Outside A Day In May

10 Mar 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, 2017, birth death & in between II Tags:

         Sitting Outside A Day In May 

      

I find myself not only wondering [but]

Thirsting, needing to know when and how they died, [but]

Thoughts or suffering or not: in short,

The state before and during…

 

I observe a skin that’s wrinkling,

Drying out and shrinking,

Hear and spy a bird in tree,

See the freshness, spring’s new growth,

The only thing I really see is death, a passing.

 

I allow myself my breaths,

The moods, desires –

All that goes along,

Forgetting for the most part.

 

Deep down I see the buds of parting

And an emptiness because

I have no answers.

All that I can do is wait and act and meditate

As if life equaled all time-in-the-world.

 

Every year in spring

I find I’m writing,

Charting age unconsciously,

Literally marking time.

 

Not sad, not glad but emptier

Than years before,

(or maybe more).

Noticing, acknowledging a substance;

The substantial underlying all the grandeur.

 

Sitting Outside A Day In May 5.21.2016

Birth, Death & In Between II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

Boredom #2

16 Feb 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, 2017, definitely didactic, revelations big & small Tags:

Boy, I never knew the subject of boredom could be so stimulating as to warrant two versions.

I’ve never seen so many synonyms for one small noun,

Blocking maturation and enjoy-dom:

Boredom.

“Weariness, ennui: frustration;

Restlessness, dissatisfaction, unconcern: frustration;

Lethargy, lassitude, flatness and frustration;

Dreariness, repetitiveness, apathy: frustration;

Tedium, monotony, dullness. yes, frustration.”

 

Can it be overcome, this boredom?

No more war – the boredom won,

Exchanged for something more like fun?

It can.

 

A friend who, when we speak, says,

“It’s a part of nature…has no answer…”

Reasoning fallacious,

She is wrong as wrong can be

And her reasoning a fallacy.

 

Awake at night: hormones, full moons;

The glut of light: electric gadgets and devices,

Radios that play a song too strong, too long..

 

A trick I’ve learned that’s brought results;

A knack, a shortcut worth consulting

Is to train the brain to focus on/in/with the brain;

Travel round in, sense and feel…

Make it real – as if you really feel

The part you aim at, frame then tame.

 

In seconds you’ve an object that’s becomes a subject.

Boredom fled, you freed,

You and your mood well pleased, released

And taken places least expected,

Un-objected to by you,

The burden boredom doomed –

All through!

Boredom 11.24.2016/ #2 revised 2..16.2017

Revelations Big & Small; Definitely Didactic;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

What Exactly Is A Monad

29 Jan 2017 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, 2017, circling round reality, nature of & in reality Tags:

                        What Exactly Is A Monad?

Monos is a Greek word meaning unit or alone, leading to a most important concept. They say Pythagoras was the first to use it. He meant ‘a single source acting alone; its origin indivisible’. By monos he meant divinity, first being, acting alone. In it’s literal sense, ‘a non-material, least unit in the world’s All. – a word of great beauty and precisely what we are: a non- material and least reducible dot in the world whole. And divine, to boot.          What interests me is the prefix mono used as the noun monad, a concept found in one of the oldest world philosophies: Vedanta. Detailed, rational, easier to comprehend than western metaphoric scriptures, Vedanta has a larger philosophic vocabulary – than even than the German equivalent – monad being one of them.  Why should you think about this? Because it is the you – irreducible, and pragmatically, empirically experience-able. Understanding it is a help, a first step. Where to start? Sitting, standing, lying, moving ask yourself, not ‘who am I’ but ‘where’ is the I that is me? You’ll start the process going. Stand in the middle of a party, a crowd or at the sink. Ask yourself the same question. The hands are going, the feet are going – all the body parts are going. Ask yourself at those times. Ah, but where is me/I?

You are alone, surrounded by all other alones. You could say that what you discover in the end is not hands, legs, kidneys and noses, but consciousness. You are a chunk of consciousness. And that chunk is not different one man or woman to another. And yet it is.

