City of Legends

Has it really been more than a month since I last posted here?  Wow.  I have been so busy with the new books, my work at deviantArt.com and outside pursuits.

I have been bad. 

Make you a deal;  I’ll do better.  Let’s hear a poem.  This one is entitled "The Alchemy of Flesh"…
 

Faint scent of you remains, stamped in my soul.
The chemistry becomes magic and I
am but another crucible to roll
over the flames and melt base metal, my
contribution to arcane ritual
you make of me, take from me to merge
the frail shadows of souls we are, eventual
victims of desires, boiling to verge
on the moment of incandescent heat
into the alchemy of human hearts,
gold, platinum and silver slivers sweet
as arsenic, swallowed to follow parts
we vivisect ourselves for, mysteries
of futures hung upon our histories.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

I am not unaware that my latest work, a seven poem cycle using the sacraments of the Catholic Church as metaphors for romantic and even erotic imagery and actions, has created a stir.  I expected it to.

But the truth is, I am an heretic.  Always have been, always will be.  But for clarity, let’s set the record straight about these seven works.

• Nowhere do I use obscene or profane language.
• The romantic and erotic imagery is established as being in the framework of a lifelong, committed and yes, wedded union between two individuals, specifically myself and the Sunday Girl.  It is not a call to excess, adultery or self-flagellation.  Okay, maybe a little self-flagellation.
• It is beautiful, soulful and one of the most proud accomplishments of my life to have penned these.  I include what is almost certainly the only surviving haiku of my career as a writer, a sonnet and a return to my own triskadekian canto form. 

The seven poems are:

• Baptism:  The cleansing and public conversion rite, making the transition, marking the preparation to receive the spirit.
• Confession:  Admitting past mistakes and errors in judgment, making clean and clear the way.
• Communion and Absolution:  The taking of the flesh and the blood into you.  In this case I literally used this (and some Catholic friends are NOT happy with me right now) as an allegory for oral sex, where flesh and body fluids are exchanged and taken into one another to blur the barriers between one body and the other.
• Confirmation:  Affirm what was said in the throes of passion, the morning after.
• Matrimony:  The haiku.  A proposal made and answered within a specific time of year.
• Last Rites:  A sonnet of the passing of one who is beloved, in the arms of their lover.  This damn thing just about killed me to write, for by this point in the write I was inside the sphere of this love.  To one day be so parted from her will be unbearable.
• Ordination:  A triskadekian canto of how love is meant to be witnessed and proclaimed, that to love is like taking on the vestments and becoming an evangelist for the person you love.

Controversial, of course.  Beautiful, undeniable.  All my love to the light that passed through me to the page, my beloved Sunday Girl.

I have loved little compared to how I
should have loved; unconditionally when
that which is best in me conquered nature
and I thought for less of myself than those
for whom my heart quick-tripped and skipped behind,
finding a peace, a joy, and a purpose
in the weaving of the amomancies
that might win me a look, a kiss, a night
that would inspire the memories that life
demands if we are to believe in love.
And, for all the idols of clay and blooms
that proved naught but mythos and corruption,
I am content that I have loved, as well
and as earnestly as mortals should dare.

William F. DeVault.  all rights reserved.

My friend Thomas asked me the other day under what conditions I see myself remarrying.  I said he asked the wrong question, as I think it is easier to answer under what conditions would I see myself not getting married again (for those of you late to the party, I have been married, and divorced, twice).  That doesn’t count two significant relationships I have had over the years where we were so certain we would end up together that we referred to each other as "husband" and "wife" in our correspondences.  No names, please.  No, neither was a jungle cat.

I told him that if I die before I finish this sentence, then I certainly would not be marrying again.  Makes sense, you know?  I don’t control the clock and I don’t know if I have moments or decades to go.  Not my zone of control.

Also, if I were to fall into stone-cold, punch-drunk, poetry-inspiring, mad, passionate, insane love with someone that it was just not possible to marry, or who would not marry me, I would not marry a stand-in.  Unfair to me and to them.  So, in that case, to be true to my heart and my beliefs, I would forego marriage.

