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

03 January 2009



"Spirituality, as it's been said, being the fine art of paying attention."



Louise wasnt having it so i caught the neighbor who forgot her fags and she dropped me off and i went to work and i was grateful. all returning, we wonder at how much is forgotten after two weeks, a building full of women growing older, our branches far extended over the river beside which we are rooted. theyre calling for cuts, theres a dysfunctional family elephant vibe everywhere. like the game where we hold our cards up to our foreheads for others to view.



I make pizza dough, mushrooms and onions, pepper jack and parmesean. i do what i can with what i have where i am. the sky was clear, day to night, the wide open night and bright fellow travellers on the oval course of eternity. blue dusk, firewood and compost, collecting #4 and making small bright connections, tentative looking forwards and the blue dog in my arms on the porch in the cold. my secret santa revealed, the woman with the beautiful hair, and she gave me the boy in the striped pajamas. walking home from the post office i could smell our woodsmoke and see the light on the creekwater and there was chocolate to taste and the trailermans cats spitting in the cold night across the bridge and the feel of the gentle dough under my fingers. the world is a marvelous place and im grateful for my health and the peace around me, all the while everywhere around the world there is suffering and injustice. violence of flesh and the souls tragedy. all the while im chittering away at a laptop listening to billy bragg drinking green tea, fed, literate, with the luxury of time to learn how to love my self at last.

8 of 365:

1. Mrs. H. and G.
2. Book Suggestions.
3. My Difficulties are So Minor.
4. A Short Walk after Work and before Supper.
5. The Woodstove.
6. iTunes.
7. Amy Goodman.
8. Homemade Pizza.
9. Clean Water.
"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)