Confounding perhaps, but inspiring too. It’s up to you to find it and find out. Born alone, you die alone. In fact, you are alone the whole of life, surrounded by other Alones whose aim you have in common: To be free, feel free, to know yourself, to have no fears, and have the understanding that you’re free. How do you know when you are free? You’ll know it when you see it.

If you are Biblically inclined and see yourself as an/the ‘image’ of God, then the aim is to become one with, merge with God. If your references have other origins work with those, but know that in and of yourself, you are alone. Learn to feel that. An absolute not negative but empowering. Knowing that leads to empathetic detachment, an all-embracing love without judgment, without the need to cling or reject.

So when you’re thinking about existence, what it means, what you deserve, think monad.

What Exactly Is A Monad? 3.23.2016/1.29.2017 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Corwin

 

 

A Perversion Of The Present

29 Dec 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, the processes II Tags:

     It’s really about ways to develop.  Or rather, the Way among ways.   Or, ways to the Way.  There’s a word I’ve always been fond of.  It’s ‘ineffable’.  It means many things, but it really means beyond description.  That’s what all this stuff is.  One is always making a stab at it, but that’s it.   

     A Perversion Of The Present

A perversion of the present –

It is thought?

Perhaps.

And yet you have to use thought

To divest yourself of thought

(at least to start with).

Riddle; paradox; conundrum:

How to solve it?

Krishnamurti, (clever man)

Used verbs like ‘carve the brain’

‘Scoop out’, ‘uproot’, and ‘empty’, aimed

At silencing a brain that’s interfered with by:

‘Ambitions, greed, stupidities, & vanities’.

All the same,

He never tells you How

He only tells you That.

Corwin (not-so-clever girl) says,

It’s the Now and only Now

That is the What and is the How;

The instrument, the what-to-do

That only you

Can find

Inside that mind

of yours.

 

Focus on a body part,

Your spleen, your heart

A word repeated,

On your breathing in and out.

On God, a saint,

If that’s your bent.

 

Focus, watch, come back to Now

When sidetracked,

Drift away or stray.

The only entrance back is Now.

 

I’m limited, I know –

But it’s a start with which

To scratch that wandering and misleading itch

Of wishing, longing, reminiscing,

Guilt and backward/forward thinking;

Start by which

To squelch & wash away the errors, launch your niche

Your cubbyhole, your branch…

I promise you, you won’t go wrong.

 

A Perversion Of The Present 12.29.2016

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

To Write For Whom (a poem to end the year)

28 Dec 2016 1 Comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, the processes II Tags:

To Write For Whom (a poem to end the year)

To Write For Whom

You reach an age when friends, your generation
Dying off like flies.
And you, full of ideas
Alive and kicking,
Finger licking fresh in mind
Trying to find
One out there,
To read your wares.
Your teeming thoughts,
Aware and deep with meaning
Warranting a reader,
Radar to its most intense.
Looking, writing, hoping for an audience,
Shakespeare felt the selfsame yearning –
Handel, Beethoven, each earning by conducting,
Not to mention poor Van Gogh
Who went the way of painters who sell nothing go.

To write, paint, sculpt, dance, sing, compose:
Any noise that oozes art.
For whom?
That is the theme, the problem
And the question.

To Write For Whom12 27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

 

A Poem For All The Publishers Who Say “No Poetry”

21 Dec 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, a sense of the ridiculous II, our times our cultureII, the processes II Tags:

A Poem For All The Publishers Who Say “No Poetry”

 

I’ve looked it up a million times –

(a little bit of overstatement never hurts)

I think in meter, think in rhyme.

It suits my temperament. Reverts

To chimes of nursery rhymes

Instinctive in us all –

This call to childhood’s guiltlessness.

Yet publishers of good repute

Refute this claim

And to their shame,

Their snobbish, profiteering shame,

Say No to poetry.

 

We should attack!

Abundant in attractiveness are we.

Ever clever, disciplined;

Deep, reflecting all reality:

And yet they say, “NO POETRY,

DO NOT SEND POETRY”.

