Tom Turner in an Existential Moment — Image by kenne
— George Orwell
— kenne
Ghost Of Yesteryears — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
We spent some brief moments with brother Tom during our trip to Seattle for Lisa’s and Mike’s wedding on Lummi Island (August 29, 2009).
It’s never been easy for anyone to figure out the Turner boys, let alone one to the other. In some ways,
however, if you know one of us, then you know the other. We are very much alike, but selectively taking some similarities to an extreme (by choice and personality), which appear different.
This video is about my brother; therefore, it’s about me.
“The cat’s in the well and grief is showing its face
The world’s being slaughtered and it’s such a bloody disgrace.”
— kenne
For Crying Out Loud (September 2009)
(The video can be enlarged by clicking on HD at the top right and the four arrows in the the lower right corner.)
Image by kenne
My brother Tom shared this Galway Kinnell with me in 2010 with the note: “Years ago I copied [sic] this poem down . . .
something about it grabbed me. Perhaps, just perhaps, the ARBITRARINESS of it all.”
Hitchhiker
Thomas R. Turner, May 23, 1942 – November 13, 2014 — Image by kenne
Standing above me in Smith’s
Awkwardly looking down through a clipped hesitancy
Our lives came together.
From within, mutually canceling
Vignettes of naturalness and gender-cliche.’
She kissed through closed lips of
Pristine openness.
Innocently I loved.
After my return from the war
I stepped into a world of Kafkaesque embraces; yearning . . .
Paled with particular sensations
I was momentarily blinded.
I could taste the t.s. eliot peach that I dared to eat.
Looking at you the way you love the first person
Whoever touched you
And never quite that way again
I savored my idea of you but missed the obvious.
Paradoxes betray the limits of logic
Not of the reality, we shared.
Your “passion” was stillborn through so dame necessary.
The aesthetics of my artifice went against the grain:
Recreation, utilitarian achievements, and another
sexuality
Were hidden karmas of your soul.
My recondite preoccupations rung up as
No sale.
But let’s
Skip the arguments.
I already know how the story ends:
A not so cryptic message –
Don’t be naive
You could only gaze into the distance at my life.
— from 24 to Harwood and Cropsey — No Road Back Home by Tom Turner
######
A Brother Lost
Now that it’s daylight at five,
I am awakened by the
Soft sounds of morning doves,
Delaying for a moment
My feet hitting the floor —
Just long enough
To think about my brother
Who no longer writes,
Calls or returns mine.
There’s no reason.
He has never needed
A reason to not call —
For him,
calls need a reason,
even made up ones —
Sharing a quote,
Name now forgotten,
Need to reach out.
Now lost in the northwest,
Imprisoned by his mind,
Lacking courage to create.
Now each day, I live with
Words no longer spoken,
Words no longer written.
— kenne
Tom Turner (08/29/09) — Image by kenne
With so much of my knowledge of literature I was taught by my brother, Tom. In an April 26, 2003 note from him, he wrote:
“Hey . . . you
Metaphysical degenerates . . .
Bantered alone by impulse . . .
Here I am attempting to essay a few
coherent thoughts . . . God it’s risky!
‘God and the imagination are one.’
I am in the midst of trying to
memorize a poem . . . ‘Final Soliloquy
of The Interior Paramour’ by
Wallace Stevens . . . never mind why.”
Tom goes on to write about a piece by George Steiner
on memorization amid the technological revolution
where media is ubiquitous:
“The danger is that the text or music will lose
what physics calls its ‘critical mass,’ its implosive
powers within the echo chambers of the self.”
He continued — “I can really be in awe of
Shakespearean stage people in recitation
of exact lines!! Read closely . . .”
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
that our devices still are overthrown:
our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own.
(The Player King’s Crucial Speech in the Play
Within the Play — Act 3, Scene 2, 183-209-Hamlet)
I probably don’t need to tell you that Tom
never memorized the Wallace poem.
Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
— Wallace Stevens
A Tucson Sunset — Image by kenne
— from Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
Eliot’s Four Quartets rests on my desk not only because I love his poetic masterpiece
but because my first copy was given to me by my brother, Tom, who wrote
“. . . I’ve become obsessed with it . . . with time . . . with memory . . . with language,
all of which are concentrated in this work. It has become such a part of me.”
Tom went on to write — “To use a few of Eliot’s words; ‘As we grow older the world
becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated . . . ‘ Complications, ambiguities, non sequitur
I keep searching for clarity . . . lucidity, and I know each time I seek that, I’ll
become more entangled. No. I’m not bored—just Scarred. I’m moving toward a sort-of silence . . .
I know what you’re thinking: ‘Bull-shit!’ Since the significant things, I want to say
have the wrong inflections, intonations for most arenas of conversation;
I ramble on into oblivion. A series of non sequitur.” (7/27/84)
I miss Tom.
