DURGA PUJA

27 Oct 2020 1 Comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My laptop broke and tech support where I bought it wasn’t being helpful

So I called Hewlett-Packard on their direct tech support line

Of course, they routed my call to India, to a pleasant tech named Deepak

He apologized for the background noise on his end; the festival Durga Puja

Was being celebrated today this, the final of 10 days

I vaguely recalled Durga from a religion class 34 years ago

And I asked Deepak of he knew of the Goddess Sarasvati

She, the Goddess of music, learning, and language

I, a musician, scholar, and writer

Sarasvati gave India the Vedas, when religion was verse and verse, song

Deepak said he knew Sarasvati and She is the exact Goddess for a musician

I told Deepak I have a statuette of Sarasvati in my apartment

Across the miles and ocean, his soul touched mine, and tears welled up

In his eyes, Sarasvati is alive, and as he spoke, my statuette

Seemed to shine with an unearthly color and a strange light came over just my statuette

Only my eyes could see

Mother India, home of our western languages

Cradle of civilization unearthed at Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa

Durga, the Mother who birthed all of creation

Mother to Sarasvati, not just a footnote in a religion class

Alive and real to him as is Jesus to me, his Durga Puja like my Christmas

He completed my service order and I wished him well

During the remainder of the Durga Puja Festival

Deepak said that he is sadly homebound due to COVID-19

And couldn’t celebrate with his family, and I

Don’t know if I can go without a computer for a week or so

I looked at my statuette of Sarasvati and the unearthly colors were gone

STRUGGLING AGAINST MY SWADDLING BANDS

25 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

My infant sorrow persists in these, my senior years

And I am not a fiend hid in a cloud

Though persistent, insistent, sinister powers that be

Tell me to be, that I am that fiend

And only my acceptance will disburse the cloud

But I am not helpless, naked; no longer piping loud

Though when I was, I was unable to sulk upon my mother’s breast

I didn’t know how to struggle against my swaddling bands

Nor that I had to, as I have to now, still, yet, in these my senior years

The tragedy written for me to play was not play

For me but was for the supporting cast

And their comedy found me the butt of every asinine joke

No.  Mirth was not mine, is not mine still

My bands swaddle not, did not swaddle, do but stifle, did stifle

Yet the author, the omnipotent author, with every reason to know better, composes

A hackneyed part so derivative that scholars reprise the same,

The tired character in their discipline and the same scholars now think

The schizophrenogenic mother a fiction but I rethink the same

The fictive character of that postulate, that a mother would

Manifest upon this helpless, naked infant—

This child of bipolar, or schizoaffective disorder

Writ deep in Virginia Satir’s suppressed family secret

Satiric family, satire of a family, familiar statistics

A production in a late-night rehearsal

Of a malevolent plot the leading lady’s desperate

Protagonist on strike; the stage lights dim

Darkness disburses out in the theater’s illuminated exit rows

The show is over, makeup sanitized off the face of reason

Outside, in the light of day, naked realization

Identifying a self-defining moment of truth, defying, momentous truth:

I am not that I am,

Not that I am I was made to be

That problem child I am not

I will be what I will to be

What I am, I am me

I am my identity, my me

What I am is what I am

I say loud:

I am I

I say loud:

I am me

My me

Identity

I am

I

Angelic Political Opponents

24 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , ,

These days in politics, there is a tendency to demonize people who hold opposing political views from our own. I feel so strongly about my candidate, I can’t imagine how people can support the other party’s candidate. There are enormous flaws with the other candidate that they either explain away double talk away or deny. They are dead wrong, it seems to me. So there is a strong temptation in me to denounce the people themselves who support the other guy. To make them into demons.

I have a highly successful friend who supports the other guy. My friend is a devout Christian, as I am. He was mentoring a young African-American man through the church. After his daughter grew up and moved out of home, he adopted a young Chinese boy with a cleft palate. Then he adopted two more Chinese girls. This guy is rich, so the children from China came into a good home. He has a friend who is a surgeon. The doctor performed multiple surgeries on the palate of the young Chinese boy. The wife of my friend told me one night that she felt bad because the doctor wouldn’t take any pay for performing the surgeries. That doctor one night gave me an Allman Brothers double-album CD and a Los Lonely Boys CD. My friend always gave me discounts on the products he sold because 1) he wanted to keep my business; and 2) he knew I was poor. He always treated me familiarly and with respect. When I self-produced a CD of my original music, he sold them in his store.

