Elegy and Remembrance

Both are lovely. Very easy to reminisce and ponder about life and death during this music. Makes this online remembrance more like a regular memorial service, to have the various musical pieces people are selecting…..

Thanks so much.
OM

Listening and glistening again with big fat wet tears…… and my throat all seized up in sobs…..but hey, this is after a glorious swim in the pond with the golden-eyed frog and pelting rain making the water jump up and down in choruses of drops…….thunder and rainbows too…. It is amazing how when someone we love drops their molecules, it is like every molecule in our body wants to resonate and remember how delicious this whole experience is, just being here…… 
I wonder how we could really ever spend one minute in the foggy place of lassitude or indifference….. and still, I know I will again…. 

With this kind of send-off, he'll be doing very well indeed.

Ramsses, it's good to see you here.

Something happened between us who took turns writing and creating the alternative reality of the Song of the Nile – Balder, Rammsses, Michael, Jane, Gitanjali, Chris, Colin, myself. Some powerful force was at work there, and I still feel echoes of it in my bones. I have never been able to understand it, but my reactions clearly show how profoundly meaningful it is to a part of me I hardly even know.

Strange karmic weave… I'm puzzled that I find myself more deeply stirred by Michael's passing than by the deaths of many actual real-life relatives and friends.

What is that all about???

If anyone here has an intuitive clue, it would be great if they shared it in this space.

Thank you for this, Bruce. Beautiful music. I would have said haunting but I wonder why - the rhythm is unusual …

Greetings, Mascha. I wonder if the masks we wore gave us permission to access deeper parts of ourselves and we were shaken by what we saw.
His sister weeping in a rainy pond,
With rainbows, thunder and golden-eyed frogs,
The beloved hovering near, silent,
Enjoying the conversation of friends.

Oh, yes. Balder, Ramsses, you wrote the magic words that open doors. Michael was an animus figure for me - still is, actually. Even more than that - he's several archetypes all rolled into one.

And it's so true what Ramsses said, I feel like slapping my forehead, it's too obvious: ”….the masks we wore gave us permission to access deeper parts of ourselves and we were shaken by what we saw.”

Damn, this is rich.

More later about all this. Thank you, ye aulde archetypal pals of mine who happen to appear online.

Hi to all,

A little line to say goodbye to the wise man. He could mix rationality with new age ideas with a unique twist. I think that he had wandered quite far in his own shadow and light and that made him wise. I'll miss him. I'll probably go over to his blog automatically and say”Oh well, he hasn't written a new blog entry yet! I'll come back later”. His writings are a good mix of guts, heart and mind, and his blog entries were to few to my taste.

Thank you Michael.

Patrick

Beautiful. All of you. Thank you.

Thank you, Bruce. You are so lovely.

I was thinking about the Song of the Nile while reading Michael's first and last entries (that Bruce re-posted on the memorial thread in i-Pod). Actually, I could never read anything Michael wrote or even think of Michael without feeling this immensity, almost a presence, that I first encountered when reading the Song of the Nile. I never participated on that thread, but I read it, becoming aware of it just as things began to erupt. I was astonished, riveted, terrified. I could not get a handle on my admiration or my confusion, and I was amazed at the courage of you who had given yourselves to it. That is what it looked like to me: you all surrendered to a collective creative process that tapped such depths, via what you each brought to it, that something archetypal was unleashed. I kept thinking, oh God, they're playing with fire. I don't know if I like this. This is magnificent! I don't know if I like this… I DON'T like this. This is incredible!…

It is good to be here with you all, gathering in his honor. How I long to know what he might have come up with in reply to all these reflections and tributes!

Michael,
Goodbye sweet man.

I want to weigh in here, too, just because I've been so undone by Michael's death, and so grateful for his being, and because I'm so, so unbearably glad that you're each here to remember and remember and share. I remember The Song, too; I remember Michael's presence; I remember his voice. And though I'm floundering still in what to do with all this, or how to mourn, or whether to, I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you.

(loving me loving you)
Siona

I'm here too.

