Moon Landing II: Perspective

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." ~  Neil Armstrong

All talk of the moon landing this week has brought up the idea of perspective for me. 

It's a big world we live in, a big, vast, mysterious, marvellous universe. But then, when we lose sight of this, life becomes so small.

Life must be composed of big matter and small. The mystery and the mundane. But - from what I can see - most people are only concerned with the small. Well, lots of people. The mechanical necessities of existing: food, money, jobs, work, routine, societal status are their ruling concerns. Looking down all the time, they miss all the greatness and illumination of what it's really about.

Seems no one blinks an eye at a star anymore. No one stops to notice the moon. Or give impetus to dreams. Life spinning by us. Life composed of material matter, no mention of the stardust from whence we came. 

Such an existence is not a life, it's just existing. Too much focus on the small things in life leads to mediocrity. Until everything loses its meaning. How empty everything would be then. How all the 'big' talk about life would become irrelevant, relegated to the background, to a bracketed by the way trivial footnote. 

But, 'life I think is no parenthesis' - ee cummings. All these other things are.

It's hard for an idealist to survive in such a harsh realist world at times. Everywhere I look at the moment, miniscule mediocrity, making small of what's really big. Things all skewed out of balance. Someone once said that mediocrity was death to a poet. Of course it is. Because poetry is the complete opposite of mediocrity and meaningless. Not to rant, but sometimes it just sucks when everywhere you turn, you're faced with a big blank wasteland when there's a myriad of starry skies above.

And then reading about Neil Armstrong this week - how it seemed his one great achievement was subsequently eclipsed by the lack of space exploration in the preceding years of the moon landing - has added to my sense of disillusion on the big/small front.  How the amazing feat of stepping on the moon was soon forgotton and faded into the background of materialism and war and a world preoccupied with other more pressing practical agendas.  And how hard that must have been for him. A veritable Icarus of the modern age.

So I guess I'm just wondering how do we surpass it? This alienating insignificance that seems the modern creed. We artists, who feel everything so keenly, including the absence of feeling?

From an early age Armstrong was a pilot first and foremost. He learned to fly a plane before he could drive a car and is quoted as saying, 'pilots take no special joy in walking. Pilots like flying.' And fly they will I suppose, against all the odds. A good maxim which could be applied to every idealist and dreamer.

And now I'm thinking of a quote by ee cummings.  An illustration of this sense of idealism and enthusiasm and curiosity for what life's really about, an inclination to stars. As he says stage right: there's a hell of a good universe next door, let's go!

Let's. Of course I know this. Armstrong knew this, quite literally. Lots of people know this. Lots don't seem to. Or act like they don't. If only they would. If only. Maybe then we'd see life in perspective - appreciate what it is really, first and foremost and finally, ultimately: a brazen and brilliant gift.

star-gaping, still,

~ Siobhán

*Read a tribute to Neil Armstrong here

The Many Consequences of Moonwalking

Afterwards, I wonder

were his days

blank and ill-footed, each choreographed

careful step

nothing to compare with

that one giant leap.

And in the desolate

barren wasteland 

of a material, alien world, no space

for heroes, how he could fly

when everywhere, gravity

was getting heavier.

When the pace of exploration 

and enthusiasm slowed

to a stall.

When eagles’ wings were clipped

and laid carelessly

to rest.

And in his inner landscape

I wonder, was there

tranquility? Or just

craters of doubt

and despair

that could never be filled up.

He must have lived

until the star-scape became a scar,

until the perspective of the green and blue

perfect pea

was thumbed away

by lack of intent.

In a land of small men, he loomed

like a giant.

A satellite circling all lapse

of dreaming, an exclamation point

to the question mark of impossibility –

braving infinity.  

© Siobhán Mc Laughlin ~ August 2012

A Poet And You Don't Even Know It!

Who are poets? How do we identify them, exactly?

It really gets me that people have a preconceived pompous notion of who and what a poet is! How they should look, act, and exactly what age, sex, occupation and personality they should have.  Hmpfh!

