Digital Underground - uXu - Underground eXperts United #uxu-606

### ### ### ### ### #### ### ### ### #### ### ### ##### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ### ##### ### ### ########## ### ### ########## ### ### ### ### Underground eXperts United Presents... ####### ## ## ####### # # ####### ####### ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## #### ## ## #### # # ####### ## ## ####### ## ## ## ## ##### ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ## ####### ####### # # ####### ####### ####### [ Five Poems ] [ By Eric Chaet ] ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ Five Poems by Eric Chaet (1) Briefly Passing Thru Chicago (2) Confidence (3) Dinosaurs & People (4) I Was Already On My Way Gone Out of This Life (5) What is Light? (1) BRIEFLY PASSING THRU CHICAGO Wing dips, & the little window is suddenly filled with a million houses, yards, trees, streets-- & Brenda & I hurry from A-11, in search of C-17-- standard carpet, plastic chairs, sound-absorbent ceiling tiles-- &, thru floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, strips of grass & concrete-- what a job! a world transformed!-- & brontosaurus-sized planes rolling among baggage cars, & conveyors, & idling in mute lines, like tadpoles or larvae waiting for some occult molecular signal to break from embryosis into sound & flight & whatever purpose is theirs. Squeaky-clean shops selling books, news, food, drinks, clothes-- we're a zoo--hurrying, or trying to absorb time--from everywhere on Earth-- turbans, blue jeans, suits, Hasidic Jew, blondes-- man with back-pack & magazine, his cap says "Norwegian Star"-- 2 girls talking soft Japanese, giggling, guy replacing garbage container's full plastic bag is wearing violet beret-- mom holding boy up to drink water from fountain, rows of chairs, here & there someone reading or watching TV set above-- "Fed drops Discount Rate, Dow up 400, Yahoo lets 14% its employees go...." Our number called, Brenda & I board the plane, taking bags of potato chips & bottled water from cart, showing our tickets. "Unexpected turbulence may occur any time, Unattended bags may be searched." Beyond being able to pay the price, you must know & carefully fit in among rigid rules, to gain membership among the jet engines & steel wings. Young dark man, short hair, clean shave, sharp-creased suit, sprawled back, completely confident & at ease, soles of his polished shoes flat against steel wall ahead of him--surprised I'm grinning at him-- our eyes meet--just as, with commanding voice, he asks his suited companion, "Did Larry say anything else?" "He said the price...." We accelerate past Air Canada & Korean Cargo buildings, & we're up over ten thousand railroad box-cars, factories, parking lots, houses, driveways, highways, trucks & autos, networks of poles & cables, sky-scrapers in a line along the shore of the green-blue lake, which so shockingly shows absolutely no inclination to rush anywhere. Below us, a small plane, the shadow of a small cloud, & gradually, you can no longer see by color where some places are shallower than others, &, gradually, we are absorbed by clouds of great capacity, & sleep. April, August 2001 (2) CONFIDENCE Because I am confident now, of who I am, I am punished less frequently, by people who can't imagine that I am who I behave as tho I am. Such people--almost everyone to some extent-- some especially consistently & ferociously-- think I should behave as almost everyone else does. But I have expended great energy & sacrificed years of access to resources I not only wanted, but needed to fulfill myself beyond bare survival-- resisting behaving as almost everyone else does-- it's no longer a matter of what I am going to do, some time. I am less frequently punished because I put myself in a position to be treated so less frequently-- (or to be treated appropriately, & then what miracles the one who responds appropriately & I could pull off!--) & because, now, when people attempt to punish me I am more capable of being somewhere more profitable instantaneously or (because I know from what it's cost that I am not deluding myself about who I am) I am confident enough to say that it is they who are misbehaving-- that they must use their imagination & reason & deal with what is before them-- not mere averages, assumptions, inclination to dominate-- or shut up. Because I am confident, it works. Unfortunately, if I were equally confident of what is not so, that would work, too--I think--in fact, it seems that people whose words & efforts are most supported are not those whose words are truest & whose efforts are most worthwhile & efficiently executed-- only those who, usually as a result of early advantage, & for lack of imagination & reason-- are most confident of themselves-- who proceed from averages, assumptions, & inclination to dominate-- deluded--but well-funded, popular, glib. (3) DINOSAURS & PEOPLE Overhead, dinosaurs, ravenous & loud (soon fossils) - fanatics give permission to equivalent fanatics - each claiming all righteousness, demanding everyone (finally!) comply & unite under their reptile command. The radio is full of insightful ideas competing commanders (who, all their lives, practice not listening: the path to power over others requires fierce focus) - dismissed, before they were ever put into words. Still, wholesome food must be found or raised, & transformed, & delivered; infants & elders, & the sick, injured, & confused must still be tended to; & someone must resist the degradation of soil, waters, air - & the many injustices, large & small! & answer the rare, sincere inquiries of those who seek to understand, to become wise, & truly useful in the midst of