"Sonata at Payne Hollow," by Wendell Berry

 

Harlan and Anna Hubbard

The Kentucky shore of the Ohio at evening.  Some time in the future, perhaps a saner time than now.  It is the season when the toads mate and sing from the stones along the water’s edge at night.  Here the river has curved in close to the foot of a steep hillside.  The slope is wooded with tall trees.  A fringe of willows along the shoreline opens to give a view up among the larger trunks.  During the play, the light slowly changes from twilight to dusk.

          Two boatmen, a man past middle age and a boy of about fifteen, come ashore.  They may be small-time traders who row of drift from one river town to another.  Their johnboat, the bow of which is visible to our right, is of the traditional make, built of wood.  A rope is attached to a ring in the bow.

          The boy carries the end of the rope up the shore and makes it fast to a willow.  He then stands and looks around.

.

The Boy:  We never stopped here before.

The Man:  Night never caught us here before.  But look.  There is the notch is the hill, and there is the creek coming down, and here are the rocks it has brought and shaped in a little bar fanned out on the river’s edge.  You’ve heard of this place.  Up yonder on the slope is where they lived and made their music, in a house built of rocks and poles and rough planks and pieces of drift from the river.

The Boy:  Who were they?  Tell me again.

The Man:   Their names were Harlan and Anna.  A long time ago they came here, past the middle of their lives, to love until they were old.  They were refugees from that violent world of our ancestors that nearly destroyed itself.  They wanted a quiet place that was dark at night, unwanted by other people, where they could grow their food or catch or find it, and be warmed by firewood burning on a hearth they made of rocks carried up from the river or the creek.   Harlan, they say, made pictures of the river and the trees and little farms that stood along the valley sides.  And he and Anna made fine music in the evenings with his fiddle and her piano.  Up there is where their house was, and there the little shop where he made the pictures, and there the shed where they kept their goats.

The Boy:  And that was long ago?

The Man:   Long ago.  The boards of their building now are gone to dust, and trees are standing where they played and ate and slept.

The Boy:  What became of them?

The Man:  They got old, and died.  And yonder, below the chimney stones is where they were laid to rest – or not, maybe, to rest.  For there’s them that tells of being here at night, and hearing that old music strike up sudden in the woods, and seeing those two ancient lovers walking about, talking.

The Boy:  Oh, Lord! Talking! What do they say?

The Man:  They talk of what they could not talk about enough while they were here, like all ghosts do.

The Boy:  If it was up to me to choose, I’d just as soon be someplace else.  Your talk is talk enough for me.

The Man:  It’s them.  You needn’t be afraid.  We’re not where they are.

The Boy:  But they’re where we are.

The Man:  Be still!

.

Now, as from far off among the trees, we hear a piano and violin – perhaps it is Mozart’s Sonata in E-flat Major.  The piano is played with elegance and technical precision.  The quality of the violin, by contrast, is “honest and handmade” but “strikes deep.”  The sound of the toads has ceased.  The music, at first only faintly audible, becomes louder.  Now there can be no doubt what it is.  The man and boy stand still, listening, the boy looking a little anxiously at the man.

Now, slowly, candlelight defines a large window among the trees well up the slope.

And now, with the light fading off the boatman and his boy, the figure of a slender, white-haired old man is revealed, standing by the river’s edge upstream.  We have not seen him come; he is just there, perhaps having been there for some time.  He stands, facing upstream, his left side to the river and to us, looking out across the slowly darkening water.  The knuckles of his half-open left hand rest against his hip.

And now the light defines the shape of an old woman walking among the trees.  She crosses above the old man and comes slowly down to the water’s edge, where she too stands still, looking out, her left hand holding to a small willow.  She faces downstream, her right side to us.  Except for the music, the scene becomes completely still.  The stillness is allowed to establish itself before Anna speaks.

In the dialogue that follows, the differences are expressed with feeling, but not with antipathy or anger.  What we are witnessing is a ritual of courtship, discord reenacted as for pleasure, the outcome foreknown.  Perhaps it has been repeated countless times before.

