Category: journal

Might there be any individual identity after death?

Imagine a mound of mud surrounded by water. Some water is also part of the mud, but still we can perceive the mud as an object with its own identity. Outside of a certain murky area the water also seems to be its own thing. But, around the mound lurks the murk, and the density and breadth of that area may be changing over time; the mound may also be taking in as well as divesting. It is communicating with something outside of itself. At what distance does the separation become complete? Well, perhaps nowhere unless we reach a desert. But at what point do we no longer recognize the water as part of the mound, despite containing mud, as an individual identity? Maybe the mud itself continues to identify for awhile. I suppose one can separate them entirely given the proper tools techniques and time. But, the water that was part of the mound might hang around the same area for awhile unless there is a particularly strong current, and even then… maybe it retains some sense of coherence and familiarity as it slowly merges with the crowd. Maybe it still has some taste of that muddy personality. Now think of the water as consciousness and the dirt as physical matter. And think of the mud as a metaphor that seemed for awhile like it might be going somewhere…

Gnat

Tiny black flyer,
we'll call him 'Gnat',
leaves the leaves
his decaying heaven beside the stream
to hang with me. 
to hang in the air
right between my eyes
Only distinguishable from the 
dangling shadowy spiders and small 
deep black spots in my eyeballs
by the independent motion.
(You have independent motion,
you may go...)
Maybe it's the glasses;
I don't need them to walk, but, you know,
The glorious beauty of the entire world is never enough.
One must check their phone occasionally.
So, walking and shooing, shoeing and swatting
Until annoyance mothers intention;
Stop, observe, and smash. 
The tiny corpse in the palm confirms the kill.
until
10s of yards later, there is another.
Right between the eyes.
We go through a similar tragic drama.
10s of yards down the path,
there's another.
At this point I think what if it's the same 
Gnat reborn, again and again, saying
"what was that all about?"
Maybe it's an old friend
who took a bad turn on the wheel of karma
what is the important message they are spending lifetimes trying to get across to me?
well, maybe there is no message. maybe it's just 
the pure animal attraction.
Relationships remain a mystery to me.

Helen says, “bye!”

Today was the anniversary of the death of my mother, Helen Ida (Smith) Chern. So, I have been a motherless child for 17 years. That is every bit as long as I was a child living (for the most part) with a mother. It is starting to sink in.

She really was a wonderful, magical person when she wasn’t under the shadow of her depression, illnesses, chronic fatigue, suicidal episodes, and a certain stubborn dramatic holding on to that state of mind once it had set in. I think that some of that was a desperate mechanism to get the rest of us to back off and leave her alone for a moment. Intellect really can be as much of a curse as a blessing. I guess we were a couple of the last of our kind, since I failed to pass along any genes. (as far as I know. as of yet. as they say.)

Then of course there was the decades long darkening shadows bringing on the decline of that intellect, ending finally in full-blown dementia. Though, once she had finally let go of all effort, she seemed as happy as I had ever seen her.

One of the last times I saw her in the hospital, I asked her if she knew who I was. Apparently you’re not supposed to ask that, but it didn’t seem to phase her. Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. She might have been dodging the specifics. But, she replied, “Yes. You’re the love of my life.”

Now I can look back to my early childhood and see the vivacious, beautiful young version of her, prancing about the house singing during the chores when she wasn’t hating and being oppressed by them. “Today is Monday! Today is Monday…”

a bit of a berk

So, I awakened from a dream with most of the conversation dissolving into mist as they so often do, but I could still hear one of the characters saying, “Well, he’s kind of a berk, you know.”

Now, “berk” is not a word I have ever used, nor did I know the meaning or origin or proper spelling or if it was even really a word. So, why was this person in my dream saying it? I had a sense that it was some sort of English insult and felt compelled to look it up. Well, turns out I was right about spelling and country of origin; but from there it gets kind of complicated.

It involves “rhyming slang”, which I have never been able to get my head around. It is a secret language which apparently everyone knows in which a word is replaced with a longer phrase ending in a rhyme for the secret word. In this case it is further complicated by having turned into a shortened version of the phrase which does not even include the rhyme. The complete phrase is “Berkeley Hunt.” (The most famous of British fox hunts.)

