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

25 September 2010

Letters from the Outside, #19


Eve of the Equinox. Sustained crescendo in the field, three hundred resonating exoskeletons chanting the Bardo, migrating battalions practice maneuvers over your head wherever you go, the clarion hymns pull you from stupor these days I think a lot about heat and density and I pray.
The night is windy and warm, I try a fire with green maple windfall and after a few hopeful flares I take a small walk around the neighborhood with the dogs to enjoy the darkness and the moonlight.

Slowly bringing the big branch rounds up to the fire, theyre post-modern rustic loveseats and I fantasize a full ring, a kettle archipelago with people sitting smiling their faces black and gold relief in the flames illumination. On the Equinox, it rains. Equinox reminds me of yesterday when T. asked me to spell Esquimaux and after spelling it telling him it was incorrect, like Indian, to even use the word Esquimaux. And that led to the word Inuit, which reminds me of Zane, and the farm on a grey day of rain with the sucking mud and the sound of enormous molars grinding corn. A million side streets everyday I wander, Gatsbys boat “against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...” Even though its raining I go out with the big black and little blue dogs in honor of the Awaited Celestial Event. This is the rainy day ive been putting everything off until, straightening the books at the top of the landing, going through the big basket beside the rocking chair. I even initiate the mending process on my Alternate Attachment Object from childhood. Living in the past is the greatest obstacle to my spiritual evolution. The instantaneous surge of Light I experience when I bring myself fully into the present you would think would be incentive. But lo, I am lazier than a pet raccoon. After a late contraction of summer, the wind just heat moving around a surrendered landscape, it sets alight the pyre, burning saffron robes rolling the valley through.


The meds are a stick in the spokes of my bike, inertia sending my body through space while my mind meditates on timelessness flat on its back in the ferns cloudwatching. On the meds my thoughts lose their nimble fingers but everything becomes catatonically fascinating and the pain cravings fade. So its a trade off, I went farther without them than I thought id be able to, november and december a death march through hostile country someone else has already ravaged, already burned (1). 

Asters on the byway and facecords hurtling toward winter in the beds of small pickups. A smell of fermenting, pumpkins on the red bench. Tomorrow collect the last tomato, pull stakes, weed the sage.
The smell of woodsmoke and cooking on the cool and quiet night, a good feeling like the way coffee tastes by a fire outside in the morning. There is more space between the beads, and I wander dazzled by the quiet. Cowboy and I, old ragged battlecraft tethered together in an untended harbor. If there are ley lines they are there running through us, tradewinds of reincarnation.


#9, the Joy of Synchronicity. The joy of living in the World as Oracle, reading the ley lines that connect all of us, reading them like music, and hearing them sing. Aleatory intersections, synapse crossroads that carry Love in their pockets. The joy of Being There. #10 The Joy of Satisfaction, feeding hunger slaking thirst. Not gluttony or perversion, but investment in the body as carriage for the Soul. Bringing Energy and Rest into our selves in balance, homeostasis. We have been led to forget that this is our Birthright. This is our True Self. Weve been led to believe that right out of the chute were stained and sorely lacking. That money will make us whole, the Key. I think you could call that living off The Grid, estranged from the Synchronicity that interconnects us and unifies the organism we forget that We are. 

In the cards, the Chalice emerges from the Cave, Grail Cup for the Hanged Man. Late supper for the boys baked chicken and potatoes, collards and garlic from the garden, a chunk of brown sugar, chiffonade and steamed in its own sweat. There was nothing sweet for after, but no one complained.

The emptiness is heavy and hard at times to bear. But that emptiness is the inside of the beginning. 
And saturday night a bright fire lit in vigil I can see from my kitchen window. Happy Birthday.

"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)