Refused, rejected

Are we bards dejected?

Never!

We go on forever,

Eager in our hunger.

 

While you publishers go under,

We are there, bad, corny, muted,

Understated and astut-ed;

Couplets, meters, forms abstract,

Highbrow, lowbrow, autodidact:

Rumbling on like thunder.

 

A Poem For All You Publishers Who Say “No Poetry” 12.21.2016

A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;

Arlene Corwin

The Many Benefits Of Facebook Friends

19 Dec 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, our times our cultureII, war book II Tags:

The Many Benefits of Facebook Friends

 

A Facebook friend wrote meaningfully:

“Give me,

Five ways to give aid to people

Of Aleppo”

(You know where Aleppo is;

It’s on the lip(s)

of all the world).

A reader sent back this small clip,

A tiny snippet:

“Meditate!

Get rid of violent thoughts,

Of evil judgments that you sow

And sown,

And temper outbreaks that you’ve known.

Don’t only sit, feel sad and moan!

That is the thing this scribe can do,

Does do and plans to do.

You do it too!”

 All done and said,

That was the ‘five good things’ contributed.

When he who wrote it

Noted

This.

I wrote right back and sent a kiss.

There are ten thousand like me.

 

The Many Benefits Of Facebook Friends 12.19.2016

Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book II;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

Cosmic Coordination #3

18 Dec 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, nature of & in reality Tags:

         Cosmic Coordination #3

(one day further, meter righted, verbs re-chosen ,rhymes clearer, form tightened, economized; made easier to read;

even message and its nuance altered)

 

Moment now can never come again,

Not poetry, not inspiration;

Angle, viewing – changing. never to be re- a thing,

Moments have a nano-difference,

Must have nano-variation;

Individual, a coin

Two-sided, joined

By now and not…

 

Moments have no measure,

No more import in the one than t’other –

Value too. Does sitting on the loo

Have more significance than any other thing you do?

Same dance, same chance – with difference.

 

The instant used for what it is –

An irreplaceable – shall we say, space?

(Let’s call it ‘space) to use with all its use

As product, project, problem solved:

A life improvisation.

 

Influences, guides that sway –

You need to take them,

(soaking up many ways unawares). And unaware,

You also guide and shape and sway

From where you are, for you have power,

Synchronized with galaxy and star

And all the spheres that ever were.

 

Not to sound too know-it-all, sententious, preachy:

That’s the way it is!

 

Cosmic Coordination #3 12.18.2016

Nature Of & In Reality;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

Consumer Of Existence

14 Dec 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, circling round reality Tags:

         Consumer Of Existence

Even if it’s all predestined

It’s you who choose.

So go, so do.

It does what it does

Despite your choices;

So many factors out and in you.

 

Even if it’s all predestined

You don’t know a thing,

So go, so do,

And carry on as usual.

You win, you lose,

You pay your dues,

Thinking that you have control

Though you have none at all.

 

A panorama of existence,

You consumer and disarmed.

They call it karma.

 

Consumer Of Existence 12.14.2016

Circling Round Reality;

Arlene Corwin

He Never Did Believe

11 Dec 2016 Leave a comment

by arlenecorwin in 2016, birth death & in between II, God Book II Tags:

He never did believe in God –

Just couldn’t.

He went yesterday.

I hope he faded, simply faded,

Fell asleep pain free, thought free

And no anxiety.

I never preach.

I cannot teach,

But feel some It does reach us all

According to capacities,

The faculty through faculties,

Our capabilities.

 

Belief or not –

Life’s crux takes care,

Taking generations through –

To rid the self of doubt,

Of frailty and flaw.

 

There’s force out there

Before the stars,

Before the universes

And our cares.

 

He never did believe

Or even contemplate the reasons why.

It’s all okay.

It has its reasons reasoning

Beyond the sky and comprehension.

 

He Never Did Believe 12.11.2016

Birth, Death & In Between II; God Book II;

Arlene Corwin

(to Å)

 

 

 

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