.

Anna: There you are, Harlan.  I've called and called.  What are you doing?

Harlan: Looking.

Anna: At what?

Harlan: The river.

Anna: You've never seen enough, have you, of that river you looked at all your life?

Harlan: It never does anything twice.   It needs forever to be in all its times and aspects and acts.  To know it in time is only to begin to know it.  To paint it, you must show it as less than it is.  That is why as a painter I never was at rest.  Now I look and do not paint.  This is the heaven of a painter - only to look, to see without limit.  It's as if a poet finally were free to say only the simplest things.

.
For a moment they are still again, both continuing to look, in opposite directions, at the river.

.
Anna: That is our music, Harlan.  Do you hear it?

Harlan: Yes, I hear.

Anna: I think it will always be here.  It draws us back out of eternity as once it drew us together in time.  Do you remember, Harlan, how we played?  And how, in playing, we no longer needed to say what we needed to say?

Harlan: I'm listening.

But I heard here too, remember, another music, farther off, more solitary,  closer -

Anna: To what, Harlan?

Harlan: I'm not so sure I ever know.  Closer to the edge of modern life, I suppose - to where the life of living things actually is lived; closer to the beauty that saves and consoles this earth.  I wanted to spend whole days watching the little fish that flicker along the shore.

Anna: Yes.  I know you did.

Harlan: I wanted
to watch, every morning forever, the world shape itself again out of the drifting fog.

Anna: Your music, then, was it in those things?

Harlan: It was in them and beyond them, always almost out of hearing.

Anna: Because of it you made the beautiful things you made, for yourself alone, and yet, I think, for us both.  You made them for us both, as for yourself, for what we were together required those things of you alone.

Harlan: To hear that music, I needed to be alone and free.

Anna: Free, Harlan?

Harlan: I longed for the perfection of the single one.  When the river rose and the current fled by, I longed to cast myself adrift, to take that long, free downward-flowing as my own.  I know the longing of an old rooted tree to lean down upon the water.

Anna: I know that.  I knew that all along.  And then was when I loved you most.  What brought me to you was knowing the long, solitary journey that was you, yourself - the thought of you in a little boat, adrift and free.  But, Harlan, why did you never go?  Why did you not just drift away, solitary and free, living on the free charity of the seasons, wintering in caves as sometimes you said you'd like to do?

Harlan: Oh, Anna, because I was lonely!  The perfection of the single one is not perfection, for it is lonely.

Anna: From longing for the perfection of the single one, I called you into longing for the perfection of the union of two.

Harlan: which also was imperfect, for we were not always at one, and I never ceased, quite, too long for solitude.

Anna: And yet, of the two imperfections, the imperfection of the union of two is by far the greater and finer - as we understood.

Harlan: Yes, my dear, Anna, that I too understood.  It is better, granting imperfection in both ways, to be imperfect and together than to be imperfect and alone.

Anna: And so this is the heaven of lovers that we have come to - to live again in our separateness, so that we may live again together, my Harlan.

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 that 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!

Anna: For a long time we had no home but that little boat and one another

Harlan:  and the music that we sent forth over the water and into the woods.

Anna:  And then we came here to this hollow and built a house and made a garden

Harlan:  and gave our life a standing place and worked and played and lived and died

Anna:  and were alone and were not alone.

Harlan:  Alone and not alone, we lived and died, and after your death I lived on alone, yet not alone, for in my thoughts I never ceased to speak with you.  I knew then that half my music was hidden away in another world.  The music I had heard, so distant, had been the music you and I had played - the music of something almost whole that you and I had made; it made one thing of food and hunger, work and rest, day and night.  It made one thing of loneliness and love.  That music seemed another world to me, and far away, because I could play only half, not all.

Anna:  And half the life that you so longed to live - was mine?

Harlan:  Was yours.  Without you, I could not live the life we lived, which I then missed and longed for, even in my perfect solitude.

