I.
This content and responses were elicited in 2011 when I sent him a review of his poems that appeared in elimae. Skip to part II to read his works.
Review of The Shout of Tom Goar, Posthumous Poet
AE Reiff May 2011 elimae /See/https://aereiff.blogspot.com/2012/12/review-of-shout-of-tom-goar-posthumous.html
I got 10 votes for my platform to pay poets to read. Did three readings that fall, then quit. Each got $50. That's where the word scared everybody to death. Thirty or 40 torn ears and bleeding toes. The word shout isn't capped in the text. I had heard it in the room once, at the top of his lungs. Scream shouted, universal world shouted... it was a scream for all the displaced maquiladores before they went back to their desks. Harriet Monroe said she would never to come to these things again. Then she wrote to Wallace, "change the text and leave out stanza 7." He acquiesced. But nobody said anything to Tom. The shout built momentum. I heard it again over time. It woke me last night. Today I pick up the fragments of which I have maybe the only copy of ten made, and wonder why this collective prophecy is not the stuff of which poetry is made.
I can blue such blues they're mean Down a hole to China never seen I can blue such blues they're red Down a hole to China like I said.
He comes shouting: Francelia becomes a storm...she screams to life...she opens her eye to the fury of dawn.
Turn the page. Some lady knitting red longjohns, leaps over from the New York Times. She is Blues From Room 7, with silver zephers sweeping stars, and angels.
Now angels look down from their rooftops to see. What do they see, laugh in the dark while she drains our blood...the Hungry Mother Monument. Somebody call Bly. Tell him that Pegasus sprang from the neck of this Medusa when Perseus slew her! Medusa's blood! Poseidon! Sea foam down in the deep heart's core, below in the center / the molten mother's lava heart-core flows. She is my earth but skip the geologic. What a relief to. But it doesn't say the Lord descended. It doesn't say the flowers bloomed. It doesn't say wars will cease. The war's on it says.
So he says, I took it down, / Put it in my blood, everything you said. Like when they're just out of ink and can write no more unless they tap a vein, or out of water can't drink, or no blankets to wrap the shrink, shivering with no meds. We get out carrots for our old dog, broccoli stems, lettuce, New York strip, fry eggs with bacon and lunch meat. It's cheaper than MRIs.
How many MRIs have you had? I became Ahab stalking the deck in the wind...and it made me so cold. That's when I thought he would bring out Ophelia again, Ophelia who drowned, I said to myself, Ophelia who got married when she was old... Ophelia, I have lived too long-- / Now I am Polonius / Remembering the arras.
Memory memory on the wall who's the freakest of them all? That's a question, but he answers. When daylight started cracking through my walls I was a fool!
Dear Harriet,
Wallace said, "I see no objection to cutting down...your criticism is clearly well-founded (183)...I should prefer to keep the lines unchanged..." (Wallace Stevens, Letters, 184).
But then again I felt a chill / Shattering blast of a trumpet whose time has come. I tell you no sound echoes down the year, blasts into ground, circles around, comes up, goes down. The scream, the shout, the blast. To keep these things from echoing I adjust the TV at night. Off! I flip the switch, the main switch, all power, cut the cable, call the soul's end from sounds I can't hear.
2.
I set out to calculate the velocity of shout. Figuring the rate of escape, its transit would be in x, times the number of days out of the solar system, heard by Betelgeuse. TV escapes earth and not The Shout? Broadcast light, sound goes out. It translates the sublunar, heard in space before all. That's what the beings of Betterguese do, they turn on earth at night, watch the tube. Count this multiplied by the indefinititude of shouts and it's no wonder we wear plugs to keep them out. They wear ear phones to keep them in, shouts multiplied with groans. You say how could they, how bizarre. I don't know. But you're a living actor on the stage here, so read the lines apportioned you and be happy in unknowing. Happy unknowing, there are as many words for it as Eskimos have for snow. You think it silent in the night when you type but it is not. The audient layers orchestrate. What seascape doesn't reecho?
Wind wraps cold around...a voice to sing? I need a bark, to float.
