June 25, 2007
Muse to the poet…
I saw you following me on the streets of the metropolis….the place where I wander around….with the sack of manuscripts….
I have seen you following me the dungeons I pass…the place where natives fear to trade…the dingy lanes of conurbation…
I found you following me in the vehicles I journey….the window frames of a motorized tramcar…fleeting images that mind seeks to imprison…
I feel your presence in everyday life I perform…in every phase of a day….in every place that I move….
Who are you (to me)…!!!…
A versifier who picks the scraps of my deconstructed verse…a poet, being stimulated from those fragments…composing an unforeseen epic….
You are the soul whom I have seen…searching in the toxic heap of city waste….the filthy write-ups (that you find refreshing)…
You are the person along for the journey…may be by my side…(I don’t observe as I stare outside)…demanding nothing…only a company in the ride…
[but] I feel that you exist when I start to write…the self whom I tend to pass up…the face that I often glare…recurring like a refrain in a clumsy poetry line…
Then who am I (to you)…!!!…
I remember what you called me once…a muse (that writes)…a figurine in a garden unkempt for years….an angel (that hardly could prove a protector)…
On the streets of the city…when I toss my verse pieces…I have seen you picking them up…standing by the road side…in the golden waves of halogen…(trying to) read the scribbles I made on leafs…can you read them…?…
You said these scraps stir you a lot…
Then am I a muse to you….to a poet….a (urban) folk-teller…
I don’t know….
But when I see you read those nonsense scraps of mine and glimpse your eyes spark…I get reassured…
You cry that I am lost…you mourn that I am dead…but if you seek deep in your heart…I must say…as every penguin has a “heart song” for his mate…so do you, the bard, have a muse for your odes (if you wish to have one)…this muse may not even acknowledge your glare when the eyes meet….might not even care to inspire your verse (when you need her most)…but…O poet, the beloved of the muse…she does somewhere inside, awaits your work of art…
Cassandra-Babbles 
Life's Elsewhere said,
June 26, 2007 at 11:41 am
Thanks for a nice ‘tribute’ to my Ragpicker 🙂 , I am quoting you in my blog and if anyone criticises your writing as trite may he nicely go to the ‘nunnery’. Happens to certain earnest Stephen Daedalus type undergrads who have just got initiated into modernist literature of the British type (incidentally the perennial second-grade literature, this Brit one, compared to the rest of the world, if you don’t consider the Irish within queen’s EngLit, politically you shouldn’t; and if you leave few like Chaucer and Shakespeare and … okay … Eliot, the American who tried to be oh-so-french and failed and landed up being more-brit-than-the-brits stiff-upper-lipped).
Writing about love is difficult. You might write it from a state of ‘ignorance’ and you might end up being juvenile (but remember its ‘beautiful’ always, this juvenalia and ‘beauty’ is something which this learned Victorian friends of yours can never ever produce) and you might write about love, in a similar way, after you achieve ‘knowledge’, which is difficult, something done by all great poets eventually. I don’t think your writings are juvenile.
I am someone who has seen enough muck and shit of this world; and even after that when I write about certain emotions which might appear ‘kiddish’ to guys who were born when I was a teenager. But I prefer writing this way. It is a Phoenix rising! So my middle finger and a flying kiss to that guy who has started to ‘grow up’ in a literary way, probably discusses Ezra Pound with his girlfriend instead of telling her that she is the most precious one under the sky, ruminates John Donne but never kisses her suddenly, and has started being – under the aegis of Lord Eliot of Wasteland county – a dispassionate/correlatively-objective/de-personalized modernist lit-reader and has acquired certain presuppositions about what good writings should be like. Unfortunately they are now in their literay 1920s, they will grow up. They will learn that the BritLits are not the best of the modernists in the world, that enough water has passed under their London Bridges which are still falling down, falling down … and they are still living under the reign of the desexualized queenie Victoria. They are ostriches who keep their faces shoved in their books and gleefully blind themselves assuming that no one can see them and I love picking plumes from their ripe rears.
Anybody criticising your writings and playing superego to you will get nice samples of the like of the passages above. Thanks again for a beautiful piece of writing.
cassandra said,
June 26, 2007 at 11:58 am
that was shrewd ….
