Poetry Time: Way too many Roses Are Red poems, for Valentine's Day

This post is also shared on Archive Of Our Own (Link here; you'll have to click an "agree" button to view) where I sometimes publish my creative writing.

On Feb 14th, 2024, I went a little bananas writing funny "Roses are red, Violets are blue" poems on different social media websites. I'm collecting them here in the hope that they'll make some people laugh.

Work Text:

Here is the one that started it all: 

Roses are red 

Violets are blue 

This poem is too short. 

A Limerick about Comment Moderation

Maybe this is a little blogger-referential for some of you... but at least it's short. A version of this poem is now my comment policy.

A brave keyboard warrior named Smee

emboldened by anonymity,
with misogyny bile
and a gospel quite vile
posted ravings and rantings freely.

The good blogger knew not what to do
as the racist and sexist words flew
for a while found it sport
to provoke a retort
but then quickly got tired of the spew.

Yet of late this small weblog could boast
twenty, thirty plus comments per post
all because of one dude
whose cartoonishly rude
comments seemed like a piss-take at most.

But the trashy fun starts getting tired
once the blog's entire content is mired
in a back-and-forth row with
a self-righteous blow-
hard whose kneejerk replies seem hard-wired.

So before your own blog gets derailed
see to it the trolls get curtailed
don't let jerks have their mirth:
a good chat is well worth
the due vigilance that it entailed.

If a commenter's words barely link
to the topic on which the post thinks
don't be shocked if the tangent
leads to rudeness more flagrant:
moderate it as quick as a wink.

And if courtesy seems somewhat lacking
let the trolls know they're in for a smacking:
that you keep a short leash
before hitting delete
so the chat in good faith can get cracking.

And if I'm in a generous mood,
on a whim I might answer the rude
get a couple barbs in
for a kick and a grin...
or it might be a ban for the 'tude

'Cause this here is my website, not yours
so I set all the rules and the mores
if there's stuff you don't like
you can take a quick hike
to more troll-friendly sites by the scores.

Bud, holy cow!

I just went to the Seoul Museum of Art, and saw Vincent Van Gogh. This guy...

you know the difference between looking at pictures of your friend, and actually sitting down and chatting -- you know the way NOBODY gets your vacation photos the way you do, just because bud, the food looks great in the picture, but they didn't get to eat it, and you did.

Well, dear readers, art is like that too. I didn't actually see Vincent VanGogh. He died. Quite a while ago, now. But if you think these pictures are impressive -- wow! You really gotta see them in person. The paint on the canvas, the little knots of colour, the texture that jumps out at you -- it's like the difference between a photo album and a person (which makes sense, but still didn't really click until I saw these in person).


This one was there. Girlfriendoseyo disagrees with me, but I think Van Gogh was overwhelmed by the sun. The sun seems so close here -- it strikes me even as being accusing. The sun almost totally dominates just about every painting where it appears in Van Gogh's work. The field is so mundane next to that glaring eye. You can barely even see the birds eating the sower's seeds -- they're totally irrelevant next to that sun.

I stared at this one for about three minutes without blinking. I don't know how, but Vincent got to me, like a fisher with his hook, he got a hold of something in me.


This next one wasn't in the exhibit, but you can see here, too, Van Gogh's feeling about the sky. I said to Girlfriendoseyo today -- Raphael's or Vermeer's paintings are so perfect, so realistic, it's like they're just seeing. Picasso's paintings are so intuitive, so emotional, it's like they're just feeling. Van Gogh sees and feels. It's amazing how raw and visceral these paintings are in person.


This one WAS in the exhibit, and Girlfriendoseyo and I were both totally gobsmacked. I just can not convey to you how powerful this painting is in person. I really can't. Even if you eat the computer screen where the painting is displayed, you won't be as deeply impressed by it as we were. Go, seek it out, and see it yourself.


This next painting was there too, the only of his self portraits (I think).

This one broke my heart, and also caught hold of me for several minutes: every line said, "dude, I've lived a f***ing rough life." He died at age 37, but this, one of his early paintings, already looks about fifty.


Everybody loves these next three. . . they weren't at the exhibit, but they might have been too much for me if they were. My old roomie Anthony once told me the story of his buddy, the self-proclaimed "biggest Bjork fan in the world", who, when he got the chance to see Bjork perform live, ended up having to leave the auditorium after the first few songs, completely overwhelmed with the power of his experience. I scoffed at the story then, and called dude an idiot for flinching away from a potential high-point in his life. . . but now I think I might understand a bit.

