No Horse

(excerpt from "No Horse" Youtube)

After reading Luke Davies work "Candy," a book exploring the nature of heroin, lust and love, my art and creativity course at Curtin had me making a short 2 minute animation. The result? This short hand-made animation exploring the time waste of addiction, heart break and the cycle breaking revelation one can find...

Visions of India; A Short Biographical Memoir…

(photo from very thankable unknown source)

By Jason B.R. Maxwell

Curtin University

1607279

Reader’s note; Names in this story have been changed to protect individuals. Yet all events are true…

Prelude

Gina Mercuzio looked like the dark free gypsy Sam White admired. Sitting cross legged with a perfect posture on a Turkish pillow in the St. Andrews market chai tent, her long braided black hair was dancing as her deep true laughter took Sam’s attention like moth wings have gravity. She had such earthy skin and a long yet elegantly rounded face which changed so much with all the flow of her conversation. But it was her eyes, that dark certain something beyond, opal born of some inner calm yet with sparks of fire. So when her friend went to get another cup of chai and she started rolling what obviously looked like a joint, Sam took her chance. “Hey do I know you from somewhere?” Sam said with a smooth smile. “Hey maybe, I was told I have an old soul so it’s entirely possible” - the fire had been sparked. Sam and Gina talked and talked as easy as breezes play with gum leaves, swirling great cosmic subjects into experiences of destiny and past lives and then switching to gems and the resonances of certain stones.  Yet as Gina mentioned a party, some deep continental part of Sam started to move. She had heard of de’ja’vu, but this was it, she had been here before. It was the spokes of the sun streaming past the rainbow canvas of the tent, just like that, it was the tribal tattoos reaching a joint towards her, just like that, it was the way Gina blurred the rest of the world, became so immensely focussed, so intensely high definition…. It was 1979 and the purple smoky haze of the sixties had settled in all the right pathways, valleys and oasis’s of existence in Australia. Yet for Sam, the adventure of other existences was stirring, waiting for their wings to open…

I

“Are you an artist Sam?” – the live mandolin and djembe music was loud, Sam’s back was turned -talking to poet friends she had met before- yet she heard Gina’s voice even though it was barely a whisper... “Yeah I guess, how’d you know?” “Well, it’s the jewellery you wear, its beautiful and so unique, especially this piece…you make it yourself don’t you?”  -Gina’s heavily jewelled arm graced up to touch her ear ring, a black oval of varnished blackwood with a silver snake dancing through the space.  

III

After the tarot cards were scattered, after the dancing spinning fires, after the DMT with the bent psychologists, the goldfish-stall-owner and the unemployed, the cyclone of that nights party brought existence home again. And Sam was excited. In the dawn crystal air, as she drove the Kinglake tractor across the red clayish dirt of the spud fields, there was a new purpose, an intuition, an electricity in her dreamings. It was India. That rich, vibrantly entrancing word. India.  Gina had offered a free ticket and accommodation as part of a business trip, delivering jewellery and buying gems and clothing whole sale from Ragisthan. “Delivering Jewellery?” Her boyfriend puffed, “to India? Sounds abit suss to me Sam…” “well, I don’t know… , Darion said she’s legit, she’s got connections...she goes over all the time, she’s coming here to buy a few ounces, we can trust her, we’ll ask her about it if your that paranoid, but its India Mark! A free ticket to India, I’ll get a chance to see the Taj Mahal, see Bagwan Ragnish, I’ll find myself Mark… and get some real materials to work with, imagine if we didn’t have to work on the farm anymore, imagine if I earn enough to get a studio...”  

IV.

