To, "Think Upon", was written in Oct '98 while reviewing and reorganizing this material.  At first I thought I might write a few sentences, a short verse as an introduc­tion to this section To Think Upon, sort of an encapsulation of the whole.  The composi­tion does do that, but I think the poem became to long to place as a separate introduc­tion, but it does I think lay out the theme for all the others that follow.  So, I guess I'll leave it right here.

 

"Give it a Thought", this was my very first attempt at creative writing.  It began as a humorous piece and in response to a re­quest from the managers of the news group on the internet for each member to provide a short biography.  I wrote it using my internet signature Iishere (I-is-here).  It rapidly turned into what I now view as a story of my travels through the paths of social work and the mental health field.  In many ways the piece speaks allegorically to my philosophical frame-of-reference.  I probably ought to revise it, but on the other hand it is my first attempt at creative writing.  In the end, I'll probably leave it alone. 

 

"Time", is the first written in a serious manner.  It was com­posed in July 1997 shortly af­ter learning of Don's terminal illness.  I am not sure it belongs here, but perhaps would be better plac­ed with those written with Don in mind.  This composition was among several to be placed on a web site.  Trisha, a friend from the msn on-line ex­peri­ences since 1995, agreed to post, "Time", and other compositions on her site, and assisted me in finding the right background and music to put with them.  This com­posi­tion (and others to follow) examines what I now recognize as expressions of my view of the universe and the human con­dition.  Those ideas, thoughts and feel­ings are in­deed articu­lated in my written words.

 

"Then and Now" (originally titled Words and Destiny"), and, "To Seek, To Reach, To Find.", are two compositions that express a philosophy while at the same time either describing events in my life space or calling upon imagined or actual scenes experienced to describe the existen­tial search for life's meaning.  These two were the first I had at­tempted in an effort to touch on the philosophical nature of my belief system.  I enjoyed the creative jour­ney even though at times the allegories were hard to draw upon.

 

"Spirit Rose", this poem was inspired by a rose that Nancy, a friend in Columbus, Ohio had scanned and made into a grap­hic and then posted as stationery on the in­ternet.  I cop­ied it and then wrote this piece and shared it with her.  "Spirit Rose" certainly has relig­ious overtones and in some ways de­fines my philosophy of life, a religion of living.

 

"Go Sing a Song", is a work giving hope and encouragement to past, present and future.  Within its structure is to be found more of my own basic philosophy.  I be­gan it sometime in Jan.'98, but struggled to finish it, finally complet­ing it in late Feb.  It is a collection of thoughts hung together by the com­mon threads of vision, care and hope, and it captures some of what I con­sider my spiritual side of life.

 

"Discoveries", not unlike other compositions I have written, started out when I was thinking about the things Don and I had done in our youth.  It took on a more com­prehensive mean­ing and required several months to complete.  I could never really think what it was I was trying to say.  Perhaps the poems that precede this piece needed to be written first.  I think the major message here is that we really never come to the final knowing of self until death comes about and maybe not even then.  "Discoveries", is indeed part of my philosophy of life and is reflective of my years of combined education, training and clinical experiences, and arises out of "just plain" living for fifty-eight years.  Isn't it interesting how the older we get the greater wis­dom we seem to achieve?  At least I think so.

 

I had thought the above piece was going to be the final work of this collection, it was not.  "A Cork of Life", was added and then others as well to this collection.  During one of the weekly television news magazines an individual responding to an inter­viewer commented that, "life was not like a cork bobbing on the water”.  That rang a bell, recalling a phrase or saying some­where heard before.  So the thought was born, the work be­gun, and the poem became.  It does address what I have al­ways thought as one of the underpinnings to my personal phil-osophy, I hope the reader enjoys my notion of existential phi­losophy.

 

"There is a Season and There is a Time", is my most ambitious piece.  The composi­tion took several months to complete as I struggled to identify the bits and pieces making up my eclectic philosophical frame of reference.  I was fearful of neglecting impor­tant aspects or individuals.  Finally, I just let the ideas flow and almost wrote a James Joyce stream of consciousness piece!  What I hoped to do was touch upon the many areas and numbers of individuals who have in some way or an-other con­tributed to my develop­ment whether living or now gone, whether known personally or through the works left to us all.  One must at some point choose a be­ginning point for the creation of a personal philosophy, I did that sometime ago probably without conscious thought but brought to the fore and purposefully add­ed to while a gradu­ate student.  This piece pays tribute to a representative group of composers, artists, scientist and theo­rist who for me provided the "stuff" from which to create my uni­versal looking glass.  Importantly, the poem begins with a salutation to my parents, teachers, friends and others who have been a part of my life, influenced, and con­tributed to who I am becoming.  Without this latter group those of the former would not have had meaning.  I am greatly pleased and proud of this particular piece.

