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

12 October 2008



Bright Idea #92: Roll Gloriously on Your Back in the Sun.
"If I can tell you the story from beginning to end in five minutes, I'm ready to start writing. Then it's a constant spreading out of that five minutes." A wandering day. excellent morning foray breathing deep reciting mantra prayer until i spied longshadows leg-traps hanging on the fenceline like economy gallows and my heart broke into a hundred fat-tailed sharp-toothed pieces and there goes my consciousness, abruptly interrupted from autumn purpose tracking and the pain and the confusion and the fear and the struggle and the despair and today the prickly pods revealed their glowing wooden hearts and i am reminded. energy puddles i track about in really just enjoying sitting in the sun listening to the pack whoosh around me and B1 roll on her back in the grass getting swept along on a train with theroux and an apple and a mason jar of lemonade. decided my space elf hat looked too much like it belonged on the head of cortez so it back to K1 but K1 is a wonder-lovely hopeful place to be. neighbors burning enormous pile of wet leaves and the valley is veiled in smoke. it lies flat beneath the sky so i know that grey weather is coming. that and the absolutely spectacular mare-tail variations weve been getting for the past few days. we drove hither and yon for coffee, milk and eggs, i took the high road and my faith in pretty much everything was restored. from up there all you see is the valley the river the hills the lake the sky and a farm or two shining simplicity while along the road clean horses and the fragrant beckoning woods. i was soul-vaulted. baked an acorn squash and ate it with my hands. we took a moon walk ate ice cream and i rode the train until bedtime early the emotional toll of our negotiations rising like the price of everything like mr. van winkle ive awoken to mightily altered world where the candy bars cost $1.25.
"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)