In Delhi it had just finished raining.  The monsoon rains had started to brew its thick intoxicating soup in the air. Yet for now it was not yet putrid, not yet mature, and as the plane doors opened the heat hit her like a fresh steaming wall. Fredricko, the short stocky ‘other traveller’ who Gina had twirled into her ideas of the gemstone trade, pushed past with a smile. “Wow… warm like a womb Sam!” and it was, the womb of the eastern culture laying out the way to her new life.  Gina greeted a tall man in a long black Turkish tunic who laughed down into his beard. She spoke a few Indian words to him and she gave him all our bags and they jumped in his beat up three wheeled car to get to the Motel.  After they settled in, a night of smoking and revelry began. Sam and Fredricko were told to not worry about their luggage. That the jewellery was delivered and the customers were happy. This gave them a sense of pride. A slightly edgy unsure pride, considering they didn’t even see what was in their ‘luggage,’ but it was a pride none-the-less.  They were smoking hashish, strong bloody hashish, unlike any hash Sam had ever smoked, why question? The slithering smoke relaxed her more than anything she had ever experienced. The world blurred again, but this time Gina wasn’t there, no one was, the world had disappeared and she was warm, content in herself, her own Indian universe. The next day they got train tickets to Ragisthan where they would buy gems. While Sam was waiting at the train station she experienced her first form of culture shock. It was a muddy naked man, a sadhu, or holy man, who was just standing there, still as a statue. What shocked Sam further was that everyone was just walking past him, women, children, just walking past as if he really was a statue. The next day they arrived in Ragisthan and then it was on to a hotel called the Ever Green. Once they got to the hotel Gina met a small, toothy-crooked-smiling boy called Suja who was the most polite and well-spoken little man Sam had ever known.. “Guud afternoon maadem … you stay with me -no problem - I will translate for you hapilly…” Suja was Nepalese. There was a light in his eyes, a dawn light, all of a sudden the blur that was in Sam’s head stopped. The next day Gina took Sam and Fredricko shopping. A glimmer of the warm friendship they all shared back in Australia appeared as amethysts, star rubies, agates, tigers eyes, quartz, and all manner of lush nuggets and perfectly facetted stones dropped into their hands at the cheap, lavish Bazaars. They had done it, they had made their creative fortune in India.

V

“Hey mem saab look…” the light was a lucid golden sunset, Suja was in the Ever Green courtyard under a tree spinning a rope… No, spinning a snake, no, a rope… Yes, definitely a rope…

VI

The blur wasn’t gone for long. The blur returned as they smoked again and again, ‘celebrating’ their sudden fortune in long, silent starings and music. But where was Gina in this comfy haze, this new Hotel womb? She kept disappearing, crossing over a cultural bridge that over time, Sam and Fredricko began to mistrust. “What were in those bags we carried Sam? Have you seen those people she’s been hanging out with?” “I don’t know Freddy, it’s Gina, you know, the mystic? Quite frankly I don’t want to know. I’m happy in my karma that way… And hey, just because they look shady doesn’t mean they are.” It started getting hot. Really hot. The thing about Ragisthan is that it’s in the middle of the desert, the hot staring middle eye of India. 40 to 45 degree Australian days don’t come close to the baking, brain frying Ragisthanian heat.  Drowsy sleep came easy. Sam’s new life was constant as a mirage. Yet as the heat rose, Sam vaguely became aware of a tension between Fredricko and Gina. From time to time she heard them arguing, and it sounded like the shoutings from some distant desert war. Then one day, as Sam came back from the pool, she saw Fredricko, forehead against the Hotel room wall with a mango lassi in each hand, mumbling to himself… “The golden haze … can’t escape the fire… the gold… the golden trail of blood… mara and the gold it kills….the haze of gold it kills!” And then he dropped the milk drinks which gashed onto the floor like thick, yellow blood. The next day the mad yet handsome sunburnt Italian was gone. Now the Motel was a lonely oven. Gina was barely anywhere to be seen.

VII

“O by the way, can I have another ten thousand rupee for the opium err I mean hashish, you’ve been smoking?” -like a monster in the darkness, Sam realized she had been smoking opium.  But she reasoned, monsters weren’t real now, were they? “Sure…” she said weakly, handing over the notes. From that moment onward, the monster had control. Gina made sure that only dreams and the hookah’s nozzle kept her company as the money kept leaving Sam’s wallet.  And yet in that hot oven, they were magical dreams, dreams of kaleidoscopic, multi-armed gods and goddesses telling her things, showing her great rainbow visions with whispers. And then walking through rainbow archways, rooms where floating spheres of light came through the eyes of lion headed men and women…  Sam woke one morning and the blur receded in that same way it receded the day she had met Suja.  The sun streamed through the white dancing curtains, and there was Suja, smiling, yet staring at Sam from the corner of the room with fiercely piercing eyes. Suddenly the ticking clock, the noises from the next room, the flicking curtains all slowed and another world came to her, Suja held up his arm, comically jutted out a finger and said “mem sab… I’m going to show you something…” and then he rose, cross legged, rose three foot clear from the floor.

