In your light I learn how to love

.

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
.
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.
.
~ Rumi

..

I go by a field

.
I go by a field where once
I cultivated a few poor crops.
It is now covered with young trees,
for the forest that belongs here
has come back and reclaimed its own.
And I think of all the effort
I have wasted and all the time,
and of how much joy I took
in that failed work and how much 
it taught me. For in so failing
I learned something of my place,
something of myself, and now
I welcome back the trees.
.
~ Wendell Berry
.

The law is the husk of faith

.
The highest good is not to seek to do good,
but to allow yourself to become it.
The ordinary person seeks to do good things,
and finds that they can not do them continually.
.
The Master does not force virtue on others,
thus she is able to accomplish her task.
The ordinary person who uses force,
will find that they accomplish nothing.
.
The kind person acts from the heart,
and accomplishes a multitude of things.
The righteous person acts out of pity,
yet leaves many things undone.
The moral person will act out of duty,
and when no one will respond
will roll up his sleeves and use force.
.
When the Tao is forgotten, there is righteousness.
When righteousness is forgotten, there is morality.
When morality is forgotten, there is the law.
The law is the husk of faith,
and trust is the beginning of chaos.
.
Our basic understandings are not from the Tao
because they come from the depths of our misunderstanding.
The master abides in the fruit and not in the husk.
She dwells in the Tao,
and not with the things that hide it.
This is how she increases in wisdom.
.
~ Tao Teh Ching, by Lao Tzu

Drink your tea slowly

.

Drink your tea slowly and reverently,
as if it is the axis
on which the world earth revolves
– slowly, evenly, without
rushing toward the future;
Live the actual moment.
Only this moment is life.


~ Thich Nhat Hanh

.

I will not leave you.

You worry that I will leave you.

I will not leave you.

Only strangers travel.

Owning everything,

I have no where to go.

~Leonard Cohen

Thoreau's Journal

.

Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of five hundred or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation. We hear of cow commons and ministerial lots, but we want men-commons and lay lots, inalienable forever. Let us keep the New World new, preserve all the advantages of living in the country. There is meadow and pasture and wood-lot for the town’s poor. Why not a forest and huckleberry field for the town’s rich? All Walden Wood might have been preserved for our park forever, with Walden in its midst, and the Easterbrooks Country, an unoccupied area of some four square miles, might have been our huckleberry-field. If any owners of these tracts are about to leave the world without natural heirs who need or deserve to be specially remembered, they will do wisely to abandon their possession to all, and not will them to some individual who perhaps has enough already. As some give to Harvard College or another institution, why might not another give a forest or huckleberry-field to Concord? A town is an institution which deserves to be remembered. We boast of our system of education, but why stop at schoolmasters and schoolhouses? We are all schoolmasters, and our schoolhouse is the universe. To attend chiefly to the desk or schoolhouse while we neglect the scenery in which it is placed is absurd. If we do not look out we shall find our fine schoolhouse standing in a cow-yard at last.

~ Henry David Thoreau

moving ahead

Once more my deeper life goes on with more strength,

as if the banks through which it moves had widened out.

Trees and stones seem more like me each day,

and the paintings I see seem more seen into:

with my senses, as with the birds, I climb

into the windy heaven out of the oak,

and in the ponds broken off from the blue sky

my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

translation by Robert Bly

To be great be entire

.

To be great be entire:

Of what is yours nothing 

exaggerate or exclude

Be whole in each thing. Put all that you are

Into the least you do

Like that on each place the whole moon

Shines for she lives aloft.

.

~ Fernando Pessoa

.

Her face was in a bed of hair

.

Her face was in a bed of hair,

Like flowers in a plot-

Her hand was whiter than the sperm

That feeds the sacred light.

Her tongue more tender than the tune

That totters in the leaves-

Who hears may be incredulous,

Who witnesses, believes.

.

~ Emily Dickinson

.

the cure

.

Love is the cure,
for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain
until your eyes constantly exhale love
as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.


.


~ Rumi

 

 

 

 

here is a smile and a gentleness

There is a smile and a gentleness

inside. When I learned the name

 

and address of that, I went to where

you sell perfume. I begged you not

 

to trouble me so with longing. Come

out and play! Flirt more naturally.

 

Teach me how to kiss. On the ground

a spread blanket, flame that's caught

 

and burning well, cumin seeds browning,

I am inside all of this with my soul.