Anna:  You will forgive, I hope, my pleasure in the thought of you alone, playing half a duet - for also it saddens me.

Harlan:  You would have laughed, Anna, to hear how badly I played alone, without your strong art to carry me.  My perfect music then was made by crickets and katydids and frogs.  I heard too the creek always coming down,  allegro furioso after storms,  and of course the birds - the wood thrush, whose song in summer twilight renews the world, and in all seasons the wren.  But those unceasing voices in the dark were the ones that sang for me, and I was thankful for the loneliness that had brought us two together out of all the time we were apart.

.

And now, as both have known they would, they turn toward one another, and thus are changed, revealing themselves now as neither young not old, but timeless and clear, as each appears within the long affection of the other.

With this (their only movement since their conversation began), the light no them brightens and changes; it becomes, for only a moment, the brilliance of a spring morning, and on the slope, where before only the candlelit window showed among the trees, now appears the house as it was, with a garden on the terrace below, Harlan and Anna smile and lift their arms toward one another.  And then they and the light abruptly disappear.  The music stops. The trilling of the toads is audible again, and we see the boatman and his boy looking up the darkening hillside.  The boy turns toward the man and is preparing to speak when the stage goes entirely dark.  The toads sing on another moment, and then are silenced.

.

Production note: The left side of Harlan’s face and the right side of Anna’s are made up to appear old.  The opposite sides of their faces should denote, not youth, but the youthful maturity of a couple in their forties - faces lovely because they are lovely to one another.

~ Wendell Berry

together in the flow

 

 

 

 

As an experiment, catch yourself the next time you find yourself thinking in terms of quantity. It might be the day’s errands, or the pile of bills, or, like me, the talking stack of papers on your desk. Simply notice the feeling of urgency and the tendency to rush through them. Notice, also, the inclination to shrink back. Although they seem like opposite tendencies, both come from the same feeling of aversion, and serve only to keep us out of touch with the actual task. We’re taken aback by the enormity of what we’ve created in our minds, so we say, I’m just going to plow through it and get it done, or, It’s too overwhelming and I don’t know where to start. See them both as nothing more than habits that come from our skewed way of envisioning time.

Both responses pull us out of the freshness of direct experience. They both bind us to the fantasy of a task rather than the reality of it, warping our sense of what is really required. Wasting energy on head trips is exhausting, and we do it to ourselves. A task is done in steps, because reality is made up of steps, infinitely divided flashes of time that are too small to measure. We come to life and our energy soars when we join that moment, rather than standing separate from it—when we rise to the occasion rather than sink into the pit of resistance. When we join the moment, we join time. We are time.

Ultra distance runner Pam Reed understands this. When running superhuman distances that require her to continue on for three days straight, with no sleep or breaks of any kind, she tells herself she only has to get to the next pole, to the next marker, right there. She keeps herself from getting vacuumed up into the enormity of the distance and ends up at the final mark by employing these little tricks—which are less like tricks than they are reminders of reality itself.

Time is an abstraction that stops and stares right back at us as soon as we separate ourselves from it. To be separated from time is to watch it. It’s a shy child that can’t play naturally, and acts awkwardly when we watch, but as soon as we look away and rejoin our conversations, she continues to play naturally. Time flows when we stop watching it. Staring at the clock is to resist reality. I don’t like this situation—can’t this clock move any faster? Like Pam Reed, we need only put one foot in front of the other, and take a step, right here and now.

Think of the jazz improv artist responding to the musical banter among her fellow players onstage. Aside from whatever training they’ve done in advance, as soon as the curtain opens, they move into unknown territory together, creating something new each time by remaining in a state of undivided presence. They let go of their ideas and preconceptions of how it should be, how they thought it was going to be, and how other musicians have done it in the past. They let go of their agendas and simply move together in the flow, with the faith that comes from experience, trusting in their own abilities as artists, and in each other.

