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gingersimasnaps · 4 years ago

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I'm not even sorry for this one 💁‍♀️

Vera is AGAIN OOC as fuck because obviously I don't know how to write canon Vera, English is again horrible, and it's angstyyy! 😁

@bakulka @fanfics-she-wrote @everythingabouthatship - I won this one. 😘

Angsty Vermish fic ❤️

This has to be some kind of a fucking joke.

Because no way this situation is happening seriously.

Vera Stone, Grand Magus, is standing in front of new Massachusetts Temple Magus and this just can't be true. She really waits for someone to jump from behind the door, laughing, and telling her it's just a joke, but it doesn't happen.

With almost sheepish smile, Derek Johnson is standing in front of her. Her ex boyfriend. Father of her dead daughter.

"Vera..." He says quietly. "Hi."

She wants to do three hundred things right now. She wants to run, to yell, to claw his eyes out, to hug him, to kiss him, to call Hamish-

Hamish.

The thought of him stops the madness in her head.

"Hi, Derek," she answers simply and tries to hold the cold tone of voice but failes miserably.

"I... Haven't seen you for a long time."

"Not exactly my fault, is it?" she snaps.

"I know, I know, and I'm incredibly sorry, Vera. I really am. I wasn't ready to be a father back then."

She scoffs. "Because I was so ready to be a mother."

Derek holds his hand up as a sign of peace. "I know I was the grand coward," he sighs.

"Yeah, you were. Now, back to the work. You were selected by your Massachusetts chapter and by the Gnostic council as the new Temple Magus. It won't be easy, I warn you. You have to be careful. You have all of your chapter's acolytes under your wing now so listen to me carefully. I don't want to hear about one single unnecessary death from your temple."

She dips into explaining him his duties and tries to ignore his body warmth when he stand closer to her to see what she's showing him in some book.

"I would love to be a part of our child's life if you allow me," Derek says when they're done and after they agree he will stay here for a week or so, to observe her work. Vera tenses up.

"She's dead."

"WHAT?!"

The next thing she knows is she's crying, and Derek rushes to hug her. He doesn't let her go when she sobs out what happened.

Suddenly the door are flying open, and Hamish is standing there, with a drink in his hand. Of course, it's 4 PM. He always brings her drink at this time. And she's still in Derek's embrace.

Hamish watches how she pulls away from the man and how he doesn't want to let her go. He watches his lingering touch while Hamish is setting the glass on her table.

"Your drink, Grand Magus," he says blankly, and turns his back to them.

"Thank you," Vera calls softly, which makes him to turn back again. Her eyes are wet. And so incredibly vulnerable. He wants to hold her. But, obviously, there is someone else to do it now.

"You don't have to thank me, Grand Magus," he answers, and goes away.

Derek stays for more than a week. It's been over a month now. He spends all his time in the Temple. With Vera.

Hamish is just tired and sick of all this. He tries so hard to maintain everything in his life and he feels he just reached the bottom of his strength.

His pack kind of excommunicated him. Randall is mad at him because he's 'not acting as the leader should act', and Jack doesn't care enough, as he's consumed with his relationship with Alyssa. Lilith is the only one who seems to care, but she has her own life. And yet, he's still trying to keep them all safe because excommunicated or not, it's his duty and he needs to do it.

He teaches fucking big bunch of classes now, because Krowchuk is on long term sick leave. He's still Magistratus, so he works for Order as well.

And the most painful thing is the fact Vera is spending all her free time with a man she swore she hates to the guts. And she enjoys it.

The last blow is delivered when he works on the drink for her (yes, he's so stupid he still does that) and hears her loud, genuine laugh from her office, where she is with Derek. After a few seconds, the door opens, and the man walks to the bar.

"I'll take it to her, Magistratus, thank you," he says with a smile. Sly smile. "She will never be yours, young man. I was the first and I will be also the last."

Hamish stands there for a few minutes, feeling completely empty. This has happened only once in his life so far - when Cassie died. Vera is still very much alive, but he lost her also.

Fuck this.

Hamish almost runs from the temple, hops in his car and drives to his parents' cabin, about an hour from Belgrave. Once he turns the engine off, he fishes his phone out of his pocket and types a single message to her.

Derek is telling Vera some story and she listens, of course, when he phone chimes, announcing new message.

"Leave it," says Derek, but she reaches for in anyway.

Hamish [5:26PM] I quit.

"Wait," she silences Derek. What does Hamish mean by quitting? His TA position? The Order? He can't exactly quit Knights. Or does he mean he's quitting them? She dials his number. It rings and rings and rings, but no one answers.

"Fuck," she grits between her teeth and furiously types a message. Then another and another.

Vera [5:30PM] What do you mean?

Vera [5:31PM] What are you quitting??

Vera [5:31PM] Answer me!

Vera [5:32PM] Hamish, please, tell me what's wrong?

Vera [5:35PM] This is not funny.

Vera [5:48PM] Hamish where are you? Tell me where you are.

Vera [5:54PM] MAGISTRATUS, COOPERATE!!!

Derek watches her attempts to contact him and of course he doesn't like it. Vera is his. She shouldn't give a fuck about the BOY when she has *the* MAN next to her. He tries to bring her attention back to him, but with no success. Vera tries another call, and this time the person answers.

"Ms. Bathory, do you happen to know where Hamish is?" she asks immediately, to hell with Mr. Duke.

"Why do you suddenly care?" asks Lilith back in her typical 'Kilith' way.

"Ms. Bathory-"

"Because to me, you didn't seem to bother with Hamish during the past month."

"Can you please tell me where he is?" Vera's voice is soft and if Lilith wouldn't know her, she would say she's almost begging.

"I don't know," she gives up. "But I would check the cabin. His parents own it, we crashed there once or twice for holidays. I'll send you the address."

"Thank you, Lilith," Vera says and ends the call. After a minute, Lilith really sends her the address.

"What's going on?" Derek asks for like 108th time.

"Hamish, the man who makes all the drinks texted me 'I quit' and I need to find him," Vera answers. "Whatever is happening, I'll help him to find a solution."

