HAFIZ - A POEM

tomb of hafiz, shiraz, iran

IN A HANDFUL OF GOD

                               by Hafiz (1320-1389)

Poetry reveals that there is no empty space.

When your truth foresakes its shyness,

When your fears surrender to your strengths,

 You will begin to experience

That all existence

Is a teeming sea of infinite life.

In a handful of ocean water

You could not count all the finely tuned

Musicians

Who are acting stoned

For very intelligent and sane reasons

ANd of course are becoming extremely sweet

And wild.

In a handful of the sky and earth,

In a handful of God,

We cannot count

All the ecstatic lovers who are dancing there

Behind the mysterious veil.

True art reveals there is no void

Or darkness.

There is no loneliness to the clear-eyed mystic

In this luminous, brimming

Playful world.

|

:

|

                                    tr  by H. Wilberforce Clarke

                                 and Daniel Ladinsky

*

TALLADEGA 2012

     'that's talladega, baby.' darrell waltrip


Yesterday's race was the 2.5 mi track at Talladega, Alabama. It looked like every redneck in the South was there. Talladega is a big race of endurance for the cars. They top 200 about every lap in the straight stretch and don't have to slow down very far to run through the curves. The issue every driver dealt with in this race was motor overheating. They run wide open for several hours. I can't help but appreciate the drivers, the mechanics who build the cars and keep the motor going. I've never been one to get carried away with sports and winning games, though since watching every race this season I've begun to see subtleties, strategies, learning about the cars. I've come to see the cars as 4-wheel motorcycles inside a light-weight plastic shell and a cage of roll bars running on an exquisitely crafted motor that is eight cylinders to the motorcycle's two. The drivers of these cars have to be young to be able to think fast enough to drive in a pack of cars, bumper to bumper, side to side, at 190mph, going through the curves in a tight pack. I've an idea if I were to get in one of those cars and told to give it just a little bit of gas to get going, I'd smoke the tires and spin in circles like the winner does at the end of the race. He does it with intent. I'd do it by mistake.


A few days ago, Thursday maybe, talking with somebody, I forget who, I was told that people who watch car races want to see somebody die. I've heard that cliche so many times, the only thing it tells me is this individual has no idea what he's talking about. Go easy on him, because he's talking out his ass and doesn't know it. I used to attempt to explain that drivers very seldom die in a crash anymore. The framework of the cars is a cage of rollbars. It can roll for a mile, fly through the air, spin, be hit by other cars. The driver is most often safe. He crawls out the window at the end of a crash and the crowd cheers for him making it. There might be a few people wanting to see somebody die, but the crowd did not cheer when they found out Earnhardt was dead.


His was a freak accident, so much so it seemed awfully karmic. He would not have been hurt at all had he worn his head brace, a relatively new item that prevents the neck from being snapped to left, right or back. Speaking for myself, I prefer a race without wrecks. I prefer to see a driver crawl out the side window than being cut out by welding torch and loaded into an ambulance. The thousands of people there watching prefer to see the driver emerge unhurt. Sometimes they're a little wobbly like Montoya a few weeks ago when he skidded directly into the back of a truck with a huge tank of jet fuel in it for drying the track. Big ball of fire. By the time the car came to a rest in the grass, the front and back parts of the car were gone. Only the cab and frame was left. He walked away, though not without a little bit of a wobble he couldn't control.


I like to watch the cars run and see the drivers maneuver the cars in relation to each other. Yesterday's race had a racing dynamic about it I've not seen much of, or any of. I'd seen cars push others, a team mate's car, without knowing why. Yesterday's race saw cars run tandem like that so frequently it became the nature of the race. I saw that two cars running together, one pushing the other, at 200mph two cars can indeed run faster than one. I saw two running side by side several times, and a team mate come from behind and give one a push and they move on ahead. It's like going into a new gear. Another thing I've learned is when the cars are going in the 190s, one taps the outside of another car's bumper, he loses traction, sometimes both lose traction, smoking tires, car parts flying, hoods flapping, fenders gone, screaming tires. Several cars out of the race. One car pushes another by the middle of both bumpers. Having some idea of what a squeeze that is at 200 to pull that off and not lose traction. I call it skillful driving. Like when Kurt Busch loses traction, I've seen him time after time keep it in the road, catch traction again and go.