 

"Fear", is a strange poem for me.  I set out purposefully to draw a foreboding ver­bal description of fear, an emotion creat­ing alarm and dread.  If one looks at the structure of the poem each verse grows, finally bringing the description to a climax followed by a decrease in descriptive provoking adjec­tives.  This work  was started about the time unsettledness was grow­ing for me.  I think the poems descriptive pic­ture probably ac­curately reflects what I was experi­encing during that time pe­riod.  Like most I have written this poem does end on a positive note reflecting my belief that life is ultimately good and that, as my father knew, things work out for the best.

This piece, "A 24 Hr. View from the Bluff to the Valley Below", was inspired by the view from my friend Bill's parent's home on Bluff Road in Sandy, Or.  The home looks out over the Sandy River and Fisherman's Bend, a popular fishing hole and in the distant background Mt. Hood rises above it all.  While help­ing Bill reno­vate his parents home I had remarked that the scene 1,000 feet below or more and out to the horizon would be one about which to write a poem.  A few days later while tak­ing a quick break from the renovation tasks, I stepped outside and roughed out a few verses on masking paper, finish­ing the composition later that night and the next morning.  If indeed there is such a thing as a "million dollar view", this is it!  As Bill says, one really needs to be there every day and watch the scenes unfold.  I am placing this composition here in this section as I think it clearly expresses an­other component in my frame-of reference for viewing the universe.  The poem has a complex and inter-related set of transactions taking place, they can stand independ­ently but together they makeup the whole.  Life does have cycles and patterns, one just needs to look for them.  I rather like this poem and the images it in­vokes.

 

"The River of Thoughts", is I think one of my more interesting compositions.  I dis­covered the picture on a special computer CD received in summer '97.  The colors are the soft but bold ones found in the fall or at summer’s first appearance.  From mid point and across the river to the opposite shore, mist arises and mingles with the air.  The canoe sits silently as though mo­mentarily abandoned, but knowing that it will be re­trieved to continue the journey.  As I took in this sight, these images coming to mind I knew I must write of the picture now forming in my mind.  The words came with relative ease, so much so that it could have doubled in size!  Along with the picture and the composition I used a musical score that I had saved from somewhere on the internet and made a stationery to use when placing the poem on the internet.  The musical score is a lyrical piece, rising with quiet crescendo and fal­ling slowly away as the sounds drifts to but a murmur to be heard.  Once again, this poem started out as a some­thing else but ended as a statement more philosophical than a poem about nature.

 

"I Heard, I Saw, I Remember",  I think of this composition as directing the reader  to some of those events in my lifetime which have contributed to the develop­ment and formation of my way of looking at life.  I can not at this moment recall why I started writing this.  But I started and finished it while at the same time undergoing some stressful times.  It may well be that as the poem developed and grew, it was my at­tempt to review and take stock of just who I am and how I got to here.  That is proba­bly as good a reason as any.  I like the content of the piece and found creating the verses around the events challenging and fun.  At first I struggled with trying to put the events in chronological order, but gave up and just let the memories and words flow!  For now this work identifies those "defining moments" in my life to the date of the composition's creation.  Folks close to my age will un­doubtedly relate to many of the universal events described and while the remain­der are taken from my own experiences, I am sure the reader will understand the notion portrayed.

 

These three works, "Time Will Tell", "This I Know" and "What is My Destiny", were all written within the same time period and address the inner turmoil  I was ex­perienc­ing at the time.  The first recognizes that things about me were about ready to come apart and that I accept that which was my re­sponsibility, the second recognizes that there is further to go and that the pathways will be revealed.  The last composi­tion lays out the possibility of a "fascin-ating quest" to be taken and raises the ques­tion should it be taken or not.

 

Jan.30, 2006: "Time Will Tell".  Earlier this morning I placed this poem on the web.  The composition speaks to the anguish I was experiencing as addressed in the "Prologue and Dedication" section. Yet, the piece continues, as does most of my writing, to be hopeful for the future. I accept responsibility for my situation and for finding the way out of the circum-stances to achieve a more stable life space.  I experimented a little with the graphics for this presentation.  I used a lot of transparencies and some 3-D effects.  Doing so made this piece a little more difficult to work with!