"Well if he wants to leave then let him leave, no? After all, it's gonna be better for you."

Vera turns to him with disbelief. "Excuse me?!"

"It's more than obvious the boy is in love with you. He's so bad at hiding it he could tattoo it on his forehead. Poor kid no way reaches your limits, not even with some branch two meters long. And I already told him now that I'm here, he doesn't need to bother anymore. Let him leave. It's for the best."

Grand Magus feels pure rage flooding in her veins. "What LIMITS are you talking about, Derek?! Who the fuck gave you the right?!"

Derek smiles. "Honey, we both feel we're the right match for each other. Don't deny it." He tries to reach for her, but she yanks her hand from his grasp.

"Oh my fucking God, I can't believe I was so stupid! I really thought you want to learn about your work, but all this time, you were just trying to get into my panties! And how do you even dare to talk to Hamish about him bothering or not?!" she's literally screaming on top of her lungs.

"If you need to know it, we were a thing long before you came here. Me and Hamish, and I was the one who iniciated it. I never want to have anything with you again, because it's you who can't reach HIS limits. Hamish would never- fuck this. You don't deserve to know him at all."

"Now who's running from who?!" Derek yells when she gathers her belongings, ready to chase Hamish to the other side of the planet if she needs to.

"I'm not running from you. I'm running TO him. And I'm not leaving you knocked up at 16 with words 'I don't fucking want to be dad, God knows who you fucked with!'" Vera hisses, and magically throws - literally - him out of her office.

She's driving fast, violating the speed limits, but her heart is pounding painfully in her chest and her mind is screaming at her to go even faster. What had she done? What had possessed her that she almost dumped her source of happiness and joy for Derek?! How could she hurt Hamish so much, when she promised to herself multiple times she never wants to hurt him?

Suddenly, her hands grip the steering wheel with such force her knuckles turn white.

Please, please, oh God please, he didn't think he's quitting his LIFE, right?!

She feels bile in her throat and swallows forcefully. The image of his lifeless body is in front of her eyes and a sob escapes her. No. No, no, no, no, no, NO. He wouldn't do that, not because of her, she's not worth it!!!

Vera drives even faster.

When she arrives, it's 6:47PM. Normally, she would be impressed she managed to get there so fast, but now, everything she needs is to know Hamish is alive.

Vera doesn't bother with knocking or whatever, she just bursts through the door.

Hamish is sitting on the couch, in front of TV that is switched off, and just stares at the black screen.

"Hamish-" Vera manages to breathe and he looks at her. There is so much pain in his eyes she almost cries out.

"What do you want, Grand Magus," Hamish sighs, and she drops her purse in the floor and runs to him.

"You," she says. "I want you and I want us, forever. I'm so sorry, Hamish, for everything I put you through. For the past month. I'm so sorry, can you forgive me? Please... I don't know what to do without you. I don't know how to breathe right when you're not next to me."

"You have Derek now, don't you?" he says, and she puts her hands on his cheeks.

"No. I don't even wanna know what he told you but it's not true. I never wanted him back. I have to admit it was interesting for me to have him around again, but I never wanted him back as my boyfriend, or partner, or lover or whatever connected with feelings. I have you for all of these things. And you have me, Hamish. You have all of me." She climbs in his lap and feels so relieved when Hamish wraps his hands around her waist.

"I love you, Hamish. I've never loved anyone as much as I love you, and I never will. Can you forgive me? I'm not asking for instant forgiveness, but someday?"

Hamish leans in and kisses her, and Vera kisses back, with all the 'I'm sorry' and 'I love you' and 'I want you' and basically every emotion she's feeling.

After their century long kissing (and yet it's not enough, it never can be enough), Vera hugs him tightly, presses his face into his neck, and Hamish is swinging them slowly and gently from left to right. Neither of them says a word, and they don't need to. Vera just wants to spend rest of her life engulfed in his embrace, and Hamish never wants to let her go. They both came home today.

Home is where the heart is.

#hamish x vera #vera x hamish #vera/hamish #vera stone #hamish duke #fanfiction #vermish #hermetic order of the blue rose #the order #knights of the blue rose

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limejuicer1862 · 6 years ago

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Gabriel Rosenstock,

according to Wikipedia,

(born 1949) is an Irish writer who works chiefly in the Irish language. A member of Aosdána, he is poet, playwright, haikuist, tankaist, essayist, and author/translator of over 180 books, mostly in Irish. Born in Kilfinane, County Limerick, he currently resides in Dublin.

Rosenstock’s father George was a doctor and writer from Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, who served as a German army doctor in World War II. His mother was a nurse from County Galway. Gabriel was the third of six children and the first born in Ireland. He was educated locally in Kilfinane, then in Mount Sackville, Co Dublin; exhibiting an early interest in anarchism he was expelled from Gormanston College, Co. Meath and exiled to Rockwell College, Co. Tipperary; then on to University College Cork.

His son Tristan Rosenstock is a member of the traditional Irish quintet Téada, and impressionist/actor Mario Rosenstock is his nephew.

Rosenstock worked for some time on the television series Anois is Arís on RTÉ, then on the weekly newspaper Anois. Until his retirement he worked with An Gúm, the publications branch of Foras na Gaeilge, the North-South body which promotes the Irish language.

Although he has worked in prose, drama and translation, Rosenstock is primarily known as a poet. He has written or translated over 180 books.

He has edited and contributed to books of haiku in Irish, English, Scots and Japanese. He is a prolific translator into Irish of international poetry (among others Ko Un, Seamus Heaney, K. Satchidanandan, Rabindranath Tagore, Muhammad Iqbal, Hilde Domin, Peter Huchel), plays (Beckett, Frisch, Yeats) and songs (Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, The Pogues, Leonard Cohen, Bob Marley, Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell). He also has singable Irish translations of Lieder and other art songs.[1]

He appears in the anthology Best European Fiction 2012, edited by Aleksandar Hemon, with a preface by Nicole Krauss (Dalkey Archive Press).[2] He gave the keynote address to Haiku Canada in 2015.

His being named as Lineage Holder of Celtic Buddhism inspired the latest title in a rich output of haiku collections: Antlered Stag of Dawn (Onslaught Press, Oxford, 2015), haiku in Irish and English with translations into Japanese and Scots Lallans.

He also writes for children, in prose and verse. Haiku Más É Do Thoil É! (An Gúm) won the Children’s Books Judges’ Special Prize in 2015.

Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel_Rosenstock#Biography

http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/ http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=gabriel+rosenstock

The Interview

Q. 1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I think the Muse came a-courting a long, long time ago, in an age before Gutenberg, an age before papyrus, when the poet was what he always is – though the role is suppressed today – a shaman.

She keeps coming – trying to possess me fully – but she knows I’m elusive, elusive as she is. We are both Spirit, pretending to be flesh, to be real. It’s a divine play, a sport, a leela as they say in India. I also write and translate for children – mainly in Irish, or Gaelic, and this is also leelai, pure and simple!

Ireland and India have so much in common. The writings of Myles Dillon and Michael Dames are good starting points for anyone interested in exploring that connection.

Ireland herself takes her name from a tripartite goddess and I dedicated a year to her in a bilingual book inspired by the devotional poetry of India, bhakti:

https://www.overdrive.com/media/796797/bliain-an-bhande-year-of-the-goddess

I mentioned the poet-shaman. There are very few courses in Creative Writing today that teach you how to be a shaman: it can’t be taught! So they teach form iinstead, how to write a sonnet or a villanelle – five tercets and a quatrain, is it? Enjambment anybody? Poets daringly continue a phrase after a line break and expect applause.

Irish poets learn your trade, sing whatever is well made. Yeats (whom I love) has a lot to answer for. Learn your trade! Poets today are tradeswomen and tradesmen for the most part. All form, no spirit, no melody that breaks the heart.

No heart. So, the great challenge today, in my book, is to reconnect with Spirit. Otherwise, forget it.

The only way to write is to write – and read, of course. Trust the inner ear – not what the manuals tell you – trust the heart, trust language. It’s not a lifeless tool in your hands, you silly tradesman. It’s alive, it’s divine. May your poetry be a sacrifice to her!

Having said all that, I occasionally teach haiku. The way I teach haiku is simply to present the works of the grandmasters of haiku, hoping that their spirit will ”catch’ and inflame the acolyte. Many believe that Basho was the grandmaster of haibun – prose speckled with haiku – and that the greatest of the haiku masters was Buson. I cobbled together new versions of Buson, in Irish and English, a volume which also contains versions in Scots by John McDonald:

https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Over-Tagoto-Selected-Haiku-ebook/dp/B00WUXQZ54

We need more multilingual books of poetry, tanka and haiku. We need to free ourselves from the dying clutches of the Anglosphere and listen to real poetry in languages which still cherish the divine music of the spheres: one can hear that sacred music in the voice of Scots-Gaelic poet Sorley MacLean, even when he reads his masterpiece Hallaig in English translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzewXmgVzL4

*** ***

Haiku Enlightenment and Haiku, the Gentle Art of Disappearing are two introductions to haiku and I hope that their titles reflect the spiritual basis of haiku, something which many haikuists ignore at their peril, I regret to say; for young readers (say, 8-12 years) there’s a book called Fluttering their Way into My Head:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1782010882/evertype-20

True haiku – Zen-haiku – is egoless and spontaneous and allows for ambiguity – the reader must make sense of it by drawing on her own experiences, dreams, memories and so on – and yet it’s happening in the Now (if there’s such a thing as the Now).. I’m fully aware of promoting a book such as Fluttering their Way into My Head and speaking at the same time about ego-lessness! But, you see, I don’t identify with ‘my’ books as ‘mine’. They are about as ‘mine’ as is the moon over Tagoto.

Q. 2.Ted Hughes would be glad you extol the shamanic. Who introduced you to the shamanic in poetry?

Does one need an introduction? I hold shamanism to be a vital part of my literary and cultural heritage.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/celt/cg1/index.htm

I can identify with the world of Carmina Gadelica whilst the world of Philp Larkin is alien to me.

Interesting that you should mention Hughes. I advise aspiring poets to wean themselves from the dominance of English-language literature, especially when it expresses itself in WASPish terms. I know many American poets, some of whom I’ve met at literary festivals, others with whom I have a friendly e-mail acquaintance. Many of them seem straitjacketed by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant way of walking, talking, eating, drinking, dressing – and writing! I translated a volume of poems, Cuerpo en llamas, by the late Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarcon into Irish and invited him to Ireland for the launch. He turned out to be a shaman-poet. The genuine article. We recorded the book on a cassette (built-in obsolescence?) and the opening invocation was in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, the language of his grandmother. I had come across Aztec poetry before, via anthologies by the likes of Jerome Rothenberg, but didn’t realize until then that Nahuatl was a living language.

During his brief stay in Ireland, Francisco gave me an Aztec name, Xolotl. I wrote a long poem of that title – in a kind of shamanic frenzy – and put it away, out of sight. Years later I looked at it again and it’s the longest poem in my selected poems translated from the Irish, The Flea Market in Valparaiso. Here’s a link to the book and a review:

https://www.cic.ie/en/books/published-books/margadh-na-miol-in-valparaiso

I’ll let the review speak for itself. Expounding further on the role of the shaman poet is best left to others. But, I’ll say this much, Paul: artificial intelligence or AI has ‘advanced’ to such an extent that robots are now writing poetry – it would almost make you join the Luddites or inspire you to form your local branch of Anarcho-Primitivists!. I think we should be reading more of John Zerzan and Paul Cudenec to fully realize what kind of world we are creating for our grandchildren. Everybody says we can’t go back, we can’t stop the march of progress. Rubbish! Of course we can go back; I don’t like military metaphors but surely a wise general knows when to retreat?

