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

20 January 2009

(exhale)



The Big Day. romantic snow falling im knitting across the transfer of power the little birthday blanket for the little limb. painted an amanita muscaria and traced my hand. everybody comes home, #4 finds chocolate i stashed and forgot about. ate a great quantity of purple cabbage for dinner. happy. walked out into the world. talked with my neighbors. smiled at the trees. the quality of light is changing, there was a bright smudge of yellow in it this afternoon. the two of us are cuddly and a wee bit more at ease. #2 calls to wish me a happy inauguration. its official, its real. theyre so beautiful and easy together. only the best. may he be our Good Captain. there is a quiet in my heart, a night in winter, something stirring deep beneath, waiting for the solid snow to sing water into the earth.



18 of 365:

1. it went off lovely, and i was alive to see it.
2. walking out into the snow with my dog.
3. firewood.
4. friendly neighbors.
5. art supplies.
6. his gentleness and kindness.
7. the organic loveliness of purple cabbage.
8. surprise chocolate.
9. uncovering a stash of paperbacks that saves his near reading future.

"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)