I am walking on office errands somewhere between The Embarcadero and The Financial District just a few minutes before these words are typed. My head is full, mulling over that same troublesome poem while simultaneously pondering a blog update when, passing through the cool shade beneath the AC Transit Bay Bridge overpass, I see a figure curled up on the asphalt in a tattered and stained sleeping bag, presumably sleeping there amid the pigeon droppings and unidentifiable puddles.

This is not an unusual sight for anybody who spends much time in San Francisco. "The Homeless" are a presence here and are often first page news . As just two words on your compter screen, "The Homeless" are rather an anonymous population. As a person huddled at your feet on the cold ground the homeless become very individual. Suddenly the struggling poem in my head and the working out of a blog seemed somehow irrelevant and necessary.

Newspaper piled high
in Winter doorways, alleys -
nests of the homeless.

One of my haiku inspired forms from a few years back (is haiku actually haiku if it is written in English? Tune in later for my opinion!) and, perhaps, an appropriate end to this.

To: Louis Armstrong

You broke my heart

sad
sweet
song

West End Blues 1928

Your trumpet was made of gold
(while you played, at least)

I'll bet the shoes you wore
never touched the ground

while your lips
were on
the horn

1928 West End Blues

Louis, you broke my heart
40 years before I was born

From: Richard Cody , 2002

The following appeared in my in-box late last night and I was unsure what to make of it until I turned this up with a Google search . At first I had no idea if it was a genuine offer, a piece of mutant spam, a simple hoax or a cunning scam.

Turns out it is all of the above.

Being unemployed, I was tempted for a moment by the lure of easy money. Fortunately, reason and a moral sense which forbids me to profit from the spoils of tyranny made that moment of temptation a very brief one.

Now, without further ado, Barrister Soulman Hassan will perform for you the great Nigerian Hustle:


Dear sir,
I am Barrister Soulman Hassan ( SAN ), Lawyer to Mrs. Maryam Abacha ( the Wife of Late
Military Head of States
General Sani Abacha) who died 1998 where in service. However, it is particularly important
to mention here that
before the death of her husband he was able to accumulate enough money through oil
proceeds during his tenure in
the office, it was discover after his death that he worth over US$4.5Billion (Four Billion, Five
Hundren Milion United
States Dollars). And some of this money were retrieved after his death while some was
recovered from the officials
that served under him during his reign as the President of Nigeria. Having said all this, there
was a twist in his
Wealth, The Present Government of Chief Olusegun Obansajo probe his Wealth, most of
his account where
frozen both Local and International.

My client has been able to Move US$45,000,000.00 through diplomatic means to a
Security Company in
Canada , marked as personal effect. Morealso, Bank to Bank transfer of the Fund can be
traced, hence the Money
was stamped with a security code so as to beat the security at the Airport and we do not
want what happen to her
late Husband's billion's of dollars to repeat itself.
My client is under house arrest, the eldest son Mohammed Abacha is in Prison and the
second son Abba Abacha is
under my custody and she is soliciting for a honest Foreign partner who will clear the funds
from the security
Company and invest part of the fund on any profitable venture.
Proposed Sharing Partern (%):

1. 70% for my client

2. 25% for you as a partner/fronting for us.

3. 5% for expenses that may be incurred by both parties during the cause of this
transacton.

Due to the present condition of my client. I shall be very grateful if you keep it confidential
and response as soon as
possible via email.

Do send your private phone number and private fax number , also the name you wish to
use as the beneficiary .

I urgently await your response.

Yours Faithfully,

Soulman Hassan ( SAN )

It seems a trading card manufacturer in Florida is producing trading cards titled Heroes of the World Trade Center which will feature photos and biographical information about those who died in the tragedy of 9/11- or those whose families are willing to participate, at least.

According to the S. F. Chronicle article , "Some families believe the idea is tasteless and the commercial enterprise exploits a national tragedy".

True enough, perhaps, but I wonder if this particular enterprise is any more exploitive than the commodification of the American flag that occurred immediately after the twin towers tumbled, or the opportunistic zeal with which George W. latched on to the attack as a means to increase his popularity with a dubious public and to push his own political agenda forward.