You know his cry is octaves up, slit my throat with shadows, he says, so the cry is light too, an empty chair, past understanding...Whisps of angels...let the fire freeze. The phrases come like waves and no tsunami. Light, angels, squeeze water from the rock. Then he says, Be rain. All these chords, melodies scat the head voice, chest voice, toes sing with the hands from the windowpane, it is a dance, not seen. Unseen, but heard, how many ways can you groan? The answer to this has lived among the elk many years, as we know from travels in their realm, uncredited more than coyote songs, their hymn of being to the lost. There are the lost and there are those who sing, who pad over moss and turf, eye shine. Everything depends upon predation inside halls and rooms. Some night over to Green Gardens the prisoners of age in their white gowns whose gnarled fingers claw and curl the air, their voices hear but not with the same SHO..! Out this clown whose eyes are wax...head as large as circled sight in a...waving brain. Oh wave the life of the waving world into the heart again! The walls are membranes, the walls, the ceilings, the windows, the doors, the floors are membranes of being lost.
These memories of things past, with the debris of later lives, remain. We dig in peril because we must go through all the top pain. Through all the cries and groans down down to lifeBut what about this and what about that, a hat they take on and off for the sake of kimberlites? Diamonds in the crust of pain wait for them to seek memories that lead to the one, an eternal regression the old man makes, I mean the one who had the bypass and the kidney out, down he goes to where nobody knows. He came as he lays there in his life and hears the song shout where radar replaced by laser still points, and down, down. He makes up myth about it, takes off hat, hair, eyes, skin, teeth and sails to the beat on a wind of flame. Down, down further into the crust, back and down, over river, through woods, the trees glisten and comes out in boyhood where grass sings: What we know is our creation, he says. I would be still... I will fade out of my head. Into the river of lights on the road. He says, I hunger and I dream against it...I have become invisible as the sun breaks.
This dissolution earned, maybe merited, maybe not, but earned, sought, felt, not hoped for, wept, but you know they work hard work for that, and open sky, cold air, snow. Be snow, lay your hand! Yes, the fire in the kiln is opalescent first, then incandescent and with tinges of wit on the border, so hot you shield your face. All singed eyebrows and hands, those who handle light in the deeper silence of the lower brain. And if that's the lower what the higher, where you walk in a kiln of yourself and meet Nebuchadnezzar boys roasting next to the four who won't burn. I can't look, he says, the vision dims.
And that's good for him, but me it wakes and I look at the seed coats sprung off the sides of the form, spray it with water and the shell flakes off now it cools. The egg is born in its shell but doesn't live long. The lake is an egg, the fawn is an egg, the leg, foot, hand that reaches out of and into the kiln to retrieve itself, not from fire, to retrieve itself from the impure bake off now in remembering. Can you remember tomorrow what you were a white tail fleeing over fences? So he comes out into it,
Bronze in the sun; The lion's in my tread as I walk And my mane flows behind.
All these forms, giraffes, three legged though, spotted, unspotted, tall as snow on peaks covered with the last freeze before spring brings living, which he calls here the time for killing.
The advantage in knowing posthumous is you get to test the words with life, see what escapes they make, or merge into the sunlike weather in the arms of a wife with children around them in age. It's either this or it's not and something else. But if you track him down, this posthumous unknown poet, not that you should, and ask, not that he would tell, but just to see, whether to bring up the past or not is up to you. Nobody else remembers, not even him, but the last page,
Songbird singing in a shower of rain Cat sits on the porch listening,
echos and reecho with your own in the brain of the mist, the rain in the trees that falls on rock to make a three petaled lily, an escarpment more aquifer and songbird that comes to billow flocks like sudden storm, hundreds, thousands of songbird breasts ruffed up, pressed out, knowing. And the cat too lies head down, content to follow seasons, the cat, bird, moment, graveyard where pebbles clash against sand for traction, where the earth remains in its blue white bloom.
Tom Goar. Poems 1969-72.
Note:
Once when I served time among the graduate inmates of U TX, and represented inmates with poetry readings paid for by the U, readers would get 50 bucks. It's true I quit after three months, but three readings ensued, maybe nine poets. This one combined the services of John Lehmann, a guest lecturer, once secretary of Edith Sitwell and Virginia Woolf, Ray Neubauer and Tom Goar. Tom went second. The room was unprepared. In the middle of his "Prospero, Sweet Prince," to the word "shout," he actually shouted. Loud. I have been bothered by it since. The Shout, not exactly a poem or a book, was a word spoken as an act. On seeing this review Tom said, "There are things that the posthumous poet would rather be tracked down and told when he is alive than when he is dead."