Imagination, like intellectualization, is put away when it has done its job. The imaginative vision provides a palette of possibilities, which are then actualized in a state of presence, and ironically, with the willingness to let go of the expectations of the vision. To paraphrase my Zen teacher, there’s nothing wrong with imagination, so long as it hasn’t got you by the nose.

How do you release the mind of its time-warped visions? By releasing them. And when the mind is clear of the mountains of fantasies, where do you start? You just start.

 

 

 

 

 

  ~ Donna Quesada.

from The Buddha in the Classroom: Zen Wisdom to Inspire Teachers

 

 

 

 

a speech at the lost and found

 

 

 

 

 

 

I lost a few goddesses on my way from south to north,

as well as many gods on my way from east to west,

Some stars went out on me for good: part for me, O sky. 

Island after island collapsed into the sea on me.

I'm not sure exactly where I left my claws,

who wears my fur, who dwells in my shell. 

My siblings died our when I crawled onto land

and only a tiny bone in me marks the anniversary. 

I leapt out of my skin, squandered vertebrae and legs,

and left my senses many many times.

Long ago I closed my third eye to it all,

waved it off with my fins, shrugged my branches.

 

Scattered by the four winds to a place that time forgot,

how little there remains of me surprises me a lot,

 a singular being of human kind for now,

who lost her umbrella in a tram somehow.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Wislawa Szymborska

from miracle fair 

 

 

 

the new moon beginning to shine

.

The chok chok of an axe, on a winter evening, 

the sun having set over the snowy earth, 

the new moon beginning to shine.  

Man has evolved into this social, technological, intellectual animal, 

but perhaps another development is possible, in another direction.  

He need not modify and subdue the earth, his home, 

nor forget that he is a part of the natural system.

~ Harlan Hubbard

from his journal, January 26, 1966

NASA photograph

here

 

 

 

 

 

I see the lamp, the face, the eye, 

an alter where the soul bows, a

 

gladness and refuge. My loving says,

"Here. I can leave my personality

 

here." My reason agrees! "How can 

I object when a rose makes the bent

 

backs stand up like cypresses?" Such

surrender changes everything. Turks

 

understand Armenian! Body abandons

boldness. Soul goes to the center.

 

Rubies appear in the begging bowl.

But don't brag when this happens.

 

Be secluded and silent. Stay in 

the delight, and be brought the

 

cup that will come. No artfulness.

Practice quiet and this new joy.

 

 

 

 

 ~ Rumi

from The Soul of Rumi 

translations by Coleman Barks

 

 

 

there is a candle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
There is a candle in the heart of man, waiting to be kindled.
In separation from the Friend, there is a cut waiting to be
stitched. 

Love comes of its own free will, 

it can’t be learned
in any school.

There are two kinds of intelligence: one acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.
With such intelligence you rise in the world.
You get ranked ahead or behind others
in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.
A spring overflowing its springbox. A freshness
in the center of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It’s fluid,
and it doesn’t move from outside to inside
through conduits of plumbing-learning.
This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

 

 

 ~ Rumi

 

the art you practice

A wealth you cannot imagine

flows through you.

Do not consider what strangers say.

Be secluded in your secret heart-house,

that bowl of silence.

Talking, no matter how humble-seeming,

is really a kind of bragging.

Let silence be the art 

you practice.

~ Rumi

translation by Coleman Barks

from Rumi: Bridge to the Soul

amor fati

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

Little soul,

you have wandered

lost a long time.

The woods all dark now,

birded and eyed.

Then a light, a cabin, a fire, a door standing open.

The fairy tales warn you:

Do not go in,

you who would eat will be eaten.

You go in. You quicken.

You want to have feet.

You want to have eyes.

You want to have fears.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry (February 2017)

with thanks to Love is a Place

stages

As every flower fades, so with all youth

And age brings different flowers at each stage of life,

Blooms each and every virtue and wisdom

In their time, and may not last forever.

From within every heart,  life calls, be

Ready for parting, and each new endeavor,

To bravely and without remorse

Find new beauty in the next other.