Considering how these three are still amazing, gorgeous, and fresh to me, even though they pop up of every tea room wall, on every Starbucks mug, in every poster-shop window. . . to actually see them in person, to have their impact amplified that much -- I might have to look away for a while, too, before staring into the sun like that.



Dear Lord, the man's night skies were breathtaking!

This one WAS there. In person, it's almost a different painting entirely.

And I wish I could explain what he does with flowers. . . but there's just no way. (This is why people write poems, I suppose.)


This wasn't at the exhibit, but again, look how he just lays his soul bare in the skies. The indoor still life paintings' backgrounds were totally flat and dull, but this Vincent fellow, he had some kind of a thing about skies.

Thanks to him, now I do, too.


Wasn't at the exhibit, but just -- wow. Just wow.


I love painters.
The German poet Rilke (my personal poetry hero) wrote, in the First Duino Elegy

"already the knowing animals are aware
that we are not really at home in our interpreted world"

And this is why artists draw -- because there doesn't have to be a story, or a meaning, or anything but a field and a sky. . . but that field, and that sky -- WOW!

Here it is! Be amazed!

We're right back to that again, aren't we? Can't that sometimes be enough? Can't that sometimes be the entire end and purpose of some art? As John Keats said,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

But with words, Keats had to say beauty is truth. These painters just show something beautiful, and they don't even have to add a single layer of interpretation if they don't want to, and they can just leave it at "here it is. be amazed."

(Girl With a Pearl Earring, by another Dutch guy who was pretty good: Vermeer. Here it is. It's beautiful. Be amazed.)

Yeah, sometimes there's other stuff in there, too. . . but there doesn't have to be. With writing, it's almost impossible not to add in a little pontification, a little theme or interpretation or explanation -- it's why I get bummed every time I read Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey -- he starts off with a "here it is. be amazed" and then starts adding other stuff. Sometimes in other poems, he got it right, got it pure, but often he was so busy explaining the perfection of his moments, or describing his own feelings, that he clouds the beauty with too many traces of his own voice -- kind of like an amazing photograph with a text line across the middle of the composition saying, "taken on a fuji finepix E550"

For your benefit, I've created a visual representation of what I mean. Which of these pictures would you rather have on your wall?




Here's a Picasso painting I talked about in a previous post.

I love about Picasso that he stripped away everything in his paintings except the things he decided were important for that particular painting.

Form? Not needed.
Proportion? Why?
Perspective? Does it serve the painting's main theme?
Conventional Placement Of Body Parts? Let's talk about that again later.

But what he DID keep in his painting, distorted, exaggerated, or rearranged for proper emphasis, maintained the exact emotional content of his subject, even when the recognizable form was long gone, and so, even though you wouldn't recognize her to pass her on the street, you FEEL this woman crying (the painting is named "La Femme Qui Pleure" - the woman who cries), more (or at least as) clearly and authentically than/as a hundred photos of women actually crying.


The other thing I love love love about Picasso is his face. Look at his eyes. Those are eyes that have been trained, for an entire lifetime, to see into the heart of things, and find wonder there. "It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child." That he not only learned how to SEE the world that way, but was also skilled or intuitive enough to translate what he saw onto canvas is as much a miracle as the way Mozart heard the music perfectly in his head, or the way Beethoven composed the Ninth Symphony while stone-deaf, or the way John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison managed to be born in the same city, in the same era, and meet each other.

Even when he's very old, you still see a child in his eyes. You see a mind still open. Still dancing.

That kind of wise simplicity appears from time to time, in somebody's eyes. . . not even in every artist, though. My favourite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, has a sharper edge in his eyes.

but it doesn't surprise me that someone who uses words (which are basically boxes, categories, and judgements impressed upon the things that actually reach one's senses) would have a sharper edge than someone who uses colours and shapes to lay bare his soul.



Would you believe that behind those eyes lies one of the finest religious-scholarly minds on the planet?

I hope, when I'm an old man, I have eyes as encompassing, innocent, and simple, as that.

But more than that, I hope they look that way because I've worked my whole life to see the world simply and wonderfully (wonderful meaning full of wonder, of course), and maybe even that I've been clever enough to transmit some of that tight-packed wonder into some books that other people can read.

How long does it take to write a poem like Rilke, or paint a painting like Picasso, or a story like JD Salinger?

A few hours, or a few days, or a few months. . . and an entire lifetime, of course.

