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

31 May 2008

Well Charlotte, i can do without the visuals for awhile, even though theres a calla lily id love to share and the garden garden garden out there grand and gently confined with little green hearts to show where the seeds are coming apart little green hearts two leaves some chubby some slender little rows of green spirits little nurseries of summer quiet the sky lowered and the gentle rain came with quiet thunder over the hill and it cleared with birdsong and i can see next years coneflowers cleome painted daisy can see the earth building into brown into black into deep good earth to grow and say this is who i am what you can tell me by. proud bellied in the garden under the sun smelling heliotrope and water running smelling sun on my skin and tibetan temple incense good coffee the closer something is to its origin the more itself it can be. my little spot here looking west west of course west is where i am and where i go and how i walk and the way i think my spirit west my soul west sitting with the fuschia and the flying begonia and the teacup violets considering the garden remember Paradise was a garden. my thailand skirt boonie hat bare feet feeling every step down through the rows of beans and greens peas and beets corn and cabbage hills of melons how could one even conjecture the dense joy of a melon from this little heart there on the ground. next year calabash and elderberry better luck with tomatoes more patience more prayers when im planting deeper digging and maybe thatll be the year the iris blooms.
"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)