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

18 May 2008


Bright Idea #20: Pay attention to who and what is around you, not your thoughts about them.
"The best thing for being sad...is to learn something." Cold rain sunday morning sleep in stretching open eyes to #4 smile cold coffee back to bed the rolls didnt rise fed salt to the roses while it rained the tomatoes are like premature babies in pockets of earth but they may live still bear fruit redeem my maiden voyage into such nightshade seed adventures redeem my self through bread and soup the house smells like home i put off laundry til tomorrow she took the corporate jet to vermont and wont be back til friday learning how to sell booze in wartime while im out in the hinterland crouched over hoed row in a silk kimono good crumb between my toes getting older and wet grateful for my freedom my breath my home of many mammals and sometime a good smell a happy thought a safe slumber for a moment in the early evening the clouds parted to show the sun the birds sang you can feel everything breathing he thinks hes a good judge of character and he likes me so im comforted always looking for that external assent that tells me im alive not a shadow walking hungry ghost im stalled on the sari quilt and need more yarn. he asked if i ever wrote a book and i told him i cant maintain a story line we write the way we live its been a series of short stories in my dream i held threads connected to a room full of people and in the apartment the rain came in through the ceiling and i couldnt make it down the stairs.
"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)