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A Psalm of Life

What The Heart Of The Young Man Said To The Psalmist.

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, in The Knickerbocker, Volume 12, #1, July 1838.
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  • place: Golden, Colorado

Mr. Blake shouts in my ear (again)

Timely advice, as I contemplate the next step away from the constrictions, and the flaccid and unimaginative management of the CGS — a small echo of how work-life went at UNOCAL all those years ago. Maybe this is how organizations fail. Or that the internal release to real life is beginning. (Can the fear be assuaged? Yes.) Lifetime is better spent in other ways. Because the spending is limited and slipping away.

Conversations with Volker expand to some of the practicalities of .de/.pt residency along with the contingencies of what is possible on a return to Europe. Reactivating human connections with UdK-Berlin, Uni-Bremen, Muthesius Kunst Hochschule, Aalto University, LHÍ, and the wider cultural sphere, yes.

But you have so generously and openly desired that I will divide my griefs with you, that I cannot hide what it has now become my duty to explain. My unhappiness has arisen from a source which, if explored too narrowly, might hurt my pecuniary circumstances; as my dependence is on engraving at present, and particularly on the engravings I have in hand for Mr. Hayley: and I find on all hands great objections to my doing anything but the mere drudgery of business, and intimations that if I do not confine myself to this, I shall not live. This has always pursued me. You will understand by this the source of all my uneasiness. This from Johnson and Fuseli brought me down here, and this from Mr. H. will bring me back again. For that I cannot live without doing my duty to lay up treasures in heaven is certain and determined, and to this I have long made up my mind. And why this should be made an objection to me, while drunkenness, lewdness, gluttony, and even idleness itself, do not hurt other men, let Satan himself explain. The thing I have most at heart — more than life, or all that seems to make life comfortable without — is the interest of true religion and science. And whenever anything appears to affect that interest … it gives me the greatest of torments. I am not ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what ought to be told: that I am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly. But the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble or care. Temptations are on the right hand and on the left. Behind, the sea of time and space roars and follows swiftly. He who keeps not right onwards is lost; and if our footsteps slide in clay, how can we do otherwise than fear and tremble? But I should not have troubled you with this account of my spiritual state, unless it had been necessary in explaining the actual cause of my uneasiness, into which you are so kind as to inquire; for I never obtrude such things on others unless questioned, and then I never disguise the truth. But if we fear to do the dictates of our angels, and tremble at the tasks set before us; if we refuse to do spiritual acts because of natural fears or natural desires, who can describe the dismal torments of such a state! I too well remember the threats I heard! — “If you, who are organized by Divine Providence for spiritual communion, refuse, and bury your talent in the earth, even though you should want natural bread, sorrow and desperation pursue you through life, and after death shame and confusion of face to eternity. Everyone in eternity will leave you, aghast at the man who was crowned with glory and honour by his brethren, and betrayed their cause to their enemies. You will be called the base Judas who betrayed his friend!” Such words would make any stout man tremble, and how then could I be at ease? But I am now no longer in that state, and now go on again with my task, fearless, though my path is difficult. I have no fear of stumbling while I keep it.
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  • place: Louisville, Colorado

dear Jules is gone

death

Julietta Luna Natalia (12 December 1999 — 04 March 2019)

Julietta Luna, Louisville, Colorado, December 2017 (Credit: Dona Laurita)

Can there be words? Words that aid in sharing the loss, words that distribute the vast sorrow among those remaining. Can all souls on the planet share this terrible passing, with sighing, with singing, with tears, with a rage against the dying of this singular Light?

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  • place: somewhere in the Southwest

An excerpt from “The Tourist”

One of the key lines in the movie “Wall Street” is delivered by Father Martin Sheen: “It is good for people to spend their lives creating, not living off the buying and selling of others.” Anthony Zega uses the same concepts when describing the basic conflict between the Tourist and the Indian: “Creation” and “The Market.”

Two years ago, Anthony moved from his home in Princeton, New Jersey to Colorado, his base from which to visit reservations throughout the West. Anthony is searching for his own spiritual grounding and we are pleased that he will be sharing the information he finds with the readers of The New Common Good.

We are pleased to introduce Anthony Zega who will act as a Western correspondent for this publication. We will present his photographs, articles, and interviews as part of our investigation of Native America. more “An excerpt from “The Tourist””

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  • place: Online

Je suis ma propre muse

or tu ne es pas ma muse

or je suis amusé par ma propre muse étant

or ma muse précédente ne me divertit

or muse amusante, disparue

or muse amusante, parti, je m’amuse

yes, that’s it. back to the steady-state of being, for a change. At least I’ll be able to get *some* work done!

A dolorous combination of caprice along with my own inability to temper reactions to horrific stories of past abuse — perhaps the subtext of an upcoming novella or multi-media work exploring how humans can say anything and how their words needn’t be connected to actions of consequence: hardly moving the neurons necessary to produce diaphragmatic contractions and subsequent guttural exhalations. Talk is cheap. Lived life is the ultimate test of … life and, consequently of heart.

