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

03 October 2008


Bright Idea #83 (J.C.): "Being Alive is the Meaning."
"They were solitary little girls whose lonliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolor visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream." A quick morning at work and then mad errands completed early, tallied out in the green book a sneaky-quick dip into the Landing found Sula and read it completely in the nest with a bowl of brewers-yeasted popcorn and coffee and the cold coming in quietly through the seams of the house. #4 sick with school fever and Z. gets paid off. Down a sunny side road for concords and eggs and a tiny black-and-white barn kitten purring warm in my arms. mennonites growing fluorescent pumpkins and the last of the peaches, zucchini and plums, none of which i buy stuffing my tote instead at the dry goods store for a week of baking, dried pineapple for me, pretzels and hulled sunflower seeds for #4. a jug of cider vinegar for cleaning. cheese, apples and spelt flour. black beans, good coffee and house soap. taking that long walk from paycheque to paycheque, spinning plates, taking them down. she called me today and said she still loved me, and it was good. this weekend i introduce Z. to the disc and i take the transiberian with theroux. some people take to drink. im a reader.
"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)