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

17 July 2008


Bright Idea #58: Abandon your false Sense of Isolation.
"Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." Morning started brilliant up quick to receive dog sisters niece turns seventeen gets books and jewelry from new boyfriend earrings he made himself. the sky lowers like night and the electricity draws back into itself giving ground to its higher power. the quiet and isolation is a balm. we light beeswax candles and tibetan incense and i stretch #4 draws in the dark kitchen later on we walk to the mailbox and its a washed blue sky and a sweet breeze and she meets me down the street tells me the year the tornado took the roof off her house shes selling she needs quiet and isolation. its humid and im hiding in the house with knitting and books gluing a map into the book in case i find myself in utah any time soon. theres so much of this country i want to see the sky at night in montana the morning sun in new mexico. this enormous urge to travel to go to just sit quietly and be there be here wherever here happens to be but im here now and almost done with the sari-quilt, solved the birthday girl gift issue, figured out what how to feed everyone again, and rode around the hamlet on my chanticleer with no knickers, waving. a full life.
"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)