in the fog at night: diary notes of a tomcat

i admit that there is expanding waste land inside, a vague sadness which could drown everything in its vastness just as the fog does now. it could drown myself and all initiative. i feel that i have been homeless all my life since my father died when i was a boy. i had realized it just at that time so long ago, and this image has joined me ever since. often i have been like a stranger in this world. i tend to sit next to myself and wonder what is happening.

it is not so bad, it just is like that.

but i can go out of this desert and cross borders, and i can take my own light and fire of being inside and stay alive, aware and as kind as i can. i actually can bring this to shine and warm outside as well.
otherwise i couldn't do my work as a doctor at all.

as a private person, nearly without friends, this means "real" friends, this is quite different.

in my twenties already i saw myself as an old tiger, irritable, constant toothache; the best thing was to feel my soft paws on the green moss of tropical forests.

now i do feel more like an ageing tomcat put at the side of the road, neglected, flea-infested, hungry and on my own. i scratch, i bite, and i purr up to strange ladies without any proper reason. what can they do but smile if there is no food in their handbag? what can i do then but leave and walk along the ditch to find something to eat?

come to think of it, i developed habits of a talking and even meowing to myself, more so when nobody listens. i don't.

i try to reach out with the flow of my life and light to this "you".
i see this "you" has no need of me.

meow.
you.
come out of  the fog.

i do.
slowly.
as all proper tomcats do.

in the forest: beauty, ice and danger

Billy Joel - In The Middle Of The Night (The River of Dreams)

Aziza Mustafa-Zadeh: Dreaming Sheherezadeh

Balmorhea - Remembrance (Official Video)

Lisa Hannigan - Nowhere To Go

The little prince & the fox, ...

It was then that the fox appeared.

"Good morning," said the fox.

"Good morning," the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.

"I am right here," the voice said, "under the apple tree."

"Who are you?" asked the little prince, and added, "You are very pretty to look at."

"I am a fox," the fox said.

"Come and play with me," proposed the little prince. "I am so unhappy."

"I cannot play with you," the fox said. "I am not tamed."

"Ah! Please excuse me," said the little prince.

But, after some thought, he added:

"What does that mean--'tame'?"

"You do not live here," said the fox. "What is it that you are looking for?"

"I am looking for men," said the little prince. "What does that mean--'tame'?"

"Men," said the fox. "They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?"

"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?"

"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. It means to establish ties."

"'To establish ties'?"

"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ."

"I am beginning to understand," said the little prince. "There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . ."

"It is possible," said the fox. "On the Earth one sees all sorts of things."

"Oh, but this is not on the Earth!" said the little prince.

The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.

"On another planet?"

"Yes."

"Are there hunters on that planet?"

"No."

"Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?"

"No."

"Nothing is perfect," sighed the fox.

But he came back to his idea.

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."

The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

"Please--tame me!" he said.

"I want to, very much," the little prince replied. "But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand."

"One only understands the things that one tames," said the fox. "Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . ."

"What must I do, to tame you?" asked the little prince.

"You must be very patient," replied the fox. "First you will sit down at a little distance from me--like that--in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . ."

The next day the little prince came back.

"It would have been better to come back at the same hour," said the fox. "If, for example, you come at four o'clock in the afternoon, then at three o'clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o'clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . ."

"What is a rite?" asked the little prince.

"Those also are actions too often neglected," said the fox. "They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all."

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--

"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."

"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . ."

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.

"Yes, that is so," said the fox.

"Then it has done you no good at all!"

"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:

"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret." 

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."

And the roses were very much embarassed.

"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you--the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose.

And he went back to meet the fox.

"Goodbye," he said.

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."

"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . ."

"I am responsible for my rose," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

Vivaldi - Sonatas for Cello & BC, Bruno Cocset

trapdoors...B.Shaw is often acidly lucid

 

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
George Bernard Shaw

piercing the veil: salad is an illusion

i am like a salad,
sprouting out of the soil,
green and growing

i need water
i need care
or i will be
tasteless, wasted
and in the end,
like illusion,
not even salad.

i am like an illusion
but i am not an illusion.
i am like salad,
but i am not salad.

i am like a dog
but not as innocent,
i need affection
i need care
or i will not
even be a dog

i am a man
and i am like
the illusion of a man,

but even Buddha said
all is like an illusion.
he didn't say
all is an illusion.
so i am not.

i want you,
not an illusion,
you are
like an illusion.
but you are not
an illusion.

rivers living
will flow
and meet
with other rivers
and reach
the sea,
maybe together.

they have direction,
innate intention,
they melt into the sea
and still they flow.

i am not alive
in the sea of nothingness
though everything
comes out of it.

imagination
and desire
and courage
are the force of creation,
pysical and in the mind.

illusion is but a word.
it tastes of bad memories,
it is about seeing
with different eyes than yesterday.
this is all what it means.
all what is now illusion
was real before anyway.

all experience
can be seen as illusion,
we are travellers,
and we are passing
and passing through
and passing by.


it is a truth,
being travellers,
but it is not an aim,
and passing-by is not an aim.
it happens.


ps:....this is personal&not a poem....
it is about trying to see a future for a relationship
in which love can develop.
kindness and love are not more illusion
than hate , violence, mistrust and indifference.
this view would remind me of the child who burns its finger
and then realizes: hot. no, pain, bad. bad memories remain much
more easily than good impressions. a common problem.


ethymology: ludere (Latin) = to play