Do we want poetry written by robots? Maybe it’s just science imitating life – so much poetry, especially in English, is artificial anyway. Futurologists talk of various possible disasters down the line – caused by our relentless ‘advancement’ such as shortage of energy supplies, of food and water, melting icecaps and so on and so forth. Overfishing will result in a shortage of fish. Nobody speaks of a shortage of poetry – it wouldn’t be disastrous enough, seemingly, nor would it bother mankind very much if we speeded up the death of languages, currently estimated at one language disappearing every fortnight. It’s the survival of the fittest, isn’t it?! Is it? Is that who we are, what we are?

So what if Irish dies, if Scottish Gaelic or Nahuatl dies, if Welsh dies, if Manx dies – again! If Beauty dies, so what? Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream? Well, some of us are not willing to accept such a fatalistic scenario. The World Poetry Movement, for one, has sounded the alarm. Poets are not ‘joiners’ by nature but when the future of civilization is at stake, perhaps it’s time for all poets to become focused. Jack Hirschman, poet and social activist, describes the vision of the World Poetry Movement thus:

https://www.wpm2011.org/

‘an end to war world-wide, and the creation of a world government that shares and distributes the wealth of the world generously and sensitively in the process of creating an equality that is nothing but the word Love in the eyes of everyone because it also recognizes E V E RY human being as a brother or sister. With no need of any wall separating an ‘I’ from a ‘You’, a ‘He’ from a ‘She’ …

This is a wise vision. Quixotic? Utopian? So what. We need to rekindle hope, we as citizens, we as poets.

I was fortunate enough in this my 69th year on earth, fortunate indeed to have a near-death experience. After recovering from multi-organ failure, I became conscious of the love that poured in streams at my bedside from my wife Eithne, my daughters Heilean, Saffron and Eabha, my son Tristan and conscious, as well, of the wave of reciprocated love that streamed from me to them. I was conscious, too, of the love and concern that came from friends, relations and fellow scribes.

Hirschman, above, is speaking of Love, the ultimate reality. Left-wing theorists should speak more often to us of love; it would help their cause. The author of The Wretched of the Earth tells us that his criticism of the colonizer is inspired by love, not hate.

For a long while I could not read or write. Then I asked one of my daughters would she kindly order me a copy of Palgrave’s Treasury: you see, English-language poetry was my first love, before I ‘discovered’ Irish and its potential,just as the author of Decolonising the Mind decided that African literature need not be in the language of the colonizer, French, English or Portuguese. His own outlawed language, Gikuyu, was best suited to express what he wanted to reveal. I also asked my daughter to bring me anything by my favourite author, Isaac Bashevis Singer? So, Mr Rosenstock, are you Jewish then? I used to think that my empathy for Singer’s work meant exactly that, but no, I’m not Jewish. It is the ancient art of storytelling, brought to perfection in his short stories, that makes me alive not to Jewishness as such but to humanity, in all its guises. And what of my attraction to Irish culture and to Indian philosophies, particularly Advaita and bhakti? Well, I once heard Ganesh playing Napoleon Crossing the Rhine on the uilleann pipes:

http://forums.chiffandfipple.com/viewtopic.php?t=44223

I jest. But I did have an out-of-body experience listening to piper Eoin Duignan in a pub in Dingle. Look, I don’t feel particularly Indian, German, Irish or Jewish – live Irish music and the ancient sounds of the Irish language can lift one and link one deeply to the universal spirit, the rich complexity that is the world of the senses, too; a deepening of a sense of place; a feeling for history. English carries imperial baggage with it. The scales fell from my eyes once I understood that through Irish, the literary medium of my choice, I could see and experience the world differently. Lucky Poet is a memoir by Scottish poet Hugh Mac Diarmid. It touches on some of these issues.

A year or so ago I came across an editorial in Poetry Ireland Review that mentioned at least half a dozen English poets.(I couldn’t figure out why. Was this a special edition of the review dedicated to new voices in English poetry? No.) We are still ‘looking across the pond’, i.e. to England. There is ample evidence, if you look for it, that many Anglophone Irish writers are suffering from a kind of literary Stockholm syndrome, that phenomenon described in 1973 as an extraordinary love and regard of the captured for the captor.

As an Anarchist, as an Advaitist and as an Irish-language poet, I value freedom and independence. It is the life blood of art. It may set you on a collision course against the Establishment but unless you are a Daoist poet content with herb-picking on a mountain, such a collision seems inevitable.

Q. 3. What is your daily writing routine?

I write or translate from about 10.a.m until 8pm. I suppose, ‘poet-shaman-translator’ is an accurate enough label to describe my activity. I don’t distinguish between so-called original writing, such as poetry, and translation (which I prefer to call ‘transcreation’). I see the practice of these arts as coming from the same pool of universal creative intelligence. John Minford, Emeritus Professor of Chinese, Australian National University, said something that caught my attention in Words Without Borders (Dec 7, 2018): ‘Hermits of ancient days practiced Taoist yodeling, a form of music that emulated the music of the spheres. Translation itself, the transformation of ideas and words, whereby self and the other merge into one, can be a form of Taoist practice . . .’ So, others may have ‘a daily writing routine’ as you call it I have something resembling a Taoist or Zen-Buddhist practice… maybe ‘practice’ is enough; it’s a more honest description than defining it as Taoist or Zen. It would be slightly ridiculous to call me a Taoist or anything else. I’ve admitted to being both an Anarchist and an Advaitist but really, all labels are rubbish. To paraphrase the essence of the Tao in The Taoist Way, a beautiful lecture by Alan Watts, ‘The Tao that can be labelled is not the Tao.

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I translate a vast array of material for a multicultural blog: http://roghaghabriel.blogspot.ie/ I’m something of a technical dodo and must thank Aonghus O hAlmhain, blogmeister, for his work and patience. In recent years, my ‘practice’ has focused quite a lot on ekphrastic tanka and photo-haiku. The Culturium is a blog which is devoted to the arts as ‘practice’ in the meditative sense of the word: https://www.theculturium.com/?s=gabriel+rosenstock I have unsubscribed to various sites recently but two that remain are The Culturium and Poetry Chaikhana. A poet-friend, Cathal O Searcaigh, who writes mainly in Irish, gave me a volume of poems by a shaman-Taoist poet of the late Tan’g Dynasty, Li He. I began to write Taoist-flavoured poems in Irish and English, Conversations with Li He. When I get out of hospital (I’ve been hospitalized since September 2018) I’d love to continue with this project. I see a fellow-shaman in O Searcaigh and have translated him into English quite often over the years, most recently in a book called Out of the Wilderness: https://www.amazon.com/Out-Wilderness-Cathal-Searcaigh/dp/0995622523 It is not easy – in fact it is impossible – to convey the shamanic power of MacLean and O Searcaigh in English:

youtube

He is a lovely, lively conversationalist, as you can hear above. He and MacLean recite their poetry as though conscious of the fact that poetry was originally chant, the ecstatic chant – the trance – of the shaman. Alan Titley, in a discussion following the interview, joined by Frank Sewell and Art Hughes, speaks of Cathal’s work as an ‘act of reclamation’. Poetry lost its heart when it ditched chant, when the poet could no longer perform the role of shaman. Can we reclaim poetry? In the discussion, academic Art Hughes also talks about the disaster of the ‘printed page.’ Frank Sewell finds ‘strange echoes of home’ in Cathal’s references to the East. And Hughes talks about synthesis and the vision of Unity known to mystic of all traditions. It’s what Jack Hirschman alluded to previously when we touched on the World Poetry Movement. Is Jack a mystic?! We’re all closeted mystics if you ask me . . .

Q. 4. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

What’s young?! I was in my late teens when I read Speaking of Shiva, an anthology of bhakti verse edited by AK Ramanujan. I haven’t properly revisited the titles that ravished my youth. That bhakti anthology opened my heart to the Universe.

I longed to write something in the bhakti or neo-bhakti style and when the conditions were right, it turned out to be a volume in English, Uttering Her Name, addressed to a Muse-Goddess directly: my first faltering attempts at using e-mail. English was the only language we had in common. She was a poet from Venezuela whom I met at a Kurt Schwitters festival in Germany. She was on her way to have darshan of Mother Meera. I didn’t formerly ask her, ‘Excuse me, I wonder would you kindly play the role of Muse-Goddess as I have some urgent bhakti poems to compose.’ I just went ahead and wrote them, 200 in all, eventually whittled down to half that size. It took a long time to find a publisher:

https://www.amazon.com/Uttering-Her-Name-Gabriel-Rosenstock/dp/190705619X

I don’t think Uttering Her Name would have come about without the influence of the Ramanujan anthology.

Was it he who said that he inhabited that no-man’s-land which is the hyphen in ‘Anglo-Indian!’? He wrote a very poignant poem about revisiting his home and calling out ‘Mother’ but, of course, she wasn’t there. I would have liked to have known him. Very much. He was a distinguished folklorist, among other things and also wrote in Kannada, one of India’s important literary languages.

I was fortunate to hear songs in Irish as a child – not at home, mind you – and the best of them are unforgettable. One could call the best of our songs folk poetry of the highest order, superior in texture and melody to much of the poetry of our time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch? behv=8JjiLoD0ldc

Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh’s voice in the opening track is very expressive, very tender and yet there’s a glorious defiance as an undercurrent to the song that says, ‘Try out your ethnic cleansing on us, again and again, your genocidal madness; we are a people of poetry and song, imperishable song.’

The second track is in Scottish Gaelic. The songs of Gaeldom are a link to a people’s struggle, songs of love (‘profane’ and divine), exile, loneliness, companionship, laments and lullabies, songs that sing the thirst for freedom. The words are music in themselves – when sung, they wrench the heart.

Q. 5. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

The most intimate form of reading is that which one does as a poet-translator. I have translated or transcreated many poets from India and all of them speak very highly of K. Satchidanandan from Kerala. He is closely involved in many festivals and last year, in Calicut, the theme was ‘No Democracy without Dissent’

https://issuu.com/gabrielrosenstock/docs/satchi_rich_text.rtf

The poet-shaman-translator in me experienced various degrees of ecstasy when transcreating the poems of the Korean genius Ko Un:

https://www.amazon.com/Ko-Rogha-Dánta-Gabriel-Rosenstock-ebook/dp/B01FRAYDX2

My love for Cathal O Searcaigh and his poetry is well known. All three are outside of the Anglosphere, if such a thing is possible. Apart from those three, the site Words without Borders can be interesting. I’m grateful to English as a global language which introduces literature in translation to us all. I like ‘aboriginal’ poetry – the more aboriginal the better.The late Michael Davitt, with whom I co-founded the journal INNTI, has a line which says, ‘Ma bheireann carbhat orm, tachtfaidh se me’ – ‘if a cravat (or tie) catches hold of me, it will choke me.’ This is Irish aboriginalism alive and kicking! It says NO to the WASP and again NO. No thanks.

Q. 6. What would you say to who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write

Q. 7. Tell me about any writing projects you’re involved in at the moment.

Current writing projects: some writers are superstitious about current projects, as though they can only breathe a sigh of relief when the book is actually printed and published. Others like to trumpet their work in progress or publish extracts here and there.

Insanely prolific as I am, I usually have a number of irons in the fire. Do you know the origin of the phrase? It alludes to a blacksmith working on several pieces of iron at the same time. I remember being in a blacksmith’s forge as a child. A magical place. Lots of superstitions associated with iron, nails, horseshoes and so on. In Tibet they speak of ‘sky iron’ and I wrote a poem once inspired by that lore when I discovered that certain Tibetan singing bowls contain material from this ‘sky iron’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbFmtpeh9so

I posted the poem on a few YouTube sites that featured singing bowls. Scroll down a bit and you’ll find it, in Irish and English. That’s a rather roundabout way of saying I’m not going to reveal current projects. To be frank, I have a number of completed projects and I’d much prefer to see them published before embarking on fresh material, such as a volume of bilingual poems, in Irish and English, already mentioned, poems addressed to the Daoist poet-shaman Li He.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Gabriel Rosenstock Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

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mylittleedgey · 6 years ago

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Contains off screen Edgeworth x female oc and shamelessly written for the punchline. Old KM fic

Although it shouldn’t have been surprising at this point, Phoenix still found himself stifling a scream as his former assistant performed a running tackle, clearing three steps and knocking onto the hood of Edgeworth’s car. “NICK NICK NICK YOU’VE BEEN GONE FOR SO LONG NIIIIIIICK!!!” she squealed. “I’ve got something to show you it’s AWESOME!” as soon as her feet touched the ground she was dragging him towards one of the other buildings in the village, one he’d never been in.