 

 

 

 

~ Rumi

all which isn't singing is mere talking

.
all which isn't singing is mere talking
and all talking's talking to oneself
(whether that oneself be sought or seeking
master or disciple sheep or wolf)
.
gush to it as diety or devil
-toss in sobs and reasons threats and smiles
name it cruel fair or blessed evil-
it is you (ne i)nobody else
.
drive dumb mankind dizzy with haranguing
-you are deafened every mother's son-
all is merely talk which isn't singing
and all talking's to oneself alone
.
but the very song of(as mountains
feel and lovers)singing is silence
.
~ e.e.cummings


.

From the Wizard of Oz

.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.
There's a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, skies are blue.
And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true.
Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far Behind me.
Where troubles melt like lemon drops,
Away above the chimney tops.
That's where you'll find me.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, bluebirds fly.
Birds fly over the rainbow,
Why then - oh, why can't I?
If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow,
Why, oh, why can't I?

~ music by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E.Y. Harburg

-click title to hear the song

into the Great Circle inside of You.

Leave the familiar for a while.

Let your senses and bodies stretch out

Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
.
~ Hafiz

it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
How should we be able to forget about those ancient myths 

that are at the beginning of all peoples, 

the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; 

perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses 

who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.

Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being

 something helpless that wants help from us.

 
So you must not be frightened...if a sadness rises up before you

 larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness,

 like light and cloud shadow, passes over your hands

 and over all that you do. You must think that something 

is taking place in you, that life has not forgotten you,

 that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.

 

 

 

 
~ Rainer Maria Rilke

.

It is too clear and so it is hard to see.
A fool once searched for fire with a lighted lantern.
Had he known what fire was,
He could have cooked his rice much sooner.
~ Mumon

.

in conversation with David Sylvester

.

You see, all art has now become completely a game by which man distracts himself; and you may say it has always been like that, but now it's entirely a game. And I think that is the way things have changed, and what is fascinating now is that it's going to become much more difficult for the artist, because he really must deepen the game to be any good at all.

.

~ Francis Bacon 

.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious

.
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed. It was the experience of mystery -- even if mixed with fear -- that engendered religion. A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, our perceptions of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which only in their most primitive forms are accessible to our minds: it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute true religiosity. In this sense, and only this sense, I am a deeply religious man...
.
~ Albert Einstein, 1931


.

The flower, the sky, your beloved

.

"The flower, the sky, your beloved, 
can only be found in the present moment."
...

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

-click the title for more

Bogart and Bacall in 'To Have and To Have Not'

.
Slim: Who was the girl, Steve?
Harry: What girl?
Slim: The one that left you with such a high opinion of women? She must have been quite a gal. You think I lied to you about this don't you? Well it just happens there's thirty-odd dollars here. Not enough for boat fare, or any other kind of fare. Just enough for me to say "No" if I feel like it, and you can have it if you want it... you wouldn't take anything from anybody would you? You know Steve, you're not very hard to figure. Only at times. Sometimes I know exactly what you're going to say. Most of the time. The other times ... the other times you're just a stinker. (she kisses him)
Harry: What'd you do that for?
Slim: Been wondering if I'd like it.
Harry: What's your decision?
Slim: I don't know yet. (she kisses him again)
Slim: It's even better when you help. Uhh... sure you won't change your mind about this? This belongs to me, and so do my lips, I don't see any difference ... OK You know you don't have act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not with me. Ohh, maybe just whistle. You remember how to whistle don't you? Just put your lips together... and blow.
(she exits. Harry smiles to himself and then whistles)
.
~ from the novel by Ernest Hemingway, directed by Howard Hawks, 1944


.-click the title

Remember the Mountain Bed

.
Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes.
.
Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me.
.
Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there.
.
Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go.
.
There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life's reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die.
.
The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head...
.
I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands.
.
I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.
.
All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again.

.
~  Woody Guthrie

The Cold

The cold seizes me
and I shiver
The wine
overthrows my tears
The night puts me to bed
and the sorrows
strengthen my resolve
Your name is burning
under a statue
Even when I was with you
I wanted to be here
The rain unhooks my belt
The wind gives a shape
to your absence
I move in and out
of the One Heart
no longer struggling
to be free




~ Leonard Cohen

.

a chaos of forms

.

And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all geniuses must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves… A man, therefore, who gets so far as making the supposed unity of the self twofold is already almost a genius, in any case a most exceptional and interesting person. In reality, however, every ego, so far from being unity, is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of stages and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as a eating or breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though it were a onefold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us share the delusion.

