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

05 May 2010

"Now is a really big place."

they were playing all my songs on the college radio. townes covers, steve earle, hayes carll. and then we went off with the cranky baby and the epileptic dog and it was lovely. picnic amid the trillium,everything full of itself, the river of self rising above its banks, spring flood of self and everythings two weeks ahead.
just getting accustomed to being around another person who doesnt also happen to be sharing my body. on the way to her house i realize that everything actually does happen for a reason and all the million things that go on whether we notice them or not are like threads in a tapestry and most of the time you have to step away from it to really see.

"dont ask me when it happened or how much it cost."

i dont know what happened that opened my door, made me want to circulate, communicate, connect, but its a strong urge now, like the leaves intricately folded down to density in the brown bud unfurl into enormous translucent lungs leaves lifting in this may weather after the evening walk it began to rain. something in me starved all this while for the pleasures of company will not deny itself any longer. im ready now for my life to begin.

“...people pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead.”

may has been extraordinarily overstimulating, all five days of it so far.
getting the garden in, washing the kitchen floor, burying the battered bodies of my lesser selves in shallow pits along the road to wholeness and peace of mind.
the world just gets more insane, people completely locked in egoblindness imaginary lines of yours and mine starvation politics and blackdeath creeps over the face of the water choking life out of feathers and fins, birds and turtles and a billion billion biota that the world depends upon. people who want to hurt people and other people who dont care and the boy in the yard shooting at birds.
how have we managed to not come very far?

ten for today:

1. fern
2. moss
3. bloodroot
4. horse chestnut
5. wild lilac
6. peony
7. hellebore
8. hyacinth
9. hoya
10. the seeds of anything

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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)