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

24 September 2008


Day Thirty-Six: Re-Entering.
"The finest growth that farmland can produce is a careful farmer./Make the human race a better head. Make the world a better/piece of ground." Thirsty, head completely elsewhere, unable to sit or do for very long, waiting it feels like. An open unobligated day and i think i should be a dynamo of accomplishment but no. i wander through the rooms, thinking thoughts like falling leaves, ovulating. outside it is late september but theres little life in my lungs today for toil or hiking. id much rather lie under a tree and come apart at the joints, the tender flesh falling back to the roots, my bones a last offering to the pack that sustains me. sometimes i get so tired. my soul is a light that shines through oiled skins, like frontier windows, more accurately windows of glass that are brittle and break, droop over time because its a liquid really, a liquid on mountain time. the feelings break against rocks my hearts gibraltar and wears me out. its been a rough couple weeks, the great shifts always eat me. by killing frost i should be clearer, done with the slow work of dying for a time, distracted by october and the way she smells. its like an unpleasant thought i cant get out of my head, the memory of some terrible smell. i want it wrung out of me, drawn from out the top of my head in a cathartic dream from which i rise clear and free. maybe the catharsis is on mountain time, like that old boat washed up on the shores of a far future, ready to reveal itself and be known. i wash the sheets and make a chocolate cake. the woman in my dream was beautiful so at ease in her skin and when i woke up i thought maybe that woman would one day be me.
"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)