Change (the only constant)

     I am attempting to be more disciplined but I did not go swimming last night.  Time just slipped past me as I was trying to fix my laptop (my Skype is running too slowly)... but with a few exceptions I am going to the gym and pool almost every day these days... it is part of a self-imposed "discipline" a Spartan revival of sorts in preparation for big challenges that are looming around the corner. “Mens sana in corpore sano”.
     The topic of this blog came up as I reminisced about the day I was having a cup of coffee with a dear friend about two weeks ago.  In the middle of our conversation and without pretensions on my side, the following phrase slipped from my mouth:
    “You know something my dear… change is the only constant in my life”. 
     But as I said that, she interrupted me in the only way she knows how to interrupt, that is, very gracefully.  She repeated my words slowly looked straight at me and smiled.
     “I love what you just said”, her eyes sparkled with admiration “change is the only constant in your life”. 
     At that point she made me reflect and those words echoed with meaning!
   “Yes, so true” I said, “as paradoxical as it sounds, change is the only constant in my life; I feel like a rolling stone for I will never gather moss”. 
Considering the deleterious consequences of my inability to grow mo$$ as the privileged do, I would say that my remark is an accurate assessment of how I have lived my life so far.
    My friend is such a precious gem, those that pirates like Eaglehook would like to retain very dearly at any favorite port!  If I were to describe her most prominent attributes, I would certainly include her enchanting femininity and alluring scent!  Oh my goodness …. Hot, hot  “candela mujer”!   I love the way she makes me feel important and much wiser than I truly am! 
     For those of you who are not familiar with my blog, Eaglehook the pirate is the main character of a spicy fairy tale I have started and that is still on the works.  He is a survivor, and for that he needs to be responsive to change otherwise he will be defeated by the witch of prejudice.  He is committed to save the Queen (of all desires) from this hideous witch, but instead got himself trapped by a platoon of three-headed hounds and grotesque goblins sent by the witch.  Now he lays captured in a dark dungeon, left to rot! 
     Eaglehook not unlike his utmost foe, the witch, is also a master of deception; I am certain that he will get himself out of that hole.  He has the unbending will of a hero and lives his life accordingly. He is resolute to the point that he would be willing to sacrifice his flesh and in turn have his invincible spirit execute his ultimate maneuver to save his loving Queen.
     I admire his high standards and tonight I wish take him out of the dungeon so that we can learn from him in a different way... Let’s recall what I wrote about him back in April last year, on the episode called “The Witch of Prejudice”. 


Fly to burn (cm Apr/09)
For a taste of your black magic
Wicked witch let me succumb;
And be devoured by the rats
That infest in your filthy dungeon.
You have captured me in good time;
Go ahead and let me die
For the flesh that you have caught
Lives a the spirit of a moth
Thwart your plan is my delight
Spin and gyre round your lamp
Wings in smoke I drop my poison
Drink to implode your wicked soul.


     There you go, that was a snapshot of his spirit - cheers, to you Eaglehook. 


A world traveler, he has circumnavigated the oceans countless times. That is why when I think of him I imagine him provisioning the “Black Pearl” in preparation for his next adventure. Of course along with his dozen crew of loyal buccaneers, who as the story goes are half-human and half-ghost for they have been cursed to remain in that amorphous stated by the wicket witch herself!    


