The temple feels

 1000 years old,

older than memory,

older than time,

deep and dark

from some forgotten future.

 

It smells of sacred shadows,

sweet sandalwood,

sanctuary and eucalyptus.

It smells of the Grail.

 

There is always a candle

burning on the altar,

underneath a portrait

of Lord Krishna,

with his loving eyes.

 

At sunset, I sit alone,

listening to nuns from the convent

chant vedic hymns.

 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from the Twenty Third Century Novel

From "The Book of Forbidden Poems"

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble.  All rights reserved in all media.

 

 

Cairo:

V:  I know that you are in Istanbul this week, but I could swear I’ve seen you several times now. A flicker of a profile at the cinema.  A face peering from a taxi.  A robed figure in line at the bank, your height, build, aristocratic bearing.  A voice heard above the crowd, speaking Arabic with an Oxford accent. Every time, I catch my breath, but every time, the frame shifts and it is clearly a stranger.  Perhaps I am picking up psychic residue of your visit here. Perhaps I am actually seeing “you,” a frequency visible only to me, tuned in for a moment, than gone.  No matter. But it does stretch the imagination to think that bi-location could actually be possible. I’ve heard stories of Tibetan lamas suddenly appearing on the screen of a student’s television set and speaking to them directly, or showing up in one part of the world at the same time as they are giving darshan somewhere else.  I know, I know.  You will say that this is just my wishful thinking. And yet, each of these sightings has me almost convinced that you are in fact here, keeping watch over me as I wander around trying to solve the mysteries of our planet. Which is the subject of this late night reflection.  Had a chance to take a good, close look at the Sphinx today, and I know now that the recent research is true: the erosion is the result of tropical downpours over millennia. This can only mean that this awesome monument is far older than has been previously thought, by many thousands of years, and that it probably pre-dates the Giza complex.  Think of it! Once this region was as tropical as the Amazon jungle, and it is those jungle rains that have cut rivulets in the stone, and stained the surface.  How long ago? Ten thousand years? Fifteen? Twenty five?  Which immediately leads one to wonder, who were these ancient architects and builders?  Where did they learn to work stone with such precision and elegance? Who were the gods they worshipped?  Were they perhaps survivors of some planet-wide cataclysm, rebuilding their lost world?  Oh, young Ahmed is here with the camels. I know, but I have to do this. Go ahead and laugh.  A temperamental, smelly camel cannot compete with an air-conditioned Mercedes. But sometimes one makes sacrifices to enter other realities, yes?  We are going to ride through the Giza complex (thanks for setting up the special permits), and then I will stay alone overnight in the King’s Chamber. Please never tell me how much or who you had to pay for this indulgence for me.  Will give you a full report, hallucinations and all. The terrorist attacks on tourists continue, but this is primarily further up the Nile, and is being greatly exaggerated in the press.  Am getting ideas for the new interactive 23 Century novel!  Will you help? Will you play this new game with me? You have once again inspired me, totally, helplessly, passionately. Now you must be a muse (ha ha) for this latest creation…   Enshallah!  S.

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from The Twenty Third Century Novel

"The Book of Virtual Reality: The Journey of S"

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble.  All rights reserved in all media.

Come join the Camp Happiness: Creative Writing Workshop

 

 

 

 

 

In these fast-moving times, when friends appear and disappear like koi rising to the surface of a pond and then sinking again, when connections are made and then dissolve with sometimes heartbreaking speed, how can we know where to trust, where to put down roots, where to safely tell our stories and speak our secrets? I believe it has to do with a seventh sense, a hidden resonance, a field phenomenon. When there is a true connection, when there is an authentic meeting of hearts, something happens that transcends the limitations of words. There is a force at work which eludes description, but it is felt. It is realer than real. It functions in an almost hyper-reality. It blows in with hurricane force and you know your life will never be the same, and you have no choice but to ride the wind. You might call it “the reality beyond words.” A great architect once wrote that “Architecture is the spaces in between.” Perhaps our truest and most trusted friendships are the ones where we discover this sudden, transforming fullness, this luminous nothingness, this overwhelming calm. The very emptiness and wordlessness of these spaces fill us with ethereal joy. We enter into a sanctuary, a stillness, a celebration of the soul. And we know that in this friendship, we will feel forever free, forever loved and safe, forever at home.

journey

 

 

you

are on

 your necessary

 journey

 

I

 am waving

 to you

 across

 a wide

 river

 of  time

 

here

 in this poem

 I send you

 peace

courage

and prayers

for a safe

return

home

 

 

alex noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN

“The  Book of Moments and Epiphanies”

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

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war terror children fear security middle east iraq friendship family child youth boy girl tank military army weapons

They said “Your husband did not feel anything.”

 

They said: “He would have seen a blinding light, and then, nothing.”

 

They said: “No Ma’m, there is no body. There were too many fragments.”

 

They said: “We have brought you this flag, anyway.”

 

They said: “You should be proud, Ma’m. Your husband died serving his country.”

 

They said: "Please stop crying, Ma'm. Please.

 

They said: “You will get about $600 dollars a month to compensate you for

the loss of your husband, but we cannot pay funeral expenses when there is no body.”

 

They said: “We will provide government counseling services at a discounted

cost for you and your son and daughter.”

 

They said: “We have to go now, Ma’m. We have twenty other widows to visit

in your city today.”

 

They said: “We are sorry.”

 

And then, they left.

 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Forbidden Poems”

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo Courtesy of www.morguefile.com

 

 

 

I am the Girl

 

I am the girl

waiting for you

in the April rain,

holding up the sky

with my silken tears

 

 

I am the girl

in the Café

at the Musee d’Orsay

sipping tea

and reading

Heisenberg

listening to the thunder

trying to understand

what the thunder said.

 

I am the girl

in your poem,

the girl in the red beret,

the girl in the rain

you must never meet

because then

the world will end,

 or stand still, or begin

all over again.

 

 
I am the girl

who loves the Doors,

who walks in the April rain

to place lilacs

on Jim Morrison’s grave

in the Pere Lachaise.

 

I am the girl

who comes to you now

only in dreams,

walking

through a storm

in some parallel life,

perhaps in Paris,

in that museum café,

taking delicate bites

of a madeleine,

remembering a future

when the world

floated away

floated

away

in a dream of silken spring rain.