.

~ Hermann Hesse

.

Men ask the way through the clouds

.
Men ask the way through the clouds,
The cloud way’s dark, without a sign.
High summits are of naked rock.
In deep valleys sun never shines.
Behind you green peaks, and in front,
To east the white clouds, and to west –
Want to know where the cloud way lies?
It’s there, in the centre of the Void!
.
~ Han-Shan


.

Listen to my silence

.
Listen to my silence
that murmurs through these leaves
listen to this unwritten song.
.
Much is heaped between these lines
risen without mouth
silted up in the underground.
.
Listen to my paper-thin silence
that is gone with the wind
through the trees.
.
Hear my voice
at the curve of your mouth
earthlydark.
.
~ Jos Steegstra


.

the closing passage from 'Beyond Good and Evil'

.


Alas! what are you, after all, my written and painted thoughts! 
Not long ago you were so variegated, young and malicious, 
so full of thorns and secret spices, that you made me sneeze
 and laugh--and now? You have already doffed your novelty,
 and some of you, I fear, are ready to become truths, 
so immortal do they look, so pathetically honest, 
so tedious! And was it ever otherwise?

What then do we write and paint, 
we mandarins with Chinese brush,
 we immortalisers of things 
which lend themselves to writing, 
what are we alone capable of painting? 

Alas, only that which is just about to fade and begins to lose its odour!
 Alas, only exhausted and departing storms and belated yellow sentiments!
 Alas, only birds strayed and fatigued by flight, which now let themselves
 be captured with the hand--with our hand! 

We immortalise what cannot live and fly much longer,
 things only which are exhausted and mellow!
 And it is only for your afternoon, you, my written and painted thoughts,
 for which alone I have colours, many colours, perhaps, 
many variegated softenings, and fifty yellows and browns and greens and reds;
-- but nobody will divine thereby how ye looked in your morning,
 you sudden sparks and marvels of my solitude, 
you, my old, beloved-- evil thoughts!




~ Friedrich Nietzsche

.

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path

.

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?

~ Han Shan

The Country of Marriage

 I.

I dream of you walking at night along the streams
of the country of my birth, warm blooms and the nightsongs
of birds opening around you as you walk.
You are holding in your body the dark seed of my sleep.

II.

This comes after silence. Was it something I said
that bound me to you, some mere promise
or, worse, the fear of loneliness and death?
A man lost in the woods in the dark, I stood
still and said nothing. And then there rose in me,
like the earth's empowering brew rising
in root and branch, the words of a dream of you
I did not know I had dreamed. I was a wanderer
who feels the solace of his native land
under his feet again and moving in his blood.
I went on, blind and faithful. Where I stepped
my track was there to steady me. It was no abyss
that lay before me, but only the level ground.

III.

Sometimes our life reminds me
of a forest in which there is a graceful clearing
and in that opening a house,
an orchard and garden,
comfortable shades, and flowers
red and yellow in the sun, a pattern
made in the light for the light to return to.
The forest is mostly dark, its ways
to be made anew day after day, the dark
richer than the light and more blessed,
provided we stay brave
enough to keep on going in.

IV.

How many times have I come to you out of my head
with joy, if ever a man was,
for to approach you I have given up the light
and all directions. I come to you
lost, wholly trusting as a man who goes
into the forest unarmed. It is as though I descend
slowly earthward out of the air. I rest in peace
in you, when I arrive at last.

V.

Our bond is no little economy based on the exchange
of my love and work for yours, so much for so much
of an expendable fund. We don't know what its limits are--
that puts us in the dark. We are more together
than we know, how else could we keep on discovering
we are more together than we thought?
You are the known way leading always to the unknown,
and you are the known place to which the unknown is always
leading me back. More blessed in you than I know,
I possess nothing worthy to give you, nothing
not belittled by my saying that I possess it.
Even an hour of love is a moral predicament, a blessing
a man may be hard up to be worthy of. He can only
accept it, as a plant accepts from all the bounty of the light
enough to live, and then accepts the dark,
passing unencumbered back to the earth, as I
have fallen time and again from the great strength
of my desire, helpless, into your arms.

VI.

What I am learning to give you is my death
to set you free of me, and me from myself
into the dark and the new light. Like the water
of a deep stream, love is always too much. We
did not make it. Though we drink till we burst
we cannot have it all, or want it all.
In its abundance it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill, and sleep, while it
flows through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us, except we keep returning
to its rich waters thirsty. We enter,
willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy.

