On Friendship

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(click on above for “I’ll Be Your Mirror”)

Let me begin with —

I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home

-Velvet Underground

Within my circle of friends, watching films and having dinners usually surrenders to conversation; mind-bending, lengthy and worthwhile conversation. And up until recently my happiness was beginning to surrender to feelings of compromise, doubt, weight and worry. So naturally this means busying the life with more dinners and playtime -thus conversations- with friends. Eventually the settling happens, and thoughts are no longer restless, and feelings of comfort begin to create the foundations of harmony. We sit in gratitude, from a distance.

And of course, at times we reach the crossroads with some of our other friends. The ones that might have wronged us. The ones we wronged. We wonder. We regret. And we question. This always leads me to…

The Three Kinds of Friendships…

Friendship based on utility.

Utility is an impermanent thing: it changes according to circumstances. So with the disappearance of the ground for friendship, the friendship also breaks up, because that was what kept it alive. Friendships of this kind seem to occur most frequently between the elderly (because at their age what they want is not pleasure but utility) and those in middle or early life who are pursuing their own advantage. Such persons do not spend much time together, because sometimes they do not even like one another, and therefore feel no need of such an association unless they are mutually useful. For they take pleasure in each other’s company only in so far as they have hopes of advantage from it. Friendships with foreigners are generally included in this class.

Friendship based on pleasure.

Friendship between the young is thought to be grounded on pleasure, because the lives of the young are regulated by their feelings, and their chief interest is in their own pleasure and the opportunity of the moment. With advancing years, however, their tastes change too, so that they are quick to make and to break friendships; because their affection changes just as the things that please them do and this sort of pleasure changes rapidly. Also the young are apt to fall in love, for erotic friendship is for the most part swayed by the feelings and based on pleasure. That is why they fall in and out of friendship quickly, changing their attitude often within the same day. But the young do like to spend the day and live together, because that is how they realize the object of their friendship.

Perfect friendship is based on goodness.

Only the friendship of those who are good, and similar in their goodness, is perfect. For these people each alike wish good for the other qua good, and they are good in themselves. And it is those who desire the good of their friends for the friends’ sake that are most truly friends, because each loves the other for what he is, and not for any incidental quality. Accordingly the friendship of such men lasts so long as they remain good; and goodness is an enduring quality. Also each party is good both absolutely and for his friend, since the good are both good absolutely and useful to each other. Similarly they please one another too; for the good are pleasing both absolutely and to each other; because everyone is pleased with his own conduct and conduct that resembles it, and the conduct of good men is the same or similar.Friendship of this kind is permanent, reasonably enough; because in it are united all the attributes that friends ought to possess. For all friendship has as its object something good or pleasant — either absolutely or relatively to the person who feels the affection — and is based on some similarity between the parties. But in this friendship all the qualities that we have mentioned belong to the friends themselves; because in it there is similarity, etc.; and what is absolutely good is also absolutely pleasant; and these are the most lovable qualities. Therefore it is between good men that both love and friendship are chiefly found and in the highest form.

That such friendships are rare is natural, because men of this kind are few. And in addition they need time and intimacy; for as the saying goes, you cannot get to know each other until you have eaten the proverbial quantity of salt together. Nor can one man accept another, or the two become friends, until each has proved to the other that he is worthy of love, and so won his trust. Those who are quick to make friendly advances to each other have the desire to be friends, but they are not unless they are worthy of love and know it. The wish for friendship develops rapidly, but friendship does not.

-Aristotle The Nichomachean Ethics

And so, I’ve learned that this argument is based upon the idea of surrounding ourselves with “good” and reasonable people that can help us to share and nurture our ideologies. Should the time come when one realizes that there is no common “good” or idea to be shared, well then the friendship has no foundation.

Then Cicero argues that ALL human beings are bonded together along with Gods, in that commonality of purpose or reason:

Let this, then, be laid down as the first law of friendship, that we should ask from friends, and do for friends’, only what is good. But do not let us wait to be asked either: let there be ever an eager readiness, and an absence of hesitation. Let us have the courage to give advice with candour. In friendship, let the influence of friends who give good advice be paramount; and let this influence be used to enforce advice not only in plain-spoken terms, but sometimes, if the case demands it, with sharpness; and when so used, let it be obeyed.

