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

08 June 2008


Bright Idea #30: Shine your Light.
"Most of us look at our ideals, say how far we are from them, and get depressed. But it is heroic simply to say, 'Here are my ideals,' state them before the world, and then spend your life trying to live up to them." Hot. Sun against the house made it a hundred i hid inside and cleaned under the sink changed the pellets in the cat box repotted the aloe made potato salad tried to be useful cleared a path for myself down the side yard took the air in small dense wedges of humidity it was the maiden voyage of the hummingbird and back to town retrieving #4 and back for summer supper in kitchen heat bowls of food a feast with the boys i always want to hold hands and be silent for awhile but this is a free house free of spiritual obligation free of group think and really all it is is acknowledging were all here together now and look theres bowls of food we like to eat. but i defer to the individual prerogative. hot. trying to shake them a little lower on the apron strings, trying not to push expectations because i push the others buttons too ask a lot of my housemates the lack of fashion not a thread at times whatever the psychedelic lean the deep desire for us to hold hands and be kind to one another which seems more and more in the world an entirely alien and somehow subversive impulse. revolutionary. and at eight of a sunday evening im butter spread over too much bread and im tired of the things i dont believe in i just want my quiet, to recharge into Divinity and remember what it was to keep the Sabbath holy. i just want to be me. why, the poet said, was that so very difficult? because who i know myself to be does not slide along so well in the machinery weve made to make this world. and i am not strong enough to say this is what i need. ive never made demands. ive never made myself out to be important enough what i want or need important enough. convinced myself that the way is no way that not having desires or expectations is liberation. i cant even participate as an activist and advocate in my own life. is that the change i want to see in the world? and what i want does not lead inevitably to the ruin of what i have now. but my spirit strains to see change within and without. sometimes i feel lonesome. on my own. alone on the red road walking toward a rising horizon and over that next hill maybe my soul wont be lonesome anymore.
"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)