My Infinity

 
 

 

as the confines of space speciously alter

when in truth only spiritbeings change

we think we have time that comes with the light

but it’s all from a viewpoint of

randomly sprinkled guitar seeds in frequencies

of our favorite rock stations

or jazz or what have you

or chocolate mousse pie

 

and there’s always a mouse in some closet –

a cute tiny sense/survival machine

of ever changing dimension and import,

Alice’s rabbit attracting/distracting,

whilst Saturday night is the morsel we reach for

over and over for trillions of years

till the second coming of Elvis

 

but at the core of awareness, we just want our green back

OUR green this time, see, you may have forgotten –

haven’t had it for real since the sorcerer set off

his smoke bomb and we all went blind

and the mouse squeaked – and we followed him hopefully

down – the rabbit –

hole

 

 

 

Copyright © 2008 by Carole Eddington.  All rights reserved.

I’ve been watching I’m Not There, the Todd Haynes film about Bob Dylan. It is brilliant, poetic, and very Dylanesque. Six different actors play six different identities that Dylan seems to have worn. He often purposely reinvented himself, at least partly out of frustration at trying to be pinned down, examined, and labeled.

I’ve always been so amazed at how people generally “look a gift horse in the mouth” in relation to great artists. They have been bestowed with astounding creations that become the stuff of the culture itself, and instead of being simply thankful, they launch into examinations of the artist as a person, inappropriately evaluating for him, stalking him, making demands, and even insulting him. Why do people dare to try to take genius apart and control it?

When you finally come to understand Bob Dylan as a person, you should arrive at the conclusion that that is not what you were after, after all, which is what he was trying to tell us all along. If you had met him somewhere before he was famous, you may have liked him or you may have not. But making his acquaintance would not have shaped your life in the way that his art has. We have to remember that the magic of an artist is in his art. It’s so simple, really.

Yes, of course, the art, being so powerful, draws us to the artist, and we want more and more of his art, which remains somewhat of a mystery to us, because, after all, it is magic. Mystery sticks us to things, and we want to solve it, and so we begin to try to look inside the artist as the source of the magic, in order to solve the mystery. But inevitably, what you find is that he’s just a guy who’s a great communicator, and he himself may not even know why. Artists have often expressed that they don’t know where their ideas come from.

But still, we try to probe the person, who is, after all, a spirit. A spirit is invisible. You can’t see him – only his body, clothes, actions. And so we stare. And we want a piece of his physicality. But that will never lead us to the answer of the riddle we’re trying to solve, which is: Where does this amazing music come from? This poetry?

As I said, the artist may not know. He often feels it’s a gift.

The truth is that this kind of creation IS CREATION – the way anything anywhere is a creation. If it has beauty or truth, if it stirs you, it is godlike, and you know it. Sometimes you may find you LIVE to experience someone’s music, poetry, painting. It takes you to a higher level, and you wonder how you could have existed without it. It may take you to yourself. This is a divine thing!

It may then inspire YOU to create, for you have been touched by something so much higher or outside of this earthly grind. Well, you have to remember that it was someone’s ART that lifted or transported you or awakened your own ability to arouse souls. The art is the magic. Poems or even just rhymes can act like spells or incantations. Combinations of words or colors or sounds or images produce effects on people that are just as real as the science and math we studied in school.

But the artist is just the purveyor of these effects. When you love the design of a car, do you seek out the designer in order to study him or know him?

People have always wanted Bob Dylan to be a hero. He could have been, but he didn’t desire that role. He was moved to create music, and he did, thank God. He gave us so much music, and he’s still giving. We need to thank him and leave him alone, because he does not wish to be a spokesperson for anything.

Emily Dickinson would love that she is so loved by the world. And she would have welcomed questions about life. But still, her art is her art. It isn’t Emily. She’s been examined to death, and she’s been found to have some interesting qualities. But none of that examination explains where the amazing wordage came from. Not really. It just came. And there it is. We should just be very glad, because she wanted us to have her poems.

Dylan wants us to have his music. We do.

I’ve lived with artists all my life. They are no mystery to me, although their art may be. Their ability to create amazing art is, I believe, the best thing about them. They are operating from a higher level. And some artists make living itself an art. They can be amazing to watch. But some do not. Some are alcoholics in their regular lives or insane or rude or slovenly. Some beat their wives or are terrible parents.

Jaco Pastorius, probably the greatest bass player of all time, who created music of such great beauty, sensitivity, style, and taste, and was like a wizard on stage, drove his friends so crazy and was so bad at keeping his life together, that it ultimately resulted in an annoyed bouncer accidentally killing him.

My husband is the bass player of a well-known Midwest rock band. I’ll never forget the day that a friend of his through his day job brought his wife to a gig. We were in the backstage area; while the band was packing up. The wife, whom I was talking to, kept drifting out of the conversation, because she was watching every move my husband made – watching how he put his bass in the case, how he walked to the car, as if he was a god. She finally apologized and said, “You get to see him all the time, but this is really new to me.” She didn’t have a crush on him; she just had never been so close to “fame.” It was pretty weird from my perspective.

