Autobiography in Five Short Chapters.

by Portia Nelson

I

I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost ... I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes me forever to find a way out.

II

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place
but, it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I still fall in ... it's a habit.
my eyes are open
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

IV

I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V

I walk down another street.

This poem was framed in five little frames and hung on the wall of a house that I stayed at in Whitehorse.

Yukon Fireweed.

two summers past
the fierce Minto fire
rolls over to show its pink belly

kjmunro

The Law of the Yukon

This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain:
"Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane --
Strong for the red rage of battle; sane for I harry them sore;
Send me men girt for the combat, men who are grit to the core;
Swift as the panther in triumph, fierce as the bear in defeat,
Sired of a bulldog parent, steeled in the furnace heat.
Send me the best of your breeding, lend me your chosen ones;
Them will I take to my bosom, them will I call my sons;
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat;
But the others -- the misfits, the failures -- I trample under my feet.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
Ye would send me the spawn of your gutters -- Go! take back your spawn again.

"Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway;
From my ruthless throne I have ruled alone for a million years and a day;
Hugging my mighty treasure, waiting for man to come,
Till he swept like a turbid torrent, and after him swept -- the scum.
The pallid pimp of the dead-line, the enervate of the pen,
One by one I weeded them out, for all that I sought was -- Men.
One by one I dismayed them, frighting them sore with my glooms;
One by one I betrayed them unto my manifold dooms.
Drowned them like rats in my rivers, starved them like curs on my plains,
Rotted the flesh that was left them, poisoned the blood in their veins;
Burst with my winter upon them, searing forever their sight,
Lashed them with fungus-white faces, whimpering wild in the night;

Staggering blind through the storm-whirl, stumbling mad through the snow,
Frozen stiff in the ice-pack, brittle and bent like a bow;
Featureless, formless, forsaken, scented by wolves in their flight,
Left for the wind to make music through ribs that are glittering white;
Gnawing the black crust of failure, searching the pit of despair,
Crooking the toe in the trigger, trying to patter a prayer;
Going outside with an escort, raving with lips all afoam,
Writing a cheque for a million, driveling feebly of home;
Lost like a louse in the burning. . .or else in the tented town
Seeking a drunkard's solace, sinking and sinking down;
Steeped in the slime at the bottom, dead to a decent world,
Lost 'mid the human flotsam, far on the frontier hurled;
In the camp at the bend of the river, with its dozen saloons aglare,
Its gambling dens ariot, its gramophones all ablare;
Crimped with the crimes of a city, sin-ridden and bridled with lies,
In the hush of my mountained vastness, in the flush of my midnight skies.
Plague-spots, yet tools of my purpose, so natheless I suffer them thrive,
Crushing my Weak in their clutches, that only my Strong may survive.

"But the others, the men of my mettle, the men who would 'stablish my fame
Unto its ultimate issue, winning me honor, not shame;
Searching my uttermost valleys, fighting each step as they go,
Shooting the wrath of my rapids, scaling my ramparts of snow;
Ripping the guts of my mountains, looting the beds of my creeks,
Them will I take to my bosom, and speak as a mother speaks.
I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods;
Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods.
Long have I waited lonely, shunned as a thing accurst,
Monstrous, moody, pathetic, the last of the lands and the first;
Visioning camp-fires at twilight, sad with a longing forlorn,
Feeling my womb o'er-pregnant with the seed of cities unborn.
Wild and wide are my borders, stern as death is my sway,
And I wait for the men who will win me -- and I will not be won in a day;
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild,
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of a child;
Desperate, strong and resistless, unthrottled by fear or defeat,
Them will I gild with my treasure, them will I glut with my meat.

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and wearily wise,
With the weight of a world of sadness in my quiet, passionless eyes;
Dreaming alone of a people, dreaming alone of a day,
When men shall not rape my riches, and curse me and go away;
Making a bawd of my bounty, fouling the hand that gave --
Till I rise in my wrath and I sweep on their path and I stamp them into a grave.
Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good,
Of children born in my borders of radiant motherhood,
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled,
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world."

This is the Law of the Yukon, that only the Strong shall thrive;
That surely the Weak shall perish, and only the Fit survive.
Dissolute, damned and despairful, crippled and palsied and slain,
This is the Will of the Yukon, -- Lo, how she makes it plain!

