Thoughts welcome

If you have a comment on one of these blog posts it is welcome. If the comment is on an old post I shall link to it from a new post, so that your wise musings are not lost. Time passes in the blogosphere like a shadow.

Thought water

A little late, here are my thoughts on David Henschel's poem Thought water.

I need a pool of thought
to dip my mind in
cool and clear and sweetly springing
from some deep source on some high mountain.

We all have thoughts and plenty of them. The overwhelming majority of them are useless.

Worries about things that may never happen, anxieties about what we think other people think of us, resentments of things that could not have been otherwise, dreams unaccompanied by the least intention of working to realise them, items in the news that we're powerless to do anything about, impotent opinions based on no knowledge, churning in the mind of last night's television or a tune that we don't like that won't go away. That is why the denizens of hell are said to gibber.

This is not the pool of thought that the poet is asking for.

The poet is asking for a pool cool and clear and sweetly springing.

It seems to me that there is no room for such a pool unless we first detach ourselves from the thicket of our usual thoughts. I like the idea of the pool being up a mountain. As we climb higher, the thicket of useless thoughts is still there, but we pass through it, it is below us.

Another thought: in the fairytale Sleeping Beauty the prince has to make his way through a thicket of thorns. But those who had gone before perished in the attempt to hack them back. It is an effort doomed to failure. But because it is the right time, the thorn thicket separates before him, without effort. No doubt he came prepared, with a sword and ready to do battle. But no battle was required.

The poet goes on:

There is no pool unless I make one
from depths of spirit in the heights of mind.
It can only be cool if I am clear
only as clear as my own seeing
only as deep as my own loving
only as high as my own thinking.

My commentary: seeing is not thought, love is not thought, and thinking is a ladder, rightly used.

How we wish we could be clear.

It seems a last reality
necessary to truth
to recognise what living water
can only be drawn from one's own well
and nothing comes out
of nothing put in.

Lewis Carroll recommended making the effort to learn a poem by heart. That way, at least there is a corner of the mind that is filled with something worthwhile, something that becomes part of our own inner singing.

The impressions we expose ourselves to - literature, music, theatre, films, the clouds in the sky, the birdsong that even a city has, the smiles of strangers - make our thinking what it is.

Of course it is not I alone
who conjure rain into my earth
or trickle truth and understanding in;
but I am sand to parch my givers
thin earth which gives scant blessing back -
yet I have caves
and through my fissured rock
slowly the water gathers in my dark.

If we have received something then we can only be grateful. We can do nothing of ourselves, though we should like to think otherwise. Even so, I am richer because of these poems made by someone else.

I wish
it lay less deep and more accessible
I wish it lay upon the mountain side
and had the colour of the sky -
in which to bathe would be to fly.

Heres and Nows - price increase

Well, I tried to hold the price until 26 February but between the printer and Amazon it's already been put up to £10 and then marked down again by Amazon to £9. This is outside my control.

Since I said I'd keep the price down until 26 February, if anyone wishes to contact me direct before the end of the month I'll send you as many copies as you like at the old price (£6.50). Click the email link and send me your postal address. Don't worry, I'm not going to spam anybody!

Thinking, swimming and flying

Thoughts on this next week. Meanwhile why not add your own perceptions? What are thoughts that live in dark caves? Is the best thought so much like the sky that it is nothing at all? What would it be like to have no thoughts?

Commenting on this blog is free! Someone has.

Thought water

I need a pool of thought
to dip my mind in
cool and clear and sweetly springing
from some deep source on some high mountain.

There is no pool unless I make one
from depths of spirit in the heights of mind.
It will only be cool if I am clear
only as clear as my own seeing
only as deep as my own loving
only as high as my own thinking.

It seems a last reality
necessary to truth
to recognise what living water
can only be drawn from one’s own well
and nothing comes out
of nothing put in.

Of course it is not I alone
who conjure rain into my earth
or trickle truth and understanding in;
but I am sand to parch my givers
thin earth which gives scant blessing back –

yet I have caves
and through my fissured rock
slowly the water gathers in my dark ...

I wish
it lay less deep and more accessible
I wish it lay upon the mountain side
and had the colour of the sky –
in which to bathe would be to fly.

One publisher's struggle with Amazon 'Search Inside'

At last! The Search Inside feature on Amazon.co.uk for David Henschel's Heres and Nows actually works! (Click the link to go to the Amazon page, then click on the picture on that page to see inside the book.)

This means that you can go and browse the book on-line just as you would in a bookshop.

