Kevin Hull   *   Writer   *   Poet   *   Editor            

 From the ecstatic poetry of the great mystics, Kabir, Hafiz, Rumi and Nanak, to the bitter-sweet human poems of Machado or Issa, we see again and again that art and spirituality are corresponding disciplines whose purpose is to awaken. In the ancient East a 'way' or 'do' has been known for thousands of years as self-cultivation. Thus, preparing a cup of tea takes on a significance of purpose and integrity seldom practiced today. Self-cultivation is therefore the work of a lifetime. As such all work aimed at self-knowledge should be seen as art. The Way of Art reveals, moment by moment, a deeper level of ourselves. The process: study, practice, and all the struggles we endure along the way are gradually refined and clarified until a moment arrives in which we discover our own unique voice: a product, naturally, of diverse influences, but nonetheless our own. We do not steal from one another as much as choose that which by the nature of our efforts already belong to us. We have merely made our translations. The work transcends. One's creative landscape has expanded to the limitless -- the intensity of our love and the integrity of our work are the antecedents of this great prize of unification within expression. The artist resides in solitude and yet is connected to every one and every thing. The page may be empty, the canvas blank, the instrument leaning against the way -- yet the form remains within the formless.

THE ARTIST

Her palette almost empty

she seeks what she has sought all along:

the Formless, the Form,

A voice may call from the far hills or an image sprout from the desert of the heart. We have founnd our place -- among the thorns, the scorpion beneath the stone, in the thin shade of a Saguaro. Thus anything that might be imagined is our own. Still, we must continue to study, to practice, to persevere, and to listen -- for these are the acts of lovvve. 

WHEN THE SONG LEFT THE SEA, (available also as an E-Book) Kevin Hull's first novel, is a story of mystery, transformation and redemption. A widely published poet and writer, he has won several awards and for a brief time was a columnist for a small-town Florida magazine. He is also the author of NAMELESS TRAVELER (memoir of an American poet), soon to be revised and re-released.

From the Blue-Ridge mountains of southwest Virginia and the southern piedmont area a short mile from the North Carolina border, he spent his formative years in the suburbs of the nation's capitol. This was a new world from which he felt alienated and grew into adulthood in solitude andcontinuing troubles at home. During this period he experienced many strange experiences. He put his energies into study, primarily seeking the abstruse mysteries of life, from the Bible, to Yage, an hallucinagetic herb used by the tribes of the upper Amazon. From these studies he inevitably discovered India and its ancient tradition of self-realized teachers. He found America's own intoxicating substances, and for several years experimented in the field of expanded consciousness. This, however, served only to widen the gulf between himself and family and friends. He spent several more years traveling in search of more that what for him was the Anerican poverty. We seemed to have no teachers of our own. And the myth of the 'American Dream' served to push him further away. The idea seemed to be: find a good job, own a house, proagate and, without doubt, show the world the blessings of materialiasm.  He continued his studies of Comparative Religion and Literature, as well as focusing his energies as a writer. He founded the literary review WHITE HERON, publishing a quarterly journal as well as Chapbooks for talented but neglected writers. His first small collection of poems, CRIMES AND BLESSINGS, was published by ISIS PRESS in San Francisco. Other limited edition Chapbooks  include: NATIVE GRACE; ONE JUMPS FREE; STILL LIGHT, STILL SHADOW; HOMELESS POEMS; NO REAL STRANGER (Haiku of Issa, translated by Ikkoku Santo) for which he was the publisher; THIS FLOATING PAGEANTRY;  and THE WISH TO BE. His work though seldom submitted seemed to strike a chord, and was anthologized and featured, as well as being published in journals from Australia to China, Japan to Finland, and, fiannly England. LEAVING BLUE MOUNTAINS -- now out of print -- was his first full-length collection of poems. This was followed by NAMELESS TRAVELER; and  SLEEPERS IN TRANSLATION, his selected poems,  published in 2009. A second novel, WELCOME TO MY HOLLYWOOD, may well be released in 2012 as well. Other projects in his writer's schedule are: WAKING THE DREAM ETERNAL (Collected Poems); and THE DOOR IN THE SKY IS LOVE, featuring the work of the four great Poet / Saints Hafiz, Kabir, and Rumi. He believes that Creativity and Spirituality are corresponding disciplines, and has for over 30 years has engaged in Meditation, Poetry, and the true meaning of the word 'Jihad': one's struggle with the inner enemies which constantly interfere with our goal toward Self-Realization and personal experiences of Grace and the higher potentialites inherent to humankind. He believes, as did George Harrison, that 'mysticism' is fundamentally misunderstood as something strange or magical, when in actual fact it connotes true perception and genuine pragmatism, a personal experience of at least some part of what we are capable of. Kevin lives and continues his work on the central coast of California. He hopes to restart his publishing efforts, including a News-Letter, an E-Zine, and Blogs as well as making space for the Blogs of others. He currently lives on the central coast of Californa,

