Creatures Set Down Here Bewildered

by Leave a Comment

[Image: Pogo daily comic strip from February 18, 1959; spotted on FaceBook.]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered?

(Annie Dillard [source])

…and:

Of Heaven and Hell

The Inferno of God is not in need of
the splendor of fire. When, at the end of things,
Judgment Day resounds on the trumpets
and the earth opens and yields up its entrails
and nations reconstruct themselves from dust
to bow down before the unappealable Judgment,
eyes then will not see the nine circles
within the inverted mountain, nor the pale
meadow of perennial asphodels
in which the shadow of the archer follows
the shadow of the deer, eternally,
nor the ridge of fire on the very lowest level
of the infernos of the Muslim faith,
antedating Adam and the Fall,
nor the violence of metals, not even
the almost visible blindness of Milton.
No fearful labyrinth of threefold iron,
no doleful fires of suffering, will oppress
the awestruck spirits of the damned.

Nor does the far point of the years conceal
a secret garden. God does not require —
to celebrate the merits of the good life —
globes of light, concentric theories
of thrones and heavenly powers and cherubim,
nor the beguiling mirror that is music,
nor all the many meanings in a rose,
nor the fateful splendor of a single
one of his tigers, nor the subtleties
of a sunset turning gold in the desert,
nor the immemorial, natal taste of water.
In God’s infinite compass, there are no gardens,
no flash of hope, no glint of memory.

In the clear glass of a dream, I have glimpsed
the Heaven and Hell that lie in wait for us:
when Judgment Day sounds in the last trumpets
and planet and millennium both
disintegrate, and all at once, O Time,
all your ephemeral pyramids cease to be,
the colors and the lines that trace the past
will in the semi-darkness form a face,
a sleeping face, faithful, still, unchangeable
(the face of the loved one, or, perhaps, your own)
and the sheer contemplation of that face —
never-changing, whole, beyond corruption —
will be, for the rejected, an Inferno,
and, for the elected, Paradise.

(Jorge Luis Borges [source])

…and:

Any man, in the right situation, is capable of being a great lover. But not every man can say, “The sixth sick sheik’s sixth sheep’s sick.” In conclusion, great lovers and tongue twisters are not as similar as you might think.

(Mike Topp [source])

From elsewhere:

August 12 in the Nebraska Sand Hills Watching the Perseids Meteor Shower

In the middle of rolling grasslands, away from lights,
a moonless night untethers its wild polka-dots,
the formations we can name competing for attention
in a twinkling and crowded sky-bowl.

Out from the corners, our eyes detect a maverick meteor,
a transient streak, and lying back toward midnight
on the heft of car hood, all conversation blunted,
we are at once unnerved and somehow restored.

Out here, a furrow of spring-fed river threads
through ranches in the tens of thousands of acres.
Like cattle, we are powerless, by instinct can see
why early people trembled and deliberated the heavens.

Off in the distance those cattle make themselves known,
a bird song moves singular across the horizon.
Not yet 2:00, and bits of comet dust, the Perseids,
startle and skim the atmosphere like skipping stones.

In the leaden dark, we are utterly alone. As I rub the ridges
on the back of your hand, our love for all things warm
and pulsing crescendos toward dawn: this timeless awe,
your breath floating with mine upward into the stars.

(Twyla M. Hansen [source])

…and:

Perhaps all mystical experience is coincidence. Or vice versa, of course.

(Tom Stoppard [source])

…and:

They eat out

In restaurants we argue
over which of us will pay for your funeral

though the real question is
whether or not I will make you immortal.

At the moment only I
can do it and so

I raise the magic fork
over the plate of beef fried rice

and plunge it into your heart.
There is a faint pop, a sizzle

and through your own split head
you rise up glowing;

the ceiling opens
a voice sings Love Is A Many

Splendoured Thing
you hang suspended above the city

in blue tights and a red cape,
your eyes flashing in unison.

The other diners regard you
some with awe, some only with boredom:

they cannot decide if you are a new weapon
or only a new advertisement.