Well I can tell you one thing. Forget all the stereotypes of who poets are - what they look like, dress like, talk like, think like etc. The truth is, we are all individual different human beings.

So, to debunk.

We don't wear berets for one. Or cravats. (Well, some of us might, French male poets most likely, but it's technically not required for the job.) The same for goatees, moustaches, beards and ponytails. And FYI, we are not all men. 

And we women poets are not distinguishable by our long hair, hippy clothing, copious amounts of handmade jewellery and refusal of make-up. 

We are not all old and grey and bespectacled. We do not all wear tweed.

We are not all gay, lesbian or trans-sexual.  We are not all lovers or beloved or obsessed with muses.  We are not all sentimental fools.

We are not all loners. We are not all gypsies, tearaways or bohemians. We are not all immune to sports. We are not all geeks. Nerds. Bookworms.  We are not all morbid, manic depressives. We are not all outsiders. Or substance-users. Or unemployed.

We do not all use quills and quote Shakespeare.  We are not all posh or privileged.  We do not all spout whimsy. We do not all carry moleskin notebooks. We are not all academics or retired teachers or elitists.

We don't wander lonely as clouds. We are not all necessarily nature lovers. We are not all airy-fairy.

We are not all social outcasts. We do not wear a permanent pout or thinker pose.  We do not all look frazzled and bewildered. We are not all classical music lovers. We do not all care about iambic pentameter. We do not all take part in poetry readings. We are not all drama kings or queens. 

We are not all part of a political movement. We are not all alienated or isolated. We are not all lost, or lonely. 

We are not all philosophers. We are not all literati. We are not all library enthusiasts.  We are not all pretentious.

We are who we are.

We are all our own individual selves. Most of us are quiet and unassuming. Some of us are chatty. Most of us wear casual clothing. Some of us wear lipstick. Some of us are teenagers, twenty-somethings. Listen to rock music and rap. Drink beer. Are pretty ordinary, when it comes down to it. More of another than other. 

What we do all have in common is our love of language. And our irrepressible desire to express our vision of the world, our reactions to it, in language. We all love words. We all know the power of words. We all have been seduced by what they can do.  We all think in words and feel in words. And we all have a heightened sense of awareness that can only be  satisfied by expressing itself in verse.

The stereotype is wrong. Most of us are poets incognito. Our love for language is an invisible thing. You couldn't pick us out in a crowd if you tried.

You could be standing right next to a poet and not even know it!! (And they could be writing a poem about you in their heads right at that moment and you wouldn't even know it!)

Anybody can be a poet. There are no pre-requisite looks or vibes, quirks or dress codes necessary to distinguish those with a poetic sensibility. It's not what's without, but within.

Remember that.

 ordinary incognito poet,

~ Siobhán

A Writer's Work is Never Done (Or, The Closet Writer's Confession)

~It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. ...I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. ~

Fact 1: a writer's work is never done. Fact 2: A writer's work is never 'seen' to be done or in the doing by other non-writer people.

By that, I mean a writer inhabits a private working sphere. We don't go to an office and clock in for a 9 t0 5 routine, a public 'proper' job so to speak. Our work is not a starched -stiff 'noun', it's not a place we go to where we adopt a professional persona, it's more of a flexible verb, a constant and ongoing process, a purpose-fuelled personal quest.

It's more than work. More than a job. It's a vocation. A pursuit. A pledge. A purpose. A fire. A be-all-and-end-all. It's consuming. It's everything. And that's why we commit everything to it. All hours of the day and night, all energy, all thought space. As Eugene Ionesco said, 'A writer never has a vacation. For a writer life consists of either writing or thinking about writing.' Because it's a passion, an obsession, a calling we have no say in or ability to decline. It is simply, who we are. 