The ancient wisdom of China

According to legend (or, according to the introduction), Lao Tsu lived in the sixth century BC. An old scholar, he was fleeing his country, and a border guard asked him about Tao and Te. That night, and he sat down and wrote the entire Tao Te Ching, after which he vanished completely. I like to imagine he put so much of his essence into the text that he just kind of evaporated into his text, or maybe into the universe at large, having already contributed an entire soul's worth to the world.

The Tao Te Ching really appeals to me, as a lover of poetry, because of the way it's written. Rather than being overtly prescriptive, or offering words so deeply rooted in a specific cultural context (which makes interpretation difficult when you exist in a different time and place than the original text), the multiplicity of meanings inherent in Chinese characters, goes well with the multiplicity of meaning in poetry, and also makes for a text that moves across cultural time/place boundaries more easily than things like the laws in Deuteronomy about stoning an adulteress, or protocol for what to do if your neighbour steals your lamb. Even in the bible, the parts of the bible that touch me the most powerfully are the poetry and wisdom books -- Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Job, as well as Christ's teachings, which are amazing.

Here are my favourite parts of the Tao Te Ching. It's food for thought, but it doesn't go and say "If you disagree with this, you're wrong," or "If you do this, or if you DON'T do THAT, you're out of the club." This makes it a bit more flexible than some of the other codes and credos, and it means that it can co-exist with wisdom from other source texts without contradicting them, and (this is important) without requiring you to choose one or the other.

Tao means "way" -- the basic idea of Tao is that mastery comes from the balance of opposing forces. The yin yang symbol represents that balance -- the world is in harmony when light and dark, life and death, creation and destruction, male and female, etc., are in harmony. The idea of finding that balance is the goal of Tao. I like that.


A lot of this is written in poem or paradox; again, this appeals to me, because its much more interesting to me to be presented with a paradox, where I have to hold both sides of the contradiction in my mind: I much prefer that to being given a statement: "This is truth. Either agree or disagree. (But you'd better agree.)" Because then if I disagree, it causes anxiety, rather than just challenging and stimulating my mind. The goal of the Tao is virtue and simplicity which, again, I like.

The Tao Te Ching is in 81 parts -- a nice, round multiple of three, the good old number of completion; here are some of the passages I liked best. The number after each entry is the book where it's found -- like the chapters in Psalms.

The translator is names Sam Hamill.


Beauty and ugliness have one origin.
Name beauty, and ugliness is.
Recognizing virtue recognizes evil.
. . .
Is and is not produce one another.
2


Bestow no honors,
and reduce contentiousness.

Cling to no treasures
and create no thieves.
. . .
The sage governs
by emptying minds and hearts
and filling bellies
3




Over-filled, the cupped hands drip.
Better to stop pouring.
9



With the greatest leader above them,
people barely know one exists.
. . .
Trust the cautious sage,
whose words are most carefully chosen.
17


Learn manifest simplicity.
Grasp the uncarved wood.
Cast aside self-interest and desire dissipates.
19


A good knot needs neither rope nor thread
and yet cannot be untied.
27


Music and fine foods
detain the passerby
But tao, explained,
has no flavour. It's bland.
35


The world's softest thing
tramples the world's hardest.
43


One hears of those who excel at grasping life.

Out walking, they don't flee from wild animals,
and in battle, don't need armor.
. . .
How, truly, can this be so?

Because they make no place for dying.
50


Heaven rescues and protects us
through compassion.
67


(I liked this next chapter enough to include the entire thing)


People are born soft and weak.
We die stiff and unyielding.

Everything--grass, trees--
begins life soft and tender,
and dies, decaying, rotting.

Therefore the hard, the unyielding
are death's companion.
The weak and pliant belong to life.

The unyielding army cannot prevail.
Unbending trees are felled.

The treat unyielding belong below,
the pliant and tender above.
76


Heaven's way is like stringing a bow;
drawing down the higher
raising the lower
77


Nothing under heaven
is as yielding as water.

And yet in attacking the hard,
the unyielding,
nothing can surpass it.
78


Sincere words are not beautiful
beautiful words are not sincere
81

My dad gets married tomorrow.

A good counsellor, a good listener, and a good conversationalist will allow a person to set the terms of the conversation, rather than guiding the conversation to his/her own personal conversation comfort zones through too much talking, conversation manipulation, or leading questions. Good listeners get out of the way, and only assert their presence enough to keep the speaker moving in the right direction.