Yes, indeed, I wonder. . .

Trembling beneath the gaze of saints, Emily strained her pale blue eyes in an effort to reciprocate that Holy vision, that sacred sight. She had traveled long and far to arrive at this moment and now that it was upon her she found herself lacking, unable to meet the eyes of those who stood before her, haloed and emanating sheer white light. Squinting, she realized suddenly that her failure was not one of chastity - as she had feared it might be ever since that distant, torrid night in Sao Paulo - but one of endorsement. Her sanctity had not been validated by anybody but herself and Marco. He was dead now, swallowed by the insurrection which had indirectly liberated her from the thrall of the Texas papists, and she alone was not consensus enough to breech the much loved and hallowed ranks she had strived so diligently to join. Or was she? Did she really require anyone else to believe in her? As she had learned through one hard lesson after another, everything is relative. The faith she had in herself might be bright enough to outshine this saintly crowd and more if she could only find it.

Marco had been the one to find that spark in the middle of her darkness, the one to protect it and feed it with bits of his own tattered soul, to fan it until it was a righteous blaze simultaneously consuming and regenerating her heart. She felt that heat even now, rising from the center of herself, illumining her eyes, sending sparks from the tips of her fingers and the ends of her blonde hair. . .

- excerpt from the unwritten novel, The Transfiguration of Emily Clean, not written by Richard Cody in the year of someone's lord 2002 -

So we get back to California with a sense of joy and relief, unload, unpack and set up house only to have one of us head right back to Orlando. Yes, it's true, our second week home has actually been just my second week home as Sarah was required to return to Orlando for business meetings. She tells me she feels like someone trapped in a dream, thinking she is clear and free of danger only to find herself back in the black room with the shadowy man creeping closer and closer, only the dull white of file like teeth visible in the gloom. Actually, Orlando isn't that bad - more like a shadowy puppy, perhaps.

I have been working the last couple of days - temp work for my former employer in San Francisco (hereafter referred to as The City). I won't bore you or myself with the details. It is good, though, to have some income to keep up with the outgo.

With Sarah away I have amused myself the last two nights with videos rented from one of the many places we missed in Orlando - Reel, the real world incarnation of the on-line movie site.

The videos in question were Guy Maddin's, Careful







and Roman Polanski's, The Tenant


.


I am not going to offer up any movie reviews or opinions here save to say that both of these are movies worth a look if you like your cinema challenging, strange and/or surreal.

The reason I bring these videos to your attention is not to discourse upon their cinematic qualities but to muse a moment on the coincidence in which they participated. Actually the latest in a series of coincidences involving video rentals. A coincidence flap , if you will.

We usually leave the video shop with two or three videos minimum, typically selected at random. Recently it seems we are exhibiting a tendency to "randomly" select videos that upon viewing reveal a demonstrable connection in regards to plot, subject matter, cast or crew, as many as three videos sharing the same thread on one occasion. This has happened a number of times of late, five or six including this latest example.

I picked each of these videos from the cult shelf (organized alphabetically by title) and that was the only connection I could make between them prior to viewing. Now that I have seen them I can tell you that they share a plot element.

Careful takes place in the alpine village of Tolzbad, where towering mountains, dreamy white snow and the constant threat of avalanche have shaped a cautious way of life and made a dark virtue of silence.

The Tenant sees Roman Polanski as the timorous Trelkovsky inhabiting an apartment in Paris whose last tenant broke the window if not her lease when she threw herself through the glass to the concrete three floors below. As soon as he moves in circumstances and neighbors force him to adopt a hushed mode of life.

See the connection?

It may or may not seem like much depending on your views regarding coincidence and statistics.

Galaxies in Collision



Kind of puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

Seize it

This moment
could be the axis
around which the whole of your life is turning.

The beat of a heart, the blink of an eye,
the time it takes to complete a breath.

What is a moment?

Merriam-Webster states, among other things, that a moment is:

1 a : a minute portion or point of time : INSTANT b : a comparatively brief period of time

2 a : present time b : a time of excellence or conspicuousness

Accurate but lacking.