It's true to say that a writer's work is never done. We have no set routines, but we write at all hours, usually into the wee hours and beyond. Instead of 9 to 5, how does 10am-2am sound? Or 2am - 10am? Not even while seated at the computer, but while travelling, eating, doing dishes, having a drink, walking, washing, even sometimes, while chatting to others. We can't switch it off; it's there all the time. Our muse is our demanding (and delightful) boss and when she calls, we drop everything. When it's going good, we don't get paid for overtime or when we manage to get something published, we don't get a double-bonus promotion or an applause. What we do get is an inner satisfaction, a glowing. It's all absorbed into the private world of our writer selves.

And to be a writer is to work in secret. An invisible job almost. No one knows we do it. Because it's done on the side of other things (or as I prefer - other things are done on the side of it.)

It's a silent and secret occupation. Unless you work in journalism, writing is a solitary private activity. Many of your family, friends and peers probably don't know (or don't care) that you do it. When you say you're busy working on something, they fob it off as an excuse - what could you possibly be working on in general leisure time? They don't see you typing frantically into the wee hours. Or if they do, they choose to disregard it, put it down to a hobby, a tic, or a personality default, jeez.

But we writers, we live for the written word; nothing else matters. What other job can compare to it? (Well, except to be an artist of course). It absorbs us. It's our life. So should I not feel particularly wounded when this 'profession' of ours, this purpose, this obsession, this grand raison d'etre - goes under the radar to other people? Like it doesn't count somehow in the great big boring work world of commutes and routines and wages and bosses etc, etc.

Oh but it does. It so does.

How many people out there I wonder, pursue what they really want in this life? Their dream occupation, what it is they really 'ache' for? Or how many just settle for a 9-to-5 - to make use of the ironic phrase -'to make a living'? How can you really 'live' if you're not doing what it is you yearn to be doing here in this life? What really makes you come alive? You can exist sure, but not live. And whatever your choice of dream-job, regardless of how practical or impractical it seems (-excuses made up be people who are afraid ), it can be done. And it matters.

Sometimes I feel like a closet writer. Like I'm two people: my public job persona (tutoring/teaching/proofreading/whatever) and then my private writing persona, the thing that I really want to pursue, the thing that defines who I am, who I want to be. And sometimes it gets overshadowed by the 'day-job'. Darn, I feel almost like Clark Kent, who had a superhero alter-ego to tend to! (Sudden image of all us writers rip-revealing a W-emblazoned t-shirt beneath our everyday disguises...) Well, look where Metropolis would have been if he'd neglected to attend to that secret profession! Because to him it wasn't a duty or a job, it was who he was. So when people dismiss what I do, it feels like they're dismissing not just my 'work', but who I am. Because you see, 'all writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation - it is the Self escaping into the open'. (- EB White).

So instead of succumbing to my day job charade, I wish I could proclaim to the world: look here, I'M A WRITER, a writer you know, and I WRITE!!! (to the theme tune of Superman - do-do-do-dododododo preferably....) I write every day, every night, for publication, for purpose, sometimes just for sanity, sometimes just to drop a penny wish into the great big well of the universe, but - THAT'S MY WORK. Now next time you ask what I'm doing, please respect when I say I'm busy. Because I am. It might be invisible work to you, but not to me. It's as damn important to me as saving the world was to Superman! So please - do not disturb!!!!!

Yes, a coming out of the closet of sorts. Even though it probably would be met with dismissal, indifference or contempt, it would be worth it. I guess that's what I'm partly doing here in this post. And what I intend on doing in the non-digital world soon. There's only so much Clark Kent caper a girl can take.....

~ Siobhán.

Life is More True than Reason will Deceive: EE Cummings & a Riposte to Reason!

“existing's tricky:but to live's a gift” 

  

Here I am writing against another tirade of cynicism, logic, reason and blah blah blah boring blasé haggering. I've been trying to weather the insistent downpouring of doubt upon my parade, naysayers and their woeful lamentations with a negative force of 10 on the Richter mood scale. Oh. And oh.

But here - a realisation - thank God I'm not a logical, practical, realist person! Life would be so boring and bland.  Not this coloured, reeling, alchemal world of imagination that mine is. 

