March 3, 2024. . . I do what is foreign to me now. I am putting with only some editing whole journal entries with feedback from my teachers. For those inclined to scoff at what is given, I say just try to do it. I came into this life with a foot still in my last world. To my good fortune, a bevy of brothers welcomed me and watched; where it came for me to think I was like others they saved me from calamity. Nearing a hundred years gives me license to speak without resorting to make believe or outright lies. On her deathbed my mother said I go out too far. Because I cannot depend solely on my skills now bodywise, I take the route straight from the written word. There is no human law that could bear the weight of cosmic trust, so questioning is futile. They know me. For what is yours to glean and learn, I bless. It gives me another chance to wake up from my world where nothing hurt. That is a nice memory. Take what is meant for you. Amen and amen.
August 28, 2020
Friday 11:48 a.m.
It is I, Veronica. Bless me as I enter and exit. Let me be the benediction on this day. I give my blessing to who feels the need. Amen and amen.Welcome. Speak. (It occurred to me this morning when I awoke at 4:30 to read again the article in poets and writers. The ending stayed with me and I needed to sort it out. It was attributed to Stephen King originally that art should support life and not the other way around. And I needed to see that again. But Life now must support art.
And to put today now in bas relief, we need art to support life in total. And we need for it to do that. Yet in today’s schooling and educational systems, art is cut out as a means to save money. What we are doing is taking away the food the spirit feeds on.True enough, the body must be fed, but what happens to spirit when it starves ? What we have is what we are viewing. The sensitivities of the human are neglected or are allowed to grow unrefined to the spiritual, emotional and psychic needs which then atrophy and disappear. Or the base survival instincts run rampant and violence becomes the mode of the day.
We see it and are party to it. It has become the normal for the times. The so called mannerly ways are given short shrift and though they have taken centuries to manifest and groom within the human, in short appalling time they are lost if ever to become part of the soul stuff anymore.
And yet who would argue in these times we should not feed the children, whatever their requirements? Who would allow their progeny to physically starve to death? And yet I ask, should we neglect the spirit in these crucial times and lose what we have gained in our best of humanity?
I could give a blistering argument for life should be supporting the arts, the sculpting, the potteries and the paintings depicting the human struggles from the beginning of manifestation. The beginning of when we took physical form to salvage our growing need for expression. And it was that that led to our need for a way to use the hands and growing mind needing to make what was a nebulous form in mind to something in the hand to see.
For we had eyes that pierced the fog of mind needing to hold that something which was idea first taking form. I search for words that would give some feeling to what were ideas in mind that we put imaging to.
I wrote in 1982 and that was a long time ago. 38 years ago. My god how could I have lived with that knowledge for so long? But no one listened and because our livelihood depended on the public I was told to watch what I said.
I wrote. . .we wandered the universe in the beginning
and walked and talked and set to dreaming
how would it be if we blew our collective breath and
set a planet whirling?
If we lifted the shades of darkness
and let our pain for expression
burn hot enough to warm even the bleakest spot?
It breaks my heart to read this. We have paid the price over and over for forgetting where we came from and what drives our spirit. And last night when I read the article saying that the reason we are writers is because we hope to regain our passion to follow what we know is Machiavelli’s letter to Vettori.
‘the evening being come, I return home and go to my study; at the entrance I pull off my peasant clothes, covered with dust and dirt and put on my noble court dress and thus becoming reclothed. I pass into ancient courts of the men of old, where being lovingly received by them. I am fed that food which is mine alone, where I do not hesitate to speak with them and to ask for the reason of their actions and they in their benignity answer me and for four hours I feel no weariness. I forget every trouble, poverty does not dismay, death does not terrify me; I am possessed entirely by those great men.’
I have said to those of my kin, when everyone goes to bed I get a second wind and take to my books. And it is within the solitude of my self I have the conversations and learn of great things .
And I write here this day that I read art should support life and give meaning to it all. We should find that life itself holds the meaning and art supports that meaning. I find that it does, it does. But I have not found those whose thinking reflects the meaning I find. And have ridicule in my naivete they say and don’t know what life is all about.
Yet the mixed signals is what takes life from those burgeoning with sensitivity and find none to hold sacred these leanings to give hope amid the storms. Not given. . . I turn over. . .)
Not given to much credence are you for what you glean from even the simplest words. Not everyone saw this in the article you realize. Not everyone. He sees it in his daughter but your mate did not see in his sons what you did and you struggled for how many years?
Veronica, everything you encounter comes back to this doesn’t it? The sensitivity of the soul to those things giving meaning to life. For it has none by itself. The gross has to be woven out and the meaningful woven in. It takes time. Time.
(and now we have to work again to put art back into life because living with a spirit that is sick is untenable. It proves the point that without art, without an appreciation of history, of literature, of art in its basic drawing, that of looking at where the charcoal drawings show what mankind has endured by looking at the cave walls, the early pictures of venturing out of the heavens onto the planet set whirling, manifesting ideas, trying out philosophies to capture society’s intents and learning from the failures, to hearing the finest notes in variable melodies, my god, the meanings of the fine carpenter, what are we doing to ourselves again? I cannot bear it. Cannot.)
Do something with the hands today. Pack up the hats. Get them into the mail. And come home Veronica, come home. You don’t have the energy to write the article for the poet magazine. It would be an eye opener to somebody but maybe with your blog it would? God girl, leave it to someone else. Just leave it. Bless and take some time for who you are. It has been a hard row to hoe. We need some off time. Too much sorrow going and too many tears. Your classroom requires a strong back and shoulders. And yours are not capable at the moment. Lady go rest. Do what you do and take it to the bar. Amen and amen. Go
1238 words 1 p.m.