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

18 May 2010


the old woman at the crossroads got a hive.  
like heaven, or a bed, past wild rose and lesser jasmine lies a good green lawn of tall grasses. 
voices carry over the valley.  voices of beasts and of man.  voices of the machine.
it might not be pretty words after all.  perhaps i just snapped, fled at the worst moment, nothing whatsoever left in me to hang on, for faith or friend or sense.  
may, blessed among months, green buds bursting with Light and gorgeous orioles, giddy in the trees.  
the man said multiple phase boxes and i thought thats what we are.  multiple phase boxes. 


for a very long time now, a few years, ive been wondering what i believe.  and at some point over the last few days it came to me.  it came to me walking to Sister Mothers house, one of those sudden mystic epiphanies many crave.  or it may have been so satisfying only because the wait so long, the longing so great.
i believe life is a learning experience.
thats a concept ive understood for awhile now, that life is some sort of celestial proving grounds in which to test and temper souls, at the very least a cell in some infinite glorious organism (he said man was a cancer on the planet).  but for a wordhead to have the distillation of her desire presented to her in seven is a gift from Great Love and Grace.
Blessed Be.


there in the middle of the little river, a place of great power and water singing (like the place before), i produced the symbols of my true return.  it had been uphill grabbing at trunks and roots and offpath through thickets and finally just you and me on a rock in a place of great power and water singing wild columbine clinging to wet slate cliffs my beloved devas of fern and moss attending to the great power of this place and we are quiet and satisfied and glad.
thank you for being who i thought you were.


seedlings.  my mugwort!  my monarda!  corn radish and peas eager for the world, i can only now make out the small petals of lettuce, the red veined arms of chard. 
radish reminds me of my sister, incommunicado since christmas.
my beloved sunflowers, tithonia, hoping for a cleome volunteer since i didnt buy any seed this year.  remembering the datura i wrestled with last summer, my garden reminds me of you, Zuzu.  i will admit to the painful space where you are not in my life.  i hope one day you decide to let me know how you are.
i am happy home in this small subculture, returned to Innisfree, the big bed and beaten track.  trying to connect, a little, vaguely unsuccessful, the harder i seek the deeper it hides.  the water of the world begins to drip through. 


"I am not educated, but I do read books."

ten for today:
(books i plan to read)

1.  Mexico City Blues, Jack Keroac
2.  Absalom, Absalom, William Faulkner
3.  Five Skies, Ron Carlson
4.  The Children's Book, A.S. Byatt
5.  The Wilderness, Samantha Harvey
6.  The Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B.,  James Donleavy
7.  Gold Bug Variations, Richard Powers
8.  Although of Course You End up Becoming Yourself, David Lipsky
9.  The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
10.  Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann

‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’

By William Butler Yeats

I WILL ARISE AND GO NOW, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

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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)