I always remember Julia Roberts’ line in Notting Hill. She played a superstar, and she says to Hugh Grant, “It’s not real, you know – the fame.” And I remember a magazine interview with Robert Redford years ago, where he tried to explain how strange it is to be famous – that the person everyone is talking and writing about is not you, but a fabrication that comes about from the various bits of information and supposition gathered about you. He explained that there are all these things said about “Robert Redford” but that they aren’t really talking about HIM. The public simply doesn’t know him.

One of the most ridiculous examples of audience stupidity was the screaming Beatles fans of the 1960’s. I don’t want to be too hard on them, as they were mostly highly hormonal and emotionally repressed 12 to 15-year-old girls who simply didn’t know what hit them. But they screamed so loudly and continuously during the concerts, that no one could hear the music! Beatle George Harrison, in particular, became increasingly perturbed about this, until they were having to persuade him not to quit.

Bob Dylan took great pains through the years to keep the public from knowing him. Naturally, though, this just created more mystique and more supposition. It’s human nature to fill in the blanks with whatever. On top of that, you have journalists and paparazzi constantly twisting and inventing just to boost magazine sales and TV ratings.

I think we should simply thank him for his music and let him go home. 

Copyright © 2008 by Carole Eddington.  All rights reserved.

 

the sky always knows me
with its white hands of benediction
leaves of communion flying perfectly
around my hair and underfoot
streaks of light like Jesus neutral
snow or rain baptizing randomly
the sun I cannot look at
God the Father in his moods

at night I face the hole of space
and see myself
I always know me
when the candle of life is snuffed
the void reveals the truth
I stand beneath myself and all dissolves

the morning starts the wind-up toy again
we love our toys
they always know us


Copyright © 2008 by Carole Eddington. All rights reserved.

I had some poems recently published in an amazing book. The amazing thing about it is that poetry is used to make a vital message very clear to people in a way that just regular language can't. This is the power of art -- the power of the aesthetic wavelength. The book is creating quite a stir. I invite you to be part of this movement by reading the book and then spreading the word to others. Here it is; just click on it:



Thank you and best wishes,
Carole Eddington

I apologize for having to say this, but I am a faery.

OK, there's this place I go to sometimes. It's at Lighthouse Beach on Lake Michigan in Evanston, Illinois. There's the famous Grosse Point Lighthouse and a beautiful beach and an extremely English 17th century style manor house from 1935 that has become the Evanston Art Center. Then, as you face the beach, there's a strip of land in front of the rocks that separate the forest from the sandy beach. It has gnarled trees and stumps, lots of leafy ground cover and wildflowers, and a narrow path from one end of the strip to the other.. It's lower than the forest and is quite secluded.

There's something amazing about that place, and I don't understand it. I've been there many many times, and every time, something incredible happens to me. I realize things and seem to become more powerful and perceptive. Sometimes it's quite astounding! I've assumed a doubtful state of mind, thinking I was just imagining things, but it didn't matter. It was still incredible. I'd go home and by the time I went back, I'd have decided it wasn't real, only to be amazed all over again! My husband and my daughter and my sister have also found the place to have some kind of amazing energy or something. Lane (my daughter) and I have been there a number of times together and been just transformed by the experience (and written great things sitting on the rocks.) I know more about life than most people, but I haven't figured this one out. And believe me, I've tried!

It's interesting that the Baha'i Temple is just a few miles away in Wilmette, and it's supposed to be built on one of the world's great energy vortices or whatever they are. Yet, I feel something much more special at that other little place. And it's only there! Even though the lake itself always soothes and heals me tremendously, it's not as magical an experience as that special place further inland.

Anyway, I went there on Sunday. I hadn't been there since last summer or fall. I was having an unhappy day, and I needed to figure out what to do about something. So I just started driving and ended up there, almost an hour from my home.

I can't try to explain all the phenomena that have happened there in the past, and anyway, you probably wouldn't believe me. It's always something different. This time, I first felt much relief and shed some happy tears. Then, something totally new happened. I suddenly felt as if I had a different kind of body that was only visible on some higher plane. It seemed very familiar, and it occurred to me that I was a faery!! I felt like an elfin being, like Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream! I was this giggly little faery, hopping from rock to rock and roaming through the greenery! And it wasn't like I was recalling something; it was as if I'd recovered something that had been sadly lost. It was a win! I felt totally light and ridiculously FREE! I actually told myself resolutely, "I'm a faery!" and it seemed somehow profoundly true! How STRANGE!!!

Well, you know, I've always been kind of, um . . . different.

The experience only lasted while I was there, and yet something in me is now a bit more freed up and, well, restored! Just thinking of it sort of puts things right.

Can anyone relate to this??

Ah, who cares?! It was awesome!!!

