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

30 June 2008


Bright Idea #47: Do Nothing.
"Be kind to each other. It is better to commit faults with gentleness than to work miracles with unkindness." Bright morning morning pages good coffee dogs little one running through backpack sidekick conquering. gave the garden bible to neighbor picked up mail tinderbox and switch puttering walking the wet rows ive decided to give up shoes and shaving my legs see how it goes its little steps toward something like pilgrims a step a bow a prostration a rising a step toward the Center. the cat sleeps on the table and what can be done? it gets on the table a thousand times you take it off the table a thousand and one impromptu play-date i glue a guinea hen feather into my book and contemplate the universe people make me so uneasy as if i should be someone else or elsewhere. cook dinner no one eats i have garden greens and rice in one bowl some cheese he sits for cheese with me a banana a hug still good still golden whatever the weather both of them all of them unconditionally All One All One and i wont worry and i read the book like the movie that mesmerized the tragic anti-hero the imperfect god. and thats what we grapple with we wrestle with the angel we are waves of love crashing retreating pulverizing dissolving smoothing carrying toward away washing purifying blessing incessantly since the beginning today i picked up a rock from the rubble of reconstruction it was red the exact size and shape of my heart.
"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)