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

02 September 2010

Letters from the Outside #13 


#3: “Making Brief Eye Contact with Someone of the Opposite Sex.” theres a fleeting connection made between two organisms, a frisson that passes between two cells. I call this the joy of Possibility. That we are surrounded by a literally infinite number of possibilities. Every moment, in our thoughts and in our actions. This is freedom, open to possibility.
Decide to make september the month in which I begin living more magickally. The heat isnt quite as oppressive today, the winds are shifting, all that wild weather on the coast were getting the ragged tattered hem of the wind off the ocean traveled some-hundred miles to wash over my face while I peg up laundry on the line.


Took the mason jar sling on its first tour of the neighborhood and its better than I expected. It even lets me set the whole thing down without toppling over, which I wasnt sure it would do. Finished the painting for my most excellent friend, Zuzu who unsheathed her vorpal blade to slay grim illness and now shes forty. Were both crafty women, we like to work with our hearts and our hands. We both share, among many a splendid thing, a love of creatures, especially dogs. And a joyful little dog showed up in the painting. If I can figure it out, ill scan a photo of it and send it to you, which you would now find enclosed. So I painted this for my beautiful friend, on the occasion of her fortieth birthday anniversary, with my boobs. 

What im lacking these days, and what these days desperately require, is oomph. But I feel my oomph rising. Another day, another tomato sandwich. When I drag the big branches down the street, skidding them out to the highground firepit for kindling, they sound like the ocean. What I need now is a rake and a hatchet, an afternoon under the picnictable pinetree to thresh the windfall and assemble the long equations of fire.
I broke another dish, geometrical sunburst of hot glass shooting off into everything, the central disc was a lens that burnt my hand. We talk until the mosquito tide rises and inside I make Cowboy his first-ever toasted cheese and tomato sandwich, the tomato a little thick but a great tomato, deep red dense flesh of late summer, and some impromptu curry with eggplant, zucchini, tomato and pepper from the garden with a cucumber raita by candlelight and music playing. I exhume my boxes of cds, and spend the evening filing songs into the computer, sifting songs into cds for Zuzu, posting photos and quotes on the painted veil.
The night is cool and dark and I am wide awake.

Another hot, thick day, I take the bike for milk and stamps, the steep ascent into town and the pleasant, effortless coasting home.  It is now september. School begins and the gridwork of schedule drifts down to settle on the days, all home together again after a tumultuous spring and recuperative summer. I want my time through the seasons to be a dance, not a deathmarch. I usually start off seasons with a long list of goals, but for this fall all I want is to learn to forgive myself, practice compassion, and laugh. I want to walk and stretch and work my way into winter, making room for all the good green growing things that come with spring. I want to believe that theres still time for a few of my dreams to come true. I want to be a good wife, a good mother, a good friend. I want to rid myself of at least some of this heavy heartedness that drags me down, rope around the ankle, eyes still searching through deep water for the light.


"dog rose"

i could fiddle with it forever and just need to get it in the mail.
you can see where the paint is still wet from a recent adjustment.
Zuzu!
the Shaman came today, given a place of prominence in the kitchen where i may gaze upon her and her dark companion, absorbing the Mysteries.  
Blessed Be.
"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)