WHEN THE SONG LEFT THE SEA  ( brief synopsis)

Our main character, Hector Martin, watches for the great Gray whale on its ancient migratory journey, drinking and brooding on a long, unsatisfactory life, and contemplating his own deep-seated need for a sense of home. As Hector (both father and son abandoned by a young, wild and insatiable wife) wanders the beaches and examines a dream-like, nearly uninhabited life, we come to the story with a tenderness as honest as a father's "I love you" or a sad, neglected child's first troubling questions. Hectors' sister, herself a lonely, passionate woman, at first reluctantly acts as the boys surrogate mother, fully aware that the deeper her love may become, the more painful the future may be, as, without promises, she may find herself on the outside looking in. Hector, to the consternation and ridicule of the entire town has set up a gravestone on his plot and comes every Saturday to 'celebrate' his wife's 'death'. We learn that while most flee grief, others seek to transform it. (And the great Gray whale continues its nomadic song, ever-faithful in the currents of the deep.) We learn that redemption often comes in the most unexpected ways and in the most unexpected places. This solitary man, fallen from grace, must at last face his demons: Will he choose Life or Death? In this powerful tale of loss, renewal and hope, our characters are on a collision course towards the unknown, each left to find the magic of life on the rim of failure, mystery, and inconceivable love.

                                     WHEN THE SONG LEFT THE SEA  (Chapter One)

all my life

 looking out of windows:

  phases of the moon

 In his dream he was walking along the shoreline, gazing out to sea with a peculiar feeling of prescience.A pulse of great Gray whales was moving south and could be seen far out on the horizon. They would soon be in the warm waters of Mexico, where they would breed and birth before retracing their mammoth journey north to their feeding grounds in the Bering Sea. 

  He saw her from a distance, gathering shells. The vast ocean was washing its dead, wave after wave. Walking toward her, he too stopped occasionally, enticed by an attractive shard from the depths. Some of these he put in his pocket; others he tossed back upon the beach. The woman was looking out at the darkening sea; perhaps towards Okinawa or the mountains of China.

 Perhaps she imagined nothing farther than the flashing crest of the angry waves. The sea was wild, gray and foreboding, a storm building in the west and growing quickly, enveloping them with wind and driven pockets of rain. Time had accomplished nothing. It was the old story, always the same beginning, this feeling of self and no self, this unceasing hunger, this scar of existence.

 “Beautiful weather, isn’t it?” he laughed, “If you like dark chaos, that is.”

She looked him in the face with an expression of curious detachment. He could have been a shadow sweeping across the sand. But as he remained silent and motionless, the simple question he had asked began to fill the air with unexpected significance. Her expression changed; a look almost of embarrassment, with flushed cheeks, revealed the thin and freckled creases of her face.

  “Yes, it is,” she concurred and nodded politely, looking out to sea.

   “You’re not from here?” he said, with certainty.

