Before beginning only Awonawilaona existed,

	no one else with him in the vast space of time

	but the black darkness on all sides

	in the space of time.

	And he brought forth his thought into space…

		Nothing existed, neither did nothingness exist,

		Between day and night there was no frontier.

		Everything at the beginning was hidden…

— Ernesto Cardenal Cosmic Canticle, Cantiga 1

I am struck with the creation stories that begin with a gesture of art. The song, the word, the sculpted gesture. In the Midewiwin tradition of the Ojibway, we are taught that the first sound was the sound of the rattle, and indeed scientists posit that the universe could only have become differentiated as a result of some force moving through the smooth early universe and causing matter to lump together, making it possible for bodies to form and grow separately from one another.

If that is true (you know what I mean) then the human attraction towards song maybe is a primal urge, infusing matter, to find this song or gesture again, to capture that echo the faded sound, movement glimpsed in the dreaming eye, a mark in the depthless blackness of a sleeping eyelid.

To discover this moment, we would need to sing the song backwards, in a sense recite the prayer of creation from below and in so doing restore the unity of force and matter.

Everything we know about the expansion of the universe says that we are always growing further and further apart from each other, separation initiated by song. Are we seeking something in music and speech that can draw us back together again?

In Cosmic Canticle, Cardenal inventories creation stories that have to do with the thoughts and dreaming and song of the creators. Whether it is Awonawilaona or P’an Ku (“…First there was the great cosmic egg. Within the egg/there was chaos. And P’an Ku floated above the chaos”) or Na Arean (seated in space/like a cloud floating over nothingness”), the poem rocks between traditional stories of becoming and the scientific ones, and all those stories blur together.

The story of Na Arean from Polynesia is like this:

“In the beginning, Na Arean sat alone like a cloud floating in nothingness. He didn’t sleep, for there was no sleep. He wasn’t hungry, since hunger had not been created. So he remained for a long time, until a thought came into his mind. He said to himself, “I will make a thing.” So he made water in his left hand, and dabbled it with his right until it was muddy; then he rolled the mud flat and sat upon it. Then a great swelling grew in his forehead, until on the third day it burst, and a little man sprang forth. “You are my thought,” said Na Arean. Your name is Na Arean the younger. Na Arean the Younger then proceeded to straighten out the elements of the earth.”

And the stories of the world created from song puts me in mind of this classic from C.S Lewis:

“It was a Lion. Huge, shaggy and bright, it stood facing the risen sun. Its mouth was wide open in song and it was pacing to and fro about the empty land. And as Aslan walked and sang, the valley grew green with grass. It spread out from the Lion like a pool. It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave.

In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer. A light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass which was sprinkled with daisies and buttercups. Along the river bank, willows were growing; on the other side, tangles of flowering currant, lilac, wild rose and rhododendron closed them in.

All this time the Lion’s song and his stately prowl, to and fro, backward and forward, continued. It was clear that all the things were coming “out of the Lion’s head.” When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up; and when you looked around you, you saw them all. This was Aslan’s world of Narnia.”

Acouple of little things I have found today:

los otros, les autres, d e e p w e b

The coolest blogroll in the universe.

So you want to write a fugue?

Text by Glenn Gould:

But never be clever for the sake of being clever,
For a canon in inversion is a dangerous diversion.
And a bit of augmentation is a serious temptation,
While a stretto diminution is an obvious solution,
While a stretto, stretto, stretto diminution is a very, very obvious
solution.
So never be clever for the sake of being clever, for the sake of showing
off.
Never be clever for the sake of showing off!

So you want to write a fugue?
But never be clever for the sake of showing off.
You’ve got the urge to write a fugue. You’ve got the nerve to write a
fugue.
So go ahead and try to write one, try to write one.
No, never be clever for the sake of being clever.
But do try to write a fugue that we can sing.
Write us a good fugue, one that we can sing.
Oh, come and try.
Oh, why don’t you try?
Oh, won’t you try and write one we can sing.
So write a fugue that we can sing.
Now, why don’t you try to write one?
Yes, come, let’s try.
Write us a fugue that we can sing. Now come along.

Visit this site and scroll down near the bottom to hear it.

If you are very attentive, you’ll notice a slew of new blogs added to the blogroll. These are all lifted from my Bowen Island Journal and I draw them to your attention so that you might explore them and find out a little bit about the really interesting discussion we are having about what it means to blog place. For more, visit Fred and Pica.

I am re-reading Cosmic Canticle by Ernesto Cardenal. The review in that link there describes the poem far better than I can right now.

I first read the poem in 1996 when I found a copy of the book in a remainder bin as one of Vancouver’s small bookstores was being squeezed out of existence by a chain. I was immediately struck by the beginning of the first Cantiga:

In the beginning there was nothing
      neither space 
             nor time.
                       The entire universe concentrated
in the space of the nucleus of an atom,
and before that even less, much less than a proton, 
and even less still, an infinitely dense mathematical point.
                                       And that was Big Bang. 

