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

04 September 2008



Day Sixteen: Be the Change.
"I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all." Early rising far warmer the stars dimmer the crickets droning their morning raga at four-thirty. watching people stand against a wall of riot gear with automatic weapons and electric guns and this is my country. this is democracy and the dream of freedom. this is where three or more people standing against the dominant paradigm is a riot. my stomach churned and my hands shook and i was so proud of those who put their flesh in apathys way. i wondered what the humans in riot gear with their badges taped over thought as they beat, bled and broke another human being holding a piece of paper or crying to be heard over the drumbeat of manipulated fear and commercialized death. to behave like that you have to de-humanize the other. they cant have thoughts or feelings, hearts or minds. to drop a bomb or shoot a gun or set an exploited dog on a child you have to believe that the other is somehow not like you at all. that is why apathy is the opposite of love. in love we are all the same, all one. in apathy it doesnt matter because im the one with the gun, the grenade, the tape over the numbers on my badge. i send love and respect to my brothers and sisters fighting for the right to say what is written on their hearts and spills out into the streets of the world like blood. i say a prayer for those who have to hide their numbers faces who walk past the woman on the street cold and hollow who keep their dogs on chains night and day i say a prayer for those who drop bombs and write laws to keep the streets full of sick and hungry and the hotels full of blood diamonds and furs. i pray for peace in the hearts of all people, because thats the only place to begin.
"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)