rusty old and beautiful

[Diane]

"I'd rather be gathering firewood." ~ the latest in bumper stickers

Nice one, Lizzy. OK, I'm stacking up the fire...

We drive right by in my old blue ute
bangin' out tunes like an old loose goose

What a line, Switz .

Hi Katrin,

Yes, of course we know each other; our brains/minds have been forged over tens of thousands of years of nomadic existence and we share a common humanity. Was I also once that woman in Mat's poem? Oh, I have always been her and always will be. Thanks for asking.

You are from Switzerland. Have you heard of Isabelle Eberhardt, the woman traveller who was raised in Geneva and left home to go travelling in North Africa in the early 1900's? She disguised herself as a man, travelled with Berbers and became a Sufi. She lived a remarkable life, but died young in a flood, but not before she had left some writings.

Since I am not a native English speaker...I only listend to his sound. From were early on I was attracted to his deep voice.

One of the main things that attracted me to Leonard was his remarkable voice, too.

I'm afraid I can't explain the quote thing any better than Lizzy. I still don't work the quote thing properly and I've been on this forum for some time. Keep practicing, and press "preview" to see if you've got it sorted.

Well, I do try to develop my spiritual side, but my juvenile side will out, also. So: After we were wondering who Sebastian was, I asked about Alice. You people need to know that if somebody mentions Alice, the only fitting response is to say, in unison, "Alice? Who the f*ck is Alice?" Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DJuTXR0BTI

Hey, can we all gather round the fire again and sing this? Guys, come over here and join us girls. I'll go see if I have the chords for it...

(I'll understand if you'd like me to leave the thread )

________________

To travel is not to think, but to see things in succession, with one's life sensed in the measure of space. The monotony of landscapes slowly unrolling soothes our cares, and infuses us with lightness and quiet. At such an unhurried pace, the smallest occurences of the journey preserve their startling beauty. These are a calm and vital state of mind rules, which once belonged to all human races and are still preserved among us in the blood of nomads.

Isabelle Eberhardt

I am a true barbarian
Wrapped in thylacine skins

Bernard

maybe true beauty is that spiritual unison, which we call love

Katrin

[Boss]

Hi all. Yes we can stay here the night and sing to our hearts content; but tomorrow night is the game. In Cardiff. Rugby - Australia versus Wales. Bernie, Jamesy and I know our team and Diane is for the Welsh. For Switzy, Lizzy and Katrin it will be an education. On our way through the Brecon Beacons I'd love to take us all to my aunt's place. She lives just outside a town called Crickhowell. She'll make us a cup of tea and a bite to eat. Might even offer a beer Mat!

After "Alice? Who the f*ck is Alice?" We can try a song I wrote in '96. Goes like this.

I been waitin' long
A long, long time
To feel your body
Next to mine

I waited forever
Til we were one
I was left stone cold
And then you come

You open my locked cell
Loosen up the door
You open my aching heart
Your embrace so sure

I've been waiting long
A long, long time
To feel your body
Next to mine

And now you're here
You take me in
I take you in
We're everything

So connected
So at one
Our love will last
like the burning sun

I 've been waitin' long
A long, long time
To feel your body
Next to mine

So connected
So at one
Our love will last
Underneath the sun
Underneath the burning sun
It will go on and on


Simple G, D, Am, Em

[mat james]

I'm for all the above,
beauty, beer
and of course...Aunty!

You are so right girls, you (plural) are that woman. I am keen to sit and listen for awhile to your thoughts and reflections on beauty....


I'm cooking eggs...


The sun is not quite up
and I'm cooking coffee
on the camp fire
beautifully fresh and warm
like my memories of you

I see you
clearly
through the smoky glowing pulse

-I'm cooking eggs
I'm cooking eggs
I'm cooking eggs
and the smoke
on the tempered fire
has this sweet aromatic flavour

Jesus! the bacon tastes good.
Christ! It's good to be alive.
God, I .... you.

...the bacon looks good again
I've just finished
last night's stubby of stout
and I'm cookin' eggs
I'm cookin' eggs
I'm cookin' eggs...

[katrin]

I sing Bosse's song, you speak so from my heart.
[quote]
"So connected
So at one
Our love will last
like the burning sun"


I remember a time I felt so connected in Australia's outback, close to the opal mines...and yes, I know the love will last for ever.