And of course, then, there’s always the situation with my children.  If they tried to come between me and my children, it would be a non-starter.  I am not diminished in my belief in love, but such a position would speak to the character of the person and in a manner that would indicate that they are not going to be well-suited to sharing my life.

That’s about it.  Nobody on the horizon, at this exact second, but you never know what might happen now…or a year from now.  Thomas posed a few hypotheticals, but none of them really seemed like a true barrier.  Some things may complicate a courtship or a marriage, but, as Westley points out in "The Princess Bride" even "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while".

Maybe I have to reconsider exception #1?

As Cyrano himself pointed out, love is a much misused word.  Alas, I live in a world full of people who can say "I love Diet Dr. Pepper" with as much gusto as they say "I love you" to their child.  Having been more than once accused of loving unwisely and unwell, I think I shall abuse the word yet further and tell you, gentle reader, a few things I do love.  Including Diet Dr. Pepper.

1. The smell of pine
2. The sound of a sleeping child
3. Sunrise
4. Sunset
5. A surprise ending to a book
6. Kissing
7. Spooning
8. An unexpected conversation
9. The scent of a woman
10. The movie "Scent of a Woman"
11. Brave, futile, heroic final acts
12. Red velvet cake
13. Redheads
14. The sound of my children laughing, even if at my expense
15. Anyone I have ever said "I love you" to.  I find it impossible to fall out of love and sometimes even love more with time..
16. God.
17. Those who seek God.
18. The possibilities in the next century, decade, year, month, week, day, hour, minute and second.
19. Rediscovering something I’d written and forgotten.
20. The feel of clean socks
21. Being held, for no reason.
22. Holding a woman while she sleeps
23. Doing the right thing, even if no one knows about it
24. Being recognized for doing something well.
25. A good sneeze
26. Exploring another’s mind, heart, soul and flesh.  Ideally at the same time.
27. Saying "No" when it needs said.
28. Bats.  Especially their little, urgent faces and the way they fly like they are on drugs.
29. Lemonade sherbet
30. The colours red, purple, black and gold.
31. A blisteringly hot shower
32. Letting my beard grow on weekends.
33. Laying in the snow in shorts and a t-shirt.
34. Cooking.
35. People who actually listen without prejudice.
36. Charity.
37. Brave and constant hearts.
38. Finding someone who is kindred in more than just a label.
39. Being surprised by another person’s talent.
40. Billy and the Beaters.
41. Electric-blue lighting.
42. The sound of rain (conversely and perversely, I hate the feel of it on my skin).
43. Being trusted.
44. Opportunities.
45. Learning something new.
46. Comets.
47. The memories associated with every scar on my body.
48. Puppies, kittens and all young animals. 
49. The fearless way some birds regard people, heads cocked.
50. Making love as an expression of love.
51. Forgiving people.
52. Dreaming.
53. Writing something unexpected.
54. The scent of night blooming jasmine.
55. Epiphanies.
56. Graciousness.
57. Diet Dr. Pepper (even though it is toxic)
58. Lemon chicken, done right.
59. Jazz drunk dialing me in the middle of the night.
60. The quiet confidence of my brother David.
61. Dante (my son) and his brilliance
62. Elric (my other son) and his tortured soulfulness
63. Peri (my daughter) and the way she pushes me around so easily.
64. Every victory ever won by everyone I ever loved, even if it was over me.
65. Sanity.
66. Passion.  And the will and skill to express it.
67. Matthew Sweet’s live rendition of "Girlfriend"
68. Achieving a moral victory that an opponent can’t even comprehend.
69. "All That Jazz", the movie
70. Chocolate.
71. My Dad.
72. My Mom.
73. The grit of my brother, Robert.
74. The intellect of my brother Mark.  And his sense of humour.
75. Becky, my sister, and her ability to be the only sib of my generation without a divorce or two.
76. A promise kept, even after decades.
77. Grilled Mahi.
78. The works of David Mamet
79. Winning the war with an audience.
80. A woman who roller skates.
81. Watching a woman apply makeup.
82. My poetry bros, Larry Jaffe and Dan McTaggart.
83. Unanticipated invitations, flirtations or royalty checks.
84. Legs.
85. The way my sons look at me as if I am crazy when I start singing hard rock songs while fixing dinner.
86. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog
87. A woman’s sigh.
88. Commitment.
89. Women with accents.
90. The contented sigh of a dog after a good run.
91. Buttercups.
92. Everyone.
93. Life.  But also, I love my curiosity and faith about what comes next.

