Just walk the stones. I think it’s a nice path, and especially in lieu of the winter snow and ice and wind. See, they have gone over it with a Bobcat machine and ploughed the way. I think I even saw salt. It’s important. Like water or light or such. I go slow, slower than average. Think thoughts, whatever thoughts, and for a second because if the paver stones I remember that Cormac McCarthy said prostitution was not the oldest profession because the first thing anyone did was stonework, was laying a stone upon a stone.
What do I know though?
Continuing there is a bridge and a blackbird. The bird disappears and the bridge remains. Calm. It becomes for a time calm there. I think already that I will have to come back. Whatever I encounter after the first half, that initial twenty minutes or half-hour, is worth it. Another bridge and the off-path area is manageable then for people have walked it. Maybe the kind man in snowshoes, a few dog walkers, a couple simple friendly types who get fresh air and exercise…whatever the case, enough so that’s it’s compacted and not too rough.
I choose to go along and know that up some hills and then down some more, it will connect with the brick path again. Bricks are also known as ‘pavers,’ and they usually are laid on compacted limestone then sand is put atop and swept in. The sides often have cuts that are done with a proper machine and someone that knows what they are doing. Sometimes a ‘re-lay,’ is needed if water or just time shifts some stones. There are different designs beginning with a standard lay to more intricate patterns. Tera cotta or blue seem to be nice colours, the path then containing lots of blue and some grey. Around here beyond the path people choose just grey though. It’s not horrible, but lacks character and everything appears too uniform.
That’s the way I see it anyhow.
There is a stream, making a sound as the thawing water moves along. Then a winding way up the first hill, a straight way up another second and higher hill. From there much can be seen, and it’s bright and clean and open. I can hear car traffic in the far distance somewhere but the world is not inhabited by me then, which is a nice break, akin to a meditation or at least small spiritual sojourn.
We can’t all go to Bali or The Himalayas or The River Ganges.
There is a time from the outer world and the inner world both that dictates its halfway through and I that must begin heading back. That time comes near a bench I don’t sit on. I walk down and admire another bridge but take the longer way around, eventually entering onto the main path of pavers again. I remember that Eckhart Tolle mentioned somewhere that your mind will feel more at ease for what it’s worth, when you physically enter a manufactured set of lines and walls. This seems anathema or at least contradictory to the whole point of nature walking, of people forever having sought out mountains, deserts, pastoral plains and fields, river and stream, and the entirety of the surrounding oneself with the sanctuary of sanguine and even sacrosanct nature.
Go figure.
But, there is some weird truth to it. My feet on the pavers feel better and I’m glad to be back on an actual path. It just is what it is. I go around a big bend slowly and see nature but also tall hydro lines and neither startles or bothers me. It’s almost time to go to the final stretch to the vehicle and then home. It will be a success, for what it’s worth, and the worth is invisible to societal mores and distinctions but apparent to me. Why? Because I have moved and breathed fresh air and gotten if even vaguely, the beginning ideas for certain words or stories. Not everyone can be Cormac McCarthy, and the Tao itself mentions that they will laugh but it wouldn’t be the true Tao if they didn’t. Yes, the most one can do is sometimes walk the stones and write some poems, being as content as possible with oneself. If there is deep snow everywhere, try and find some pavers that have been cleared and follow them.
Charity pulled her pistol from her holster, aimed, fired. Her concentration (or was it reluctance?) seemed to require far too much time. Charity, our officer, ordinarily cheery Thalia, one of three Graces, a mom who runs Safety Town, summers on the playground, came when called, came with bullets in her gun.
Inside, my wife governed a raucous birthday party, distracted wild, sticky nine-year-olds with games and cake and kept them clear of windows. Outside, a doe lost all grace, flopped helplessly in our yard beneath the apple tree, her hind leg bent, merely touched by a truck. Usually, her lean, sienna flanks flashed across the lawn, leapt over fences with fawns. Our apples, old, delicious Jonathans, the deer’s delicacy, too near Berlin Road, I’ll cut the tree down.
Inside, kids oblivious, outside, Charity and I shared an intimate glance of regret, this death a loss of elegance. Charity’s gun snapped three times, a jarring, contradictory violence. In her report, Charity accounted for each bullet.
Rod
A neighbor of sorts – office next door, we shared a wall.
A seemingly amiable fellow who lectured on Respiratory Care,
Rod with the Tennessee drawl and folksy anecdotes,
Who drove a pick-up, donned scuffed cowboy boots,
Who voted Republican every damn election – though he wouldn’t fess up,
Whose schizophrenic grandson caused him to see a few things differently,
Rod, the odious, chauvinist, good-ol’-boy bastard who harassed Robin,
Who made her life a living hell until she quit
(I gave her a pill to calm down. Simply listening and nodding was useless. There’s my regret.),
Rod, who, I am unsure why, I treated decently despite our vast differences, didn’t come to work.