Mat, I remember you cooking eggs, and eggs in all kinds of variations. I liked the pancakes best

Hey Boss, I am looking forward to the game, I once watched a ruggby game in New Zealand. Fun, and we get a beer there, I 'm sure, Mat!

Diane, I do now Isabelle Eberhardt, although I haven't really read anything she wrote. I will now. Thanks

And -Alice? Who the f*ck is Alice?"

Katrin

[Diane]

Mat, I remember you cooking eggs...

Ah. Oh .

Crickhowell ! We are stopping off at Boss's Aunt's in the lovely little town of Crickhowell ! Boss, none of my rugby-enthusiast friends have mentioned the game, but I'll keep my eye out.

Our love will last
Underneath the sun
Underneath the burning sun
It will go on and on

Will it? Go on and on? Are we wise to try to hold onto to it?:

"Love is not something permanent, eternal. Remember, what poets say is not true. Don´t take their criterion, that the true love is eternal, and untrue love is momentary - no! Just the opposite is the case. The true love is very momentary - but what a moment!... such that one can lose the whole of eternity for it, can risk the whole of eternity for it. Who wants that moment to be permanent? And why should permanency be valued so much?... because life is change, flow; only death is permanent." Osho

Katrin, I have only read second-hand accounts about Isabelle Eberhardt, and have been trying from time to time for quite a while to get her original writings. I have ordered them from various sources, only to find out that they are out of print. At the moment, I have The Oblivion Seekers on order from Amazon, and they tell me a new edition is being published soon. Here is info about The Oblivion Seekers :

http://www.peterowen.com/pages/modclas/oblivion.htm
The Oblivion Seekers
Isabelle Eberhardt
Translated from the French and with a preface by Paul Bowles

Isabelle Eberhardt’s life was one of the most extraordinary of any writer's of the last 150 years.

Daughter of a Russian Nihilist who forbade her any contact with society, dressed her as a man and insisted her education consisted of hard physical labour, she, perhaps unsurprisingly, ran away to North Africa in 1897, aged twenty. There she travelled through the Sahara and became one of the few white women ever to have been initiated into Sufism. She also produced a small but exceptional body of writing.

The Oblivion Seekers is a selection of her best stories and vignettes of African life, including several excerpts from the unfinished work her biographer Cecily Mackworth called ‘one of the strangest documents that a woman has given to the world’. It is superbly translated, with a biographical preface, by the American novelist Paul Bowles.

‘Limpid, quietly ecstatic sketches of life and death’ — Times Literary Supplement

‘Strongly atmospheric’ — Time Out

‘Thirteen evocative glimpses into Eberhardt‘s fiercely nomadic life’ — Blitz

‘Highly literary, evocative, romantic’ — Kathy Acker, Guardian

You might find it easier to access her work, as I imagine you won't require the translation.

I won't be around this weekend, and maybe not until after the Leonard Cohen meet in Dublin next week, so I'll see you guys. Look forward to catching up when I return.

I was already a nomad as a young girl, when I used to daydream as I gazed at the enticing white road leading off, under a more brilliant sun it seemed to me, to the delicious unknown...For me it seems that by advancing into unknown territories, I enter into my life.
______________

The true African landscape is not to be found in any of the large cities...Vast space and emptiness, a blinding light, are what makes a landscape African!
______________

I've come to understand, among the nomads, that I was climbing back to the sources of life; that I was accomplishing a voyage into the depths of my humanity.
______________

If a voice shouts at me... "Foreigner! European, I'll not turn around. If a voice says, "you, woman. Yes woman!" I'll not turn around. No, I'll not even turn my head, even when it whispers "Isabelle Eberardt". But if it hails, "You, you there, who need vast spaces and ask for nothing but to move. You alone free, seeking peace and a home in the desert, who wish only to obey the strange ciphers of your fate"...Yes, then I will turn around, then I'll answer: I am here, Si Mahmoud."

Isabelle Eberardt circa 1900, translated by Paul Bowles.

[mat james]

somebody,
tell her she's dreamin'

[Boss]

I'm sorry Diane, but yes it will go on and on and on and on and nothing can stop it. Not even some fancy quote from Osho will stop it. It is written in the stars. Inscribed in my heart. The moon knows it and yes, any poet can see it. Cohen covered Irving Berlin's "Always" - why?