By every metric of a man, my friend is exemplary. And yet I am tempted to hate him because of his political allegiances. Can you imagine! Is that what this age has come to? I don’t think it’s just me. I really need to remind myself of the character of my friend, because I keep manufacturing bad reasons why he is supporting the other political candidate. He and I used to be able to debate our opposing political positions. We cannot, now. But I do need to remember he is a friend. And an angel on earth.

Philosophy of Education

21 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I went to school to learn. That may seem self-evident. It should be self-evident. But it is not.

As I reflect back, I see that many of my colleagues did not go to school to learn–at least, that was not their primary objective. I remember asking one of my Harvard English professors why it was that hardly anybody in class asked questions or even spoke. The distressing reason was that the students wanted to make a good impression on their professor. Silence is less risky than asking a question that could indict the interlocuter. But I asked a lot of questions when I didn’t understand something, or when I disagreed with an interpretation. I was less concerned with the way I looked than I was concerned with learning.

I remember talking with a professor at a wine and cheese social. We were talking about students who try to ingratiate themselves with influential professors. It happened to be an influential professor I was talking to. He told me that it is so obvious when students try to do it. Then he exclaimed, “You’re not like that, David!” Never have been.

My academic major was not calculated to lead to a tenured faculty position. Were I interested in an academic career, I would have been an English major, or would have majored in scriptures, or ethics, or history, or any number of well-established academic disciplines. But I majored in religion and literature. There were only two major universities in the US that had religion and literature majors. Not a promising discipline to major in.

But I wanted to learn about modes that express meaning. I believe that two leading ways humanity has expressed meaning are religion and literature. I already had a B.A. in philosophy. I achieved my aim of learning about meaning. I learned about poetry and about religions and they taught me about meaning in life. And, more importantly, I learned how to continue my learning after school. And I continue to learn, even in these, my senior years.

I am not commending the path and approach I took to education. I was never tenured, never had much of an academic career. But I’m at a stage in life when many of my friends are done with their careers. So it’s all in the past with all of us. And, finally, in these my senior years, I am happy with the learning I have pursued and continue to pursue, and the subsequent life I have cultivated and now live.

COOL

19 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

At first glance, I didn’t think he was cool

I scanned the committee, and none of them looked cool

I wondered what I was getting myself into

“They all look like nerds!” he exclaimed, surveying the hotel lobby

At the conference we were attending (before The Big Bang Theory made nerds cool)

“Careful,” I replied, “You’re going to spend your whole career with the likes of them.”

“Don’t tell me that.  I can’t hear that now.”

I did an online search of an old professor for whom I was a T.A. and was on familiar terms.

He was the coolest guy I ever knew and at a party in his house,

I noticed a book of French fabliaux in the bathroom

Now a well-published professor of Indology and a yoga teacher in Santa Barbara

Which I think is about as cool as you can get

But Carol looked at his picture, with his wild hair, and said she didn’t think so.

“You think Dave’s cool?!” my roommate to my other roommate—I the accusative case.

Carol grew up on a farm, which makes her as natural as a person could be

And nature is not involved with that which is cool

We may view a lion or a wild boar as regal

But we wouldn’t see them as possessed of what is cool

Nature has no airs, no trendy styles, no current fashions, is no poseur: the ground

Carol is genuine, real, authentic, natural, like the beanfields she hoed

Like the Tao’s breath of the valley spirit, the uncarved wood

And being together with Carol, what is cool evaporates like mist in the mountain valley

Time wears down that which is cool,

As age steals beauty of a certain kind

Jobs can have the effect of cool

“I was learning to drive a rig; I went for status.”

A big pick-up truck will suffice for cool if you can’t drive a rig

And workers of jobs that are cool look down on others

“It’s your fault that 20-somethings don’t want to work and live in their parents’ basement.”

“You academics are to blame for all that political correctness and the ‘woke’ movement,”

He, to me, and then vanished into his conspiracy theories

Wearing his ball cap; me, the accusative case, wearing my beret, he resented

“I’ll bet he doesn’t even work on his own car,” I heard someone declaim

My friend from Harvard laughed and laughed when he heard it

Resentment piles upon resentment as the professions pay

Little respect to pipe-fitters—which all comes down to a form of cool—

Hip-Hop booming from the speakers in their BMWs as they pass you on the road

I’ve never noticed a pig looking down on a horse

A rabbit insult a mouse; a mouse, a groundhog

An oak, a poplar; a flower, a thistle

Nor an ocean wave ostentatious, a thunder cloud pretentious

And when I walk in the woods, I’m not a Harvard graduate

And Carol opened the chicken-wire gate and walked around with the hens and roosters

MY BLITHE SPIRIT (redux)