I could keep going for days, and probably still miss some key items.  But, I just wanted to share for a moment or two…

A friend of mine reminded me of this quote from Mahatma Gandhi. Always a fan of the guy.

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

I was going to show solidarity today with an organization that has asked its members to pick a day and do a single-word blog post, but I got sidetracked. Maybe tomorrow.

I got a note today from an old friend, praising the tracks they had heard off of Evangelist, most notably Kitabu, and pre-supposing that the title cut to the CD was going to be an expression of anger or remorse.

Ha!

First off, I don’t have time for anger in my day…I get angry, when I must, for seconds at a time. You can blink and miss my anger (be thankful, it isn’t pretty). My view of the human emotional palette is that it contains three primary colours; love, rage and fear. Love has an outward vector, by its nature it is dynamic, as it generally means there must be some kind of flow outward to express it. Rage (or anger) and fear are different, you can bottle those up inside until they eat a hole in your intestines. I have enough forces acting against me in the universe, I try to keep those two (rage and fear) out of my life. They are disabling elements.

No, Evangelist is more an expression of how powerful love is and the aspects of love as they impact us. I speak of the futility of not loving or of loving for its own sake, but not with anger or fear. It’s an interesting cut.

I got slapped around a bit yesterday by the Mad Gypsy herself, Karla Frances Sasser, in the course of a wide-ranging discussion of our former involvement and why it didn’t hold. It was interesting to find out that she and I hold different definitions of what it was, and different perspectives on what went wrong. Then we discussed the empath’s role in finding disastrous liaisons. Empaths should not touch. Anything.

Winter comes in its own time, we cannot dictate nature. Spring is capricious. We do not control the fates.

I have seen people, younger than me, fall and never rise again. Touched dead that which was once warm and vital and giving of life. I have buried friends and seen people pass into the grey, where they wait for the worms for decades, already dead, just failing to decompose.

I have friends and loved ones who are bent and broken, people I love on the cusp of life and death, and have watched the clouding of a soul, unable to do more than cry out to the heavens for mercy for those too far into their own darkness to see light or find their way out of the shadows.

It is a graceless world, a time and place where mediocrity, if the volume is loud enough, passes for excellence. Where we celebrate the antics of emotionally retarded pop stars over men and women who everyday do heroic acts we ourselves would probably shrink from. This is not a time of excellence, of exceptional accomplishment, but of self-righteous failure.

Commitment is not a sprint. It is not something to be accomplished in a moment or an hour, but in a lifetime. We measure not the fall and rise of days and weeks, but of decades and eternities as the hand-span measure of our souls and hearts.

I would rather have an ounce of truth, of love, than an ocean of anything else.

I contacted my editorial committee (sans one) this evening and ordered an immediate review of the tracks on Evangelist.

I am dissatisfied with the overall tone…I want something transcendently joyful and hopeful, and the current motif is a bit too…um…not funereal, but more defiant than celebratory. A man shaking his fist at the heavens instead of bathing in the light.

It’s gonna be a long couple of days…but I am seeing colours I had all but forgotten. I am wanting to express this sense of joy and gratitude and that love, even when it is rough and difficult, is still better than the greyness most people wrap themselves in out of fear and pain.

The Evangelist has his message.

Thank you. Love is the message.

Oh, my sons think I am losing my mind…seems they caught me a little bit ago, fixing dinner while iPod’d to The Spinners Rubber Band Man. Could have been worst, they didn’t catch me during I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

I would rather live my life as ronin than ever love another.

I love, therefore I am.