Rodak's Writings: Solipsist?

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Possibly because of my persistence in defending the righteousness of operating as a sola scriptura Protestant; or possibly because I’m just a stubborn and hyper-opinionated contrarian, Tom--Keeper of the Keys at Disputations—has not been able, from time to time, to resist the temptation to characterize your humble host as a solipsist. Say what?

I must admit that I was a bit miffed--after I looked the word up and found out what Tom was talking about. Then again, if one gets a good whiff of the attitude expressed in the following old poem, one might be prompted to allow the possibility (slight though it might be) that old Tom is, after all, a just taxonomist.

Not Asking Much

I’ll eat my strained prunes
if you let Grandma make me God.

I’ll wear a bright sign
and sing in the streets:
Don’t work! Don’t vote! Suicide is out!
Go home! Take a bath with a friend!
Drink wine! Make love!
For, verily, as the last virgin succumbeth
it trippeth some kind of lever, et voilà!
the Apocalypth!

Judgement cometh! Take a break!
Baptize thyself in funky waters!

Yea, verily, I’d be God, alright!

(But then the old, beat-black, funk-dipped
wino shuffled up to the candy store counter, and said—
Don’ tell me! I knows! said—
Jeezis maybe went up that tree a Englishman, o’what’evah,
but he come back down a nig-gah!)

Redemption, is this your price?
To be pulled by the ear down Broadway
by some huge mutha Japanese boom-box?

No?

Then behold!—
TV addicts in their hundreds of millions,
straining to act as one;
going mad with frustration,
‘cuz the thing’s not perfected!

Behold!—
Within the pillar’d alabaster breast
of every stout Rotarian sire beats—
paper-thin—the hive-swelling communal heart
of a retooled Red Chinese cadre!

So, come! (Ye perfect capitalists!)
Come! (Ye cannibals of the future!)
Truth is but a lamb in the swamp!

Come dance on my funky grave!
Come eat my dust!
Choke!

Now try to scream.

x …All I want for this moment,
x for the price of this moment spent
x on a single freaking tear,
x is a little mercy:
x is to be able to stand
x on line down at the supermarket,
x perfect in patience,
x filled with joy
x and in awe of existence…

Grandma!
Is this too much to ask?

Then, Grandma, stuff thy strained prunes.
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In the final anaysis, however, my interpretation would be that I’m exonerated by the bit about the supermarket..

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Reflections: In the Red

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The Red Mandala was created long ago in a notebook, freehand, in red ballpoint pen. When it was finished, and I began to contemplate it, I was given this message:

This figure is a self-portrait; each of its formal imperfections maps a corresponding flaw in your soul.


Ah-so.

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Readings: Blaise Cendrars

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If you happened to have dropped by this site a couple of weeks back, you may have seen one or more of the posts I put up quoting from Henry Miller’s excellent book, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. In that book (and probably in others), Miller touts the writings of the French novelist, Blaise Cendrars. Having never read any Cendrars, Miller’s endorsement sent me off to the stacks, resolved to fill this gap in my cultural heritage. I came away from the library with two books by Cendrars: The Confessions of Dan Yack; and Moravagine.

Of the former, the less said the better. The latter is a more interesting and substantial work. In the end, despite Miller’s enthusiasm for Cendrars and my enthusiasm for Miller, I can’t say that reading these two works has left me with any desire to pursue further studies concerning the fiction of Cendrars: c’est fini.

In Moravagine, he does manage to create one of the most cynical, amoral protagonists that I’ve ever encountered. Some thought typical of this character is presented below:

…In the last analysis scientific knowledge is negative. The latest discoveries of science as well as its most stable and thoroughly proven laws, are just sufficient to allow us to demonstrate the futility of any attempt to explain the universe rationally, and the basic folly of all abstract notions. We can now put our metaphysics away in the museum of international folklore, we can confound all a priori ideas. How and why have become idle, idiotic questions. All that we can admit or affirm, the only synthesis, is the absurdity of being, of the universe, of life. If one wants to live one is better to incline towards imbecility than intelligence, and live only in the absurd. Intelligence consists of eating stars and turning them into dung. And the universe, at the most optimistic estimate, is nothing but God’s digestive system.

