You're Not a Self, You Silly Elf

`Self-discovery` is a mutual, mirroring act. The self can see the self, to a degree, better than another can, but not without the mirror of the Other. Self is not a reference point for itself. Insofar as it is, it's equally a reference point for Other. Self exists only with recourse to an entity outside of itself which interacts and overlaps with it. If self interacts only with Self, there is no awareness, identity, unity or evolution. In real life, there is division, there is unity: Without the one, you cannot have the other. The joy of unity is meaningless if there can be no mystic mingling between related but simultaneously distinct selves. Absolute selfhood is a delusion, a blindness to Self and Other, a distortion of reality. It is not only because of communities that we see or have Self. And yet we cannot see or have Self without other intercoursing selves.

Brought to you by another Quiet Sunday Evening.

~NpH

Klaus Eberhardinger

I like Austrian Drama Pop. Here is my own translation into English. Klaus Eberhardinger has a peerless presence. Erste Allgemeine Verunsicherung`s staged song may be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBMnkVXq1iE

`Death`

It's Twelve in the night
Outside a storm's going,
the death-bells knell.
Once again - someone's off into the Grave

Death is a fair man -
be you rich or poor.
"Dead is dead,"
says the worm.
Once a corpse, we're all alike.

You can be lazy your life long
- or busy as hell -
Five days after Death's got you,
Everybody starts to rot all soft.

Given what I can sense
about the ol' Scythe-father,
I can hear this shriek outside
to make alkylene freeze in my veins:

"Every one of you,
"Every one!"

Black coat, swarthen hat -
A scary figure!
He's got a scythe
and an egg-timer!

Slowly he comes closer,
clops on the door
- I smell a whiff of mold
as he says to me,

REFRAIN:
"Greetings - I am Death!
Gone is your distress.
Come, your time is up,
Get movin and no fuss
It's me - the godfather!"

I tell the old father
"Come in, come closer!
but scythes I won't need to buy
-- I got my own lawnmower !!
You must be awfully hungry
-- you're nothing but bones.
Shall I make you hot spiked tea,
or boil you some soup?"

He drinks a tea down,
then the next - the whole way to X
- he throws it down his ribs.
But he only burns his teeth -
He's no lips, you see.

But then he grips his egg-timer -
My hair goes up stiff to heaven!
He taps me on my shoulder --
and introduces himself again!

***"Greetings - I am Death!
Your distress is over.
Come, your time is up,
Get movin and no fuss
It's me - the ol' godfather!"

He whets his scythe:
"Before I mow you down,
bring me another, one final Jager Tea."

But after the fifth cup
the gaffer loosens up!
He rattles his bones and mounts the barn stool:

"Every one of you!
E-e-e-e-e-e-vry Man!"

"Listen now, you're mistaken!
My name's not Everyman !
you need to go to Salzburg -
That's where Death's at home!"

I go with him to the station - had to carry him right to the train!
I buy him another ticket and set him in the dining car.

The train rolls away - I'm wallking on air!
I wave him off from behind.
He sways there with his scythe
and says to the cart porter:

"Greetings,
I am Death!
Your distress is over.
Come, brother, come,
Bring me quick a Jager Tea, but with loads of rum!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jagertee: 'hunter's tea' - black tea with rum

Home in the Family Hotel

I had a dream this morning I stayed with my parents in a hotel overloaded in tea-rooms. We were in Britain. Our lodgings led onto a `theatre-room` where two walls had tall windows facing the grass, the hills sloping down toward the room. Their drapes opened and closed like stage curtains, revealing performances on the hillside. I pulled back the drapes on one window and saw a choir of seven singing ladies in long green, purple and red robes. They sang this song, which sounded in my ears as I woke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlrOe0CTCXE

 ...

No great distance may prove assistance
from my mind your love to move -

-`My heart is with you altogether
Though I live not where I love.`                 

... 

In the second half of the dream, still in Britain, I was married to my `mother`, who'd inexplicably turned into a 2-meter tall German blonde with wide hips and thighs. We continued lodging in the theatre-room hotel. Our room had a see-through glass wall with German tourists piled onto a sofa on the other side of it. Many of them were students. Wandering the adjacent campus, I found a flyer-handout (termed `flandout`) detailing how to help Germans missing their mobiles. It instructed them to phone one of four telephone numbers written in huge characters on a uni building. I carefully copied down the numbers to my `flandout` just as a German boy, phone-less and forlorn, approached me for help. I proudly and compassionately handed him the info.

Fire Is Hotter Than Blood

37° F/3° C. Chewed on life on the porch with my brother. Puffed, sipped and mingled thoughts with my brother. Frozen toes, warm counsel. A smoke arose. A secret congress. A consort howl. A breath of half-forgotten strength vented from below, or from above. The vagabond wolf, separated from the pack, finds the warmest hearth. What is kinship when its bonds die away? Friendship remains: The guide to turf, to den, to country, to money, to mate, to feast – to every spoiled dream.

Unknown Once Now Hidden by Naught

There we the once-sundered together were blended,
we strangers, unknown once, were hidden by naught.
I kissed and I wondered how doubt was all ended,
How friendly her excellent fairness was wrought.

....

Haste! mount and haste
Ere the short night waste,
For night and day,
Late turned away,
Draw nigh again
All kissing-fain;
And the morn and the moon
Shall be married full soon.
So ride we together with wealth-winning wand,
The steel o'er the leather, the ash in the hand.
Lo! white walls before us, and high are they built;
But the luck that outwore us now lies on their guilt;
Lo! the open gate biding the first of the sun,
And to peace are we riding, for slaughter is done.

-William Morris, The Well at the World's End

Hoverslumber

Diving bats
like boomerangs
over sun-swooning water
and wake of gnats
unslaggingly slake
with bites over the ladle
of the lake
their hunger
as my hover-cradle
wingslings aloft
on the nightfalling wind

~NpH~

Better than Sunmade

The sun came raiding,
sweating for bliss and blister,
sweltering even under shade.
Rain fell hard and flaying down,
steaming brisk and stoking,
like the Amazon poking,
melting my milk and marrow!
Before I'm de-manned,
what I demand, for cold and frisky,
is a sarsen tub, marbly made,
its hollow filled with hoary frost
under billows of stout
where the beerbarrows wave
frosted on the swell

There I'll come, foam-riding,
I'll stoutly ripple.
Inside I'll slip,
and slake,
and tipple

~NpH

Ropes of Sky

Thunder and Blitz
fill with wonder this Longest Day
before the Supermoon

The Rain ripples down
in netted silver,
wets me in river-beams
purer than Sungleam's
Plunder and Ritz

-Nathan Paul Hillman,
 south Wisconsin, 21 June 2013

Zonking Ziggu Rats

When controlfreakish big-heads, drugged up on some new System Creed, lack humility to confess their own small knowledge, wee cosmic stature, mistakes, frailty or doubt, ranting on about how a device, method, convention, prediction, currency, stock, military force, government, gene, fuel, empire or city or ship (Titanic) is fool-proof, eternal, immutable, invincible like a Pharaoh's eyeball or Babylonian ziggurat or Roman road, I sit paring my claws, tittering, snorting & cackling through snarls of derision, more convicted I can knap flint with gnomes on Neptune rather than believe them.