“Wait, what?” her enthusiasm was as contagious as it was bewildering. “What happened?!”

She turned to him, mouth pursed in a vain attempt to keep the news in. For 3 seconds. “Lilly had a BABY!”

“A baby? That’s it?”

Maya was distraught. “She’s the MOST ADORABLE thing EVER, NICK! Cuter than CATS on the INTERNET!” she emphasized, clenching her fists in genuine rage.

He was about to tell her that cats with poor grammar didn’t hold the same level of fascination for some humans as it did for her when he heard Edgeworth behind him. “Lilly, one of the visitors at your…ceremony?” he wasn’t sure what to call the party where she had been proclaimed the Leader, and honestly he wasn’t sure if she knew a proper name for it either. Fortunately, she didn’t go into detail.

“Yaaaay! You remembered!” Maya ran over and hugged him as a reward. “Don’t you think she looks like she makes the CUUUTEST babies?”

Miles paused. “There were so many people there. She was the one studying literature, right?”

“I dunno.” Maya shrugged.

“Well, who’s the father?”

“I dunno.” Maya shrugged again, obviously disinterested in the line of questioning.

“You don’t know?” Phoenix protested. “I mean, it’s kind of important, isn’t it?”

“Not really.” she replied. “Dads don’t stick around much here, anyway, remember? But it’s a girl, so she’s going to stay part of the family, and that’s what’s important.”

“But, financially…” Edgeworth pressed. “Shouldn’t he be responsible?”

“There’s not much to spend money on out here. And like, what if you bought something big, like a car? Drive it ten feet from the training grounds to the temple? Everywhere else, it’s better to use the train.” she turned to them, walking backwards to face them. “You guys are waaaaay over thinking this. Just come look at her baby! You won’t believe how cute she is!” she turned back and ran into the next room.

“So…. Babies.” Phoenix said apologetically, knowing Miles didn’t care much for children.

“They’re cute, Phoenix. Girls like them. I can’t help but wonder, though. Men aren’t exactly readily available out here.”

“GUUUUYYYYS!” came a warning roar from the next room, followed quickly by what sounded like a terrified baby girl. They hurried to the door to find Maya hugging the child attempting to calm the poor thing down with a bouncy dance that was clearly traumatizing it further. Another woman, presumably Lilly, read a magazine casually, either unconcerned for the sanity of her child or assuming the spiritual leader of her religion knew more about raising children than she did. Phoenix rushed to take the child from her.

“MAYA!” he yelled, and then gulped as the child screeched and her mother looked up archly. Yes, apparently Maya was the only one allowed to give her kid Shaken Baby Syndrome. “It’s ok, princess.” he cooed, and heaven help him, it WAS a freakishly adorable baby. “You’re alright, it’s ok.” she stopped crying now and looked at him, huge eyes teary and fascinated. “Everything’s okay, angel.” he continued. She giggled, and his heart melted.

“Aren’t her blue eyes sooo pretty, Nick?” Maya cooed.

“Most newborns have blue eyes, Maya.” Edgeworth informed her. “They change color later.”

Maya stuck her tongue out at the back of his head as he poured some tea.

“He’s right, Maya.” Phoenix added. “But her hair is so unusual… It looks almost like Franziska’s.” He didn’t add that Franziska seemed like the type of woman that seemed able to impregnate other women by terror and sheer force of will, but the chuckle from Miles showed that it was clearly implied. “It’s so fine, it looks almost grey.”

Miles choked.

It was a few seconds later, when Miles was still choking on his tea and the child’s hair was still very grey that a possible reason began to sink in. “Miles. Are you…?!”

“Am I?!” he parroted hoarsely.

“IS HE?!” Phoenix demanded of the mother, who shrugged coyly in response. Maya made the wisest decision she had made in months and took the child back as Phoenix’s face changed color. “You BASTARD!”

“Are they…?” Lily asked, gesturing with a shoulder at the two men. Maya nodded vigorously, rolling her eyes.

“You bastard!” Phoenix repeated, grabbing a magenta lapel and dragging the other man out the room.

“Look, I didn’t know…”

“Didn’t know what?!” Phoenix hissed. “That putting your cock in ladies could get them pregnant?! How long have you even LIKED women?!”

“I don’t!” Miles protested. Phoenix raised an eyebrow, fuming. “Look…” he started again. “I’m gay, I’m not some sort of frothing misogynist, I don’t actually have anything against women, I just prefer the company of- God Phoenix, can you just breathe? You look like you’re about to pass out- I prefer men, I prefer YOU.” Phoenix scoffed again. “I just… it was an accident, it was a party, and I had some drinks, and you weren’t there, and…”

“I WAS PRAYING WITH MAYA UNDER A FROZEN WATERFALL ALL NIGHT LONG!” Phoenix returned furiously. “I don’t even know what the fuck I was praying too, I was just vaguely asking the universe to please not freeze my dick off. Although APPARENTLY I should have been asking it to freeze yours off, because I can’t leave you alone for ONE SECOND….”

“I’ve never cheated on you before.” Miles returned firmly.

“Oh really?” Phoenix snorted. “Is this actually not cheating, or ‘I’m not aware of any other illegitimate children I might have created while your back was turned’ kind of not cheating?”

“Listen, would you? It was an accident.”

“What kind of accident?! ‘I’m sorry, I accidentally penetrated your vagina with my penis, I should probably take that out before OH! Now I’ve gone and ejaculated!”

“I don’t think that’s fair.”

“You want this to be FAIR?!” Phoenix yelled. “What the hell was so exciting you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants?!”

“We were having a fascinating conversation about gender roles in 18th century English literature, if you must know.” Miles returned calmly.