I've learned to appreciate nearly immaculate skill at car driving. I heard Jr Johnson (a driver from the early years of nascar) say when asked about today's drivers, "They're just boys." By a mountain man's assessment, a man from another time where an 18 year old is a man. In the mountains, by the time a boy is 18 he is rugged, will hurt you in a fight even if you win, backs down from nothing, is a genuine marksman with a rifle and is unafraid to use it. In relation to Jr Johnson and Curtis Turner, mountain men who grew up running liquor. Outrunning highway patrol and Blue Ridge Parkway rangers was their fun. Everything is different now from what it was then. People are not as rough and rugged as in the old farming days in these mountains. Mountain boys now grow up playing video games and watching Sponge Bob Square Pants, a talking sponge that wears clothes. My translation of  Johnson was saying into my language was there are so many generation gaps between him and today's drivers, they're another breed of human. I don't know about Jeff Gordon's life, but I doubt he grew up running liquor. The men today have their own idea of what constitutes a man. It's not nearly as hard edged as Johnson's.


Justin had a bow tournament yesterday that started at the same time as the race. His tv is set to record the races. We started watching it around 8. When it was down to about 20 laps to go, when it was really getting good with some serious driving going on, the recording ended. No getting it back. He found a place that told the race results. Brad Keselowski won. I have to say in this race the best driver in the best car won. He out drove and out strategized everyone else. There might be drivers that could be said to be "better" drivers, but not in that race. He won it straight out. The one wreck of the race didn't involve him. The race was over before we started watching it, and neither of us looked ahead to see the top 10. Takes the fun out of it. I like the tension of not knowing who might win. Up to the last centimeter at the finish line, anything can happen at any time. I've seen them run out of gas coming out of the last curve or have a tire blow out in that last stretch. Earnhardt Sr had his wreck in that last stretch, on his way to winning Daytona again. As in life, what's ahead in a race cannot be anticipated because every second anything can happen.

* 

PERIGEE FULL MOON HOWL

tea bag blinders

The Super Moon is at Perigee right now. I went out to have a look earlier, but the clouds were so thick and getting thicker that by the time the moon rose it was behind the clouds. Oh well. I was double-checking the good sense in making it a point to see something like that. It's cool. I don't often see the planet Mercury and when I do, it feels like a special moment, one of very few in my lifetime, two that I recall. In one way it seems boring to take an interest in seeing the moon when it's biggest in its orbit. In another way, it strikes me interesting to note such a thing about our earth's companion. I missed the Super Moon rise and never even got to see it in the sky. It's not like I've never seen the moon or that this night is more important a time to see it than any other. It's not. It's just one possible moment to see it, but not tonight.


Earlier, I put my copy of Lauryn Hill's mtv unplugged video into the dvd player. She was lovely. Then I put The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill on the sound system. In the time it was winning all the music awards, she said she recorded it for 500 people and it became a big seller and award winner. She seemed to be embarrassed by winning the awards. Like she said, This is Hip-hop, it's not supposed to get awards. She has had a major spiritual transformation, which I am guessing occurred when she fell in with the Rastafarian Marley family, marrying a son of Bob Marley, Rita her mother-in-law, living in Jamaica much of the time, raising her kids, being a mother and a wife. She came across to me someone on her spiritual path that runs through Rastafarian spirituality. She has the heart of a seeker. She found what she was originally searching for, and now searches for how to live in the world not of it. Now the joy of my world is in Zion. Going by what I saw of her in the concert, she has found her authentic self and with it her authentic way.


Heard on the news USA is pressuring India to stop buying oil from Iran. This gives good evidence that our government is beginning to meddle in Asia. Of course, there's no "beginning to" about it, as our government only meddles and all over the world. Now that they're planning an assault on Iran with Israel the cutting edge, urging Iran's Asian market for oil to cut back is meddling. No place in Asia is an automatic ally of the USA, certainly not after the Bush junta. British government is with the USA, but not the people. The American people, like people all over the world only want more money and more tv. Our government is a separate entity unto itself, a marionette show put on by manipulators from above, the 1%, who would have us all in prison to keep us under control if they needed to. We're so cooperative they don't need to put us in prison. Wave a dollar in front of our faces and we'll do anything. It's the American way. Money for us is the tin rabbit that leads a dog race. The love of money keeps us in motion.