Persistently practical people questioning all the great absolutes of living get on my nerves just a tad.  I believe in these wholes. These absolutes of beauty and possibilities and that life is to be lived, not analysed away - 'beware of heartless them/(given the scalpel, they dissect a kiss/or, sold the reason, they undream a dream) Yes, thank you EE Cummings. If it wasn't for poetry, I'd lose my footing at times in their cynical trenches. 

Because poetry is the one solid foundation of proof against these practical, science-wielding, logical lacklustre people. It proves that life is here for the living, enjoying, appreciating. Why should everything be explained and devalued and delineated into addings-up and making sense, and being 'realistic.' Realism will give you life in 2d; imagination a wonderful 3D ride. 

  

Poetry knows how it is. And I'm going to include some poems here by EE Cummings, avant-garde poet extraordinaire and one of my favourite poets ever. One of the reasons why I love this poet is because of the freedom and energy of his poems. In his life and his writing, he placed primary emphasis on feeling rather than thinking: he maintained that to be 'Alive' was to live at a heightened emotional intensity and, conversely, that merely to exist was the equivalent of being 'dead'. Hear hear! All ye logical, practical, tied-to-rules and regimented lives people, take note! 

His unique stylistic technique of lower-casing, jumbled-up syntax and lack of punctuation adds to the freestyle element - it was a form of rebellion for him against traditional forms and their restrictions both in life and in art.  (It was also a way of representing feeling first, rather than meaning - what was his main thematic interest. The poems may not make 'sense' on a 'logical' level at first glance, but they do evoke a powerful emotional response which contributes to an altogether more thorough understanding, ie a visceral, intellectual and emotional one. Indeed, a test to see whether you're a person of reason or passionate persuasions -  if you like his poetry or not!) 

And here, I'm including these poems as a form of rebellion for me, against the traditional restrictions being lashed upon not just me, but all free-spirited thinkers, who prefer to revel and appreciate and believe in what life has to offer - 'feeling first'; rather than analysing and debunking and explaining it all away with reason's steam-roller 'sense', doubt's dismissal and logic's nit-picking over meaning.

Someone once said that reading a poem a day is like taking a vitamin for the soul, well if that is the case, reading an EE Cummings poem a day must be equivalent to downing a mutli-vitamin tonic for living! He valued spontaneity and creativity above all else, and this comes across so energetically in his poems, that they seem to leap off the page and smack you in the face with a burst of blooms and smiles. Cummings had a Romantic view of life: his preference for emotion over reason, the natural life rather than the civilized life with all its complexities, mystery rather than certainty, poetry rather than science.

Those who pay attention to 'the syntax of things', as he puts it, will never truly or fully live. 'Deeper is life than lose, higher than have.' There's more to life than societal structures, set-ups, should-dos. And I know this, but sometimes I need reminding, whilst in the face of so much superficial, scientific, statistical, society-pleasing, spirit-sapping haranguing.

So thanks to reading some more EE, now maybe I can turn my mind to things like the importance of daffodils (which are seriusly underrated- who can gauge the full effect of their sunny disposition on passers-by - look at Wordsworth!) and all such Spring wonder, and silence the tut-tutting of tiresome (tired) critics.

So, let this post be for appreciating. For knocking reason on the head and glorying in the wonder of Spring and new sun and blue skies and daffodils and those topsy-turvy non-sensical feelings we get that we can't explain but take such joy in, the excitement of a hope tugging on our mind like a balloon, a pursuit of a possibility against all the odds, an indulging in a non-logical luxury, a bluebird dream in the heart coming to the hand, a belief in over-the-rainbow states of mind, a life where the small things don't overwhelm the big and smiles trump frowns and wishes win hands down on practical woes. There.


Stay tuned for more EE Cummings coming soon...

~ Siobhán.