In all beginnings dwells a magic

Protecting us and helping us to live.

We shall traverse realm on realm,

cleaving to none as a home,

The world of spirit wishes not to fetter us,

He will raise us higher, to wider spaces.

We're hardly at home in one circle,

 Familiar habits make for indolence,

In someone who is ready to depart and travel,
 The crippling habit may dismiss itself.

Perhaps even the hour of death

may bring us home to new fresh spaces

The call of life to us is never ending ...

Well, my heart, bid farewell continually!

~ Hermann Hesse

relaxing into flexibility and composure

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are so used to being caught up in our thoughts and feelings

 that we lose sight of our true nature. The key to meditation

 is to recognize that the host is not the guest. 

 

The comings and goings of thoughts and feelings are like guests

 coming into our homes. Would you let guests run your house? 

Of course not. You're the host. You may consult them, 

but you must be the one to make any final decisions.

 Most of the time, trouble comes when we listen to the guests - 

our fleeting thoughts and feelings - and ignore our responsibility as hosts.

 For example, some people are extremely affected by 

self-disparaging thoughts. But why should our happiness 

depend on passing thoughts? 

Our true nature, is already free and liberated.

 

Who is the host though?

 

Many of us are habituated to tensing up throughout the day.

Due to our postures while sitting or working, we may have pain

in different areas of our bodies. For some of us,even certain words

 or images can trigger tension. Every time these scenarios arise, 

the body responds in a certain way. These are signs that our bodies

 have learned to respond to situations with tension, and there's

blockage.  

 

 Progressive relaxation from head to toe, by placing 

awareness on each body part and feeling its accompanying 

sensations. Not thinking, but experiencing the sensations of the body. 

This practice strengthens our ability to relax both in 

meditation and in daily life. It enhances our brain's flexibility

and stimulates neurons that secret neurotransmitters,

which strengthen our ability to make connections.

This enhancement helps enable composure when we're

faced with difficulties.

 

 

 

 

~ Guo Gu

excerpts from Silent Illumination

 art by WOLFSKULLJACK

 

 

 

 

the little horse

the little horse is newlY

Born)he knows nothing,and feels

everything;all around whom is

perfectly a strange

ness Of sun

light and of fragrance and of

Singing)is ev

erywhere(a welcom

ing dream: is amazing)

a worlD.and in

this world lies:smoothbeautifuL

ly folded;a(breathing and a gro

Wing)silence, who:

is:somE

oNe

.

e.e. cummings

a looking

silence

.is

a

looking

bird:the

turn

ing;edge,of

life

(inquiry before snow

~ e. e. cummings

contentment

 

 

 

 

 

Contentment counters and overrides our constant tendency to grasp and chase after things. Contentment has the flavor of being at ease - grasping nothing, lacking nothing. It is being open and leisurely. In this state, we don't make anything into a big deal, while at the same time we engage with the freshness of each moment. Cultivating an attitude of contentment is engaging with and yet not grasping at causes and conditions.

 

We are swayed by causes and conditions when we feel a sense of lack and when grasping is present. We inevitably get sucked into the vortex of grasping and rejecting, having and lacking.  These polarities bring up all sorts of other issues, such as trying to escape from who we are or, alternately, trying desperately to be someone we're not.

 

There is no formulaic way to cultivate contentment or non-grasping. We need to personally explore the flavor of contentment and digest this feeling little by little, becoming familiar with it in our lives. We can't just force this attitude on ourselves and expect to be able to plow through all of our problems. Contentment is not a mere concept. We need to appreciate the depth of what it means to be content. It is not just being disinterested or detached from everything.

 

When we are content, we appreciate what we have, and we are able to engage fully with whatever may arise. There's a freshness to it. With contentment, we're able to avail ourselves openly of everything, without rejecting anything. In this process, there may be pain and grief, But we are cultivating the ability to feel fully, to be present to whatever arises without judgment. Allowing such feelings to move through us will make us stronger. We are incredibly resilient. Our hearts and minds will eventually accept and release whatever comes through us.