II. His response April 5, 2011was:
I'm astonished, amused, grateful, and touched. And honored. Your review would be the best review of my poetry ever, even if it were not the only one. It is itself a lyric of delicious images, thinly disguising itself as prose. There are things that the posthumous poet would rather be tracked down and told when he is alive than when he is dead. Your remembrance of his words is a treasure you have given him. These days, the only poems I write tend to follow operations. My latest, a laproscopic hernia repair, was the occasion for this hip-hop lyric: I've got a new look, and I hope it won't stick: Two black balls, and a two-toned dick. And after a trip to the cardiologist's office a couple of years ago, to check up on my quintuple bi-pass operation that happened four and a half years ago, I wrote this: Ultrasound I saw my heart today, Not all at once, but part by part, And valve by valve, as the technician Moved her instrument across my chest And we watched the muscle throbbing, My hot blood displayed as blue, red, and yellow streams Surging in and surging out, Valve-flaps lifting, closing, lifting, closing— Busy, busy, busy, busy, Never pausing. How can you go on like this, My fragile hearty beating heart? How can you someday stop? Will Mind go on without you, Or will it not? I love seeing your creations. If I could do visual art like that I wouldn't do anything else. Thank you for being kind enough to care. Tom
My reply 6 Apr 2011 was:
I'm glad you take it in a friendly manner. I can imagine a range of responses. I wrote it before FB, then it got lost in the maze. I found it yesterday while looking for a piece for Lee Klein, the Eyeshot guy. For him now you have to send a postcard with a fragment to his address and if he wants more he emails. I made a postcard out of cardboard, but have no idea what I wrote on it, giving him a title to jog memory...but couldn't find it, but I found this. To me life is so absurd and ecstatic. I don't think I have scratched the surface yet of what is there, I mean in your words and the worlds it rings. More absurd, I would want to do an edition of your words, esp. seeing you continue and bringing all that in! Comfort and logic somehow join hands there. Even more, when I wrote this and lost it a rewrite of it came out anyway in an entry for a contest before last Christmas, all from your memo about Haiti, 33 poems called Prayer for all Beings in Distress. It didn't win anything of course and I could not add to it probably. The first poem was one I sent you, Rain A nimbus earth stands whole. Something from nothing forms good. Suffering, health, pursue care of neighbors, beings in distress, menial tasks. Forms of the formless stream. The mountain being consciousness gasps. Breath, praise, pain cry when still, Bear the thaw of the nothing world. Nothing not formless calls communities of plant, bird, star. Beast centuries day-pour dreams, gardener, musician, rain. I am way out of my depth in these things I know. Clay has finally taught with the earth, stone, paint, glass, children and wife what the One said, he wakes my ears to listen as one being taught. And the eyes. There is a huge backlogy of the written, but yes, I am thinking what you say about the other. Two are in kiln fire, two out of bisque to glaze , two are green and drying and two are in the making. There only seems to be more and greater in all these affairs Tom. Send me if you will what you have written. And stay alive. Life is an end in itself. Andy
III. 6 apr 2014 he sent this autobiographical material :
I promised you some autobiographical material when I had something. After making a stab at
writing an introduction, I started to write the actual memoirs, and right away the reality of who
would read these words(?), and how much was I willing to reveal to them(?), stopped me in my
tracks. For me to write something that I would consider worthwhile would necessitate the sort of
honesty and accuracy that can be self-incriminating, so to speak, and incriminating of others still
alive. I could use changed names or first names only, but, more daunting, I expect that my
family could possibly see what I had written, no matter how obscurely I published the document.
I’m not saying that I won’t write it. It would be a good exercise. But I’m not rushing into it at all.
Let the grandkids get a little older.
As far as publishing this much-imagined memoir is concerned, what I had in mind is to offer it as
a semi-obscure file file to the tiny SCT group that I am a member of on Facebook, and also I
envision putting together a memorial website for the pre-posthumous poet where I could collect
a few poems together with videos of the pre-posthumous poet reading them. The site would
include videos of me doing tai chi and qigong, and, possibly, dancing. There would be a video of
me playing a couple of didjeridoos that I made (with some help from master crafters). I would
also include several short stories. There would be a slideshow and video visit through our house
and gardens. A video of me playing with the grandkids on a ropewalk that I try to bounce them
off of.