Shame on all cynics and analytical reasoners! -

since feeling is first - ee cummings

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you; 

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world 

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
- the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says 

we are for each other; then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph 

And death i think is no parenthesis 

You're never foolish to appreciate everyday wonder and revel in it! :

may my heart always be open - ee cummings

may my heart always be open to little birds who are the secrets of living whatever they sing is better than to know and if men should not hear them men are old may my mind stroll about hungry and fearless and thirsty and supple and even if it's sunday may i be wrong for whenever men are right they are not young and may myself do nothing usefully and love yourself so more than truly there's never been quite such a fool who could fail pulling all the sky over him with one smile
And finally, my mantra against realism. Reason is not the means to understand life!! Life is a mystery, a wonder, an exhilaration to be felt and appreciated and awed, not reduced by the shackles of reason:

life is more true - ee cummings 

life is more true than reason will deceive

(more secret or than madness did reveal)
deeper is life than lose:higher than have
–but beauty is more each than living’s all

multiplied with infinity sans if
the mightiest meditations of mankind
cancelled are by one merely opening leaf
(beyond whose nearness there is no beyond)

or does some littler bird than eyes can learn
look up to silence and completely sing?
futures are obsolete:pasts are unborn
(here less than nothing’s more than everything)

death,as men call him, ends what they call men
-but beauty is more now than dying’s when

Why I Write - Writers (and Me) on Writing

This blog has been a long time coming. Why? Because it's important.  And here it is: Why do I write? Why do you write? Why do writers write exactly?

Is it to make a living - albeit a very random and penniless one? To provide a public podium for our frolicking imaginations? Because we're wordy and want somewhere to indulge our verbal acrobatics? To dictate to the masses? On a notion, a whim, a wish? To make ourselves heard? To have the last word?

Writing is not just a pastime, a hobby, or indeed a career. It's a passion. A pursuit against all odds of ordinary. Not the shallow stereotype of  scribbling and doodling and making up stories to entertain, it's more about engaging with the world, responding to it and creating. It's not trivial, it's powerful. 

 

It's hard to explain - exactly. There's a lot to it. I've tried to explain it to people and I can never seem to get across how important, essential it is. Most writers, serious writers, would say that they feel they have to write, that it's an inner essential need, as necessary as breathing. 

Granted, there are 'writers' who engage in the art of the pen for entertainment sake only. Those who engage in writing from time-to-time, a hobby. And on an echoing note, there seems to be a stereotypical consensus out there that writing is something you take up  only when older, as retirement recreation, like knitting. (I say this as it seems every writing group I've ever attended has been populated mainly with older members.) But why? Some of the greatest writers have been and are young writers. Those who have been passionate about the craft since they first put pen to paper in single digits. Today young writers are clearing the score-board - Zadie Smith for example and this year's mid-twenties Orange prize winner, Tea Obreht (and Cecelia Ahern, dare I say it, one of the wealthiest and youngest writers around, regardless of her chick-lit status). Wilfred Owen was only in  his early twenties when he wrote what is today considered some of the greatest war poetry ever.  Keats left a legacy behind him after his death at twenty-five. Seamus Heaney was peddling verses at school, as were the Bronte sisters and Jane Austen when she was just a young woman on the threshold of adulthood... Need I go on?

Anyway, back to topic - Why do I write? Not as a hobby. I have enough other hobbies. Reading is a hobby. But writing is not. Writing is more important than a hobby, more demanding, more purposeful. Writing is the career I'm chasing, but more than that too, it's also a fulfillment of a kind, of every kind. A fire that I've lit and tended to and if I let go out, I'll turn to ashes and embers in its wake. It's a need, a devotion, above all else.

And why do writers write? Margaret Atwood, one of my favourite writers is someone who has managed to express this 'need' for writing. She has been writing since her youth, as most great writers have been. In her book on writing  'Negotiating With the Dead', she examines the whole business of writing, the whys and whats and hows on a psychological level, and one memorable passage where she pieces together all the reasons for writing she has ever heard from writers of all shapes and sizes goes as follows:
 
