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

29 May 2008


Bright Idea #27: If you dont have anything nice to say, dont say anything.
"Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed."
Have i planted too shallow? too deep? is the tilth paltry? has it all washed away? have the robins been feasting on heirloom seeds? could i succeed? success would be nice, even on a small scale, on an eighth of an acre with high hopes and horse manure. keep at it, each moment the Great Teacher each moment something grows stretches breaks open to give its Everything to the Sun. my soul-stealers been carted away by Charlotte and what am i to understand? to look at things another way? to not put a wall between myself and my experience? to live and not objectify as if my life were a photograph two dimensional dog-eared on the floor of the car corroded by errant condiments and time? when im in this curve of the circle i shouldnt cook. i think i get the beastlies when the ancient brew in my body tells the blood to break a away. the weather wanders i sought refuge in the rainbow bridge reading organic farming manifesto and as i scooped peanut butter cookie dough out for returning heroes from whirling gauntlet academia i heard victoria whisper think of england.
"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)