VIII

From there things began to sink into darkness. Because of the monsoon floods, she heard rumours of a break out of cholera in Ragisthan and Sam was sick; conjunctivitis, dysentery, the nauseous blur it seemed, was never going away. After a heavy smoking session to numb her pain and nausea, she fell into a drug induced coma and experienced the height of a near opium overdose, she knew it was so because she had felt herself leave her body, and yet she didn’t think it was her body, when she looked down, it was someone else in the bed.. When the drug left her, out of mercy or a sudden lack of interest from Gina or both, she had been in that bed for two weeks. She suddenly decided she needed to go to the toilet since that’s what normal people did, wasn’t it? She collapsed from the effort... When she finally made it to the mirror she got a major shock, the person on that bed WAS her. When Sam first went to India, she weighed eight stone and yet now, from a period of three months, she was five and a half.  After this revelation, reason came back to her. She told herself, it was time. She couldn’t stay in the hotel with a money hungry parasite feeding her opium…  

IX

As Sam left to go to Bombay by train, she felt lighter, as if she was leaving an old part of herself behind. On the way, the train stopped after the rain at sunset. The smell in the air was alive. It was all alive. Sam feared the floods had swept away the tracks. But as she looked out she saw everything was fine. Suddenly she saw the snake charmers, fully tribal and proud, walking across the tracks from one endless sand horizon to the other, their oxen and their curved swords at their sides. She realised then that that was power, for true power comes with freedom, even the trains were transfixed…

X

 “O no sorry mem sab, all we have today is daal, japarti and rice, nothing but daal and rice, O an chai yes, we have chai, it is very nice chai, yes very nice…” with daal, japarti and chai in front of her and her blurry Bombay world, a cow stuck its head through the window a few foot away from where she was. She gasped, but then she also felt blessed, she knew these creatures were considered blessed animals and she could suddenly see the peace in its large all seeing eyes. Unfortunately in the confusion, her new silver bracelet had been stolen. She reasoned that she probably fed someone’s family for a few days, so it wasn’t all bad. Even in her state she knew she was still a fairly wealthy westerner. Every day she saw slums and filth, how could she complain? After this experience she slowly wondered out onto the street and for the first time she started feeling happy, still sick, still blurry, but happy. Street performers, a husband and wife were building a huge clay dome over the husbands head. A dome nearly a full foot thick over him as he was laying down. When she went back three days later, he was still there, head in a clay bell in fifty degree temperature, with no air holes in sight. It was then she reasoned it was time to call her boyfriend. She was no street performer, she was sick. Without any health services she felt she could rely on, she needed advice… “Go see Gensi Lansing, he’ll look after you…” This was Marks friend who was a Buddhist priest. He had an ashram, a holy place, in Bombay. She was saved. It was like a palace, an artist’s white marble palace, with pillars and wide open windows where cool breezes whispered about compassion. The happiness she felt as she left the restaurant unfolded now like a lotus. They had the antibiotics, they had the food, the water, it was all kindness, totally free and safe from the snakes poison that was chasing her on the street. So the blurry world started receding, making sense. Yet she knew she had found the place for her wings to rest, and there was a way home…

Epilogue

After a quick trip to get her Gems back from Ragisthan with Gina nowhere to be found, the Federal police interviewed Sam at the airport. Gina Mercuzio was a drug runner and they were hot on her trail. She had been importing blocks of hash to Australia, hash made to look like bits of wood fixed behind doctor’s golden name plaques. They went through Sam’s suitcases, her handbag, her everything. They weren’t going to let Sam get on the plane, not until the very last minute. But all she could say was what she knew, that she had no idea where she was, who she was, she was invisible in that culture. But all Sam craved now was her own culture. Where things were known to her and monsters were visible at the very least. On a stopover in Indonesia they gave Sam special medicine for malnutrition. When she arrived back in Australia, Mark walked straight past her because he didn’t recognise the body that was now wondering in a new spiritual happiness. She had glimpsed at power. She had realised that her spirit was changed at a fundamental level and there was now truly more to this world than what was seen or talked about in books or reason.  That with freedom, we could do things that defied logic, that skipped the A+ B that always equalled C and reached into a deeper area of the human psyche. A psyche that led beyond a segregated mentality, a world where the true artist existed, and with a pocket full of gems...

Works Cited

White, Sam. Interview on India. Interviewer; Jason B.R. Maxwell, 2014. Recording.

Get out of the Box!

photo from unknown source... thank you!

Samsara or the inherit nature of embodied consciousness, described by  Thanissaro Bhikkhu as literally meaning "wandering on," is the creation and recreation of worlds to move into and learn about the separation of self. Thus in this ode I give you my new video poem "get out of the box" which, with fire, prompts the creativity and unique essence of your individual being while escaping the burning pain and suffering with enlightenment.  Enjoy my friends and Amitābha ...