     I am multitasking tonight and drinking wine in moderation, but in honor of Eaglehook, I truly wish it was rum! My doctor prescribes wine for medicinal purposes, but unlike Eaglehook I am compliant….  I am also listening to soothing music, but unlike the pirate who is blasting in his brains off with Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild”,  my tunes come from  B-Dylan, Vinicius, S-Getz, Chico Buarque, Caetano-V, E-Clapton, BB-King, etc.  I am also reading from Neruda when I need to pause for inspiration…Yes, I am in a mood for variety tonight!
     Let me bring you to my trenches, i.e., to the “bosquejos-sketches” headquarters before it disappears from this location.  I have the feeling that my coming voyage will be arduous and I will no be able to post anything for a long while; so let’s get it done tonight!
     There is a book on my desk called “Dogs and Demons” with a book marker tucked in the last chapter. The title is superb but it is not about black magic as the name implies.  I do not want to finish reading it because I like happy ends with a long kiss and a “they lived happy ever after” closure – But my conscience tells me that I must… So I have decided not to procrastinate and finish reading it when it stops raining in Vancouver! 
     Ideally I would rather finish reading it as I sun bathe naked with the Queen on the deck of the Black Pearl drinking piña-coladas… I would read the last ten pages early in the morning and have the whole day to digest that dreadful epilogue. 
     My desk is cluttered with all kinds of things, like bills to pay, reading glasses, post it notes, but I wish I had some cheese to enjoy with my wine.  Let me show you where Eaglehook was born, the “bosquejos-sketches” desktop, and this is how it would look at any given time I post something… a picture is worth a thousand words don’t you think?

*

     As you can see I am a little eccentric, I have two PC screens as if one was not enough! My name card is posted on one of them so as to remind me who I am.  Eaglehook does not need business cards, because he carries swords, and he does not need to tell anyone who he is… you just need to look at him to find out.
     The light-green post-it note says “Ms S (I wrote a little and “innocent” heart sign), Mon 21 – 11am, rendezvous” and that would be tomorrow!  Ms S. is my nurse at the local clinic and I love to play hide and seek with her… he! he! he!, but no!, no!, no!… don’t be so narrow-minded!  
     She has been trying to catch me for the past two months as I owe her some clinical exams; she finally managed to get me on the phone last week – I love her persistence because it makes me feel important – I think I will get my ears pulled!
     Tomorrow is the day of the ‘equinox’ which means that the day and night are of same length and can be observed by all of us at the same moment in time independent of our location!  Isn’t that extraordinary!  I wonder why people don’t go around wishing each other a Happy Equinox like we wish each other a Happy New Year.  New Years have nothing special; they start in the middle o no where in the Pacific Ocean, where hardly any humans live and keep moving west until it returns to where it stated 24 hours after.
     Now imagine us celebrating the “Equinox Moment” in unison with the rest of humanity.  A colossal countdown… and all bells and whistles going off simultaneously around the globe… wow! what a blast! It would be so more meaningful.  I also propose that we count our years between each equinox and not on Dec-31; an arbitrary location in time and space that is deprived from any celestial significance – Let’s forget the New Year and welcome the Equinox!
      “Happy equinox everybody!!   Love, health and prosperity to all of you.” 
      With the Equinox in place, we could also live twice longer because it repeats itself twice during the current twelve month calendar… However, I think that accountants would be furious though, I can imagine them fuming at trying to cook their books every “equinoxial” round, poor devils.  Politicians on the other hand would love it, they’d have a chance to cash in their budgets twice as fast and tax us double! …ouch! 
     It is only like 10pm and just turned dark on these latitudes.  Equinox or not it is getting late here and I wish I had real muse in my room instead of sitting here describing objects on my desk, blabbing about celestial phenomenon’s or otherwise pounding aimlessly on my keyboard … BB King is singing “three o'clock blues”….


And I can't even close my eyes
Three o'clock in the morning baby
And I can't even close my eyes
Can't find my baby
And I can't be satisfied
I've looked around me
And my baby she can't be found
I've looked all around me, people
And my baby she can't be found
You know if I don't find my baby
I'm going down to the Golden Ground
That's where the men hang out…


     But seriously, tonight I feel I need a real muse – I am moaning like BB-King and there isn’t a “Golden Ground” around my neighborhood to seek refuge. 
    These days I have not had the peace of mind to enter into this special space of mine that is detached from all noises, away from the annoying sprites and goblins that distract me all the time; and that prevent me from peeking into this surreal and yet familiar place I call the “zone”.  I need to be creative, so in the absence of a muse I am going out to the “zone”, where the poet’s hangout to fetch me a juicy one!
    For the exercise let us just imagine the scene where my soul-mate is getting ready for the night and observe how later I will bring Eaglehook to appear on stage as we begin to navigate into the “zone”!