[Diane]

Hi Mat n Boss, not much time to write but I wanted to play devil's advocate there. What I mean is that love, romantic/sexual love that is, doesn't necessarily last; like everything else it changes. Better to immerse oneself in it whilst one has it. Trying to hold onto it is an impossiblilty. That is the Buddhist view. I don't know if I agree with it. I don't want to agree with it. But that does not mean it is not true.

Cohen covered Irving Berlin's "Always" - why?

I'll give that some thought, Boss.

Thanks for the fun and recitals and thoughts. Enjoy the weekend, friends,

Diane

[lizzytysh]

Only have time to stop in long enough to read and since I see you're disappearing until after Dublin, Diane, just wanted to say have a great time [which I know you will ]. Enjoy Anjani and the rest... lucky you & the others

~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

P.S. How old was that incredible life when it was brought to an end by rising, raging waters? That's a sure example of quality vs. quantity in the assessment of our existence.

~ Lizzy

[mat james]

the funny thing about love for me is that many different people can bring that emotion out in me. It is a vulnerability I have, I find something beautiful in someone and I fall in love. It seems to me that this gets back to that previous question on beauty.
Rusty and old can be beauty to me. So too of course can its opposite.


Almost Eve


You wore only your scarf
like a gypsy
in the wilderness
almost-Eve
in the midday sun
you hung that shroud
around your naked form

and I heard you sing...

softly...

and Omar Khyaam whispered,
"a loaf of bread
a jug of wine
and thou beside me singing
in the wilderness-
this is paradise enough for me, now!"

[lizzytysh]

I'm guessing "Almost Eve" was written by you, Mat ?
No words too many, no words too few ~ Simply beautiful .


~ Lizzy

[katrin]

Mat, my heart is weeping...

thanks.
As you know, I love old things, people, etc. and it is not the old, but as you wrote the "beaten to character." To me, the beauty in it is the story it tells, the path it has behind. I am fascinated by people with a lot of lines and wrinkles, each telling a story. Also rusty utes, with wholes under the shoo matte, and which always brake down, but when one knows that ute, the ute will not fail them. - It is all about love, isn't it? Love for the ute, for the woman/man, for people with and without wrinkles...I think ultimatly there is only one emotion-energy, love. So therefore to love more than one person, thing deeply makes sense. I know that feeling.

Katrin

[mat james]

in answer to Diane...

You were wondering what "tucker jamesey" is Diane, a few postings ago. I found this:

"tucker jamesey"...(definition from the Cybermystic Dictionary of Antiquity.)

tuckerjamesey, n. (rare, usually shared among kindred spirits. Prohibited in normal conversation, and is therefore smuggled in as spiritual contraband.) tuckerjamesey, A form of poetry one can eat/devour to become divine. origins, tucker (food, Australian bush terminology), jamesey, family code-name but given name Mat (meaning, gift from god). tuckerjamesesque, poetry of the mystics (eg: Leonard Cohen, Rumi, Blake, Cruz, Holderlin etc) that sweep the reader through unconscious portals toward divinity and the awakening god within.This food only transmutes to divine nectar when the dweller within becomes drunk sublime and during this transmigration of the chi-essence receives the impossible moniker of pan-egocentricity (atman/braman).
tuckerjamesey can and does also go by the names of tuckerboss, tucker diane, tuckerleonard, tuckerblake and so on ad infinitum.

So when Bernard, Boss, Switz and I go sauntering via the muses we take a flask of tuckerjamesey to en-nourish our divinity and as it is particularly effective when coupled with occasional doses of oestrogen; we quixotically search for love unceasingly.

Speaking of "muses", Katrin, you are fast becomming one of mine with opal, desert country, romance and some old time dreaming. I am going to explore the theme more! It is such a tempting dream.
I enjoyed your poem about Africa. You are brave.

Are we still troubadoring you guys or is the camp-fire over?
How was Dublin Diane?

[lizzytysh]

Here I'd taken it to be some form of alcohol, Mat. Much better, what it really is. Diane will be seeing and hearing Anjani and the rest tonite in Dublin ~ not so many hours from now , if she has Wednesday tickets... I've forgotten who has what ticket[s] for what night[s]. I've managed to bring my cd of Anjani to listen to today ... be there in my own way. I can't wait to read the feedback here on Anjani's performance... the others, too, of course ~ but there's already been a lot written on the others. I hope some more photos will get passed around the campfire.

You're right about Katrin ... I'll be interested to see some of the results of your musing .

~ Lizzy