Message to Xanadu

(susan seddon boulet via moonwoman)

From the Koori Dreamtime to Platos Perfection of Forms to William Blakes ideas of Jerusalem, the idea of the immortal world pervades. This poem reaches out in ode to that concept most electric in our sparking arcing minds, that there is a holy city where humanity is realized and it motivates and guides us always....

In Order to Bloom...

(photo from unknown source)

I write to alight the world, to craft the reworded one word universe. I write because I cut wood before after and during enlightenment. I write for the rights of the left so we can all return to the centre. I write because the sunset on loves heart will once be set. I write because you haven’t met the real me yet. I write because this life will hunt me to death and these footprints will never be washed away by the hunters waving gun. I write because the moon can only meet the sun in the past inscription-ink of one impossibly strobed out and wild electron. I write because my proton and neutron spirit listens to the higgs boson of my heart beat.

I write because of the fire that my friends bring to my fire as we burn it down in the art of conversation, made in time with the owl and cicada in the shadowless shadows. I write because I howled with Allen Ginsberg, was on the road with Kerouac, was silently smiling with Tenzin Gyotso and felt the hum of the machinery in the stars of Stephen Hawking’s mind.  I write because my father read the hobbit to my magic sight-full eyes, and the war ended three times hence. I write because the meaning of life is 42 and I hitchhiked on a shoe shaped ship powered by the drive of infinity and a cup of tea.  I write because I’ve seen festivals retuned to the pirate ship of the psychic.

I write because I’ve heard the Akashic record of the multiversal lung sent through the lips of my daughters. I write because I’ve felt all our cultures true deity gliding over the nape of a neck and planted in a garden in rich red soulful soil.  I write because a girl broke my heart in teenage earthquakes that still echo footy ground smoking spot embraces. I write because I love to perform to the bohemian café temple that sells the best beer in my home town. And we are the organic computer that will find the question to the one now and so answer bunjils blessings. I write because my mother did the same thing. I write because there is no question, we ARE the family of imaginations that are attempting the impossible fix of all in their hermitage, in their 3 pm shadow of thought-torturous-Atlas-moan, feeling the full rage of time, the chronic bipolar-schizophrenic-Alzheimer’s-catatonic-obsessive-compulsive-ADHD-meglomania of our collective advanced embodiment. I write because quantum mechanics has proven that we are all connected to our evolution and if you disagree, bring your evidence and I’ll laugh in our new connection.

I write because my great grandfather wrote and I have his ancient golden pen which I now hope to absolve of its heritage of sin. I write because the indigenous taught me how to begin on the pathway to become indigenous, to respect all dream times and skill lines to destiny amongst the permanence of tribal way. I write because Julia Cameron taught me to be kind to the inner child I know lives on the inside of everyone. I write to catch the fleeting shadow not meant to be shadow, but meant to be the molten silver on the gum leaves at the end of a hard tired day. I write because three pages of journal everyday teaches me chaos like 39 and a half teeth brushings leading to a car crash. I write because the very essence of order said we’re meant to be alive, somehow, impossibly sown in an adjective of love-verb.  I write because there’s always a few words left to bloom back to the gods…

On Three Portraits, the Young Poet, the Politician, the Old Philosopher…

(photo from unknown light source)

By Jason B.R. Maxwell,

29^th March 2013.

Bachelor of Art student,

Curtin University.

Abstract:

“…its group mind, it’s one of the means that’s available to us of attaining group mind and there’s a lot I think in there that’s akin to a religion, there’s a religious dimension to this…”

(Di’Stephano, Poetic Interview 27.4.13)

The Young Poet:

If Tigga, Mr. Happy and Raa Raa the Lion were all one character in a series made for some childishly

strange hippy reality TV network, the poet I know as Ben Andrews or ‘tigs’ would be him. A smiling

yet gentle and charismatic gentleman-hippy of the Belgrave poetry and performing arts scene, it can

truly be said that people and auric sunshine seem to exude from the very space around him. This of

course, for a poet like me, an urchin, dark-eyed and hermit like, hardly able to remember a friends

name let alone how to truly smile without obscene paranoia , makes me jealous as…

But of course, as poetry is always a civilized, social game, it’s quite natural and easy to forgive him.