I’m thinking that I might want to start putting together the website first. So, given my slowness
and lack of motivation, the pre-posthumous poet may become posthumous smoke and ashes
before I finish writing the summary of my life and goodbye.
I’m attaching a few documents. One of them is my rough start at an introduction to the memoirs.
Since the autobiographical story is missing, I’ve included “Ourstory, a poem that I wrote in 2011,
inspired by my having obtained a medical marijuana license and purchased some incredibly
potent edibles and oils that are definitely psychedelic in their effects. Way to go, Colorado!
Another attached poem is one that I wrote in 1991 when JoAnn and I first moved to Colorado.
We received a month of teachings from a high lama at a mountain retreat before finding our new
home in Boulder. Finally, another rare poem (there are generally years between them, but this
was written the same year as “Ourstory”), a birthday poem for JoAnn, which is suggestive of the
imagined ending chapter of My Slug Cog Life. Those poems would be on the website, along
with a few others, including a representative poem or two from that Shout or Scream, whatever
it was, in Austin.
Finally, there is an article on SCT and the DSM-5 that I wrote for the SCT group and published
on their page as a file entitled: “WARNING: THIS IS A RANT!” It will be on the pre-posthumous
website, too. The important thing is to put it all together for no or little money. I could never get
that Google blog thing to do what I wanted it to do, so I abandoned it. I’m thinking of something
like WordPress, or whatever current thing is available that won’t cost me more than $10 a month
rent, preferably less or free. It does seem that the first step is to find a suitable platform and then
start putting up the things that I want. I still have to produce the videos of tai chi, poems and
didjeridoo. I had a free website with Windows Live for years. It came with a neat tool for
designing basic pages that made building them easy and fun. What a deal! They began asking
money for the site about the time I retired, so didn’t keep it up as a memento.!
•
As I’m writing this it is occurring to me that the first chapter, childhood, would be innocent
enough, and would illuminate the neurological disorder very well. I don’t see any reason why I
can’t start there. The thought of entering computer world and learning a new web tool to set up
the memorial site—and spending money—is less appealing than delving into the early days.
Those early childhood years, when I was gaining in consciousness at a relatively rapid rate, give
me memories of the 1940’s that I’ll always cherish. That time was very different from this more
populated world. But you, no doubt, know earlier times than I do, old man.
I have read from your first go at your memoirs that you have published online, and of course
take special interest in the Austin stories and the people that I remember, some well, others sort
of, and others not at all. The letters that you present are from people with interesting minds, and
the stories that you tell of your doings in those days are filled with energy and good imagery.
You make a lot of references, personal and literary, that I’m not familiar with. You have read far
more widely than I. I never read much, and now read even less. Mostly I keep up with five or six
online newspapers and a weekly summary (The Week).
Reading your own pages inspired me to bring down my copy of A Calendar of Poems and slide
back into the time when young poets wrote evocative poems with pens and typewriters. My
favorite is probably still “Prose Passage,” with it’s “planetary bulldozers,” and its “expectant
concrete mixers and steel road-graders…silhouetted against the night sky.” I appreciate your
ability to move between the profound and the everyday with apocalyptic humor. “Cullen’s Army”
has always puzzled me. I’ve never been very good at interpreting dreams, and this one is no
exception. I appreciate the humor that I find in these pages, such “Love’s Illumination” for John
and Victoria, written in 1971 in the manner of the metaphysicals. What has become of John
Donne? What has become of John Cullen? Do you know anything of his life after Austin?
A lot of reading is a burden to my sluggishly cognitive brain, so I don’t read anything of length
anymore. I watched a video every evening for years, but finally burned out on that. No TV.