— kenne
Tom Turner, a Rainy Day on the Seattle Waterfront (June, 2000) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
(These quotes were among Tom’s handwritten notes.)
— Paul Theroux
— Kierkegaard
New Orleans Gallery Window — Photo-Artistry by kenne
— kenne
An Aspen Fall — Photo-Artistry by kenne
In a letter dated 4/26/03, by brother Tom wrote:
“I am in the midst of ‘trying’ to memorize a poem . . .
‘Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour’ by Wallace Stevens . . .
never mind why . . .
although the exercise was triggered by a piece by
George Steiner in which he wrote:
‘The danger is that the text or music will lose what physics
calls its ‘critical mass,’ its implosive powers within
the echo chambers of the self.'”
Tom was aware that what is committed to memory
and susceptible to recall constitutes “The Blast of The Self,”
an intensity of outward attention — interest, curiosity,
a healthy obsession was a motivation stronger
even than love or hatred or fear.
— kenne
Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.
This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:
Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.
Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Thomas R. Turner (May 23, 1942–November 13, 2014) — Photo-Artistry by kenne
This posting is the second of several I will be sharing from a long poem written by Tom
sometime around 1980 after his wife left him. Today is the fifth anniversary of his death.
24 to Harwood and Cropsy: No Road Back Home
(Taken from a Brooklyn Bus Route and the Title of a Blues Album.)
After my return from the war
I stepped into a world of Kafkaesque embraces; yearning . . .
Paled with particular sensations
I was momentarily blinded.
Biting hues of romanticism blinded me with quixotic hopes I
Stumbled into a Brooklyn routine and parody of intent.
The bare facticity of Brooklyn lives got to you.
Spasms of coughing spontaneous tears
Saw us through Saturday matinee's Saul's Deli and a quart of beer.
Always we were together.
Halluncinatory flashes of a deluge on an
Ocen-Avenue-Saturday running laughing
Around an inundated block.
All those Saturdays in the world waited for two riders on a
Slick tandum
Carrening toward a Coney-Island of anticipations
Fiercely believing in the notion of possibilities.
Not sure I understand it now,but I "understood" then.
Walking to Walbaums one twilight
the first spring
(or the second they were all alike for awhile)
I could taste the t.s. eliot peach that I dared to eat.
Looking at you the way you love the first person
Who ever touched you
And never quite that way again
I savored my idea of you but missed the obvious.
Through the compactness of subway-sundays
We cherished dreams of escape with
Transcripts and belief that college would do it for us.
Ave. J. and jewish-chritmases allowed a diet of
Imcompleteness and knapsacks of disillusioning bohemianism.
We never looked back,
U-Haul got us out with reassurance of
Family.
(Click on any of the tiled images for larger in a slide format.)
Thomas Robert Turner, May 23, 1942 – November 13, 2014
I love you, Bobby!
Click On Tom’s Celebration pdf
Richard Burton Reading, And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Tom Turner — Image by kenne
Tom and Kenne Turner (October 2009)– Image by Joy
We are hairy men
who may be thought of a “Twit,”
but I dare say, are not.
Why you might ask?
If you look closely, you will not see
tasty morsels in our beards,
while Twits upon close review
will have tiny little specks
of dried-up scrambled eggs.
So says Roald Dahl,
and he should know
of all the disgusting things
found in the beard of a twit,
but, no need to hold your noses.
So, what is it these hairy men
are trying to hide?
Is it an ugly face, you ask?
No, not really,
for we are two guys
possessing good thoughts,
which shone out of our faces
like sunbeams,
so we will always look lovely.
Again, Roald Dahl, should know:
‘If a person has ugly thoughts,
it begins to show on the face.
And when that person
has ugly thoughts every day,
every week, every year,
the face gets uglier and uglier
until it gets so ugly
you can hardly bear to look at it.’
Even so, on this sand grain day
in the bent bay’s grave
I celebrate and spurn
my driftwood seventy-sixth
wind turned age.
Yet, I remain steadfast
in Shakespeare’s fifth stage
in The Seven Stages of Man,
still acquiring wisdom,
enjoying the finer things in life
and remain very attentive of my appearance,
trying to live life to its fullest,
preparing for the final stages of life.
Shall seventy-six bells sing struck.
kenne
I can’t let this pass without again sharing Dylan Thomas’ Poem On His Birthday.
Tom Turner — Image by kenne
The poem “Invisible Man” by Pablo Neruda gets inside me, stirring my very being, mixing the past, present, and images of the future. The poem has short lines making it seem longer than it is. Even so, I’m sharing some of Neruda’s powerful lines, which I have read, reread contemplating thoughts of my brother, Tom, and existential invisibility.
— from Invisible Man by Pablo Neruda
(Click here to read the complete poem.)
— from Tom Turner’s notes
Becoming is Superior to Being 