VII.

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for the love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in the ground, as I
have planted mine in you. I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy--and this poem,
no more mine than any man's who has loved a woman.

~ Wendell Berry

The Wheel - for Robert Penn Warren

.

At the first strokes of the fiddle bow

the dancers rise from their seats.

The dance begins to shape itself

in the crowd, as couples join,

and couples join couples, their movement

together lightening thier feet.

They move in the ancient circle

of the dance.  The dance and the song

call each other into being.  Soon

they are one-rapt in single

rapture, so that even the night

has its clarity, and time

is the wheel that brings it round.

In this rapture the dead return.

Sorrow is gone from them.

They are light. They step

into the steps of the living

and turn with them in the dance

in the sweet enclosure

of the song, and timeless

is the wheel that brings it round.

.

~ Wendell Berry

.

enough. these few words are enough.

Enough. These few words are enough.

If not these words, this breath.

If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now


~ David Whyte

.

The whole world is you

yet you keep thinking there is something else.

.

~ Hsueh-Feng

.

from The Wind among the Reeds

.

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

. 

~ WB Yeats

inspired by Maud Gonne 

.

you can read their address by the moon ...

.
The Sisters Of Mercy were actually two young women that I met during a snow storm in Edmonton, Alberta. And they came to my hotel room and there was something oh, very agreeable about their company. And they had no place to stay and they fell asleep on my bed, and I stayed up and I remember there was a full moon. And I felt like having something to say to them when they woke up, and that was one of those rare and graceful occasions when I was able to write a song from beginning to end in the space of a few hours. And while they slept I worked on this song. And when they woke up I sang it to them. It was completely full and finished, and they liked it. Barbara and Lorraine were their names.
.
~ Leonard Cohen, from Diamonds in the Lines


.

even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments

.

And even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone. So it was then with the Steppenwolf too. It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they him. For all who got to love him saw always only the one side of him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him. And they had to because Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be loved as a whole and therefore it was just with those whose love he most valued that he could least of all conceal and belie the wolf. There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals. Usually these were the most disappointed and angry of all; and so it was that the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them.
.
~ Hermann Hesse 

.

Nevermore

.

 
Memory, memory, what do you want of me? Autumn
makes the thrush fly through colourless air,
and the sun casts a monotonous glare
on the yellowing woods where the north winds hum.
.
We were alone, and walking in dream,
she and I, hair and thoughts wind-blown.
Suddenly, turning her troubling gaze on me,
‘Your loveliest day?’ her voice of living gold,
.
her voice, with its fresh angelic tone, vibrant and sweet.
I gave her my answer, a smile so discreet,
and kissed her white hand with devotion.
.
- Ah! The first flowers, what a fragrance they have!
And how charming the murmured emotion
of that first ‘yes’ from lips that we love!
.
~ Paul Verlaine


.

That's how the light gets in.

Ring the bells that can still ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.

~ Leonard Cohen

On the Theory of the Big Bang as the Origin of the Universe

I.

What banged?

II.

Before banging

how did it get there?

III.

When it got there

where was it?

~ Wendel Berry

from 'The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci'

.

I cannot forbear to mention among these precepts a new device for study which, although it may seem but trivial and almost ludicrous, is nevertheless extremely useful in arousing the mind to various inventions. And this is, when you look at a wall spotted with stains, or with a mixture of stones, if you have to devise some scene, you may discover a resemblance to various landscapes, beautified with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys and hills in varied arrangement; or again you may see battles and figures in action; or strange faces and costumes, and an endless variety of objects, which you could reduce to complete and well drawn forms. And these appear on such walls confusedly, like the sound of bells in whose jangle you may find any name or word you choose to imagine.
.

~ translated by Jean Paul Richter

"oh please, oh please come out and play."

We have not come here to take prisoners

But to surrender ever more deeply
to freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world
to hold ourselves hostage from love. Run, my dear,
from anything that may not strengthen
your precious budding wings,

Run like hell, my dear,
from anyone likely to put a sharp knife
into the sacred, tender vision
of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend
those aspects of obedience
that stand outside of our house
and shout to our reason
"oh please, oh please
come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners,
or to confine our wondrous spirits,
But to experience ever and ever more deeply
our divine courage, freedom,
and Light!

~ Hafiz