“Longing, we say, because desire is full
of endless distances.”

08 May 2008


Bright Idea #12: Express your Self for the Joy of it.
"If your heart were sincere and upright, every creature would be unto you a looking-glass of life and a book of holy doctrine." Went in with pink ribbon flowers for mother princess sat and was nobody to parent in queue sat on main street waiting for junk lady no baptismal font home drove out like old days slow rumble of country road everything breathing tired eyes just being. a hundred thousand people in the wind and rain. my heart wasnt in the hearth today grey day cold my mind tends to summer my flesh prickles in spring coffee and granola in the rocking chair excavating high end gardening magazines considering elder weeping cherry a hedge of lilac the roses are drooping and i hope i havent croaked them the lavenders hardy the day whiles away tomorrow is friday theres a cold spell the seedlings breathe the air little trouty spotted lettuce from last years seed the california poppy sprouts that i dream of that color divinity immutable the goddess of alchemy must wear gowns that color and he came to me put his words in my hands and i buried them in my heart how blessed are we who have friends we can talk to i invoked the Little One all the sad choices ive made all my lonesome roads have led me here the good clutter the phone ringing with earnest blessings from the world outside my walls and one of these days i may just breathe like a seedling out from cellar grow light into ever infinite shifting light of home.
"And if the question were asked: What is more real, the mundane or the sublime? most would hesitate before they gave an answer. On the one side, details: say, the aftermath of a breakfast, dirty chipped plates in the sink, their rims encrusted with egg yolk. Against this, the unnameable: small aching heart with boasts, what can you know? Outside the cage of everything we ever heard or saw, beyond, outside, above, there lies the real, hiding as long as we shall live, there stretch and trail the millions of names of God burning across the eons. When all through this our end will come before we even know the names of us.

For many the egg yolk prevails." -L.M.

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well." -V.V.G.

"The perfection of the Absolute where all Becoming stops and pure Being, immutable, timeless, unchanging, hangs forever like a ripe peach upon the bough." -E.A.

"...and the whole incident was incredibly frazzling and angst-rod and filled almost a whole mead notebook and is here recounted in only its barest psycho-skeletal outline." -D.F.W.

"At the top of the mountain, we are all snow leopards." -H.S.T.

"Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live." -D.T.
"Cometh a voice: My children, hear; From the crowded street and the close-packed mart I call you back with my message clear, back to my lap and my loving heart. Long have ye left me, journeying on by range and river and grassy plain, to the teeming towns where the rest have gone - come back, come back to my arms again. So shall ye lose the foolish needs that gnaw your souls; and my touch shall serve to heal the fretted nerve. Treading the turf that ye once loved well, instead of the stones of the city's street, ye shall hear nor din nor drunken yell, but the wind that croons in the ripening wheat. I that am old have seen long since ruin of palaces made with hands for the soldier-king and the priest and prince whose cities crumble in desert sands. But still the furrow in many a clime yields softly under the ploughman's feet; still there is seeding and harvest time, and the wind still croons in the ripening wheat. The works of man are but little worth; for a time they stand, for a space endure; but turn once more to your mother - Earth, my gifts are gracious, my works are sure. Instead of the strife and pain I give you peace, with its blessing sweet. Come back, come back to my arms again, for the wind still croons in the ripening wheat."
-John Sandes, The Earth-Mother (excerpt, 1918)