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

07 September 2010

Letters from the Outside, #14


Hot. A thick heat that makes it hard for me to breathe if I dont keep up with the meds, which get expensive. I start taking a hippie multivitamin hoping itll help with the general malaise, maybe a deficit in my tomato-mayonnaise-white bread-salt diet. Even the dogs are hot, vying for prime real estate before the factory fan. Every hour or so I go out and wrangle another wheelbarrow of firewood, the crackle of leaves calling in september. I putter, make hummingbird food, the hummingbirds who will fly away and the little chickadees, finches and sparrows I notice coming back to check on their winter feeding stations here. The kitchen counter is covered in big bowls of tomatoes, the beloved peacevine cherries, the Uncle Jamie little yellows and big pinks, the neighbor romas, lobed costalutos that for taste is my favorite of the slicers but not built conducive to sandwiches. The little red calabash I dont think ill grow next year, and the round, winsome oregon spring bush which may have also had its moment in my sun. the organic heirloom seed people I buy from have a huge selection, and id like to try something different. Ive been growing these for about three years now, but this is the first year I really saw them for what they were, they way they grew, the way they felt, smelled, tasted. Getting to know a stranger. Next year, maybe Black Plum, Nyagous, Red Zebra, Siberian, Crnkovic.
 
 
It doesnt take much to overwhelm me, im a glass full to the meniscus, the littlest shift pours me out onto the ground. Friday a cooler air buffeting through the denser sunlight. Put the painting in the post, bring a jalepeno and a tomato to Sister Mother, went home baked brownies to john wesley harding (an excellent autumn soundtrack), washed dishes to john coltrane (pursuance/part 4 -psalm), dragged more maple and waited for Cowboy to come home. Drove down the town road for mennonite eggs with my arm hanging out the window listening to Steve Earle sing Hillbilly Highway. Fiddled endlessly with cd songlists for Zuzu. Brought brownies to King's Hill, the sun setting in a storm sky, double rainbow in the east and in the west a molten gold washing over the russet tassels of corn, flameless torches swaying in the dusk. I love to stand in some open place and feel the wind rush through me.
Night on Sister Mothers porch, little girls in rhinestone tiaras squealing around the house, the laughing chatter of adults. Fine sleeping weather sets in. The next night a campfire at our house, I light the way with little votives in small jars, and it feels good to just sit outside in the night with the company of fire, and stars. I cut my ring finger clean and deep and all day it bled through the bandage until we glued it shut. The breaking, cutting and burning continues; the Earth Herself adjusting to the axis shift, and a few more days of Mercury in Retrograde. 
 
 
Fall clean-up begins around here. Tuesday, the last day of summer vacation, is glorious. Warm, honeyed sunlight with a freshening breeze. Quiet, peaceful industry of home. Last night I started canning the tomatoes, and decided to freeze the small cherry and pear varieties instead. Awhile back the cards gave me the Horned God, and Four of Wands, masculine energy and a happy home. Cowboy points out that im the only human female in the house, and how good it feels for us all to be together. Today, the cards show The Lady, and Plenty, and I am strengthened in my faith that all is unfolding as it should, despite my petty frustration and wrong turnings. The Lady and Plenty in this time of Harvest, bringing into ourselves what summer has given, our faces to the sunlight we know will soon be in short supply. Honeycrisp apples debut at the market. Thoughts turn to firewood, and horse manure for next years garden. Ive promised cookies, but theres more wood to haul and I just want to be outside on a day like this, feeling hopeful and alive, which I wish had lately been the norm. But im learning to breathe through the bad days, and count my blessings. Orchard weather, cider light. Ill come in in a few hours, plan dinner, wash the dishes, and bake for my boys. 
 
 
The routine and early rising begins tomorrow, schoolwork, all the buttoning up that needs to be done before true winter. It seems a long long time since spring, and so much has happened to alter and improve the course of our lives here together. Im trying to stay open to all the magick and beauty afforded me here during my short stay, learning what lessons there are to lift the heavy dark that has always threatened to cloak my soul. Love as the Light, and the Law. We miss you.
"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)