Who If I Cried. . .

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

(also on p 635, I caught an overtone:
"that terrible ecstasy known to result from unmediated
observation of the beautiful" -- a poem that, um, somebody
I know suggested was about one of the Care Bears...

Ok, kiddies, I'm going freestyle here. . . .

             Who, though I cry aloud,
             would hear me in the angel orders?

So, let's start around 1971, here in Fresno. This is about three months 
before my first "trip" [mescaline, btw].I was keen on hearing Beethoven's
15th quartet because of my ongoing interest in "Acid', going back to 
around 1965, when the Beatles settled in. The effects of the Beatles 
acid trips seemed to be best about a year or two before they took 
the stuff.

             And should my plea ascend,
             were I gathered to the glory

Anyway, now I'm all of sixteen and absorbed by Beethoven, and Aldous 
Huxley wrote about the Fifteenth quartet in "Point-Counter-Point", a book 
that I've only managed to get to the part about the quartet. So I'm in the 
Fresno State Music Library [It was was Huge, it was Great] and I'm listening 

             of some incandescent heart,
             my own faint flame of being

to the Guarneri String Quartet version on RCA, and everything is going 
smoothly, lovely stuff, quite a bit of pulling at the heart-strings, and the

              would fail for the glare.
             Beauty is as close to terror

third go-round


             as we can well endure.
             Angels would not condescend

something weird

             to damn our meagre souls.
             That is why they awe

is going on.

             and why they terrify us so.
             Every angel is terrible!

Usually I manage to get one of the nice booths

             And so I constrain myself and
             swallow the deep, dark music

 just me, myself and I

             of my own impassioned plea.
             Oh, to whom can we turn

But this time, I was sitting in the middle of a big open 
room with lots of people all around me,

             in the hour of need?
             Neither angel nor man.

and I started to cry uncontrollably, and it felt as 

             Even animals know that we
             are not at home here.

Sweet as drinking Mead from the Rider-Waite Ace of Cups

             We see so little of what
             is clearly visible to them.

And I saw this house in the country in the midst

             For us there is only
             a tree on a hillside,

of a green meadow

             which we can memorize, or
             yesterday's sidewalks, or

and I knew I was home. 

             a habit which discovered us,
             found us comfortable and moved in.

And I cried, and I cried and I cried.

             O and night...the night!
             Wind of the infinite

And the music ended.

             blowing away all faces.
             Within our solitude appears

And I took off my headphones

             a nearly lovely god
             or goddess, all the

and took the record to the counter, still crying, and pretty 
much fleeing the building with my head down.

             heart is ever apt to meet.
             Lovers fare no better,

And finally I open my eyes and the Eucalyptus trees are 
glowing magenta and purple with glints of green, I was 
seeing these auras around the trees, and I felt washed 
and fully of joy.

             concealing, by their love,
             each other's destiny.

For what it's worth, the work I talking about, Beethoven's 
Fifteenth Quartet in A minor, Op. 132 is famously modal, 
which we are in right now, everything in the novel in 
moving modaly upward, an old Monk trick.

             Do you still not understand?
             Pour your emptiness

Anyway, this is only part one of the story,

             into the breeze-
             the birds may soar

We'll get there when we get there.

             more swiftly for it.