JoAnn and I play, I help her with gardening, and she cooks gourmet dinners (lucky me) while I
practice qigong and explore the universe on my Mac. I was always slow, of course, and so built
a minuscule body of work. When John turned his back on me, I lost my principle reader, and
with that the impulse to write. Soon, physical labor that the 30-year-old me was unused to left
me wasted in the evenings with no energy. The work was good for me, though, giving me the
grounding that I sorely needed, building my strength, and giving me the means to survive
without going corporate. I’ll stop now and save the rest of this for that soon slow-to-be-coming
memoir! I’ll send you a chapter whenever there is one.
Here I am saying that I don’t read or write much, and I am saying it in a little note that rambles
on for two pages (and a number of sittings) by now. It’s as hard for me to stop as to start. I’m
sending these uncirculated, but copyrighted, writings to you because you will give them an
intelligent reading, I do believe. Your appreciation and, hopefully, enjoyment, may give them a
little more reality in this illusory world. Take care, old friend, and have fun Tom
2 My Slug Cog Life, Rough Draft 70 Years of Living with Undiagnosed SCT
This begins the rough draft of my story:
INTRO
Life Review
That’s what’s so good about a first draft. I can go off on a tangent, and I need not
worry, because I don’t need to include anything, and certainly don’t need to start with
what I happened to write first. What I want to write here is my narrative, as incomplete
and delusional as that must be. This is the story of my life as I see it.
I need to focus on the question, why am I writing this story?
The task of the closing years of ones life is to recollect, to “re-collect” the events of
one’s life into a meaningful “collection,” and to transmit the wisdom that one has gained
to the succeeding generations. And so as I was turning 70, it seemed that the time for
that task was upon me.
The task seemed daunting. How could I make sense of my life? Historically? Through
family? Career? Religion?
to find in one’s memories the meaning of one’s life,
Start again:
Life review is the work of old age. Our later years are supposed to be a time for
recollection and reflection. It is the time to “put it all together,” to distill what wisdom
we have uncovered in our lifetimes and transmit that to the generations coming up. I
I have long viewed my life as a search for what is real, a search for meaning, and
perhaps most fundamentally, a search for love. I did find meaning, and I found love,
and for me they are the same. As for reality, that’s either hard to find or impossible to
•
ignore, depending on your point of view. If that search is what my life has been about,
why then, is does the title of this piece refer to my living with “undiagnosed SCT”?
There had always been things that I could not understand about myself. How did I
score as a “near genius” on IQ tests and score well on other such national tests as the
SAT, and yet be at the bottom of my class in grade school, and receive such low marks
in high school that I had to go to summer school every year? Even then—because I still
had to make up a whole semester worth of courses—I failed to graduate with my class.
What was the cause of this discrepancy between my “potential” and my performance?
How did I get into college where I had a successful career. Why did I then bomb out of
graduate school where I had earned nothing but A’s, and take on the life of a
carpenter? I had these questions, and many more, about my life. Why am I the way I
am?
When I was a month or two away from my 70th birthday, with most of my life already
done, I found the missing piece! Browsing the news online—something I probably do
too much of—I came across an article, “Sluggish Cognitive Tempo” (http://
www.buzzle.com/articles/sluggish-cognitive-tempo.html) describing a little known
neurological disorder. A child with SCT is often intelligent, sometimes a “savant” in
some area, but dreamy, forgetful, lacking focus and motivation, socially withdrawn,
having problems with working memory, having trouble with math, reading very slowly,
easily distracted and inattentive, among other characteristics. I was shocked that the
description of a child with SCT exactly described ME as a child. I felt as if I were
putting on glasses for the first time and seeing my place in the world with a startling
new clarity.
Aha!, I thought, so it is not that I am a worthless lazy bum, as I had been told many
times, in many different words, and so had thought. It is, rather, that the neural
connections in my pre-frontal cortex are faulty, memory retrieval is erratic, and my
body probably doesn’t produce enough dopamine and norepinephrine. In short, I have
a neurological disorder called “sluggish cognitive tempo,” and no amount of effort on
my part is going keep my neurotransmitters from randomly skipping a beat, slowing
me down like a sleek red Ferrari with faulty spark plugs.
It is a disorder that I was born with and will carry with me for the rest of my life. Now
I could see that much of what I had been berated and punished for, and much of what I
had berated and punished myself for, as a child and as an adult, was not my fault. And
my “savant” quality of writing—you may well disagree with that characterization based
on what you read here—was nothing that I could take credit for, either.
3.