We've only known Hillary Clinton in the foreground as a candidate, the educated woman republicans love to hate. She came across as progressive, leaning maybe one degree left of middle, and now it's comical to hear her as the voice of the post-Ugly American, the voice of the most powerful military force in the world, not necessarily a benevolent ally, and certainly not a friend of the people. Her voice will go on ringing in my head saying, Get with the system and you'll do all right. It's the system that more and more people want to stay out of. I've wanted to stay out of it all my life. I'd been convinced through school, church, parents and tv that I needed to live by the system. I tried it, because I didn't know how to do otherwise. The System spit me right out. I was a sour apple, only good for making hard cider. I've never been able to obey ignorance. I can if it's my own, but when it comes at me from outside myself insisting I obey, don't count on it. When true intelligence, like God, requires obedience, I'm right there. I like the Ben Franklin quote recommending we question authority. Those guys, the framers of the Constitution, were so left wing as to put Alice's Tea Party into a hissy fit.


One of our county commissioners is running for the district instead of the county this time, wanting to go to Raleigh as a Tea Party Parrot from Spartaritaville. I think it would be great if he won--get him out of here. He's a yankee anyway. He's also a little quick to accuse without evidence. Like the Sparta Revitalization Committee, he has no idea where he is. He wants to move to Raleigh after his divorce and "represent" Alleghany County. These are the kinds of jokes that "represent" us. A notice in the mail a couple days ago for a democrat whose name I don't remember running against Virginia Foxx. I didn't need to remember his name. I automatically vote against Foxx, so I'll be voting for him, whatever his name is. You see, I'm an Anti-republican. I vote against republicans. Seldom do I vote for a democrat when I vote democrat. I'll vote for anybody running against a republican. Reagan has shown us, and Bush came along to be sure we got it that the republican party has become the cancer within. Parrots jabbering party line. Liberals are evil. Liberals are evil. I don't vote for judges because they don't post their party allegiance. Rather than accidentally vote for a republican, I don't vote for judges at all.


Democrats are becoming such republicans I'm about needing to stop voting completely. I vote because I believe in the boycott of one. It makes no difference to Coca Cola Corp that I don't buy coke because they are known to have hired death squads in Columbia to kill union activists and their families. I boycott Coca Cola. It makes no difference to them, but it makes all the difference to me. When I drink a DrPepper I remember why I do not drink coke. My vote has about as much value as my boycott when it comes to persuasion in one way instead of another. I vote and boycott certain corporations knowing these gestures mean nothing outside myself. In myself is where it matters. When Bush bombed Baghdad, I had already entered my vote of disapproval. It is like having a clear conscience to know I voted against the usurper of the throne, who set out systematically to destroy the world's economy and set the whole of civilization into bottomless Depression. I voted against it twice with Bush, twice with Reagan, and every time I ever vote.


*

UFO SIGHTING

picture found at google images taken a month ago

This is the night of the Super Moon. Eleven something it's supposed to be at Perigee, the closest in its elliptical orbit to earth. Fourteen percent bigger. That's not a whole lot bigger. The only time to see it will be when it rises. In relation to foreground, the horizon, trees, buildings, mountains, ocean, it appears bigger than up in the sky. If the ufo I saw in the sky SW of my location is there again tonight, a lot of people will see it. I've been seeing several, though it might have been the same one, over the last months. Driving home from Justin's Thursday night after putting the picture frame together. I was on Hwy 18 in Ennice and it looked to be over the Piney Creek part of the county. It was 3 white lights. The one last night looked to be over maybe Laurel Springs or maybe Wilkes County. Thursday night the sky was overcast and no stars were visible. This cluster of three white lights was below the cloud.


I don't recall how many years ago, at least 15, maybe a few more, I was visiting with my friend Carole who lives out in the Stratford region of the county. We were at her neighbor's house, half a dozen of us together. We were sitting around in the living room talking. We heard a jet engine going over, a common thing in the mountains, but it was going awfully slow. It lingered in its slow traverse across the sky. We all looked at each other at the same time and without a word all of us jumped and ran to the door. On the deck we looked up and saw the shape of one wok on top of another and a dome on top with a light inside it. It sounded like an F-15. It went in a straight line and looked like it was going to pass over my house and Bullhead. I knew the direction of my house from there and that was its path. I talked with Winfield in the next day or two. He lives beside Bullhead. I asked if he heard a loud, slow jet fly over. He remembered it, thought it odd it went so slow. I asked if he went outside to see what it was. No. I told him what I saw. End of subject.