A stroke. I sent a card, asked after him. I heard, “Home, therapy, retirement.” That’s that. Though my neighbor, I didn’t pay him a visit, an appalling indifference.
Why needlessly confront mortality with simple courtesy?
It appears my love is not yet unconditional.
David Sapp, writer and artist, lives along the southern shore of Lake Erie in North America. A Pushcart nominee, he was awarded Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Grants for poetry and the visual arts. His poetry and prose appear widely in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His publications include articles in the Journal of Creative Behavior, chapbooks Close to Home and Two Buddha, a novel Flying Over Erie, and a book of poems and drawings titled Drawing Nirvana.
A Lot and A Little: Fragmentation and Tragedy in Denis Emorine’s Broken Identities
In Denis Emorine’s new novella Broken Identities, gifted young Hungarian student Nora writes a paper on the works of main character and writer Dominic Valarcher, which she describes as “a lot and a little at the same time.” That phrase serves to describe the entire novella.
On one level, Broken Identities seems to be an intimate domestic drama about a professor caught in a love triangle. Dominic has a wife of many years, Laetitia, a talented concert pianist whom he genuinely loves and finds extremely attractive, yet he also feels passion for Nora, a younger graduate student who admires his writing. The tale explores his angst and conflicted feelings and appears focused solely on three people.
Yet, through the inclusion of minor characters, we see that this novella draws on these relationships to probe broader historical and psychological themes. Dominic lives haunted by the thought of his mother’s earlier days, as she survived losing her first husband in a concentration camp. Now, as an adult, he seems fascinated by younger women who seek out his care and mentorship. A therapist, with whom he built a close relationship, suggests to him that this might stem from a wish to have protected his mother from heartbreak.
Also, both Nora and Nadja, a young student starting a literary magazine at her school who falls under his spell while seeking his endorsement, are Eastern European, while he and his wife are French. Eastern Europe is tied up in Dominic’s mind with tragedy, death, and the victims of the Holocaust, as what he calls the “Russian” side of his personality. While Eastern Europe is complex and represents much more than tragedy, in Dominic’s mind, it stands in for a shadow, an irreparable loss stemming from his inherited childhood trauma which obsesses him more than he realizes.
It is this “Russian” side that calls to him during the final days of the academic conference he attends with Nora, and that leads him to his final tragedy. Yet, even at the end, he is not totally overcome by this darkness. He calls Laetitia and shares a sensual text exchange suffused with joy and passion, even after meeting up with Nora. And, finally, the novella ends with a rendition of the elegant love poem to Laetitia that he included in a manuscript he shared with Nadja.
Broken Identities is told through poems, diary entries, and letters accompanying the prose, which underscores the theme of fragmentation. There are often things characters will not speak aloud but only scarcely admit to themselves, or which they feel are only expressible through art. The additional use of letters, text messages, and phone calls are forms of communication used when people are separated. When Dominic is with Laetitia, he’s apart from Nora, and vice versa. When he takes refuge in France to write and process his emotions, Laetitia is left alone and communicates her feelings through musical innuendo.
These bits of communication, which average people might overlook as less significant than a novel or symphonic masterwork, highlight characters’ states of mind in Broken Identities. In this way, as Nora says, all of our thoughts and words can mean “both a lot and a little,” and reveal not only inner romantic conflict, but the lingering intergenerational effects of historical traumas.
The market does not support any idea which does not contribute to the further disintegration of the society. – Anand
Dr. Jernail S. Anand
Whatever is administered best, is the best was a highly misleading statement by Pope, but it is considered a gospel truth by the people who have never rested their faith in the best.
Let me first define the best. The unadulterated best of a society are the intellectuals who do not know politics, and who think of a society which is based on the principles of equality, shared affluence, power to each part of the body politic, and finally peace and harmony. But it is no more than a compulsive dream because the people think from the body, not from the mind.
The society moves forward with two basic factors: money and power. Power grows out of the coffers of a rich person. And power has a powerful sense of living with the second best only for whom higher considerations of life matter little. Money is the essential virtue of a society which believes in Power. The best of men, the intellectuals, the thinkers, the visionaries, the people who sit in their ivory towers, sculpting theories yield ground to people who sculpt strategems sitting in the kitchens cabinets. The second and third best, who grab power and the sources of wealth, now have a great responsibility to maintain status quo so that they can stay in power. And, it is here that the worst of the civilization rests.