 

*******

 

In the Bois de Boulogne 

 

This pale

waning moon

partly hidden

and sullen

behind an ancient oak

in the Bois de Boulogne

peeks out

as though not wanting

to be seen,

 

not wanting to be seen,

by her,

like a paramour

from the past,

glimpsed at a party,

 

a paramour

who did her wrong,

made promises,

never kept them,

left

without saying goodbye

and now pretends

he never knew her name.

 

Alex Noble

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Forbidden Poems”

 

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo Courtesy of www.morguefile.com

In the lavender

a flurry of emerald wings...

hummingbirds hover.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Moments and Epiphanies"

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo Courtesy of www.morguefile.com

time zones

 

 

my day draws down

to an indigo close

 a cool ocean breeze

breathes through my room

like a blessing

a chorus of frogs

welcomes in the night

 

your day now begins

even as mine ends

 I see you sitting

in the spring sunlight

outside a small café

in Brussels

sipping a latte

and reading a railroad map

 

as I am writing these words

you suddenly look up

as though hearing your name

called from a far distance.

 

I whisper through the time zones,

it’s me, it’s me,

your angel of the morning

and I am beside you, now.

 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Forbidden Poems”

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Digital Art by Alex Noble

 

 

 

 

 

 

simple pleasures

 

 

 

 

heavy morning fog                                                                              sitting very still

 

                  having no expectations             listening to the owls

 

butterfly beach at sunset                                                     the poem you sent

 

  your letter                                           gathering white sage                     the muse

 

 

“we live in a time when one fifth of all our genes are owned by someone else, and an unsuspecting person and his family can be pursued cross-country because they happen to have certain valuable genes within their chromosomes”

 

lighting sandalwood incense                                                                      sending a prayer

 

            seagulls circling in the wind                                        the marina at dawn

 

your calm voice on the phone                   having no expectations                  white sage

 

       orange blossoms                       journeys                                           heavy morning fog           

 

 

“a cradle of ideas – historical, philosophical, literary, scientific and religious – the library of alexandria was unparalleled in the world. But fifteen hundred years ago, it vanished into the mists of myth and legend – its vast bounty of wisdom coveted ever since by scholars, fortune hunters, and those who believe its untold secrets hold the key to ultimate power.”

 

 

butterfly beach at dawn                    burning white sage                       talking to you

 

          the smell of incense               writing a poem           rice paper moon, pale sky

 

sunlight on spring leaves            a humming of bees                           your letter

 

knowing we will return           water in the creek         eating a nasturtium blossom

 

 

“two thousand years ago, mary magdalene hid a set of scrolls in the rocky foothills of the french pyrennees, a gospel that contained her own version of the events and characters of the new testament.”

 

 

writing this poem                               collecting the fragments                 like this

 

nasturtiums                    a quiet refuge                                      bees in the lavender

 

incense smoke in the late light                                                        wind in the sycamores

 

         fallen pine tree                                      always hard to explain

 

tide pools at rincon                           the waves in moonlight            campfires

 

 

“the topology of time strings in visible electromagnetic radiation…(and ,later) every time we look at the sky we go back millions of years. we can travel through time just by looking out the window.” 

 

just sitting still                             making sense of it          pine trees in the fog

 

             your letter from                   surfing before dawn        queen anne’s lace

 

I was thinking about you                the smell of the sea            high tide

 

“manipulating string theory may make it possible to witness the past in the present. by breaking down particles of light, and accessing the code hidden within each fragment. they theorized the possibility of experiencing everything from dinosaurs roaming the earth to the crucifixion of christ.”

 

you write: I will be back

 

                                 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Forbidden Poems”

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

"Rincon Beach at Dawn" - Photo by Alex Noble

 

  |
 

I feel as though I am thinking your thoughts again. This happens often these days. You are perhaps reading this on a train. I would like to write many things to you, but realize my letters might not be delivered, even if I use beautiful, rare stamps. You are looking out the window now at Monet's haystacks in early morning light, in snow, in blue shadows. We are resigned to our respective solitudes. I went to a movie last week about Carthusian monks, who live in silence. All of us live in silence, but some silences, like ours, are deeper than most.  I never know when I will hear from you again. It is all a mystery. You are an enchanted forest, a castle perilous, a calm lake in the wilderness of my extraordinary life. Ah, now you are crossing Van Gogh's famous bridge at Arles, now you are passing through apple orchards in full bloom. We are crossing a bridge, we are always crossing bridges, you and I. We cross bridges in search of the journey, the deep self. I am here, writing these lines, gardenias from the garden on my desk, owls patrolling the late night woods.  When you return to your office, my poems and letters will crash around you like friendly waves, surrounding you with light, or grief, or longing.  It is in this sense that words are dangerous - always the surprise of them. Bridges. This is what the rain means: we all love somebody else, we know it, we know it.  When we met, for that hour in the cafe in Cap D'Antibes, (did I dream that?),  I couldn't get enough of the sound of your voice.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Forbidden Poems”

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

 

 

What are Soul Friends?  Soul Friends are like Glass Wing Butterflies: fragile, exquisite, rare.  Soul Friends are like mirrors in which you can see your best self, reflected.  When you are having a conversation with a Soul Friend, you feel more expansive, more intelligent, more at home with your deepest and truest self.  A Soul Friend never makes you feel “less than”, apologetic for who you are, not good enough, guilty, inadequate, unwanted or unneeded. A Soul Friend is at all times there for you, through the horrible times, and in the triumphs, with no judgment, no criticism, no demeaning remarks, no false praise.  A Soul Friend brings an indescribable energy into your life, an energy which is dynamic, positive, hopeful, affirming. Instead of focusing on your current crisis, the Soul Friend will support you in seeing all the opportunities that you can harvest from whatever seems to be going wrong, and will bring instant, constructive and creative support.  If you have fallen into a deep dark well, your Soul Friend will not only let down a rope ladder, but will send down a bouquet of roses and a bag of chocolate chip cookies, and sing to you while you are climbing back up to daylight.  A Soul Friend is someone you can call in the middle of the night without apologies or hesitation, and cry your eyes out if you feel as though your world has just fallen apart. A Soul Friend will meet you anytime, anywhere if asked, and will be there with you for as long as needed for you to regain your peace of mind.  How does one attract such extraordinary beings?  How does one bring these rare, priceless, beautiful creatures into one’s life?  It is simple: to attract Soul Friends, practice Soul Friendship with abandon, with delight, with no thought of return, with no agenda, with no strings or conditions or reservations. You will begin to notice something wondrous. Your true Soul Friends will begin showing up, invisibly at first, quietly, without show or fanfare. You will realize that there is a true Soul Friend over here, and another one over there. Shimmering wings! Kindness. Gentleness. Humor. They will appear in surprising ways when you least expect them. And as your Soul Friends start filling up your life, you will know, with a calm and clear certainty, that you will never be alone again.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Moments & Epiphanies”