As for me, I continue eating;
I liked you better the way you were,
but you were always ambitious.

(Margaret Atwood [source])

…and:

Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

(Likely Arthur C. Clarke, via Stanley Kubrick [source])

Know Thy Self (But Watch Out for Traps)

by Leave a Comment

[Image: “(No?) Parking,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (second paragraph):

The ego normally arises as a kind of personal theory about the coherence of experience, an explanation for the consistent association of certain contents of consciousness. For example, the proprioceptive and tactile sensations of the hand in picking up the cup of coffee, the sensations of taste in the mouth and of hot liquid swallowed in the throat, as well as the somatic effects of caffeine to follow, all constellate with visual sensations corresponding to hand, cup, etc., in an emerging sense of self or agency. I, as the passive witness and motor force behind this body, is how the brain makes sense of the association of these diverse inputs, including perceived outputs. The sense of I-ness may be a wonderfully pragmatic device, which mostly works well in the evolutionary scheme. But is it true? Does the self “really” exist?

…There are people who believe they make the sun rise or control the weather. Some schizophrenics appropriate a fantastic range of sensory input to the self, believing themselves the focus and the orchestrator of great cosmic events. Other mental patients, and some mystics, completely lose the sense of self, facing a bewildering confusion of sensation with no unifying scheme to make sense of it. Most people’s experience, of course, lies between these extremes. But normality does not establish truth. The fact that most people have a normal self, the subject of consistent and limited experience, does not make the self real. From the perspective of every spiritual tradition, entered deeply enough, the existence of ego is considered an illusion, the normal psychosis.

(Dan J. Bruiger [source (in somewhat different words)])

…and:

“Of the two witnesses, hold the principal one,” is saying that one witness is everybody else giving you their feedback and opinions (which is worth listening to, there’s some truth in what people say) but the principal witness is yourself. You’re the only one who knows when you’re using things to protect yourself and keep your ego together and when you’re opening and letting things fall apart, letting the world come as it is — working with it rather than struggling against it. You’re the only one who knows.

(Pema Chödrön [source]

…and:

Hidden Things

Let them not seek to discover who I was
from all that I have done and said.
An obstacle was there that transformed
the deeds and the manner of my life.
An obstacle was there that stopped me
many times when I was about to speak.
Only from my most imperceptible deeds
and my most covert writings—
from these alone will they understand me.
But perhaps it isn’t worth exerting
such care and such effort for them to know me.
Later, in the more perfect society,
surely some other person created like me
will appear and act freely.

(Constantine P. Cavafy [source])

From elsewhere:

Now—unless some zoologist can dig up a weird exception—humans are the only living beings who wear clothes. They are also the only beings who laugh, for humor is the property of humanity and consists, essentially, in not taking oneself seriously. (Consider the situation of someone chasing a hat blown off by the wind.) People can laugh at themselves because they know, deep down, that their lives are a big act, a put–on. This may get us into the depths of mysticism, but every person knows, tacitly, that he is God in disguise. Not, perhaps, the universal monarch of Jewish and Christian imagery, but at least the inmost and ultimate Self of Hinduism, the Actor who plays all the roles, and thus the Joker in the deck of cards. Stated more philosophically, each one of us is a manifestation of the total energy of the universe. Wearing clothes is therefore a gesture which implies the unadmitted knowledge that our personalities are put on. Think of such phrases as “cover yourself,” “pull yourself together,” “tighten your belts,” “keep your hair on,” “don’t lose your shirt,” “caught with your pants down,” “shiftless,” “sound investment,” “redressment of injustice,” “defrocked,” “uncloaked,” “dismantled,” “name and address,” “wearing an expression,” “clothed and in one’s right mind,” “vested interest,” “stuffed shirt,” “good (or bad) habits,” “the bare facts,” and “the naked truth.” Such a list of sartorial symbols and millinery metaphors for mental and moral states, of depletions and completions of personality, might be expanded indefinitely. But they express a basic and intuitive recognition of the connection between who we are, as persons, and what we wear.