Robert Service

The last verse of this poem is posted in pretty much every public building around this place and it's true.

Lake Wakatipu poems.

In Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand, there is a harbour with an old stone wall built around the edge. In the wall, a poem is engraved. I read the poem one day and it goes like this:

WAIPOUNAMU
by David Eggleton

Hoisting history on his back like a sugar – sack,
The swagger strides along greenstone trails.
All night the crib creeks are humming home,
And drowned towns float in their canvas shrouds.
They are just the ghosts of their original selves,
An emotional investment looted by snow-melt for,
Schemes to answer the question of illumination.
To tap this yearning for a golden age,
Singing shepherds held wisps of tussock
Which curled like lighted Chinese joss-sticks
On the fan – tan tables of sly-grog dens,
Frozen in that glacier known as the past.
In the forgotten graveyards, hair grows into grass
While wind sifts the sweet vernal over ands over,
Like diggers letting gold dust pour through their fingers.
The Kingston flyer is chuffing
On the great Northern Railway to Wakatipu,
John Turnbull Thompson cut the run holders loose
With a panoramic survey and the confidence of a faith healer
In the middle of Queen Victorias royal century,
When the boom-time harvest of celtic place names
Seeded central like a nouveau-Hiberian dialect
From Balclutha to Glimmerburn to Glendhu bay.
Winter arrives on time in a glitz blitz of powdery snow.
The hoar frost in a Quartztpoils of ice crystals
Turning weeping willows into frozen chandeliers.
Some strung the coils of number eight into fences
As trail bikes took to the state highway with a roar
And the rain shower passed a plume
Over small towns that are hardly seen for hills.
Tarns prickle with bubbles from upland soakage
at the start of Wakatipu on mounts Humboldt and Forbes.
Pasture stands four- square
To the intersection of lakes Hawea and Wanaka, from where
Nat Chalmers shot the gorge in a flax raft with his guides
After descending Mount difficulty in flax sandals,
The first Pakeha to see Lake Wakatipu, for which he paid
Reko and Kaikora a three legged pot – Te Kohoa!
Viper’s bugloss is the honeyed heart of the hive and veranda shadows are dark as delphiniums.
The four-fold path of the farmer leads to hot and cold taps, the meat-safes a Muslim bag, but the kerosene lamp’s gone
The way of aunt Daisy’s and uncle scrim’s voices on the wireless
Or goals from the boot and pine-tree when rugby took a capital.
Braids of rivers run dreadlock plaits from a taniwha’s
Stone head, so his blind eyes spurt waterfalls
and his chest is the sucking valley of a mudslide,
when swollen rivers heave against mountain flanks
and sinkholes laden with silt roar old man floods here!
He’d ride the whaleboat molyneaux from its tributaries
To the sea, or disgorge the matau of its spears and hooks,
If they hadn’t drained the hydro-electricity, way back.
Rivers rule our lives, gurgling, puddling, dripping,
Working the lake country round like a greenstone,
Turning out a tiki of interlocking curves flowing
Into Waipounamu, which breathes its green glow,
Of purple grape froth trickling a ripe roses scent
And beetroot palate into our salad day memories.
Views of the lake in its many moods: sometimes quiescent,
Like a windowpane stippled with rain, behind which
Cucumber leafage and swollen twigs revolve, and you
Can imagine fridge-fulls of rare home brews,
Or spiced-plum brandy, tots doled out to travellers;
Sometimes waves snapping fierce enough to whip out
All the tent pegs in canvas-town, with a wind able to upturn a wedding marquess’s trestle tables tomorrow.
Days of wooden coach wheels bumping out of Ida valley on the old Dunstan road in journeys of the pioneers.
Days realising meteorological balloons into a delicate apricot sky
In this landscape we invent, as it invents us –
From rock flake and spring water, from a skiff of froth
Tumbling over a weir into the after glow of the Aurora

Christchurch.

I spent a couple days looking around Christchurch where I was meeting Chris and Mara.

There are a lot of churches there, as the name would suggest. A lot of the buildings are made of this beautiful dark stone in this gothic style. I really loved just wandering through the streets. I stayed at a good hostel in an old building called Rolleston House. I think that was where one of the old mayors of the town lived. It was right in between the museum, art gallery, art centre, and botanic gardens. Very nice part of town.