I think the best poems are that way, too: rather than TELLING you what you ought to see, and feel about a particular instant in time, a good poem just says "Look." and lets you taste a little experience, and good poets will put you right there beside them, so much that you don't even notice their presence: you're just sitting there yourself, looking at the same thing a poet noticed once.


It sounds so simple to use words to clear a way for a reader's own imagination to find a beautiful space, but then, it sounds so simple get a medical doctorate: just go to school for years, and work really hard! It's easy, too, I suppose, to be successful in business: find a need, fill it better than your competition, and make sure people find out! Easy peasy, lemon squeezey!


Rilke said, "Ah, but poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines."


Here are some poems worth a lifetime of gathering sweetness, because instead of just saying


HEY READER! HERE IS SOME SWEETNESS I FOUND, AND NOW I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT IT!


the poet just says: "I was here." or, even better, "look"


and why do the poems need to MEAN anything more than what they say, really? can't it be enough to say, "a frog jumped into a pond. Plop." (that's a loose translation of the most famous haiku ever written)


(all translated by Kevin O'Rourke, from a book on Korean Poetry I carry with me every day)


Ha Wiji:
(untitled -- but a perfect, perfect picture)


The guests have gone; the gate is closed;
the breeze has dropped; the moon is sinking low,
I open the wine-jar again and recite a verse of poetry.
Perhaps this
is all the joy a recluse ever knows.





Evening; Self Portrait
by Cho Byunghwa


I've cast off in life what may be cast off;
I've cast off in life what may not be cast off,
and here I am, just as you see me.




Prank
by Kim Namju


A sunbeam
the size of a
chipmunk's tail
sits
on the doorstep
of my cell.
I'd like to scissor slice it,
pop it down my throat,
melt my frozen body
as spring snow melts.






(this next one is the best erotic poem I've ever read)
hwang chini


I'll cut a piece from the side
of this interminable winter night
and wind it in coils beneath the bedcovers, warm and fragrant as the spring breeze,
coil by coil
to unwind it the night my lover returns.





if you don't like poetry, tough. Maybe my next post will be about the transformers movie or my favourite foods in Canada or trucks and shiny power tools. But for now, think about something beautiful you've seen, and how YOU'd share it with the people around you.


I have to go to bed now. My dad's getting married tomorrow.


love

Rob

This is from my friend Tamie's blog.

You can see it in its original form here.



Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal
by Naomi Shihab Nye

After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.

Well -- one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.

I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?

The minute she heard any words she knew -- however poorly used -
She stopped crying.

She thought our flight had been cancelled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we're fine, you'll get there, just late,

Who is picking you up? Let's call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her -- southwest.

She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.

Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.

Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.

She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies -- little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts -- out of her bag --
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.

To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo -- we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookies.

And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers --
Non-alcoholic -- and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American -- ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.

And I noticed my new best friend -- by now we were holding hands --
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,

With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

Not a single person in this gate -- once the crying of confusion stopped
-- has seemed apprehensive about any other person.

They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.

Not everything is lost.




***rob again

I really love the sense of community in this poem, that community can still spring out in unexpected places.

I was walking home on Thursday night after posting this poem (I'm adding to the post now), and somehow my senses just switched "on" -- I've written about that sensation before. Suddenly I was just seeing everything around, and everyone was my friend. This was unexpected, because a friend had cancelled an appointment on me that night, and that usually bums me out, but tonight, the entire world was just glowing a little, as if wet, or catching sunlight on snow crystals. I walked home as slowly as possible.

Hope you all walk home slowly sometime soon.

-Rob

May 2006 Update: New Coworkers.

Hi everyone.

Well, a few things. Two of my coworkers finished
their contracts this last week: Jared and James were
nice guys, but now they're travelling and will head
back to Canada soon. I have a new roommate -- I moved
across the hall so that I could have a guy roommate
instead of Melissa. His name is Anthony, he's from
northern England, and he's a pretty nice guy. Also,
April came from North Carolina and she's nice too.
The big bonus came at work, when I was playing a song
that I'd put on my work computer (while doing other
important work, of course), and April turned around
and said, "Is that the. . . and named the (somewhat
obscure) band?" Turns out both these new roomies are
the same kinds of avid music fans I am, which makes me
think we 'll have a lot of great conversations about
music, and which is a great starting point for the
rest of the friendship.

