by Carle Phillip Graffunder
A single white-capped wave that crests an ocean’s swell
Itself is not the sea.
In fjords and firths the tides rise higher
Until they almost touch the wings of sea-birds flying there,
But tides are not the sea.
Above them all with fine-tuned sight
Clear-eyed wing-ed gladiators of the open sky
Can see antipodes and back.
Yet the world, though hugely grand, does not reveal the soul.
The zeal of confidence that makes me know what I do not know
May urge me ever on to wider scenes of deed and thought;
But I know glint of light on surface sea does not reveal the deep
Where genies of power guard the graveyard of the sun.
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by Carle P. Graffunder
This is a story I dreamed last night — as much as I can remember.
In my dream I wanted to become a medical doctor. The dream probably came about because I had been considering the years' long unremitting and debilitating pain of a close friend. During the course of the day I had had conversations about pain with two nurses and, independently, with my friend's primary care physician and medical insurance company. So perhaps it was the attendance on these that allowed the dream to become expressed.
The dream centered on a written examination that, if passed, would grant me my medical degree and a license to practice. When, in the dream, the examination paper, a rather copious document, was returned to me, there was a mark on the left quadrant of the page in the margin. It read "42." I took note of the scribbled number with some apprehension. I did not at once grasp the significance of those figures. Then I noticed that they referred to Part One of the exam. That part of the exam took up about two-thirds of the first page. The remainder of the sheet referred to the rest of the exam; in that margin was written "43."
Drawing on my previous experience with grading, I had assumed at first that my grade was "42" for the entire exam, a mark that meant "failure." My spirits, however, perked up when I saw a second score; for I began to add the two scores together. My elation was immediately dashed. A total score of "85," although adequate to pass, was hardly acceptable to me since it indicated a score that was not in the range of "best." That, in turn, meant I could count myself as hardly a notch above "mediocre" as a student. Furthermore, from such knowledge, I could predict that I would be not much more than an "average" doctor, perhaps even "good" but by no stretch of the imagination one of the "best." Chagrined, downcast, and embarrassed, I was inwardly ashamed.
Out of my vision, I gradually became aware in my dream that my major professor who was also my mentor was approaching me. I turned slightly to find him at my elbow. "This is so humiliating," I told him. He looked slowly into my eyes and said, "Someone will always surpass you in one thing or another. Your grade is better than 95 per cent of those who took the test and better than 99 per cent of all practicing MD's. Your job from now on will be to learn the difference between honest ignorance and flim-flam. Take your degree and your license and practice your profession!"
I think the dream was an expression of deep intuition. In my waking life I had given my best for a very long time to find a way to lessen my friend's excruciating pain. I strongly felt the discouragement of failure to do that. But my profound self was letting me know that attempts to penetrate ignorance, even though unsuccessful, are more to be honored than pretense.
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by Carle P. Graffunder
Artwork by Charmaine Frost
Where are the emotions of joy, chicanery, veniality, pride, slyness and craftiness, elation, guilt, desire and any of a myriad of other qualities and experiences located? Indeed, where is imagination, inspiration, character, pain, exuberance, discriminatory pleasures and perversities and specializations of “rightness” and “evil” and satisfactions too numerable to mention?
Volitional aspects in human existence may present other difficulties of magnitude. Research psychologists and other pragmatists long have discarded attempts to find where “paying attention” or “focus your thoughts” or “listen carefully” can be located. Where “real” is long ago passed into obscurity as a field of scientific interest departing with the dictum that a thing is real if it is real in its consequences.
All urges, all fantasy, all insight, all intuition, all goal-setting, all of these and more slip into and out of our consciousness at times and places we can only partially - often, only with difficulty - even describe. To “locate” their “presence” seems even more evasive. It is as if a kind of emperor’s new clothes enclosed in our “selves” and these phenomena. The eye does not see directly. The paths of stimuli are traceable through a series of connections each energized briefly only enough to start up the next. So that what finally reaches the visual field is not what shone in the eye of the beholder. The person believes he is “seeing;” but it is an illusion. When he understands that, he can begin to understand impairments of vision and vision related phenomena such as migraine or dyslexia. So with hearing, we do not hear direct; waves disturb various tissues in succession, the waves are directed by physical engagements to take prescribed pathways to relevant auditory brain situses, in accordance with frequencies to which they are sensitive. What happens if pathways are blocked or misdirected? We have the illusion that we are hearing directly: and to comprehend that is an awakening experience. Such knowledge allows imagination to play a very large part in problem-solving in medical areas. But also the knowledgeable person will begin to get some insight into the fragile and tenuous nature of ideas and of any and all “knowledge.” He can discover that a world of illusion is where he lives.
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by Carle P. Graffunder
The hour has come the Blackbird said
When we must fly or flee.
I’m not quite sure exactly what
EXACTLY we can see,
But if the sky is golden red,
And foggy is the valley,
Then likely it is night or morn;
And now’s no time to dally.
We must escape the Painter’s brush,
Our feathers black must bristle.
‘Twould be a shame if tainted we
Were not allowed our whistle.
We go at once to fly or flee,
But where we cannot say.
It matters not when Jaybirds screech,
Just flap your wings and pray.
The biggest Blackbird (one of them)
Stood up and looked around.
“Why, brothers all,” (said sober-lee),
“Let’s just stay on the ground.
“There’s not a robin, squirrel, or snake
“That’s fiercomer than us.
“And all that ever we must do
“Is simply stop the fuss.”
“The hour is here!” rode on the breeze.
But when or why or wherefore?
No sagely bird did shake his head
With knowing metaphor.
But if the sky is turning red
And foggy is the valley,
Then likely it is night or morn
And now’s no time to dally.
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by Carle P. Graffunder
It was the summer of green pears. Pears didn’t ripen. Rain did not fall. Streams dried up. Green pears, small, tough-skinned, and split open, fell like rain. But there was no rain.
Summer sun and summer heat, long pent, burst confinement. Week after week, day upon day, sun poured forth hour and hour and hour of eye-blurring heat.
Green pears fell like rain to the ground. But there was no rain. No low-lying cloud slaked thirst of twig or tree. Occasional devil dogs languidly rattled dead leaves trying desperately to cling to branches.
So it was that pears remained green and skimpy. From drooping branches unripe fruit with open wounds pelted the parched earth beneath. Dry leaves, desiccated and crinkled by sun, crunched under foot like soda crackers.
Pears were green and fell like rain. But there was no rain. Green pears fell. They were dried-up and small and hard with long, deep gashes because there was no rain and summer had been very hot for a very long time.
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