(Alan Watts [source])

…and:

New Year’s Day

The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

(Kim Addonizio [source])

Lingering at the Margins of What We Can Know

by Leave a Comment

[Image: “Savannah (July, 2021),” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

random haiku

It is fairly hard
To lie when writing haiku,
Which is fair enough.

Nothing much of note
Happens in corners of the
Globe that are remote.

And, presumably,
The same applies to far flung
Corners of the brain.

No one has ever
Written a bible of how
To be a poet.

Being myself a
Minor practitioner, I
Think of this as odd.

It is, isn’t it?
There is no way you can teach
Men to be poets.

And what is doubly
Odd is that true poetry
Is so beautiful.

I mean, you’d think there’d
Be a manual, a guide
To rampant beauty.

(Stuart Reed [source: none found, but possibly by this author])

…and:

The greatest effort is to be really where you are, contemporary with yourself, in your life, giving full attention to the world. That’s what a writer does. I’m against the solipsistic idea that you find it all in your head. You don’t…

The real life of the mind is always at the frontiers of what is already known.

(Susan Sontag [source: here and here])

…and:

“I cannot live with myself any longer.” This was the thought that kept repeating itself in my mind. Then suddenly I became aware of what a peculiar thought it was. “Am I one or two?”

(Eckhart Tolle [source])

…and (excerpt):

In treating our consciousness as if it were a digital computer or deterministic machine after the model of 19th century science, I believe we foster a limited and false view of our inner world. We must now take the step towards a quantum view of consciousness, recognizing that at its base and root our consciousness behaves like the ever flowing sea of the sub-atomic world. The ancient hermeticists pictured consciousness as the Inner Mercury. Those who have experienced the paradoxical way in which the metal Mercury is both dense and metallic and yet so elusive, flowing and breaking up into small globules, and just as easily coming together again, will see how perceptive the alchemists were of the inner nature of consciousness, in choosing this analogy. Educators who treat the consciousness of children as if it were a filing cabinet to be filled with ordered arrays of knowledge are hopelessly wrong.

(Adam McLean [source])

…and:

My reality is that God speaks to you every day. There’s an inner voice, and when you hear it, you get a little tingle in your medulla oblongata at the back of your neck, a little shiver, and at two o’clock in the morning, everything’s really quiet and you meditate and you got the candles, you got the incense and you’ve been chanting, and all of a sudden you hear this voice: Write this down. It is just an inner voice, and you trust it. That voice will never take you to the desert.

(Carlos Santana [source: here (among others)])

From elsewhere:

A man might spend his life peering at the private life of elementary particles and then find he either knew who he was or where he was, but not both.

(Terry Pratchett [source])

…and:

In fording a swollen stream, one’s strongest sensation is of the pouring strength of the water against one’s limbs; the effort to poise the body against it gives significance to this simple act of walking through running water. Early in the season the water may be so cold that one has no sensation except of cold; the whole being retracts itself, uses all its resources to endure this icy delight. But in heat the freshness of the water slides over the skin like shadow. The whole skin has this delightful sensitivity; it feels the sun, it feels the wind running inside one’s garment, it feels water closing on it as one slips under—the catch in the breath, like a wave held back, the glow that releases one’s entire cosmos, running to the ends of the body as the spent wave runs out upon the sand. This plunge into the cold water of a mountain pool seems for a brief moment to disintegrate the very self; it is not to be borne: one is lost: stricken: annihilated. Then life pours back.

(Nan Shepherd [source])

…and:

To the Garbage Collectors
in Bloomington, Indiana,
the First Pickup of the New Year

(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap,
like furry mittens,
like childhood crouching under tables)
The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black
outside our window: clattering cans, the whir
of a hopper, shouts, a whistle, move on …
I see them in my warm imagination
the way I’ll see them later in the cold,
heaving the huge cans and running
(running!) to the next house on the street.