Especially since anyone offering easy, associative barrel-fire-on-the-street type friendships are like

gold mines of paranoia break free, both essential and human…. Even before I round the cold-day –

ghost screaming corner, I know he’ll be there at the door, short and kid-like, his old special jeans

lent against the café, champion ruby roll drifting smoke into the wind, old top hat casually held out

to collect the door fee, those huge signature blond woolly lamb-chop-cheeks bending with each free

smile, waiting for the poets to come from their dark corners...

 It seems, no matter how strange, how completely wild or weird, he welcomes them all

and knows them all. With an easy few words, a few easy hugs, he’s excited as a bounce about any

topic, protest, world reincarnation, permaculture (especially permaculture) even weather boredom

and sharp barb wire subjects like ‘whether one should even bother voting in a capitalistic age such as

 ours’ never drops, for there truly is a tapestry of every moment about him, weaving and weaving

the hacky sack of each conversation around the circles that gather in the crisp fog breath air. 

As the milling and the flow of feet take us to the warmer bar and he stays behind smoking with a few

friends, it’s a little obvious I’m torn between conversation and poetic duty to perform first, but we

finish up an impossibly large concept of a borderless world with an ease that is ever so slightly

astonishing in its synchronicity “thank god poetry has no borders” and I can only smile at the insane

truth of it and join the crazy Salvadore Dali ant march down the eighties gloss white stairwell, too

bright, too quiet again. When I see him again, he’s like some high school rebel, fashionably late, the

convenor has to call him, assuming with comedic value, the teachers role “tigs, your on man!” And

he bounds down the stairs with a red-cheeked puff-goof-pause on the landing, everyone including

me laughs when he says with a big open cheese “hi…” and it’s obviously as a butterfly on a bears

face, he’s well known by everyone here. 

It shows in the start to his poetry too. No stuttered mumbling awkward introductions or grand-

standing his place in any world, no useless droning monologues about his day spent lounging at the

café shop laughing at tourists, just casually flicking back his shoulder length fringe and straight into

it. Poetry about Lego, about the art of play, about life…

The Politician…

Rest? What is this rest you speak of? This, I imagine, is the motto of Local Councillor Samantha Dunn.

Searching for her titled name brings up 37,300 results by Bing Australia and 39,000 by Yahoo

Australia (Bing, 2013, Yahoo, 2013). Taking out the white noise from these searches, it is

clear from almost any of them that her name keeps finding itself in all the right places.  In the local

hip “Burrinja Arts Centre” website (Burrinja, 2013) for instance, under the section

labelled ‘Committee,’ her generous biography firmly entrenches her character in the lush

Dandenong Ranges.  Lived in the area “since she was eight” she has been elected councillor for

Lyster Ward 2 terms running and it is clear that she “feels a profound connection with the area”

(Burrinja, 2013).

Especially since she has so many positions within this vibrant community; chairperson of the Eastern

Transport Coalition since 2009, chairperson of the President of the Victorian Local Governance

Association since 2011, she’s also the council’s face for the Monbulk Aquatic Centre Project, the now

complete Sherbrooke Children and Family Centre Project, Monbulk Soccer Project, Flora and Fauna

Strategy, Municipal Emergency Management Planning Committee, Graffiti Advisory Group and the

Shire's Advocacy Group, clearly, a passionate woman! (Burrinja, 2013)

On her blog she promises to better public transport, make more pathways for walking and cycling,

build a new community hub for Belgrave, make more funding available to tackle weeds, make safer

streets and roads, and encouraging business and innovation and to make peace on earth with

whatever aspect of herself she has left (Dunn, 2013). On her recent election to

the VLGA, federal Greens member Jo Tenner said “Samantha has the skills and energy to provide a

strong voice for the people of Eastern Victoria” (The Greens, 2013).

Of her politics, Cr. Dunn believes like many that “people are tired of the old parties and their broken

promises, the Greens represent honest hard working democracy and a just transition to a

sustainable future for us all,” (The Greens, 2013)  And honest hard working

democracy runs thick in her blood.  In her work with the “No Maccas in Tecoma” group for instance,

against an inappropriate VCAT approved planning permit to build in the local town of Tecoma, she is

a most vehement force of nature in opposing the build along-side other councillors, who also

opposed the build unanimously  (Dunn, 2013). 

Yet her campaign against the McDonalds intrusive build is not just an enactment of Greens inspired

Democratic process, there is a practical side as well. On her blog for instance, she mentions a whole

range of planning problems with the project, not least of which is the intense traffic and road

planning on Burwood Hwy that is “a recipe for disaster if you ask me, however as VicRoads have

signed off on it and they are the roads authority there is no avenue to overturn this”

(Dunn, 2013). 