 

The poem, "The Wonder of it All", is probably the beginning of my looking outward instead of inward by drawing attention to events going on about us in the world and raising questions or suggesting different ways of thinking about them.  "The Wonder of it All", starts with current events as the stepping stone to issues of human relationships, those singular in nature and those universal in application and moves on to raise questions of a broader nature.  There are those people and institutions which genuinely care and there are also those which do not and who consider the end to justify the means.  I think the essential question here is which is which and who shall come along to lead the way.  Quoting from an earlier internet sharing of this composition, "The Wonder of it All" is really a companion piece to "Where Evil Lies and Lurks", but from a different perspective.  Described in the first verse is President Clinton's admission about events with the intern, and then the terrorists bombings in Africa which took place about the same time.  The second verse describes the aftermath of school shootings which happened also around that same time.  The following verse is a description of events unfolding in Bosnia but could just as well describe Iraq today!  The remainder of the work are life experiences.  As with all of my material addressing the nature of human kind, the poem ends on a positive note.

 

"Somewhere", is very similar in ways to "Wonder....".  Alter­nating between the pre­sent and some time in the future, the composition directs one to think upon relation­ships and what they might mean both on a personal and broader worldwide scale.  There is some-where out there, something at all times af­fecting you and me, and we have choices we can make to care, share, trust and love today, tomorrow and the next.

 

What tries man's soul, "Indeed", is my attempt to write of those things which can come along to test our resolve, the strength of character and even the fabric of our relation­ships.  Can we pass the tests of "tries" and at what costs might this be or what relation­ships might fall by the wayside unable to stand the stress of the challenges set out upon.  This is, I think, a good piece to end this section of my collected writings and move on to the next.

 

Well, as is usually the case, the above was not the last composition for this section!  There are fourteen more.  The following introductory remarks are written in the present time;  or are those which accompanied the composition when previously posted on an internet forum or sent in an email.

tedc october 11, 2005.

 

"Change for the Bus" (originally "I See You"), you know now after almost eight years since writing this quick piece, I do not remember for sure why I wrote it!  Although I think I had been visiting one of the old poetry Bulletin Boards on MSN and wrote this piece in one night to add to the boards' contest or comment section.  Now after reading it several times in prep-aration for placing on my web site, I have decided I rather like it.  It reminds me of some of the thinking and perhaps conversations I might have engaged in with one of my mental health patients.  The symbolism seems to be clear, one had better be prepared for life's full journey ahead (have coin ready to feed the meter!).  I have an idea this was perhaps my purpose in writing this little compositions, for indeed I had been on an incredible journey for which I was not fully prepared.  

 

Ah yes, "What Goes Around", one of my slightly "bitter" pieces.  I do not recall after all the intervening  years the specific moment I sat down to right this piece.  But it is obvious that when writing it in December 1998 I was coming to the end of some rather disastrous times, a close friend taken by cancer, another murdered in his home, and others with whom I thought a bond existed, proved not to be.  I am willing to bet this happens to us all during a lifetime of living.  I am not unique in discovering this, I am sure.  But I might be unique for writing about it! 

 

Feb.7th 2006: As I finished working with this piece in preparation for placement on the web, I began to realize that this composition also addresses the current state of affairs in our United States government...the political system is at the moment corrupt.  Where does the truth exist, who is lying and who is being truthful, who is being bribed and do what extent?  We will certainly know as indeed, "what goes around, comes around!"

t.condon

  

"Who is to Blame, Who is Watching the Kids,  When Will We Ever Learn", these three pieces are among my favorite, and may be some of my better writing.  The descriptive texts which you will be reading originate from my understanding of the human psychological processes, my clinical work with adolescents, families and adults over a thirty-year period, and the observation of changing societal norms over the years. 

tedc october 11, 2005

 

“Who is Watching the Kids”, those that go unseen, those that are abandoned and not given care?  This piece comes from clinical experience working with children and adolescents but the motivation to write this piece came from, in part, the “epidemic” of school shootings that rolled across our country.  These youth, and those who are still with us today, are deeply troubled, barely hanging on to reality, finally self-destruction becomes the chosen way to seek relief.  Those who should care only need to stop, look and listen…these kids are not hidden from view!

 

The companion piece to “Who is Watching the Kids”, is “When Will We Ever Learn”….when will those in charge learn to recognize and appropriately address issues of childhood and adolescent alienation/mental emotional illness. Instead we fortify buildings, hire guards, patrol hallways, setup checkpoints to pass through, and still……..there are those youth who pass through, unseen, uncared for and untreated.

 

This past week(2000) I was browsing through my finished written work and found this poem.  I had forgotten that I had written, “Who is To Blame”.  The poem was written in April 1999.  I had written it during the period 1998 to 2000 along with four other pieces.  It was during this period when a number of significant events or socio-cultural processes were immerging to tear at the fabric of society here in America and across the globe.  In addition to “Who is to Blame”, I wrote at least four other piece; “The Wonder of It All”, “Who Is Watching The Kids”, “ When Will We Ever Learn”,  “Where Evil Lies and Lurks”, addressing the upheaval, alienation, and social anomie taking place at numerous levels of society.  “Who is To Blame” identifies some of these.

