luminous yolk

"It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it’s still here. So get out there...ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to the body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much; I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those desk-bound men and women with their hearts in a safe deposit box, and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this; You will outlive the bastards." --Edward Abbey

"All that I serve will die, all my delights,
the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,
the silent lilies standing in the woods,
the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all
will burn in man's evil, or dwindle
in its own age. Let the world bring on me
the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know
my little light taken from me into the seed
of the beginning and the end, so I may bow
to mystery, and take my stand on the earth
like a tree in a field, passing without haste
or regret toward what will be, my life
a patient willing descent into the grass."
-Wendell Berry

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
-David Wagoner

19 January 2009

O GREAT ORACULAR iTUNES!!!
(cd available upon request)

1. What does the Winter hold in store for me?
So What, Derek Trucks Band

2. What does the Spring hold in store for me?
Yellow Submarine, The Beatles

3. What does the Summer hold in store for me?
Fire Door, Ani DiFranco

4. Will our journey to Sherman be successful this summer?
Pony Boy, The Allman Brothers Band

5. Who Am I?
Paradise, John Prine

6. What is my Theme Song for this Year?
Open, Peter Gabriel (LToC Soundtrack)

7. What should i understand about my Emotional Life?
Teknochek Collision, Slavic Soul Party

8. What should i understand about my Physical Life?
Hypnotized, Ani DiFranco

9. What should i understand about my Spiritual Life?
My Manic and I, Laura Marling

10. What song played over my Soul as i was born?
Oh Susanna, The Be Good Tanyas

11. What song shall usher me Out as i die?
Campaigner, Neil Young

12. What song holds a secret key to my deeper happiness?
It's All Over Now Baby Blue, Bob Dylan

13. What is the Theme Song of my Very Life?
Back to Memphis, The Band

14. What Goal Should i Work Toward this Year?
Friend of the Devil, The Grateful Dead

15. Will it Be Alright?
Daylight Fading, Counting Crows

16. The Song of my 36th Year?
Ice Cream, Sarah McLachlan

17. The Song of my 37th Year?
We're All in this Together, Old Crow Medicine Show

18. What do i Need to Understand about N?
Good King Wenceslas, John Fahey

19. What do i Need to Understand about #2?
A Long December, Counting Crows

20. What do i Need to Understand about #3?
It Takes A Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry, Bob Dylan

21. What do i Need to Understand about #4?
You Had Time, Ani DiFranco

22. What do i Need to Understand Me?
Alive and Well and Living In, Jethro Tull

23. What is the Meaning of Life?
Baby Let Me Lay it On You, Etta Baker

"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)