  “O no!” she laughed softly. “How about you?” He shifted his feet in the sand, smiled, and bent down to capture a tiny sliver of a shell he saw spinning towards the sea. She noticed the quickness with which he moved.

  “This, I suppose, is home base,” he said evasively. “I’ve been around here, on and off, for awhile.” He rose and turned to face her. “Where, then, if I may ask, are you from? I thought I detected a slight southern lilt in your voice.” And he handed her the piece of shell. It shone like liquid pearl, a purple and golden wash flowing with neither matrix nor design. She received it in silence.

  “Yes, I have roots – I would say strangled roots – there.”

  “So what brings you to this extremity?”

  “Just seeing the country – what do you do here?” But she intended to say, “What are you doing here?”

  “Just working to survive, like everyone.  My sister and I run an antique shop – a complete flop, to be truthful. I’m becoming the number one antique. Maybe one day they’ll put a price tag on me.” He was angry at himself for this lame response. Using one’s age as a substitute for wit always left him cold, and here he was doing it himself, and doing it badly.

   “But what would you do?” He looked at her long and hard. This was a question he’d rather not answer.

  “To discover, I guess, what love means.” And the bitterness in his laugh startled her. But there was something else too in the timbre of his voice that upset her as well. He seemed to be insinuating that nothing was worth ‘becoming’ in this world. He had not been able to hide the long years of disappointment. “Be a poet, a writer,” he mumbled, after a pause.                                                   

She started and went pale. If he’d been paying closer attention he might have noticed the slight tremble in her hands.

“This is very strange,” she said, cautiously. Then after an uncomfortable pause she faced him squarely, an expression of perplexity visible upon her face. By way of explanation, she began: “Last night I dreamed that I was on the beach (one reason I ventured out in such weather) and a man walked slowly, deliberately, toward me in the gusty wind. When he reached me, he said: ‘“I will tell you who I am.’” And then he paused with the kind of curious significance we sometimes find in dreams, and whispered: “I am a poet.” Then she glanced out to sea, and it was smooth as glass. . . A line of whales were swimming south, undetected. “What do you think of this?”

He remained silent, but her words had made a deep impression. He turned the silver Aztec ring over and over again and gazed out to sea. Not a whale to be seen in the strengthening storm. No doubt the storm had driven them deeper and farther out to sea.

  “So you too are a dreamer,” he said slowly, quietly. “What do I think? I’m unable to form an intelligent reply. But I have my suspicions.”

  “Suspicions?” The word surprised her, but as he offered no further explanation, she stubbornly followed suit and remained silent. She could not fathom this cryptic answer. But if he could leave it at that, then so could she.

  “What are we to think? Life is a mystery. We seldom decipher the simplest equations. . . We read what we can.” He searched the ocean for signs of the storm’s intensity. A powerful emotion threatened his equilibrium. He did not wish to be lost in it.

  “I think your dream was very beautiful,” he said at last, and there was something in his manner that seemed to dismiss the subject. His apparent lack of interest intrigued her further; she detected a certain decision in his silence, something akin to faith. Whatever the actual reality behind his behavior she was now determined to drop the subject, mystery or no mystery. In truth, what are we to think?

  “What’s it like to be a poet,” she said for lack of anything else to say. She smiled and held up her open hands in a gesture of surrender to the subject. He laughed wearily. This was another question he’d hoped would not be asked. In the back of his mind he felt a strong sense of unreality.

  “I’m really not a writer – but the most useless thing on earth: an aging man who once wished to be a writer.” He paused, then continued: “You know, it’s like dreaming I am dreaming . . . to be constantly awakened from a really great line or verse or a work in progress suddenly finished and doubtlessly perfect and just as doubtlessly vanished. Only to see the shadow of a shadow trailing behind one’s longing and words.”

  “I don’t think it is useless work at all,” she said, with obvious sincerity.

