If You Should Meet Me

If you should meet me on the sidewalk
in the city,
would you know me?
Would you recognize my face?
Would my name come to mind for you?
And if you answer yes,
how would you respond?
Would you pass by,
pretending not to notice me?
Or nod and speak a quick hello?
Or stop and chat a while?
Or would you smile a smile so big
and spread your arms all open wide
and take me inside?
If you should meet me on the sidewalk in the city---
What would you do?

- Sharon Terry

Advice from a Caterpillar

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.
`Who are you?' said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, `I--I hardly know, sir, just at present-- at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
`What do you mean by that?' said the Caterpillar sternly. `Explain yourself!'
`I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir' said Alice, `because I'm not myself, you see.'
`I don't see,' said the Caterpillar.
`I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly,' Alice replied very politely, `for I can't understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.'

Fiction/Fulghum

Here's some stuff borrowed from Robert Fulghum ... on his experiences with fiction ... i find it very interesting:

THE NOVEL

As with the life of the individual, the novel carries the seed of its end in its beginning. The answer to the reader's question, "What finally happens?" is always the same: everybody dies and the world falls into the Sun. But prolonging the end as long as possible is the novelist's privilege. That is why "THIRD WISH" finishes with the word "To be continued." I know how it ends. But I do not know what happens in the meantime. I write to find out.

I have chosen to write a novel because I choose to continue having adventure in my life. I write to create fleshy memories – to not have only the gnawed bones of the past to sustain me in old age. And even those bones are a reassembled skeleton of what really happened. Our autobiographies are themselves as much a product of the creative imagination as any work of fiction. Our history is what we need it to be. We are the heroes of our own situation comedy. To be alive and human is to live on a tightrope. To retain balance, you must keep moving.

"The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. Every novel says to the reader: 'Things are not as simple as you think.' That is the novel's eternal truth." Milan Kundera said that in The Art of the Novel.

A successful novel is a conspiracy between the reader and the writer. The reader's imagination is required to complete the writer's. The reader must be willing to be active – to do some work – to take some responsibility. If the reader does his work well, every novel is unique. The writer and the reader can both declare:

I am the life.
I am the work.
I am the audience.
I am the singer.
And I the song.

We conspire to collaborate.

More of Gibran...

Well, here's some more of Gibran... insightful and profound - the Gibran style, of course :-)

CRITICS - By Kahlil Gibran (from The Forerunner)

One nightfall a man travelling on horseback towards the sea reached an inn by the roadside. He dismounted and, confident in man and night like all riders towards the sea, he tied his horse to a tree beside the door and entered into the inn.
At midnight, when all were asleep, a thief came and stole the traveller's horse.
In the morning the man awoke, and discovered that his horse was stolen. And he grieved for his horse, and that a man had found it in his heart to steal.
Then his fellow lodgers came and stood around him and began to talk.
And the first man said, "How foolish of you to tie your horse outside the stable."
And the second said, " Still more foolish, without even hobbling the horse!"
And the third man said, "It is stupid at best to travel to the sea on horseback."
And the fourth said, "Only the indolent and the slow of foot own horses."
Then the traveller was much astonished. At last he cried, "My friends, because my horse was stolen, you have hastened one and all to tell me my faults and my shortcomings. But strange, not one word of reproach have you uttered about the man who stole my horse."

Justice??!!

Some insights from ... uh, well, who else?... Kahlil Gibran:

WAR - Kahlil Gibran (from The Madman)

One night a feast was held in the palace, and there came a man and prostrated himself before the prince, and all the feasters looked upon him; and they saw that one of his eyes was out and that the empty socket bled. And the prince inquired of him, "What has befallen you?" And the man replied, "O prince, I am by profession a thief, and this night, because there was no moon, I went to rob the money-changer's shop, and as I climbed in through the window I made a mistake and entered the weaver's shop, and in the dark I ran into the weaver's loom and my eye was plucked out. And now, O prince, I ask for justice upon the weaver."
Then the prince sent for the weaver and he came, and it was decreed that one of his eyes should be plucked out.
"O prince," said the weaver, "the decree is just. It is right that one of my eyes be taken. And yet, alas! both are necessary to me in order that I may see the two sides of the cloth that I weave. But I have a neighbor, a cobbler, who has also two eyes, and in his trade both eyes are not necessary."
Then the prince sent for the cobbler. And he came. And they took out one of the cobbler's two eyes.
And justice was satisfied.

(not) just another poem

Came across this one recently
Could read... enjoy... relate... connect...
Read on...

Alone

He lies alone.
The quite is all to deafening. Its all there is.
To one side of him the phone. Talk.
To the other. The computer, chat.
Neither is comforting.

"It doesn't matter" he thinks.
Nothing matters.
Nothing ever will.

Near him, all around him, is the faint scent of despair.
He looks for something to hold onto.
There’s Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing except the silence, the quite.

"I should get up." he thinks.
"What’s the point?" is what follows.
His hands tremble.
He wants to cry, but he can't.
Its almost as if he's immune to the situation.

"Stiff upper lip," He thinks "Stiff upper lip"
It doesn't help
Nothing seems to help.

He searches for something more to hold onto. Anything.
All he finds are his thoughts.
They're no help.
All they seem to do is betray him.
As if someone has opened the floodgates,
Millions of Gallons of thoughts come rushing into his mind.
He struggles to stay afloat.
He looks for his planking, something to help him stay afloat.

Dreams.
He finds dreams, and holds on to them.
He won't let go. He won't ever let go.

He lies alone.
The quite is all to deafening. Its all there is.
To one side of him the phone. Talk.
To the other. The computer, chat.
Neither is comforting…

– by Greg Bealer

Musical Lobotomy

If I could purge
that part of my brain
which stores pain,

I would replace it
with a gentle refrain;
Bach, Beethoven

or simply rain.

- Susan Maree
© 2001 Susan Maree Jeavons-All Rights Reserved

Sea and Sky