Further, fahther, the meaning has become a milder insult than the word which it supposedly stands in for which is itself a much milder and more common epithet in England than in these parts, pardon the expression.

Know what I mean, Vern?

Tonight’s walk story

One, two, one, two, it shouldn’t be that hard. Left, right, left, right. Lub, dub, lub, dub. I’ve been hearing about that since I was a kid, at least since those nuts at Disney put out Hemo the Magnificent when I was 7. Flip, flap, flip, flap; a night runner goes by across the street to further illustrate and orchestrate.

A few blocks back, as I reminded myself to look at the dark sky and tree silhouettes and be more present, I remembered how I used to think about how painters never seemed to get that dark blue right, how it was my calling, how maybe I should get around to that again, I realized as my head was scratched by some low and naked tree limbs that maybe I was being present in the wrong place.

Lub, dub, lub, dub. I should be able to do that, been doing it all my life. Maybe this advanced poly-rhythm my heart started seeking, that may be tiring me and that the docs don’t like, is all part of the ascent to a higher realm. An existence further into the stratosphere of the fractal edges of the rhythm of life. If you look closely at those edges, zoom in, there’s always a basic pattern if you dig down far enough. It just seems like dissonance when so zoom out and see them all piled up and cramming in next to each other.

Another night walker at a tangent, as if to illustrate the obviousness of the tiring/weakening part, asks (just as I’m starting to compose this story in my head) if I’m alright. “Yeah, just at the end of three or four miles, trying to get home.” “Well, you’re almost there. Keep your head down and power through,” says he with a little fist pump. Yeah, I need to keep my head down while keeping my head up. And, it turns out, maybe I needed to hurt that side of my skull to balance out the aching and swelling on the other side of the head/face/teeth all day.

up,down, up, down…

another episode, same old characters

I had a remarkable unplanned encounter
with my old sweetheart the Moon;
I was just heading back from the usual little 
walk down the hill to the store.
Barely a few houses up Olentangy Street
I happened to look up for a glance;
But my look was captured, our lights were linked
and my feet froze to the cement.

Heavy cloud cover seemed to part
just in that one bright circle.
And though the dark grey continued to roll
from the south, with a chill breeze in step
down here below, we both stood engaged
the dark edge would advance but at last moment part
just enough to leave that one circle uncovered
slowly growing as stretched by our gaze.

I stood waiting for coverage, but the parting went on
Until a larger space shown with clear blue around
and subtle grey circles in the overall black
radiated out an enlarging sphere pattern.

Although the moon has promised to help
my vision if I remember to gaze
there still was a little lack of focus
and double-vision projection below.
This made it seem like the moon had a chin
and the space in-between gave it a grin.
As the moons parted and the old familiar
features of my friend sharpened, the double
moved down into a long white beard.

Eventually, of course, the chill of the sidewalk
Moved up through both the thin soles and thick socks
And I had to break off and move along, dizzy.
When I looked up again, the features were blurring
And the blue space was smaller, though it grew as I watched.
We continued this way as I went up the hill.
As the walking got longer, moon's features grew dimmer;
angry memories returned of the last time we talked,
and the words that as usual got stuck inside me.
Looking up from the bridge at the top of the hill
dark black swirls had moved to the fore.

another night or day

I got to a pretty good state for awhile yesterday waking up after midnight and going from the endless night of despair into the day instead of trying to get up in the afternoon in despair and seeing things just get darker.

I thought maybe I was on the right track. But, waking up at 3 a.m. today (a favorite time of day) it seems just too dark. I think I was having one of those dreams that was just a true and graphic account of my lack of place in the world. Maybe it was better yesterday when it was all running and hiding and people being shot in the head.

But the part I remember was ending on a somewhat lighter side of trouble. After all, I found a place to pee for a change (well, it was off a sidewalk, but I didn’t think anyone was around), and did so quite easily. (I thought maybe because my penis was particularly short at the time.) So the walk was going along okay into the grey color field, skies and sidewalks and buildings.