In friendship and relationship, just as those who possess any superiority must put themselves on an equal footing with those who are less fortunate, so these latter must not be annoyed at being surpassed in genius, fortune, or rank. (section 20)

Now, by “worthy of friendship” I mean those who have in themselves the qualities which attract affection. This sort of man is rare; and indeed all excellent things are rare; and nothing in the world is so hard to find as a thing entirely and completely perfect of its kind. But most people not only recognize nothing as good in our life unless it is profitable, but look upon friends as so much stock, caring most for those by whom they hope to make most profit. Accordingly they never possess that most beautiful and most spontaneous friendship which must be sought solely for itself without any ulterior object. They fail also to learn from their own feelings the nature and the strength of friendship. For every one loves himself, not for any reward which such love may bring, but because he is dear to himself independently of anything else. But unless this feeling is transferred to another, what a real friend is will never be revealed; for he is, as it were, a second self. But if we find these two instincts showing themselves in animals, - whether of the air or the sea or the land, whether wild or tame, - first, a love of self, which in fact is born in everything that lives alike; and, secondly, an eagerness to find and attach themselves to other creatures of their own kind; and if this natural action is accompanied by desire and by something resembling human love, how much more must this be the case in man by the law of his nature? For man not only loves himself, but seeks another whose spirit he may so blend with his own as almost to make one being of two. (section 21)

It is virtue, virtue, which both creates and preserves friendship. On it depends harmony of interest, permanence, fidelity. When Virtue has reared her head and shewn the light of her countenance, and seen and recognised the same light in another, she gravitates towards it, and in her turn welcomes that which the other has to shew; and from it springs up a flame which you may call love or friendship as you please. Both words are from the same root in Latin; and love is just the cleaving to him whom you love without the prompting of need or any view to advantage-though this latter blossoms spontaneously on friendship, little as you may have looked for it… And since the law of our nature and of our life is that a new generation is for ever springing up, the most desirable thing is that along with your contemporaries, with whom you started in the race, you may also teach what is to us the goal. But in view of the in-stability and perishableness of mortal things, we should be continually on the look-out for some to love and by whom to be loved; for if we lose affection and kindliness from our life, we lose all that gives it charm… (section 27)

This is all I had to say on friendship. One piece of advice on parting. Make up your minds to this. Virtue (without which friendship is impossible) is first; but next to it, and to it alone, the greatest of all things is Friendship. (section 27)

-Cicero On Friendship

BUT, the “friendship” speaks for itself when reason cannot be met, when love cannot be met. Not all people are capable of this. Is it not our moral obligation to foster an environment that enables us to grow into becoming a virtuous person ? If we fail in this duty..what next? How do we know what a friendship really is?

Happy 1,891st birthday to my favorite stoic of all, whose wisdom was always mightier than the sword, and whose candle - if lit during these apocalyptic times - would be the saving grace to guide us to humanity, to the foundations of a just nature. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. “ “The sexual embrace could only be compared with music, and with prayer.” - Marcus Annius Catilius Severus (Aurelius Antoninus Augustus) aka Emporer Marcus Aurelius
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Happy 1,891st birthday to my favorite stoic of all, whose wisdom was always mightier than the sword, and whose candle - if lit during these apocalyptic times - would be the saving grace to guide us to humanity, to the foundations of a just nature.

“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. “

“The sexual embrace could only be compared with music, and with prayer.”

- Marcus Annius Catilius Severus (Aurelius Antoninus Augustus)

aka Emporer Marcus Aurelius

(This was a previous post of mine in 2011 & ‘12. It’s nice to revisit old thoughts) When an ocean comes between two people, and one is caught in a current going the opposite direction, the point is not for us to go after as a savior but rather…to swim ashore. To regroup. To breathe. To find strength and to be graceful during the process. If the current brings that person back, you’ll be the same person as before but rather than a cold fervent rush, you’ll be found in a warm stillness, and grounded in compassion. If the person becomes lost in the current, your same warmth and grounded soul will only grow deeper and the heart will become still, and silent… wanting not waiting….for life.
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(This was a previous post of mine in 2011 & ‘12. It’s nice to revisit old thoughts)

When an ocean comes between two people, and one is caught in a current going the opposite direction, the point is not for us to go after as a savior but rather…to swim ashore. To regroup. To breathe. To find strength and to be graceful during the process. If the current brings that person back, you’ll be the same person as before but rather than a cold fervent rush, you’ll be found in a warm stillness, and grounded in compassion. If the person becomes lost in the current, your same warmth and grounded soul will only grow deeper and the heart will become still, and silent… wanting not waiting….for life.

when I grow up

Looking over facebook posts, realizing there’s a deep sense of sadness amongst some of my friends, because of ongoing national and worldwide tragedies. Going to two funerals in one week kind of forces me to look for a reason to smile, for a sense of balance, though its perfectly alright to feel no need to smile (considering). I think society has forced us to respond in ways that create burdens on our psyche. Smiling, laughing, and breathing, help us to alleviate some of that burden. I hope that my friends can find a reason to smile, even if only briefly, if they want to.

