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

21 October 2008



Bright Idea #97: Do What You Love, Love What You Do.

"You've got to own your days and name them, every one of them, or else the years go right by and none of them belong to you." No brainer bright idea arent they all, but an important lesson for me to integrate into my heart and mind, I who drifted mindless through so many years, abdicated my will because i didnt get to die under the dock and lived sixteen years learning loathing and suspicion its a big epiphany. i believe that if you are and do whatever it is with your whole heart, 'failure is impossible' even if you miss your mark. countless inspirational adages are based on this, which makes me feel a bit suspect. but do what you love. follow your bliss. and make whatever you do a prayer. theres worse advice. and today in the sniffly damp i need a little franklin stove of cheerful thoughts, feeding the fire a tinder of minutes. before when i came under his caustic critique i would let it smother my good going with wet newsprint and ashes. now i keep the door closed. im learning at this late hour what is good and what is not so and more importantly i am learning that i can choose what i expose myself to. before i played sebastian to any passing arrow. and im grateful for the learning even at this late hour. content to sit at my happy fire and give freely of its warmth if its warmth is welcome. but i dont feel compelled to feed the fiends anymore. bring to me your ember of Light. we can braid our breath together and off you go with your belly-fire in a bowl to guide you. i live by my Light and if it doesnt suit you theres a million little lights everywhere for the liking. a moment of sun changes the timbre of the morning.



#4 stayed home sick. damp cold drizzle and blow waiting on the hecate beads to string october dark moon triple goddess mala my shoulders around my ears we keep the house at 50 and the evenings cooking and laundry keep us warm til bedtime. driving to town made me uneasy, the bank ladies cooed at Z. and fed her biscuits i broke down and bought ice cream to soothe my jangled nerves screaming dairy early to bed with gargoyle and todays gratitude award goes to 1) clean sheets 2) knitting 3) hot and cold running water 4) printed matter 5) the web of friends. carmelized onions and potatoes quiet tuesday night with tea and bed tired of fending off and parrying tired of playing defense when id rather be ferdinand with corks on my horns.

"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)