... shuuu....(silence please)


    I can hear her in the bathroom taking off her makeup and brushing her silky hair… as she comes in the bedroom she would ask me, in a childish and feminine way to reassure her if she looked alright tonight, and I would courteously reply “yes, sweetheart you looked wonderful tonight”… then as I turn off the light and roll to cuddle with her, I would pause my embrace - but now blessed with heartfelt  emotions I would repeat  “yes my darling, you are wonderful tonight!” … and my words would echo with meaning...
     Embedded in this fantasy lets commence our approach to the “zone” were the rational becomes meaningless and the physical translucent.  Unprepared in my “raw” self, I would need an extra pair of balls to go there, Eaglehook for sure would have no problems; but I could loose my bearings without a muse - and never make it back! 
    Once there I’d be searching for where truth and beauty dwell but it would not be difficult to find the source – it is a place were you are able to hear the musical silence of peace pounding in your heart, where purity dissolve our most sordid stains and where the surroundings are absolutely free of gravitational deformations – I am beginning to sense its proximity, the exact location where the words like “you are beautiful tonight” bounced back to echo with infinite meaning!   From there I would harvest a load full of words and scatter them on my double screens as pieces of a puzzle who is about to be assembled to rendition. 


    Let us imagine the Black Pearl one month before her departure on a balmy summer night - she floats majestically anchored in Heaven’s Bay.


Heaven’s Bay (cm jun/2010)
A sweet summer night’s dream
starry breezeless night
Black Pearl mystically rolls
Anchored on Heaven’s Bay
keel and mast taking turns
she twists leisurely in delight
rumpling wooden echoes snap
muffled deaf in her hollow holds   
Absorb and exude in rhythm
A bright full moon of bliss
Stardust sprays the sea
spreading round her silhouette 
reflections of moving shadows
retain amusing dancing lights
of her murmuring rocking chambers


 Inside the captain's chamber the Black Pearl embraces Eaglehook and his Queen.  They rest their uncovered bodies on his bed, lusciously wrapped in the sweet-moist scents of love… both are staring at the ceiling entertained by the mystical oscillating reflections arriving from the moon…
     “I wish I was a firefly!” he interrupts their lunar trance, “and I wish you were another one my lovely Queen… “And why fireflies, Eaglehook”, she inquires…. “For they have a life span of only ten days!”
     Invigorated by his words and in plain belief that he had just made the most logical and heartfelt love declaration, he turned to kiss her nipples with gusto, the type of gusto exclusively reserved for titans of his sort. On a virile crescendo he begins to caresses her inner thighs northbound with his right (and only) hand; just to find his initiative short stopped by her leg suddenly crossing over his wooden right. Now spurring her ankle under the hardwood leg she turned her slender body over, so as to lay exactly on top of him with her elbows on his chest.  Hands on her cheeks and looking down at him she exclaims with a puzzled look,
     “Why a fireflies, my silly pirate!”
Now with his better hand positioned on her precious back and wishing the other was not a hook, he looked tenderly at her inquisitive eyes…serene and collecting words form within his heart he expressed the equivalent feelings coming from his chest. (But of course, restrained in meaning due to the insufficient morphemes of language) He proceeds:
     “Imagine the countless possibilities sweetheart, in a short span of the month left before my departure we could enjoy three life-cycles back to back and glow away in twirling rays of passion, and when my time to go arrives, we retire our cocoon in a tender plume of fire!”
     And once again his words took their magic meaning, but now not only from his heart but they crossed to seed her soul with sublime emotions. 
    She felt she was floating in clouds when he lifted her by her waist and maneuvered himself to sit straight against the back of their love nest.  Gently he lowered her to enter him, his hand slipping down her back -she felt him deep; embraced she moaned in pleasure as her hair streamed back to blend with the mystical reflections that splashed from the distant stars and the moon….
     “Like fireflies my dear Queen”, he continued, “I wish we’d glow in passion validating all our desires until we vanish in great style… you and I, elegantly wrapped in fire!”  At that moment of infinite surrender the moon hid behind a cloud to leave the lovers love in peace! 
     This is Eaglehook at his best, a master lover, a dreamer, a doer and pleasure giver! 
     The next morning when they woke up with the sound of pelicans hovering over their deck, he added:
     “Our lives my lovely Queen, seem to be infinitely short when we look at the immensity of the universe.  However, the antiquity of time is  like an endless river– nobody knows from where time is coming nor where it is going, we only know time is present now and forever…  think of the millennial lights that twinkle in sky and that reflected on your eyes last night, my love for you now shines in harmony with the immensity of time, and with all my heart while our magic lasts…but rest assured that if we part some day, our love will remain somewhere down the stream of time” 
    Eaglehook will move on to his next port akin the Stppenwolf “searching for adventure and whatever comes his way, born to be wild” he would sing!  But as a gentleman and a pirate, he will return to her arms just in time to hold her tight again on Heaven’s Bay.
    Amazingly when he kisses the Queen on his return, he will kiss her as if it was their first kiss again.  Something along these lines:


A taste of you (cm, jun/2010)
As I take this breath from you
Energized from warmth we seek to embrace
From ages left apart now held so tight
Touched our lips on this first time
A taste of you that came to life

Enchanting fragrance of surrender
Embraced in love before the stars
Spreads your warmth in million parts
Twirling petals drift our scents
A taste of you that came to life

For time took long our breaths apart
Distanced hearts far longed so much
This day to reunite what feels so right
Set us free our breaths entwine
A taste of you that came to life

Witness heavens and the Above
A love so deep the birds did cry
Locked hearts as breath entwine
Blessed with life that comes to us
A taste of you that is my life

   I will be on my way too, but I am not so sure if I will be able to come back to my “Heaven’s Bay”, but I will make sure that Eaglehook does to lighten up our lives… our gallant rolling stone that gathers no moss!
     Of late I have been bogged down by the mundane and other essentials to have had the time to write.   Undisciplined, sometimes instead of writing I indulge in senseless tangential futility, albeit the fact that I do not own a TV and have not held one in my possession for at least a decade. 
     It is beginning to sound like and excuse, but it is an excuse nonetheless, let me face it.  My apologies then, to those of you who are fond of the pirate and wish to read his stories more often.  I will need to stop my postings for the time being until I properly settle down on my next destination.
To end this post with utmost resonance here is Pablo Neruda’s “Farewell”.  Apparently Neruda knew all about the constantly changing Eaglehook; and so young at the age of 18 back in 1922 when he wrote Farewell.

This is my translation:

Farewell - Neruda

From the bottom of you, and kneeling,
a sad boy, like me,  watches us.
For the life that will burn in his veins,
Our lives would need to be tied.
By those hands, daughters of your hands,
would have to kill my hands.
Through your open eyes on the earth,
I will see tears in your eyes one day.

I DO NOT wish it, Beloved
So that nothing binds us
nothing should join us
Nor the words that flavored your mouth,
nor the words that were not uttered.
Nor the love party we did not have,
nor your weeping by the window.

(I love the love of the sailors
they kiss and go
They leave a promise.
And never return again.
In every port, a women waits:
sailors kiss and then go.
One night they lie down with death
at the bottom of the sea.

I LOVE the love to share
in kisses, bed and bread.
A love that ca be eternal
A love that can vanish.
A love that wishes freedom
to return to love again.
An idolized  love that approaches
An idolized love that departs.)