'To record the world as it is. To set  down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten. To satisfy my desire for revenge. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. To produce order out of chaos. To delight and instruct (not often found after the twentieth century, or not in that form.) To please myself. To express myself. To express myself beautifully. To create a perfect work of art. To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or - the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists - vice versa. To hold a mirror up to Nature. To hold a mirror up to the reader. To paint a portrait of society and its ills. To express the unexpressed life of the masses. To name the hitherto unnamed. To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor. To thumb my nose at Death. To make money so my children could have shoes. To make money so I could sneer at those who formerly sneered at me. To show the bastards. Because to create is human. Because to create is Godlike. Because I hated the idea of having a job. To say a new word. To make a new thing. To create a national consciousness, or a national conscience. To justify my failures in school. To justify my own view of myself and my life, because I couldn't be a 'writer' unless I actually did some writing. To make myself appear more interesting than I actually was. To attract the love of a beautiful woman. To attract the love of any woman at all. To attract the love of a beautiful man. To rectify the imperfections of my miserable childhood. To thwart my parents. To spin a fascinating tale. To amuse and please the reader. To amuse and please myself. To pass the time, even though it would have passed anyway. Graphomania. Compulsive logorrhea. Because I was driven to it by some force outside of my control.  Because I was possessed. Because an angel dictated to me. Because I fell into the embrace of the muse. Because I got pregnant by the Muse and needed to give birth to a book (an interesting piece of cross-dressing, indulged in by male writers of the seventeenth century). To serve Art. To serve the Collective Unconscious. To serve History. To justify the ways of God towards man. To act out antisocial behaviour for which I would have been punished in real life. To master a craft so I could generate texts (a recent entry). To subvert the Establishment. To demonstrate that whatever is, is right. To experiment with new forms of perception. To create a recreational boudoir so the reader could go into it and have fun (translated from a Czech newspaper). Because the story took hold of me and wouldn't let me go (the Ancient Mariner defense). To search for understanding of the reader and myself. To cope with my depression. For my children. To make a name that would survive death. To defend a minority group or oppressed class. To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. To epose appalling wrongs or atrocities. To record the times through which I have lived. To bear witness to horrifying events I have survived. To speak for the dead. To celebrate life in all its complexity. To praise the universe. To allow for the possibility of hope and redemption. To give back something of what has been given to me. '


Phew! That's a mighty long list, but no doubt an accurate one, of both lowly and lofty reasons. Margaret Atwood herself, leans to the idea of writing as a way of lighting up the 'darkness.' She also notes the example of Samuel Beckett, who famously said that writing was all he was good for. And Flaubert, who said that you will always write the greatest for yourself, and not any audience.

Hmmm. So many different reasons, seemingly correlating to the literature status sought,  those with lowly ideals and those with lofty ones. Me? I write on an impulse, and electrifying urge.  Like Lord Byron, to clear all the clutter out of my head and onto the page where it becomes legible (lest I go mad in its cerebral  crowding and in-squabbling).  To define things: the world, states of emotion, truths, myself. 'To give to airy nothing a local habitation.'  Because I'm head-over-heels in love with language. Because I'd like to spend every spare moment  I have tinkering at the treasure of words and nothing else. Because it's a fire that needs to be fed. Because writing makes things matter.

Why do we write? As Rilke put so beautifully, in every serious wannabe-writer's handbook - 'Letters to a Young Poet - 'This above all - ask yourself in the stillest hour of the night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple 'I must', then build your life according to this necessity...'

And the answer is a resounding YES - for those of us who are serious about writing.  The lofty ones, the committed ones, the do-or-die ones. The ones who may have it tougher, struggle to make a writerly living, whose futures consist of garrets and solitary scribbling, who go to writer-groups for literary criticism not tea and chit-chat, who  painstakingly ponder on the meaning and magic of manuscripts, rather then churning out lite, bright, by the bundle bestsellers.  Oh well, we have the deep soul solace of words, where they merely skim the surface.

(Maybe I've left out some quotable writers on this million-dollar question, have I? Anyone out there able to quote some more?) Or better yet, add some new reasons to this treatise I've set out??  And you fellow lofty writers out there - share your aspirations! Now that I've laid down my gramophone, I'm all ears as always...


wondering and pondering and writing on,


~ Siobhán.