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Kyoto:

V:  I am just groggy enough from all the flights it took to get here from Katmandu that I am hearing what sounds like Jimmy Buffet singing “Wastin’ away again in Kurosawaville.”  This may not seem funny to you when you get this, weeks hence, but I am having to drink so much tea right now to stay awake that I should be forgiven for synapse lapses. Remember all those misty, woodsy Kurosawa landscapes that form the tapestries against which his profound storytelling takes place?  (Especially the “Sunshine Through the Rain” sequence in Dreams.) That is what I mean about “Kurosawaville.” I took the Bullet Train down from Tokyo, slept a few hours at the Kyoto Imperial, picked up your letters, and then was chauffeured out here to this Ninja fortress ( I don’t know what else to call it) in the foothills where the VR conference is taking place.  From the outside when you drive up, it looks like just another Fourteenth Century Samurai outpost, but the minute you pass through the Great Gate, you sense that all is not what it seems, (sort of Pirandello Moderne) and this impression is immediately confirmed as an elegantly kimonoed doorman takes over your arrival. Geishas float by silently, heads slightly bowed, tiny shoes tip tapping on the Carrara marble lobby floor. Everything is hushed, formal, almost Kabuki. The Kabuki Hilton? I ask myself, and then the next thing I know I am whisked up into the most palatial suite I have ever stayed in, bar none. Eat your heart out, Plaza Athenee, Four Seasons, Ritz Carlton.  Any hotel we can do, they can do better.  A Geisha in full regalia is bowing herself in to explain the interactive room service features to me. I may be in a data-base. If I am not back in a month, send in the clones. Back soon…S.

 
Kyoto

 V: Good heavens!  The Room Service Flight Instructor’s name is Hiroko, and she is taking a year off from her Phd. with Negroponte at the MIT Media Lab!  Hiroko explains to me that Room Service operates by means of a simultaneous translation program for what looks like every dialect spoken on the planet. She has been a co-designer on the remarkable software that is in beta test at this here Kabuki Hilton. Just look up at the ceiling, she tells me, and  say, with force (“con brio”) “HAI! Croissants with smoked salmon” and down in the kitchen, the Cyber Food Geisha  hears it in perfect Japanese, and in 5 minutes, the croissants with deep sea Alaskan smoked salmon is being set out, with a scattering of orchids, on your antique laquer coffee table. And this is not that toxic farm raised salmon, mind you, but smoked deep sea salmon. It is clear that no expense has been spared to make our karass (that’s Vonnegut-speak for happy little family) of Virtual Reality visionaries right at home. You have to say the “HAI,” as this triggers the translation system. Hiroko places a rose- red Cartier leather folder on my desk with the Room Service Users Guide, remarks that she is hoping to take some time off to attend sessions of the conference, and is off to her next tutotial. I address the ceiling, and faster than the stroke of a Samurai sword, my smoked deep sea salmon arrives.  All of this is astonishing and rather pushes the boundaries of bushido, at least for the purists, one would think. Remember Inverlochy Castle, north of Glasgow where we hid out after the film festival a few years ago? This makes that palace look like a back street budget hostel in East Berlin, I kid you not.  I am about to get a tour of all the Main Control Center (Danny Hillis designed the patrallel array, very beyond state of the art), so must sign off. The rooms are wired into the conference center, so if you want to take a jasmine bubble bath and watch Jaron improvise on the theme of nanotech brain implants that can store every movie ever made you just wave a magic silver wand (the sword of the New Millenium Samurai!) and voila, a flat HDTV screen glides down and there he is holding forth to a room of international tech types.  Hmmm. Maybe I’ll just cocoon right here and take advantage of the digital amenities of the world’s first total cyber-hotel. Have I died and gone to techie heaven, or what? More later. Sayonara. S..

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Virtual Reality: The Journey of S"

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo Courtesy of Kyoto Visitors Bureau

 

Entry Code:  5-20-2300

 
Xanadu Database: Planet Metafor Expedition :Camp Metafor Archives.

 

Description: Partial Folio of Four Poems, Titled The Coyote Poems, printed on sand parchment, cover lettering in silver. Author unknown. Five illustrations. Provenance, Camp Metafor Great Hall, The Library...

 

************************************************************************

 

 

 

The First Poem

 

Coyote waits in the shadows

and only comes out when she feels safe.

She listens for the snap of twigs,

leans into the whispering night,

breathes in the crisp green smell of  pines.

She calls to the owls, knows their names.

 

Coyote is a creature of shadows,

these shadows of God are her angels.

They keep her from harm

until she feels ready for the full light of the sun.

Then she will dance, and sing her Coyote songs.

 

She listens for your voice.

 

If your voice is true and kind,

if she feels your welcome, and kindness,

if she connects with your most inner dreams,

Coyote will turn her head in your direction

and watch you with her whole being,

attuned to every signal you send

that will help her to understand you

as you are even now in your new life.

 

Do not be afraid of her because she is a Wild One,

do not think that there is any harm, there in those shadows.

She waits patiently, waiting for your Urth eyes

to adjust to the surrounding darkness.

Step by careful step, Coyote will move closer,

but not too close, for she does not wish to frighten you.

She wants you to know she is a Friend, a Friend of many lifetimes.

Coyote knows she has much to learn from you,

and even now her eyes fill with tears of silent joy,

tears you cannot see, but they mirror the tears in your own.

 

Coyote surrounds you with prayers for your journey,

and being a Guardian, offers her brave Coyote-life

for your protection, comfort and peace.

“Greater love than this, there is none, that we

lay down our lives for our friends.”

 

We wait, sending healing love across the Great Darkness.

We wait, like Coyote, careful not to move too quickly,

measuring the wild music of the wind.

