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

05 September 2008


Day Seventeen: Believe.
"Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these/Of mid September; through the still warm noon/The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune/Than ever in the summer; from the trees/Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies,/No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon/In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon/Finds motionless white mists out on the leas." Woke up, had coffee, morning sit and stretch, saw them off, walk the two, tidied up and went to half day work in the valley and say hello hello why arent you lovely? yes it was a lovely summer but im so glad to be back. i told her that in summer the energy is all this water flowing on the ground and september means pouring all that water in a cup, the energy is orderly and easy to dam and run, riding my own tides that change with the seasons my blood salt and water blue like the sky within me brown like the earth without. Artemis water and barley dogs and the moon. i believe and im not resigned and i believe and every day the waters cleaner resting and running and its the weekend its september its waxing moon in sagittarius and today in the growing gusts that herald fall (just like spring, as if summer were a queen preceded and followed after by an invisible blustering contingency) there was a cinder snuck into the harbor of my open eye and for an hour it scratched out a place in the universe there between the lid and the orb and no flushing or coaxing or conceit brought peace and patience blinking blinking by the end of the working day standing in the small room of many scented women the eye began to weep and the cinder was gone. blood tears ocean sometimes of an evening of a morning i begin to believe we are one drop of water in Loves infinite everywhere.
"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)