Mascha, I didn't have the experience you did with the Song of the Nile, but I too feel like Siona, undone. Perhaps he was an animus figure with a capital A. I think it's more than that. I was involved in some intense sharings with him, I think that's partly why I am so affected. But only partly. I'm trying to see why it goes so deeply for me. HIs voice. I'll never forget his voice. His presence - that I only ever felt virtually and on the telephone – his incredible generosity with himself inspite of all the physical discomfort. Perhaps that is it, that he gave so unendingly of himself when so much of himself- his body - must have been suffering greatly. I think that's it.

..perhaps why I feel so sad, that such a beautiful man should have suffered at all. (and yes, I know, perhaps this is partly why he was so beautiful). I literally can't bear to think of him in hospital and all that.

I see now that this aspect in particular is triggering re some old (and new) stuff for me, which I wont go into, but I'm thankful to be here in this space, Balder, to write a little and unravel. Thanks for listening.

Love,
Sandra

Reading all of your responses here, I'm overcome with an appreciation so intense, it's overwhelming. I can't think straight, I'm out of control, awash in feelings of almost unbearable… I don't know the word for it. Love? No, words fall flat on their butts in the face of it.

Sometimes I wish I wasn't so permeable, so insanely impressionable. Then again, I can hear Michael roar in my ear: 'No! You go, girl. You, of all people, better feel EVERYTHING to the last drop… and then some! That's why you're here, after all.'

Too much was never enough for this guy.

This may be the time and the place for those who participated in Song of the Nile, or who were affected by it, to have a wrap party. I feel that I can talk about it now that I am perfectly content to say nothing at all. That's when the inner voice says, well, in that case, maybe you should say something.

I was just thinking of Michael the other day. I did not know him that well. We communicated a  little on a particular subject and I read some of his blogs. He touched me. I just wanted to add something here.

Ramsses, Mascha, Balder - everyone involved in Song of the Nile. Last night I was thinking about suggesting that this might be published. Perhaps not in the normal route, but something by way of honouring Maxie - and all of you involved. Recently at a literary festival,I heard of a particular self-publishing outfit that sounds far far better than most. I'm sure many of us would love something to hold in our hands that spoke of our dear friend.

With all due respect to Maxie, I'd rather forget about it.

Balder - same here on all three points you made.

The song of the nile…
It is going to take me ages to read and remember and glean all of the pieces of this mysterious, ever-expanding puzzle that we  share together….not only in the Song, but everywhere.  
I first noticed Michael in the Chapel…..he and I shared this, dare-I-say, compulsive fixation on the geometry of the whole unfolding…he brought his favourite Phi to the table of fascination and I brought my Pi….. and then we got to the spiral and the tornadic vortex, Shiva and Shakti, and honing 'the point of attraction' so sharply that it becomes singular such that everything become nothing becomes everything…. that singularity is 'the eye of the needle', the interface between spirit and matter….and how the imagination of God pours through each heart into all this, and back again…. 
 Michael wrote somewhere in one of his blogs that at this late stage, when he discovered this community, he had started doing 'loneliness'…….I don't entirely know what he meant, but I resonate with that too…. as here there is a place where so many of us are trying to wake up to this mystery from the inside out…. there seems to be an understanding that each one of us has the clues and cues to solve this riddle of how we actually got here out of the grand mystery of apparent nothingness, to this place so filled with 'stuff', and so distractingly entrancing….. and as an intrepid adventurer of this time/space/knowledge event horizon, it has been such a relief to find fellow adventurers…. and even if we look like a hapless crew sometimes, I love this little band….  Michael is the first of us to go over the event horizon….into the unknown…his molecules released. Oh, how amazing is that! and how does it work….. how many births and deaths have I witnessed, and all I feel each time is awe.
There is lots to “publish” here about this adventuring….. and it is a beautiful tribute to Michael and actually to all of us, showing up in our own ways. Like Einstein, sitting on a beam of light,  we are traveling at a pace so fast that you arrive at the same time you depart, having crossed the expanse of the universe in the meanwhile, from infinity to eternity….from this movement-so-fast-it-becomes-stillness and the arising tension becomes our intention is born, our freedom to choose…..
I well up again with tears, with gratitude, with relief, with loss, with love….I love what everyone is writing, I love these many varied perspectives……In some version, Michael is held in all these living fractals that are US….how deeply we are all affected by him, and by each other!  ahhhhh, this breaking heart…… 
Jane xo

