Arisbe's topics - tribe.net

November

Frank — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:18:20 GMT

The day of the dead
Of the dead
Hhas turned into night
Into night
The doors are swinging shut
Swinging shut
The doors between the worlds
Between the worlds
But not before one summoned
One summoned
With leather mask, fermented grain
Fermented grain
Appears within the circle
Within the circle
The circle of the heart
Of the heart.

©2007 FP Purcell

posted in Arisbe - 0 replies

Who are all these people?

Frank — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:23:04 GMT

So a visitor to my personal Tribe page reasonably asked. I had chosen a series of photos of people who have inspired me at one time or another, intending to upload them to this community. Instead, being very tired, I put them there. It might amuse you to drop by and take a peek. Some you will know of. Perhaps of some you will say, so, that's what (s)he looked like. Paul Foster Case, Manley Palmer Hall, Valentin Tomberg (the anonymous author of Meditations on the Tarot), Noor Inayat Khan, Ortega y Gasset, Abhishiktananda (Dom Henri le Saux OSB), Dayananda (Dom Bede Griffiths OSB), the Emperors Franz Josef and Karl, that fellow with the long name who founded the Mondragon Cooperatives...

http://people.tribe.net/a52589ba-308f-4404-b66f-f3c8f8157089/photos

posted in Arisbe - 0 replies

2001

Frank — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 17:34:07 GMT

Ours is the hemisphere of dark: the cold
Puts out the burning pyres alight
These hundred days of wretchedness untold;
This briefest day gives way to longest night.

How can I bid you celebrate the birth
Of one you think survived the cross and moved
To France, leaving his corpse beneath that earth,
Our cause of joy to you, at best, unproved?

Get gone, dear one, be blessed, betake your heat
That thawed an icebound spirit into life
To where the ocean and the summer sands will meet,
Earth, sea, air, fire dancing in gladsome strife.

I'll tend this flame in token of the sun
Against that day when all our lights are one.

©2001 FP Purcell

posted in Arisbe - 3 replies

Adopt - a - Vampire

Frank — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 13:16:55 GMT

It has been my custom to invite new members of my personal network to join the Arisbe tribe, and this is a good time for me to add new content as well, since nobody else is doing so yet.

One of you posted this link, or at least a link to the parent site, on LiveJournal yesterday or today, and it certainly deserves wider circulation: http://www.batroost.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=53

By the way, does anyone have an mp3 file of Bob Hope singing, in a Transylvanian accent, Fangs for the Mammaries?

I thought not.

posted in Arisbe - 0 replies

Neihardt

Frank — Wed, 10 May 2006 22:39:04 GMT

At a quite wonderful dance performance I remarked that the title of one of the musical numbers, Filii Neidhardti, was undoubtedly a reference to the Poet Laureate of the State of Nebraska, who acted as scribe to Nicholas Black Elk, producing thereby a text which endears itself to all who feel nostalgia for the earth religions. The music sounded more Celtic than anything else, which I attributed to the generic neo-Pagan sensibility, which may be so. The allusion, I now realize, was to the Medieval German poet Neidhardt (with a "d" in the middle as well as at the end) von Reuenthal, some of whose songs I have on an old German vinyl in a part of the apartment I can't get to.

Emerging from the Vale of Remorse (Reuenthal), I post something from John Gneisenau Neihardt (with one "d"). This is in keeping with my earlier postings of verse which may not be entirely great, but which deserves to be remembered, and which suits a mood I ascribe to this little Tribe .

When I Have Gone Weird Ways
John G. Neihardt

When I have finished with this episode,
Left the hard, uphill road,
And gone weird ways to seek another load,
Oh, friends, regret me not, nor weep for me,
Child of Infinity!

Nor dig a grave, nor rear for me a tomb
To say with lying writ: “Here in the gloom
He who loved bigness takes a narrow room,
Content to pillow here his weary head,
For he is dead.”

But give my body to the funeral pyre,
And bid the laughing fire,
Eager and strong and swift, like my desire,
Scatter my subtle essence into space,
Free me of time and place.

And sweep the bitter ashes from the hearth,
Fling back the dust I borrowed from the earth
Into the chemic broil of death and birth,
The vast alembic of the cryptic scheme,
Warm with the master-dream.