  “Like I said, I survive as best I can . . . my sister and I eke out a living with our shop.  Then there’s my military pension and the occasional side job. Survival, as I’m sure you know.  (and he looked at her with a strong, knowing look that made her feel uncomfortable, which was not easy to do) Survival is the key.”

  “I don’t understand this world,” she commiserated. Strangely, it seemed as if she were talking to herself – her sympathy appeared general, directed not to anyone or anything in particular but merely requisite to the dilemma of living in an unsatisfactory world – a world which appreciated the utilitarian and the practical business of living, not the abstract, subjective and, let us face it, useless work of translating through ones’ brain the recondite sorcery of Art. Sure most of us hung a picture or two on our bare walls or entertained ourselves with a sentimental poem or short story; sometimes we even prided ourselves on knowing certain authors, their anecdotal record that proved just how special they had been. But, all in all, we related to those who were engaged in the daily ordinary struggles, which is our common admission into the human race. All else was merely indulgence. The same fears, greed, lust and ignorance that pulled us together – maintained the commonplace. Art was the last dish on the table – not any form of desert either, but at best an appetizer we could share in our likes or dislikes. Art, at its highest form, approached truth, spirituality, God: thus it was by nature anathema. We already possessed these things, in dog bone certainty. Therefore Art was another useless conundrum, intertwining, and representing by a pliable wire a hangman’s knot. One would be wise to keep one’s art to oneself. At least these were more or less Hector’s thoughts. Sara held tight to her intrinsic worth theory – the masses just didn’t get it. Life was too brief a journey to waste it merely on things. She was infected, as so many others, by the bug of knowledge. After all, we lived in a world of disharmony, deranged and twisted by the preoccupations of the time.

  “Art, in its truest sense, is the art of living well; and when it comes to this – well, I can tell you without any false humility, that in this I am a miserable failure.” He threw a shell into the surf, glancing back at her as he did so, wearing a mischievous smile as if to say that none of it mattered anyway. The weight of the failure at the things he’d just said to her disgusted him (like a lie) – he couldn’t defend or explain art. The work was all that mattered.

  “As for writing or any other medium,” he continued, pedantically, filled with self-loathing, “The work is a personal expression turned into a product, utterly subjective, made true only in so far as it reaches another. . . though I have often thought that maybe it is not quite as subjective as it seems. I mean, our stories, our work, belong to everyone precisely because they are stories, drawings, music, revealed to and about the exact same person – the exact person who is essentially a strange unknowable being for whom we can never get our fill.”

Here he paused and laughed, seemingly at himself. “Of course there are the commercial concerns – quality be damned! – the primary concern of making money. Once in awhile the two coincide. This, naturally, gravitates toward mass appeal, the watered down and easy, the easily accessible... Why? I’ll tell you. . . The purpose of Art is to awaken. And this reveals us to ourselves. And naturally this is painful! Simply put: People don’t want Art because it forces them to wake, and this waking hurts!”

  “That’s probably true,” she said, impressed by the simple clarity of his thought, “but good work ought to be valued. . . One shouldn’t have to starve or sell their souls to the devil merely to survive, and a bare survival at that, to be free to create.”

  “Well,” he laughed, “we’ll always have the sea . . . and the whales . . . and the storms to prove our beautiful insignificance.!” She too laughed and looking toward the dark, choppy waters, said: “Have you see the whales?”

  “Not in this storm . . . but many times before. They are a hobby of mine. They always seem so happy . . . though they are moving farther from shore, no doubt because it’s safer to keep their distance.”

  “So, really, why are you here?” She surprised him with this question – a man who believed he could never again be surprised by anything. That was the precise moment when he began to look at her differently. And to see her as a woman, a real woman.

  “A new start,” he began shyly. “And this is the closest thing to home I’ve ever known – though I admit that I am still looking.” Then he paused, as if he had more to say. “Something real, I suppose – but don’t ask me to describe this thing to you.” This was the first time he had admitted this to himself or others.

She looked down at the sand. An uneasy silence ensued, the sea washing its dead in the living waters, hand over hand.

