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

16 June 2008


Bright Idea #36: Listen.
"Back from the river, over by a thick forest, you feel the tide of wild honey flooding your plans, flooding the hours till they waver forward looking back. They can’t return; that river divides more than two sides of your life. The only way is farther, breathing that country, becoming wise in its flavor, a native of the sun." Maybe that will be my resolution for the year XXXVI. to listen. a little time in my parallel universe and im fine, got a a call this morning to bat second-string pinch-hitter for BFF when her plans go aglay. send belated bloomsday greetings to the Celt, pluck pigweed and volunteer tomatoes from the garden. peat moss im thinking because its like growing in wet adobe but so early in the evolution of abandoned arable each year a small step a leap a better carrot an earlier pea. the world pressed yesterday against my chest like heat and tonight ill get tossed into anonymous crush to be liberated from the obligations of personality to be one more adoring face breathing in the damp night moving connecting to vibrations and frequencies something farther back than lyrics and melodies all of us i cant imagine the weight of all that attention sunday dinner hard enough the energy zooming in jets and standing in eddies he said stay with it breathe with it my aversion is as much a habit as anything else and i can stay the habit reverse it slowly with mindfulness and compassion for myself the energy a partner to dance with an art to admire. Grace is a wind on the water and what i need to learn is how to set my sail to work together with the world around me to move forward with the confidence my Spirit affords me to do what my Soul requires. Books and Dogs Good Coffee and Sleep in a White Bed in a Small Town in an Infinite Universe. such a short time to be here and a long time gone.
"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)