Monday, September 21, 2009

He had waited so long

...
He had waited so long: his latter years had been no more than a stand-to. Oppressed with countless little daily cares, he had waited: of course he had run after girls all that time, he had travelled, and naturally he had had to earn his living. But through all that, his sole care had been to hold himself in readiness. For an act. A free, considered act; that should pledge his whole life, and stand at the beginning of a new existence. He had never been able to engage himself completely in any love-affair, or any pleasure, he had never been really unhappy: he always felt as though he were somewhere else, that he was not yet wholly born. He waited. And during all that time, gently, stealthily, the years had come, they had grasped him from behind ...

...

~ Jean-Paul Sartre
 
.

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

Sunday, September 20, 2009


e.e.cummings- charcoal sketch

pencil sketch by e.e.cummings

silently if,out of not knowable





silently if,out of not knowable
night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess
(only which is this world)more my life does
not leap than with the mystery your smile

sings or if(spiralling as luminous
they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,
less into heaven certainly earth swims
than each my deeper death becomes your kiss

losing through you what seemed myself,i find
selves unimaginably mine;beyond
sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears

yours is the light by which my spirit's born:
yours is the darkness of my soul's return
-you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars



~ 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

Saturday, September 19, 2009

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

Friday, September 18, 2009

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
 
.