To gain the world but lose the soul?

For the last several years I have been tossing the question around to anyone who will listen…What is the Request of Happiness?

Blogging for me is part Don Quixote and yet part Walter Cronkite. I really think that Stansfield forced this upon me because he was tired of me sending him newspaper articles and trying to brainwash him with my crazy talk.

How do we debate such a question? At what point do we distinguish the threshold that we say separate a shared existence? That is, what is our established normality and how folks we may consider less fortunate enter our consciences?

We can spend our whole lives yes, answering questions like that…hell, it took me what seems like surviving the thousand year war to finally find the question, ‘what is the request of happiness?’

I’ll start here with a quote from a pome that helped me nudge myself a bit…it is called “A Color of the Sky” by Tony Hoagland

“Outside the youth center, between the liquor store

and the police station,

a little dogwood tree is losing its mind;”

I had stopped my ability to see colors for a long time I let myself be stuck in the muddy moral middle; thinking that by taking a side I was going to betray the universal thread. I have since altered my demands of what was supposed to happen to more about the way that things are…the definition of what is important is it shrinking or becoming insatiable?

The aspect I try to keep in mind is trying to be honest with myself to see if what I have defines me or do I define myself through my experience.

I have a friend that teases me about cell phones, he says remember when we were in Georgetown back in the day and we would see people carrying these bricks in their ears…how we made fun of them?” Once I realized if I leave the house without it I have a sense of insecurity I had to ask myself…how come? And then properly left it behind…

…it’s foolish to think that there is something wrong with ourselves…ever…in that sense…of what we carry with us from our daily experience…how do we act when we meet someone and they tell us they don’t have a cell phone or cable or a TV or a computer? These aliens who visit our planet? What do they want? Where is the mother ship?? …a little dogwood tree is losing its mind…

One of my favorite existential quotes I paraphrase slightly, ‘it’s not the intensity but the duration’ that manifests the meaning of what we hope to achieve. We see many people in the position to save souls fighting the demons only to become one. We have lessons for ourselves to assess the nature of our own soul. We need to be grateful, thankful, forgiving and restless, yes?

What does happiness request from us? Something – Nothing…For the most part, most folks tell me that happiness has no request, no karmic demands…that the empty is empty and the full is full…(“most men live lives of quiet desperation…etc etc..”)

To me that is just…just… in –con – cieveable…

What is that music from a farther room? What do we expect from ourselves and others? It took me a long time to realize what I expect from myself as a poet was not the same as say - professionals expected from ‘themselves’ and whether I like it or not survival insisted I reconcile that.

I found this thread in everything… the common denominator is the innate selfish behavior that we insist to use for our self definitions; myself not excluded.

So are we defined by whether we dial a one for a long distance call or not? For the most part the answer is no…but does that let us off the hook?

I think I talk about revolution in a grandiose way to spark up saying we need things to change. There is a lot of talk about how the system is broke…but it ain’t broke; it works the same way it has for years. I caution to believe that the next group will be any better than the last without a majority of the people speaking clearly that we’re over the overreach.

America as a nation is one big diverse group therapy session. The power of what we think other’s think is so overwhelming we don’t acknowledge its full force.

So does the matter then turn to ‘are we ‘Soul Sick?’’

I think that is more concerning than depression etc; that may be getting overplayed in societal justifications. How does this come together with revolutions and all that?

It makes me wonder if we can accomplish such a great feat that would be like as monumental as the Civil Rights Movement or Woman’s Suffrage; pick an equivalent.

I think it would take something as extreme as that to break those bonds.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be content, comfortable or even slightly complacent…it comes down to how we are defining ourselves and does that interfere with our logic.

We are constantly forced to pick our battles…we make our choices and they will define us if not today…eventually we look back over our shoulder to see the miniature of what was once larger than life. In this I ask; are we ready?

What are willing to accept? What fate of unintended consequence are we willing to allow? With a startling awareness we consume the mass information that we process without thinking out to its end…we choose a feeling and close the circuit.