This moment is NOW .

A place outside of time, neither ticked nor tocked.

Present and accountable as HERE and NOW but lost even as it is realized.

This moment is momentous, perhaps.

More so than your first, or last, kiss?
Or the instant you knew, as a child,
that Death was in the world?

Maybe.

Possibly not.

There are occurrences of obvious consequence
which we pin to the maps of our lives (here
I learned the truth about Santa, here I learned to drive)
and there are moments like this,

passing unobserved (mainly) into a life in progress.

As the first week in our new home passes into personal history I find myself with an idle moment for reflection and musing in general.

This is the first real idle moment I have had for some time. Most of my moments from the entry below until now have been filled with the details of settling in to our new place. These details include the usual activities of any move - unpacking and setting up house (a small challenge as we have moved into a smaller space which requires careful planning and placement of furniture and objects for a harmonious home - fortunately, Sarah is a natural born Feng Shui master who has found just the right place for all our stuff, including our small library) and, most importantly at this point, looking for work.

Being unemployed is a condition that, while worrisome the longer it endures, has allowed me to absorb the atmosphere of our new home. The days spent inside seeking employment via the internet ( J. Boragine & Associates , BayAreaHelpWanted.com and Craigslist.org ) have given me the opportunity to soak the place up much quicker and sooner than would have been possible had I been rushing out to the old 9 to 5 from the moment we arrived.

Aside from establishing myself in a job it has not been a difficult transition from Orlando to Oakland. In fact, it hasn't been a transition at all, really. Even while we were in Orlando our hearts were here in California (as those of you who have been reading for a while know).

We rented the apartment I am typing these words from sight unseen (save a few digital photos), performing the necessary transactions via e-mail, fax and USPS. This entailed certain risks, of course, but we are pure of heart and have not been disappointed. In fact, just a day or so back it occurred to Sarah and myself more or less simultaneoulsy that this simple one bedroom space, in this 8 unit 1930's era apartment building near Lake Merrit and downtown Oakland feels comfortable and strangely familiar. It's almost as if we have walked between these walls, become acquainted with the creaky spots in the hardwood floors, turned the rumbling dyspeptic hot water tap in the bathroom and gazed at the buildings and greenery beyond our windows before. It feels like home.

The neighborhood around us is also quickly assimilating into the mythology of our lives:

The hum and buzz of traffic along Park Boulevard.

The faceless man across the street who is known to us only by the loud and painful coughing which punctuates the day. Already and, perhaps predictably, he has assumed the moniker of "The Coughing Man".

The grand old buildings from the 20's and 30's which loom above the busy thoroughfare of Park Blvd., many accessible only via steep and winding stairs which creep up from the cracked and uneven sidewalks.

The rainbow of black, white and Asian humanity which occupies those buildings and the small shops which litter the neighborhood.

The debris which lingers in the gutters between weekly street cleanings, consisting usually of empty Home Run Pie wrappers and scattered shreds of newspaper .

The Parkway Theater , bringing food, drink and first run, foreign and cult movies to hungry film goers.

All of these things and more are like scenes and players in a tale that has always been, a portion of our story that was put on hold while we dallied inexplicably in the margins of Orlando. Well, we have turned the page now and the narrative of our lives is resuming.

Read on. . .

The journey is done. We have found our way back home.

Thanks to those of you who wished us well and extra special sugary sweet thanks to friends and family who assisted in various ways with the move.

A few boxes remain to be unpacked and an entertainment center from IKEA will be joining our household before we are completely settled into our new space.

Having safely navigated the country, my primary concern now is to find employment. I am hopeful that I might yet return to my former employer in San Francisco but, until I hear from them one way or the other, hope is all there is.

Blogging may take a back seat for a bit while I restart my life in the Bay Area.

Someone told me there's a girl out there
with love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

Notes From a Life in Progress is hereby placed on temporary hiatus while the life of it's author (me) progresses toward that great ineffable inevability.

Yes, the big move is upon us! Please wish us luck dear friends, casual acquaintances and idle passersby as Sarah and myself pack up our small, dim cat, Mang, and the rest of our humble home and haul it across this grand and horrible country.