“Oh God…” Phoenix hid his face in his palm. “You got a LITERATURE erection?”

“Well, the conversation continued…” Miles continued, blushing slightly. “We ended up on the subject of…. How traditional values affected contemporary fiction…” he bit his lip. “…And the conversation turned to…. Well…”

“YES?!”

“The fandom of The Steel Samurai” he sighed. “I never claimed to be a saint, Phoenix.”

“You…” Phoenix coughed. “You cheated on me… over FANFICS?!”

“Not mine! More like the general idea of….. Shit, Phoenix, I was really very drunk, and she was, as you must have noticed, visually attractive, and I was very absorbed in the conversation, and at some point I remember noticing her hand going down my pants and thinking it sounded like a good idea, and… Look, I really am sorry.”

“Not sorry enough to tell me?!”

“Damn it! What did you want me to say, ‘I fucked a girl, it’s not normally a problem for me, I know you were literally 300 yards away, but you can be sure it hasn’t happened before all those months I’ve been overseas and it will never happen again, I promise and you can trust me.” he sighed. “Yes, I should have told you. I was a coward. I AM a coward. You know that.”

“You’re not a coward, Miles. You’ve gone out of your way to piss off some of the most terrifying people I’ve ever met, including Damon Gant and Franziska Von Karma. You’re just bring selfish.”

Miles cringed. “Yes, I guess that’s fair.” he looked up weakly. “Would it make things worse if I spoke to Lily?”

“About what?!”

“About her financial state, about healthcare options…. Look, I’m not trying to start a family, I’m just trying to take responsibility for a kid I apparently helped make…”

“…Do whatever you want.”

The echo of Miles’ footsteps sounded overwhelming as he left the room. However, they were soon drowned out by louder, more violent footfalls. “YOU’RE DUMPING HIM, NICK?! HOW COULD YOU?!”

“I didn’t say I was…. Maya! I’m not the bad guy here! HE cheated on ME!”

“With LILLY!” She huffed. “Lilly’s like the sweetest, nicest, prettiest girl ever, and she makes delicious burgers, and she shaves her legs, and you could learn A LOT from her, Nick!”

“He cheated on me over the STEEL SAMURAI!” before the words even came out, he realized this was the worst possible crowd to use that defense on. Maya slapped him.

“Like you’re any better!”

“I… what? What did I do?”

“You know…” Maya lectured furiously. “You act like him bringing a kid into the relationship is this huge deal, but you DID THE EXACT SAME THING!”

“I WHAT?!”

“TRUCY?!”

Phoenix choked. “Maya, there’s a difference between making a kid and adopting it!”

“Really?! Like what?!”

The conversation continued, in increasingly loud and frustrated terms, as Miles inspected his new daughter warily.

“You DID tell me you were in a relationship beforehand, I’m sorry.” Lilly offered gently.

“No, it was my fault.” he sighed. “So, what sort of education is she looking at?”

“Well, depending on her spiritual capabilities…” Edgeworth snorted, and she smiled, remembering when their conversation had turned to the nature of religion. “She may become an acolyte, or a minor head of a branch family, or an attendant to a higher member…”

“Sounds… delightful…” he muttered. “What about college?”

“Few go.” she replied. “Sometimes the ones with the least power are sent to get them out of the way.” she lowered her eyes in false modestly. “And I had a scholarship too.”

“So, given your spiritual power… no offense… the likelihood of her being a necessary member of the community is unlikely?”

Lilly smiled. “I hear your boyfriend is into adoption, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He raised an eyebrow nervously.

“To be honest… no offense… I was much more interested in the possibilities of pursuing a fascinating evening with a handsome and cultured young man after several months in a very secluded temple than I was at the potential of creating an offspring.”

Miles looked back at the child with growing terror. As mad as Phoenix was, adopting the kid seemed right up his alley. Given the nature of there relationship now, he didn’t want to think of how infinitely more complicated things would become with an infant child. He thought of a question he should have asked earlier. “Does she have a name?”

“Not yet.” Lilly replied. “Normally they’re given a name at a special ceremony at three months, but given your closeness with Mystic Maya, I’m sure you could influence it.”

“What do you think of the name ‘Franziska’?”

“It’s ok, but why?”

He sighed. “Because Karma’s a bitch.”

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nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

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Hyperallergic: Why Patti Smith Writes

Patti Smith (photo by Steven Sebring)

Patti Smith knows her new book, Devotion (Yale University Press, 2017), isn’t for everyone, but it’s a gift for those who get it. “I think the kind of people who will like this book — because I think a lot of people won’t like it or will dismiss it — are people who like to read and are curious to see how a piece of work comes together,” she tells me. By turns allegorical, metaphysical, fictional and factual, Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing. A master of poetic innovation, Smith takes her style to the next level in this slim volume, embedding a tragic short story between an autobiographical introduction and a shorter essayistic coda, which demonstrate how her direct experience traveling around Europe alchemized into a short story.

I first encountered Smith’s work when I was in my early twenties. Like so many people before me, it gave me permission to do what I wanted to do, reminded me that it had never been easy and testified to the power of love. Sometimes, in the ensuing years I would pick up a book of hers mid heartbreak or writer’s block, post coitus or cry, and flip to a random page. Smith’s words brought inspiration and guidance without fail.

With the release of Devotion, she formalizes the guidance many have sought from her. I had the chance to speak with her directly. Our conversation roved from spiritual practice to mentorship to musicality and back.

Katherine Cooper: How do you begin a book?

Patti Smith: Well with this little book, Devotion, the genesis was a talk I was invited to give at Yale about writing, and then the idea was that I was supposed to expand the talk into an essay about writing. How I set to work with Robert’s book was, again, not something that I chose. I had promised Robert, the day before he died, that I would write our story. I had been mostly unpublished (still am) so it was a bit daunting to start such a big nonfiction project. I wrote many, many chronological outlines trying to remember everything that I could. M Train was much more fun. The cowpoke in M Train is really Sam Shepherd and Sam and I talk about writing all of the time. I had this dream about him and then I just decided to see if I could sit day after day writin’ about nothing, no plot or anything, you know, just writin’, to see what happened.

