Things I do not do...

go with the flow... or struggle against the tide...

I find myself commenting quite a bit on a few sites out on the web lately - can’t really explain it, but they have gotten my attention and I am compelled to participate in their conversation - mostly because I agree strongly in what they have to say... of course... the last time I participated  - the Deringer Files had taken a political turn and I had to shut it down before some one shut me down... but even then I was able to turn many an angry misguided fool to my side of the argument... I turned the tide...

A couple of nights a go I posted a comment on a site (that I have decided to promote) about how I once turned the tide and the vibration of a room with laughter.

Vibration is a feeling - you can feel or sense a mood - that is vibration... you can sense when one is angry and sad and mostly you will avoid that person... and you can pick up on good vibrations and gravitate toward it... because you want to feel good.

As I sat at my favorite burger joint munching on a big fat burger and typing out the comment I had posted on Simon’s site I began to remember another incident and began to chuckle... until the chuckle turned to laughter and I had to stop and compose myself... but then I would think about it and start laughing again - as I  was working on my computer - the people around me assumed I was laughing at something on line... as I laughed I made eye contact with a man that sat with his family in front of me and I said to him... “some people are idiots...” and kept laughing... it must have triggered something in him because he started laughing... and then his wife started laughing... the man agreed out loud with me as they laughed and said what I had said to him in Spanish as an older man walked past us and then he started to chuckle in agreement... and as the old man sat down his light chuckle had turned to laughter and the couple next to him asked - “what is so funny...?” and the old man said - “Stupid people...” and that couple began to laugh... Dash Deringer Strikes again...

The incident I was remembering took place close to thirty years ago - in a small Irish bar in El Paso, Texas... with my now forgotten crew... I believe we had already been drinking when we stumbled in and invaded a table by the door - the place had a long bar along one wall and about ten small tables in total... we sat... and drank... now, that night the place was mostly Mexican and Irish footballers... with a few girls there with their boy-friends... a short while after my crew arrived a group of girls walk in all looking somber and pathetic... but they were all rather cute... we drank and drank until we could  find the right moment to start flirting with them - (I  didn’t know anything about women then...) we knew the Irish at the table next to us and we went back and forth with jokes and insults with them for a while and one of the sad girls gets up from her table that was also next to us - they were in the middle of the room  - and she leans down real serious like to one of our group... the biggest one of us... she leans down close to him and says - “ can you please keep it down... our friend’s father is dying and we don’t really want to hear your conversation...” she slowly... and dramatically turns around to go back to her table... and I start laughing - because back in those days it was usually me that people were asking to shut up!

One of the Irish next to me asked what that was all about and I told him... the waitress came by to check on us... we ordered another round and my friend told her what had just occurred... I said this place was small... the waitress told the bartender and the Irish had spread the word to their left... by the time the waitress came back with our round the whole bar had heard what happened and the place began to get louder... and louder... and louder... we were competing with the boys next to us to see who could have the loudest conversation... Irish and Mexicans being the way they are when they drink... we were all getting a bit rambunctious... the place was about to explode... and looking over at the sad girl table... which everyone was doing to see how they were reacting to the thunder of the crowd... you could see that they were frustrated and annoyed... they just were not going to get sympathy from this crowed... not that night ...  not any night... for I have been to wakes at this bar... and there is no crying there... this was a place for drinking and laughing... and brawling when it calls for it... our vibration was stronger than theirs and there was no way in hell we where going to let a bunch of sad white college girls bring us down... oh... did I mention that... they were a bunch of white college girls...

Well... being the drunk prick that I was back in those days - as opposed to the somewhat sober ass-hole that I am today - I figured... fuck it... some one has to say it... it might as well be me... so I stood up and said what everyone in the bar was thinking... “ Yo!!!  Fucking idiot... your father’s dying and you’re in a fucking bar drinking with your girl friends...? what the fuck!?!... you’re over there crying about ‘my father’s dying and so many thing I want to say to him...’ take your dumb ass to the hospital and be by his side... and tell him” the room had gone still - and I continued - “Jesus! At least go to a church and light a candle a pray for his fucking soul... but what the fuck are you doing here...”

the sad girls stared at me in disbelief... and the one whose father was dying had tears in her eyes and was red in the face... the room erupted in laughter - the Irish next to us were on the ground and my table was about to follow their lead when the girls all got up - one by one and single file they marched out with as much dignity and pride that only sorority girls can summon up in a situation such as this and made their way past us... and the room laughed... with a few “waaa!!! my father’s dying... I can’t drink with all this noise... my father’s dying...” echoing from the heartless drunkards that we were... as the last of the girls passed me - and she was the cutest of them all by far... one of the Irish kids that was next to me reached out to grab her arm and said - “Hey baby girl... your dad’s not dying too is he... cuz you can stay here with us if ye like...” she jerks her arm away from him and turns to look at me with that  - this is all your fault look  - and pushes me so hard that I fall back on our table... and the room loses control again... we win... and once they had gone... the room returned to a nice peaceful and relaxed mood... but every now and then some one would yell out something like - “my father’s dying - which one of you fuckers is going to buy me a tequila...” or “ Bartender! Me father’s gonna die one day... how ‘bout a round for me table on the house!” 

