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

07 October 2008


Bright Idea #87 : The Dark Side of the Moon is covered in Mountains, the Light Side in Seas.
"A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself." Clear black night presaged hard frost morning. on the hill the way in sun was green the way in shadow white i sat in the light behind glass reading marquez and waiting. made apple crisp and tomato sauce, started a hat with holes to match gloves with no fingers. a bright day up twenty degrees before dawn the day went so fast and theres a hearthwarming on the horizon. i do what i can to feed my spirit and bolster my soul. on the road i wrote starlings october cornfield line of frost and shadow. bloodgrumpy i want my three days in the hut on the island to not tend or bend or serve or justify. dont we all? my hat looks like a teacozy but i learned a new stitch. up late listening to the debate on npr starting the last glove. pure october evening, white stars and woodsmoke. this bright idea had some crystal seed of climbing and floating, work and resting. but at the bottom of the sea there is rising and at the top of the mountain there is resting. at every moment there is rising and resting. political rhetoric makes me want to chew my ears off. milk chocolate and yogi tea. sometime this winter ill try my hands at socks. it is interesting to me that the weather goes chill and im drawn sweetly back to the clickety sticks, happy in the nest through the night.
"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)