 
***

 (Poems Two, Three and Four currently in digital cataloguing. Please check in again)

***

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Metafor"

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

 

 

 WRITING PRACTICE: FRAGMENTS

 

When in doubt, start small.  A blank page can look formidable.  We wonder where on earth we will find words, the right words, to fill it up.  The good news is that we do not have to follow in the steps of Tolstoy, Proust, or even James Joyce.  We can “write small.”  We can put just a few words on the page.  We can write haiku-style epiphanies and share moments of insight.  One of the most well-known and written-about poems in the English language is William Carlos Williams poem, The Red Wheelbarrow:

 

so much depends

upon

a red

wheel

barrow

 

glazed

with rain

water

 

beside

the white

chickens

 

 

I recently wrote a poem titled “Simple Pleasures.”  (See my Alex Noble Blog).  I decided that I would go out into the woods and gather “fragments.”  You will see some of these fragments in the poem, others came to me as I was writing.  For this particular poem, I decided to also include fragments from several books I have read recently about genetic engineering, the library at Alexandria, the Magdalene manuscripts, and String Theory. I was interested in the juxtaposition between the very simple and the very complex.  But I could have written several short poems using just the fragments that appear in the poem from my hour of observation in a forest meadow by a stream.

 

Because this is about “writing small,” I am going to quit here, with a suggested Writing Practice Exercise for you.

 

EXERCISE:  Get away from your desk and go out into nature, or to a favorite coffee house, or out to a lake, or down to the beach, or to a Farmer’s Market.  Become a spy.  Look, listen, smell things, notice everything that is going on around you, and write down fragments. Don’t even let yourself write full sentences. This will be a temptation, but resist it. Just write down the fragments: two words, three words, five at the most.  This is like yoga, just keep going. Do the practice. Look, listen, smell things, notice, and write it all down. Then, go back to your desk and write a short piece in which you arrange the fragments. Try not to be too serious or too rational. Let the words write you. That’s it!  Have fun, and be sure to share your results in the Optional Assignments section!

 

 

Alex Noble

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Writing Practice and Wisdom for Writers”

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,

and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

 

Note from Wikipedia:

 

The Red Wheelbarrow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Carlos Williams' 1923 poem The Red Wheelbarrow exemplifies the Imagist-influenced philosophy of “no ideas but in things”. The poem, written in two minutes or so, portrays the scene outside the window of one of Dr. Williams' patients, a very sick child he was attending. This provides another layer of meaning beneath the surface reading. The poem is intentionally plain and lucid. Williams was trying to veer away from what he saw as the “European” verbosity of his peers (T. S. Eliot, for example), to create a typical “American” image with his poem.

The subject matter of The Red Wheelbarrow is what makes it most unique and important. He lifts an ordinary scene to an artistic level, exemplifying the importance of the ordinary; as he says, a poem “must be real, not 'realism', but reality itself." In this way, it holds more in common with the haiku of Bashō than with the verse of T. S. Eliot. Bashō, a master of Japanese haiku, wrote poems that are somewhat similar to The Red Wheelbarrow (e.g., “Moonlight slants through/The vast bamboo grove:/A cuckoo cries”).

 

I live on a street called Moon.

It is very quiet here.

The evenings are as transparent

as the voices of nuns at sunset

singing Gregorian chants.

 

Several times a day I get calls.

I get calls from a man named Michelangelo.

At least that is what he says his name is.

He always asks the same question.

I tell him the answer can be found

in that place, just over there,

where we take responsibility

for bearing the gift of God into the future.

 

And you, you live on a street called Sun,

not far from here. Your evenings, too,

are transparent. You also pause, close your eyes,

and listen to the clear, angelic voices.

 

Several times a day, you also get calls.

Yours come from a lady named Silence.

She always asks the same question.

She wants to know where she can find

her lost innocence. Each time she calls,

you tell her to check out the Lost and Found

at the Trailways Bus Depot.

She never understands.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Neighbors”
 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Illustration, "Pathways to the Sun" , (Feathers applied on cotton) from the Nazca Culture, South Coast of Peru, 400-800 AD

 

 

 

I live on a street called Rose.

You live on Tennessee Williams Avenue.

One day we will meet at the Country Market,

perhaps in the Fresh Garden Produce section.

 

I will look deep into your eyes.

We will make small talk about the weather

and conjugate verbs in the Language of the Soul.

You will ask me out for dinner.

I will blush. You will insist. My eyes will get misty.

I will feign protest and say something innocuous

about how it is all so difficult,

so difficult here in Middle America.

 

I will perhaps talk about how much easier

it used to be, when we traveled

on borrowed passports, under assumed names.

You will hint at your service

in an unnamed government agency in Chile.

 

Putting a five gallon jug of Simple Green

in my jumbo-sized red shopping basket

(the Country Market bought these used from Costco)

I will look at you with my blue-eyed small-town smile.

You will return the smile, like a ship

at sea, signalling to another ship passing by:

“You are in a shipping lane. I will rescue you!"

 

We will arrange a rendez-vous in another lifetime,

perhaps at Sam’s Club, or Best Buy, or Office Depot.

We will buy notebooks and post-its together, maybe even pens.

I would be the Queen of Roller Disco.

You would be the King of Metafor.

We will exchange cell-phone numbers,

writing them secretively with Magic Markers,

on the backs of Bonus Bingo cards.

I will make a vow to become fluent

in several obscure Mayan and Aztec dialects

so that we may tell each other stories in our dreams.

 

Well, if not in the Country Market, Sam’s Club,

 Best Buy or Office Depot, maybe we will decide to meet

in the Main Street Fluff 'n' Dry Laundromat,

where we will wash away our past and present lives

with biodegradable Seventh Generation suds.

 

Or you will move away, or I will move away,

And it will all have that undefined quality,

that je ne sais quoi, that nostalgia

that you feel, when the thing you had hoped

for so long would happen, never happens

and that feeling of fading anticipation you have,

waiting by the telephone for a call,

a call that over the years, you slowly realize,

will probably never come.