The front entrance of the museum. It says: Lo, these are parts of His ways but how little a portion is heard of Him. Because, of course, it used to be a church.

The fountain and one of the houses in the gardens.

From the front porch of the hostel I stayed at where the street cars ran. The art centre is in the background.

More gothic architecture.

O, and this town is Rugby World Cup crazy. I thought it was next year, but it isn't even until 2011. They have a huge, beautiful new stadium though. This countdown clock was in the centre of town.

And, Christchurch must have a long history of wool production too because so many of the buildings have there old woolstores signs on them. I saw one called the Kashmir Building too. Too bad it isn't full of cashmere anymore? How it's an electronics superstore.

Martin's school poem.

For Want of a Nail

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

Is it really okay if S. Meyer quotes Robert Frost?

Fire and Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

Chaos.

In my head and in my mind and all around me today. Apparently, we're in the mood to move books around and get rid of stuff from the lab for the big move-out that's looming at the end of August. Today is also the day I plan to finish the results section of my thesis. This has proved difficult for two reasons. First, the crashing people all around me and secondly, the fact that along the way some of my data managed to mix itself up. There was an inconsistent dip in evenness amongst my seed plots and I'd been meaning to investigate the reason for this for months. Finally I got around to it today and realized that I had cut and pasted the first five columns of data in survey 3 incorrectly. Thus the dip and an entire day spent rearranging graphs. This has created the chaos in my mind. The chaos in my head has to do with the weather and the unbelievable amount of static electricity my hair is capable of holding onto. It's driving me nuts, to say the least.

I've decided to come here to escape from all of this hectic energy and create a post about why I admire e.e. cummings so much. I mentioned him in the previous post about poetry and was thinking about my appreciation for his work last night before I fell asleep. In my Grade 12 English class we had to make a presentation about all different aspects of a poem we had selected to study. (Strange how you can remember some projects and things so vividly). I picked a favourite of mine: anyone lived in a pretty how town, by e.e. cummings, of course. I knew that I enjoyed reading his poetry because of the images it conveyed, but I had put little thought into the meanings and symbolism of his work, or the impact his life had on the things he wrote.



I put a lot of effort into that project. I can remember sitting in my seat in the middle of the bus, scrunched up with my knees pushed into the back of the seat ahead of me, reading everything I could find in the library about e.e. cummings and his work. I managed to deconstruct his poem, probably deliver one of the better talks of my highschool career, and come out the other side wanting to know more. Usually, this was not the case for me and as soon as I finished a project I attempted to delete the unnecessary information from my brain. The difference this time was just that he defied every rule he came across, grammar and punctuation, the English language. The characters in his poems were outcasts but they did whatever they wanted to do. His style was dark, but pretty at the same time.

anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

Poetry.

I've always been interested in the work of certain poets. Two favourite I always read are Margaret Atwood and e.e. cummings. I have a few other collections of poetry, but I've never really been completely sucked in. Today though, I found this fragment of prose and it struck a chord with me:

FIGS ALMONDS DATES

We have in our cross-hairs
your

figs, almonds, dates, your pome-
paradise, your orchard

--"A duet with Rav Zalman who used to sing," Margaret Aho

I went on a bit of an internet search to try to find more. I couldn't find this particular poem at all, so I might head to the library in the next few days. I have a hard time letting this sort of thing go. I still need to write about the mystery book I mentioned a few days ago.

While I was looking for that particular poem I came across some more of Margaret Aho's work at the Beloit Poetry Journal. This journal is an incredible collection of interesting poetry. It appears to be free to access the entire site by anyone. From the website's History Page:

"The BPJ has remained remarkably consistent in its independent and eclectic editorial policy, its high standards, its international scope, its selection process, and its format. It has never missed an issue."

I'll definitely have to heck this out a little further. In my searches I also came across this little inter-gem: The Poet Name Generator. It never ceases to amaze me what people will do with their free time. From my html coding today I know that developing this sort of site is no easy task. It takes at least a good portion of a university-level course to come up with this sort of thing. So, yeah, approximately 14 solid years of education.

Cheers,
Lady Evelyn Picklesouse