It could be as long as two weeks before fresh text finds it's way to this blog. In the meantime, you may want to amuse yourself and satisfy any curiosity you possess about the face behind the rambling by visiting the photo links* I have provided below (The Face Behind the Blog).

California here I come!


* I apologize to those of you who have been reading my poetry and experiencing intermittent errors when the pages load. Geocities is hosting those pages (as well as the photo pages) and it is a bug in the code which I have not had the time or energy to figure out. I can hardly complain, of course, as it is free web space!

Is it hot in here or is it just me?

Stuck Tune Syndrome . . .

At last, a name for the condition that has kept the Alka-Seltzer jingle in my head 20 years after I last heard it.

As if to punctuate the ideas I was poking around on the 10th , earlier today I was mulling over the topic for this very blog when I clicked over to OnePotMeal and read this typically well reasoned and eloquently written post about identity. Steve blogs:

"The appeal, for many people, of the web is that it allows a flexible self. A self unbound by the 'realities' of real life. I can recreate myself as many times as I want to, even several times simulataneously, assigning each aspect of my own personality it's own blog and identity if I want to. The unfortunate corollary of that freedom, however, is that relationships formed in that environment are based not on whole selves, whole people, but on particular aspects in common. A blog is, by necessity, a very narrow window on someone's life, and trying to 'know' someone through their posts feels a bit like the blind men groping the elephant. We may find similarities on our opposite sides of the elephant, and we may find differences, but none of us is seeing the full picture of who the elephant and our fellow gropers are.

That's the nature of constrained communication, whether constrained by PC terminals or by real life reticence and deceit."

This struck me because I had been thinking much the same thing in regards to my own "real" life. As my final day at the law firm where I have been employed for the past year and a half draws near, I find a number of people (all women it might bear noting) telling me that they will miss me. I have not been quite sure how to respond to these statements because, cold as it may sound, I will certainly not miss them. By my own choice I don't know them and they don't know me. Or, more precisely, I might say that I don't really know them and they don't really know me. To employ and mutilate the analogy Steve used, we are nothing but incomplete elephants to one another, these women and myself.

Let us ponder for a moment this observation by the late, great Alan Watts from his seminar, Self and Other :

"You know how Henry Emerson Foster wrote a book called 'How to be a Real Person'? Translated into it's original terms, that means 'How to be a Genuine Fake.' Because the person is the mask, the 'persona' worn by actors in Greco-Roman drama. They put a mask on their face which had a megaphone-shaped mouth which projected the sound in an open- air theater. So the 'dramatis persona' at the beginning of a play is the list of masks, and the word 'person,' which means 'mask,' has come to mean the real you. 'How to be a Real Person.' Imagine."

The persona that I present to my co-workers on a daily basis, the mask they have seen every Monday through Friday for over a year now is: Richard, amiable but reserved and efficient in the dispensing of paper clips and pens.

None of these folks know much about me beyond that. They have no idea that I enjoy Mozart and Blue Oyster Cult, that I write poetry, that I have four tattoos, that I am something of a mystic. Anybody who has spent even a minute reading this blog will be closer to the "real" me than the people I have been working with for almost two years. As stated above, this is by choice and the reasons for that choice are, perhaps, subject enough for later musings. The bottom line here is that they will not miss me but only a particular mask that I sometimes wear, a small fraction of a much larger whole that is me.

We all wear these masks, of course. Here in blogdom, out in the real world, our actual faces are more often than not obscured by illusory ones. The challenge for any and all of us who are striving for perfection is to drop the facades and be real. Really.

P.S. What was your face before your parents were born?