My vestiges of muscle stir
uneasily in their percale cocoon:
what moves those men out there, what
drives them running to the next house and the next?
Halfway back to dream, I speculate:
The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old
Bloomington a cleaner place
to live in—right, men? Hup, tha!”
Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys,
let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes
on truck thirteen!”
Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can,
another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’
three kids through Princeton?”
Or something else?
Terror?

A half hour later, dawn comes edging over
Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like
a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green,
and over that the black-and-blue of night
still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave
their silhouettes against the red, and through
the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk
of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men,
like windup toys, tossing little cans—
and running.

All day they’ll go like that, till dark again,
and all day, people fussing at their desks,
at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison
tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all
things that are Caesar’s.

O garbage men,
the New Year greets you like the Old;
after this first run you too may rest
in beds like great warm aproned laps
and know that people everywhere have faith:
putting from them all things of this world,
they confidently bide your second coming.

(Philip Appleman [source])

Don’t Waste Your Time Seeking (Just Open Your Eyes)

by Leave a Comment

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (second paragraph):

The given is always at hand, in any situation in this given world; fullness of response to this gift is the goal; what needs to be improved by practice is our response…

Day and night gifts keep pelting down on us. If we were aware of this, gratefulness would overwhelm us. But we go through life in a daze. A power failure makes us aware of what a gift electricity is; a sprained ankle lets us appreciate walking as a gift, a sleepless night, sleep. How much we are missing in life by noticing gifts only when we are suddenly deprived of them.

(David Steindl-Rast [source])

…and:

Sometimes it’s okay. Sometimes it’s not one desperate act after another. Sometimes we hear the music that is always there. As the old Irish homily goes: “The most beautiful music is the music of what happens.” It is not necessary to run to a remote, quiet place to hear it. It is here already, always. The essence of eternity is how we experience the present. The witnesses are here in ourselves. The fullness of our inheritance denies nothing.

(Terrance Keenan [source])

…and:

Starfish

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night,
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life’s way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won’t give you smart or brave,
so you’ll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
were born at a good time. Because you were able
to listen when people spoke to you. Because you
stopped when you should have and started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

(Eleanor Lerman [source])

From elsewhere:

Found Letter

What makes for a happier life, Josh, comes to this:
Gifts freely given, that you never earned;
Open affection with your wife and kids;
Clear pipes in winter, in summer screens that fit;
Few days in court, with little consequence;
A quiet mind, a strong body, short hours
In the office; close friends who speak the truth;
Good food, cooked simply; a memory that’s rich
Enough to build the future with; a bed
In which to love, read, dream, and re-imagine love;
A warm, dry field for laying down in sleep,
And sleep to trim the long night coming;
Knowledge of who you are, the wish to be
None other; freedom to forget the time;
To know the soul exceeds where it’s confined
Yet does not seek the terms of its release,
Like a child’s kite catching at the wind
That flies because the hand holds tight the line.

(Joshua Weiner [source])

…and:

Josh Barker was in big trouble. Big trouble indeed. He was only seven, but he was pretty sure his life was ruined. He hurried along Church Street trying to figure out how he was going to explain to his mom. An hour and a half late. Home long after dark. And he hadn’t called. And Christmas just a few days away. Forget explaining it to his mom, how was he going to explain it to Santa?

Santa might understand, though, since he knew toys. But Mom would never buy it. He’d been playing Barbarian George’s Big Crusade on the PlayStation at his friend Sam’s house, and they’d gotten into the infidel territory and killed thousands of the ‘Rackies, but the game just didn’t have any way to exit. It wasn’t designed so you could ever get out of it, and before he knew it, it was dark outside and he’d forgotten, and Christmas was just going to be ruined. He wanted an Xbox 2, but there was no way Santa was going to bring it with a home long after dark AND a didn’t even bother to call on his list.

Sam had summarized Josh’s situation as he led him out the door and looked at the night sky: “Dude, you’re hosed.”

