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

07 August 2010

Letters from the Outside, #6


An excellent day to journey, light on the water and wind in the sails and the little locust leaves falling. When the walking dogs and I stop to listen or to write the shadows are cooler and longer in the morning a spectrum shift apples and walnuts apparent in the trees a set of tapering vertebrae and two teeth in their fragment of mandible embedded in the soft tar of the road. A cloud covers the sun and the walking dogs and I stand quiet on the verge listening to the seasons change. 

Lovely silver sliver of light in the morning east and I listen to a little Europe '72. Craft up some white magick and out in the garden, pruning and incantations, next year my espalier concept for sure, and preventative measures. Live and Learn.


Hiroshima. The release of energy holding everything together taking everything apart. 

Im learning that its time to pick beans when the white flowers come again. I am grateful that the blossoms have proved more hardy than I was led to believe, for all my rough handling I wouldnt have any beans. I go down the rows, eat a few, nip and tuck at the tomatoes but this disease is no joke. Im supposed to be sterilizing my tools, washing my hands, I could be just spreading it around. Theres only one plant that looks like it may have reacted poorly to the application, sort of limp. Tomorrow ill do it again, its such a diffuse treatment with such basic ingredients I dont think im doing more harm than good, considering my questionable surgical practices.
I pick the last of the cucumbers. Very sad.
Sometime this weekend I plan to second seed and pick calendula blossoms for oil. Itll be good to have salad again, and I may have tomatoes too, Inshallah.


For a moment, 2:13 on a friday afternoon, I am filled with Love. These moments are milestones and they keep me going. The oxalis stem I poked unceremoniously in with the rose geranium propagates has bloomed two flowers. The rose geranium balks, goes a bad color. I have not been gentle with it. So in goes the terracotta angel, an aspirin and a sodalite sphere. The older aloes are stalwart but the babies cant hide their optimism, havent got their teeth yet. 

The purple queen needs to hang from the ceiling and not the wall, her leaves against the hot southern window like too many people in a car. The hoya I occasionally encourage one way or another, the pink velour petals and bright nectar collected at the mouth of each little flower clutched in umbras of twenty or forty the little intelligent fingerbuds traveling through time with earth sense for something to clutch. The rubber plants get bigger. I dont water them enough. The spider plants are spry and well contented. The dwarf orchid Nick bought me has shed its preliminary petals, but I continue to water it lightly and believe it may one day rebloom. That will be a day. I try to keep the ferns and ivy damp, keep the little transplants watered in summer its the sun and in winter its the woodstove. But this house would be less a home for the want of these green devas. Not only that, they are beautiful and life-affirming and breathe sweet air for us to drink.


The craving for solitude gets keener. Not away from Cowboy, or the boys, but away from other eyes and minds when im home, away. A refuge. But I know that I have to find it first inside. My refuge must travel within me. 

Went out with  last night and danced and danced. This morning my ears are still ringing. The air was cool last night, and this morning there are no cicadas singing in the trees. T. and I are going with friends to the garlic festival for something to do, and I could use a bulb or two to try again with instead of plunking these nano-cloves I failed to grow back in the ground expecting something bigger. 

I am trying to get out just a little more, circulate whatsoever, but im always disproportionately relieved when I come home again, cats in the headlights wanting in, dogs in the window waiting, Cowboy quiet and smiling, a shower, a book and bed, narrowly escaped from the clamorous weft of the world.

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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)