Icarus a quin no escucha el mar en este viernes

listening seaward

Neruda begins his Poets Obligation with the lines, 'A quin no escucha el mar en este viernes - To whomever is not listening to the sea...' and it immediately opened up a dilemma for me because I had recalled reading this as 'looking' not 'listening' and then I realised his wording was perfect because it reminded me to open up all of my sense: sight, sound, touch, smell and taste are at once evoked by a simple, initial misreading. Not that this is hugely important in itself but it does hark back to the Calvino-esque idea of exactitude, thinking and living, seeing and hearing, listening and talking all in simple and single moments as we wander from stall to stall, sampling the wares life presents us with, and then,

With scarce my reason, with my fingers

with slow waters slow flooded

I fall to the realm of the forget-me-nots...

I am a Jack of All Trades - is there a better song in this recession climate? There are worse off than me out there, if you can sing, I am listening, if you have strong hands, I have a job or two, we could clear the shed, cut the trees, write lines of poetry for I am struggling, I begin with "In the middle of the night I ask myself..." can you take me to the next line? do you have the words, the metaphors the rhymes? I need a Jack of All Trades...

Icarus en medio de la noche

Little by little, and also in great leaps, 
life happened to me... 
Pablo Neruda

It is strange, is it not? How life just happens to us, no matter how hard we grab and grasp and try to plan, we just turn a corner and oops, there is it, lying in wait to shake us up (and down). And then we find ways of getting by, ways that say, don't ruffle the feathers, bite you lip, button your thoughts, saying what you want and what you mean is not always the best way to manage your dreams. And then dreams, what are they but the borrowed bones of old stories that linger, buried at the back of insomnia, designed to taunt and haunt and confuse, and even begin in a language you don't even speak, en medio de la noche me progunto: and this is a Calvino-esque beginning of a story I have been thinking long about:

In the middle of the night I ask myself...

Icarus over Africa # 1

I have never been to Africa though
snatches of colour
collide with exotic forms
my eyes have never seen
for I have never been
to Africa in my know





I have never been to Africa though
music fills my ears
ideas and images
my eyes have never seen
for I have never been
to Africa in my know

Icarus # learning to fly

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My muscles ache at the thought of typing and writing another line, and yet the compelling urge to do just that overcomes any form of resistance. Its not an Orwellian, 'Why I Write' idea that urges me on. I have no interest in the narcissism nor (for the moment) the 'political purpose,' that Orwell chose over the 'betrayed purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally'. As I was told yesterday its about staying alive, keeping the mind going, stopping the brain from losing grip. Its about the same as learning a new language; making the ceramic collage I promised the bare wall at the left hand side of the garden (so I could look out at colour through the kitchen window); exercising the brain as Joan Baez said in an oft posted track. I think that is why I write, I write to think. I write to try and understand. Which brings me to this blog, what is it for? Prevarication, the wordy-rapping-hood equivalent of hoovering the hall, well I guess it beats drinking myself to death.

I was born north of the border,

south of the river

and west of the sea.

How am I supposed to feel,

how am I supposed to be,

how am I supposed to know about

the things I cannot see?

I'm learning to fly - but I ain't got wings - coming down - is the hardest thing...

Icarus hiding

Hiding from the ghosts

I just read the most wonderful thing about Dorothy Parker, which is that her mother was Scottish and her father was Jewish. What an odd combination. One parent born in a country and the other in a religion. Isn't that a curious notion? Also, I wonder if that is why she is a spectacularly bad poet? Except I suspect that is just cruel for she wasn't really a poet but a writer who versified occasionally and some fool published a lot of it. But I guess that happens everywhere, there really is some spectacularly bad writing published - I have just read such a novel, whose title I will not repeat but it has snowdrops in it and it was also shortlisted for the Costa Prize - sigh. But I am now thinking about writing again and come April I will begin. The trouble is, since I have spent so long on academic books I have a notebook of too many ideas. And such a notebook is a heavy burden to carry around because the 'where-to-begin-ghost' lurks within, scribbled in the margins, leaking out of the unwritten, uttering the unsaid words that haunt the shadows. Sigh, where to begin when the beginning is obscured by clutter.

Working in the soul mine,

walking in the sunshine,

taking in the night time,

flying 'cross the timeline,

soul mining...

Bring on your wrecking ball:

Icarus and kites

Gangster Blues

Dressing up in American shops is a lot of fun but there is something about this look that doesn't quite get the smiles it should from the shop people. Oh well! It just goes to show how 'representation' can tell a succession of untruths. Or might that be truths - who knows I really might be the bad guy depicted (or not). Lately I have been thinking about buying a kite. There is something wonderfully cathartic about launching it and then watching it holding the breeze, falling and flying and flying and falling, swooping over water and land and buildings, flying and falling and falling and flying - and then I realise its just another Icarun theme - and possibly thoughts of escape, oh how i could do with an escape right now but there seems to be no chance of that. One thing I cannot run away from is the fact that I am too trendy for my shirt. It seems that months after I first blogged The Civil Wars the rest of the world caught up - and their CD has just been publicised as a new release. So hears to them again, may they enjoy their second coming (on this blog at least). They write some good songs but here's one of Lenny's - indeed one of his very best:

Icarus daydreaming

Spring

March has arrived with a spring day and a new sense of newness. And I feel liberated from the repression of winter. Not that it has been a huge winter - and I expect we will still get some of it. But spring has an epiphanic quality, where the world can be seen anew, where we get the chance to shake off the cobwebs, stretch our legs and feel the sun on our faces once again. And so the 1st of March is aligned to some new ideas too. A new song started yesterday, a new resolve to write it to completion and plans taking shape for new writings. So its out with the old and in with the new. But just a small reminder of how apposite that is, how could anyone not be sad at yesterdays news:

Cheer up sleepy Jean

oh what can it mean

to a daydream believer

and a homecoming queen - sigh - I too am a daydream believer: