Up those stone steps I climb

...

Up those stone steps I climb
Hail this joyful day's return

Into its great shadowed vault I go

Hail the Pentecostal morn

...

The reading is from Luke 24

Where Christ returns to his loved ones

I look at the stone apostles

Think that it's alright for some

...

And I wish that I was made of stone

So that I would not have to see

A beauty impossible to define

A beauty impossible to believe

...

A beauty impossible to endure

The blood imparted in little sips

The smell of you still on my hands

As I bring the cup up to my lips

...

No God up in the sky

No devil beneath the sea

Could do the job that you did, baby

Of bringing me to my knees

...

Outside I sit on the stone steps

With nothing much to do

Forlorn and exhausted, baby

By the absence of you

...

~ Nick Cave

.

Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life

in catfish forms

in scaffolds of skin and whiskers

at the bottom of a pond

and you were to come by

   one evening

when the moon was shining

down into my dark home

and stand there at the edge

   of my affection

and think, "It's beautiful

here by this pond.  I wish

   somebody loved me,"

I'd love you and be your catfish

friend and drive such lonely

thoughts from your mind

and suddenly you would be

   at peace,

and ask yourself, "I wonder

if there are any catfish

in this pond?  It seems like

a perfect place for them."

...

 ~ Richard Brautigan

...

If you want to know God,

Then turn your face toward your friend,

And don't look away.

...

~ Rumi

e.e.cummings- charcoal sketch

pencil sketch by e.e.cummings

...
A bird the size

of a leaf fills

the whole lucid

evening with

his note, and flies.

...

~ Wendell Berry

An eye is meant to see things.

The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: for loving a true love.

Legs: to run after.

 

Love is vanishing into the sky.  The mind,

for learning what men have done and tried to do.

Mysteries are not to be solved.  The eye goes blind

when it only wants to see why.

 

A lover is always accused of something.

But when he finds his love, whatever was lost

in the looking comes back completely changed.

 

~ Rumi

The Bright Field

.

...

I have seen the light break through

to illuninate a small field

for a while and gone my way

and forgotten it. But that was the pearl

of great prize, the one field that had

the treasure in it.  I realize now

that I must give all that I have

to possess it.  Life is not hurrying

...

on to a receding future not handering after

an imagined past, It is the turning

aside like Moses to the miracle

of the lit bush. To a brightness

that seems as transitory as your youth

once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

...

~ R. S. Thomas

.

a divine stream

Your body is a divine stream,
as is your spirit.

When your two great rivers merge, one voice is found

and the earth applauds
in excitement.

Shrines are erected to those songs
the hand and heart have sung
as they serve
the world
with a love, a love
we cherish.





~ St. John of the Cross

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life

.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, 

to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, 

to cut a broad swath and shave close,

 to drive life into a corner, 

and reduce it to its lowest terms, 

and, if it proved to be mean, 

why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, 

and publish its meanness to the world;

 or if it were sublime,

 to know it by experience, 

and be able to give a true account of it.

.

~ Henry David Thoreau

.

no going back

.

No, no, there is no going back.

Less and less you are

that possibility you were.

More and more you have become

those lives and deaths

that have belonged to you.

You have become a sort of grave

containing much that was

and is no more in time, beloved

then, now and always.

And so you have become a sort of tree

standing over a grave.

Now more than ever you can be

generous toward each day

that comes, young, to disappear

forever, and yet remain

unaging in the mind.

Every day you have less reason

not to give yourself away.

~ Wendell Berry

Worn to brightness, this

Worn to brightness, this

bowl opens outward

to the world, like

the marriage of a pair

we sometimes know.

Filled full, it holds

no greedily. Empty,

it fills with light 

that is Heaven's and

its own. It holds

forever for a while.

~ Wendell Berry

the emporers new clothes

...
Everyone lives in his own fantasy world, but most people don't understand that. No one perceives the real world. Each person simply calls his private, personal fantasies the Truth. The difference is that I know I live in a fantasy world. I prefer it that way and resent anything that disturbs my vision.


...
~ Federico Fellini
 
.

you speak to me in italics

you speak to me in italics
slanting your thoughts deep into me
you come at me from an angle
impaling me on the point of desire
you lean towards me like a tree in the wind
each leaf inscribed with the same word
I have never met your type before
yet I can read you like a book




~ Andre Ramier

.

remember?

Harlan: And so we named a day -- remember? --
          and a certain train that you would be on
          if you wanted to marry me,
Anna:                                   and that you
         would be on if you wanted to marry me,
Both: and both of us were on the train!
Anna: And then, Harlan, we did drift away
Harlan: on a little boat we built ourselves,
          that contained hardly more than our music,
          our stove, our table, and our bed
Anna: in which we slept -- and did not sleep -
Harlan: my birthplace into our new life!


~ Wendell Berry

.