but my mailing address is still the same as before.
Please continue sending all gifts, money orders, tins
of Tim Hortons coffee, magazine subscriptions, Far
Side Collections, cards and fanmail to

*** if you know me, you know how to contact me. this is published online,
so I've taken personal information out of the e-mails.***


I saw Matt get married three weekends ago, and it was
fantastic. Matt's best friends came from Canada, and
my theory that Matt's true superpower is attracting
high quality human beings into his circle of
friendship, has been confirmed. To a person, the
people who came out to see the wedding were cool,
kind, fun, and generally about twelve different kinds
of awesome. So that was cool. My ex-girlfriend
Exgirfriendoseyo (the bride's twin sister) was there, of course,
but we've been doing some work to get back to a place
of friendship, and so that was all fine. She even
sent me her toast to the bride, and I proof-read it
for her. (She did a great job.)

Other than that. . . things have been going as usual
at work, I'm excited about the new roommates, it's
getting warmer, all good things. I don't get to tell
as many stories in my new classes as I did before, but
I'm mostly OK with that. I still have a lot of
laughs.

Gloria's one of the sweet, cute little five year olds
that just started. She likes me a lot, and she'll
come over and play with me during break times. One
day she came running through the play room, chasing
her friend Sophia, and I called her name, "Gloria!
Come play!" Usually she answers that summons with a
big smile on her face, but this time, she paused in
the doorway, looked back and said, very
matter-of-factly, "Teacher, me busy," and ran off.

I can't say I've ever been blown off so cutely.
Usually, when they're my age, and a girl doesn't want
to spend time with me, I'm at least partly unhappy,
but this time I was all goo.

Another time, we were talking about butterflies in my
older class, and I asked,
"what do you call a baby butterfly?" (They all know
the story "the very hungry caterpillar", so I figured
this would be an easy one.)

Arooh says, "Butter?"
I laughed. "No, Arooh. That's not what you call a
baby butterfly. Do you know, Eric? What do you call
a baby butterfly?"

"Sweetie?"

Eric got two laugh stickers for that answer.


"What is the smartest animal?" (dolphin)
No answers.
"It starts with a D."
"David?" (one of the students in the class' name)


The dinosaur "Apatosaurus" was recently renamed
"A-potato-saurus" by my student Lucas.


My student Harry recently wore a t-shirt to class that
bore the English letters:

"Your gsehkd dsfje fhdawj your jgwqd wedsh." The
literal translation is "English characters look cool
on a t-shirt."


One day I wore my Superman T-shirt to school. The
kids always get excited when I wear the Superman
shirt.

"Teacher. You are Superman!"
"Yes. I am Superman. You are Super-Tom! Hello
Super-Tom."
"Hello Superman."
"Hello Super-Ryan."
"Hello Superman."
"Hello Super-Annie."
"Hello Superman." (The students all think this is
great fun.)
"Hello Super-Kate."
"Hello Supermarket."


And the kids are sweet, too. The other day I was
playing Beethoven's ninth during lunch time, and the
kids were eating quietly, and during the famous ending
theme, a few of the kids started spontaneously moving
to the grand, expansive feeling of the music. It
reminded me again how powerfully and unconsciously
music jumps right through our guards, and how
intuitively responsive these kids can be. Fantastic.
I teach gym class every day now, and I play a game
where the kids have to dance, and when I pause the
music, they all have to freeze. I get to play some of
my best cheerful music, the kids get to dance, and I
get wildly entertained by the silly dances I call out
for the kids. "Do an elephant dance!" "Do a rabbit
dance!" "Do a fat tummy dance!" (it also gives me
great ideas for when I go out dancing with my friends.
Hee hee hee.) Music makes me happy. I'm writing a
lot these days. Quite good stuff, too (especially the
poetry). And finishing a lot of stuff that's been in
progress for a long time. Seeing these things take
form is very satisfying. I feel better these days --
like the changes that have been trying to push through
are starting to take shape, and the things I've lived
through are starting to make me a new person, rather
than just creating tension within the person I can no
longer quite be.

I'm starting to see more colours. I'm starting to be
happy with my friends, and my situation. These are
good things.

So change my phone number in my address book.

More later.

love
Rob Oprivacyhand


Here's one of the poems I wrote. If you don't like
poetry, I'll sign off here, and you can pretend it's
just the quote that goes after my signature, and
ignore it as such. If you do like poetry, then you'll
wonder why I'm so apologetic.



Love you all.