And thus, O little house that sheltered me,
Dissolve again in wind and rain, to be
Part of the cosmic weird economy.
And, Oh, how oft with new life shalt thou lift
Out of the atom-drift!

posted in Arisbe - 5 replies

In Praise of Dreams

Mary Anne — Fri, 23 Jan 2004 09:42:23 GMT

From: "Sounds, Feelings, Thoughts: Seventy Poems by Wislawa Szymborska

In my dreams
I paint like Vemeer van Delft.

I speak fluent Greek
and not just with the living.

I drive a car
that does what I want it to.

I am gifted
and write mighty epics.

I hear voices
as clearly as any venerable saint.

My brilliance as a pianst
would stun you.

I fly the way we ought to,
i.e., on my own.

Falling from the roof,
I tumble gently to the grass.

I don't find it hard
to breath under water.

I can't complain
I've succeeded in discovering
Atlantis.

I'm delighted that just before dying
I always manage to wake up.

After the outbreak of war
I turn over on my other side.

I am but I need not be
a child of my time.

A few years ago
I saw two sons.

And day before yesterday a
penguin
with the utmost clarity.

posted in Arisbe - 0 replies

Æ

Frank — Thu, 22 Jan 2004 02:49:06 GMT

Be not so desolate
Because thy dreams have flown,
And the hall of the heart is empty
And silent as stone,
As age left by children
Sad and alone.

Those delicate children,
Thy dreams, still endure.
All pure and lovely things
Wend to the Pure.
Sigh not. Unto the fold
Their way was sure.

Thy gentlest dreams, thy frailest,
Even those that were
Born and lost in a heart-beat,
Shall meet thee there.
They are become immortal
In shining air.

The unattainable beauty,
The thought of which was pain,
That flickered in eyes and on lips
And vanished again;
That fugitive beauty
Thou shalt attain.

Those lights innumerable
That led thee on and on,
The masque of time ended,
Shall glow into one.
They shall be with thee for ever,
Thy travel done.

from Song and Its Fountains

posted in Arisbe - 3 replies

"The friends I seek are seeking me."

Frank — Wed, 31 Dec 2003 19:06:30 GMT

"The House by the Side of the Road" may not be up to our critical standards of greatness in poetry, but it does express rather well Charles Peirce's idea of Arisbe, and by extention, the idea of philosophy as musement rather than argumnet.

A somewhat better poem by Catskill naturalist John Burroughs, whose grave at Woodchuck Lodge I visited some time ago, expresses one aspect of the spirit of virtual community behind sites like Tribe and Tribes like Arisbe.

WAITING
John Burroughs

Serene, I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind nor tide nor sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays--
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray
Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years.
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own, and draw
The brook that springs in yonder height;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.

posted in Arisbe - 6 replies

The House by the Side of the Road

Frank — Mon, 29 Dec 2003 18:17:17 GMT

THERE are hermit souls that live withdrawn
In the place of their self-content;
There are souls like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze the paths
Where highways never ran-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

Let me live in a house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
The men who are good and the men who are bad,
As good and as bad as I.
I would not sit in the scorner's seat
Nor hurl the cynic's ban-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I see from my house by the side of the road
By the side of the highway of life,
The men who press with the ardor of hope,
The men who are faint with the strife,
But I turn not away from their smiles and tears,
Both parts of an infinite plan-
Let me live in a house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

I know there are brook-gladdened meadows ahead,
And mountains of wearisome height;
That the road passes on through the long afternoon
And stretches away to the night.
And still I rejoice when the travelers rejoice
And weep with the strangers that moan,
Nor live in my house by the side of the road
Like a man who dwells alone.

Let me live in my house by the side of the road,
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

-- Samuel Walter Foss

The version of the poem I found on the Web does not have the citation to the <i>Iliad</i>, so you will have to take my word for it that the house in question was in fact in a place in Asia Minor called Arisbe, for which Charles Sanders Peirce, whose walking stick I once held in my hand, and whose hat I was allowed to try on in the Milford Historical Society, named his place of retirement.

And the poem, though not up to the level of masterwork, may yet serve as a fitting introduction to the spirit of this place in virtual space.

posted in Arisbe - 2 replies