Leaving Florida

The boxes are packed (except for the computer, stereo, and CDs, which I refuse to part with 'till the last possible moment), the utilities are set to be terminated, the mail is soon to be forwarded and we are counting down the days until we pack up and ship out of Orlando. There are some things I may miss about Florida - the amazing birds (herons, eagles, buzzards, cranes), the typically balmy nights, the sky shredding thunder and lighting storms, even the theme parks to some small extent - but we are beyond happy (for reasons that I touched upon here ) to be returning to California. Perhaps my nearly two years absence from the state of my birth has made me overly sentimental or ridiculously romantic but I find myself thinking that California's nickname, The Golden State , has a deeper reference than the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848 . Just as the gold of alchemy has been largely misconstrued as the physical metal only, so to the gold of California. Is California The Golden State because it is a place where we might be capable of tweaking the chemistry of our spiritual/psychological make up, transmuting it from a base substance into a pure one? I think that more so than many states in the union, California is such a place. Certainly more so than Florida, at least in my estimation. I suppose that the generally perceived notion of California as a haven for whackos and mystics is hardly surprising considering that the very name of the place was derived from a 16th century Spanish fantasy novel. The Spanish who "discovered" California believed it to be an island - I think that they were right!

The List

I have just recently discovered Mike Golby over @ PageCount and, after reading a few of his epic posts, have added him to my roll. I know I am not the first to muse about this, nor will I be the last, but just what criteria does one use to decide who will be added to one's roll? This is a stupid question, of course, because it is a completely subjective one. The blogs that I have added to my (currently) short list are blogs that have in some way resonated with me. There are blogs that I enjoy - such as Ghost Rocket and Quiddity - primarily for the news/entertainment links they provide. Then there are those that, through the words of their authors, engage my mind and stir the "little grey cells" a bit, as Hercule Poirot would say. Among the latter I would include OnePotMeal , Kalilily and, most recently, PageCount . Others fall in between and all around these two types.

In the short time I have been blogging I have gotten in the habit of reading all of the blogs on my roll regularly, if not daily. I experience, when link surfing here in the blog community, much the same feeling that typically engulfs me in a bookstore or library - namely the "so many books, so little time" syndrome. Time is a precious commodity and, because I only have so much of it that I can allot to blog reading and writing (I have a wife to love, books to read, a job to hold down in the real world), I choose to be selective about the blogs included on my roll; especially because I prefer to give those blogs the attention they deserve when I am checking in.

Still, if I happen upon your blog and it speaks to me in the ill defined way I have mentioned above, you may just find yourself linked.

CLICKETY
SWISH!
CLACK

. . .the bones of popes long dead are skipping rope inside my head. . .

Selling Brand USA to the world has got to be a tough job these days, even for the most savvy of ad people. For instance, how do you put any kind of positive or justifiable spin on torture as a means of interrogation?

Thanks to Empty Bottle for the heads up on the torture atrocity.

As I begin this particular blog entry I am listening to Spiritchaser -






- the last album (released in 1996) from the incomparable duo known as Dead Can Dance .

From the back of the CD insert comes this quote, excerpted from Harmonies of Heaven and Earth by Joscelyn Godwin:

"In most musical instruments the resonator is made of wood while the actual sound generator is of animal origin. In cultures where music is still used as a magical force, the making of an instrument always involves the sacrifice of a living being. That being's soul then becomes part of the instrument and in the tones that come forth, the 'singing dead', who are ever present with us, make themselves heard."

While those few words are full of thought snacks, it is the concept of music as a magical force that interests me here. Not many of us these days are using music to raise the dead or to communicate with enitities beyond our vibrational plane. Music is used, however, to induce certain moods, to create atmosphere in personal interior and exterior space. Think of a favorite song or piece of music and consider the effect that music has on you. Does it make you happy? Sad? Bouncy? Serene? If it has any effect at all it is working a change within you, coloring your perception for at least the duration of the piece. Depending on your definition of magic , this may or may not fit the bill. I think we would all agree, however, that if music has the power to change you - your mind, your mood - for even a moment, then it is a force of some kind. Personally, I have no problems accepting music, some types of music more so than others certainly, as a magical force - my definition of magic (in a nutshell) being the working of change, via the agencies of imagination and will, in oneself and the world at large. Music provides an ideal medium for the focus of imagination and the channeling of will if one is willing and able to use it as a tool to do so.