However, while big business have the lawyers and the money, her vehement attention to detail,

incredible powers of initiative and go get ‘em attitude, Cr. Samantha Dunn is clearly force to be

reckoned with and any company seeking to further thwart the democratic process on her watch will

have a fight on their hands that’s for sure. For if I’ve learnt anything from my research into this

woman, it seems Cr. Dunn for the sake of peace, promises to never let rest enter her vocabulary, not

even once…

The Old Philosopher…

There was an eerie barking quietness about the start to my Interview with Zen-full, Osteopathic

healer and scholar of poetry Vince De’Stephano.  Almost an aura of fear expressed in a young

dog that punctuated, fear of a stranger in his big open house about to unleash a storm of

deep psyche in his owner. A storm that turned out to be a wise, hard earned poetic philosophy

juxtaposed with a painful and passionate Sicilian family history.

Yet the dog calmed down eventually and we then went into the largely wooden kitchen where we

set up the equipment. My first question was aimed at framing how he was introduced to poetry, to

which he casually replies “by an older fellow [Peter] when I was asked to paint a church where he

lived … I was amazed by his ability and vast store house of poetic phrases drawn from great

poets that he would drop into our conversation all the time” and this story clearly brings up a

warmth within him as he smiles and leans back, almost punctuating my visions with his stares. 

While I listen to him talking of this man who was also a man working with disabled youth, I get a

poetic vision of them, mighty warrior-medics on the battle field of life, fighting to save troubled

youths in careless, cold institutions.  Yet as he further explains his humanity in philosophy, it is clear

that poetry and healing seem intimately linked.  For he reflects from 30 years of clinical practice,

that it has “brought me face to face with the truth of human suffering, [that] scratch any life and it

bleeds, but it’s only close, patient, caring contact with people where truth is revealed”.

From there the interview takes a rather darker turn with a question of family influences, a turn

towards his own human sufferings through anger, dissatisfaction and a yin and yang polarity

between his father and mother. He describes with stoic expression, how his father spent two years

carrying a machine gun in North Africa and spent four years in a Scottish war camp. In comparison

his mother had always dreamed of joining a convent and was a softer “spiritual woman” whom was

shocked by the reality of his father, a man that “totally shook her existential foundations in a way

that I don’t think she really came back from…” for she died suddenly from a stroke after they moved

to Australia from Sicily.

As I listen I see not only the visible pain in his expressions, but the visionary experience that Vince

pours out from the sudden nature of her death. For he describes how, shortly after her death, his

father read to his family for the first time ever from a Bible, the psalms of David; “as though he was

recounting and retelling the story we had already lived and that we were to live more fully” and how

it was “completely beyond linear time where the images, the sounds, the tones were all familiar …

like a old Lama performing death rights”. After this painful moment in their lives he told how his

father softened and mourned for months if not years, but “there was [still] a core of anger and that

core was never really dissipated. And that was related to the un-satisfactoriness that he felt and at

the core of that anger.” And from that lesson I believe there is this statement: “I suppose what

prompted me at the time [to write and perform poetry] was a sense of mortality and by mortality I

mean that sense of what is it that we leave behind”

…. And then the storm was over…

Reference List:

Bing. (2013). Search results: Cr. Samantha Dunn, accessed 28th April 2013:

http://www.bing.com/search q=Cr.+Samantha+Dunn&qs=n&form=QBLH&filt=all&pq=cr.+samantha+dunn&sc=1-17&sp=-1&sk=.

Burrinja. (2013). Burrinja Committee: Cr. Samantha Dunn, accessed 28th April 2013:

 http://www.burrinja.org.au/index.php/about/committee.

 Dunn, Samantha Cr. (2013). The official Blog of Cr. Samantha Dunn shire of Yarra Ranges, Accessed          28th April 2013: http://crdunn.blogspot.com.au. 

The Greens. (2013). Country Greens Victoria Network, accessed 28th April 2013:                 http://cgn.org.au/dp/SamanthaDunn. 

Yahoo. (2013). Search results: Cr. Samantha Dunn, accessed 28th April 2013:                      http://au.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oGkmWxZINRtR4A5XsL5gt.?p=Cr.+Samantha+Du                  nn&fr2=sb-top&fr=yfp-t-501&type_param=&rd=r2

The Flame

(photo: Adam Scott Miller)

"Have you no thought, O dreamer, that it may be all maya, illusion?

