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

04 August 2008


Bright Idea #67: Share.
"The wild deer, wand'ring here and there,/Keeps the human soul from care./The lamb misus'd breeds public strife,/And yet forgives the butcher's knife./The bat that flits at close of eve/Has left the brain that won't believe./The owl that calls upon the night/Speaks the unbeliever's fright." Slept late with a bad dream. for each kernel there is a silk umbilical thread drinking sunlight rain it doesnt question it grows from the seed is what it is glorious and phenomenal utterly unique displaying a thousand years of living with these clever tool wielding naked apes. here one comes barefoot through yet cool shady sward rich smelling turmeric shift breathing to see how the garden grows. we reach above her shes safe here in the silence shes weeded our rows let the gourdvines trail about us in the name of freedom and interbeing. the brown earth beneath her the blue sky above and all this growing green the leaves that feed the hard fruit that will soften and blush this month into deep experience of her standing over there dripping seeds smiling. children in the bush beans sharing delight in such extraordinary acquaintance with their world. the squashes hiding in broad leaved bowers gestating toward the cold birth of their warm colors and one small secret one called moon and stars that hold deep sweetness summers last offering. this is where she is can smile and breathe dirt under her nails reassuring that shes real here alright just grow into your soul roots down face up toward the changing sky spiral of seasons friends lovers i called late at night just to remember what it felt like to hear you from somewhere far away.
"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)