 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “The  Book of  Neighbors”

 

 

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

 

You ask about unconditional love, as we sit in Plato’s cave, watching the dance of shadows on the wall,  wondering about this idea of unconditional love, mulling it over, intellectualizing it, twisting and turning it in our minds. We have come in from a long day of fishing in the small bay, our nets empty, and we ask ourselves over and over, what is unconditional love? Why are our nets empty? Day after day, we throw our nets of selfhood out into the world, and catch nothing. No one, it seems, will love us unconditionally. Why is this? Surely there is a secret to it, the same way there is a secret to knowing where the schools of fish are, the same way there is a secret of secrets to knowing how to find and live this thing called unconditional love.  Yesterday I took a long ride through the backcountry, north of the city.  There were old ranches, weathered barns, groves of bright gold lemons and deep green trees full of shiny jade avocados.  There were stands of eucalyptus trees stirring in the wind, small ponds, cows and horses grazing in green spring pastures.  I thought about how I love you unconditionally, and how full the net of our friendship is, when I draw it up out of the deep turquoise sea. Perhaps the hawks know this secret, but they float high overhead on silent wings. I think the hawks have known for a thousand years, and if we listen, they will tell us. The hawks fly free.  Back in Plato’s Cave again, writing these words, I realize that unconditionality in love has to do with practice more than possession, with peace more than prohibitions, with letting go rather than fearful holding on. Would there be war, or famine, or poverty if the world lived within a matrix of unconditional love?  What is it that happens when we know we are loved without strings, obligations, requirements, boundaries or demands?  “To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” Surely, this is when the nets of our souls fill up with an abundance of joy, confidence, enthusiasm, strength. Surely, this is when we know we can live our dreams and attain our highest potentials. We love unconditionally because we can, because it is the right thing to do, and because this is the most direct way to experience and share the great love of God.  We love in this ultimate way because it is a path of joy, and because we are the ultimate beneficiaries. Where, then, do we start in this practice?  We start where we are, here and now, around the fire in this shadowy cave, honoring the freedom and identity and unique selfhood of those we love. We let them go. We have no expectations. We put no limits on our love. We do not say, as most of the world does: “I will love you only if…”  We say instead: “ I let you and those I love fly free, and watch you soar, and ask for your blessing for my own flight.”  And in this new found freedom to fly, we are at last able to leave this shadowy cave of the past, step by trusting step. We are able to leave behind our doubts, fears, limitations and ignorance. We realize that those whom we love most are the ones who most need our blessing of freedom.  A favorite poet puts it well: “It’s that I care more for you, than for my feeling for you.”  Such is unconditional love. Welcome to the sky.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN: “Notes from the Soul Country”

 Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop,and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo “Summer Solstice Parade Workshop,” by Alex Noble.

PROLOGUE: IN WHICH THE QUEEN OF URTH RECEIVES A MESSAGE

 

The Queen of Planet Urth knew that the only way to look at glaciers is from the deck of a luxury cruise ship. The Queen knew that rowboats and other small craft do not fare well near glaciers. They tend to go kerplunk and capsize when large chunks of the glaciers fall into the water, which they are doing a bit too often these days. This is how it happened that the Queen of Planet Urth chartered a first class ocean liner and made a queen bee line straight to the biggest glacier in Glacier Bay, Alaska.  She always thought about things more clearly in the presence of natural phenomena like volcanos, tropical hurricanes, tsunamis and disintegrating glaciers, and there was definitely a need to think about things now, the sooner the better. Strange things had been happening to her lately. She was having warning dreams, visions and premonitions, having to do with the safety and survival of her beloved home planet. Her only planet, actually.  And so once safely anchored in Glacier Bay, she sat, waiting for something to happen - anything: a call, a signal, or a revelation. What she saw in front of her was a lot of very old ice, on the move, at the speed of six inches a century, or six feet a century, she couldn’t remember exactly, with all the things that she had to remember as Queen. But she was convinced she had come to the right place.

 

The blue that she saw in the crevices and caves of the biggest glacier in Glacier Bay was as blue as anything she had ever seen in her life.  This blue was bluer than shadows on the moon. It was much bluer than Billie Holliday or Muddy Waters.  It was bluer than stolen sapphires, blue suede shoes, or the egg of a Lapis Lazuli Ostrich.  It was a blue bluer than a waltz, bluer than the first hour of evening, bluer than the ponds in Monet’s Water Lily paintings. Bluer than one of those thirty foot waves at The Pipe in Hawaii. It was much, much bluer than those blue neon boots of the seventy-five foot blue neon cowboy she had seen on a sign in Times Square.  It was a blue that said: “Get ready for an Invasion. And please do not scream.”  An invasion? she wondered out loud. What oh what could this possibly mean?

 

The Queen needed more information, and she knew that this blue blue glacier could give it to her. She knew if she stared hard enough at a particular spot on the glacier, that she could, through the sheer power of her applied imagination, drive a wedge of insight into the ice and send a chunk of blue large as a locomotive splashing into the sea, opening to her the History of Time and All Things. So she stared, just the way she stared at clouds when she wanted to punch holes in them. Sure enough, in a few minutes, a large crack appeared. It was the deepest blue she had ever seen, blue as a unicorn’s eye.  The crack widened and widened until suddenly, with a great crunch and the crinkling sound of thousands of breaking crystal glasses, a chunk of ice the size of the Coliseum described a graceful arc into the ocean.

 

What was left in the glacier was a large blue hole, so blue that it could hold all the blue light that ever lit up the inside of Chartres Cathedral, and that is a lot of blue light when you think about it. Approximately fifteen hundred seals bobbed up and down on their ice rafts, whiskers wondering what was going on, and what was this ship doing in their backyard, anyway. The Queen, telepathically, got her message from the heart of the glacier. It shook her down to her Gold Blahnik Arctic Boots. Incredible! She felt faint, but also deliriously happy.  The Queen blew the glacier a kiss, while the whole bay rocked with waves. She thought they were dancing, but she could not be sure. She smiled a smile that wriggled its way through several time warps and wormholes. This is good, she thought to herself. This is very very good. She called the ship’s Captain on her radio-phone, and told him to head for home.

 
This is a kind of a love story. It takes place inside the heads of the King and the Queen,  who have not met yet, but they will be meeting soon, again and again, always for the first time.  This is a story about unconditional love, a handsome visitor from another planet, holograms, the completion of Einstein’s Field Equations, Cosmic Central-the smartest computer in the universe, psychic powers, heroes on a journey, a new religion, Coyote, the quest for meaning, romance, show business, a Conspiracy to bring Light to Urthlings, cowboys and Indians, alchemy, Julio-The Unicorn Who Helps Love Happen,  The Singularity, sacred texts, psychic archeology,  event horizons, surfing, puzzles, fourth dimensional physics, the pyramids on Planet Metafor, The Database at the End of the Universe, social cyber-networks, redemption, and happiness ever after. And so beginneth the romance of the King and Queen.