But a vehicle starts pacing me, then falls behind, and someone is talking.. I have to turn around to see that it’s a cop car. What luck. He wants to know what’s going on or something, I say “you tell me. what do you want?” Well, it turns out he doesn’t say anything about indecent exposure, or anything of a legal nature as far as I can tell. He’s just harassing me about my life in general, and leading to, “You let yourself go bald.” As I was trying to say in a scoffing tone (don’t talk back to the cops, kids) “That’s not something one has much choice about” I woke up. And here we are, with the imaginary correspondents again.

memorable yet forgotten dream

When I got up Thursday it was Friday. It had been another strange and overly extensive day into night’s sleep. Before, I’d already stayed up a bit too long and whiskeyed a bit and was more than prepared to fall out of it when there was a last minute turn and I decided to do what needed to be done instead. So then came further hours of getting stuff ready to go to the post office, walking down there and a side-trip to a store where I bought and consumed things which I should have not. After the staying up, stayed down a sleep-and-a-half in penance; waking briefly for visits from the cat, too impatient with me to stay in my arms, and a surprising explosion from the sky followed by reassuring water fall. Maybe there were some other memorable but forgotten interruptions, but still little indication from my waking mind that it would ever wish to re-enlist.

Toward the end there was one of those long, connected, maybe lucid dreams in a place with diverse enough areas and people to seem to justify the many chapters and themes. Unfortunately, I was once again unwilling or unable to get up after, and the details and connections are eroding and wafting away.

The event was outside at first, a festival of some sort I guess as there were booths and exhibits. In front of the booth where I was, which no doubt had something to do with African-American, and perhaps Jewish-American, cultural history there was an “amusement” of some sort, a game or ride, involving a tall pole. There seemed to be a reference to lynching, a “heritage” thing I guess, and its position right in front of us felt like an intentional provocation. Frustration. Leaving for awhile. Return as things were winding down and some conversation about whether anyone had done something, or why we/I couldn’t. “Well, anyway, they are gone and we are still here, so perhaps…”, she said.

Then it was inside, after-party with many people in The Lodge. Although, there was some kind of overlapping with my place. For, in discussion with someone about my extensive incomplete and undistributed works, as I was trying to explain about how I had been a visual artist as well as songster and writer, I was pointing out that the works on the wall didn’t include any of my best prints, but there were some upstairs I might be able to root out. From nearby a confident-looking gentleman, a solid well-groomed fellow with dark hair, sidled into the conversation. He said he had heard enough to know that I had something, but that I was in need of representation. I allowed that that may be true, and he assured me that he was the man for the job and knew how to begin our business. I was all for it.

It is at this point that I began to have a recurring problem with understanding the other characters’ words. I couldn’t tell whether it was because the noise of the event was making it hard to distinguish, or they were actually using words which I did not know. However, since the confident dark man seemed to be going into academic and Arts catch-phrases of some sort it may have been the latter in this conversation. He started right out with something like, “So, you write Shakespearian <insert Latinesque neologism>s which can be related to <more gobbledy-gook> and for which there is a market in <who-the-fuck-knows>…

I interrupted with frustration (and some yelling, I suppose), to object that, no, I don’t. I had merely made some passing reference to a one-off sonnet, and that all I really do is (generally odd) songs and drawings. He walked off in disgust.

Then I was sitting in a corner next to some stairs, from under which people occasionally crawled out of a door. Someone had witnessed the encounter with the salesman and said that they had noticed his mask. It was a party, so I suppose there may have been masks, but I had not seen him in one. They said, “It was his smile. It is the mask of The Devil.”

Then from the stair-door emerged a lovely young woman who I thought was someone I know (unlike most of the nice helpful women I encounter in these places, who I don’t recognize.) She was talking of someplace I could possibly go and take refuge. A room, or maybe a box. I picture a pillar in the middle somewhere. That it would be alright if I stayed to this one side where the water hadn’t reached yet. But, I couldn’t make out what her word for this place was, and some other details. I kept asking her to repeat it, and she did. But I had to say, “sorry, I’m still not getting it.” After awhile she went off to other things, but leaving some hope that we were going to be getting together later.

The last thing I remember is doing some washing-up with some other women whose words of encouragement I cannot recall. The surfactants in the tub seemed to be working well for them in clearing off the dishes, but I was left struggling with scrubbing at some small utensils whose tiny nooks and crannies, curves and corners, held onto globs of grease.