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

23 June 2008


Bright Idea #41: Draw what you See.
"I will not be driven to the edge of Iowa by the urgent melancholy of cellos after all." The power went out this morning and i thought about people thrown into panic for lack of juice and im scribbling morning pages in an already dim kitchen hot coffee purple kimono wandering toward the house that always somehow deflects me to school the kids stood on stage and realized it isnt all that easy to give yourself away i got to play with other womens babies and i connected easy deep with women im getting so beautiful good at it letting it move through me im loving my way through my life she said if you live by your heart youll never harbor any regret and the love will not leave any room for fear and i felt good in my pink oxford and blue jeans and a box of academic detritus and i punched out and slid away from the teachers lounge and walked out the back door and drove off hoping something gives next year. BFF on cell after non-dinner with coffee and dogs in sweet side yard hummingbird visit broken by ballistic unnatural report of vast american ego engine i breathe i told her id give her my body to save her life the luminous yolk in a dark garden the cosmic egg let it grow until i could lay it in her arms and say this is how much i love you.
"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)