And with that, I toss Monsieur Cendrars into the oubliette.

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Rodak's Renderings: Sky Pilot

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Remembrances: Boxing Backwards

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“Boxing Backwards” is the title that I gave to a collection of my poems, mostly composed after my move from New York City to Ohio in the early 1990s. The words are taken from a line in a poem, (to which I link you here) which I ended up not including in the collection. It was not that I felt that the poem didn’t work. Its exclusion was based upon my decision that the tortured syntax and neologistic compounds used in the poem (originally titled “In Retrospect: 1994”) clashed with the style of the bulk of the works. Structurally, this poem is an example of an experimental form that I created and used in the composition of a dozen or so other poems which were included in the collection. Its form is based on a strict linear syllable count, repeated in two stanzas of twelve lines each. The syllable count forces word choice and presents the poet with interesting problems of creative composition.

The term “boxing backwards” functions for me on a couple of different levels of meaning. In a pugilistic sense, if one finds that life is landing a series of sharp jabs to one’s chin, while one flails ineffectively, unable either to counterpunch or to mount a defense, one is soon on the retreat—“boxing backwards” into the ropes. On a more immediate level, with reference to the afore-mentioned move from NYC to Ohio, “boxing backwards” suggests the unpacking of the corrugated cardboard boxes into which the treasures and detritus of the life one has left behind had been packed for the move. As one opens the boxes and digs down through layers of documents and other items, one travels “backwards” through time and the boxes, deluged by memories of things past.

As I stated at the conclusion of a recent post, having become increasingly dissatisfied with dissecting the present world, where very little that is good—and less that is worth discussing—is happening, I have instead turned to the past. I have been going through the physical boxes stored in my closet—boxing backwards—and building blog posts around the items found therein.

As some of my Facebook friends have already seen, one category of “treasures” found in a box of very old items was certain pages torn out of some of my college notebooks (1965-1969), the margins of which are adorned with pencil, felt-tip, or ballpoint pen doodles made while obviously paying less than rapt attention to the words of my teachers. I will, for awhile, be using some of these doodles to illuminate selected blog posts. The doodles will most likely have nothing at all to do with the content of the post of above which they appear (as the one on this post does not); they will be art for art’s sake.

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Reflections: Pigging Out

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The question was never whether natural cycles of climate change occur. The question is, rather, whether human activity will push a naturally occurring climate trend a couple of ticks past a tipping point which would result in a global disaster for the unnaturally huge current human population.

As things stand with Man, however, a significant human die-off could be considered quite desirable.

So, as they say out in pork country, Happy Thanksgiving, m**therf***ers.

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Remembrances: In the Desert

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Below is another poem from the Rodak archives, composed for the same woman to whom this previously posted poem was addressed. This one is obviously more appropriate to her then still embryonic vocation as a rabbi:


Song for Leah

Leah, my face in your eyes,
dark stars, flashing on and off,
as night more slowly turns to day
than love devolves into sorrow.

Leah, your name is lovely
to my tongue. I do not hate you.
Though I loved your sister first,
I cherish all that you have borne for me.

Leah, your lips are dry,
chapped, as if in fever.
But your proud brow is cool,
smooth as a patriarch’s proscription.

Leah, is it your own?
Or is it Laban’s will,
rising like Sinai
behind your eyes?

Leah, time's bright eye
has focused too acutely,
parching love’s most tender flesh,
leaving my heart a desert place.

Leah, you show me out.
You fix the latch.
You shoot the bolt.
Life is a caravan, departing unladen.

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The photograph, taken during my travels to the Holy Land, back in the day when “Leah” was more recently in my life, is of the desert near the Dead Sea.

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