Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Madame Heart


I dreamt a scene. A woman’s head floating in a blue sky above a landscape arid with rocks and scattered manmade metal. Or was she above the sea with ships moored in the harbor of her neck? It was a Dali painting. Next day I strolled through the Dali museum into this room and that with melting clocks, stilts and butterfly sails, turned a corner and there she was floating on the wall. Exactly, though I had never seen the scene before except in my dream. I have not been able to find the painting anywhere since, and the museum is too far to go see again, to know it is real.

But what is real?

The dream? Dali? His vision? Surreal, it is called. Sir Real. For what is reality except what each of us sees, feels, perceives? Hello, Sir Real, nice to meet you, Madame Real.

Of course she was me, that head. Some version of my reality. Existing in me before Dali created her. Mind disconnected from heart, in control until the reverse happened through years and landscapes, each small keys that upended the house, doors broken open releasing the heart to graze above the world, wild, free.

But it becomes too much, Madame Heart. The butterfly sails cannot be sequestered in the harbor, nor can streetcars of progress stay on the tracks grown over with poisoned weeds, like jittery men getting somewhere they are not, everywhere there is virgin space, looking for somewhere to die.

Empty blue sky. The one place a heart can watch from, uncluttered.


~ with thanks to Erin
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17 comments:

  1. Our theme this month at TweetSpeakPoetry is surrealism. This post is perfect for that, Ruth.

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  2. Thank God for dreams! Without them, there is no escape, no creation, no respite from reality, no questioning...

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    1. I seem to dream rarely now, or at least to remember them, Rosaria. It seems important when I do.

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  3. I came over here after I posted today, Ruth - Erin has been doing some inspiring. I love how our dreams can show us to ourselves in whole new ways, shake us up and put us back together (or not), re-introduce us to ourselves and, of course, the world. But, I also hear that it's too much, your looking for respite, for an uncluttered space for your heart. The silent, stillness Erin speaks of?

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    1. Mary, I'm happy to see that Erin has inspired you too. It is ongoing, neverending, a new way of seeing that she has given me.

      Yes, feeling the world can be dangerous. I have to remember to find healing from poetry, art, music. Erin shared the Four Seasons productions of Riff, Rant and I can't remember the other one. Oh and look, I just went to their web site (http://www.4spfilm.com/4/HOME.html) and the home page has something in production called "Healing the Mind." Precisely!

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  4. I found myself in that kind of space this morning and then came across a quote by Susan Sontag that seemed related: "To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of meaning." I have no idea now how this is related or connects to any of the other things that have been said here, I just feel that it is.

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    1. Ing, I feel that it is related too. As you said Tuesday (the quote you forgot to bring), we can get the connection without being able to explain it — feel it, show it, without telling it.

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  5. ruth, i have had this prose poem open most of the day one way or another and i have been yearning for james to remind me of something cataclysmic that happened to me/us, a revelation that he revealed to me that helped me to be able to live inside this world of spoiled systems and the living heart. but of course i have forgotten and amazingly HE CAN NOT REMEMBER either! (you can't imagine how many revelations have been lost between he and i and in this itself is something to learn!)

    i mentioned to you the world of the two rivers before. one river is the river of systems or the mechanics of this world of economics and politics, the world egotistically based. the other world is the world of the heart. you want to heal the world of systems with the world of the heart. so do i. i don't know that is possible. i also don't know if it is what we are supposed to attempt. i don't know if it is the higher order. perhaps in its being spoiled the world of structure reveals its natural order. in the absolute world of all all things must necessarily exist. our hearts will refute this and the systems will continue on, giving our hearts reason.

    and so how do we manage?

    we seek that empty place where we might become filled. (always the paradoxical. reading simone weil tonight i find that somehow paradox acts like hands separating the space of existence and allows all being to take place. without paradox there is nothing.)

    you write, "everywhere there is virgin space, looking for somewhere to die." and i just about split open. this is a wedge driven into the fabric of being.

    (your link to me is sweet but so unnecessary. this is your journey.)))

    xo
    erin

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    1. Erin, first let me say about the link to you that I had no sense of obligation in doing so. I had been stuck and sad and empty and wantless, spiraling down. You shared the two videos from Four Seasons, and I was immediately sprung open, and hollow bitters were released. I would thank you one thousand times here and anywhere if I could. It was a terribly important reminder, that there are ways to live in the broken world.

      Which gets to your rivers (again, which I had misplaced in my heart). As I read what you wrote here my body, soul and spirit echo Yes. The only work that matters is what can be done in me. From this many changes occur that can't help but occur. But I feel you must be right, that the scaffolding (it is only that, it is not solid, though it seems to be) is not something I have to mess with. That paradox is necessary, and even the root of meaning and joy. And then, to live and survive we have to find our space where the second river flows. I feel that this takes daily intention and practice. We must keep reminding each other. It was this I will keep thanking you for.

      As for you and James being unable to remember the revelation, I do find it remarkable, and important. Rungs of the ladder that have been climbed up and forgotten.

      xoxo

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  6. I have been so far removed from blogging for the past few months -- only able to check on things rarely. But a few days ago I realized I hadn't seen you on my old blog roll and now just discovered your 'new' place! I have found your writing to be such a welcome time spent and look forward to catching up with you since August.

    Once again, you remind me of so much thinking I have lost touch with over the years. I have to pause and remember -- if vaguely -- how to think and how to look -- maybe even how to dream -- in an uncluttered 'from the heart' kind of way.

    I'm so glad to have found you again!

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    1. Many thanks for this, Broad. It is so good to have you join me here.

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  7. all i can think as i read over and over again, this profound puzzling you present here, is,

    the heart wins

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    1. Carl Sagan said, "She had studied the universe all her life, but had overlooked its clearest message: For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love." Thank you, Amanda.

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  8. some dream to remember, some dream to escape, but mostly we should dream to "live"

    Never stop dreaming.....

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  9. Madame Heart and Sir Real. Only you would come up with that, Ruth. :) I'll never forget the Dali exhibition I saw in...Paris, I think it was...and maybe also in Barcelona? So what you have written here makes me go off on my own dream!

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All responses are welcome.