And I,
I wanna cry
long past the timeframe they’ve told me is acceptable.
I wanna laugh
until I’ve drowned out silence,
or until they tell me to grow up.
I won’t listen.

I wanna ask
those questions,
the easy ones with answers like,
“Because he thought no one loved him,” or
“we’ll never have the answers.”
And the tough ones, with answers like,
“Because he thought no one loved him,” or
“we’ll never have the answers.”

I don’t wanna know
why and when people stopped listening, stopped caring.
And because no one ever thinks they need a hug,
I wanna hug
everyone I meet.
That moment of letting go together,
when we feel emotions dancing.
And I’d rather dance
then grow up.

I want my heart to smile,
in a room filled with unbearable darkness.
Adult eyes piercing me with curiosity, longing to be
in my shoes, once again.
To grow up, in my shoes.

Because
I’m 2 years young,
5 years old.
I’m that kid you once knew.
I am hope.
Love is what fills the softness
throughout my bones.
There are no options
for anything less.
I am what I want to be,
when I grow up.

Grief on a Pedestal

To sit and think and write of the agony and despair of being tortured by endless supplies of surrounding loss - is to wallow in our weeping. To place grief on a pedestal, and press pause. Our tears slowly turn to clay, sculpting endless supplies of surrounding…words. Our frowns struggle to lift us to places forgotten, to avoid falling into the still of life’s estranged but necessary other half. When it’s not planes, trains or hugs that gets us there, it’s the pen. Retreating to now, the moment that leads the way to those forests -where all sides of trees are veiled in rusted moss- those cold and heavy forests, where we begin to connect with nature, and rustle through a sense of being nurtured. We’re forced to embrace void and fear, our long-lost siblings. Soon we’ll say goodbye to our Winter in Spring, knowing that as long as there is life, it will come again. And Summer will come to burn the shade off the trees. But for now, we weep. Wallowing in the moment, until we can put the pen down and allow the clay to become dust.

Bluebird Reading: Featured Poet Introduction: Iris de Anda

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Reading at the Bluebird Reading Series 4/14/13 in Highland Park, CA

Please meet…Iris De Anda.

She’s a force, a true free spirit, warrior, a mujer of many talents. When she’s not writing, she’s working with Las Adelitas; a clothing line she co-founded with the intention of creating dialogue, awareness, and pride in the Mexican culture. She’s also a certified practitioner of the healing arts.
http://irisdeanda.typepad.com/la_writer_underground/

Iris is a staple in the Los Angeles community, using her words as weapons of solidarity for peace, justice and…love.

The following poem she dedicated to Qatari Poet Mohamed Ibn Al Ajami,
sentenced to life in prison for reciting a poem.

Just Poetry is not a Crime

This is not just poetry
it is visions pouring
thru us of collective
conscious unity

These words flow
thru us catching glimpses
of a new world aglow
revolutionary

The love we speak
is a reflection of
the truth we seek
in humanity

This is not just poetry
it is justice screaming
thru us in constant
vowels & soliloquy

The musings on this page
a distilling forth
thru us of rage
transformed as poetry

The ideas we write
come forth streaming
no wrong or right
only questions on being

This is not just poetry
it is life revealing itself
thru spoken word
this is the sound of urgency

There are those whose verse
some would silence
so we grow louder & disburse
create freedom of speech treaties

The stitching of phrases
as declarations of change
us only leaving traces
messages as visionaries

This is not just poetry
it is equality pleading
thru us in pain
requesting mercy

These odes emerge
thru us hearts beating
as we converge
under skies so starry

The rhymes it seems
count us into
the daydreams
of our journey

This is not just poetry
it is every moment
of overlooked pieces
unknown & mystery

The ink begins spilling
a memento of silence
thru us of feeling
becoming a story

The voices in our head
come from living
in black & white then red
adding color to memory

This is not just poetry
it is death beckoning us
thru dark nights
this is the typist bleeding

There are those whose lyric
some would ban
so we sing louder & euphoric
never sorry no apologies

The poets manifesto design
of grasping fleeting thoughts
turning letters into lines
free even if charged with just poetry


© 2013 Iris de Anda

For more information on the Bluebird Reading Series, or to RSVP…FACEBOOK

Bluebird Reading: Featured Poet Introduction: Neil Aitken

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Please meet the first of four poets on the lineup for the April 14th Bluebird Reading Series in Highland Park… Neil Aitken

Award-winning poet, writer, website designer, and editor of the always-rich-in-the-finest-poetry journal Boxcar Poetry Review

But, most interestingly, not only is he a skilled painter of words, he is also a poet of painted imagery. The attached photo: Funeral Procession: Guatemalan Funeral Triptych (pt 1) (acryllic). 1991.