My eyes will not be enchanted on yours
My pain will not be sweetened near you
But wherever I go I will take the look in your eyes
and wherever you go you will take my pain.
I was yours, you were mine. What else? Together 

we made a bend along the course our love passed.
I was yours, you were mine.
And you will be of whoever loves to you,
He who harvest the orchard I have seeded.
I am on my way. I am sad: but I am always sad.
I come from your arms. I do not know where to go.

… From your heart a boy bids me farewell.
And I reply farewell.

The Original:

Farewell - Neruda

DESDE el fondo de ti, y arrodillado,
un niño triste, como yo, nos mira.
Por esa vida que arderá en sus venas
tendrían que amarrarse nuestras vidas.
Por esas manos, hijas de tus manos,
tendrían que matar las manos mías.
Por sus ojos abiertos en la tierra
veré en los tuyos lágrimas un día.

YO NO lo quiero, Amada.
Para que nada nos amarre
que no nos una nada.
Ni la palabra que aromó tu boca,
ni lo que no dijeron las palabras.
Ni la fiesta de amor que no tuvimos,
ni tus sollozos junto a la ventana.

(AMO el amor de los marineros
que besan y se van.
Dejan una promesa.
No vuelven nunca más.
En cada puerto una mujer espera:
los marineros besan y se van.
Una noche se acuestan con la muerte
en el lecho del mar.

AMO el amor que se reparte
en besos, lecho y pan.
Amor que puede ser eterno
y puede ser fugaz.
Amor que quiere libertarse
para volver a amar.
Amor divinizado que se acerca
Amor divinizado que se va.)

YA NO se encantarán mis ojos en tus ojos,
ya no se endulzará junto a ti mi dolor.
Pero hacia donde vaya llevaré tu mirada
y hacia donde camines llevarás mi dolor.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía. Qué más? Juntos hicimos
un recodo en la ruta donde el amor pasó.
Fui tuyo, fuiste mía.
Tu serás del que te ame,
del que corte en tu huerto lo que he sembrado yo.
Yo me voy. Estoy triste: pero siempre estoy triste.
Vengo desde tus brazos. No sé hacia dónde voy.

...Desde tu corazón me dice adiós un niño.
Y yo le digo adiós.

It seems that I don’t want to stop tonight!  Here is another poem of Neruda that bears directly on Eaglehook – but we will get there back to it  at the epilogue of his adventures with Queen of all desires!  There is more to come…. Bye now, I leave you with a portion of Deber del Poeta”


From the anthology “The Essential Neruda, selected poems” “Deber del Poeta” (The Poet’s Obligation):

  

The Poet's Obligation (a part of)  - Neruda
…
So drawn on by my destiny,
I endlessly must listen to and keep
The sea’s lamenting in my awareness,
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in perpetual cup
so that, wherever those in prison may be,
wherever they suffer the autumn’s castigation.
I may be there with an errant wave
I may move, passing through windows,
and hearing me, eyes will glance upwards
saying: how can I reach the sea?
And I shall broadcast, saying nothing,
The starry echoes of the wave,
A breaking up of foam and of quicksand.
A rustling of salt withdrawing,
the grey cry of the sea-birds on the coast
So, through me, freedom and the sea
Will make their answers to the shuttered heart.
                             (translated by: Alastair Reid)


The original

Deber del Poeta (una parte) -  Neruda
….
Así por el destino conducido
debo sin tregua oír y conservar
el lamento marino en mi conciencia,
debo sentir el golpe de agua dura
y recogerlo en una taza eterna
para que donde esté el encarcelado,
donde sufra el castigo del otoño
yo estaré presente con una ola errante,
yo circulare a través de las ventanas
y al oírme levante la mirada
diciendo: cómo me acercaré al océano?
Y yo transmitiré sin decir nada
los ecos estrellados de la ola,
un quebranto de espumas y arenales,
un susurro de sal que se retira,
el grito gris del ave de la costa
Y así, por mi, la libertad y el mar
responderán al corazón oscuro.