-Walt Whitman

Upon the meditations of consciousness this poem reaches, where consciousness is boundless, intimately connected to this earth as the one true consciousness we incarnate. Its symbol, an inverted journey upon the inside of a flame, is a journey of healing the layers of collective mind through the inner life cycles we master. For he who heals oneself heals the world. It is in accordance with the descriptives of existence being called the samsara flame, the life flame distilled until what remains is the crystal essence... And so Amitābha my friends...

A Venerable Space in the City...

(graff from unknown source, please advise if you know...)

The beauty of the calculus machine that is the city comes through in this poem. About a spontaneous experience found walking for fitness at 4.30 am between Fawkner park and St. Kilda beach, it explores a moment through the entanglement of speed, metal, plastic and tarmac, that reaches out to us from time to time. A moment so indescribable that in its oasis, rips the veil held over micro existence, and so for us to sigh at the true pace of things... in joy my friends...

Looking for these Keys

(photo from unknown source)

Questions of the self have been coming up recently, with my morning pages of squibbling journals, social dysfunctions and experiences of macrotic dreaming. In these moods then, this poem with visual poem seeks for the key of patience, peace and collaboration with circumstance, as the poetry scene in Melbourne evolves around a dying governance and capitalist cultures in fascist disarray. Indeed we here represent a strange breed, the left and the sensitive few, a core of survival, clinging to bridge the gaps between communities, the earth and massive psychotic conditions... in joy :)

Yeats; Upon the Balance of Two Worlds…

(photo care of www.Totemical.com)

By Jason B.R. Maxwell

Griffith University

s2832398

 “To escape a dangerous fanaticism we must study a new science; at that moment 

Europeans may find something attractive in a Christ posed against a back ground not of 

Judaisim but of Druidism, not shut off in dead history, but flowing, concrete phenomenal. I 

was born in this faith, have lived in it, and shall die in it”   (Yeats cited in Harrison 371)

Introduction: Two Religions

Much has been said about the theological complexity of William Butler Yeats.
Yet from the moot of his critics, there remains a question via one structure of thought; on judgement day, does he believe in any form of Christian salvation? Even though it is clear that Yeats is far from Christian, answering a definitive negative to this question would be far from truth. Therefore this essay unearths an agnostic balance of religions leading to his visions of salvation. This balance can be seen behind two key works; the mechanistic logic of Christian enlightenment in “Sailing to Byzantium” and the natural beast of Paganism in “The Second Coming” (Yeats 124-129).

A Vision:  Conceptual background.

Yet we cannot discuss these works without first mentioning Yeats’s philosophic view point in ‘A Vision’. Inspired by Mrs Yeats’ exposition as a discovered psychic in 1920,  ‘A Vision’ details, in prose, that history was a “Wheel”, where a “Great Memory” and the influence of Christ, lasts two thousand years and then falls to a new cycle, directly opposed to its predecessor (Weeks 286-287, Griffith University 16). But to complicate this determinism, analysis made by Empson suggests that spirits “time travel” to ancient kingdoms and decide where and when to incarnate themselves (72). Indeed Yeats himself was interpreted as desiring to do so, to around 1000 AD (Empson 84).

Yeats; Sailing to a perfected Eternity…

But where was Yeats going and why? Byzantium, one of the major birthplaces of Christianity, to Yeats, represented a “unity of aesthetic and religious experience” (Empson 69) and thus a pivotal point in the two thousand year Christian cycle (Empson 84).  Further, in Yeats’s first poem of the city, “Sailing to Byzantium”, it is singing that is given detailed and contrasted metaphors relating to the perfection of art, where each stanza beholds music in different forms (Empson 69).

In the beginning the poems youthful song seems to accelerate the cycle of “whatever begotten, born and dies” and thus a distraction from “the monuments of unaging intellect” or collective mind (Yeats 6-8). Further, in the second stanza, the structures involved in the schools of art also distract, this time from the individuals “soul clap”, i.e. the individuals music amidst the songs or monuments of Byzantium (Yeats 11). In the third he turns to his new masters there and makes prayer, to “pern in a gyre” or reach out to help “Gather … [him] /Into the artifice of eternity” (Yeats 19-22). These three stanzas form an advancement of the soul in song, from the distractions of youth, to learning an individual’s place, to sharing art until enlightenment.

However it is the completion of the poem which creates the most controversy. For once he has achieved the highest purification of his soul, he wishes not for any type of flesh-full immortality amongst the lords and ladies of Byzantium, instead he wishes to reincarnate as a golden bird in order to sing to a “drowsy Emperor” to keep him awake (Yeats 29). 

