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

24 October 2008



Bright Idea #101: Play, Snacks and Naps.

"Lay down these words/Before your mind like rocks./placed solid, by hands/In choice of place, set/Before the body of the mind/in space and time:/Solidity of bark, leaf, or wall/riprap of things:/Cobble of milky way./straying planets,/These poems, people,/lost ponies with/Dragging saddles –/and rocky sure-foot trails./The worlds like an endless/four-dimensional/Game of Go./ants and pebbles/In the thin loam, each rock a word/a creek-washed stone/Granite: ingrained/with torment of fire and weight/Crystal and sediment linked hot/all change, in thoughts,/As well as things." An extraordinarily peaceful day. the wind was soft and warm. more birds to see, theyre captains of industry, feeding and fending, erupting from shrubs and going quiet as the hawk cries over us, searching, circling. trees are mostly bare and the guns are coming you can hear them tuning like an orchestra down the valley on the way home there are two deer strapped to the boot of a teal sedan. we were feeling so easy and free we walked west to the crossroad and the honey smell of the woods and peaceful pines bearing wild grapevine and longshadows beautiful roosters crowing at unexpected sunlight. i avert my eyes from the little pelts and the dogs can smell the entrails in the gully and everything is unwound in the warmth i come home grateful for water make a really beautiful banana bread recline with the buckwheat warmer in the red chair making a small dent in the media pile. #4 stays over an extra night with his father well make it an early night and tomorrow baking pb chip cookies as requested and errands that dont require leaving home. a long long day and ive been eating way too much popcorn lately. grateful for: 1) the ancient asthma meds i found in the medicine pantry to make up for the albuterol, etc. i cant afford 2) my pack 3) my buckwheat warmer 4) the peace and sanity of the natural world 4)that banana bread 5) my chocolate body lotion from w.s. 6) the music of stony creeks falling down the hill near the crossroad 7) learning that what e.o. said years ago was true. life can be broken down into three entirely manageable situations: play, naps and snacks. im grateful for the whole illuminated infrastructure of my life that allows for so much space and energy and stillness and movement.
"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)