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

29 August 2009

a heaviness.  an acceptance.  feelings of guilt for not measuring up to others expectations but its all external.  inside there might be disappointment but its fleeting.  theres been an incredible amount of slack around here on my part for sure, but the days of structure and obligation are coming and im sucking the very last marrow from my lazybones before.  better today, clearer, the hormone vortex subsides.  acceptance of who i am and what i make of myself.  an it harm none do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.   
cowboys been very cool about it all.  i think were both realizing how much of ourselves is defined by negative space, by whats not there.  and that absence requires a great deal of energy, it absorbs light unlike being and doing which creates it.  that is to say ive been feeling a little like a blackhole.  once again this summer my relationship with the tomatoes has fallen apart entirely, and theres only so much i can blame on everyone elses bad luck, too.  i realize all this sounds rather dreadful but what i really want to get across the event horizon of my days is that i can stand before all my failures and with an unassailable earnestness say:
im grateful to be learning from my mistakes in all areas of my life.  i believe that i can take these shortcomings and disappointments and build something stronger brighter and more satisfying.  the rubble of bricks and the vastness of space will offer me tools with which to build a house for my soul, something of joy and nourishment for my spirit.  inexhaustible optimism.  picking oneself up, dusting oneself off and trying again to dance with the devils, wrestle with the angels.  learning where to put your will, learning to listen to the whisper in the wind.  learning ultimately to be alive.   
we all fall short one way or another, were mortal, the failure is hardwired.  its learning to work around it.  its the red thread running through the system.  all of us with spinal cords can either get up and dance or lay down and die.  im realizing how fragile i can be if i let that disappointment fester.  the rot at the heart of a tree.  im recognizing all the aversion techniques, all the locks on poorly hung doors that block a million thresholds.  anger, self-loathing, fear.  and inside me all around me is that softness.  that tender consciousness  i want to share.  like a bag of food from my garden or a smile. 
look, this is where i am tired, where i ache, where my heart wants to be let in  and to let in in return.  i didnt do half the things i wanted to this summer but i learned so much i grew so much.  it was the summer of the sowing, of it all happening underground.  and sometime soon a little shoot will break the miraculous surface of the earth and something will be born.  something emerging from the center of myself growing toward the light in all things.   i have seen flashes of the light within me and i am learning to not be drawn back into the shadow it invariably casts.


42 of 365:
1.  advair.
2.  laughing out loud. 
3.  this book.
4.  the cowboy.
5.  autumn is coming.
6.  my good sweet boys.
7.  hope.
8.  amy goodman.
9.  sunflowers.
10.backyard sweetcorn.
11.my new dictionary!

how'd you rate?  i got three outta five...

im still learning how to dance with the new blogformatting.   ITS ALL A LEARNING EXPERIENCE!

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"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)