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

04 October 2008



Bright Idea #84 (J.C.): "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."
"Help your neighbor's boat across, and lo! your own has reached the shore." up early before the sun, watching the trees come out from the dark blue of october wee hours. morning errands accomplished half-blind before coffee to earn a long walk in the new cold with B2 & Z. #4 gets a reprieve so we make concord jelly and popcorn balls i make two loaves of good bread despite the fact i left the popcorn maker in the oven as i preheated and the house smells like burning shellac. large projects on half-life schedules. the mexican dinner a fortnight from now doubles. wasted most of my walk rattling invective in my head against H2 and find that by the time he calls the anger is burnt off and theres only a quietly whistling plain of space and smoking stubble. learning to take a step back, a breath, my time. recognizing distance from my lights by the degree of darkness. enormous squash at the mennonites down the street, and six little eggplant, fifteen cents each. ill feed off those squash all week, squash and curry and bread, note to self to check out basmati at the india shop in the city when i get there. contemplating sunlight through the southern window, chicken soup aromatherapy and a blessed quiet evening another day of our lives.


Our Sermon Today from R. Blount, Jr.:

"To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. …
We're in the midst of a bunch of letters, and if you're like me,
you feel like a pig in mud. What a great word mud is. And muddle,
and muffle, and mumble. … You know the expression "Mum's the word."
The word mum is a representation of lips pressed together. … The
great majority of languages start the word for "mother" with an m sound.
The word mammal comes from the mammary gland. Which comes from baby
talk: mama. To sound like a grownup, we refine mama into mother; the
Romans made it mater, from which: matter. And matrix. Our word for
the kind of animal we are, and our word for the stuff that everything
is made of, and our word for a big cult movie all derive from baby talk.

What are we saying when we say mmmm? We are saying yummy. In the
pronunciation of which we move our lips the way nursing babies move
theirs. The fact that we can spell something that fundamental, and
connect it however tenuously to mellifluous and manna and milk and
me (see M), strikes me as marvelous."

Amen.
"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)