The old man tells his tales of days long gone.
He simply wants an audience to validate his life-song.He’s real.
He’s here.
He’s heard,
far and near.Does this make his life more or less than what it was?
Language damns and limits.
It erects walls and pushes chasms of misunderstanding between them.
It is the favored tool of manipulators and politicians.
The boon companion of confidence men.We fall prey to its deceptions daily.
Struggling to understand and make ourselves understood.
What we mean, filters through what we say.
What we say, changes what we mean.
What we meant to say gets lost.This imperfect tool betrays us time and again.
We still persist to worship at its altar.
Syllable and consonant,
Adjective and adverb,
Loquacious largesse, inflating our value.
It is all we have.Or is it?
Can we stop talking and start listening?
Can we give up the quest for the Word,
And pick up the quest for the Heart?
I think we can.
Category: Road Ramblings
I’ve never met my Muse.
What I mean to say is, we’ve never been formally introduced. I like to imagine she comes at night and kisses my dreams with her intricate inspirations. Only the good dreams though, she wants nothing to do with the self indulgent tripe that sometimes spews through my mind whilst I sleep. But if the dream is True she’ll turn it toward a story, an impossible tale of wonder that leaves me breathless, scrabbling for a pen in the early morn.
My minds eye paints her, standing directly behind me a delicate hand resting lightly on my shoulder. She is lithe, tall beyond reason and her exotic eyes contain a universe of words. I believe that is why she won’t step from behind me and introduce herself. For one look into her eyes and I would surely be lost forever amidst worlds upon worlds of possibilities. This is a fate I would not mind one bit. I think she knows this.
I haven’t named her, feeling that to be a bit presumptuous. I’ve imagined what she might look like and have a sort of recollection of the cadence of her speech. Like an old memory of the murmur of your mothers voice as you pressed your head to her bosom as a child. Sometimes I think I can almost understand the words through the buzzing, thumping racket of life. Then I relax, put pen to paper and let it talk for her.
I don’t know why she does what she does for me. I don’t know why she does what she does to me. Wisdom and experience versus ignorance and bliss, on dark days I would gleefully choose the latter. I think she knows this too, and an apologetic eye sheds two tears for my pain. Though this doesn’t stop her from driving the Real into my mind at every turn of circumstance, with every wolf-song howl.
We are locked in a dance as old as time. Our particular dance may be a polka or a waltz, a stilted country two-step or a passionate samba. I believe that is up to me. In other words, I am leading. After all we’ve been through and all that is likely to be ahead of us, I still can’t help but wonder, “Why me?” Why do I get this blessing, this albatross of her attentions? The stress of her regard often unmans me.
The Spaniards Inn, London 2010
