Counting the Dead

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No one is talking about the Dead.
We’re just counting them.
Each day there are more and we think
it can’t get any worse, until they don’t
come back. So we keep counting the Dead.

People made memorials for the Dead
of 2001. Their names are etched in stone.
You can read them on the Internet.
At some point they were read aloud.
But that was only 2,600 Dead. .

We mourned. We wept and flew the flag
and vowed revenge. We didn’t understand
that Death is never satisfied.
We should start reading names today.
Too many Dead to carve in stone this time.

But we don’t call the Dead by name
or say what was done with their bodies,
memories, or redeemed of the time
they should have had to wait as days
of quiet life and love pass by.

We who are dying now will learn
the patience of stucco and sunlight
on glass. Some of us refuse.
There is no one they love enough
to sit in a room with their dust and be still.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed

Same as it ever was

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Thoughts on influences of writing and dealing with The Plague.

I got an offline comment recently from someone who said that they don’t follow my blog much anymore because it’s just stuff written by other people. To this I replied they ought to read it, maybe starting with the blog’s description in the right column:

Metaphor is my blog on writing: the art, the life, the culture, the tech, and the inspiration. Plus whatever metaphorically floats my boat, tickles my Elmo, etc.

It doesn’t say my blog of my writing. It says on writing … and the inspiration.

To be sure, the commend wasn’t meant to be hurtful or derogatory. More than anything, it reflects the fact that we’re all drowning in data and it’s become a great challenge to focus and read deeply. That includes me; I often comment on news links posited to social media, based solely on the headline.

Tonight I saw this:

Opinion: “I hope that when both our daughters think back on this time, they’ll remember how many good people worked so hard to keep the world running — often at risk to themselves,” says NPR’s Scott Simon.

I commented: “Maybe they will remember all the people who out of love didn’t put themselves at risk and instead protected their family and community and made a future – and a future generation – possible.” Nice comment. I hope it made it seem like I read the article but I didn’t; I just read just the Facebook post. Time to move on!

But a blog is here for people who are looking for something to read for a few minutes, not a few seconds. And the blogger owes them his/her best efforts to make those minutes worth the investment.

Any blog about writing is essentially a blog about its inspiration, as well as its process and hopefully its product. None of that exists out of context. I read books. I listen to music, watch movies, listen to people, watch life go by. I share it and write about it and comment on it. That’s what writers do. We give attribution – credit where credit is due – and explore what if anything the inspiration brings.

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe.

Carl Sagan

Besides, it looks to me like at least 80% of what’s here is 100% written by me. My poems are shared here when I think they’re worth sharing

Speaking of watching life go by, we’re in Day 36 of quarantine here in California. I asked myself in my journal whether today feels like my real normal life, within the terms of quarantine. My first answer was No. It still feels like my real life got put on pause 5 weeks ago. This feels like life in suspended animation. It feels like we’re not free to get on with Life on Life’s Terms.

For example, I can’t pack a bag, gas up the car, and head off to visit my brother. Not only would that be two separate quarantines commingling. I would have to stop along with way – it’s over 400 miles – and risk infection. Not good. No going. I love my brother and my family.

I realize that my first response to the question is wrong. This is my life today. This is precisely Life on Life’s Terms. I’m just not psychologically acclimated yet. I’m still getting my footing in a situation that’s like crossing a dangerous stream of Time on a mossy, wobbly log. Watch your step there, Scouts!

This is the way it is right now. For some reason, the universe has inflicted us with a time of plague and we can’t change that. Until November, we can’t change the fact that the people tasked with providing common solutions and help on the national macro level are corrupt failures. But we can decide how we’re going to react to it all. And if we’re not to be among the selfish and addle-minded herd, we have to do the right and loving thing and effing deal with those terms life is setting for us. Stay Home. Stay Safe. For the Love of God and Everybody, Stay Apart.

Yeah, I’m saying that the people who are protesting orders to keep businesses closed and stay safe at home are committing acts of incredible selfishness; the moral treason of carelessness; not in any way love for their fellow humans. It’s not hate, it’s ignorant indifference. And as we’ve been taught by Elie Wiesel, the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.

That’s what I think, and the thoughts are mine and were written by me. [OK, I’m being a little hard on the person who gave me that comment. I’m just hoping if they read the blog again, they’ll actually read the blog this time.] When you read something someone else has written you’re giving the gift of your time. Writers and other artists should never take the gift of time and attention lightly. I am grateful always.

____________________________________

Now with apologies to The Talking Heads, here’s something paraphrased.

You may find yourself
living in a quarantine.
And you may ask yourself
how did I get here?
And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful life.