I grew up in the '50's and '60's. Until the late '80's, hearing news of a suicide was a rare occurance, ESPECIALLY child or teenage suicide. News of a parent killing a child was a very strange and rare thing, and occurances of child suicide or a child killing his or her family members or friends were just unheard of. At least I never heard of anything like that. Normal people didn't suddenly just lose it and kill themselves or each other. That all changed in 1988, when Laurie Dann walked into a 2nd grade classroom in Winnetka, Illinois,with a handgun and opened fire on the children. She killed one and critically injured 5 others. She also killed a man who tried to wrestle the gun away from her. Later, she killed herself.

I had never heard anything like this. It shocked everyone. But that was just the beginning. Since that time, there has been an increasing number of bizarre violent acts committed by people who had never done anything violent before. There now have been hundreds --maybe thousands -- of cases around the world of little kids killing other little kids, kids killing their parents or grandparents, parents killing their kids or each other, and people of all ages, including small kids, killing themselves.

The hypothesized reasons are numerous, but only one makes sense. And I swear, you have to be over a certain age to really see this, because as I said, this stuff never happened before! If you entered adulthood in a time when this stuff was unheard of, you would be at least somewhat confused at all the proposed "explanations," and you would realize that no matter how easy it is to procure a gun, regular people just don't kill each other. And you would see that all the violence in the movies and on TV and in video games would not be enough to cause a little boy to purposely hang his sister. The stress of modern life is not enough to cause a mother to kill her children, no matter how depressed she is. And then there are the cases of people who were known to be happy and creating their futures, like Michael Hutchence of INXS, who suddenly, for no reason, killed themselves. I'm telling you, this stuff didn't used to happen!

But see, Laurie Dann, Michael Hutchence, Kip Kinkel, the Columbine killers, and just about all the others in this new weird catagory, were on these new DRUGS. Laurie Dann was on both Lithium and Anafranil. Michael Hutchence was on Prozac. Kip Kinkel was on Prozac and Ritalin. Eric Harris of the Columbine killings was on Luvox. The list is enormous.

Only powerful mind-altering drugs could mess a person up that badly. Think about it. If you are NOT on any medication, think about what it would take for you to kill your loved ones or yourself or even a stranger!Remember, most of these people who committed homicide were incredibly confused by it, and their personality profiles did not allow for such a thing in any way.

The answer is the drugs. The WHY is PSYCHOTROPIC MEDICATIONS. THAT is what changed. Get these people safely off the drugs, and they don't do weird stuff like that anymore.

Please check out the links below to educate yourself on this subject. And remember, anti-depressants and certain other drugs, no matter how seemingly innocent, can be MOST dangerous when one is withdrawing from them. They should only be withdrawn from with the help of a medical doctor who understands this area. But in ALL cases, they definitely SHOULD be gotten off of!

http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/7818

http://www.myspace.com/thetruthaboutpsychiatry

you know, guys,
we can die at any time.

if we just sit, we lose things
all around us.

it's not just that "shit happens,"
it's that every single thing will turn to shit and so will you

unless you CREATE something.
unless you CREATE.

if you're sewing a button back on,
you're creating.

if you're boiling pasta,
you're creating.

and little things may be enough for little beings.

but if you have big ideas,
you're not a little being.

ever feel like part of you is wasting away?
ever feel there's some legacy you can leave this place,
if only for your children?

I'll betcha Steven Spielberg does not fear death.
he's created so many fabulous worlds.

but you don't have to make films --
unless it's your thing! then you must,
'cause it won't go away.

lots of people can just make a great life.
a meaningful or beautiful life.
they can inspire or help people

they can heal or nurture or teach by example,
they can brighten days.
they can keep the place clean.

what should YOU create?
there's only one answer:

create what you really WANT to create.
if it's huge, better get busy!

the blood, sweat, and tears will all add up
to a magnificent life

and you'll never feel like things are falling apart
around you

you won't be bothered by little problems
or ailments

for YOU are the source of life.
if you create it, you'll have it.

if you don't,
you won't.

I wish you could hear the music in my head, she said.  And I knew she had stepped out of the world again.  So I looked in her eyes and listened very hard till I heard the silence of a cat walking, and I heard the tiny rustle of an overripe cherry tomato falling through the leaves.  And then I heard a single clear soul-stroking strain of a trumpeter, playing for himself alone in the afternoon.  And the tickle of her wind reached my hair as I felt myself falling back down to my high school lounging and dreaming existence, and then I heard Ella, the Goddess, the Angel, the Saint singing eternal sunshine and honey and goodness.  And I was back in our groove.

Copyright © 2005 by Carole Eddington.  All rights reserved.

Well, that basically says it. I've been doing MySpace.com (www.myspace.com/vinakti) for awhile now. As an avid communicator, I find it to be fun and exciting. I've been resisting getting sucked in to LiveJournal, but it finally got me. Writing, to me, is like breathing, so this is natural.

So, HI everyone who might read this! I have a few friends at least who post on here. Rora, Annie . . .

Well, it's almost 7 AM. Better get to bed! (I'm on a vampire schedule, which is like a musician's schedule, but worse.)

Love,
Vinakti