“His poems are doubled-forests, like Magritte or early Taoist landscape paintings; you journey outside in one direction admiring the foliage, the arrangements of shadow and landscape, then suddenly, you fall inside into voracious vortices of light, fire, voice, and wisdom – the kind that shimmer behind the words. His breadth is vast and his depth is a tremulous chakra opening, burning quietly, even deliciously in your heart. A rare and perhaps the most gifted new writer on the loose.” — Juan-Felipe Herrera

And here’s one of my personal favorite poems of his…

FOR SAL PARADISE,
LOST IN AMERICA

I could drive for days on end
heading nowhere but out of the city,
out into a world of stone and wood,
plow and rain, and some cast-iron weather-vane
spinning me whichever way the wind blows.

Go it alone
save only the static hum of the wheel-rutted roads
and the heart-ticking balm of silence.

A cradle of words, candle, camera,
and pen. Paper for fires. An arrow of stars.
A bow of earth yearning.

tonight, I could be anywhere,
a lone man in a car surrounded by ghosts

Outside my window, men and women
and the dark cloud of America

like a house burning
on a distant hill

I could be anywhere

scattering over the world

I tell myself
how easy it would be

to be lost in the middle of America,
to be struck deaf, dumb, and blind by this star-splattered sky
and not know how to find my way home.

© 2007 Neil Aitken.

For more information on the Bluebird Reading Series, or to RSVP… FACEBOOK

a simple smile

…the inspiring awe of a Teslin Lake, embedded into the curves of a simple smile. The fishermen have shown me the certain greatness that lies beneath the magnificent beauty of the still waters, and beside the restless trees that embrace them. A life so beautifully delicate and complex that even men yearn, as women do their families, to foster a particular process of sharing time with, and to better understand, what’s hidden below.

And now, perhaps in my journeyed existence as a young woman, I’ve discovered that even beyond this life in the waters, stirs an even greater purpose. As a clown disguises his sadness in his false smiles, the waters cry out to us, not as sadness but as proof, that a smile is what we should seek to take when we explore its robust, still body. A smile that reminds us that it’s the world that we should make happy, and we merely follow. Our lives belong to this world, and the essence of our being lay still in the water. It’s the all-recondite joy we should share and remember, without asking why. Happiness doesn’t begin or end with a view or photo of a lake, nor with the fish caught from it. Happiness begins with awareness of the fragility of our lives and our response to all that the Earth has given us, including that smile in the lake.

2013 memory of Teslin Lake, Yukon 2005

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wander lust

it’s that time when being mestizo makes sense. when cultures don’t collide, they dance. the time when I can feel the winds take over to raise the sails, my body the mast. the migration patterns running through my DNA, with swans dancing to the thumping of the drums, dancing from my feet to my throat, and making a home in my heart. the time when all that has been, comes to fruition, in the form of a test that I’ll never have the answers to, but a test that will inspire me to count on the Sun for direction. and i’ll raise my ear as close to her as possible, to listen for my heartbeat. and i know, through adventure, that what i’ll hear is the world. and that’s what makes sense.

wander lust

living, is taking the long hike
up the hill that only you see
in cities that don’t exist
with people that don’t have names
floating along in ships
parades on sinking sand dunes
paddling ocean waves of stillness.
falling in lust requires letting go
of everything.
its time to forget, experience awaits.
the rebirth of an oscillating sun
is implanting its memories under my skin.
burnt fossils fuel a certain brilliance.
kerouac could only dream
of movement as existing as this.
lets not fuck it up with wander love.

Mark your Calendars for Poetry Awesomeness

the Hollywood Institute of Poetics is very 
excited, eager, ecstatic, enthralled, elated
to present next months:

BLUEBIRD READING series

hosted by:
Jessica Ceballos 

Featuring:
Chiwan Choi
Brendan Constanine
Mandy Kahn
Ryan Nance

with OPEN MIC after the feature. 2 minutes max. 
SIGN UP begins at 1:45!

FREE!
light refreshments and edible delights will be available for consumption, as will books for purchase and signing!

