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

26 August 2008



Day Nine: Free Your Mind (Open to Yes).
"Imagine the people you fear and dislike as pivotal characters
in a fascinating and ultimately redemptive plot that will take years or even lifetimes for the Divine Wow to elaborate." Early up in darkness where it all begins coffee dog pink sky and maretails presaging rain. deer out along the treeline up ahead on the road waiting to wave the beautiful white flag of instinct longshadow herefords and dunton belteds up near the fence gorgeous glossy creatures the angus bull cooling his magick sack of golden fishes from a nights work the red cow her egyptian horns on the way back the sun shows over the eastern rim of this bowl of my beginning. my nose is cold which indicates that i am in good spirits and my mind wanders happily in the quiet before traffic and trying to be useful. first thing this morning i absolved myself from loneliness. liberated myself from the commitment of expectation (again). realizing what this pack means to me, for me, seeing myself at the center of a circle of souls that are immune to makeup, marketing, false feelings of unworthiness and lack. simple straightforward spirits who dig long walks and afternoon naps. czy. arrived last night with bavarian hardneck and honey but no go on the paddock. stopped over at her house on the way home and felt that fierce familiar feeling like theres a puddle growing under me as i stand there on the threshold figuring out how to flee but today is the day i reconcile with all that wages war against this precious peace inside me like the last ember in the world. out on a blanket in the sun with the pack drawing circles on the paper, a list of names, walking deeper into the wilderness of consciousness farther down through the field of awareness. what do you do with the despair? i am by nature a hopeful person and this despair is dead wood kindled to cook and warm and light my way.
"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)