18 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

O, to be blithe

Hail to me, my blithe spirit

Blitherie is not whither my spirit listeth

To be blithe, I need to release much

To fly away some glad morning

Release more than just a few weary days

–More than the consequences that drove my ambition–

—-The momentous, heavy pressure, guilt, blame,

—-Blame my early family conspired to see was my guilt,

—-Echoing through a severe religious system:

—-“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect”

—-Did anxiously strive to live such impossible words, yet the same, kind Master’s words

—-“My yoke is easy and my burden light,”

—-I never heard.  I can never be the perfect god I try to be, nor ever the perfect child

—-I try to be who will be approved by my father

—-No.  Not while I carry the guilt of my family’s sins, born upon the person

—-I am

—-Denied.  Denied confession, satisfaction, and absolution

—-Echoes through this self, denied, self-denial.

—-Enflaming ambition, the hunger, nay, to crave

—-Blessing.  In a degree, from a book publisher, record producer, an arena’s applause

–And now this dalliance with being blithe; hail to me, my blithe spirit–    

With spirits I’ve attracted in my Kirlian aura, karma

It would be a sort of religious conversion

To be a new version of the self I’ve been and become

Plato once told me that an unexamined life will never be blithe

I came up in conversation out at the pub, I heard later

I, back in the solitude of my hotel room

“Dave’s probably working on his book while we’re out here”

In fact, I was carried away deep in Beethoven’s Mass in C

Kyrie eleison.  Donna nobis pacem: have mercy; give peace—and I, a pastor

Which is what I mean about blithe

There are no trines in my astrological chart

All my planets are in the first house and everything

I do or that happens to me comes with a momentous upheaval

And I must be momentous, I guess, and not blithe

I think I could be blithe if I wanted

If I only wanted to be blithe, to let go, could let go of it all, wanted to let go of it all

Or ought to let go of it all and be blithe

EINSTEIN, THE IKON (A Spenserian Sonnet)

17 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Einstein’s face: the universal ikon

The single signifier signing brilliance

We know how Einstein looks, but not Newton

Who has Bach or Swedenborg’s appearance

And all are equal in intelligence

But it is Einstein’s face we see as genius

Leibnitz or Descartes don’t stand a chance

For smarts, it’s only Einstein’s face for us

His smile, mustache, and wild hair all a fuss

MY BLITHE SPIRIT

14 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

O, to be blithe

Hail to me, my blithe spirit

Blitherie is not whither my spirit listeth

To be blithe, I need to release much

To fly away some glad morning

Release more than just a few weary days

More than the consequences that drove my ambition

The spirits I’ve attracted to my Kirlian aura

It would be a sort or religious conversion

To be a new version of the self I’ve been and become

Some of my team told me I came up in conversation out at the pub

I was back in the solitude of my hotel room

“Dave’s probably working on his book while we’re out here”

In fact, I was deep in Beethoven’s Mass in C

Which is what I mean about blithe

There are no trines in my astrological chart

All my planets are in the first house and everything

I do or that happens to me comes with a momentous upheaval

Like a religious conversion and not like the zephyr of a blithe spirit

I think I could be blithe if I wanted

If I only wanted to be blithe, to let go

And even this poem itself isn’t blithe

EXPECTATIONS

13 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

A whole community of us; a whole culture

A drop-in center, network, support groups, community clinic

Psychiatric symptoms so severe; we understand one another

We all knew each other when I was there

Yet, since we aren’t raving, regular people who see us expect

We function as if our symptoms are not severe

Who don’t understand us as we do one another

Grudge against government hand-outs

Which I barely function well enough

To be denied

Barely function

Function well enough

Just well enough

To be shamed by my co-workers’ expectations

That I function better

As if I didn’t have an illness

Not understand

That it is my best and I do have an illness

And so the whole community of us who understand

One another, our culture, our community, our symptoms

“You have an illness;” she said, “You shouldn’t be working.”

HEMINGWAY’S POETRY

11 Oct 2020 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , ,

And Hemingway tried his hand at writing

Poetry

And it never went anywhere

And everyone knows of Hemingway’s

Stories

And Gertrude Stein said that they were

And that he must not write stories that are

Inaccrochable

And Hemingway’s mother never liked his work

And they couldn’t read his stories in her

Reading group

And Hemingway wrote in a letter that he wanted her support

And for Christmas Hemingway’s mother sent him

A gun

And Hemingway’s father had committed suicide with

The gun

And Hemingway’s mother thought he would want it

And Hemingway unlocked the cabinet and used his own

Shotgun

And ended his illustrious literary career by his own hand

And had undergone electroshock treatments at the Mayo Clinic for

Depression

Previous Older Entries