Friday, February 20, 2015

Do You Belong?

THE HOUSE OF BELONGING

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my
darkened heart
and
I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway
of light,

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.
-David Whyte, "The House of Belonging"

33 comments:

Jen said...

I think it's a fantastic poem! It really resonates. Where do you find these things, FJ? I think you've told me before...

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

I Google the subject and the word poem or poetry and then review what comes up and pick the poem I think best matches the subject of the video.

nicrap said...

If you could kindly recall, what "subject" brought up this particular poem?

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The lyrics in the video.... "belong to something new".

I was looking for interesting video's to post, when my mind drifted to the nature of "belonging"... and the nature of the relationship between the words... 'be' and 'long'

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

btw - Did you notice the 'symbolic' Invasion Stripes on the motorcyclist's jackets representing the patch for their "club"?

nicrap said...

Symbolic of what you would say?

Thersites said...

The "invasion" that is "something new".

Thersites said...

...before leaving his past behind, (smoke cars, accidents) the cyclist "checks himself" (selfie)... embraces the future, and accelerates towards it.

At least, that is how I interpret this video.

Thersites said...

I hadn't seen it before, but here an "alternative" version.

Thersites said...

Funny that the "gender" was incomplete? I can only imagine what THAT means. ;)

nicrap said...

Unfortunately, my "austerity" plan doesn't allow me to watch the videos. :(

But i read some of the text and din't know where to look (or hide or that matter.) Feminine East! ;)



Thersites said...

Embracing your inner ascetic, nicrap? ;)

...and while it's nice to lie in your mother's caring and comforting arms, know that sooner or later she's going to attract a big and invasive pr*ck... ;P

nicrap said...

Dang! How did you come to know that i live with my mother? ;)

Thersites said...

You aren't the pr*ck, are you? ;)

Thersites said...

Nope, you're nothing "new" to her. ;)

nicrap said...

lol. You are "nuts". ;)

Joe Conservative said...

Hey, I resemble THAT remark! ;)

nicrap said...

heh. Does Wyndham Lewis know that?

Thersites said...

I'll have to ask him... :P

nicrap said...

...oh. Don't think he would mind. He looks "nuts" himself. ;)

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

...perhaps a bit dizzy from all the swirl of the Vortex. ;)

nicrap said...

I have decided that now onwards i will only insult the quick and never the dead. ;)

Thersites said...

It's some times difficult to leave history behind. To curse the dead, used to be a tradition in Polynesia that allowed the process of "mourning" to complete its' beneficial effects, and allow the living to "move on".

nicrap said...

hmm. I wonder what i could have found to curse my father with (that he bore himself a "blind" son?) ... or do you mean something more general...on the usual lines? Like, may you rot in hell and that sort?

Thersites said...

I suspect the practice was instituted to prevent the loved one from blaming themselves for deceased's death, and thereby taking upon themselves certain guilt-induced neuroses/ repressions.

In other words: "You stupid f*ck! It's all YOUR fault that I am an obedient son. You should have beaten me more so that I could hate you, and disobey your wishes. Now that you are dead, I'm NEVER going to do what you would have wished me to!" Or something to that effect.

It's in effect a symbolic "purloined letter"... like that of Kafka to his father.

Thersites said...

:P

Thersites said...

or this

Thersites said...

Something to stave off afterwardsness.

nicrap said...

I wonder what those people (Polynisean, did you say?) themselves have to say about the practice and the reason they give for it.

Thersites said...

I thought that the reference was from Freud's "Totem and Taboo", but I looked and couldn't find the original. So maybe it was in his "Civilization and its' Discontents". Sorry.

Thersites said...

Hmmmm. Might have been "Mourning and Melancholia".

nicrap said...

hmm. No worries. I will look it up myself one of these days. And thanks for the trouble. :)

Thersites said...

:)