Thanks Cassandra « Love’s Ragpicker said,
June 26, 2007 at 12:04 pm
[…] Thanks Cassandra Whoaah! I am touched! Buddy-blogger Cassandra probably became saddened when I killed off my muse in an earlier post of mine, and she wrote this touching piece […]
cassandra said,
June 26, 2007 at 12:16 pm
well…so did i….once upon a time….killed my muse (did not kill exactly, you can say exiled)….
now…I dont think you can claim my muse to be yours…
and regarding this comment….?…
hmmm….i’ll surely answer in my next post….so….
till then…have patience….
i wish my friend (“earnest Stephen Daedalus type undergrads “) readi this…if he misses…i’ll ask him to read….
but i definitely have certain things to say…..
that you will get to read very soon…..
Life's Elsewhere said,
June 26, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Everyone has his/her muse … but this muse is mine! Anyone who is literate enough can identify the man “following (her) on the streets of the metropolis….the place where (she) wander(s) around….with the sack of manuscripts….” as me, Love’s Ragpicker !!!
Who are you referring to as ‘you’ here?:
“I remember what you called me once…a muse (that writes)…a figurine in a garden unkempt for years….an angel (that hardly could prove a protector)…
On the streets of the city…when I toss my verse pieces…I have seen you picking them up…standing by the road side…in the golden waves of halogen…(trying to) read the scribbles I made on leafs…can you read them…?…”
Are you denying that this is a tribute to my ragpicker? Or that your exiling/killing of the muse is not referred to in my last post, where I kill her? We are playing with, authoring a couple of characters … what’s wrong with that? This exciting new medium (blogfiction) allows us to do so, the hyperlinking and resultant references which it allows. Think of one author creating a character and another author commenting on that fictionally. I am more excited because, yes, I created the muse, but I created her from a male point-of-view and I am just eager how an intelligent and imaginative woman like you, with a grasp over language more powerful than mine, can re-author that character giving her an autonomy of her own which I might be unable to …
Regarding your friend, I have my Hattori Hanzo sword ready and thirsty … I have outgrown my BritLit classes, thankfully am now exposed to a global literary/artistic imagination larger than those provided by the narrow isles governed by Tories and Liberals. I am ready for a literary/artistic bloodbath any day. Not only I have outgrown, but also I have ideas of mine, borne out of the life of my mind, not derivative ideas from some secondary Englitcrit books. I won’t provide footnotes, I will have a gala time!
cassandra said,
June 27, 2007 at 10:13 am
well dear…in that case you must at the best claim the intertextuality in my blog…you can no doubt say that when i portrait my poet as a ragpicker…its your character…ok…i do agree….
but i don’t agree that a muse should necessarily be a woman (i know many of you wont like the idea)…if i write…i may also have a muse…and i don’t think you can deny that….when the muse writes to the poet….that’s poet in general….and the rag picking is one of those characteristics of the poet which i no doubt adopted from you…
so…the “you” in…
“I remember what you called me once…a muse (that writes)…a figurine in a garden unkempt for years….an angel (that hardly could prove a protector)…
On the streets of the city…when I toss my verse pieces…I have seen you picking them up…standing by the road side…in the golden waves of halogen…(trying to) read the scribbles I made on leafs…can you read them…?…”
…is not essentially the ragpicker…it is the “poet”….and if i say poet…do i in particular mention any one single poet soul…?…if you can claim my muse…i think i can also claim your poet…that’s it…
but….one thing that you can not do is….claiming my muse…and scolding my friends as well…(i cant allow both the things at a time)…he is a young boy…have certain ideas or ideologies…which in many ways are similar to mine…if you take out your thirsty Hattori Hanzo sword…to save your muse….i can also fight back to save my poet (who bears my ideas and ideologies…irrespective of the rag picking singularity)….so….lets not engage in any kinda blood shed….and leave that poor friend of mine in peace…otherwise i shall have to fight for him….
Life's Elsewhere said,
June 27, 2007 at 11:26 am
Aha! Piece reigns therefore! And that’s good: poetry in the age of Digital Reproduction as ragpicking, will write further about that in my blog … thoughtprovoking and so aggreable. As far your ideas and ideologies are concerned, if you spell it out on some further posts, I am game for a quarrel (without swords).
Lastly, plz plz plz develop the idea of a modern-day Cassandra! I will be radically changing my blog into a kinda blognovel, just ruminating about that; I think blogfiction is a thing of the future, and you have this brilliant idea in your hand and keeping it underdeveloped!
cassandra said,
June 27, 2007 at 11:31 am
i dont think you can really force me to change my ideologies….and if you do…
i want you to know…
i want you to know…
i really want you to know….
that i am ready for the game…