  “It’s been nice talking to you,” she said, and held out her hand. “My name is Sara.  I would be interested in seeing your work.” He shook her hand and smiled.

  “You have already seen it,” he said, without forethought. “I would be interested in seeing you. Remember, you are your work. I too am my work. And as you can see. . . Well, there’s not much to see in that department.” He laughed alone this time, while she kept a steady, enigmatic gaze upon him.

  “Forgive me,” he laughed softly. “My name is Hector – I have no idea why I talk like that. No disrespect intended!”

  “I must go,” she said cheerfully, ignoring his strange confession, and started walking away. “Good luck, Hector.” She turned, smiling, in a full moving circle, swinging her arms. “And keep writing – if only for me.”

The turquoise sea was pulling back into itself, the cool wild breezes quickening, the air charged with a subtle, incipient restlessness. How far can one go? He was looking toward Panama; perhaps as far as Tierra del Fuego or Brazil, or perhaps even beyond, round the Cape of Good Hope and the Indian sea. Perhaps as far as Conrad’s Malaysia, toward islands of new beginnings among people who had never known the consciousness of sin. Perhaps he might yet find a place to begin anew.

  “No,” he admitted, sadly, “this is my place.” But a lingering doubt itched, as it were, his very soul. How far can one go? Suddenly he turned and sprinted down the beach.

  ‘Wait,” he called loudly, coming to an abrupt halt beside her. “I’m . . . sorry.” Out of breath, and trying to hide the fact, he paused a moment. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, buying time. She was looking at him like a confused child, serious and unsure.

  “I would like to see you again,” he spoke gently with unexpected emotion. She detected a mixture of kindness and sadness in his voice. She hesitated. A dark cloud tore apart; and through the brief opening sunlight swept across the beach momentarily; the unexpected light poured upon the sand and was almost immediately swallowed, and far out to sea where the storm had calmed, shifting north, a ‘pulse’ of great Gray whales had surfaced for an instant, heading south, again unseen. She handed him a scrap of paper and said: “You can call me.”

  “You can count on it,” he said, with fragile confidence.

  “See ya,” she called over her shoulder, and continued on her way. He walked in the opposite direction, feeling twenty years younger, frightened and hopeful; all the while keenly watching his reactions, surprised by the intensity of emotion and energy, as well as the flood of thoughts which had suddenly overwhelmed him. He turned and watched her disappear over the ramp to the gravel-packed parking lot, a tiny indistinguishable figure among a sea of shadow and light. Looking out to sea, he recited from one of his poems:

 I will travel into myself, lost in a blossoming world.

  I will build something strong

  in this heart no one has touched.

  and open all the doors and ask them inside,

  a host among strangers . . .

  I will know the love of one,

  beyond my making or my desire,

  and I will nourish her with the light

  of my devotion all the length of my days.

  I will travel into myself. . . lost in a blossoming world.

And suddenly – like the first faint stirrings of madness – inexplicably, he exploded in a fit of incongruous, bitter, self-deprecating laughter, akin to a horrible tearless cry. . . And the turquoise sea opened its arms of living waters. And closed them again like an immense, unfathomable creature breathing in a storm of solitude the bitter-sweet dream of Life and Death.

Dawn seeped into his mind like the end of a sad dream. He couldn’t recall much of the day before: lots of drinking, brooding, a quick visit to the grave, staggering among the dunes. He remembered walking home, the street light’s corona intensified by the alcohol. Something else; something special had happened. He’d fallen face down onto his bed, his last thought one of self-disgust, his mouth parched, severely dehydrated, feeling utterly stupid and lazy, too lazy even to get himself a drink of water. His consciousness faded into black oblivion, a last sickening knowing fading into nothingness: It had all been a dream.

 NAMELESS TRAVELER 

 “Man does not reveal himself in his history,

He struggle up through it.”

