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

19 September 2008


Day Thirty-One: Better, Thanks.
"You can always tell an old soul by how friendly they are to trees and to dogs." Cold morning cleared the air phone calls negotiations post office pharmacy super c and a weekend of lovely little to do hang in the hammock with bolstering fluids and printed matter. go easy on the dairy, sleep perchance to dream the dalai lama and black horses and a wedding where i pilfered the favors, little scented candles in tins and mine had the french for pumpkin. trundled pumpkins for frontal display, left some for granddaughter and the Great Pumpkin in a little field that smells of ripeness and old hay, chorus of zinnia still singing praises at what looks like a sunflower funeral, huge haggard heads humble down preparing the black gift of secret flesh for decembers sparrow. all the little vertices of a small world, friends and small children to town for parts and dinner at the lowest common denominator. extraordinarily dehydrated after chemical warfare against whatever that biological shock and awe was. the whole hamlets burning tonight, little fires sending smoke down the valley over the swamp to the lake where people are taking one last long look at summer. one of these days i might get it together but its really not all that bad right now.
"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)