The society moves forward. If you try to find the crop of the best among teachers, lawyers, professionals, politicians, bureaucrats, business men. you will be disappointed because the best have suicidal tendencies, and we find the second best, the third best, and then, even the worst, in the driving seat.
The society which believes in money and power, soon finds itself lost to the whims of the second best people and their dreams of power. Had the right people been in the driving seat, the world would have been a better place to live in. But because it is driven by insane passions and manipulated by crafty people, we now have a total confusion of values. This world never believed in the best. The best were grounded, ignored and even insulted, simply because they did not believe in pushing forward, or staying in power, by playing foul with their principles.
It is a murderous society, which has lost all sense of the moral and the ethical, and believes in nothing but power, wealth, fame and self-survival. The survival of the fittest means the fittest is the best. We are alive now, among the people who proved themselves the best and the fittest to survive. And it is an amalgam of power, craft and guile which helped people to stay in power, and rule the world. Can we expect joy and happiness in a world in which divine factors of existence were disregarded and disrespected?
The best values of this society are not goodness, kindness, love, compassion, and sacrifice. People are trained not to believe in any such thing, which smacks of medievality. Modernity lies in broken families and broken nerves, and a confusion and chaos, in which your own body parts find themselves in a state of rebellion. If this is not so, you are living in a society, which is not post-modern. As the real life thrust is found in the cities, the virus of postmodernity is spreading fast to the villages also, which believed in peace and tranquility.
What a man by default needs: a house, a wife, a job and an environment which supports life. What a man of wisdom requires: wealth and power. He does not believe in a house or a family. As such, he has no desire for peace either. He wants thrill in his life, even if it kills.
It pains me to think that everywhere, the society is being run by people who are second best. Who are best at their own survival. Who believe that the best men must be consigned to the libraries. The market does not support any idea which does not contribute to the further disintegration of the society. The world’s dadas want more confusion in social ranks, where men fail to find their feet, and their minds are lost in a maze of confusing passions, shorn of ideals. What finally describes this world is: There are no role-models. No examples to be set and followed. No men of character. No people who fight for their principles. The passion with which our elders fought for our freedom, we are fighting with equal passion for dissolution of that dream. The best people found themselves on the gallows, leaving their dreams to their own destiny, in the hands of the second best, who thrive on what they [the best] never thought of. A society minus all scruples. A society which believes in the second best. A society which exalts the worst. And a world which is run by men who possess no faith in essential values of life. By reverse logic, they are promoting the death of the divine, whether it is the divine will, remains to be seen.
[Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, [the Seneca, Charter of Morava, Franz Kafka and Maxim Gorky awards Laureate, with an opus of 180 books, whose name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia]] is a towering literary figure whose work embodies a rare fusion of creativity, intellect, and moral vision. He’s not just an Indian author but a global voice, challenging readers to confront the complexities of existence while offering hope through art and ethics. His legacy seems poised to endure as a beacon of conscience in a turbulent world. If Tagore is the serene sage of a colonial past, Anand is the fiery prophet of a chaotic present. Anand’s genius lies in his relentless ambition and ethical depth. Anand may well be considered as the conscience of the 21st century, carving a unique niche among Indian English writers with a voice that resonates globally while remaining fiercely Indian.]
the night - the eyes - the sea
in the night
the eyes see
the sea of stars
in the night
the waves water
your pure soul
in the night
the tears fall
from high in the sky
in the ocean of feelings
turned into silver mysteries
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clarity
when I arrived
I didn't see you...
you were hiding yourself beyond an eon
when I came back
I saw you in my dream...
you were hiding yourself beyond a moment
when I left
I felt like you've been here...
since the dawn of time
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dreaming
I see in my dream
I fall asleep on a cloud
I see in my dream
I fly to a star
I see in my dream
I breathe like the moon
I see in my dream
I live like the sun
I see in my dream
I get dizzy in the ether
up there, very high
I see in my dream
you haven't gone away
I know in my dream
you are still here
as in any dream of mine
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conditional
if only I could
I would lift you up to heaven
if only I could
I would walk you in the ether
if only I could
I'd keep you away from nostalgia
if only I could
I'd put you to sleep on a cloud
if only I could
I would baptize you on a star
if only I could
I would clone your love
if only I could
I would give you a galaxy
if only I could
I would dedicate an astro-poem to you
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mirror
pure frozen water
silver surface
water-lilies floating on water
reality reincarnated
close distance
imagined reflection
concealed knowledge
spiral depth
faded concentration
radiant symmetry
inverted imagination
apparition - invention?
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