Greetings!

For the next while, I'd like to divide the blog into two parts:
a) What's going on, and b) What goes on. What's going on has to do with the ever-changing illusion we call life; what goes on has to do with that which does not change.
For the next few blogs, allow me to indulge myself by contributing a short poem to the first part and - thanks to all the great teachers and scientists of our times - an illuminating thought to the second part!

Here goes!

WHAT'S GOING ON

                      THE HAWK

Was it the weeds that grew out of the graves?

Or the rabbit’s foot nailed to the gate?

Or the skull of the dog on the road?

Or the sun-parched pump on the path?

Or the abandoned nest in the pump?

Or the bones of the abandoned bird in the nest?

Or all of that, or what? What was it at all

That caused all the tear-fall in the field?

Ah, had I but known why,

Sudden as the silence in the meadowlark’s song,

Raising your eyes to the sky you would print

On the silkscreen of your heart

The black silhouette of a hawk, spreadeagled against the blue,

Stock-still in expectation of some small animal

To bolt and tumble for all time through hot confusion

Into the bone-coloured meadows behind the eyes!

WHAT GOES ON

“All know that the drop merges into the ocean, but few know that the ocean merges into the drop.”

Kabir   (This quotation is also attributed to great mystic poet, Rumi - but no doubt both would agree that it comes from the same Source in any case!...)

Books published

This piece of flash-fiction is just under five hundred words - two minutes of your time, if you have it! 

And if you have another minute to spare, I'd love to know if you thought it was worth the first two minutes!    

                                                                                           

                                                BETWEEN STATIONS         

The announcement on the train apologized for the delay. Power cut. Obstruction on the line. Obstruction?   Months earlier, in Monkstown, I’d seen men in reflective jackets, with bin-bags, combing the tracks. Body parts, muttered someone, gravely.

Feeling servile in the tight-fitting suit I wore only for interviews and funerals, I went over what I’d say about the gap in my employment, what I had to offer, why they should hire me. There’d be a panel, I was told. Deep breath. Time enough. At least there was a view of Killiney Bay. Maybe I’d spot the dolphins. Oh, to be a dolphin.

Porpoises, Cornelius, not dolphins. Only Charles called me Cornelius. On the way into Dublin last year, he sat regaling me with prophesies of doom. Ignorance is slavery, he lisped, stuffing a bunch of photocopies into my reluctant hand. Warnings of an imminent nuclear war were highlighted in yellow, validated by incomprehensible astrological events to which obscure notes and numbers were added in neat, meticulous handwriting. Keep it under your hat, he advised, solicitously.  People aren’t ready for it.  

Fellow-students from the seventies, it was the first time I’d seen him in years.  It surprised me that he’d even recognized me on the platform. All his life he’d remained a teetotaller and non-smoker. His shirt collar was frayed, albeit neat and spotless. He had no watch, no phone, no e-mail, no debts, no cards, no mortgage, no dependants, no responsibilities. At all.  I suppose it must have been his integrity that evoked in me a certain admiration for Charles, envy even, if truth be told.  Before he got off, he scribbled the address of his bedsitter on the margin of one of the dispatches. Greed will be our demise, were his parting words, uttered with a chuckle.

Would he have actually welcomed a war?  A nuclear winter? A windswept planet of insects and grasses?  And if so, why?  Sour grapes?  The vindication of his predictions?  The utter destruction of his loneliness?

I decided to visit him months later, November, I think it was. I wanted to tell him, I wanted to reassure him, that despite everything, despite all the terrible harm we have done and are currently doing to ourselves and to the planet, this life, this astonishing, ephemeral life of ours was just bursting with potential and joy.  

A woman with a baby answered the doorbell. She pointed to a door in the hallway. The tenant, in his vest, also from abroad, drawing heavily on a cigarette, had known Charles only to see. He remembered a skip, a mattress, old clothes, old books.

A pair of fins surfaced and dipped in the bay. Dolphins!  I almost shouted it out. The near-empty train shuddered once, then glided smoothly along the tracks. I wiped the tears from my face, loosened my collar, stretched out my legs and broke into laughter.  It was true, I conceded, laughing.  Life was just bursting with potential and joy.

Gregory Rosenstock

Novels:  WhoCares (2008); Lazarus (2012).

Non-fiction: Be In Me (2013)

Prequel to Be In Me (Be In Me, Q & A) just e-published and pending review. I think it's currently free to download nevertheless - although it might take a few days to reach iTunes, etc.

What is it? It's an extended interview (c.20 pps) about Be In Me, a book on life, death and the afterlife.
(Just kidding. There is no death.)
P.S. And no, it's got nothing to do with religion!...

Enjoy the free download: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/394791
(Feedback of any kind would be cool - you can write a review if you like!)
Published at Smashwords.com