 

Please pick up your password, and proceed to enter the novel. Your Guide for today will be Merlin.  Your server for this part of the novel is The Database At The End of The Universe.

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of The King and Queen of Roller Disco”

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo of Margerie Glacier, Glacier Bay, Alaska from www.morguefile.com

 

 

I live on a street called Wilderness

just north of Solitude

and  parallel to Discovery.

Last night it snowed

and now the cars float by

as though we had never been introduced.

 

Several times a day I look up at the sky

     and watch words tumbling down:

adjectives, verbs, nouns.

This morning, I saw a “ceremony” and a “balloon.”

It is so exciting.

Sometimes, I see whole sentences.

They remind me of you.

 

You live on a street called Mysterious.

It is in another town, not far from here.

I would walk over to see you

if I knew the way.

 

You are like some strange Faberge secret.

I am afraid to get too close.

Once, just after midnight,

I thought I heard you breathing.

Or was that just the wind in the pines?

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Neighbors"

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

 

 

 

I live out in the suburbs on a street called Blue Tango.

I know that sounds a bit racy, but Blue Tango

is actually a bit of an anomaly around here.

This is just your plain vanilla up tight bedroom community,

like so much else here in the Home of the Free,

Land of the Brave, barbeque in the back yard nation.

 

There’s Jefferson, Hamilton, Adams, and Washington.

And then my street, Blue Tango. God knows

how these things happen. My mind boggles

wondering which NuNited States Presidente

got bumped for Blue Tango, and when, and why.

Maybe I should call Thomas Kuhn, the Anomaly Guy.

Is Blue Tango the precursor of a paradigm shift?

 

You have it better. You live on a street called Light My Fire,

right between Hibiscus and Bird of Paradise, over from Hendrix Way.

I’m willing to go on the record here: I like your neighborhood

oh so very much better than mine. Was there a Doors fan

on the City Planning Commission when street names were assigned?

As I was saying, I like your neighborhood better.

It is the only part of town where you can salsa in the streets,

set firecrackers off all year long, build Particle Accelerators,

explore the wonders of The Tenth Dimension,

and keep (Wild) Pink Flamingos on your front (Astroturf) lawn.

 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Neighbors”

Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo from www.morguefile.com

 

The Role of Art

 

 

1.  Are you concerned about the state of your society and the health of your planet? Is too little being done to sustain your confidence? Does your future and the future of your children seem threatened?

 

2. We are making a movie about how you saved Planet Earth. You are the star. Here is your script. Please feel free to make any changes which you feel will make the story more compelling.

 

3. FACT: Religion must allow ecstasy some scope if it is to maintain its vitality and vigor!

 

4. MUSIC! DANCE! LANGUAGE! MAGIC!

 

5.  We admitted we were powerless over our addictions – that our lives, organizations and planet had become unmanageable.  We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to health and sanity. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the loving care of this Power as we understood it.  We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, our institutions, our nation-state, and our planet.  We admitted to ourselves and others the exact nature of our wrongdoing.

 

6. Is this Art?

 

7. Some Artists have assumed the ancient role of the Shaman, “the technician of ecstasy,” whose job in a tribal society is to have visions in a trance state and record those visions in poetry, song and the visual arts for the therapeutic benefit of the community.

 

8.  As Artists, is it possible for us to create changes of perception in the collective global consciousness of such magnitude that as a species and as individuals we will be motivated to enter into large-scale, focused and effective planet-healing activities?

 

9.  Toxic waste disposal sites are ideal targets for terrorists.

 

10.  How then shall we live?

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Minamata - Powers of Ten"

 Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo from www.morguefile.com

***

 

Note on Title of MINAMATA: POWERS OF TEN:  Minamata, Japan, is best known as the former site of a major environmental disaster caused by industrial pollution of the bay with mercury. From the 1930's to the 1960's, a chemical company dumped tons of mercury into Minamata Bay. Thousands of people living around the bay developed methylmercury poisoning through the consumption of contaminated fish. The victims suffered from severe neurological damage, which later became known as Minamata Disease.

For a sense of the scale of the universe, watch this short film, POWERS OF TEN by Charles & Ray Eames, (just posted at my HAPPINESS BLOG) which has become a classic, and given meaning to the extraordinary dimensions attainable by just adding a zero again, and again, and again.

 

 

Web User (requests a webpage)	Internet Service Provider (connects user to Internet)   Internet Diagram: Data flows from a website host computer to the user's computer. See discussions below	Routers
Host Server  (web site) "serves" page to users	Virtual Name Server	Root Server

*******

THEY MET ON THE NET
 

(In Which the King and Queen Meet for the First Time (Version 1.0) )

 *******

 

The King and Queen might have met:

 

1)  At a ham and chicken church supper in Nashville, Tennessee.

2)  Sharing a Post Cold War Root Beer on the Trans-Siberian Express.

3)  Waiting in line at Virgin Space Lines for tickets to the first commercial flight to Mars.

 

As it happened, the King and Queen met incognito on a terrifically cool social networking site, where, for six months, they knew each other only by their network code names, Aeschylus and Aphrodite.  The theme of the forum that brought and kept them together was “Cyber-Culture in Transition: Techne and Logos at the Singularity Café.”

 

Their first exchange of ideas took place over a period of 23 hours during which neither the King nor the Queen ate, slept, or did any Disk Defragging. During this first googlogue (being a huge dialogue, beyond the imagination of mere mortals), certain key servers melted down and had to be replaced, and 54,000 complaints about cable outage were registered with cable providers in six midwestern states.

 

Philosophically, emotionally, grammatically, and spiritually, this cyber-collision was a planetary seed-crystal experience of both intended and unintended consequences. Neither the King nor the Queen would ever be the same, forever bound throughout space time by the tensegrities of Bell’s Theorum and old fashioned Divine Love. Heisenberg looked down from wherever he is now and felt validated. Forever changed by each other, forever changing, the King and Queen entered hyper-reality at Warp 50 speed.