(Christopher Moore [source])

…and:

Winter Morning

When I can no longer say thank you
for this new day and the waking into it,
for the cold scrape of the kitchen chair
and the ticking of the space heater glowing
orange as it warms the floor near my feet,
I know it’s because I’ve been fooled again
by the selfish, unruly man who lives in me
and believes he deserves only safety
and comfort. But if I pause as I do now,
and watch the streetlights outside flashing
off one by one like old men blinking their
cloudy eyes, if I listen to my tired neighbors
slamming car doors hard against the morning
and see the steaming coffee in their mugs
kissing chapped lips as they sip and
exhale each of their worries white into
the icy air around their faces—then I can
remember this one life is a gift each of us
was handed and told to open: Untie the bow
and tear off the paper, look inside
and be grateful for whatever you find
even if it is only the scent of a tangerine
that lingers on the fingers long after
you’ve finished peeling it.

(James Crew [source])

A Quirky, er, No: an *Eclectic* Christmas Mix (2025 Ed.)

by 4 Comments

[Video: I suspect many of us have experienced such a moment in our gift-giving lives — a moment when the giftee’s face, and perhaps their very words, say, “Oh! You’ve given me a… WHAT is this you have given me, exactly?”]

Per usual, let’s begin by putting the music itself at the top of the post (with some discussion to follow). Here are the ten selections for this year:

…and here’s the whole thing — up to 158 songs, totaling over eight hours, in this fifteenth year of this project:

[As before, I’m incredibly annoyed that you can’t shuffle the songs in an embedded playlist, like this one. But if you’ve got a Spotify account, you can open the playlist there… and shuffle it! To do so, click on the three little dots to the left of the “Play” arrowhead button; once in Spotify, just shuffle it to your heart’s content.]

Now, on to the annual nattering (heh)…

Among the surprises in this year’s list, you’ll find Chris Rea’s “Driving Home for Christmas” — which (to my delight) describes an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods drive not in the United States, but in Britain.

And there’s also Máiréad Nesbitt’s lovely violin solo, “Ériu’s Dream.” This really stands out, for me, because… well, it’s not a Christmas song. The titular Ériu serves (per Wikipedia) as the “eponymous matron goddess of Ireland,” and I can find no reference to a dream of hers. (She apparently does feature in the dreams of other Celtic figures, though.) But, I dunno — the song just seemed to me to fit here.

Perhaps her dream was one which included holly, mistletoe, and magical figures emerging from a misty, snowbound landscape? I can hear that.

Finally, I must confess: my heart did not look forward to compiling this year’s list. The reasons are partly technological, and partly… well, other than technological.

Technology: yes, I’m comfortable with tech — maybe atypically, even weirdly comfortable with it, considering my age. But I could see the handwriting on the wall, thanks to my blogging platform’s age and increasing… inflexibility? A couple years ago, fed up with the laborious process of trying out yet another music-playing plugin when all the old ones were no longer working, I finally switched over to Spotify. Which does, yes, enormously simplify creating and sharing playlists…

…at a cost of its own.

No, I don’t mean the cost of my subscription; I gladly pay that if that’s what it takes to share music here. The cost in question isn’t monetary, it’s… well, political.

The truth is, yeah, 2025 is a very dispiriting year in which this leftie American blogger finds himself living. Politics saturates everything — ugly politics, politics interlaced with capitalism, politics soaking into the season like rotgut booze in an otherwise heavenly fruitcake.

And, it turns out, even simple pleasures like sharing music can, this year, stink of politics.

It turns out, see, that some of the advertising revenue which Spotify uses to support free Spotify accounts comes from the US Department of Homeland Security. Specifically, Spotify’s free accounts may occasionally feature recruitment ads for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, a/k/a ICE. (See here (Newsweek) for some background, and here for an official response to it from — in this case — the New York City Comptroller.)

Now, you yourself should not experience these odious ads by listening to this playlist on RAMH. The question really is: should I and other paying Spotify subscribers be directing our money into the music streamer’s coffers?

I don’t think so. But switching, at this point, means finding an “untainted” streamer which offers something like Spotify’s enormous library of music, so the playlist doesn’t need to be remade — yet again — with different music.

