OTI:two poems and notes:11/10/16

Open To Interpretation

Second Labor

For pop Alz was a dream.
They all dream,
And we call them 'they'
As they're like children
Before they're named.
But I don't know,
Maybe he was lucid as I
And can recall each day.
Don't know,
Not a one of them has returned
To explain it.
It looks to be hell,
The continual looping
Memories repeated spinning.
Caring, I experienced what I could,
Eating sleeping existing
Beside him day after day,
Looking into the entrance
To the underworld
With its guardian,
The Lernaean Hydra.
You don't need to see this,
But Alz is like
That many headed serpent's
Heads talking all at once,
Arguing incessantly with one another,
Making no sense.
Quiet one head down
And the dragon grows another,
Maybe more.
And they are ear piercing loud.
Even when peacefully sleeping,
The afterimage of their screaming
Makes their waking a dread.
While you wait while they sleep
Maybe you sleep too
Only to hear them in your dreams,
See them in your dreams.
I still do.
Pop's one pissed off ghost,
And my clothes still soiled with
Virulent hydra blood.
You don't want to be
Too close to them
Or me.

So, So,

So, so,
Again I'm again a student
With his homework project
As again
A paper mâché volcano,
A carved balsa wood Stonehenge.
Show and tell has always
Been my favorite time,
My words alive with telling
And your eyes as well listening
For awhile
Until I see the long parade
Of my fellow students' projects
Dulls your gaze over mine.

So, so,
I show you my kids' stuff
I thought of interest
Just like back then
I'm still in school
Retelling my adventures,
But I note your own interest
Behind your eyes
Keened by your own adventures,
And for these tales of mine
You have little time.

So so
Pursuant to some future
I make my superstitious way.
You, superstitious too?
Oh, we have that in common,
Not a good sign.

DolphinWords

Notes: Second Labor...reference the second labor of Hercules, slaying of the Lernaean Hydra, the serpent/dragon with many heads...cut one off, and it grew another...Alz reference Alzheimers...I hesitate to post this one, but I realized my experience was a fit with Hercules'...I'm not Hercules!...the old myths are made much of by different interests...these interests see in them allegories...modern psychology references its diagnosis to the myths...metaphysicians see allegories of spiritual things...and scientific principled scientists see things too...there's some merit to all of them...I'm finding the old Greeks loved ambiguity...every so often they would have contests for playwrights, like the Olympics for athletes...plays were submitted, and from these a few plays were chosen, each playwright given a whole day to themselves to perform three tragedies, and a satyr play, and after the performance the judges would vote...brb...

quote

At the end of these three days a jury of ten people chosen by lot from the body of citizens chose the best choir, best actor and best author. At the end of the performances, the judges placed a tablet inscribed with the name of their choice inside an urn, after which five tablets were randomly selected. The person who received the highest amount of votes won. The winning author, actor and choir were thus selected not purely by lot, but chance did play a part.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_tragedy

unquote

That's ingenious ambiguity...almost like our having a popular vote, and an electoral college vote from the all or nothing win for each state...hmmph...one way to let the gods have a hand in things!...I've distanced myself from alz...just don't like to even to talk/think of it...or even medical things in general...which maybe doesn't help much for people who might benefit from my experiences...though in truth, the entire blog is dripping in hydra blood...hydra blood eventually does in Hercules...how'd Dante put it?...brb...

quote

Dante passes through the gate of Hell, which bears an inscription ending with the famous phrase "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate",^[17] most frequently translated as "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."^[

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(Dante)

unquote

I can't even read through wiki's takes on Dante...an allegorist algorithm of some sort keeps dumb bunnies like me out of that cabbage patch, which is just as well...medical books/things make me glaze over too...but on reading the wiki Dante takes, I see a segue into the So, So, s...Dante is guided by Virgil, a student with a teacher...not an unfamiliar relationship to me!...I regard everyone as my guide/teacher, always have, always will, I guess...always feel like I'm the little kid tagging along...which often leads to disappointment when the big kids ditch me!...oh, I need to do some poems about being 'ditched'!...it is just the worst...but I always look up...

quote

Today "Hydra-like problem" or "hydra" refers to a multifaceted problem that seems incapable of step-by-step solution, or to one that worsens upon conventional attempts to solve it, for example, attempts to suppress a particular piece of information resulting in it being disseminated even more widely.

http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/Mythology/LernaeanHydra.html

unquote

hmmph...oh!...I figured out the strange increase of pageviews...had to study this out!...in google blog editor there is a page or two that show statistics on pageviews...this has a name, Google Analytics...it is useful for those marketing their blog...for me, it's just vanity to look at it, and wonder who in the world in Sudan would happen on my blog!...and in the study, I discovered something called Referral Spam...this is when a bot finds the analytic page, and visits it...doesn't even visit the blog, just the analytic...but it leaves a pageview notation, as if it visited the blog...the purpose of this apparently is to dupe someone studying the analytics to click on the web site source, the bot's, that is funneling all the pageviews, just to see it, and so be lured to whatever the site is about...the analytics have things like what search engine and platforms viewers are reaching the blog with...this is all very dull, and now that I know where all those recent pageviews are from, I can go back to ignoring the analytics!

:)

DavidDavid