gray habits & hypocrisy, & institutions running on inertia, over cliffs. Yes, more people - some innocent or good - will die - & it might be you, or me - the dinosaurs roar, furious. Meanwhile, your participation - in extraordinary deeds that make the situation better than otherwise - are needed - during fall & winter - as they are needed during spring & summer - & in deeds that will out-live dinosaurs. (4) I WAS ALREADY ON MY WAY GONE OUT OF THIS LIFE I was already on my way gone out of this life when I began to see what I had been part of. The first freeze had already come, & I was just noticing the vine that reached out from beneath the lush carpet of grass by the side of the road on which I walk & balance myself. My youth was already a memory when I began to understand to whom I'd been attracted, & why. My parents were dead when I started to wonder what I would have done in their circumstances-- what I would have done to get money, how I would have maintained the house & health of the children, when & how I would have compromised or insisted-- & to realize how differently than that they had behaved, &, therefore, who they must have been. It was only as I began to understand the grip of dogmatism on others that I began to see how desperately I clung to unrealistic views, how much my plans were based on hoping for miracles that couldn't be. I spent my boyhood among cars, buildings, wires, pipes, & streets, wrought up by conversations of people who felt trapped by circumstances-- & much of my manhood trying for a breath & a clear view of blue sky-- & almost all of my life just trying to escape from the straightjacket of current politics, rationalization, & pressure to behave conventionally-- proud of being part of a greater history of struggle for justice. But that greater history turned out to be just a tiny fragment, too-- a thousand years or maybe two or three or even six-- encapsulated in a bubble merged from smaller bubbles, from events in Babylon, Egypt, Jerusalem, Athens, & Rome, London, Calcutta, Quebec, Boston, New York, Washington, The Gold Coast, Carolina, Florida, Fallen Timbers, Wounded Knee, Tulsa, Bavaria & Berlin, Moscow, Mississippi, Hanoi, Baghdad, Beijing, Johannesburg, Bogata, Rwanda, Bosnia, Congo, Angola, & Peshawar. I was desperate to burst the narrow family consensus range-- to enter America, widest of all ranges, tho it had its wickedness & violence-- to take my chances & do what I could to make my way & have my influence-- unaware that to be less than a person in the universe-- bones & blood & nerves & skin & eyes & brain & hands & heart & muscle-- one human among humans, among all the species & all the organisms, the stones & soil, rivers & seas, breezes & clouds & storms-- on a spinning planet dancing with a moon, spiraling around a star going somewhere as surely as you or I or the geese or acorns-- that health & completion of oneself is the center from which righteousness has to burst joyful like a song among songs-- was to be insufficiently robust, & therefore prey to plants, animals, & fragments of plants & animals prowling for food, & to careless habits, obsessions, compulsions--my own & others-- that would devour me before I became aware of what was happening to me. My consolations are the thought of the moments & days to come-- & of the times in the past when I was able to overcome my laziness & fear &, within my limitations, managed to do more than was expected of me to do what I thought I should be doing with my life, to the best of my fragmentary, developing understanding, tho there no reward was offered or given, & there was often fierce, subtle, long-term penalty; & this moment & day of realization, excitement, clarity! (5) WHAT IS LIGHT? What is light, life, gravity--what are electrons? How does my mind choose its thoughts, or move my eyes or arm? How am I, sometimes, restored to love or health or calm or confidence? When experts in the use of this or that awkward machinery enhance their wealth & stature among more diffident neighbors by synthesizing & pouring forth chemicals whose effects on fish & people they have no way even of approximating-- who will die & who will live, & how, along & in the rivers, lakes, & seas? When the complex living coded genes in living nuclei of busy, living cells are shuffled, force-marched, & square-danced by those who know the narrow tech & the soil & seeds & air put into fashionable clothes, & sent to business school-- who will start & end wars, forest fires, famines, & plagues? Will anyone be able to find & nourish the hard-won sprouts of wisdom & justice in the chaotic midst of politically-connected contractors' employees laying cables & building generators, & the corruption, anxious rationalization, exaggeration & lying for advantage, & the use of greater might to take what you want from whatever hasn't been ruined?-- instead of cooperating to make the most of the root & branch of the sapling, of the child's laughing discovery, of the vegetables & fruits, & the flowers (of even the flowers of "weeds" that delight &, so, strengthen our hearts), of the insects & birds, the worms & other exquisite & diligent transformers of what is left of what was living until yesterday, last week, or last fall-- into what can live--somehow!--again. What is light, life, gravity--what are electrons? How does my mind choose its thoughts, or move my eyes or arm? How am I, sometimes, restored to love or health or calm or confidence? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- uXu #606 Underground eXperts United 2002 uXu #606 The uXu FAQ - http://www.uXu.org/faq.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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