I’m six years old and you hand me a loaded rifle.
That’s what this is, isn’t it?
Your talk of love?
Don’t you know how dangerous this is?
I might hurt myself.
I’ll almost certainly hurt you.
What wild impulse had you handing over such power
to this clumsy child?
Why not have me stand on one foot
balancing a Ming vase on my head?
Why not hand me some scissors
and send me pelting down the stairs?
Why not assign me the job
of air traffic controller at Tullamarine Airport?
Why not give me your heart?
Yes. Why not?
11:10pm Sunday
14.November.2004
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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Two weeks from now ~
by now I would be swollen
heavy with life
two heartbeats
two brains, four eyes,
four hands, four legs,
sixteen fingers and four thumbs
a tangle of toes
two heartbeats
two lives, inseparable, entwined.
Two weeks form now you would begin
the drawing away
the endless days, endless dance
of merging and separating.
Mouth to breast
we would continue the joining
Mouth howling, spewing a new generation’s words,
milk and food vomited
rejected
we would continue to part.
Two weeks from now I would look into your eyes
and cry
for your terrible beauty
and terrifying dependence
and I would wonder
will you learn the piano
better than I?
Would my love of language have passed
through your umbilical cord?
Would the cutting of it
amount to a separation, abandonment
beyond redress?
Will you forever hate me in a tiny corner of your heart
for evicting you,
for teaching you to stand
on your own two feet,
wobbly and unsure
afraid of the alienness of terra firma?
Will you hate me for holding on?
Hate me more for letting go?
Two weeks from now
one of the animals will have departed
the Ark.
Would you be bewildered, dazed and lost
forever seeking the twin of the pair?
Would you, like me,
know yourself as complete
and yet still long
for Noah’s myth
Noah’s guaranteed continuation,
the immortality
of the twosome?
You were the only one ushered into the Ark,
my littlest one,
and you debarked long before
we ever reached port
And two weeks from now I will arrive at the appointed meeting time
and you will not be there.
You were never evicted, little one,
and it is I,
not you
left feeling abandoned
and utterly rejected.
If your father could only see me now
would he feel anything
but sick
with relief
that you are
not?
5:10pm Monday
18.August.2003
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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This morning I have been following links from fox’s page over at Chasing Shadows Again. Yes, I am incredibly lazy and having someone else do all of the hard work of finding good sites to visit! Fox wrote of the Poets Who Blog site and the latest post there is about a carnival they’re having. To be a part of it, you must send a link to your personal favourite poem on your blog and WriterWoman will list these links on her site on the 26th of May. The deadline for submissions is midnight of the 25th. It’s a wonderful way to gain readers for your poetry. Here are the details on entering.
The debate I am now having with myself is whether or not to submit a poem link and, if yes, which one. Given that I’m not writing anymore, it seems somewhat fraudulent to be asking anyone to come and read my poetry. My reason for even considering it is that I HAVE to do something to inspire myself. I realise nobody else is going to be able to prop up my ever-waning self-esteem but I’m not going to deny that it helps to think that SOMEBODY out there believes I can write. It’s a belief I no longer hold… never really did to begin with but now, definitely don’t! (Writing that, I just successfully talked myself OUT of submitting a link 
)
So, to every poet out there, Poets Who Blog are offering a shop window in which to show your wares 
Go to it! I know I, for one, will be checking back there on the 26th to follow all of the promised links back to their treasures.
(Which reminds me, if you’re anything like as lazy as I am, fox really does host a treasure trove of wonderful, interesting links… I won’t even mention the pirate underwear! )
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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I’ve just been reading around Dazed Kitsune’s site, Letters To Strangers. The site’s introduction, Why Is This Site Here?, is a painful, thought provoking anecdote about the connections we fail to make, the conversations we fail to initiate, the kindnesses we cannot accept. At the same time, it displays a trust and faith in human beings that is simply beautiful. How does the saying go? “There are no such things as strangers, only friends we have yet to meet.” It seems appropriate to the idea behind this site. We say on so many occasions, “It’s a small world”, yet we fill it with spaces and seem wary of closing the gaps. This site is a bridge and I’d hate to see it go to waste. While being untrusting of strangers seems to be something we instinctively instil in our children these days, it is a sad indictment of society and one I wish we could do without. Well, here is a place for reconnecting. For random acts of kindness… for talking to the world and knowing one will be heeded.
The other stand out post here posted under the date January 08, 2007 and makes for a fitting segue to the introductory post.
Culture and love and faith are far too great (and beautiful) things to try to appreciate in any context like what they are being squeezed into. Fragmenting things into shards small enough to grasp makes them into less than the sum of their parts.
Read the entire post to put this excerpt fully into context. It’s extremely well thought out and another example of Dazed Kitsune’s interesting and thought provoking take on the world in which we live.
All in all, a site well worth the visit and definitely worth contributing to.
Update: On a related note, I’ve just read Jeremy’s post entitled, Random Acts of Kindness and How They Blow The Mind. A timely read, indeed. I should probably write this up separately but, since it’s all so intertwined (to me, at least!), I’m adding it in here.