Rob



"The Potter"

Slow, dust pushing
against each knucklebend,
heavy with riverbanks'
earthy murmurs,
the pottetr's dirty
mud-slick hands
banish the whole room
except the wheel
the clay
and the air pouring
into a new emptiness.

More perfecting
the vessel's
startling new capacity
than shaping walls
both spinning
and motionless,
the potter
sets a potential
into what once
was only mud,
and by preparing it for them,
also creates
all the things
it will one day contain.

January 22nd 2006: A Sticky Patch and a funny story at the end.

Well, it's been a sticky patch, and as I once said before, I don't like writing update e-mails when I'm feeling sticky. (Just wait till the humid heat of summer. . . haw haw haw.) But the fact is, I owe all you folks an e-mail -- have for a while, and by gum, I finally have a fantastic story I can use to finish it off with a laugh. (I didn’t even realize that's what had been holding me back until Sarah delivered her coup de grace of humour that day, and one of the first thoughts was "now I can finally write home."

May as well get this one out of the way: a few of you have already heard in personal e-mails that Exgirlfriendoseyo and I broke up. After a seven-month wait in Canada, and a really hard test, and a variety of tests both personal and paper, we simply seemed to be heading in different directions, and needing different things than we offered each other. It was done in such a way, and at such a time that we still respect each other, I don't have any regrets, and I wish her the best. We tried to make things work, but there was just too much else going on.

It was my first Christmas away from home this year. And my first Christmas without. . . you know, all that Mom dying of cancer stuff. I ran an entire calling card down on Christmas morning, and had some difficult and wonderful phone calls from a group of people who ranged from kind wisdom and caring to full, vulnerable empathy to some wonderful and necessary "talk-about-something-else-ification". Exgirlfriendoseyo and Matt both went down to Ulsan (where Exoseyo’s parents' extended family lives) for new year's, and I in turn got properly sick, and couldn't do much for new year's eve. On New Year's day I was still sick, and the next day, Exoseyo and I broke up, so I just put my head down and worked as much as I could handle for the rest of that week.

Being optimistic isn't always the same as being cheerful, and being hopeful doesn't always mean having a spring in your step. That's one thing grief has taught me. Right now, sometimes I walk as if I'm wearing a lead raincoat, and sometimes the best I can manage is friendly small-talk with my roommate before I disappear into my room to read or listen to music or head out and walk aimlessly through the winter air. However, (unlike the last time I was down and out like this, in 2001), I have absolute faith that, in time, things will start climbing, and in time, I will feel whole again. In time, I will be joyful and engaged again. (Engaged meaning participating fully in life, not engaged meaning rings on fingers.)

As for now, it's OK not to be swimming in a bucket of peach fuzzies. It's OK to feel however I feel, as long as I know that, here on earth, just as no joyous moment lasts forever, neither does any bad time. And until the wheel takes another turn, I can find fantastic, beautiful, funny things that can make me smile and enjoy my life, and think about those things, and I can talk to God if I need to, and God can handle any emotion I have (having invented them and all.) And if I feel joy 20% of the time these days instead of my usual 60%, well, that will eventually correct itself, as long as I don't hold onto my grief, but let it pass through me, effect me, and then end once it is spent.

I've looked up some of my old friends in Korea, from my first and second years here, and I've spent some good time with Matt, and been less distracted from my supervisor work. Those are all good things. Exgirlfriendoseyo didn't pass the test, so that must be disappointing for her (she found out on the 10th, a week after we broke up). I hope she has some good friends nearby right now. I've also made a new friend or two, and am really enjoying the making of new friends. All these things add happiness to my life.

Here are some of my best friends these days:

Deb. In the last year, I'm so glad, Deb, to see us grow closer. Thanks for your phone calls. Every time we've talked on the phone has been absolutely, perfectly, just what I needed at the time. YAY FAMILY!!!

Matt. As always, the staunch wingman. Gives good advice, listens well, and has a great knack for knowing when to engage a state of mind head-on, and when to help me get my mind off it. His good buddy Kris is in Korea now too, and he has proven his measure, and made me glad to have him around.

Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road -- this song sounds like somebody jumping into a big, '70s American gas-guzzler and chasing their dreams down the center line of a winding highway. Better still, it makes ME want to jump in a car (or on a subway, or into a pair of good walking shoes), and grab a map, or a shovel, or a ladder, and start looking for something beautiful and joyful.