People are stupid and common sense is fading fast in the western world... but you can go with the flow or struggle against the tide... I came to the conclusion, not so long ago, that it was in my best interest to remove my self from the equation... but I am starting to get the feeling that perhaps the tide is changing... and... it might just be time to get back into the fight... as my Irish friends would tell me in a bar brawl - that would have nothing to do with us... “If  I  fall... pick me up and throw me back in...”

How a Star Is Born

A Theory 

by

Victor L. Vogt

then again... it could just be God...

she waits by the water

what inspired this 

*  *  *

Mythopoeia

by J.R.R Tolkien

To  C.S. Lewis who said that myths were lies and therefore worthless, even though ‘breathed through silver’.

Philomythus to Misomythus

You look at trees and label them just so,
(for trees are ‘trees’, and growing is ‘to grow’);
you walk the earth and tread with solemn pace
one of the many minor globes of Space:
a star’s a star, some matter in a ball
compelled to courses mathematical
amid the regimented, cold, inane,
where destined atoms are each moment slain.

At bidding of a Will, to which we bend
(and must), but only dimly apprehend,
great processes march on, as Time unrolls
from dark beginnings to uncertain goals;
and as on page o’er-written without clue,
with script and limning packed of various hue,
an endless multitude of forms appear,
some grim, some frail, some beautiful, some queer,
each alien, except as kin from one
remote Origo, gnat, man, stone, and sun.
God made the petreous rocks, the arboreal trees,
tellurian earth, and stellar stars, and these
homuncular men, who walk upon the ground
with nerves that tingle touched by light and sound.
The movements of the sea, the wind in boughs,
green grass, the large slow oddity of cows,
thunder and lightning, birds that wheel and cry,
slime crawling up from mud to live and die,
these each are duly registered and print
the brain’s contortions with a separate dint.
Yet trees are not ‘trees’, until so named and seen
and never were so named, tifi those had been
who speech’s involuted breath unfurled,
faint echo and dim picture of the world,
but neither record nor a photograph,
being divination, judgement, and a laugh
response of those that felt astir within
by deep monition movements that were kin
to life and death of trees, of beasts, of stars:
free captives undermining shadowy bars,
digging the foreknown from experience
and panning the vein of spirit out of sense.
Great powers they slowly brought out of themselves
and looking backward they beheld the elves
that wrought on cunning forges in the mind,
and light and dark on secret looms entwined.

He sees no stars who does not see them first
of living silver made that sudden burst
to flame like flowers beneath an ancient song,
whose very echo after-music long
has since pursued. There is no firmament,
only a void, unless a jewelled tent
myth-woven and elf-pattemed; and no earth,
unless the mother’s womb whence all have birth.
The heart of Man is not compound of lies,
but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Dis-graced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
Man, Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.

Yes! ‘wish-fulfilment dreams’ we spin to cheat
our timid hearts and ugly Fact defeat!
Whence came the wish, and whence the power to dream,
or some things fair and others ugly deem?
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfilment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.

Blessed are the timid hearts that evil hate
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bate, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah’s race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen.

I would that I might with the minstrels sing
and stir the unseen with a throbbing string.
I would be with the mariners of the deep
that cut their slender planks on mountains steep
and voyage upon a vague and wandering quest,
for some have passed beyond the fabled West.
I would with the beleaguered fools be told,
that keep an inner fastness where their gold,
impure and scanty, yet they loyally bring
to mint in image blurred of distant king,
or in fantastic banners weave the sheen
heraldic emblems of a lord unseen.

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.

In Paradise perchance the eye may stray
from gazing upon everlasting Day
to see the day illumined, and renew
from mirrored truth the likeness of the True.
Then looking on the Blessed Land ’twill see
that all is as it is, and yet made free:
Salvation changes not, nor yet destroys,
garden nor gardener, children nor their toys.
Evil it will not see, for evil lies
not in God’s picture but in crooked eyes,
not in the source but in malicious choice,
and not in sound but in the tuneless voice.
In Paradise they look no more awry;
and though they make anew, they make no lie.
Be sure they still will make, not being dead,
and poets shall have flames upon their head,
and harps whereon their faultless fingers fall:
there each shall choose for ever from the All.

The Whittling Boy

by

Winlsow Homer