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

21 October 2010

Letters from the Outside, #24


It is cold and damp and excellent. A steady gentle rain falls on the dogs and me while south along the valley wall everything is glorious, illuminated. The rain thickens and I am grinning, my face, my heart wide open receiving this weather I can breathe in. my blood responds to this extremity, the dim, hypersaturated environment that is able to communicate fluently with my genetic language. I saw a photo of snow and experienced the sweetest sense of anticipation and longing. But the sate of snow brings the craving of springtime. This Mystery School of the Seasons.


I dont talk much to folk who dont also live under this roof. Im insular and poorly digested by the crowd. But in the last few days ive had the most remarkable things communicated to me by fellow humans. Fleeting, freighted exchanges. Like the gods speaking through flesh, an interception of chitchat by Vox Omnium. The words “Spirit Guides,” and “Sanctify.” Back to the Black Jaguar, my wild fourth year dreams, spinning spider mothers, spiral stairways leading down forever, a cemetery on every stone my name. Six sisters bearing me along in the light in a brass bed.  Fathers car rolling over my mummified form in the driveway, that same car going over the cliffside and all of us in it. And the dream of the Black Jaguar. Walking the wooded path above me the Black Jaguar in the canopy, I have no fear, but a sense of belonging and security. Neither of which I have enjoyed much in this waking world. Moments, that afternoon on Cherry Hill with Cowboy shines like a lighthouse. But soon after these dreams something broke, could no longer bear. And I live life in exile since then. I want to reclaim the country of my soul for the aboriginals born of that soil. And theres a honed urgency new to the decades long grope in treacherous darkness.


I am open. I am listening. I have babbled white noise to keep out the sound. Written on the blackboard in the kitchen, “Silence Listening Memory Practice.” and this casual reference to Spirit Guides, specifically Spirit Guides assisting me through this life, this travail. And the casual reference to “witching water,” to Sanctify the branch that came off in my hand. My year of The Star, an enormous amount of work, of Energy. Struggling something like birth from out of some wormhole my structure uncompressing and shining and again ill be able to see. For lo, the Whole is Beautiful, and every part thereof. Our inability to experience the beauty and wholeness does not discount its Being. Just clouds before the Sun.


Full Moon tomorrow night, my wishing lantern caught in the tips of a willow tree burning like a japanese moon the night of the revel and this morning gone, not even bones left on a prairie platform, the entire architecture dissipated into Bliss. Nasturtium, Calendula in all her mighty variations, Cleome, all out there being, shining, mothering slender seedstock for vernal rebirth. The equatorial Tithonia faded weeks ago. The Tithonia are way taller than you are and almost as wide with wall sconce stems terminating with a flourish into Fairy crowns of true orange, a yellow coronet.
Intense electricities thrumming underground. This consistent ache under the breastbone, this persistent tug at the quicksilver cord that connects me to some brooding fractious guru with ironclad commandments im only now beginning to learn. A wave of spit and dizzy and im on my feet again. Blue bead, red thread. Walnut stang goes to Sanctify, to the man who speaks through trees. This is the year I wrestle myself from the conscription of Angst. The little girl I craved and gave away is revealed to be myself, me.


On Easthill the bowls and inlays, the gardens and orchards and vineyards and the young bucks fluster me from a Friends company, but the branch is there, the antlered outline the womb-eye not kindling tie a ribbon round it to remember two true chestnuts from a cardboard box osage and walnut and madrone, a root that drinks from a different ocean I wonder what my wood would be, a blank rune is what im after but from which tree?
The deep comfort of beginning dinner, the initial aromatics and then everything after, cornbread baked in a castiron skillet, chili con carne a jalapeno simmered whole in the midst of it im still eating peacevines out there, an eggplant to pick, I could even get a little jar of flowers, and soon ill spend some sunshine carving pumpkins, a spirit trail into the heart of the fire. As below, so above. 



"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)