Beethoven's 9th symphony, fourth movement. The third movement is full of storm and tempest, and the fifth is unbridled joy. But the fourth movement bridges them, it's still of the tempest, but there, in the distance, approaching like one of those fantastic prairie thunderstorms, comes joy as thrilling and powerful as a flash-flood. When I listen to it, I hear my life -- things are still stormy over here, but every once in a while, like a crack of sunlight through cloud, like a flash of heat-lightning on the horizon, or a rumble of thunder, joy is waiting, somewhere just past the horizon, just beyond my fingertips, at the edge of my peripheral vision, something I can smell but which moves back out of sight whenever I turn my head to look at it. Like a shy animal, I have to sit in stillness and patience, and wait for it to approach me again. I know I will feel well again. More than well. If you can get your hands on the fourth movement (or just all of the 9th), it's best to listen to it really, really loud. Then the fifth movement is awesome -- the musical equivalent of a child running down a really really long hill.

Another best friend: the poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Especially his Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus -- Rilke understands how grief and sadness deepen a character and expand one's heart, enabling it to grasp for greater things than before. If you don't dig poetry, that's fine. Just skip to the place where it says "SO ENOUGH POETRY ALREADY" in all-caps (I made it all caps so it'll be easy for you to find it.)

"How we squander our hours of pain
How we gaze beyond them into the bitter duration
to see if they have an end. Though they are really
our winter-enduring foliage, our dark evergreen,
one season in our inner year -- not only a season
in time--, but are place and settelment, foundation
and soil and home." -- Elegy 10

***Sonnet to Orpheus - Part II, sonnet 13
"Be ahead of all parting, as though it already were
behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.
For among these winters there is one so endlessly winger
that only by wintering through it will your heart survive.

Be forever dead in Eurydice -- more gladly arise
into the seamless life proclaimed in your song.
Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days,
be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang.

Be -- and yet know the great void where all things begin,
the infinite source of your own most intense vibration,
so that, this once, you may give it your perfect assent.

To all that is used-up, and to all the muffled and dumb
creatures in the world's full reserve, the unsayable sums,
joyfully add yourSELF, and cancel the count.



***(Dove that ventured outside) - thanks mel.

Dove that ventured outside, flying far from the dovecote
housed and protected again, one with the day, the night,
knows what serenity is, for she has felt her wings
pass through all distance and fear in the course of her wanderings.

The doves that remained at home, never exposed to loss,
innocent and secure, cannot know tenderness;
only the won-back heart can ever be satisfied: free,
through all it has given up, to rejoice in its mastery.

Being arches itself over the vast abyss.
Ah the ball that we dared, that we hurled into infinite space,
doesn't it fill our hands differently with its return:
heavier by the weight of where it has been.


Also John Keats:
(from Ode On Melancholy)
Ah, in the very temple of delight,
veiled melancholy has her sov'ran shrine,
though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
can burst joy's grape against his palate fine.
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might
and be among her cloudy trophies hung.


and if you skip the others, I still recommend you read this one:


"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And form the selfsame well from which your laughter
arises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the
more joy you can contain...
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and
you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that
which has been your delight...
Verily you are suspended like scales between your
sorrow and your joy.
Only when you are empty are you at stand-still and
balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold
and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow
rise or fall."

-The Prophet, Kahlil
Gibran(1923)


Somebody told me that sorrow digs the mine-shafts in your heart, and the deeper and wider those holes are, the more joy can run through them later, when the
wheel turns.

SO ENOUGH POETRY ALREADY

Here it is, folks. This was one of the biggest laughs I've ever had from a student, and it came from one of the youngest students I've taught, but there you go. One of my classes really loves my storytelling. I have a tradition of telling stories on Wednesdays (show and tell days) -- I come into class looking dejected and say "sorry kids. I don't have anything for show and tell today." Then I tell a show and tell story about what I found for show and tell that week, and what ridiculous series of events led to me being unable to bring that show and tell to class that day. Once I invited a polar bear from the zoo to come visit, but he wrote down the date wrong, and once I offended a magical cloud, so he zapped my show and tell with his lightning, and so forth.

Well, on Friday, we had a birthday party for all the students in preschool with January birthdays. Three students in my homeroom class (Tiger Class) had birthdays, so I had three crayon boxes wrapped as gifts, for those three boys. When I walked into Lion class, my student Sarah (a wildly hilarious little girl), asked me if she could have a present. I said, "No. I can't. They're for Tiger Class."

"Please teacher?"

"No. They're not for you."

"Can I open one and see?"