Rabindranath Tagore

I knew the phantom material could not be captured by the phantom life. But I was lonely to reach the telling. For many years I’d tried to approach the inexplicable, but the dream seemed elusive as flowing water. I gradually came to realize that the story was not in fact about me. The real story was about life, everyone’s life. Some kind of phantom life was seeking its own elucidation – the work was to penetrate the kernel, to discover the machinations which bewitch us into thinking we know ourselves when in fact we haven’t a clue. This statement may be unpalatable to many; but on careful consideration I believe every thoughtful human being, if given the chance and the choice, would prefer – in spite of the bitterness of awakening. . . to grow, to transform, to understand his or her own potential. We must be willing to bear both the comedic and tragic manifestations within and without us. And we must begin with knowing our true, transcendent wish. This Wish, as it were, becomes our religion. From this beginning our studies begin – the benefits become obvious: we are no longer automatons parroting the beliefs of others; no longer do we simply go along with the status-quo. . . We have pulled our vehicle onto the road of individuality for a greater purpose. We begin to observe disturbing trends: that we live in fragments, and discover in our love a fractured lament. By the time I had reached the age of thirty, I felt like I had been dragged behind a truck for a millennia; I had come to the wisdom born of utter failure, knowing in my bones that I KNEW nothing . . . I had an enormous amount of experience to draw upon, but without knowing myself could only report these events as factual episodes lacking in flavor and the deeper truths that even a little awakening provide. So, I waited. Finally I wrote the book. And, frankly, I succeeded in putting down a readable, fairly interesting story which received excellent reviews . . . But somewhere within I knew I had missed the mark. I waited, worked on other projects, and then one fine day I was graced by a clear vision of my error and how to approach the material. Without knowing it I had focused on the sensational rather than the essence – a sin of expression I had often condemned in the past, only to realize at last my own inexcusable culpability. This – please understand – is not to claim that I have now fully succeeded and place before you something true, as if the story were an authentic chronicle of a difficult period of a human being’s life, a work of art whose value far outweighs its faults. No, I do not even imagine such a thing. But I do say that I have re-worked the material in such a way as to be truer to myself – and this is about as much as I can hope for. In fact many may prefer the original version. But at my own expense, I now feel ready to let this story go. For good or for bad – it is finished.

   I saw that we inhabit our stories – or the dream of a story – as if we were the true actors, the decision-makers, and the sufferers who knew beyond any doubt what we were saying – because, after all we had ‘experienced’ the events. But had we lived our lives asleep, or awake, or in a muddled combination of the two states of consciousness? Had we any idea as to the actual meaning or experience of sleep and waking beyond the common meaning ascribed to them? Had we had the courage to peer into the most dark and frightening corners of our Being? These questions define the true value of all that we do or fail to do, and yet little attention is paid to them. Our stories are about unsought destiny, unconscious urgings, primal moral strengths and weaknesses, and blind happenstance. This is what came to interest me most in the telling. How to proceed in such a situation? How to speak the truth? Clearly we come to our stories as to a campfire gathering; from a distance voices echo in the chill darkness . . . The stories belong to everyone seeking shelter from the cold and the dark. We listen, as a loose fraternity of voices, for some illumination. We embellish the narrative with our perceived losses and victories. But in spite of the imperfections each of us return to our solitude a little closer to the voice within us.

   I hope you find something worthwhile in this story, which like every story is two parts fiction, one part fact. Lies are told unknowingly and truths by accident. The best we can do is to know ourselves and decide which parts of the story of life are most valuable for our continued development. I cannot say I have been a good listener, but I have tried.

   I put my trust in you, my fellow campers, to fill in the gaps. For where everyone is a stranger, there are no strangers. And in a world where our dead do not really die and our living do not really live, it seems to me at least, that we are haunting the promise of ourselves – as if we are the dream of ourselves, struggling to wake . . . I do not know who is dreaming this dream . . .

And if I did know – regardless of my best intentions – I could not tell you. I could not even tell myself.

 Kevindalehull@gmail.com

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