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

18 December 2008



"Sometimes I read about someone saying with great authority that animals have no intentions and no feelings, and I wonder, 'Doesn't this guy have a dog?'"

In my dream the falling man became a running pack of smoke wolves when he hit the ground. everyone smiling and squealing and exchanging small gifts and i tied the bracelet to my wrist so maybe it would work. i fled and there werent any cardamom pods and i came home and despaired and TOOK MY MEDS and in a little while felt like i could go on. this time of year is extraordinarily difficult for me. im certainly not alone in this but my difficulties are unique in that they are mine. so. driving home one eye on the slanting sunlight on the mountain fantasized about dissolving into a trillion motes of light, rising and shifting in the wind, apart and away. so many fine images today out there, the yellow sky, the shaft of light, the little yellow apples on the bare branched tree, the hawk watching the ground below. i made dinner and checked homework and put in a load and read more blue dolphin to #4 and on second thought made a 1234 for the staff breakfast but forgot to butter the pan and briefly considered making those insane cake balls but on third thought opted for the rough-and-tumble hippie approach of slicing the Great Crevasse and serving it on my grand chipped yard sale english rose platter and someone said they wanted to know me and my inner critic sits back in her smoking chair, swirling burgundy and smirking into her silk scarf, the high heel grinding into persian pile and the eyes squarely on me. what drowns me is the expectation of the season that comes from the outside, not my life and times, this time of year i would have of my own devising. the obligation, like a state holiday youre required by law to observe, the birthday of some benevolent overlord.

and if photos of some guys french bulldogs in frog hats gets me through, so be it.
"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)