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

15 September 2008


Day Twenty-Seven: Always Question.
"The organizer in his way of life, with his curiosity, irreverence, imagination, sense of humor, distrust of dogma, his self-organization, his understanding of the irrationality of much of human behavior, becomes a flexible personality, not a rigid structure that breaks when something unexpected happens."
The branches were all over the ground, town trucks trundle through heading for the chipper. contemplating sloth and duty calls me out of my kimono and into the powdery roil of mostly postly-menopausal women. i open milk and remember names. i write little red numbers into a book for a lady who calls me "my favorite liberal." i realize this tumultuous hoard of hip-high souls have no table manners because they do not sit at a table. the brighter horizon looms. i refuse to pass judgment on the ladys fashion sense. i get a loren eisely book in the mail. i am the blushing recipient of a perfect sunflower "found it in a field of clover, all on its own, knew it was for you." dinner, laundry, the corn still bright on the stalk, the basmati a comfort with butter and salt over all. i pray for her beastie, set the coffee up for the morrow and say it is good. homework done, dishes done, laundry done, day done and the best i could. one eye on the hand and one on the horizon the horizon where the sun is always rising before my heart in the west the dusk the ocean home the closest thing to the heavens on earth depth and floating and you cant breathe. full moon dog star ides of september. turning wheel the dogs just want to be outside barking we wander the sward admiring gourds and pumpkins and so soon october, the very word wine in the mouth. i am transfixed by the mathematical perfection of this sunflower mandala. spinning outward meshing moving toward a greater understanding that essentially cannot be understood. the very least i can be is watchful and reverent.
"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)