luminous yolk

"It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there...ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." --Edward Abbey

"All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass."
-Wendell Berry

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
-David Wagoner

29 October 2008

Bright Idea #104: You Cant Cross a Chasm in Two Small Jumps.

"..we need to be suffused /with lusty compassion and ecstatic duty, /ingenious love and insurrectionary beauty...The roads they pave us,/the places they save us,/the tomatoes they grow us,/the rivers they flow us./Their mysterious stories,/and morning glories,/their loaves and fishes,/granting our wishes./The songs they sing us,/the gifts they bring us,/the secrets they show us,/above and below us./Thanks to them,
from whom the blissful blessings flow, /we are waking up." Snow. still sickly but the cash came through and provisions were got, including the albuterol which makes my hands tremble but breathing is nice. snow small and hard, spitting snow, #4 said quite correctly that the morning snow resembled crumbled styro, but tasted like vanilla. everyone relieved and well-fed, coffeed and medicated, the Mr. started PT and the boys and i went to the lakehouse to scavenge what was left behind. flora/fauna guides, mysterious wickless oil lamp, an oar. french onion crocks in faux festiva colors, a meat/corn/coffee grinder, an enamel pot. keys and candles and a cooties game from the fifties. baskets,glassware and a mug reading "#1 MOM." it snows (tiddly-pom) and theres breakfast for dinner and we learn that a stamen holds pollen and an ovary holds eggs and dispersal is another word for scattering. we learn that in art class, neither dragons nor hot-tubs were allowed. snow through the night, i suppose, but cuddled deep and dear under the duvet my dreams have been long and legendary, fantastic men and women and more highways and a huge pane of glass that broke in my hands and ended up red sand in my mouth. word that soul-brother may show up on this shore shortly. happy new year.

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"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)