17 Sept 18 Cascade

What beliefs do you hold most true? Have you thought about this? We all operate from hour to hour based on our deepest beliefs – some about grandly important matters; some trivial and malleable.

Have you ever had one of your most cherished beliefs challenged, or even shattered? The certainty of love returned? The on-going existence of a child? Death coming unexpectedly? The times when beliefs break and fragment comprise the bedrock of the poem below.

Cascade

                                                Seven years stand atop decades hardness

                                                Now, stepping off the cliff into darkness

                                                            rolling off the sharp edge

                                                            plummeting into freefall

                                                                        cascading flesh along the wall

                                                                        the avalanche of me

                                                A year of presage searching for the gate

                                                                        now jagged key in lock rotates 

                                                Lake rises up white to meet the divergence

First wind-wave crests in sea surges

                                                            sends my bearings reeling

                                                            as I fall through the void of believing

                                                                        as idols crumble

                                                                        rolling off the distinct divide

                                                with a blackbird who has commenced her crying

                                                            diving beside – both of us falling flying

                                                The bird splays out glossy throat feathers

                                                beneath this hot February weather.

                                                            At the end of this presage year

                                                            I fathom falling beyond the gods

                                                                        racing past the notion

                                                                        as the freefall goes on

                                                                                    leaving behind the watchful ones

                                                                                    and the pantheon of deities gone

                                                

Inside this falling through, I apprehend

stepping away from scriptures and watchful men

            tumbling past these concepts like a ruptured star

            as the void-bound plunge continues down the wall

                        toward something greater, something more

                        where no imagined sentients observe, or care

                                    protect, reward, or punish there

I see that nothing but our own conventions collect worthless merits

A turnkey revelation destroys precepts, canons once cherished

Something more means nothing greater, nothing less

Living out the once-and-no-more span of living’s access

            without point or purpose beyond the utter joy

            of swimming in the infinite, stroking fast

                        with elation through knowing the abyss

                        one immense step at a time off the cliff

All the fictions plunging swiftly and gaining speed

with the compendium of stories, I myself propel

            until I can apprehend their downhill spiral

                        into the candle’s blown out morals

This freefall into freedom’s enchantment

from ethics, dogma, mothers ancient

            Persistent change orders every day

            Analysis, explanations, unpacking gone away

                        No rules. No doctrines. No limits

                        No granite commandments. No tenets.

Only choice and entering to begin again, again, again

Staggering freedom – relief at departure of imagination

The falling away of everything familiar

            a practice of emptiness and form

The loneliness of stepping off and falling

outside margined boundaries, beyond norms

No sanctioned chart to navigate

Love the single dazzling star and the single gate

Walking through and saying yes

a survivor of beliefs’ wilderness

Background

The rough timeline that opens the poem approximates the time it takes to change one of a person’s core values: seven – seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. The number “seven” is just a metaphor for a shorter time as compared to the decades it most frequently takes to solidify a belief or value. That said, the foregoing is all speculation.

Perhaps, a more accurate metaphor comes from Buddhism: taking one step off a hundred-foot pole. Cliff or pole, doesn’t matter. When a belief shatters, the world loses its center and most of us fall over or down in the descent of disbelief in losing a cherished value that is no more. 

All this has happened for me over the decades of my life – many times. (I suspect this is part of human condition – true for all of us.) Just when I began to feel comfortable with a set of beliefs, whether religious or mundane, the bottom fell out, and I experienced imbalance and deep uncertainty about what would replace (if anything would) my prior confidence about how things actually are.

In place of these persistent, recurring assaults to values held, and beliefs cemented, it finally struck me that “the way things actually are” means constant change (impermanence of everything, even rocks and mountains, given enough time), the fiction of a stable self, and the impossibility of fulfilling desire in an ongoing manner. And that’s just to start.

This poem is, therefore, a call to consider whether such states of being are the reality we live in. Just consider the lengths humanity has gone to prevent change, to hold on to a stable self, and to continue to try to fulfill desires. In short, the poem challenges the very concept of beliefs and values. Have at it in the explorations below.

Exploration #1: What’s to be done when a belief shatters? Try to return it to its former state? Let it go? Be at peace with whatever comes after? Bargain with the gods, i.e., “If you do this for me, I will . . . or I will never . . .”

Exploration #2: Consider what beliefs are most central to the way you conduct your life. Make a list of 3 to 5. If this question poses difficulty, consider self-reflection to surface your beliefs and values.

Exploration #3: Are people the product of their beliefs, or is some other dynamic operative?

Exploration #4: In reference to the last line, ask yourself the question Tina Turner once put forth: “What’s love got to do with it?”

Your Monday Poet, Jack Pine Savage

Wannaska World, 2018.09.17

Otto had already begun his assigned reading about Norse mythology in the school library, starting with Odin, the all-father, highest ranking of the Asgard gods. (Every library in the region where Otto lived had a healthy supply of books on Nordic legends [sagas], and mythology.) The book he had chosen looked pretty new, but the introduction said it came from the thirteenth century’s Prose Edda written by someone named Snorri Sturluson. Otto sat back stunned in the library chair when he saw a black-and-white drawing of Odin in the book he had chosen, for on either side of the god, a wolf sat, half looking at Odin, half looking out on the world. The two ravens perched on Odin’s shoulders, named Huginn (thought) and Muninn (memory) also intrigued Otto, but the wolves really grabbed his attention. Reading on, Otto discovered that their names were Geri and Freki which in Old Norse both meant “the ravenous one.”

 After school, Otto rushed home to see how his new friend had survived the day As Otto hurried home, he decided to name his new friend Freki. Freki didn’t exactly look like a wolf, but Otto decided she was close enough with her stand-up ears and pointy snout. Besides, Geri sounded too much like the common name, “Jerry.” Otto had seen a wolf a few times loping through a farmer’s field, but more often darting across a forest road into the trees. 

No, even though Freki looked somewhat like a wolf, she was much smaller and her light tan coat didn’t match the gray-black fur of wolves. He really didn’t care what kind of dog Freki was – probably a mutt, he thought. A vision of Wink suddenly floated up in Otto’s memory, and a deep well of sadness burrowed into his heart. He would for sure rather have Wink back instead of this new dog, but then Otto again became cautiously excited by the thought of the newly named Freki. He broke into a run up the Pepperhorst’s long, winding gravel drive just off County Road 8. He had sequestered Freki in an abandoned chicken coop, and without going into the house, he went straight to the coop, unlatched the door, and in a flash, Freki leaped out and was gone, chicken feathers floating from her mouth. Otto ran after her, as Paula Pepperhorst called loudly from the front steps of the house, “Where are you going, young man!”