I went to see Nine Inch Nails in Melbourne on Sunday night. Blessed with a ticket and a night’s accommodation from my friend, Rob. With regard to acts of kindness and being stunned by them, Rob’s efforts in that direction cannot go unmentioned. Don’t ask me what a five foot two woman of less than a hundred pounds was doing in a mosh pit… but there I was. Front and centre at a NIN concert! Rob had been looking forward to this concert forever…. and spent his time being a human barrier between me and those around me. To ensure I didn’t detract from his enjoyment of the evening by giving him cause for worry, I got out of the pit after the first two songs (this also ensured I returned home intact!). At any rate, there was NO reason whatsoever why he should have been looking out for my well being at such a time. He paid for the tickets, it was his concert…. yet he kept part of his mind at all times on where I was and if I was okay. Later that night I actually wound up in tears because of it. Not because he’d done something so horrendous, but because it’s been so long since a man has been kind and considerate of me with no thought of repayment or reward. I know this sounds terribly sexist, but I had honestly forgotten men could be thoughtful and kind – not without wanting something in return, at any rate. I’ve been involved with someone for the past five years and I have taught myself NOT to even want such consideration. I found out on Sunday how much I miss it… and how much it means to me. To be given priority. To be cared for.
As Jeremy stated in his post, one can grow quite cynical about human beings out in the big, bad world…. and it is truly stunning to find that it’s not so bad after all. In fact, people can be incredibly sweet, stunningly beautiful and so very kind.
I think Rob’s kindness really woke me up to the possibility of being loved. I had forgotten that anyone could actually care about me, could put me first. It’s been a long, long time.
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
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‘A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.’
Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
First of all, I must state that I am far from being an expert on any of the three intermingled topics to follow. I feel compelled to write on these subjects because I have hit a wall of frustration and cannot see where the truth lies (pun intended!)
Earlier this evening my mother dropped by. She’d just attended a church meeting which hosted a lecture on Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ – I’m sure some of you have heard of it? For the record, my mum is a Christian…. a true believer. Also on the record, I am not. My only qualifications in writing on these topics are a) I’ve read ‘The DaVinci Code” and b) I’ve read The Bible. The former has been foisted upon the public as fiction and no one has come knocking at my door trying to sell it to me or threatening me with eternal damnation if I don’t subscribe to the statements made within the book. As for The Bible, it was spoon fed to me as a child and delivered up on cold Sunday mornings when I was dragged out of bed and off to church for my weekly bout of brainwashing. I guess I’m making my stance a little clearer, yes? I have nothing against Christianity and do, in fact, follow its basic tenets. For instance, I’ve never murdered anyone ~ well, not yet anyway. Nor do I covet my neighbour’s wife ~ she’s too old for me and I prefer petite over portly. As I’ve never been married, I can’t be accused of adultery ~ and I can’t recall a line in the ten commandments about aiding and abetting, although possibly my memory is failing on that count and/or I’m indulging in sheer sophistry. I don’t “take the Lord’s name in vain” out of respect for my mother ~ but I’ve been known to call out to him during some of the more climatic moments of my existence ~ how could that be wrong? Doesn’t such usage imply not only a degree of belief, but also an exclamation of gratitude, praise and acknowledgment of god’s miraculous creations? (Oh, how I love the body made in his image!) On the same note, I have yet to steal ~ not for lack of trying! I have merely borrowed and always returned him after I was done with him ~ in better condition than when I found him, I might add! I think I might be straying from my point here ~ sidetracked by memory.
Lets see, what else? ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’. Since I don’t have any on my list at all, the order of said list is a moot point, but I guess, technically, I could be said to hold true to this one. No graven images? Please god, explain why you created artists? Even primitive man was moved to finger-paint the walls of his home with the things he found beautiful and worth remembering and I find it difficult to believe that anyone who has created such things felt compelled to do so out of hatred for god. So, old fellow, you can keep your jealousy and your curses upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, okay? My, such petty vindictiveness ~ not a thing I want to find in a god nor a trait I have any wish to emulate.
Keeping the Sabbath day holy is easy enough. Only two things; firstly, is it Saturday or Sunday, I’m forever getting confused. Secondly, if the day is to be one of rest and spiritual communion, please explain, god, why you let my mother force me out into the freezing cold, placed me on a hard wooden pew and surrounded me with people smelling of mothballs and self-righteousness? She’s one of yours, god, so I’m guessing you condone such cruelty. Oh, and your representative at the pulpit? A mind on Valium with a heart to match it! You condemn a person for working on the seventh day and yet you made me endure that droning moron and spend two hours fighting relentlessly against sleep’s siren call? How much harder can a girl work?? As for honouring my mother and father, even your dutiful daughter, my mother, believes such honour should be earned. Don’t get me wrong, it was there as stipulated in the beginning, but a person can fail to hold a person’s respect and I think allowances should be made before you go pelting me with brimstone and cremating me over a slow turning spit!
I must admit that this one is my favourite, although I’ve already touched upon it:
‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour’s.’