KC: It’s interesting to hear you call Just Kids “Robert’s book”— you’ve said that you see the making of art as a gift. Devotion is dedicated to Betsy Lerner, but who is it for more broadly?

PS: I dedicated it to Betsy because she has been my editor since Just Kids. It took me so long to write that book that I was actually dropped by the first publisher, which was Doubleday, and Betsy continued on with me. She also eventually left Doubleday and she became my agent and continues to be my guide. But I suppose it’s to people who like to read or people who are writing.

KC: Eugenia, your central character in the story, is born with a natural gift for ice skating. It’s in vogue right now to think of creativity as innate to everyone—I wonder if you think that some people are just born with talent and some aren’t?

PS: A creative impulse doesn’t have to blossom as art. But absolutely some people are born with special gifts and they can be excruciating and cause a great amount of sacrifice. What it means is that you go through life sometimes with a half life because at least half of your life is devoted to practicing, working, developing your craft. Many people can learn things but I think there are others who, for whatever reason, have a calling�� it’s in their blood, their ancestors had a specific affinity towards a certain thing, or [they’re] touched by God. It doesn’t make them more valuable than another person, but people do have gifts. And then there is the lack of gifts. I would love to speak language, for instance, but I can’t speak anything really except English — yet there is a cashier at the deli down the street who can speak fourteen languages and I keep telling him, “you should work for the UN!” He’s a polymath.

KC: Yeah I was gonna say he’s not only a cashier, he’s a polymath.

PS: He’s not a cashier, he just plays one on TV.

KC: This book is in many ways the first book you’ve written that’s not devoted to someone that you have been involved with — Robert Mapplethorpe is the central figure in Just Kids and your late husband Fred Sonic Smith is in M Train ….

PS: The story is called Devotion, but what [Eugenia] is devoted to is not a love interest. The love interest to me in this little book is writing. And for her, her love interest is skating. It’s one’s craft.

KC: I was paging through M Train again, after I read Devotion. I was struck by a line the Cowpoke says right at the beginning: “The writer is a conductor.” Devotion has a musicality to it. It’s almost like a fugue. I was curious what role musical form or music played in how you structured this book, if it did at all.

PS: In the beginning, I’m talking about this film, In The Crosswinds, about the Estonians. If you felt like it, you could go to the YouTube and see the trailer. You hear a voice, the voice of Erma. I don’t know the Estonian language but this girl had the most lyrical voice and it haunted me like a musical refrain. I’m sure that in the book I talk about it: “Luckily traffic is thin as we enter the Holland Tunnel. Relieved, I sink back into the voice of Erma. I imagine writing a story guided by the atmosphere of the particular resonance of a particular human voice — her voice — no plot in mind, just trailing her tone, timbres and composing phrases as if music and superimposing them, transparent layers, over hers.” I didn’t have music in my head per say but I had that musical quality of her voice as my inner voice for that story. That was just something I did that I figured no one would notice.

KC: Rhythmically it feels so distinct as opposed to the other two parts.

PS: Also, I wrote the whole story on a train, so I think that also comes into play.

KC: The title of the series “Why I Write” gives the illusion that you might be in for a straightforward answer but —

PS: Well, I think that the last line of the book answers it as well as it could be answered. My answer is the same as [Eugenia’s] answer: “We write because we cannot simply live.” I can’t even go to the bathroom without a book in my hand. I have to have a book with me, or a notebook, and I’ve been like that for most of my life. You know, being an artist is like being a double agent. You’re trying to move through life with full attention but you can’t because something happens that triggers an idea. I’ll be sitting at a concert listening to Beethoven and my mind makes up a story and then I feel compelled to write it instead of listening to Beethoven. It’s that dual thing. You wanna engage fully in life and give your loved ones your full attention but often you just can’t.

KC: Somebody once said to me, “When Patti speaks she incants; very few people have that ability.” How do you cultivate a practical relationship with the divine in your writing and performing?

PS: We always aspire to something higher. As a child, it seemed to me disappointing to be in a world where everything was already figured out and there was nothing more to want to achieve than making a living. My mother taught me about god before I went to Sunday school. That to me was very liberating, the idea that there was some higher force. I didn’t really have any expectations or idea of what god was, it was simply that there was something to aspire to, something that kept on going, that was infinite.

It might be as something as practical as you’re on stage and you flub something, so you just draw from some part of you for everyone to have a good laugh to transcend this rough moment and then it becomes a courageous act instead of just a piece of humiliation. Other times it’s something deeper. The way I practice communing with this other aspect, this intimate aspect, is forever changing, Sometimes it’s just talking to my mother. Sometimes it might be very abstract prayers that have no words and sometimes it might come through in a piece of work. I don’t have any specific belief system or expectations. I just believe.

KC: As I was reading this book I was thinking about the relationships of mentorship and inspiration that are peppered throughout it. You find yourself at this moment becoming an inspiration and an icon for young artists specifically — it seems like a lot of people are turning to you for answers. In my view, your work presents questions and mystery. I wonder — do you share some of your characters’ ambivalence about mentor status?

PS: Eugenia has two mentors — Maria and Alexander — but in the end the one she believes in the most is herself. She keeps showing them that she’s her own person. She has a vision that might be beyond their grasp.

It’s the mentor’s duty to let his acolyte go on without them and hopefully eclipse them. Sometimes people thank me because they say, I helped them get on the right track or something of that nature and I always tell them, “I’m glad that I was of service but you would have found it on your own.”

Sometimes [people] hold you in reverence or something and that’s a very nice thing but I think it’s really important to say “Thank you but may you eclipse my own efforts.” Or, “may you do something totally different. I have no desire to be a leader of a cult or anything. I’m a responsible person but I don’t wanna have the responsibility of all these people. I want them to be responsible for themselves and believe in themselves. I’ve been inspired by hundreds of people, thousands of books, songs and movies. Even in this little book it was Patrick Modiano and Simone Weil and the little Russian skater, all these different factions in the cauldron of my brain stirring it up and that’s what came out — this little story and this little book.

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