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down.
…
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Same as it ever was
Letting the days go by
Same as it ever was

Shelter

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In the distance, someone beats
a great drum, coming nearer every day.
This old rhythm we don’t recognize,
the days of plague. Those who do not
learn from history are doomed.
Like birds driven earthward to shelter
under bushes by a storm, we wait
for abstract entities to pass.
Son of man, you cannot say or guess
how long. The clock reminds us,
drumming down the hours like high
surf pounding on the rocks.

I have lived in this room for years,
beneath its stucco laqueraria devoid
of cherubim or even birds.
The days called me out into the warm
sea air, to see the intimation of islands
beyond the eucalypti and the bluffs.
Now the invitation is withdrawn;
at least obscured, contingent
on a tolerance of sorrows.
I had not thought the sweet breeze
would rise and bring such sounds
of the inevitable world.

J. Kyle Kimberlin
Creative Commons Licensed

Waves of the Same Sea

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I will write in my journal that today was not a good day. It began with news of a surge in diagnoses and deaths from covid-19 in New York and ended with the governor’s order that Californians must stay home. This is going to be bad before it gets better, but that implies hope.

Such days bring fear up from the belly into the eyes and ears and leave great deposits of fear, like shoals of obsidian sand, in the sheltered harbors of the heart. But in the hours in between, I was offered a vista of high clouds following recent rain, and of the blue Pacific.

There was also this: On many cartons of medical supplies donated by a Chinese company to the people of Italy were written words of the 1st century Roman philosopher Seneca.

“We are waves of the same sea, leaves of the same tree, flowers of the same garden”

Together

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“To bear in mind constantly that all of this has happened before. And will happen again—the same plot from beginning to end, the identical staging. Produce them in your mind, as you know them from experience or from history: the court of Hadrian, of Antoninus. The courts of Philip, Alexander, Croesus. All just the same. Only the people are different.”

– Marcus Aurelius, concerning the Antonine Plague in the second century AD.

It is the different people that’s the issue, though, isn’t it? Because certainly this is not the end of the world or the end of humanity. The Antonine Plague killed between 10 and 18 million people, at a time when the population of the world was about 125 million. Today there are 7.6 billion. Most of us will survive. Will I be one of them? Will you, or your older or more vulnerable loved ones? 

Aurelius was Roman emperor and in the past day there have been over 475 deaths in Italy alone. In the past few days, the rate of infections and deaths has spiked worldwide. This was predicted. Now we’re afraid. What can we do? 

I’m a typical introvert; at least, a little more toward that end of the spectrum. Not much for larger groups and crowds, generally. You’ll never hear me say, “Let’s go to Vegas, Baby!” But one thing I know about myself is that, as much as I normally expend energy around other people and recharge in solitude, in times of crisis I like to be with others. I feel the urge to be together and work together. When the Thomas Fire came, and then the mudslide and the outages and road closures, I drew strength from others. It was like my introvert poles temporarily switched. Now, frankly, I would like hugs.I would like to be able to hug my friends and neighbors, shake hands with strangers. A Grateful Dead show would be awesome. And I’m looking forward to that future, someday. In the meantime, we have to find other ways to be kind and love each other, and take care of each other so we can live on, to the bright morning of once-again hugs.  

So how do we get through this? Together, apart. We have to stay apart to do this together. John Green said this so beautifully on YouTube last night, and I’ll like that below. 

Whoever you are, I love you. From here at my desk, alone in my condo on the west coast of California, please know that. And I would embrace you if I could. We have to get through this together. If you have one of those who thinks your separation doesn’t matter, or that anyone can afford to be defiant in the face of this disease, please rethink. Please be kind. You don’t want to kill your parents or grandparents. Get away from other people to break the chain of infection. Please be kind to each other. Do the hard things, the brave things, the loving things and remember

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry

Fragile sense

Quote

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We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. There is a strange and sorrowful loneliness to this, to being a creature that carries its fragile sense of self in a bag of skin on an endless pilgrimage to some promised land of belonging. We are willing to erect many defenses to hedge against that loneliness and fortress our fragility. But every once in a while, we encounter another such creature who reminds us with the sweetness of persistent yet undemanding affection that we need not walk alone.

– Maria Popova

Totalitarianism

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“Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
—Hannah Arendt, “The Origins of Totalitarianism”

Legacy

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Francis Bacon wrote:

Death is a friend of ours and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

Bacon, an essayist, philosopher, and statesman, was born in 1561 and died in 1626. I was born in 1961, 400 years later than Bacon. Do you realize what this means?

It means I need to get busy writing down interesting but moderately obscure stuff that people will still be quoting in around 2430 AD.

