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

21 September 2008


Day Thirty-Three: (Dont Forget to Take Your Meds).
"If we will have the wisdom to survive/to stand like slow growing trees/on a ruined place, renewing, enriching it/then a long time after we are dead/the lives our lives prepare/will live here." Black cat came back from brink of elsewhere. i held him to my heart and today hes out prowling the creek little jaguar a new cat lease on life like milk hot and fragrant off the hoof in a quiet barn on a frosted morning. blessed be. tragic bats squealing from under the step. anxiety and dread lowering i fall apart several times and rally with use, sauce and japanese incense, a book and some eggplant. granddaughter comes over to pick pumpkins. the wolf book is a deep comfort at days end this last day of summer it was fun to wade through the wild garden through the burning smelling gourd vines and the stalwart zinnias and the patient pumpkins still gestating in the corners and the bloodless stalks of corn and the effulgent comfrey mother and the glorious ruby chard and the sunflower ghost sentinels and autumn comes to town in a brown riding cloak smelling of horses.
"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)