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The (Tantric) Science of Sound

by Rooji Saluja

In tantra, there exists an entire science that makes use of sound energy in spiritual practice. Mantras are sonic vehicles that encapsulate mystical energy and direct it towards specific aims.

How does sound affect us? Try this. Close your eyes and imagine screeching cars, blaring horns and hooting train carriages. What do you feel? Your pulse quickens, heartbeat races and blood seems to be gushing towards the heart. Now change the scene. Imagine the sound of water gushing gently over the pebbles, and a thousand anklets beating against the soft wind, in tune with the flowing stream. At once, a calm, serene feeling takes over, lulling your senses to a soft awareness. This is the magic of sound.

Vedic scholar and author Dr David Frawley in Ayurveda and the Mind argues that there is a background sound pattern to our consciousness. It may be a song we have just heard, or the sound bytes from a painful or pleasurable event. Some movement of sound is always going on inside us. Like rhythm in music, it determines the rhythm of our consciousness. Furthermore sound is the vehicle for emotion, which we can either reinforce or release. We sing with joy, shout in anger, cry in sorrow and groan in pain. Thus each emotion corresponds to a particular kind of sound, and intensified emotions usually demand stronger sounds. more “The (Tantric) Science of Sound”

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Rue L’err

Human selfishness: as the ruler: as the authority:
expands, extends itself: un-til: *time:*
intimate and ganglionic:
arrests: forgets it.

*Ru-ler : rue l’err :*
the smile-after: painted *over* sorrow.

****/Z*

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  • place: Berlin, Germany

re-asia

head to the HKW for another opening, this time an Asian exhibition, Re-Imagining Asia. happen to run into Stephen, and will get together with him later in the month to catch up on things. aside from the numerous online events I’ve jumped into when he was at V2, I haven’t seen him f2f since Tornio in 1999 or so when he and Nina came through with a collection of Canadian experimental films that they screened to an unsuspecting audience at the Polytech. they were on their way further north researching their Aurora project. will have to ask him about what happened to that.

the most intriguing work there not simply how it dominated the entire space, but for the work it was, especially reflecting the previous evening at Alnatura. the work, Wu jin qi young, translated as Waste Not, by artist Song Dong, is a collaboration with his mother:

On 28 February 2008, the Chinese artist Song Dong, from the People’s Republic of China, started erecting his room-filling installation ‘Waste Not’ in the Foyer of the House of World Cultures. It is his parents’ house, which fell victim to urban planning in China and is now being reconstructed together with its entire inventory in the Foyer.

Wu jin qi young describes the philosophy of life of an entire generation of ordinary people in China who have grown up with the experience of war, expulsion, starvation and constant shortages of goods. Song Dong’s mother belongs to this generation. And one can imagine all the things that have accumulated in her house over the decades. When his father died in 2002 and his mother was filled by despair as a result, Song Dong tells us: “Art was my last hope. And by helping me with my art, my mother was gradually able to shake off her sorrows.” The two of them worked together on the concept for “Waste Not.” This not only helped his mother to work through her problems, but also to emancipate herself from a household that was growing out of control. The result is both impressive and depressing, with the seemingly countless toys, items of clothing, buttons, ballpoint pens, cupboards, remnants of materials, bags, pots, tubs, toothpaste tubes, etc. are lined up alongside one another like stock. In the Song Dong’s hands, the entire construction becomes an artifact; he creates multilayer archives full of obsolete Chinese products and manifestations of past living conditions.

we are suspended in a sea of stuff. certainly the Confucian pathway would show some relief, eh? imagine a similar house in the US, that generation is almost gone in the US, the ones who grew up in the Great Depression. but perhaps another will come down the long road of history along which we spend a little time.

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

John Francis Wester 1958 – 2006

John Wester Learn sorrowfully from the network (from Karen (T.)) of another passing. John Wester was a great friend from junior and senior high days. we maintained contact after the college diaspora and when we were both living in Los Angeles after college (he doing his law degree, me finishing my tenure with corporate oil) and later through email, thinking that at one point we would cross paths. an obituary is a terse framework that little shows the life, only the social situation. I’ll add some words and, if I can find some, photos soon. Karen calls — the first time we have spoken in, what, maybe 30 years? nah, a few less than that. it is strange and nice to hear a voice that slowly stirs older memories — of those humid summer days down at the North Shore dock of what was a not very large lake in one of the first planned communities of the 1970’s, Montgomery Village. I would cycle down Brink Road from home to the Village on occasional summer days before a drivers license made more of the world available. At the dock, John, Richard, Taryn, Karen, Mark, Gary, Bruce, Sharon, and others would hang out — some of them working (boat rentals), some like myself, just hunting for summer friendship. more “John Francis Wester 1958 – 2006”

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  • place: Prescott, Arizona

local color

If thou art worn and hard beset
With sorrows that thou wouldst forget,
If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep
Thy heart from fainting and thy soul from sleep,
Go to the woods and hills! No tears
Dim the sweet look that Nature wears.
— Longfellow

i.e., get the hell out of town!