Even Life and Death need a break....time out form their line of work. For those interested Death is drinking strawberry daiquiri whilst Life  is down to the last dregs of a shocking pink milkshake. Both are just chillin' like the cool dudes they are. I had to put life on a Li-Lo( also a shocking flesh coloured Pink )as in Samoan it means "curious or generous one" as well as a beach inflatable for lazy loafers who want to just float and soak up those life giving rays. Then in African naming Lilo means "two-hearted" (a person who is both "good and evil", for example being laid-back about insults but defending others without hesitation). Ain't Life just like that? Death is listening to old school rap WHITE LINES - DON'T DO IT or chuckling at Lilo & Stitch on his I-Pad.
I wrote this when the nuclear accident happen to happen at Didi Lilo, Georgia, a daba outside Tblisi. Awww man....like....who knows how this old world will end or what a God is or for that matter...a Nothing! All we can know is that we just don't know...despite the fact we are dying to find out. Ok ok....enough...too much information. I remember a chalky graffiti on a wall once that said: "Mistah God....he dead!" How Conradian!

But as s Mr. Eliot puts it more succinctly....

"This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"

But....I digress!

***

Contemplating a cruise whilst a line of cummings ran through my head.  e.e.'s "all worlds have halfsight,seeing either with..." which hosts the lovely lines:

he's free into the beauty of the truth;

and strolls the axis of the universe
- love.    Each believing world denies,whereas
your lover(looking through both life and death)

and so GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL jumped into my head. Well...there ya go!

Oh I often I have been entranced by this song long before I knew what it meant...it haunted my mind and stained my soul.

This lament. It is supposedly sung by a mother whose son, a priest, has turned to the Protestant faith, and she is calling him back.

Moya Brennan's version is the only version for me.

FILL FILL A RÚN Ó

Curfa
Fill fill a rún ó
Fill a rún ó
is ná h’imigh uaim
Fill orm a chuisle ‘s a stóir
agus chifidh tú ‘n glór má fhillean tú

Shiuil mise thal is a bhus
i mólta ghrainn óige a rugadh mé
‘sni fhaca mé niontas go fóill
mar an sagart ó Dónaill ‘na mhinistir

Curfa

Dhiultigh tú Peadar is Pól
már gheall ar an ór ‘s as an airgid
Dhiultigh tú banrion ná glóir
agus d’iompaig tú go cóta an mhinistir

Curfa

English Translation

Refrain
Return return o (secret) lover
Return o (secret) lover
And do not depart from me
Return to me o heart and treasure
And you will see the glory if you return

I walked hither and yon
In Molta Ghrainn I was born
And I didn’t see the wonder yet
Like Father Ó Donaill as a minister

Refrain

You denied Peter and Paul
Because of the gold and silver
You denied the queen of glory
And you converted to the garb of a minister

Refrain

***

The News of the Screws or The Screws of the World as it was called even back in Shakey's day probably had their own Clive Good-man who probably had a terrible hack hacking...cough. Shakespeare wrote the now alas lost play KING MURDOCK or as it was subtitled ALL'S UNWELL THAT ENDS ILL.

Frederick Greenwood, editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, met in his club one day Lord Riddell and in the course of conversation Riddell said to him, "You know, I own a paper."

"Oh, do you?" said Greenwood, "what is it?"

"It's called the News of the World—I'll send you a copy", replied Riddell, and in due course did so. Next time they met Riddell said, "Well Greenwood, what do you think of my paper?"

"I looked at it", replied Greenwood, "and then I put it in the waste-paper basket. And then I thought, 'If I leave it there the cook may read it'—so I burned it!"

***

The title is supplied by one Seneca the Younger (c. 4 BC – AD 65) that well known and renowned Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist.

* * * * * * *

The sound of my sister's voice.  We lived in a house not made of books.  The only  texts existed in the texture of the telling...my sister finecombing my hair and soothing the pain with...shussh...stories.

'The little toy soldier is covered with dust...'

...exists only in my mind and the vague trellised traces of Junie's voice.  It is here breath against my skin as I fall asleep. It has never entered my mind through print yet it is printed irredeemably...indelibly in my mind.

'What is it again? '

I am following my father...gogging my Dad doggedly for the words of a song.  I scrawl the words across the page of my mind as exasperated his patience explodes:

'As down the ****** glen one ****** Easter morn...how many times do I have to tell you! '

My sister Moira is slightly tipsy.  I glow with pleasure as the pattern unfolds.  When she is more that slightly tipsy she will softly and sadly sing.

'I know my love by his way of walking and I know my love by his way of talking and I know my love by his eyes so blue and if my love left me what would I do...? '

I am drunk with her words.  There is a slight smell of loneliness off her breath.  I hang   on   her   every    breath.

I have had four teeth pulled and my world fevers and frets. The smell of sausages sidles up the stairs and seduces me to the top of the stairs.  When I am safely ion danger the smelly magic no longer supports me.  I fall and float down the stairs.  Junie comforts  and croons.  I am lying in her arms in her bed.  Again she sings.  'Again! ' I plead.  She sings again.

'Black is the colour of my true love's hair...her lips are like...'

Her body vibrates with sound and the words echo through me and echo through the memory of me.  For a long long time
the only way these words were written down ws in the breath entering and leaving her body.

When I remember to write...

I write to remember I write to forget.

I write to recover what has never left me but exists in a someplace of my mind.  I write to find out who I am and if I ever was. I write to discover where I went when the wordl went away.

As the bus crashes the book is torn and burning.  The world dies.  A child cries.  I WRITE TO REMEMBER I WRITE TO FORGET.  The book leies strewn across the motorway.  It's spine is broken and its leaves flutter away in dismay.  The book is burning.  It is unreadable as it reads itself to the night's wind. It is an image torn from a dream that is really real.  Its spine is broken and pages turn themselves over and over in the night.

I write...to remember...I write...to forget.

Sunlight streams through the bedroom window...sculpts a sister.  Creates Junie.  She is telling me the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Every time I cry.  She says she will not tell me again because it always me makes me cry.  I promise not to cry if she promises to tell me again.  She tells me again.  I cry  every time.  She is not dead.  She is telling me the story of Orpheus and Eurydice.  She is created of sunlight.  Dust motes dance in attendance.  It can not be...more real than this. I write to remember...I write...to forget.  I write to recover the times of her not dying...when she is sunlight and breath.  When she was my book.  When the sound of her was all...around me.  Writing to remember...I forget so much.  I write because I am - lost.  I write to find an exit door in my mind.  The book is broken.  The book is burning.  Pages...fiery pages flutter like lost souls escaping into the darkness.  I write to reach the light.  I write to enter the darkness.  I write to escape the sound of the book burning. I write to forget...I...write to...not forget.                             Remember.

* * * * * *

“Chasing angels or fleeing demons, go to the mountains.”
― Jeffrey Rasley, Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal

Yes folks this be the man who in April this year, the then presidential candidate Ted Cruz appointed into his advisory council for religious liberty.

Calling my wife but got a digit wrong and ended up talking to this absolutely lovely old lady who thought it was hilarious. "The last fella who talked to me like that was my husband Pat and he died twenty years ago!"

It was highly embarrassing but she was delighted and just laughed and laughed....I couldn't apologise enough.