• CAUTION: THIS IS A RANT
I am totally pissed at the American Psychiatric Association. They are burying---
BURYING, I say!--the diagnosis of SCT in the upcoming edition of the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. They are burying it deep inside the diagnosis of
ADHD, as some sort of a subset. And they are doing so for less than scientific reasons.
Here is an article that appeared May 6, 2013 in the New York Times, headlined
“Psychiatry’s Guide Is Out of Touch With Science, Experts Say.” You might find it
interesting:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/health/psychiatrys-new-guide-falls-short-experts-
say.html?_r=0!
It is a hopeful sign that Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental
Health, says that the DSM-5 lacks scientific “validity,” and that his goal for the NIMH is
“to reshape the direction of psychiatric research to focus on biology, genetics and
neuroscience so that scientists can define disorders by their causes, rather than their
symptoms.” That will undoubtedly help some some people with some conditions
sometime in the future, but the reality on the ground is that the DSM-5, due to come out
in a few weeks without a diagnosis for SCT, will guide psychiatric diagnoses for the next
decade or two in the U. S., where many of us live. The American Psychiatric Association
does not offer much in the way of treatment for SCT, just the amphetamines that Big
Pharma cranks out for ADHD kids, but they could at least provide a clear diagnosis for
this disorder so that those with SCT can be identified and hopefully begin to deal
knowledgeably with it, helped by understanding family, teachers, counselors, etc.
At this point, research in neurology has revealed SCT to be a neurological disorder
distinct from ADHD. The efforts of the NIMH to discover the exact neurological
mechanisms that cause SCT are needed and appreciated, but the symptoms of the
disorder are clear enough today for a diagnosis. Without a diagnosis, a school-age kid
with SCT is more likely to be blamed, rather than helped, for being lazy, moody,
unmotivated, forgetful, withdrawn, underachieving, making dumb mistakes, losing stuff,
and walking around in a haze. Such a child will naturally blame her/himself and try to do
better, and blame him/herself even more when she/he doesn’t seem to be able to.
With some support, the bright side of the SCT individual can be polished to shine.
Those with SCT tend to be intelligent, intuitive and creative, if a little slow, and often
have advanced mental attributes in some areas, what I like to think of as my “savant”
qualities. With a little extra help we SCT people can learn to do better in the areas that
are difficult got us, and really well in areas in which we are more bright.
Why is so much attention paid to ADHD while SCT is unrecognized, when the
consequences of either disorder can be quite devastating for the individual who has it?
The behavior of the ADHD cohort can be disruptive in a classroom setting, requiring
immediate attention so that the whole class can be taught. The quiet, withdrawn SCT
students in the corner are not a problem to the teacher or classmates, and can easily be
ignored. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. So it is in the classroom, in life,
and in the DSM-5.
CAUTION: THIS IS A RANT
There are steps that one with SCT can take to deal more effectively with life (most of
which, I would argue, do not require a psychiatrist), but the first step is to learn that one
has SCT. That is why receiving a diagnosis from a psychiatrist, the recognized authority
in such matters, is so key.
With little assistance available to us from the American Psychiatric Association, perhaps
we with SCT need to step up and become advocates for our own condition. If Dr.
Barkley is correct that there are about as many with SCT as with ADHD, then
approximately 5% of the population are silently dealing with this condition. We are
talking about millions of individuals with this disorder. As of this writing, there are 116
members of this Facebook SCT group, of whom maybe 30 or 40 actually look at this
page occasionally. As glad as I am to have found this group, to reach the SCT
population as a whole a lot more is required.
In the part of my mind in which anything is possible, I imagine a huge outreach effort---
including a public relations campaign, our own web sites, lobbyists, outreach to
educators, outreach to social workers and mental health workers, etc.---educating the
public that there are some sensitive, bright, creative, smart people who have much to
contribute if they are helped to develop their talents more fully. Such is my dream,
though this SCT group, of all groups, won’t do such a big task. Our disorder more or
less precludes the motivation, outlay of energy, and people skills required. We’re a
group of people who tend not to group much. At least we’re smart enough to realize
what we are up against. That’s somewhere to start.