 

Our love-starred couple knew not shapes, sizes nor colors. They saw no felicitous outlines of face or form. What flew from ISP to ISP, from e-mail to e-mail, from heart to heart was pure thought which manifested itself in bytes, megabytes, googles, and terrabytes of ardor and awakening.  As they each printed out thousands of pounds of recycled chemical-free text, in order to preserve their encounter for posterity, the sheer volume of paper streaming out from their laser printers threatened to encase them in tombs of their own prose, bury them alive in their love.

 

With all the impassioned purity of Heloise writing to her ardent Abelard, the Queen poured out her astonishing life-story.  With all the bravura of Browning, Robert, writing to his beloved Barrett, Elizabeth, the King for the first time in his life bared his biorhythms and unmasked his ego. Oh, the thrill of it! Thousands of data packets streamed through space-time in asynchronous transfer mode to draw these two ineluctably closer and closer together, into a digital union that approached Kurzweil’s Singularity.

 

Mind locked in on mind. Concept caressed concept. Verbs hugged. Apostrophes blushed. Paragraphs parted their sweet lips in smiles of recognition, promising penultimate and concluding sentences sweet as Creation itself.  An electronic Eve reached out her invisible hand to her advanced technology Adam, but wait! wait!  Eve offered Adam

not the fatal Gala Apple of times past, but a gift of true happiness, friendship, and ideas. “Let’s build us a civilization,” she said.  “Whoop-de-do!” answered Adam.

 

Millennia sniffed the wind and wondered if the home planet was in for some kind of perfect storm of enlightenment and change. Primitive life forms wiggled  in their murky swamps, dinosaurs looked up from their dinners of palm trees and hibiscus shrubs, Bengal Tigers huffed away in their blue jungle sanctuaries, polar bears took the day off for ice-games. It was just that kind of history-making thing.

 

Desktop to desktop, the King and Queen discovered each other in the dark first as raw data, then as information, then as memes, then as categories and finally as whole libraries of potentiality – libraries interlinked, interlocking, interactive and most of all, inspired. Desktop to desktop they interfaced in user-friendly compatability,  and it all happened without a touch, without a tear, without so much as a sibilant sigh. The sheer flow of idea-energy that flooded and flowered between them was enough to fill several intergalactic guidebooks, and certainly enough to jump-start at least twenty-three new planets.

 

This ardor, fervor, and coherent light generated by the King and Queen in their digital adventures catapulted back and forth across the continental United States with such force that it created a radiant glow at several power stations.  This spontaneous luminescence was briefly mistaken, outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico, as a new kind of UFO.

 

Over the months to follow, the King and Queen knew each other soul to soul through their microelectronic transmissions and typing, posting and pasting skills alone. They embraced chastely, demurely, and dreamily in the electronic ethers of Web 2, 3, 4 and 5.

 

They agreed that meeting at the ham and chicken supper in Nashville, Tennessee would have been much too Southern. At the time, she was involved with a space biologist, and he was smitten with a neuro-linguistic programmer. They went into a secure, private chat room for an hour to talk about that close call on the Trans-Siberian Express, and how awful the root beer was.  As for the time when they were waiting in line at Virgin Space Ventures, well…who knows? But here, now, meeting like this on the terrifically cool social network was perfect. It had just the right touch of classification, invisibility and anonymity, to best discover their authentic and integral selves.

 

Hoo Boy!  A genuine Twenty Third Century Cyber-Love Story, masquerading as an old fashioned romance!

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of The King and Queen of Roller Disco"

 Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

 

Don’t Cry, Baby, Don’t Cry, Don’t Cry

 

1.  Can you get other people to care the way you do?

 

2. Conscience is what hurts when everything else feels marvelous.

 

3. These are the days of miracle and wonder. This is a long distance call. The way the camera follows us in slo mo. The way we look to a song. The way we look to a distant constellation that is dying in the corner of the sky. These are the days of miracle and wonder, don’t cry, Baby, Don’t cry, don’t cry.  (Paul Simon. Late Industrial Age Poet).

 

4. What themes are coming across to you in this performance? You can be honest. No one is watching:

 

 

 

5.  Are you an addict?  No, really, I want to know. And while we’re at it, how about the company you work for? Companies can be addicts, too, just like people. How about your Nation-State? Nation-States can be addicts.  And your planet?  Is your planet an addict?

 

6.  FACT: Throw away a soft-drink container and you throw away the energy equivalent of half a can of gasoline.

 

7.  What is consciousness?

 

8.  FACT: A single nuclear submarine costs as much money as the annual education budgets of 23 developing countries with over 160 million school-age children!

 

9.  Television is infrastructure, binding space in shared time, binding variety in shared context. Amythic TV is a mass of statistical, demographic, and actuarial effluvium guided by the marketing paradigm. TV, as a cyber-nautic tool, is a subsystem within a higher and more complex matrix of information processing. It is access fed back to process, and it is planetary.

 

10.  How then shall we live?

 

 

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Minimata: Powers of Ten"

 Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo by Pablo Gonzales Vargas @ www.morguefile.com

Note on Title of MINAMATA: POWERS OF TEN:  Minamata, Japan, is best known as the former site of a major environmental disaster caused by industrial pollution of the bay with mercury. From the 1930's to the 1960's, a chemical company dumped tons of mercury into Minamata Bay. Thousands of people living around the bay developed methylmercury poisoning through the consumption of contaminated fish. The victims suffered from severe neurological damage, which later became known as Minamata Disease.

For a sense of the scale of the universe, watch this short film, POWERS OF TEN by Charles & Ray Eames, (just posted at my HAPPINESS BLOG) which has become a classic, and given meaning to the extraordinary dimensions attainable by just adding a zero again, and again, and again.

 

Lessons in Water, in Rock - 1

The light focuses, a pattern emerges. You
can be sure

that most of your questions will resolve themselves eventually.

Nothing is harder than this: those
quicksilver changes

Of mood and meaning that contain your
past and your future.

It has all been a prelude, each moment
leading you on

to this inevitable encounter. Not the
struggle it used to be,

no, now the gears mesh easily, and you
give it no thought at all.

 

Given half a chance, you would take
responsibility for it,

But no one has asked, and you hesitate
to volunteer.

Overhead, in the apartment upstairs,
strangers argue fine points of global politics

that have always eluded you, except now
it is so much more serious.

The balances are more delicate, the
stakes higher.