All of which is a problem for me, not for you. So for now, anyhow, I’m just — one more time, thank you, 2025! — screaming into the void.

On that sour note, for which sourness I sincerely apologize, please do enjoy this year’s selections! And I’ll see what I can do about the Spotify issue.

No Naturally Still Waters, but Still Running Deep

by Leave a Comment

[Image: “No Still Waters” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

What is a life of depth? Is it to have a lot of deep experiences? Spiritual experiences? Enlightenment experiences? Or, are we immediately off the track when we envision any kind of experiences which would fill a life of depth? Important questions.

To really live a life of depth is to not depend on any experience at all — whether profound or not. Rather it is to let each experience point you back to the void from which it arose, to the state present before the experience itself.

To see each experience as your own perception of conditions continually emerging from the stillness of emptiness is half of it. To be reminded by experience (rather than hypnotized by it) to Return is the other half. So to live a life of depth, experience becomes the finger pointing back to the Before. It’s a reminder.

(G. Bluestone [source])

…and:

Silence

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths,
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young.
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities –
We cannot speak.

A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
“How did you lose your leg?”
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, “A bear bit it off.”
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.

There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.

There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d’Arc
Saying amid the flames, “blessed Jesus”
Revealing in two words all sorrows, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.

And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.

(Edgar Lee Masters [source])

From elsewhere:

My days are porous. I follow no pattern. I open doors and close them again. Now and then I sit at the table by the window to write, but my language overflows. There is no healing to be found in sentences, they disintegrate, there is garbage and roses, stray notes which curl up and disappear. There are open windows, breadless birds, lost routines.

I shop sporadically. I drift in and out of the house. I pull out the box of provisions from under my bed and find supplies I don’t remember buying. I fetch cans from the kitchen, leeks from the garden and onions from the shed, buy odds and ends on quick trips to town. My day is jumbled, indecisive…

A restlessness has got into my day. Broken patterns and unpredictable journeys through the house. There are opened rooms and silenced doors in what was once an orderly day. Wakeful nights, sudden sleep, weary mornings and days with no structure. I walk across the grass at night, alone, without telescopes or hope. I stop short. Starshine, moonlight, celestial waste.

(Solvej Balle [source])

…and:

The Student

She never spoke, which made her obvious,
the way death makes the air obvious
in an empty chair, the way sky compressed

between bare branches is more gray or blue,
the way a window is more apparent than a wall.
She held her silence to her breast like a worn coat,
smoke, an armful of roses. Her silence
colored the smaller silences that came and went,
that other students stood up and filled in.

I leaned near the window in my office. She sat
on the edge of a chair. Hips rigid, fidgeting
while I made my little speech. February

light pressed its cold back against the glass,
sealing us in. She focused on my lips
as I spoke, as if to study how it’s done,
the sheer mechanics of it: orchestration
of jaw and tongue, teeth shifting in tandem,
shaping the air. So I stopped, let her silence

drift over us, let it sift in like smoke or snow,
let its petals settle on my shoulders.
I looked outside to the branches

of a stripped tree, winter starlings
folded in their speckled wings, chilled flames
shuddering at the tips. Students wandered
across campus as if under water, hands and hair
unfurling, their soundless mouths churning—
irate or ecstatic, I couldn’t tell—ready to burn

it all down or break into song. When I looked back
her eyes had found the window: tree, students,
birds swimming by, mute in their element.

It was painful to hear the papery rasp
of her folding and unfolding hands, to watch
color smudging her neck and temple, branching
to mist the delicate rim of one ear. I listened
to the air sunder between us, the feverish hush
collapse. I could hear her breath—smoke

rising from ice. I could see what it cost her
to make that leap. What heat it takes
for the body to blossom into speech.

