Hands of the Clock

[Image: “March of the Wheelbarrows,” by JES. (Licensed for
Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial International use.)]

From whiskey river:

Sleeping for Kafka

I heard on the radio this morning that prayers can heal. Experiments demonstrate that cancer patients who are prayed for, even by an anonymous person, have a better prognosis than those who receive no prayers.

A person can purchase prayers from Grace Church in Kansas by dialing 1-800-prayers. Visa and Mastercard are accepted.

I read that Kafka, a chronic insomniac, felt refreshed after watching his beloved sleep. Sometimes he invited her over, just to admire how she draped herself over his couch, wrapped in immaculate rest.

Some speculate it was the dreams of his beloved he wrote.

Thoughts like dreams drift from mind to mind. Some are heavy and sink to the ground or disappear under water where they grow like sea plants, while others are light and glide upwards like helium molecules.

When Jacob saw angels going up and down a ladder, they were merely tracing his thoughts.

Nietzsche said few people think their own thoughts. Instead they are thought. Many people are dreamt and prayed. They are like seashells inhabited by hermit crabs.

Most of us have no clue whose dream we are.

(Nin Andrews [source])

…and:

Gabriel
(excerpt)

There are enigmas in darkness
There are mysteries
Sent out without searchlights

The stars are hiding tonight
The moon is cold and stony
Behind the clouds

Nights without seeing
Mornings of the long view
It’s not a sprint but a marathon

Whatever we can do
We must do
Every morning’s resolve

(Edward Hirsch [source])

…and (italicized portion):

Debtors

They used to say we’re living on borrowed
time but even when young I wondered
who loaned it to us? In 1948 one grandpa
died stretched tight in a misty oxygen tent,
his four sons gathered, his papery hand
grasping mine. Only a week before, we were fishing.
Now the four sons have all run out of borrowed time
while I’m alive wondering whom I owe
for this indisputable gift of existence.
Of course time is running out. It always
has been a creek heading east, the freight
of water with its surprising heaviness
following the slant of the land, its destiny.
What is lovelier than a creek or riverine thicket?
Say it is an unknown benefactor who gave us
birds and Mozart, the mystery of trees and water
and all living things borrowing time.
Would I still love the creek if I lasted forever?

(Jim Harrison [source])

Not from whiskey river:

Return

Leaving on an exciting journey
is one thing, though most of all
I am engaged in homecoming —
the dogs, the glass of wine, a favorite
pillow that missed your head, the local
night with its familiar darkness.
The birds that ignored your absence
are singing at dawn assuring you
that all is inconceivable.

(Jim Harrison [ibid.])

…and:

As Monet grew older and progressively less mobile, he changed the subjects of his paintings from haystacks, fields, and cities to the poplar-lined Seine near home, where he could slowly drift or moor his floating studio beside a bank. When even those forays took their toll and his physical range narrowed, but not his mental scope, he began painting the garden beside his house. If anything it took more imagination to paint without the rah-rah of cities and perpetual geisha of a changing scene. Instead, as he aged, he explored the recesses of the familiar: the teal-green Japanese bridge weathering in sun, the water garden and sky conjoining in rain, the buttery noon sun spread across the grass, the rocking goblet-sized tulips and dangling purple wisteria in spring, summer’s garden pathway tolling with orange and yellow nasturtiums. Life’s constant flickering, rocking, dangling, tolling. The new automatically attracts the eye, but remove the siren of novelty and one must pay attention on purpose, even to subtle tones and totterings, as unrest streaks through the landscape.

(Diane Ackerman [source])

…and:

When one awakes from sleep and so returns to conscious life, he is in a peculiarly receptive and impressionable state. All relations with the material world have for a time been shut off, the mind is in a freer and more natural state, resembling somewhat a sensitive plate, where impressions can readily leave their traces. This is why many times the highest and truest impressions come to one in the early morning hours, before the activities of the day and their attendant distractions have exerted an influence. This is one reason why many people can do their best work in the early hours of the day.

But this fact is also a most valuable one in connection with the moulding of every-day life. The mind is at this time as a clean sheet of paper. We can most valuably use this quiet, receptive, impressionable period by wisely directing the activities of the mind along the highest and most desirable paths, and thus, so to speak, set the pace for the day.

Each morning is a fresh beginning. We are, as it were, just beginning life. We have it entirely in our own hands. And when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all yesterdays should be yesterdays, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient is it to know that the way we lived our yesterday has determined for us our today. And, again, when the morning with its fresh beginning comes, all tomorrows should be tomorrows, with which we have nothing to do. Sufficient to know that the way we live our today determines our tomorrow.

(Ralph Waldo Trine [source])