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

29 September 2008


Bright Idea #80: Make Do.
"Xipe Totec, Lord of Shedding, god of seedtime. These are 13 days of devotion, companionship, self-sacrifice and love. This trecena points to the eternal conflict that tears at every human being: suspended between two great communions, love and mysticism, each of us strives to survive being swallowed whole by either. On the one hand, the painful shedding of illusions, and on the other, the pleasurable creation of illusions." Morning walk ruby sumac and duntons herd, longshadows guinea hens in the road challenging my dog. the good sweet smell of woodsmoke and leaves on the ground. the hills turning showing truer colors. the way needs a clean-up again, but its lovely when i look up the hill into the woods the tall slender trunks the smell of the woods the fall morning light soft and low to the fields two geese heading for the pond. i let my thoughts ramble ahead of me, unleashed, aching to wander farther afield than my feet will take me. i realize my autumn restlessness was compounded by my infirmity and getting out with the dogs is a miracle salve to muscle and mind. tomorrow is october, the very word wine in the mouth. october cider pumpkin haycock. #2 came for dinner tonight hes worn thin and elsewhere but assures me not to think the chasm between s. and i was a product of my shortcomings, which is a comfort. i think this is what is meant by there being no love lost. it is unfortunate but i am a solitary creature and know that when the time is right for me to share my time with a friend that friend will appear. thinking DUP will introduce me to a pool of souls in tune with the harp of my blood. more and more i wish to reach out and connect but a connection will only be made when the heart on the other end is open. so i walk and write and paint and dream and pray and my life is ladled out in peaceful lovely puddles of light with good safe sleeps in between.
"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)