 

 

 

 

~ Guo Gu

from Silent Illumination

 

 

  

a fabrication

 

 

 

 

 

It’s funny how much our surroundings influence our emotions. 

Our joys and sorrows, likes and dislikes are colored by our environment 

so much that often we just let our surroundings dictate our course. 

 

We go along with “public” feelings until we no longer even know

 our own true aspirations. We become a stranger to ourselves,

 molded entirely by society… 

Sometimes I feel caught between two opposing selves — 

the “false self” imposed by society and what I would call my “true self.” 

 

How often we confuse the two and assume society’s mold to be our true self.

 Battles between our two selves rarely result in a peaceful reconciliation.

 Our mind becomes a battlefield...

These are our loneliest moments. Yet every time we survive such a storm, 

we grow a little. Without storms like these, I would not be who I am today.

 But I rarely hear such a storm coming until it is already upon me.

 It seems to appear without warning, as though treading silently

 on silk slippers. I know it must have been brewing a long time,

 simmering in my own thoughts and mental formations,

 but when such a frenzied hurricane strikes,

 nothing outside can help.

 I am battered and torn apart,

 and I am also saved.

I saw that the entity I had taken to be “me” was really a fabrication.

 My true nature, I realized, was much more real,

 both uglier and more beautiful than I could have imagined.

 I saw that I am neither young nor old, existent nor nonexistent.

 My friends know I can be as playful and mischievous as a child.

 I love to kid around and enter fully into the game of life.

 I also know what it is to get angry. And I know the pleasure

 of being praised. I am often on the verge of tears or laughter. 

But beneath all of these emotions, what else is there? 

How can I touch it?

 If there isn’t anything, 

why would I be so certain that there is?

 I understood that I am empty of ideals, hopes, viewpoints, or allegiances.

 I have no promises to keep with others. In that moment,

 the sense of myself as an entity among other entities disappeared. 

I knew that this insight did not arise from disappointment, 

despair, fear, desire, or ignorance. A veil silently lifted effortlessly. 

That is all. If you beat me, stone me, or even shoot me, 

everything that is considered to be “me” will disintegrate.

 Then, what is actually there will reveal itself — faint as smoke, 

elusive as emptiness, and yet neither smoke nor emptiness,

 ugly, nor not ugly, beautiful, yet not beautiful. 

It is like a shadow on a screen.

At that moment, I had the deep feeling that I had returned.

 My clothes, my shoes, even the essence of my being had vanished,

 and I was carefree as a grasshopper pausing on a blade of grass… 

 

When a grasshopper sits on a blade of grass, 

he has no thought of separation, resistance, or blame…

 The green grasshopper blends completely with the green grass… 

It neither retreats nor beckons. It knows nothing of philosophy or ideals. 

It is simply grateful for its ordinary life. Dash across the meadow,

 my dear friend, and greet yesterday’s child. 

 

When you can’t see me, you yourself will return. 

Even when your heart is filled with despair, you will find the same grasshopper

 on the same blade of grass… Some life dilemmas cannot be solved 

by study or rational thought. We just live with them, struggle with them,

 and become one with them…

 To live, we must die every instant.

 We must perish again and again

 in the storms that make life possible.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

from  Fragrant Palm Leaves: Journals 1962–1966

with thanks to the marginalian 

breath deeply with movement

 

 

 

 

~ Judy K Young

Qigong practice is focuses mastering the art of breathing. 

How we breathe has a vital effect on our well-being physically,

 mentally, and spiritually. As you gain more control of your breathing,

 you gain more mastery of the rest of your body.

 
Your heart beats slower and more effectively

Muscles relax

Levels of nitric oxide increase, 

which relaxes blood vessel muscles and lowers blood pressure

Deep breathing is a signal to your body that the danger is over. 

The fight-or-flight hormone production stops and your body 

returns to a neutral, peaceful state. Your mind becomes clear 

and you regain perspective. 

 

This peace spills over into every part of your life.