The day I get a hankering for an ass or an ox is the day I deserve to have my mortal coil ripped from my body as agonisingly as possible ~ none of this ‘gently shuffling off’ business
After all of that rambling, my point is that I’m a relatively good person and, while I don’t follow Christian teachings, I respect the basic premise and I certainly lean more in that direction than toward Satanism! 
As for The DaVinci Code, I enjoyed it as a good read, nothing more. I didn’t rearrange my entire belief system ~ what there is of it ~ to accommodate the theories and speculations it contained. I didn’t run out to become a founder of a neo-Cathar cult. I can’t even say I was surprised or overly stimulated by it. The only reason I claim the last is because I read, a decade before, ‘The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail’ by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln. Two of those authors attempted to sue Dan Brown for plagiarism and I can’t say I blame them while, at the same time, they must realise that their speculations were also lifted from other sources and not original. To quote Wilson Mizner, ‘Copy from one, it’s plagiarism; copy from two, it’s research.’
At any rate, I read Dan Brown’s book and thoroughly enjoyed it as a work of fiction
Now finally to the point of all of this. (You knew I’d get there eventually ~ didn’t you?) When my mother called around tonight and I enquired about her meeting, she unleashed a ‘fact’ on me which I have been unable to verify. What she said was that, supposedly, a Muslim financed the majority of the making of The DaVinci Code film. To me, I care as little as if she’d stated that a person with green eyes had done so. Seriously, so what? Yes, sure, Muslim fundamentalists went on a psychotic rampage when cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed were published in the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, back on the 30th of September, 2005 and, from there, were quickly disseminated around the globe. From what I’ve read on various Christian web sites, blogs and newsletters, they feel The DaVinci Code is a far greater attack on their religion than anything Muslims have had to contend with, and are all busy patting themselves on the back that the Pope hasn’t issued a papal bull ordering the death of Dan Brown and the leading stars of the movie which followed. So far, I can’t find a single non-Christian source to back up this claim of Muslim funding. If anyone can provide me with a reliable source, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, it’s almost irrelevant to me. What frustrates me more is that a great many of the people reporting such things have not even read the book and seem to conveniently overlook the fact that it is a work of fiction and never claimed to be otherwise. What fascinates me is the response to it from the Christian community. Aside from their lack of curiosity (I LOVE playing ‘what if?’ The more far fetched the better!) there is also such a huge outpouring of what can only be referred to as ‘the lady protests too much, methinks’ ~ said lady being the church. What I want to know is, what are they all so afraid of? Why so threatened? If their own faith is strong, why should they care what others think, say or write? Shouldn’t a true Christian feel nothing but compassion and pity for the poor schmucks who are ‘taken in’ by such ‘nonsense’? Why this overwhelming need to defend their religion? Is their conviction that they hold the truth so fragile that they worry those yet to join them will be seduced by ‘the dark side’? Surely the truth should be self-evident and not need a PR rep. and people running around taking care of damage control.
Talking to mum tonight, it seems she believes that EVERY book written after the bible is fiction. I get frustrated on a few levels. One, yes, I’m a tad envious of her indomitable belief in ‘and they lived happily ever after’ ~ even if one does have to die to be blessed with such happiness. Two, since she became a Christian (around twenty five years ago, I think), I’m not sure that she’s let a single other thought inside her mind. Her belief seems more a barricade to me than a gateway to truth. When I question such simple things like: ‘But what about the job of translating the original works into English? Aramaic is a difficult language in that it has many a line and a squiggle attached to individual letters ~ tiny little marks which could easily be overlooked or misplaced, thus changing the meaning of both the word and the sentence. When it comes to a possible confusion such as ‘Jesus walked on the water’ rather than the possible ‘Jesus walked by the water’ how can one not be curious about the possibility of error? Then we have reports of new papyrus fragments found, long lost gospels and other archaeological findings which may change ideas that many hold to be facts. But no, she will not hear of them. They’re not in the bible, therefore, they are not The Truth. I have tried discussing aspects of the bible with her because I WANT to understand and, I’m sure, there’s a part of me that wants that blind trust in something bigger and better, more kindly and organised than myself. I have tried and, while she doesn’t seem to react as though I’m attacking her ~ which I’m not ~ too many of our conversations have devolved into three words from me: ‘But what about?’ and from her: ‘Because it just is.’
That answer would never have satisfied me as a child, how could anyone expect it to satisfy me now??
It’s not an answer; it’s a belief. Without it, I can’t understand her and, without a sense of curiosity and the wonderful mind game of ‘what if?’ she can’t understand me. As I wound up saying to her after I’d spent an hour or so banging my head up against her bible, ‘There is none so blind as he who will not see. That can apply equally to both of us.’
The thing is, she only considers me blind. She knows the truth!
‘I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.’
~ Galileo Galilei
‘I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure — that is all that agnosticism means.’
~ Clarence Darrow, Scopes trial, 1925
‘I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.’
~Sir Stephen Henry Roberts (1901-1971)
© Melinda Chambers. All posts are the creation of the author and, as such, remain the author's property with all rights reserved.
- The Thing With Holding On
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- Can’t or Won’t?
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- How Convenient
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