to a writer of reputation

... the man must remain obscure.

                                   ~ Cezanne

.

Having begun in public anonymity,

you did not count on this

literary sublimation by which

some body becomes a "name" -

as if you have died and have become

a part of mere geography.  Greet,

therefore, the roadsigns on the road.

.

Or perhaps you have become deaf and blind,

or merely inanimate, and may 

be studied without embarrassment

by the disinterested, the dispassionate,

and the merely curious,

not fearing to be overheard.

Hello to the grass, then, and to the trees.

.

Or perhaps you are secretly

still alert and moving, no longer the one

they have named, but another,

named by yourself,

carrying away this morning's showers

for your private delectation.

Hello, river.

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~ Wendell Berry

from Given

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to bring ourselves to birth

.

One of the lovely things about being a human is that we are called in each moment to bring ourselves to birth.

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Part of the difficulty of our times is that we have reduced the magnificent adventure of being a human being to endless, wearisome projects of self-improvement and self-analysis according to the flattest and most boring maps that could be made

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~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty the Invisible Embrace

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under the day

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To come back like autumn

to the moss on the stones 

after many seasons 

to recur as a face

backlit on the surface

of a dark pool one day

after the year has turned

from the summer it saw

while the first yellow leaves

stare from their forgetting

and the branches grow spare

.

is to waken backward

down through the still water

knowing without touching

all that was ever there

and has been forgotten 

and recognize without

name or understanding

without believing or

holding or direction

in the way that we see

at each moment the air.

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~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

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the comet museum

.

.

So the feeling comes afterward

some of it may reach us only

long afterward when the moment 

itself is beyond reckoning

.

beyond time beyond memory 

as though it were not moving in 

heaven neither burning farther

through any past nor ever to 

arrive again in time to be 

when it has gone the senses wake

.

all through the day they wait for it

here are pictures that someone took

of what escaped us at the time

only now can we remember

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~ W.S. Merwin

from The Pupil

.

the beauty of the heart

.

The beauty of the heart

is the lasting beauty:

its lips give to drink

of the water of life.

Truly it is the water,

that which pours,

and the one who drinks.

All three become one when

your talisman is shattered.

That oneness you can't know

by reasoning. 

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~ Rumi

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blending

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Ryokan's Hut 

located at the present day Gogo-an temple in Niigate prefecture Japan

.

Blending with the wind, 

Snow falls; 

Blending with the snow, 

The wind blows. 

By the hearth 

I stretch out my legs, 

Idling my time away 

Confined in this hut. 

Counting the days, 

I find that February, too, 

Has come and gone 

Like a dream.

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~ Ryokan

from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan

 translated by John Stevens




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transparent

.

.

Like the little stream 

Making its way 

Through the mossy crevices 

I, too, quietly 

Turn clear and transparent.

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~ Daigu Ryokan (1758-1831)

from Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf: Zen Poems of Ryokan

 translated by John Stevens

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elsewhere

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Elsewhere shows pictures as language

where no words exist.

Elsewhere describes vague places;

undefined and only to be discovered intuitively.

Visual moments elude clear descriptions.

Elsewhere touches edges of perception

and gives the suppressed attention.

.

Elsewhere is fleeing

away from here.

From finding without searching.

It needs the here

to be elsewhere.

At the place studying the unknown

far away, understanding home.

Longing as a companion.

.

Elsewhere unifies contradictions.

It overcomes inside and outside.

In the distance it is narrow.

.

Elsewhere is noise in the silence.

Shocks are dull and quiet.

Elsewhere raises questions

merely for the sake of the questions.

And causes contented comfort to be questionable.

.

Sometimes it is cold from the inside.

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~   Mareile Mack

with thanks to Crashingly Beautiful

.

I

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The shallow “I” of individualism can be possessed,

 developed, cultivated, pandered to, 

satisfied: it is the center of all our strivings for gain and satisfaction, 

whether material or spiritual.

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But the deep “I” of the spirit, of solitude and of love, 

cannot be had, possessed, developed, perfected.

 It can only be, and act, 

according to the inner laws that are not of man’s contriving,

 but which come from God. . . .

.

It is beyond limitation. It is beyond selfish affirmation.

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~ Thomas Merton

cease clinging and hankering

Many students come to see me from all over the place. 

Many of them are not free from their entanglement with objective things. 

I treat them right on the spot. 

If their trouble is due to grasping hands, I strike there.

 If their trouble is a loose mouth, I strike them there.

 If their trouble is hidden behind their eyes, it is there I strike. 

So far I have not found anyone who can set himself free.

 This is because they have all been caught up in the useless ways of the old masters. 

As for me, I do not have one only method which I give to everyone,

 but I relieve whatever the trouble is and set men free.

Friends, I tell you this: there is no Buddha, 

no spiritual path to follow,

 no training and no realization. 

What are you so feverishly running after? 

Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots? 

Your head is right where it should be. 

The trouble lies in your not believing in yourselves enough. 

Because you don't believe in yourselves 

you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. 

Being enslaved and turned around by objective situations,

 you have no freedom whatever, you are not masters of yourselves. 

Stop turning to the outside and don't be attached to my words either. 

Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. 

This will be better than ten years' pilgrimage..

~ Master Lin Chi Yi-Sen

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me

.

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,

if this is the time.

Do it gently with a touch of a hand,  or a look.

Every morning I wait at dawn.  That's when

it's happened before.  Or do it suddenly

like an execution.  How else

can I get ready for death?

...

~ Rumi

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I Am But a Traveler In This Land & Know Little of Its Ways

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Is everything a field of energy caused

by human projection? From the crib bars

hang the teething tools. Above the finger-drummed 

desk, a bit lip. The cyclone fence of buts

.

surrounds the soccer field of what if.

Sometimes it seems like a world where no one 

knows what he or she is doing, eight lanes 

both directions. How about a polymer

.

that contracts in response to electrical

charge? A swimming pool on the 18th floor? 

King Lear done by sock puppets? Anyone

who has traveled here knows the discrepancies

.

between idea and fact. The idea is the worm 

in the tequila and the next day is the fact. 

In between may be the sacred—real blood 

from the wooden virgin’s eyes, and the hoax—

.

landing sites in cornfields. Maybe ideas

are best sprung from actions like the children 

of Zeus. One gives us elastic and the omelette, 

another nightmares and SUVs. There’s considerable

.

wobble in the system, and the fan belt screams, 

waking the baby. Swaying in the darkened 

nursery, kissing the baby-smelling head: 

good idea! But also sadness looking at the sea.

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The stranded whale, guided out of the cove 

by tugboats, turns and swims back in. 

The violinist will not let go her violin 

which is 200 years old and still on the train

.

thus she is dragged down the track. 

By what manner is the soul joined to the body? 

Answer: an arm connecting a violin

to a violinist. According to Freud,

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there are no accidents. Astrologists

and Presbyterians agree for different reasons. 

You fall down the stairs with a birthday cake. 

You try to fit a blunderbuss into a laptop.

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Human consciousness: is it the projector

or the screen? They come in orange jumpsuits 

and spray the grass so everything dies

but the grass. It is too late to ask Kafka

.

what he thinks. Sometimes they give you 

a box of ash, a handshake, and the rest 

is your problem. In one version,

the beggar turns out to be a king and grants

.

the poor couple a castle and a moat and two 

silver horses said to be sired by the wind.

That was before dentistry, which might have been 

a better gift. You did not want to get sick 

in the 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th or 18th centuries.

.

So too the 19th and 20th were to be avoided

but the doctor coming to bleed you is the master 

of the short story. After the kiss from whom 

he will never know, the lieutenant, going home,

.

touches a bush in which birds are singing.

.

~ Dean Young

from Skid

.

As you may know, Dean is in need of a heart transplant.

Over the past 10 or 15 years, Dean has lived with a degenerative heart condition--congestive heart failure due to idiopathic hypotropic cardiomyopathy. After periods of more-or-less remission, in which his heart was stabilized and improved with the help of medications, the function of his heart has worsened. Now, radically.

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a video by D.J. Dolack of the recent benefit reading for dean Young at the National Arts Club in Manhattan.

Readers include Robert N. Casper, Joe Di Prisco, Matthea Harvey, Edward Hirsch, Mary Karr, Matthew Rohrer, Gerald Stern and Dara Wier.

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...and Dean Young on the telephone.

To make an online donation, please visit Dean Young's page at the National Foundation for Transplants.

thanks to Rebel Girl for the update

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returning to the source is tranquility

If you can empty your mind of all thoughts

your heart will embrace the tranquility of peace.

Watch the workings of all of creation,

but contemplate their return to the source.

All creatures in the universe

return to the point where they began.

Returning to the source is tranquility

because we submit to Heaven's mandate.

Returning to Heaven's mandate is called being constant.

Knowing the constant is called 'enlightenment'.

Not knowing the constant is the source of evil deeds

because we have no roots.

By knowing the constant we can accept things as they are.

By accepting things as they are, we become impartial.

By being impartial, we become one with Heaven.

By being one with Heaven, we become one with Tao.

Being one with Tao, we are no longer concerned about

losing our life because we know the Tao is constant

and we are one with Tao.

~ Lao Tzu

from the Tao Te Ching

translated by j. h. mcdonald

cave art: chauvet-pont-d'arc

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Unto this Darkness

.

.

Unto this Darkness which is

beyond Light

we pray that we may come, and 

may attain unto vision through

the loss of sight and knowledge,

and that in ceasing thus to see or

to know

we may learn to know that which 

is beyond all perception and 

understanding

(for this emptying of

our faculties

is true sight and knowledge).

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~ Pseudo-Dionysius

Dionysius the Areopagite called Pseudo - to differentiate him from the Dionysius mentioned by Paul in Acts.  He lived in the 6th Century and has had a profound impact on Christian mystics.

.

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desert places

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast

In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,

But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

 

The woods around it have it--it is theirs.

All animals are smothered in their lairs.

I am too absent-spirited to count;

The loneliness includes me unawares.

 

And lonely as it is that loneliness

Will be more lonely ere it will be less--

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow

With no expression, nothing to express.

 

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars--on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Robert Frost