the boys made men without a

Hint of doubt of their lovely leap of faith.

And now my face does blush with the acceptance

Of the thought that fusty laws speak partitions

To divide and demarcate our learnt

Acquiescence with the deeper need to

Spill with pride. Intuition seeps through.

And so do the words in the book. They seem

As curled and aged like the well-worn page.

But I must seem as diligent as the rest.

I look down again and read the rules.

The old tome almost slips from my hands as

My mind wanders toward thoughts of hummus

And olives and talks with lovely ladies

Who feel no fear yet know to hide their heads.

III. The Party

Reverie and joy among the smiling

Faces and dancing for tradition is

What makes this celebration of festive 

Rite as sacrosanct as old city light.

The light of Zion shown through the villa

Windows. Each arch top aperture did frown

In stuccoed scowls and let through white heat

That fueled the flame of swirl and swoon of Hora's

Circling steps. Among the noise the children

Conspicuously congregated in

A corner.  Both secrets and curiosity

Reigned among the young.  In the middle of

Their muffled noise, a twin did bleed his new

Mannish blood, the result of a brotherly

Prank gone wrong. I implored upon him justice

Should be met and such sibling travesty

Must be shown. But the boy now man, as if

Sagely seeing more of love than fear, did

Wipe his adolescent fluid and told me,

No. And the blood of siblings does flow on.

And age old stories can be told anew.

Commotion was upended by commotion.

A new curiosity came from the

Window where the screech of a Jerusalem

Fire truck whirled and wheeled from the street

Below.  The children, like a tight pack of

Bees that cannot lose their squeeze, sped there.

The new commotion, they were most proud to 

Relay, was that a tree had lit on fire,

Ablaze, in the bright light of day.  Without an

Answerable cause, this, to me, spoke of

Unclear mystery's like those twin tales

We call love and fear. And the sign for a

Wonder did remind once more that those

Same age old stories can be told anew.

Another sight might help me mull my thoughts.

I leave these festive faces who dance in 

Rings so my mind might mingle with city air.

IV. Uzzah’s Mistake

A natural inclination can kill.

The new king entered into the sparkling

City, a natural leader to lead

A joyous procession of minstrels and

Cymbals and concubines and one oxen

Driven cart. Loin-clothed and lean he danced like

The possessed caring not a whit for the

Shame that poured from windows. He would be king.

He would be the well-spring that led to what

Would be believed the waters that immersed

A final one. All in this new city.

Within this carnival of cymbalic

Crash and lyre strum did poor Uzzah walk.

He walked apace with those torpid beasts of

Burden, the yoked souls set free only by

The merciful slake of their animal ignorance.

What animal is not ignorant? But

Awareness of  ignorance seems the sin.

So the oxen did pull the cart in an

Intuitive step like organic machines

In zen-like rote. They pulled the cart that housed

The sacred text meant for no earthly eyes

Or hands but to be placed in the bosom

Safety of the welcoming sacred town.

Yet in a sudden one ox did falter

And slide upon the dusty city floor.

Could it have been one jewel strewn stone

Upon his path that caused the shrine to shake

And move upon the wheels?  Therefore, Uzzah,

A man whose intuitive nature took

Hold like a double swell of both love and

Fear, laid his hands upon the shrine

So as to steady God's word so that it

Might not fall to grace where rocks and stones are

Laid. And for his deed did God strike him dead.

The impulsive step borne of human care

Left him lying there among the quarry.

And much does God want of both love and fear.

A natural inclination can kill.

V. On the Balcony

Among the flowerpots and plastic

Cups I find an empty length of ledge

To rest some sun-scorched arms. I hear still

The din from festive faces that maze

Around stuccoed hotel halls that echo

Like cloudy calls of far off friends unfound

In a dream. Patioed and bent on

High I ponder from my heightened place

The things I want to love and those I

Need to hide. Ambivalent are those

Angels that shine as bright as the noon

Day sky for they never need be seen.