But why would Yeats do this?

Some critics see this move as “hollowness” and Yeats was deeply criticized even by his friends for turning his back on the naturalism that is so strong in other works (Kimball 216, Empson 80). But nowhere does it say that Yeats’ song itself is unnatural, mechanical or monotonous. So in light of Yeats’ circular theory, Yeats might believe that for personal AND political reasons, he had to travel to the very critical time of Byzantium where the real bird is said to have existed (Empson 84).  This mission might seem so vital, that even immortal flesh, subservient to impurity, will fail him and his Emperor to the decisions that might decide the fate of all future Christianity. And so the question; why couldn’t Yeats’ ‘unaging intellect’ lead Christianity to salvation?

Absolution and Armageddon

Perhaps art can lead to salvation, but to give such a world burden to one man alone would be to define Yeats (or his yawning, un-god like Emperor) as Christ himself, and too far from Yeats’s agnostic and war hardened reality. No, Harrison defines Yeats in similarity to Nietzsche, in that Christianity parallels Paganism as “two principles” that are in a state of constant flux that is “contrary, not negation, not refutation” (368). Indeed, this was a natural unending cycle, one after the other.  Nowhere is this more relevant than in his poem; “The Second Coming”, where rather than signalling any “reforming zeal,” Yeats depicts civilization on its “blood dimmed” knees (Harrison 368, Yeats 5).  

The poems semiotic structure is simple enough; two stanzas contrast contemporary torn realities with a mystic’s narrated vision. It achieves the former with Yeats’s cone shaped ‘gyre’ system for the soul embodying contemporary Christianity as a whole; for “Turning and turning in the widening gyre/ … /Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold” (Weeks 286-287, Yeats 1-3).  This system predicts that in the largest ‘gyre’, furthest from the birth of Christ symbolised ideologically as the Falcon, innocence is lost, the wise are silent while “the worst are full of passionate intensity” (Weeks, Yeats 2-8). 

This environment builds into the second, where Yeats then imagines a sleeping Sphinx awakening in the desert as a consequence.  Here Yeats comments on his own symbolism, of the East and its Sphinx as “human power … stretched to its utmost” and thus a symbol of “laughing, ecstatic destruction” (Yeats cited in Harrison 368). But to finish it all in true Christian dread, this gigantic beast “slouches towards Bethlehem to be born” (Yeats 22).

In contrast to “Sailing to Byzantium”, the symbols in “The Second Coming” seems to leave no real room for interpretation, it is “quite plainly the association of the beast, the anti-Christ” and thus the destruction of Christian civilization (Weeks 291).   But to differ from interpretations inherit in ‘anti’, perhaps seeing the second coming of Christ in a contrary form rather than a ‘refuted’ form, one such as Michel Angelo, would absolve many concerns amidst the sheer chaos (Yeats 20, Yeats cited in Harrison 373).

Conclusion: The Completion Storey…

By contrasting the dualistic bird of “Sailing to Byzantium” and the ‘Anti’- Christ in “The Second Coming” we can see the beginning, the middle and the end of Christian civilization in political failure AND artistic beauty.  Yet past Christianity’s life cycle, it is perhaps answering “What rough beast … slouches towards Bethlehem” with a Pagan one, a rough yet natural “druidic” Christ  with the tough task of leading the world back to nature, where we come closer to Yeats’ intended influences upon Christianity. For to Yeats, life was a balance, not a conversion, of two contrary forces; of the logical, temporal mechanics of Christianity and the natural, eternal song of Paganism.

Works Cited:

Empson, William. Yeats and Byzantium. Grand Street 1:4 (1982): 67-95. Web. 20^th Dec.            2013.

Griffith University. Study guide; LCI12 Irish Literature.Brisbane: Digitisation and Distribution,    2013. Print.

Harrison, John R. What Rough Beast? Yeats, Nietzsche and historical Rhetoric in “the Second Coming”. Papers on Language and Literature 31.4 (1995):362-373. Web. 28^th Dec. 2013.

Kimball, Elizabeth. Yeats's Sailing to Byzantium. The Explicator 61:4 (2003): 216-218. Web.     26th Dec 2013.

Weeks, Donald. Image and Idea in Yeats’ the Second Coming. PMLA 63:1 (1948): 281-            292.    Web. 26^th Dec. 2013.

Yeats, William Butler. Selected Poems. Ed.Timothy Webb. London: Penguin       Books,            1991. Print.