The Riddle of Sand

I: Angel of Broken Stones

“So heavy the burden I bring with me from the past,

I doubt that I should make these vows for the future.”

                                                     – The Tale of Genji

I am the eater of days,

Father of the Indefinite roads of Time,

Consuming hourglass moments and sundial liquor.

As I let the ages run down a throat

Dry with ancestors dust and the heat of being,

I swallow sand and time,

Drinking dust

Drinking dust

Tasting in it steel and blood,

Diamonds and lead-

Sweet sepulcher wine.

I bring a song of kings and battles                                              

Sung in the voice of the outer world,

War and warriors all fall forgotten, water upon the sand

While my wings beat

And stir the other side of the light.

I am the arbiter of dreams,

Sender of the dark sundrinkers

That sail through the cold, impotent ashes

Left after the living fire of the Childe of Night

Turned the men of dust into the dust of men.

We seek the jewels of the desert, the roses of the sand.

October thoughts

October is one of my favorite months.  It's generally, depending upon what part of the country I may be in, not too cold, not too rainy, but cool enough to dress like an adult. (I still believe that shorts, while they have a place, should mostly be worn by women and children.) We always called it "gettin' right for the weather" and I still look forward to it.  Plus October is the beginning of the death of the year, so to speak, and that has it's own attractions creatively and psychologically.

Maybe it's a holdover from years of "hallowe'en indoctrination" as an American, but October brings with it a certain taste of death.  For Al Davis and Steve Jobs more than a taste this year.  Culturally this is when we are allowed, even encouraged to seek out darker impulses, physical or spiritual. Americans don't really deal with death well, individually or collectively.  We tend to either romanticize or demonize our dead. But we lack a cohesive mythology as a nation, so "national" deaths become political. On second thought, I take that back. Politics is the national religion of America.