From there the poem meanders through origin stories and, as I reread it now – all 481 pages of it – I see where Cardenal has assembled a collection of sources and ideas and markers on the path of the evolution of human consciousness as it is mirrored in the evolution of the universe. Many of these things he points to – snippets of quantum theory or sacred songs describing origins and history – ring with the clarity and beauty of poetic cadance, and, at least to this blogger’s mind, they also read as invitations. As if Cardenal was saying “so you think that is cool? Check out what Cardinal Danielou had to say.” Reading this poem with the book in one hand and Google in the other invites a journey inward into a huge resevoir of conjecture, observation and thought.

For example, here is Cardenal’s take on one creation story, cribbed from a Maori tale of origins:

anxiously searching in the deep darkness,
searching
there on the shore that divides day from night,
the night conceived the seed of night,
the heart of night had always been there
even in the deep darkness,
the palpitating pulpa of life
grows in the deep darkness,
out of the shadows even the most tenuous ray of light emerges,
the procreative power,
life's first known ecstasy, 
with the joy of passing from silence to sound, 
and thus the progeny of the Great Expander
filled the expansion of the skies,
the chorus of life arose and erupted in ecstasy
and then reposed in a delight of calm.

This story is borrowed from the Maori whakapapa of creation, the story that is told to begin all stories, the lineage that describes all lineages, the genealogy of matter. A whakapapa is a history in song form that links the singer to his or her ancestors and beyond that to the beginning moment of time when the universe manifested its potential:

“The term “Te Here Tangata”, literally The Rope of Mankind, is also used to describe genealogy. I visualise myself with my hand on this rope which stretches into the past for the fifty or so generations that I can see, back from there to the instant of Creation, and on into the future for at least as long. In this modern world of short term political, social, economic and business perspectives, and instant consumer gratification, Te Here Tangata is a humbling concept.”

On this Maori website you can read more about whakapapa and see an example of one. This author has also recorded the whakapapa of creation, a version of the story that Cardenal paraphrases above:

Ko Te Kore (the void, energy, nothingness, potential)
Te Kore-te-whiwhia (the void in which nothing is possessed)
Te Kore-te-rawea (the void in which nothing is felt)
Te Kore-i-ai (the void with nothing in union)
Te Kore-te-wiwia (the space without boundaries)

Na Te Kore Te Po (from the void the night)
Te Po-nui (the great night)
Te Po-roa (the long night)
Te Po-uriuri (the deep night)
Te Po-kerekere (the intense night)
Te Po-tiwhatiwha (the dark night)
Te Po-te-kitea (the night in which nothing is seen)
Te Po-tangotango (the intensely dark night)
Te Po-whawha (the night of feeling)
Te Po-namunamu-ki-taiao (the night of seeking the passage to the world)
Te Po-tahuri-atu (the night of restless turning)
Te Po-tahuri-mai-ki-taiao (the night of turning towards the revealed world)

Ki te Whai-ao (to the glimmer of dawn)
Ki te Ao-marama (to the bright light of day)
Tihei mauri-ora (there is life)

A lineage that links us to the very beginnings of the universe is welcome, epecially for the humility it engenders.

A secret manifesto for blogging:

Bear in mind that the place of meditation is not of key importance, but it is wise to return to the same place at the same time daily so that the habit of meditating becomes established. The Buddha meditated under a Bodhi tree where he achieved enlightenment. An advanced meditator can choose almost any place and it will serve his purpose — a crowded market place, a burial ground, a cave, a park or a refuse dump. In his inward turning he becomes totally oblivious of his surroundings; or, contrariwise, makes the very surroundings, as he advances deeper and deeper into meditating, the subject of his thoughts. The important thing to remember is that these thoughts must be schooled and channeled. They must be kept “on center.”

But you, now, are still in your beginning stages. Untoward thoughts will persist in entering your mind. This is only natural. You will be amazed at how many and how trivial these intrusions can be. You must learn, however, to treat these intruders with courtesy. Do not shove them away in anger. Be gentle, kindly. Label each one — past — present — future? Worthy? Unworthy? Animosity? Vanity? Desire? Egotism? Your very act of branding them will assist in their cessation. As they begin to disappear, your mind will gently return to your nostrils, your breathing. It will grow quieter and quieter.

— Dorothea Figen, Beginning Insight Meditation

We’ve had blogging as dreaming, now blogging as insight meditation. Blogging as Vipassana. Choosing topics and posts because they stay “on centre” and not, in fact, because they lead us through the multitude of links and paths. That is the monkey-mind blog, which we try, no matter how successfully, to avoid.

Anyway, my monkey mind keeps returning to the image of the Buddha blogging beneath the Bodhi tree. He would have had fun with this medium.