 

With a zen retreat this weekend, it may be days before I can write again. I am saddened that Michael and I parted in yet another miscommunication of some sort that I sensed was very upsetting to him. Possibly I was projecting my own feelings on him. I'm still not sure exactly what happened. It could have been addressed. It wasn't. Now he's gone. And that pretty much sums up the Song of the Nile. The beauty of it is that he's not sick anymore. Oh no. Not sick at all now, are you Michael.

Ramsses, Bruce, Mascha… I hear you. In a way it's none of my business - you are the ones who were involved with the Song.
Just love, here, with you all.

Not at all, Sandra. I for one would be very interested in what you have to say about it.

Seconding Ramsses' reply to you, Sandra. And adding that your intention comes through as very pure. You simply want to spread your love and encouragement, yes?

Personally, I think that if anyone gets published among us here, it should be Jane. And Maryw. Oh, and Balder! ( dang, the list is getting longer and longer…). Big books lingering in potentia there.

Seeing that nobody has commented on Jane's post up above, (the one that begins with “The song of the nile… “), I want to say, fantastic weave, Jane! As usual.

Please write more.

If one of you would up to mailing (i.e. snail mail) the whole thing to me, that would be great.

Yes to SO many of you being published. I've been on a campaign re this on DD for ages as ahem, Ramsses knows ;-)

And, yes to your very beautiful words, Jane.

I'm having a hard time putting any coherent thoughts together after a week of “family fun” and the chance to observe my dysfunctional/habitual ways of relating in that arena. 
Thank you for drawing my attention here Mascha.
Michael would have liked to see the Song published.  In the communication we shared on this, he did express confusion and sadness with the way several things unfolded on the Nile.   I feel the archetype angle of the story runs very deep and will try my best to add something to this wrap—I just can't do it right now.  I didn't play a big part, but the process and you all affected me more deeply than I ever would have imagined. 
Love,
Chris

Reading all this clarified something for me of why Michael touched me deeply in these last few months.
I am reminded of the title of Michael Garfields song, “It Hurts, So We're Not Dead.” I'm listening as I post…
http://www.myspace.com/michaelgarfield
Maxie helped get me in touch with that pain of being in a body in a way that I could accept and experience it in myself more freely.
That was a great gift.

Although I am not familiar with this 'Song of the Nile' (however it has peaked my interest and I would love to read what you all are talking about…is there a link?), I got to know Maxie on Julian's Kundalini thread.  I enjoyed his piece, http://mqs.gaia.com/blog/2007/7/kundalini_and_the_dragon_rodeo and his very indepth comments, and I began to read his blog.  Back then I was a newbie, and a little intimidated by all the intellectual types here, and so I never asked him to be my friend, and by the time my self-esteem had flowered a little, I think that he was not participating here as much.  I am grateful that his blog is still here for us to re-visit, and thnx Bruce for posting this in honor of his memory, and also all of you that commented…may he always dance in joy…*

Thnx Bruce…and may we continue to wreck…lol

Hey all,
Mascha thanks for inviting me to come here.  I am sorry it took so long for me to come here, I find that I dont look at my Gaia account that often any more.  There is some sadness about that for I remember the heydey and the alluring intensity and movement of that! And when I do look, all your familiar voices - but now no longer Michaels - makes me feel warm. 
Song of the Nile ahhhh I feel a giddy giggle arise.  And then some other mixed emotions…feels like something past that got us together and blew us apart too, oh when people share something together…that will pass…its their moment forever…
The trance of nostalgia can kill me, what can we look to in the future? is that heartless? I dunno. 

We all hit the ground running. We make compromises. Big Daddy offers us that sweet deal and suddenly we find ourselves in Pharaoh's army. We've signed on with the Devil. I don't claim that Michael was a friend of mine. I did care about him and wanted him to get well. I had already lost one friend to Agent Orange. What an obscene name. Agent Orange. God damn you, you assholes.