I’m  laughing beause I’m very sad. I just listened

to a number of sad songs – Bob Dylan and Johhny Cash singing, “North Country Fair”.

It’s a wildly moving song of love and loss. Got me in the solar plexus.

I’d go outside and start sobbing on my hands and knees on the sidewalk,

but my neighbours already think I’m weird..

*

I can see I’m going to have to move back into the bush – where the spirits

of everything is at you fingertips – and you can feel taste and hear the things you love.

And if you focus and say a mantra (prayer) and breath deeply, you can taste the redemptive taste of God, Himself – utter clarity.. And if you sing out a prayer, he might answer you – or sing along.I need some company when I listen to that song, because it breaks my heart. I think of a courageous friend who was with me when I first heard that song,I associate the song with her – and the sense of loss is almost overwhelming.

*

Even the people I am with, I’m somehow distant from them, except for maybe my children. I’ve always been an outsider. I’ve always been an observer, all my life.

When my father was dying, I alone was sitting with him – and I was taking notes.

And when I was making love with a beautiful woman, I was writing a poem on her

stomache. Not everbody likes this.

*

But you know what you are, what you are, what you are – and I try to love the people around me as best I can. But it’s not always enough. Sooner or later I’m going to hit the road. For no good reason whatsoever except for my past.

*

I feel bad that I’m constricted in this way with women. That I always have to leave

for no good reason at all.

Well, I’m a singer and I’m a writer, maybe that’s the reason. I want to say to all the ladies I’ve been with: it wasn’t your fault. It’s not that you weren’t good enough or kind enough, no, it’s an imperative I labour under from my past.

I loved you all. But I couldn’t stay.

 

* * * * *

 

 

           We all feel it. Even if you’ve done nothing to deserve it,

you feel it – if you’re past the age of two. The judeo-Christian

belief system made  sure of that. And the puritan ethic

didn’t help.

 

Now  the guys in the photo above right, they don’t feel guilt or shame. They’re

too busy swatting flies. And  they’d live in the bush til  the

end of time – if u gave

them,    each one of them, a 40 ounce bottle of rye whiskey each and   every  day,

then they’d never leave the bush… and they’d never feel an iota of guilt

or shame. And they wouldn’t give a damn about the flies.

Whoops!

 

Lost the thread.

 

          Some years back, I started painting. I started by using oils.

The results I achieved/ received  were so primitive as to be almost

embarrassing … But I loved them.  So I was happy. I loved working

with raw colour. And I loved swirling the blended oils

around the canvass – until I could see what the  colours

wanted, hear what the oils were whispering

to me.

Painting is a flow experience – rather like

the experience of the mystic – the mystic must feel out,

sense, intuit what the spirit of a place is saying  to him.

So  must the   painter in a different way – he relates the

inner world of his imagination to the spur of the colours

before him. Or perhaps better put, the colours urge

his emotions to concretize the vision of his imagination.

 

Whew! What a mouthful! Colours stir the emotions;

emotions stir the imagination… … Who knows?

I express  my

emotions through colours.

Colours express the inner  self.

External depictions not required.

 

Enough said.

 

 

Escape the linear nature of words?

 

Not exactly…       words can dance, too.

Words can flow through rhythm and

rhyme.

A wild, tormented and impassioned imagination

also helps. Being rejected and mad in love,

wild with desire – burning

with  a need for speed, a need to climb the nearest

church   steeple and ring the bells, bathed in the

flowing light of the full moon…

 

All of these I find helpful in learning the mystery

and the meter of  the dance of  the words.

 

(C) 2016 by W. G. Milne

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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