unbearable sadness of being

This unbearable sadness of being
Settling in
Almost unaware
Like a dense fog of charcoal grey

Take hold!
To dissipate its cloak
That clings soiled and heavy

Ever encompassing
Does not allow one to breath

At times, there is a need to feel this
To let it be
Knowing that when it leaves
I will be temporarily free!

Until she returns
Like an incessant disease
Perpetuated by dwelling in the muck of her

Tears red and stained
Sore eyes and
Blistered soul
My heart chained in despair
Fading fast...

Leading me absolutely nowhere.

~ Calli © 2008

image source: Tap_tap_by Kenzography

beauty and suffering...

In his book 'Dark Nights of the Soul,' Thomas Moore talks on my favorite subject, the connection between beauty and suffering. And he states so eloquently, "It could be that only in the beautiful can you really perceive the depth and essence of pain, and only in suffering can you learn how to appreciate the full range of the beautiful." ...I love how he states this below:
"Listen to Samuel Barber's "Adagio" and see if the sheer beauty of the sound carries you to the transcendent levels of suffering and pathos. In addition, he goes on to say, "Read Shakespeare's Hamlet slowly and carefully. Isn't the beauty of its language the very means by which you feel the full extent of Hamlet's suffering? If the words were not so artful and pleasing, maybe you would be instructed in a certain kind of pain, but you wouldn't have the same sensual, searing participation in the insights. Beauty takes you down into experience and then up and above all human limitation."

-- Moore's insight into this is very moving to me and is expressed so beautifully. He also talks about how beauty is not only found in suffering but in bliss as well, true of course, and when he states, "But if you avoid the dark side, your sense of beauty may turn sentimental."

-- I must say that I agree with this statement for we have to learn to embrace the darkness in order to fully perceive beauty and light. Moreover, he goes on to say, "Just as materialism "coarsens" the soul, according to Oscar Wilde, so sentimentality can "soften" it excessively." Moore then says, "The course and the sentimental usually sustain each other as opposites." "Real beauty solves the split."

-- This is why you will find beauty and pain within these pages because this is the truth of our lives; this is what it means to be conscious and aware and to fully integrate all aspects of ourselves to include our dark, sad, and hurt emotional selves as well as, our happy, optimistic, open and loving selves. This is my 'reality' and my personal quest in life is to create a balance between these aspects of 'self.'

~ Calli © 2008


image source: Diaphanous Gown by Jeremy Lipking at http:lipking.com

the depths we can go...

Raw, resurrected bleeding depths
Taking me down
Step by step

Into the hell of the mind
Near a corpse of ones breath
A glass cage
Where one can see
But cannot touch

Let me in or Let me out
Whichever way?
Matters nay

A looking glass
Misted and smeared
Covered in blood with terror and fear

Let me in or Let me out
Whichever way?
Matters nay

OR is this my sin?

~ Calli © 2008

image source: thirteen_steps by ZeEnigMa at deviant art

To me, this is pure beauty...

A Lover's Call XXVII

Where are you, my beloved? Are you in that little
Paradise, watering the flowers who look upon you
As infants look upon the breast of their mothers?


Or are you in your chamber where the shrine of
Virtue has been placed in your honor, and upon
Which you offer my heart and soul as sacrifice?


Or amongst the books, seeking human knowledge,
While you are replete with heavenly wisdom?


Oh companion of my soul, where are you? Are you
Praying in the temple? Or calling Nature in the
Field, haven of your dreams?


Are you in the huts of the poor, consoling the
Broken-hearted with the sweetness of your soul, and
Filling their hands with your bounty?


You are God's spirit everywhere;
You are stronger than the ages.


Do you have memory of the day we met, when the halo of
You spirit surrounded us, and the Angels of Love
Floated about, singing the praise of the soul's deed?


Do you recollect our sitting in the shade of the
Branches, sheltering ourselves from Humanity, as the ribs
Protect the divine secret of the heart from injury?


Remember you the trails and forest we walked, with hands
Joined, and our heads leaning against each other, as if
We were hiding ourselves within ourselves?


Recall you the hour I bade you farewell,
And the Maritime kiss you placed on my lips?
That kiss taught me that joining of lips in Love
Reveals heavenly secrets which the tongue cannot utter!


That kiss was introduction to a great sigh,
Like the Almighty's breath that turned earth into man.


That sigh led my way into the spiritual world,
Announcing the glory of my soul; and there
It shall perpetuate until again we meet.


I remember when you kissed me and kissed me,
With tears coursing your cheeks, and you said,
"Earthly bodies must often separate for earthly purpose,
And must live apart impelled by worldly intent.


"But the spirit remains joined safely in the hands of
Love, until death arrives and takes joined souls to God.


"Go, my beloved; Love has chosen you her delegate;
Over her, for she is Beauty who offers to her follower
The cup of the sweetness of life.
As for my own empty arms, your love shall remain my
Comforting groom; you memory, my Eternal wedding."


Where are you now, my other self? Are you awake in
The silence of the night? Let the clean breeze convey
To you my heart's every beat and affection.


Are you fondling my face in your memory? That image
Is no longer my own, for Sorrow has dropped his
Shadow on my happy countenance of the past.


Sobs have withered my eyes which reflected your beauty
And dried my lips which you sweetened with kisses.


Where are you, my beloved? Do you hear my weeping
From beyond the ocean? Do you understand my need?
Do you know the greatness of my patience?


Is there any spirit in the air capable of conveying
To you the breath of this dying youth? Is there any
Secret communication between angels that will carry to
You my complaint?


Where are you, my beautiful star? The obscurity of life
Has cast me upon its bosom; sorrow has conquered me.