You reflect on the precarious state of
things.

 

Much of what we’re talking about here
has to do with coming home,

finding a place inside yourself and then
extending that place to the larger world,

until finally you move into that utterly
still atomic center of things.

In the course of your journey, that
which is not essential

tends to fall away, to dissolve, even as
vapor trails across your sky at sunset

dissolve in the fading evening light.

 

You have always known it would be like
this,

although the exact configurations of it
eluded you.  Now there is time to look
back,

and see how each step was necessary, how
each disaster

contained a seed of truth.

These seeds which you planted and cared
for

provide the grain that now sustains you.

What was it you knew? Only that toward
which your soul yearned,

however undefined and distant your ideal
was then. The ideal, of course,

is complete within itself, and carries
within itself whatever is required.

 

You have a role to play, but that role
is never what you first think it to be.

At first you think it has to be this way
or that way, and you become busy

about many things, trying this, trying
that.

You plan, outline, connive, speculate,
and try to bend all circumstances

to accommodate that which you believe
you must have.

It is so tedious, this wishful thinking.
It is an exercise in self-will

that leaves you exhausted and desolate.
Your fatigue is dense,

layered with the rock and sediment of
your unfulfilled dreams.

What was it that seemed so urgent? Now
you are left sitting alone

in your room, feeling like a character
in an Edward Hopper painting,

and your sparse furniture casts long
shadows across the floor.

How can this be, you ask the wind. You
did what was asked of you,

or at least what you thought was being
asked of you. You followed the directions

that came with the package, that
brochure written in six languages,

and you can read all of them except
Korean. You did your best.

No matter. Eventually you realize that
you must begin all over again,

and you slowly retrace your footsteps
back to Square One.

You do not pass GO, you do not  try
to collect the two hundred dollars.

 

Walking on the white shore at noon, sunlight
glancing off of jade green waves

(bright noon of shells, cypress, and
sand dunes shifting beneath the wind)

you begin to recapture fragments of the
original Grace, the gift you nearly forgot.

And yet, it has been here all the time.
The air around you dances with light.

Nothing is easier than this new
beginning.

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Lessons in Water, in Rock”

 Please visit
DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS:
A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in
all media.

Photography by Alex Noble

 

Soul Repair Kit 101

 

 

1.  Identify situations, people and associations in your life that make you lose your equilibrium, and put them at a safe distance, behind a firewall, where they cannot disorient and disrupt you. Resign from burdensome or crazy-making commitments.

 

2.  Dismiss psychic troublemakers altogether by telling them that while you will always hold them in your highest prayers, you can no longer continue the relationship and to please leave you alone now.

 

3.  Spend as much time as you can by the sea, and when possible, meditate at the bottom of large waterfalls. The negative ions will be better than years of therapy.

 

4.  Create a safe sanctuary where you can be alone and stay as long as you need to, doing nothing. Refuse to make apologies for your need for some peace in your life.

 

5.  If there are people in your online life who send you messages that annoy or disturb you, depending on your mail program, set a “rule” that will send messages from these
folks off into what Tennessee Williams called an “oubliette,” a folder where they will be forgotten until you wish to deal with them. At some point, you can do a “block sender” and get rid of them altogether. Thus does technology support privacy and sanity if we know how to use it.

 

6. Visit the nearest zoo, natural history museum, art museum, and botanical gardens. Don’t ask why. Just do it.

 

7.  Plan a trip to somewhere that nourishes your soul, even if you cannot get away for awhile. Still, plan the trip in great detail and put the itinerary in your Dream Box.

 

8.  Learn how to tell friends and associates that you need a “time out.” This will result in being able to take control of unpleasant situations, on your terms. Let people know that you will be back at some point, but cannot specify when. Ask them for their loving support.

 

9.  Make a list of your ten most favorite things to renew and refresh your mind-body-spirit, and do them.

 

10.  Learn to spend at least half of your day without using the telephone or computer. Develop a low-tech lifestyle that does not depend on electronic addictions. Use the time you free up for service to others, to the world, and for development of your own spiritual practice, health, creativity and life-skills.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Notes from the Soul Country"

 Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

Photo from www.morguefile.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live on Via Greta Garbo in the Valley. I am very shy.

I’ve always had trouble getting to know people,

and I’ve  lived a very private life, until I met you.

 

You live on Hemingway Road, in Key West, near the beach.

We collided when you dialed my number by mistake.

I liked your voice, and your poetic, extravagant soul.

Now we do e-mails and tell each other our secret dreams.

We write to each other like kids playing in the woods.

We reach out and share moments of happiness and pain,

and talk about the things that matter most.

 

What I want to know is: What is the future of love?

There are a thousand faces to love these days.

How many people can one heart hold, or, like the

proverbial Greek bus, is there always room for one more?

How is it that technology can bring total strangers together,

as though they have known each other through many lifetimes?

What kind of love is this, when we have invisible

best friends in cyberspace we have never met in person?

I suspect there are millions of people who ask this question,

and that it is not just us. It may be the whole world.

What are the possibilities and potentials of infinite, unconditional love?

 

So here we are. Why is it that our paths have crossed?

I think some playful Fate or Muse conspired

to put us in touch with God’s pure Grace in human form.

Here, we are at long last free to speak our truth

as it must be spoken, as we must learn to speak it always.

Is this the perfect therapy for our wounded and broken souls?

Is this a place for troubled hearts to feel safe and loved at last?

Is this how our lost inner children find their way home?

 

I often think about you, down there in the Keys,

and I pray for you, as you chart your perilous course,

setting sail into the unknown in search of your true life.

I know there are thousands of miles between us,

and worlds of dreams and stories yet untold.

Though we may never meet in this short lifetime,

I am writing to you tonight to tell you I love you,

that the moon is full here on Via Greta Garbo

and I know it is shining down on Hemingway Road  as well.

 

I can hear the sound of the waves, and smell the sea.

I am there in the boat with you, casting my lines into the blue deep.

I am writing to say that no one gives me more than what you give me,

ever and always the courage to begin again.

 

 

Alex Noble

 

 

 

An Excerpt from 23CN:

“The Book of Neighbors"

 Please visit DIVING DEEPER: A Writing Workshop, and CAMP HAPPINESS: A Weekly Blogazine

Copyright C 2007 by Alex Noble. All rights reserved in all media.

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