ABID - Incantation of the Ego

 

Ancient Beast of Impossible Derivation

we call to your bones and lost sinews

to reassemble into woeful vengeance. 

Strike down our enemies but not be-

fore sowing terror and painful discord.

We have suffered enough in dishonor.

Our humiliation has reached its nadir.

The time for mercy has passed us by.

Empty mouths now cry out for blood.

ABID, we bid you to undo what is done.

***

The Benefits of Writing

 

I’d like to put in a plug for writing.  It has been a lifesaver for me through some pretty dark times, especially in the past few years of this pandemic.  It’s been a way to connect with others in a world where isolation can be crushing.  In the past decade it has even been a dialogue through time and space between me and my younger self who exists only in memories but influences so much of what I say and do in the here and now.

Maybe the form of writing at hand is a poem because they are short and “easy”.  I didn’t say “good”, just easy in the sense they can be written down quickly and concisely.  I leave iambic pentameter and the outpouring of cantos to other more skilled practitioners.  And rhyming is fun, but I do not use it very often.  I mostly settle for micro-bits of emotion and glimmers of insight that pop out from time to time, like when heat transforms a kernel of corn into popcorn.  If I can capture these burst kernels on paper the benefits are more filling and longer lasting. 

Memories of younger years generate a fair amount of what I’ve written, but the other major source is photographs I’ve taken.  I highly recommend this strategy for generating words because for me it has inspired the lion’s share of what I have written in the past decade and been a well of ideas to draw from.  It is typically something peculiar that catches my eye and suggests a story of some kind, like a Rorschach test. 

I’ve also benefited from books that give advice and/or ideas for writing prompts.  These include “Writing Down the Bones” by Natalie Goldberg, “On Writing” by Stephen King, and “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron among others.  I used these mostly in my early to mid-40’s when I was trying to get started writing before transitioning to using childhood memories and photographs as the major sources for inspiration and writing ideas.  And speaking of childhood, my kids have done their fair share of heavy lifting in regards to being my muses.

Most of the writing advice I’ve come across emphasizes the importance of reading and reading a lot.  This is especially true of Stephen King who follows his own advice and has written book reviews for books that I’ve ended up reading due to his enthusiasms.  I have to say I don’t read a lot nowadays but when I was a kid I read all the time to escape the mundaneness of small town life.  I had a penchant for Fantasy with Science Fiction as a close second (and then Roger Zelazny blew my mind by mixing the two).

Most recently I’ve gotten on a Kurt Vonnegut kick and I’m watching the documentary “Unstuck in Time” on Hulu.  I’m also reading “PITY THE READER - on writing with style” by Suzanne McConnell who uses KV as her touchstone for writing and writing advice.  I’ve learned a lot from his brevity of style that he attributes to his early writing years when he was doing a lot of journalistic work which requires one to get to the point quickly and distill things down to their essence as much as possible.  His literary journal “So It Goes” has become a home for some of my poems and photographs and something I look forward to submitting to every year.

All that to say, whatever your motivation or life experiences, writing may very well be the “easiest” and most accessible way of engaging in a therapeutic process.  I highly recommend it.

***

The Power of Thin Mints

 

There is something undeniably powerful about a Girl Scout cookie thin mint.  Today I saw a nurse’s assistant come into the 6th floor work area with an armful of those lovely green boxes and I made comment about how much I love them.  She offered to sell me a box from her limited supply but when I told her I had no way to pay her she said I could pay for it when I see her next. 

That’s when the Nurse Manager swept in and bought a box for me despite my protestations.  It was an act of kindness that I wasn’t sure I deserved and it made me a bit verklempt.  It  became clear to me in that moment that I would be remiss if I did not share this windfall with others in this place that has been so good to me over the years.

I quickly took on the role of a thin mint street dealer by hiding the box in my inside jacket pocket and sidling up to people with a whisper, “Hey, you wanna thin mint?” and giving them only the slightest glimpse of the green box.  The smiles were worth a lifetime supply of thin mints and by the time I was headed out the door for the day I’d eaten about four and given the rest away.

To be honest, I don’t know what came over me when I was handed that box of cookies.  My inclination was to hurry back to my office and eat them in the dark like Gollum on his island in the cave with his “Precious”.  But there are few things more precious to me than my coworkers at Grant Medical Center.

***

The Beauty of Us

In the search for grand vistas 

or man-made wonders

let’s not forget the beauty of us.

Even if we wander through galleries of

priceless paintings and stunning sculptures

let’s not forget the beauty of us.

You know, there are two of us 

who made two more, doubling the love

that is the beauty of us.

***

Jesus Needs His Sandwich

 

Jesus needs His sandwich 

and I nearly forgot it in my haste

to leave the hospital today.

I got as far as the parking garage, 

my driver’s side door partially open,

when it hit me, “Jesus needs…”

So I sprinted back to the hospital

and snatched up a ham with 

muenster and a bottle of water.

Sure enough, he was standing 

in his typical spot at the bottom 

of the exit ramp with his sign.

He greeted me with a crooked 

smile and a pensive wave but 

I knew it was Him standing there.

The beard and longish hair was

a dead give away, frequenting 

the highways and the byways

as I’d read in the Good Book.

I didn’t want to be caught 

empty handed when I met Him.

So Jesus got his sandwich today

and He said “God bless you”.

Score!  What a lucky man I am!

***

What Kurt has to Say

 

Is there a more clear-sighted observer of our modern American experience than Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.?  That is a rhetorical question.

I couldn’t tolerate his stories when I was younger because I was trapped in the warm delusional embrace of the insulated American Midwest.  When it came to our historical and national consciousness it was all a Ra Ra self-congratulatory affair with flags flapping from poles and porches throughout my town.   It didn’t help that the Soviet Union was such a monstrous system as a point of comparison on the other side of the world.  We were pretty darn good in that light, right?  But we were human beings just like everyone else on the planet with similar foibles and outright repugnant behaviors mixed in with moments of selflessness and virtue.  

Our black and white way of seeing things outwardly had a tendency to turn inwardly creating a bind.  If we personally were either black or white, who can tolerate thinking of themselves as black?  So that left being white and therefore in a state of self-delusion and denial as a way to square that circle.  I’ll leave the implications for racism to your imagination as just one aspect of that phenomenon.

And KVJ ruthlessly destroyed all of this in his short stories and novels in the most humorous of ways.  He was honest enough about his approach to quote a British critic “who said that I put bitter coatings on sugar pills, and I consider that fair”.  His witnessing of the utter destruction and decimation of Dresden by the Allied Powers was the purifying event that opened his eyes, traumatic as it was, like a huge slap in the face.  Wake up!  

I was probably in my thirties before I had an “ear to hear” what KVJ was telling me.  It took at least a decade post-high school with stints in the Army, living overseas, medical school, and changing my childhood religion to open my eyes to what he had to show me.  Suffering was a key teacher in that regard.  I had to get past myself and the need for self-justification.  

And now I must circle back to the idea of "love of country".  I love my friends, family, and community as concrete points of interaction.  This is my “USA”.  What I don’t love so much are the abstractions created by the powers that be to manipulate me for their own purposes.  

And Kurt, God bless him, asserted in Breakfast of Champions that “at the core of each person who reads this book is a band of unwavering light.”  I believe it is a light that dispels the darkness of hatred and ignorance if we let it.

***