Sail your smile into the air; it will reach and enliven me!
Breathe your fragrance into the air; it will sustain me!


Where are you, me beloved?
Oh, how great is Love!
And how little am I!

Khalil Gibran


image source:La_Petite_Fille_de_la_mer_by_Karezo

dark night of the soul

Tears embedded upon my desecrated soul
Tortured and constricted,
Whilst stripping away ALL past pleasures,
Leaving nothing but remnants of a ravaging pain.

Embittered memories
Silent resentments

Sharply-madness takes hold!

Given to obsessive thoughts
Melancholy usurping gladness.

Shadows blacker than black
Movement? –Can’t you feel this vacuum?
Waves, the blackened tide
Strangling my senses, suffocating,
Blindingly leading me into this void
Dejected, drowning, catapulted backwards
Swallowed whole, with no escape.

This is my dark night of the soul.

~ Calli ©2008

Sarah McLachlan

I came across this great photo of Sarah on her site at: http://www.sarahmclachlan.com

I love if for its artistic beauty, it's gorgeous! and I have been playing 'fumbling towards ecstasy' nearly all day today. Sarah has a brand new release titled: Closer: The Best of Sarah McLachlan that came out October 7, 2008. It's on my list...

The reason for this post is just a mini tribute to her soulful work and songs. Once I am able to post a playlist here, you will no doubt find some of her songs on my list

from fumbling towards ecstasy:


All the fear has left me now
I'm not frightened anymore.
It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh.
It's my mouth that pushes out this breath and if
I shed a tear I won't cage it
I won't fear love and if
I feel a rage I won't deny it
I won't fear love...

~ Calli

fallen from heaven

Ich habe mich in einem Engel verliebt!

I have fallen in love with an Angel!

For these immortal wings
paired and translucent,
for their divine substance,
I do thank you,
but even so I humbly beg-
Transform me, transform me!
to that other race
in your image so wondrously fashioned
and of eternal love forged.

Here is the German translation:

Für diese unsterblichen Flügel
zusammengepaßt und lichtdurchlässig,
für ihre göttliche Substanz,
Ich danke Ihnen,
aber allerdings bitte ich bescheiden
Wandeln Sie mich um, wandeln Sie mich um!
zu diesem anderen Rennen
in Ihrem Bild so wondrously umgearbeitet
und von der ewigen Liebe geschmiedet

From the Opera: 'Fallen From Heaven' - Seraphina
'Vom Himmel GeFallen'

***To me this is very beautiful as Seraphina, the angel begs to become mortal to be with the one she loves. What a beautiful thought...the angel in the image is of course male, but it still, in many ways symbolizes for me, the meaning of the lines from the opera.

...and since I am learning German I love to use it in my writing on occasion.

troubled and yet very beautiful souls

Landscape at Dusk by Vincent van Gogh

That such a final, tragic, and awful thing as suicide can exist in the midst of remarkable beauty is one of the vastly contradictory and paradoxical aspects of life and art. The extraordinary and seemingly counterintuitive level of control found in many of van Gogh's last canvases, completed just before his suicide, finds comparable calm and lyricism in lines by Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky who, like van Gogh, committed suicide when he was in his mid thirties:

It's after one.
You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way runs like a silvery river through the night.
I'm in no hurry
and with lightning telegrams
there's no need to wake and worry you.
As they say
the incident is closed
The love boat
has smashed against convention
Now you and I are through
No need then
To count over mutual hurts, harms, and slights.
Just see how quiet the world is!
Night has laid a heavy tax of stars upon the sky.
In hours like these you get up and you speak
To the ages, to history, and to the universe.



This excerpt is from a book titled: Touched With Fire, Manic-Depressive Illness and The Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison (who incidentally suffers from manic-Depressive illness and is also the author of a revealing memoir titled: An Unquiet Mind

** This poem is really profound and lovely. I am amazed at the clarity and ease by which it seems these poets and artists create, especially just before their suicides. The same seems to have held true for Sylvia Plath who wrote some of her most revealing and profound writings and poems just prior to her death by suicide at the age of thirty. As you will find this is 'The' subject I am deeply involved in researching; the correlation between psychiatric illness, melancholy, the creative temperament and its relation to spirituality or lack thereof. My research is evolving each time I find something new that sparks my creative urge to find out more...call it an obsession, but it is also a deep seated need to find the seemingly 'elusive' answer to what, why and how this happens to amazingly creative souls of this world.

~ Calli

painful beauty

"And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped about my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty.

At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy."

An excerpt from 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' by Arthur Golden



Clearly Arthur Golden has a soul that understands the close connection between pain and beauty...

Separation

A concrete wall between us
Thought it tiny in comparison
To the ocean and seas.

Together once,
But for a time.

Now I linger in my thoughts
Of you...

Fighting off feelings of
Serious Blue.

Wanted to take away your pain
Had not intended to make it my own.

Separation of time, and space.

A concrete wall that separates
My universe...
From yours.

~ Calli

fear

Fear is what holds me back
Fear is what suffocates my dreams

Fear is a pitiful thing
An undesirable emotion
One that must be overcome.

Fear sucks the life out of your dreams,
My dreams, and the dreams of all who have ever existed.

Fear: What is this seemingly powerful emotion?
Fear should not be allowed
To hold us back from our dreams.

There are those who have escaped fear's wrath
Overcome and stomped out its breath.

Those are the ones who make it,
I want to be one of the ones who make it!

~ Calli

beauty and pain...

Life and love consist of both beauty and pain

~ Calli

My new blog will attempt to show this truth through words, thoughts, poetry, and art, as well as delving into the lives of various artists, writers, musicians, and philosophers, who live or had lived within shades of grey.