Other than ranting against the American Psychiatric Association’s uncourageous
decision to exclude the diagnosis of SCT from the upcoming DSM-5, we can continue to
use this forum to share among ourselves what we have learned that is useful in living
with SCT, and what is not. That much we can do for one another. Best of luck to us all,
and to the unknown millions who have no idea why they can’t just snap out of it.
4. This Lama Laughs Like Thunder for Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso, Rinpoche
During the hailstorm that destroyed my tent and soaked my clothes,
You sat unmoved in the Meditation Tent chanting the Mantra of Cakrasamvara,
Demonstrating the dharma, while I fretted to save my temporary shelter, saying a prayer to all I
hold sacred:
I take refuge in my home, car, refrigerator and computer.
I take refuge in my wives, children, money, friends, and boss.
I take refuge in central heat, indoor plumbing, my nice warm bed,
As well as the luminosity and emptiness of television.
Yet, at the same time, beyond my mind, close to my heart, inseparable from the inexpressible,
again and again the Lama laughed.
The Lama laughed, and the skies cleared.
The sun and stars appeared at once. The earth became a dream that felt completely right.
In the equanimity of pleasure and pain together there was clarity and bliss as I worked to
straighten up my tent and dry out a thousand of words of notes on what the lama said
from moon to moon:
What you’ve said will pass through languages and practices into insights to become real life
walking dharma for a long time.
We shall trade our tents one day for the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, and our minds for the vajra
dohas that you sing.
Let there be hailstorms, wind and lightening. I take refuge in your laugh.
Tharpa Dawa
Rocky Mountain Shambhala Center (now Shambhala Mountain Center), Colorado
8/23/91
5. Ourstory
History, History, History—what a passel of lies!
The Women of the World ask me, “Whatever happened to Herstory?”
The People of the World tell me that no one ever listens to Theirstory.
They’re eager, I’m sure, to hear Yourstory.
I’m always telling Mystory, whether anyone is around or not.
By “not” I mean that even when I’m alone I keep telling myself the magnificently
marvelous story of me,
Again and again with countless variations and subtle alterations;
Nevertheless, the tale I’d most like to hear is Ourstory:
You and me—and more—in a story.
By “more” I mean Being and Non-being altogether,
Dancing as nothing at all in beautiful array—
Every being and non-being and whatever else there is and isn’t
Telling this endless and expanding story
Any little part of which is bound to break your heart.
By “break” I mean break it open.
Ours will be a wordless story of broken open hearts
Unknown to History, nourishing the Earth and all the Heavens.
You can open it anywhere, start anywhere.
Tom Goar
August 18, 2011
Lafayette, Colorado
6.
Thirty Years with JoAnn
You planted flowers in my yard!
and made me plant trees, though I complained.
You tamed my rangy ways, my wild heart.
You blazed my dharma trail through your devotion to your guru.
You made our garden home into an enchanted place
where our minds know peace, and our hearts open softly.
Tom Goar!
September, 2011!
Lafayette, Colorado
My Reply 7 apr 2014
I love meat so I enjoy all the different aspects you contemplate, but I have never spent a dime on websites. WordPress works pretty good and a lot of people use it. I have a WordPress site that I use for what I call personal revelations, not that they are, but it is catch and catch can, but it is a little constrained. Too bad you can't get Blogger to work for you though, it affords me more freedom with uploading pics etc better than WordPress. Another one I experiment with is Scribd. The good news there is that it saves every version you make. Sometimes I have over a hundred, but there they all are and I can upload them anytime I want-except of course they add advertisements galore to the viewer's screen. The other two do less of this. My favorite lit site, elimae, that published so much difficult material for me, including your shout, has now disappeared. None of its links work. The editor has backed it up at his personal site, but unless these are archived at universities or national archives, Australia, Britain and Canada do this, they are lost. I made my own Blogger backup. WordPress is an automatic backup for free for lits, so is Scribd, but Vulcan disappeared from Scribd, for some reason.
I'm interested in algorithms and stat counts and expiries and their ins and outs.
I use SoundCloud for simple tape recordings, readings, but it doesn’t get near the play it would if put on Youtube, which is far superior in clicks. Either way though both can be linked to the text to illustrate the point where and when you want. These multiple texts are the thing. Do you believe there are some editors who won’t publish a piece with links in it? All the best,
No comments:
Post a Comment