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

03 August 2008



Bright Idea #66: “It's a fool who looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart.”
"A horse misused upon the road/Calls to heaven for human blood./Each outcry of the hunted hare/A fibre from the brain does tear./A skylark wounded in the wing,/A cherubim does cease to sing./The game-cock clipt and arm'd for fight/Does the rising sun affright./Every wolf's and lion's howl/Raises from hell a human soul." Rose from dreamless sleep into sunday grey morning washed the floor before coffee J. came for the dog we talked playwrights and ley lines the awareness that everything is within us the world is a reflection. cashed a cheque at the drive-up open now like the liquor stores bought flour sugar milk cheese made broonie and cinnamon scones. the house smells like sunday should the air out there smells like concords. time passes. coffee and incense laundry and a song about the james boys that gave me gooseflesh and i caterwauled into the valley past the baptists thinking this is the time of the meteors, isnt it? the nights have been cloudy the days threaten rain thick air but it lifts the smells of august that deepen the colors and theres almost a feeling of geese calling october in the giddy sensation of the earth turning toward winter toward rest all this living everything miraculous and nothing short of its self. uncle walt had it right all the Light pioneers its all miraculous every breath every face every single second thank you. nothing gets done but its beautiful as it is. maybe it would be easier with someone i could tandem or dance with but easy has never been for me. blessed be.
"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)