I used to try to imagine the first victim of theft. I used to wonder how that affected their ability to trust the world around them. I tried to imagine all the thoughts, feelings and activities that would have surrounded those circumstances.

In juxtaposition; we can watch nightly the rape and murder of children by parents and guardians (not to mention the wars) and just change the channel. Carl Sandburg wrote a poem that was read to me one time (I’ve not been able to find it); but he talked about the war news and how He felt compelled to ignore it.

I’ve always thought that I as a poet had some responsibility…to do something in the face of everyday ‘living is easy with eyes closed’ confusion. It is human to turn away from an accident. Yet do we over come it with a desire and loathing strangely mixed?

I once heard a priest give his story about how he was called to God. He told me he was at party drinking having a good time waiting for his girl and he heard a voice ask, “What are you doing?” As the night went on, he began to realize this was his calling. Don’t we all ask ourselves these questions in the midst of our splendor?

We either answer to ourselves or ignore the question. I believe living as an everyday example no matter how vilified I can become…because one is best persecuted for their beliefs as the saying goes. I hope to approach a beginning of a crystallized awareness…search, find and evaluate, then compare.

All we can do is open our hearts to say first we will express love. I also believe that inside that we are able to find an empathy that should bridge the difference between values and definitions, rhetoric and alibi, agenda and hubris.

So – what of this question… what is the request of happiness? Can I gain the world and save my soul? Am I going to be allowed to give back what I take? Will the sins of the father be the sins of the son? Can I reconcile my sick soul with that of a world that requires my strength and convictions that have colors? Can I pour empty into empty?

There is an old saying that I don’t recall exactly where it comes from but it has stuck with me ever since I first saw it… ‘Whatever satisfies the soul is true’. We don’t need to justify that which we love, that which we hold dear or that which we dream for.

I hope that I don’t ask for people to be without anything. I once wrote about having a muddy banjo that I’ve been meaning to play…but I looked to it as some sort of miffed oracle from a Turkish prison…no there is nothing wrong with excesses. The philosophy of the Revolt of the Elites is that there is a concerted effort to keep those kinds of benefits from the rest of
America.

We look to some things today that and take for granted that the whole of our society can have the opportunity to participate…but the doors are not always open nor have they always been open. The attempt is to close, cancel, under fund or tax away the expendable income and rewrite the rule book so we can turn back the clock.

Neither side is better than the other. We are being overrun by radicals in both parties, as they say the left is overwhelmed by the MoveOn group and the right is getting undercut by the NeoCons and we have to wait several years before we get to see the results of the unintended consequences.

I think one thing is for sure; we will approach this time in the record books years from now and reach to the conclusion that it is a confusing time. We have to hope that level heads will prevail although that hasn’t been the case up until now.

So, what’s my point…I think it is a fine line but one can achieve both. We reach for our muse in the quiet afternoon and that changes little in time. Sure sacrifices and choices bewitch us to certain realms of commonplace…but as that saying goes… whatever satisfies the soul is true.

I stopped referring to myself as a poet about five years ago and started to do it once in awhile about two years ago. A lot of water under that bridge…but there is a song I recommend it is called “The Poet Game” and it is by Greg Brown. He says he doesn’t know if he would play the Poet Game again if he had the choice. I always thought him a liar in that song.

The request of happiness requires your earnest efforts…your pureness of heart…your kindness to your guardian angel… asks you to help when it can’t explain…explains what it can not help… but genuine inspiration cannot be helped…cannot be hindered…even Dostoevsky was spared from the firing range…

For me, the request deems me to look for the colors in the world and express them…I can no longer look into the grey and be satisfied. It is something that we can not be rushed into…after all didn’t Billy Shears ask, ‘what would you do if I sang out of tune, would you stand up and walk out on me? Lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song and I’ll try not to sing out of key.’

Yet until then, just like they say, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice practice practice…