It confirmed my ignorance for him, once again. I knew it would, which is why I brought it up. It's a curious tic we have in human nature, when we know somebody is judging us, we automatically have to confirm for them that their lopsided interpretation of themselves in a mirror is right. Or it might be my  own psychological construct. Anyway, I do it over and over. Have done it since childhood. It amuses me in a nerdy kind of way. When somebody looks down on me, I want to confirm for them I'm as ignorant as they suppose, worse. Then they stay away and don't bother me any more. I don't have to avoid them; they avoid me. :D 


Last year, driving to Woodlawn, Virginia, on Hwy 18 one Friday night to a show at the Front Porch, I saw a cluster of three lights, one of them blue, over Galax. I drove under it in Galax and couldn't see it again until I stepped out of the car in Woodlawn. There was a parade on another road in Galax and I wondered if it might be the goodyear blimp hovering as part of the show, but it would have lights on itself advertising goodyear. Not a blimp. Driving home, three hours later, I saw it over the landscape I was driving toward, home. The closer I came to home, I could pinpoint it better over Cherry Lane, 5-10 miles to the east by crow. Guessing the lights to be ten miles or so away and not very high in the sky, it gave me a rough sense of size, not little and not huge. That night was overcast cloud too, no stars. The three lights, again, were below the cloud. I guestimated the distance from Galax to Cherry Lane, divided that by three and roughly guessed it might have been moving around 10 mph. It appeared to be still, but evidently was in motion. I didn't watch the one last night and the one Thursday night long enough to determine if they might have been in motion.


I got a picture of the the one with the blue light when driving on Air Bellows Gap Road, just a half mile from the house, where the view includes Bullhead, Cherry Lane and Glade Valley all the way to Sparta to Twin Oaks Gap. Big span of the southeastern quadrant of the county. I stopped and got a photo of it through the door's open window. Didn't want windshield specks in it. I have to enlarge the image all the way until just before the colors turn into square pixels. Just in that moment before the blur of big pixels I see it as I saw it. Couldn't use the zoom on the camera, because I'd have never found it looking through the camera zoomed as close as I would want it. Not a star in the sky. I don't need a photograph to confirm for myself that I saw it or to convince anyone that I saw it. I know what I saw and have seen so many by now, it's just another sighting. These are just the closest and the most obvious one's I've witnessed.


In the late 90s when I was painting in a little building separate from the house, walking one way or the other at night, a couple hundred yards, fairly often my eye would follow what I took to be a passenger jet going from Atlanta to DC or NY or anyplace. I see it in the sky, a dot of light moving in a straight line. I've been inside them. A lot of seats, a lot of people, strangers on their ways to different destinations. The tray on the back of the seat in front of me down, a pepsi can and and clear plastic cup with pepsi in it, delivered by the stewardess. The wing out the window, clouds in the distance, highways below like lengths of thread lying on the floor. From the ground, a light in the sky. It's things like that I think about when I watch a plane fly over. I'm in it listening to Sade on headphones singing, "crown you with my heart," reading Norman Mailer's Armies Of The Night, talking with the  human in the next seat with a Sprite can on the tray. A capsule of people that don't know each other, all on their own particular journeys like cars on the interstate, using this transportation mode from this point unto that.


Walking to and from the little building I was using for a studio under the stars, I learned the constellations in that time and knew which stars were the planets because I saw them almost every night and felt like it was time to learn the constellations at least of the zodiac. Outside the ecliptic path I knew Orion, big and little dipper, and that was about it. One night a jet I was following stopped. It stayed in place awhile. Then it moved straight up, stopped, straight line to the left, stopped, straight down below where it started and stopped. I stood fixed in place watching this dancing light. Eventually it went behind the tree line and I didn't see it again. Several times I saw a light in the sky dance like that. I'm not afraid to call them ufos, but I don't like so general a name that could include somebody in a parachute at night holding a flashlight. Like the crop circles could be from two old boys from an English pub stepping on a board. Now, with YouTube we can see a lot of interesting "craft" in different contexts, like seen by a pilot in a plane, or seen close to the ground by somebody with a camera. They're all over the place now. Wouldn't it be fun if this turns out to be the year they choose to come down from the sky and save us from ourselves.


*