 

Who is To Blame

The first in a series of questions, "who is to blame", appears in the beginning verse identifying the school shootings which became almost epidemic during the period 1998 to 2000, and again just recently in Wisconsin.  These tragic events are recognized as generating death, destruction and terror in our schools across the nation.  The second verse, again while written pre-911, could just as well have been written then as it calls into question the finger pointing and illusory answers provided to the central question, "who is to blame".  In the third paragraph a more universal scene is identified by drawing attention to the "destruction and violence" generated across the globe because of the rule of dictators.  Then too, others are ignored because they suffer from mental illness and the services to assist them have disappeared.  Children who suffer from a lack of "care and tenderness" are recognized and the question is asked, "who is to blame for those unclaimed?”  The next verse speaks to the growing hero status given to law enforcement special SWAT teams who, dressed in war like costumes, go in to "battle".  So too is hero worship granted the baseball super player and the basketball giant who fight on the field and court with very little provocation.  Do such scenes glorify assaultive and aggressive behavior as the rewarded and chosen method for dealing with conflict?  The following descriptive verse recognizes that all too often television pro-grams (and movies) depict violence against others and  watched by "unsympathetic minds".  Have we become immune to violence?  The sports father who beats another youth with a bat or his fist, or yells obscenities at an opposing player, "who is to blame when such is heard?" Then in the final verse the central questions are asked and the comment is made, "isn’t there enough to go around?"

 

I must note that the events of September 11, 2001 occurred after this was written, none-the-less I have chosen to portray that turning point in American history with the graphics I have used to dramatically illustrate this composition.  The central question which has seized our collective attention since the 9-11 attack has been  focused on "who is to blame".  The nature of this composition is applicable to that event.

ted c  June  25, 2004

 

I am writing in the present, January 22, 2006:

"Spring Views" was written in March just as the frosty mornings and nights were beginning to give way to the first warming rays of the dawn's rising sun.  I had just gotten into my car in a night darkened parking lot of a local store and gazed skyward, there, in a cloudless sky, I saw the large blue moon of spring hanging low on the horizon as suspended in air by some invisible thread!  I stared transfixed on the sight while images which were to become part of the poem sped through my mind.  As with other pieces written during this time period, the composition reflects my coming to terms with the events having recently taken place in my life space, and my attempts to reconcile the past, the present and the future into some sort of wholistic understanding of me!  As with other compositions raising queries to consider, this one does so and ends on a hopeful, positive note.  A note about the graphics for this piece.  What the viewer will be seeing is much different than those graphics I have previously used when sending this poem to folks via email.  While preparing this piece for the web site, I searched the internet and found what I think are much better representations for the content.  I hope those who have previously viewed, "Spring Views", will agree with this thought.

 

  

"Where Evil Lies and Lurks", although I have not altered the text, I have changed the graphics several times for this piece when post-ing it in the past on an internet newsgroup or sending it via email to others and in the process have "lost" the original date for the com-position.  It was written during the same time period as ,Who is to Blame”, “The Wonder of It All”, “Who Is Watching The Kids”, and “ When Will We Ever Learn".  Together these  five are my attempt to define and describe the effects of evil, where it "comes" from, and who is responsible for evil's arrival.  In addition, the last two compositions deal with the evil observed in the school shootings.   "Where Evil Lies and Lurks" describes the aftermath of chaos, destruction and havoc left strewn about the landscape of mankind, the consequence of evil's deeds.  I originally wrote this piece following an almost epidemic of high school shooting across the United Stated (including one here in Oregon).  The war in the former Republic of Yugoslavia was also underway at the time and thus became another circumstance for evil’s description.  The September 11, 2001 attack on America,  the war in Iraq , the Spanish railroad bombing, the recent subway system explosions in London, and numerous other terrorist attacks around the world each clearly define what evil is.

 

Today's date is Feb. 12, 2006 and I finally have put, "September 11, 2001" to graphics and midi and have up loaded it to the web site! This now completes this section.  I wrote this piece during the night of September 11 and the morning of the 12th, 2001 following the attacks on New York City, Washington DC (Pentagon) and the crash of the airliner in a Pennsylvania wooded field.  The attack on America killing thousands of our citizens was of course a cowardly act by terrorists which eventually led to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is not an elaborate piece, but captures my state of mind at the time.

 

Some closing thoughts to this section.  I hope the reader has found some common ground with the thoughts expressed here, or perhaps the written words have provoked some new ideas or concepts to consider.  I claim no special insight to the topics addressed, but I have struggled to express my own thoughts and feelings which at times were extremly intense and hard to come by, and at times flowed easily.

tcondon feb.12, 2006