Um … does anybody out there think there will still be humans living on Earth’s surface in 400 years? Or is the Anthropocene yawning to an end sooner than that?

Asking for a friend.

Bonus points if you know what movie this is from and, like me, saw it when it was new.

Birth

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I just learned that an old friend has passed away. We knew he wasn’t well but I don’t believe even he thought time might be so short. It makes me consider how precious life is. In a sense, life is a series of experiences, each of which slips into the past and is impossible to have again. And each day we say goodbye to the person we were the day before.

I’ve been working on this poem already for already for a few days. This seems like a good time to pull it out of the notebook.

BIRTH

Every birth is a condescension of starlight,
a grand confluence of element and intelligence.
Each arrival a litany of the life-long goodbye,
to the first moment, first face and day,
to sunsets innumerable and hurried
in silence by the turning world.
Goodbye then to childhood. Goodbye to first love,
kiss, car, first earthquake. Goodbye to the last
day of school, to the wood duck and whale,
all blankets and cold lakes, all cloudy spring days.
Goodbye to time and the stubborn way
the planet rocks back and forth forever,
creating spring and all its passionate hope.
Goodbye to yesterday and who we were,
misremembering all the possibilities.
Goodbye to our plans for the end of days
and the Nightland coming and everything
to which we haven’t said hello. Oh God!
Goodbye to dogs, goodbye to you and me.

J. Kyle Kimberlin

Creative Commons Licensed

“Goodbyes make you think. They make you realize what you’ve had, what you’ve lost, and what you’ve taken for granted.”

Ritu Ghatourey

Metaphor Rising

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I’ve been thinking a lot about my poor old blog. Metaphor will be 17 years old in March.  It began as a venue on Blog City, to excoriate George W Bush and the evil wrought by his “shock and awe” attack on Baghdad in 2003. Many of the oldest posts have been lost to the dyspeptic digestions of the Internet, as the blog moved from place to place. 

I used to write posts about writing tech pretty often. They’re called apps now but for a while I was a minor champion of FOSS, Free and Open Source Software. Then a couple of years ago, I was spending so much time trying to ferret out and build a system of apps to enhance my productivity that I grew sick of the whole pursuit. I hit a wall and became disenchanted with personal technology as the solution to my challenges. We all have to use what works for us and productivity apps on my iPhone weren’t working for me. 

On the rebound, I fell in love again with analog. In summer 2017 I learned about the Bullet Journal method and gradually adapted it to my needs. Late that year, I found pocket notebooks, then got into pencils in 2018. Those are my hobbies now, and the tools I use for my primary avocation, writing. 

I still write, mostly poems, and from time to time I’ll post one here. But it has become obvious that the blog can’t survive on my occasional poems. I need to generate other content. As I’ve said before, I really don’t want to let Metaphor die, as so many blogs have. But it’s not flourishing. It’s time for a change. 

“Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens. The sleeper must awaken.”  
– Frank Herbert

I sat down with my notebook and pencil. I made a list of prospective blog themes that interest me. 

  • Poems and poetry 
  • Books I’m reading 
  • Philosophy, especially stoicism
  • Consciousness and its myriad deployments
  • Personal development, especially mental focus and clarity 
  • Analog, especially reading and writing tools and their use
  • Writer’s block
  • Journaling
  • Random observations
  • Worthy content I find on my TV and other devices; e.g., good movies
  • Brookie, my dog (she has a mostly-forgotten blog and a tumblr, I think)

You’ll notice a few common blog topics are not mentioned:

  • Politics
  • Current events
  • Personalities
  • Food and drink
  • Style
  • My digestive regularity and other effluent; e.g., the executive branch of the US government
  • My opinions on other people’s lives

It’s my thinking that deciding what to think about, and what’s not worth our time, is the first task of an entity that comes to the realization that it is sentient. I don’t think about Hair Furor and his golden golf cart, except when I’m conscious of the fact that I’m not thinking about him. There are plenty of brains drowning in that obsession; mine’s not going down with the ship. If you think it’s my civic duty, sorry not sorry. 

OK, I’ll admit it: when he’s actually doing damage, hurting people, I f**king care very much. I’m literally a card-carrying member of the ACLU and the SPLC. I care deeply about human and civil rights, including those of LGBTQ persons and immigrants. I just have no near-term plans to write about this, as far as you know. 

So that’s my thinking today about what to do with the blog. Some of those themes in the first list are sort of trending culturally, based on my myopic perceptions. If any of them resonate (great newly-overused term!) with you, please click like on this post to let me know. Leave a comment please, if we share interests. I’d be glad to see Metaphor become more of a place of dialog, less a lectern of unchallenged mediocrity. 

Thanks for reading this!