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

29 June 2008


Bright Idea #46: Read.
"Reluctantly, we learned to move together, touch, let go." Full life. Bike rides trampoline chalk marathons backyard bonfires strawberries and cream deep sleep with portentious dreams in which i receive a call from Laura on the 3rd Planet who implores me to stay with Sheba. Good coffee and blue sky growing garden and a BFF beautiful boy and maybe a greater understanding. out in the world today everyone seemed like caricatures of themselves weather beaten garish and grotesque. i laugh loud and people turn to look where could all that happiness be coming from? everyone humid and beaten into their sunday best the mushrooms were not what they claimed to be and the ice cream was made of shortening. no wonder i stay home where things make sense and people are real and not plastic flesh toned automatons false whatnots with credit cards. i just dont get out anymore and the world as it is is galloping away from me people stumbling into the night by the tv light of cell phones i like the darkness and the uncertainty its more real than what hides in the light. so good to come home to the animal smell and the array reconnect with the dishwater and the clothes dryer these altars i tend i am a Woman of the Hearth i dont travel lightly. cup of tea in the ticking quiet man and boy upstairs asleep with love in their hearts for me. What more could i need?
"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)