My tastes in music have changed and grown over the years. My earliest interest in "real" music was influenced by my mother who, at that time (mid 1970's), seemed to be listening to "lite rock". For a time my ears followed hers. At some point in my early teens I heard Electric Funeral by that definitive heavy metal band, Black Sabbath and my brain, under the influence of Ozzy's haunted wail and Tony Iommi's volume 11 swirling guitar riffage, melted and reassembled into something altogether different. Most of my teenage years were spent banging my head to heavy metal and strumming air guitar to "classic" rock. From these narrow musical confines I stepped into punk rock and various types of alternative music which ultimately led to a grand expansion of my musical mind. These days when somebody asks me the impossible question, "What kind of music do you like?", I typically reply, "It depends what mood I'm in".

So, what magical forces have you been listening to?

The poem that kept me awake on the 5th has continued to be troublesome. It has not come together at all smoothly but in bits and pieces in need of careful consideration and brutal hammering out. This painstaking, arduous and time consuming procedure is one of my creative modes. Another, infinitely preferable, method is the one in which a story or poem seems to form in my head all of a piece, from whence it spills without effort onto a paper or electronic page (there are differences between writing on real vs. virtual paper but that is another post).

Stephen King on Good Morning America, apparently, made the following comment in regards to writing:

"My job is not to create, per se, but to unearth, to get these things out of the ground as fully complete as they can. . . I never felt like I wrote a story. I felt like I found them all. I feel more like an archaeologist than a creator."

This notion is one that I can empathize with and endorse completely. While I can only wish that I was as efficient an archeologist as Mr. King, I can attest from my own experience that writing is like finding buried treasure.

This line of thought leads me directly to Jung's theory of the collective unconscious . This concept, as I understand it, deals primarily with archetypes , which are more general, of course, than a specific story that Stephen king or myself might write - or should I say discover? - but any difference between the general and the specific here is minimal, I believe, when we are talking about these largely uncharted regions of the mind.

Let us consider the following excerpts from an interview with Alan Moore regarding what he refers to as Idea Space :

"For the sake of argument we can imagine that our thoughts occur in some sort of medium which we will call Idea Space. That our personalities, the things we call ourselves might be a kind of travelling nexus in this Space, that ideas or concepts are solid forms or the equivalent of solid forms within this space. How this space differs from our space is, firstly it isn't a space � space does not actually exist there. The distances are associative like in the real world Land's End and John O'Groats are famously far apart but you can't think of one without thinking of the other � so in Idea Space they're next to each other."

". . .There's no time either. There's no space and there's no time. It's just as easy for you to think about what you were doing this morning as Victorian street scenes. You can go there instantly. You can imagine a scene from ten years in the future. Time is not the same. Time does not really exists other than to the conscious mind, that's what I believe. Our perception of linear time is purely a construct of the conscious mind...."

"...Your mind is not bound in time the way your body is, it's certainly more fluid � there's not really a time barrier in the world of the mind. Now it struck me that a good model might be, we've all got our own Idea Space which is individual and unique to us. This is like having your own house. We've all got part of our unconscious in the back garden but the back gardens all lead onto the same street. In another model you might say there's all these little individual inlets of consciousness, but they all connect to the same central ocean."

"... Interestingly, when James Watt did discover the steam engine there were about six other people in the same two or three month period who, completely independently, also discovered the steam engine. Charles Fort , who documented much of this, said, in his special whimsical way, 'I guess it was just steam engine time.'"

". . .Someone has got a film out with the same idea. And it's tempting to think that the idea could either have been a solid thing floating in a mutually accessible space you happened to come across, and so did somebody else. When we say things are in the air, what do we mean? What air are we talking about? We all know that phenomena, you have a word explained to you, and within the next three days you hear it three times...
I don't think I'm saying a lot here that hasn't been suggested by people like Jung and Plato before me, where he talks about his world of essences. I'm coming up with this theory to explain things that seem to have happened to me."

Jung' s collective unconscious and Moore's notions of idea space ring very true to me. This concept of a single field of mind ties up nicely with one of the standard characteristics of mystical experience , namely the awareness that all things are one.

So where does the problematic poem bumping around in my head fit into all of this? It's simply a piece which I am having trouble excavating, I suppose. I'd better hurry up and get it out, though, before someone else does!