2pm March 10, 2013

at the VERY AWESOME..
Avenue 50 Studios
131 North Avenue 50
Highland Park, CA 90042
323 258 1435


CHIWAN CHOI is the author of two poetry collections, The Flood and Abductions. He is also a founding editor of Writ Large Press. Currently, he is serving as Executive Director of a new large scale project, LA Writ Large. 

BRENDAN CONSTANTINE is a poet based in Hollywood. His work has appeared in Field, Ploughshares, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Zyzzyva, and other journals. New work is forthcoming in Ghost Town. His most recent collections are ‘Birthday Girl With Possum’ (2011 Write Bloody Publishing) and ‘Calamity Joe’ (2012 Red Hen Press). He currently teaches at the Windward School and is adjunct professor with Antioch Los Angeles. Mr. Constantine also regularly offers workshops in hospitals, foster care centers and with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project.

MANDY KAHN is coauthor (with Aaron Rose) of the nonfiction book Collage Culture: Examining the 21st Century’s Identity Crisis (JRP/Ringier), which was also released as a record with a score by No Age. The book had its launch at Colette in Paris and for a month beforehand, excerpts from its text were installed at Colette as wall art. Kahn has given many readings and talks in conjunction with the book’s release, including those at Motto (Berlin), the Shoreditch House (London), Printed Matter (New York), Art Center College of Design (Pasadena), Family (Los Angeles), the Celebrity Author’s Luncheon for CALM (Santa Barbara) and for an audience of 2700 at the Davies Symphony Hall as part of Pop-Up Magazine (San Francisco). Her poetry is anthologized in From Totems to Hip Hop, 1900-2002 (edited by Ishmael Reed) and her recent poetry readings include L.A.-based events at the Last Bookstore, Skylight Books, Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, the Silverlake Jubilee Festival, the Standard Hotel, and two readings for the PEN Center USA-sponsored literary magazine The Rattling Wall. The magazine World Literature Today called Kahn “a rising star of West Coast poetry.” As writer-in-residence for the site-specific art event the Series, she composes poetry and prose to accompany new works of music, dance and performance art.

RYAN NANCE hasn’t ever been to Turkey, not once. Nor has he ever been to Saint Peter’s Basilica. Never has he made a living selling potatoes. There was a time when he did travel, but that time has passed. There was a moment, a decade ago, when the faint smell of mildew in the stacks of the Butler Library was reward enough. There will be a day, in the not too far-off tomorrows, when he will try to use whatever it is he has at hand to make you happy. Today is not that day. In the meantime, he has poems he has written that he hopes will feel good on your tongue and he has websites he hopes will let you do what you want to do and finds a lot of the things in the world fascinating.
Poems www.rtsnance.com/works

Avenue 50 Studio
www.avenue50studio.com

Jessica Ceballos
www.jessicaceballos.com

to RSVP and for UPDATED INFO VISIT THE FACEBOOK PAGE

the wonderful words of an adrienne rich mind

No one’s fated or doomed to love anyone.
The accidents happen, we’re not heroines,
they happen in our lives like car crashes,
books that change us, neighborhoods
we move into and come to love.
Tristan und Isolde is scarcely the story,
women at least should know the difference
between love and death. No poison cup,
no penance. Merely a notion that the tape-recorder
should have caught some ghost of us: that tape-recorder
not merely played but should have listened to us,
and could instruct those after us:
this we were, this is how we tried to love,
and these are the forces they had ranged against us,
and these are the forces we had ranged within us,
within us and against us, against us and within us.

-Adrienne Rich

from  Twenty-One Love Poems, found in the volume The Dream of a Common Language: Poems 1974-1977 (UK; public library)

the meaning of life

(this is my personal favorite of hers. it makes me feel something…familiar.)

by Patti Smith


[from More Reflections on The Meaning of Life, edited by David Friend and the Editors of Life Magazine, Little Brown and Company, 1992.]


My first sense of life was that of motion, of being lifted, and the beating of my mother’s heart. Then, as consciousness pressed, I turned in the radiance of my father’s mind. When I closed my eyes I could feel the world spin. When I reached out I could feel the breath of care. Bound, within my blood, was their love, their burning and their discordant prayers.

Yet time makes ravens of us all and swiftly, it seemed, I fled from their grasp. The sea was a glass. The sky an immeasurable path.

Guided by the knowledge of them I journeyed fettered, free. And as all before me, I have questioned, grateful for the privilege of being able to ask: What is my task? Why do we exist? All answers produce the pain of recognition, emptiness and joy.

To prey upon stillness, to suffer dawn
To bow before God, to administer grace
To unveil space, to be spirited away
To lift a child
   into the reigning air
   where the voice of heaven
   chirps like a bird