This holy place of sun-scaped earth does

Not belong to me. She has had in time

So many a lover and those who claim

The hold of heathen hands. I stand here

Balconied above with heated heart and arms,

A sun-burned player of that tragic play

To ask, “Wherefore art thou, Jerusalem?”

For now, I return to those found faces,

Those Semitic smiles that pierce my festive

Mask and ask with eyes to partake in hummus,

Olives, those drinks in plastic cups,

And the felt coolness of sliced cucumbers

That soothe and smooths the heady pulse of this

Heated heart and the pain of sun-scorched arms.

VI. Last Night

 Despite night's inky cloak, the moon helped spy

The line of olive trees all jutting at an angle,

Outwardly, like evening samaritan's

Umbrella's offered with inviting

Smiles to roof wet heads. On the hill above

Sat the old town not so ancient as the moon

But near as ghostly white and seeming as

Close. On Zion's hill stands the kings wall still

In perpetual grin in old and yellow

Lime. And beyond the ancient town, older

Than tales borne from the earth, beam tiny

Lights that tell no stories nor deign no laws.

While on holy ground bejeweled rocks and

Stones shine soft and fainting light upon the

Transcendent terrain marking each and all 

An armament, or else a grave. And above

It all, above all that man has carved, spreads

A vast and sleepy sky, in a convex

Arc like an omniscient eye, that feigns a

Constant watch but looks the other way.

Hide Under My Mustache, Poor Horse

'Hide under my mustache, poor horse!

Only I comprehend the state we're in!

Insensitivity of the world runs a course

And overtakes us here on this street of Turin!' 

And so this superman, with looping, aching arms,
Wrapped the nag’s neck in sympathetic choke.
Though equine embrace made no less calm,
Clasped hands, trembling tight, made a loving yoke

That laboured to shield the beast from his flog of dread.
Man and beast, there, held tight to no common vanity.
The Flogger of the man, in his lost mind, stayed dead.
Nature, in blind ambition, straight stripped his sanity.

So, like the clasp come undone from slippery skin
And takes leave of a wrist, snaking around,
Did the man let loose his fingered grasp and, in
Tragic heap, fell straight to the ground.

That good little lamb that frolics happily upon
The globe round top of the green grass lea
In stainless splendour, is in turn the same one
Who, with innocent eye, cannot spy the company

He keeps. Behind that eye the subtle worm
In insidious routes but no true endeavour,
Bores through the skull in parasitic turns.
And the innocent eye is shut forever.

We climb the hill, we crave to be on high.
But the taut tight rope over the abyss frays
And in eternal echoes we hear the sighs.
Angel arms slip from our necks and we fall away.

Analyzing Oil on Canvas

The fantastic Mark Tansey.
One sunny day at the MET I stood in front of this painting contemplating it for many minutes. It was hanging right there in the 20th century section where all the light comes flooding through the angled windows as if to disinfect any gratuitous linseed oil. I am a snob and a selfish person only when it comes to two spatial areas that happen to be free: in front of a painting displayed in a museum and a bar stool. I don't like sharing that space in either case.

A seasoned lady, one of those well-to-do Manhattanite types, sidled up next to me. The corner of my eye dazzled slightly at the twinkling beams dancing off her heaps of jewelry. I was annoyed by it. She began to think out loud so I assumed her observations were meant for me. She seemed to call up all her own powers of benign snobbery when, nose in air, she proclaimed it was a shame the artist didn't create a certain 'closure' to the painting by adding some cow dung underneath the cow.

I very gently pointed to the left of the painting and reminded her of the scientist holding the mop. We did all this without eye contact. She let out an expensive sounding laugh. I finally turned and smiled at her in that satisfied way we do when we think we're witty and this made me hate myself. I didn't want to smile the way she spoke. This was a funny thing as I felt very shabby that day but it subsided after that. However, I do remember wishing laughter paid out.