"No. It's not your present."

"Why you don't have a present for me?"

Then Sally said, "Show and tell story."

"Oh," I said, "do you want a show and tell story about why I don't have presents for you?"

"Yes," all the students agreed. So, off the top of my head, I began.

"Well, I was going to get presents for all the kids in Lion class, so I went to a special toystore, and they showed me a new toy that's a small robot, and it talks and sings and it has a TV and 100 video games, and a phone and a helicopter! So I bought six of them -- one for me, and one for each person in Lion class.

"Then, I was so excited that I found a great present for my Lion Class students, that I put on my helicopter hat (a regular appearance in my Show and Tell stories), and flew into the sky. While I was there, I saw Quentin the Clumsy Dragon (another recurring character). He said, 'Why are you happy, Rob?'

"I said, 'I'm happy because I found some great presents for Lion Class!'

"He said, 'Wow! That's GREAT! When I'm happy, I like to chase birds! Do you want to chase birds with me?'

"'Of course I do,' I said.

"So Quentin the Dragon and I flew high into the sky, and we flew down really fast, and we scared some birds, and we flew higher, and we did it again (this is done with hand motions and funny faces), and we flew HIGHER, and we did it AGAIN! And then, Quentin flew SO high, he hit the moon!

"But when Quentin hit the moon, he hit a Moon Monster. The Moon Monster was sleeping, and Moon Monsters get REALLY angry when somebody wakes them up! So the moon monster grabbed Quentin in one hand and said, 'YOU WOKE ME UP! I'M REALLY ANGRY!!!', and he grabbed me in his other hand, and shouted, 'YOUR FRIEND WOKE ME UP! THAT MAKES ME REALLY ANGRY!!!'

"So Quentin said, 'I'm so so so sorry," and I said, 'I'm so so so so sorry!'

"But the moon monster was so angry he didn't say 'that's OK.' He said, "I'm STILL angry,' and he started to shake us in his hands. (This, too, was done with actions and funny faces).

"Finally, Quentin was very dizzy, and he said, 'rorororororob - pupupupupuplease give him thethethethethe prepreprepresent!'

"'Give him the present? But these are for Lion Class!' I said. Then the monster shook us both again, very very hard, so I said, 'Here, Monster. I'll give you a present so you aren't angry anymore.' I gave him one of the special robot toys. He opened the present, and he LOVED it. I thought, 'It's OK, because I still have five presents for the five people in Lion Class. Now I don't have one for myself, but that's OK.' The Moon Monster started playing with his new toy, and he was so happy that he jumped up and down, and when he jumped up and down, he woke up TWO MORE Moon Monsters.

"Very quickly, I gave two more presents to those two Moon Monsters, and they were happy too, so Quentin and I flew back down to Earth, and I went home. Now, I don't have enough presents for all the kids in Lion Class, so I'll give them to the birthday boys in Tiger Class instead. I'm very sorry, Lion Class, but I don't have enough Robot Toys to give them to you.

Well, Sarah wasn't satisfied with that. She said, "It's OK, Teacher, I'll share with Sally. Scott doesn't want one."

"Sorry, I have to give them to Willy and Zach and Steven now. I can't only give them to some people in Lion Class."

"Just me teacher. It's OK." (Please realize that she's saying all this in a playful, bantering voice that's charming and fun -- she's not whining or needling at all, so I'm engaging rather than cutting her off with my teacher-authority.) Before I could answer her, the door knocked, and I was called out of the classroom to deal with something. When I returned to class, Sarah had her head on the desk, so I tapped her on the back and said, "Wake up, Sarah! It's time to get out your books."

As soon as I tapped her on the back, she stood up and shook her fists and growled "WHO WAKE ME UP! I'M ANGRY!" -- demonstrating perfect comprehension of the entire story (very impressive for her English level), and the cleverest attempt yet to get her hands on one of those wrapped gifts. She absolutely slayed me. It's not often a kid will catch me right off guard with a funny angle or comment, but she just about knocked me off my chair with laughter. I asked her if she could shake me as much as the moon monster shook me, and before I sent the students off to get their activity books, I had all five Lion Class students pulling on my arms, trying to shake me enough to convince me that I could only placate them with boxes of crayons.

It was an absolutely brilliant day. I'll hold on to those kinds of laughs and smiles, and after a while, I'll notice them more, and remember them more easily, and in time, the whole world will be as shiny as it used to be for me.

Patience. Hope. Joy.


love:
rob