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

11 November 2010

Letters from the Outside, #28, Pt. 1


The sun comes out and everything is wet and glorious. Its even still raining a little but everything shines in the sudden afternoon light like springtime, the path up to the compost slick and sliding laughing out loud in my cheap clogs the jostle of dogs the thin crust of muddy prints on the kitchen floor.


Cool, beautiful night, Dark Moon in Scorpio down the road with sage, pomegranate, candle, the cloak and a bit of blue maori.   The last half-teacup of california cabernet held on until tonight, viscous and savory, the starless purple of royal blood. Im letting go of negativity, all her wanton blemished bastards picking my pockets my dreams careening on a bed of nails an impotent crucifixion signifying nothing. Nihil, god of my abhorrence.


I reach for Grace. I reach for the Light that infuses strength enough to choose peace and kindness, for the Darkness from which all good things are born.  Dark Moon performance art theres one that wont commune, wont connect, and the antagonism I feel is unjust, but implacable. I talk it out with Cowboy and let it go.  All this anger and impatience people practice, rewiring, corrupting an original and essential Interconnectedness.


T. asks me where the one cat is. “ I fed her tuna from my fingers this morning in the snow.” That evanescent negligee is long gone, replaced by what passes here for warm weather in november but its still raw and windy, a weather that inspires you to transform a large hard squash you bought off the side of the road along with your eggs from chickens you can watch flutter and fuss in the pasture past the horsefence into a food you eat with a spoon, or sip from a mug with bread toasted and buttered that rose while you were out on your walk. Winter reminds us what fragile creatures we truly are. Why are we so willing to allow our fear and incomprehension to keep us from generosity and compassion? Why do we work so hard to harm others and not believe it harms ourselves?


People say this is an unreal and naïve perspective. It is only unreal when you accept their superimposition of the dogma of man upon the original world. When its not a tree but board feet. When its not a river but a swill tributary for industrial waste. When its not the finite liquefied remains of Earths biotic history but the mother of our culture, medea eating her children, what we live and kill for. I emailed the man who talks through trees and the ad attempting to get my attention said, “save us from our phones,” said, “be here now.” it was selling us some new kind of application for some new kind of device. It didnt say, “Put the damned thing down.”


Its a bit grim out there and Im wildly short of breath but I bridle the dogs and away we go, down the same road we walk every day to the same place where I stop and pray and turn around. The same way I suck the wild marrow from, leaving behind only the bone of the road that not a long while ago was most likely a way to the lake through the valley, a wooded footpath along the lower wetlands. So I pick up the butts and beercans and nappies and plastic trash in defiant honor of the Soul of this land that offers to me such succor and solace and to honor my soul which is also one part of it.

"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)