I believe that people want to see what they are buying, especially if it's a poet they've never heard of. You have to give something away so that people see the quality, then they'll want more and buy.

I originally asked Amazon to activate Search Inside back in August 2010. The whole process was immensely complicated. The link provided was simply wrong. Then they didn't tell me that my Amazon.co.uk password wouldn't work on Amazon.com. I had to set up a new account.

I finally uploaded the book's pdf file at the end of September.

By early December the Search Inside function worked on Amazon.com but still not on Amazon.co.uk, so again I clicked the link inviting publishers to activate this feature. Once again I was invited to sign up to Amazon.com. I emailed back explaining that I had done all this already and nothing had happened to the book's listing on Amazon.co.uk.

Amazon replied as follows:
We can use the same files on Amazon.com for Amazon.co.uk so you don’t need to resubmit. In future, just contact us if you wish your titles to be active in other Amazon territories.

to which I replied:

Yes please, please do this.

To which they replied:

Your title will be live on Amazon.co.uk within 24 hours.

My advice to other print-on-demand publishers: as soon as you hear from Amazon Search Inside, set up an account with Amazon Seller Central at once and upload the pdf file without delay. Then expect to wait two months before anything happens on Amazon.com. When it does, email them again and ask them to activate the feature on Amazon.co.uk as well.

Kindle edition coming soon!

It's been a struggle but I think I'm there. Watch this blog!

Come peaceful – a commentary

So what do we do when suffering from the private tempest and the heart's riot?

David's poem (see the post immediately below for the complete poem) describes the internal civil war and the war on the heart that follows from it:

Discharge the armies of my disarray
Which turn from civil forays on my hopes
To plunder purposes heart kept, and bray
Across my sleep their trumpets of dismay.

The poem goes on to suggest two ways out.

First, he hopes for a smile
A touch, or words to knit the mind’s torn ease.

Sometimes sympathy is enough. In my experience this sympathy should try not to justify the sufferer's sufferings. I mean, if your friend is in a hole, don't climb in with them. Instead, offer the hand of friendship. You can offer a hand, but they must make some effort to climb out by themselves.

You might, for example, ask your friend, or yourself, 'What are you going to do next to improve things? What is the next step?'

The wrong kind of sympathy, even the wrong kind of listening, can make a person's problems more real than they deserve to be. The inner enemy in our internal civil war is often weaker than we imagine. Many (admittedly not all) of the things that are terrible today we laugh at or forget within a year.

It is even possible to recover from a broken heart. (You cannot in any case suffer from a broken heart unless you allow yourself to love in the first place – risking failure is a necessary precondition of success.)

The poet asks for a smile, a touch, or a few words only.

The poem offers us a second option.

... despatch that spirit by which I
Can set the eyes to search again
For lights within my stormy sky
And ears to hear some song behind its rain.

The medieval Sufi, Ibn 'Arabi (AD 1165-1240) wrote:

This noise is the noise of the wind and storm that your ego causes to be raised between the angelic influences and the world in which you live. The storm can only be quieted, and your heart find peace, through the remembrance of God.

It is the noise of our internal strife that plunder[s] purposes heart kept and clouds from us our true nature, which is the song behind its rain. That song, that peaceful place is you.

Come peaceful

A proof-reading error for which I am entirely to blame left off the first stanza of the lovely poem Come peaceful, which I reproduce in full below.

I am preparing a new print edition of David Henschel's Heres and Nows which will be ready very soon, correcting this error and one or two very minor errors I have come across while preparing the Kindle edition.

Special offer

For anyone who can provide me with a plausible story that they bought the first edition I shall send free of charge a copy of the new edition as soon as it is ready. Use the email link at the foot of the right-hand column of this web page. Don't forget to supply a delivery address!

Next week I shall post a little commentary on this poem. There is a way through the private tempest and to find the lights within my stormy sky which we shall talk about next time.

Meanwhile I wish you a happy and peaceful New Year.

Come peaceful

Oh make my private tempest quiet
And all cares still:
Come peaceful to the heart’s riot
Whatever can, whoever will.

Discharge the armies of my disarray
Which turn from civil forays on my hopes
To plunder purposes heart kept, and bray
Across my sleep their trumpets of dismay.

If you – bring blessed things to please
This tyrant anguish and my martial fears: a smile
A touch, or words to knit the mind’s torn ease
With meaning’s reconciling guile.

If not – despatch that spirit by which I
Can set the eyes to search again
For lights within my stormy sky
And ears to hear some song behind its rain.