(Dorianne Laux [source])

Your Map of What’s Inside You Is Never the Territory

by Leave a Comment

[Image: “Master Disconnect,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

A Suite of Appearances
(excerpt)

In another time, we will want to know how the earth looked
Then, and were people the way we are now. In another time,
The records they left will convince us that we are unchanged

And could be at ease in the past, and not alone in the present.
And we shall be pleased. But beyond all that, what cannot
Be seen or explained will always be elsewhere, always supposed,

Invisible even beneath the signs—the beautiful surface,
The uncommon knowledge—that point its way. In another time,
What cannot be seen will define us, and we shall be prompted

To say that language is error, and all things are wronged
By representation. The self, we shall say, can never be
Seen with a disguise, and never be seen without one.

(Mark Strand [source])

…and (in slightly different form):

It is the nature of things, which is speaking with the voice of a man, the thingness of things in Homer, the deathliness of life in Villon, the liveliness of death in Fielding, the life of apparently lifeless things in Hebrew poetry, the eating eatability of things in the Panchatantra, the (thrilling because unexpected) mysticism of Ancient Egypt. But the poetry of poetry, the Zen of Zen is when the words and the ideas are undivided and indivisible (though a word has its own intrinsic value); when you just can’t explain why it is poetry, why it is Zen (but you do). A poet is a mountain speaking mountainously (not montonously [sic?]) of mountains to mountains, just as Shakespeare is a Hamlet speaking Hamletically of Hamlets to Hamlets.

(R. H. Blyth [source])

…and:

The Pulse

Sealed inside the anemone
in the dark, I knock my head
on steel petals
curving inward around me.

Somewhere the edict is given:
petals, relax.
Delicately they arch over backward.
All is opened to me—

the air they call water,
saline, dawn green over its sands
resplendent with fishes.
All day it is morning,

all night the glitter
of all that shines out of itself
crisps the vast swathes of the current.
But my feet are weighted:

only my seafern arms
my human hands
my fingers tipped with fire
sway out into the world.

Fair is the world.
I sing. The ache
up from heel to knee
of the weights

gives to the song its
ground bass.
And before the song
attains even a first refrain

the petals creak and
begin to rise.
They rise and recurl
to a bud’s form

and clamp shut.
I wait in the dark.

(Denise Levertov [source])

From elsewhere:

Nora Stokes could smell trouble. Actually, thanks to the cream she’d been told to liberally smear all over herself to protect her skin through the strains of pregnancy, she could really only smell the sickly sweet stench of coconut. The stuff was strong, but it was too cold outside to open a window. Greevy, despite repeated assurances, had not got the boiler fixed before he had buggered off to Italy to save his sham of a marriage. That meant the heating had two settings, blazing inferno or off. It wasn’t much of a choice but she’d gone for inferno. At least that way, between the heat and the smell of coconuts, she could occasionally close her eyes and relax into the blissful fantasy of being on a warm tropical beach somewhere. Then the baby would kick and she’d remember her current state and how, if she really were on a beach, Greenpeace would soon show up and try and roll her back into the sea. Then she’d feel bad for thinking that and apologise to the baby. Currently, her days seemed to consist of wildly fluctuating emotions, bizarre cravings, and an exciting array of physical discomforts and indignities. Oh – and smelling like a deep-fried Bounty bar.

(Caimh McDonnell [source])

…and:

After the Roman Empire collapsed in the west, the Franks took over. Rye, which had spread from the east and north where other grains fared poorly in the cool climate, now spread farther south because the Franks ate rye and brought it with them, expanding its cultivation deep into Europe. Rye helped avert famine when wheat could no longer be imported, and according to [one author], the Frankish Empire would hardly have survived without it. The problem was that people who ate rye sometimes got sick because of a dark-purple spur that grew within the grain spike, a toxic fungus called Claviceps purpurea, which could lead to a condition known as ergotism.

But back then, people didn’t know that it was the toxins in the rye that were making them ill. They called the disease St. Anthony’s fire. Thousands died. Those afflicted went mad, their hands and feet burned. Women suffered miscarriages. Skin became numb, flesh rotted, limbs fell off. There were reports of a widespread dancing plague, and of monasteries where monks could cure the disease. Sometimes, at least. It was the wheat often eaten at monasteries which probably healed them, but no one knew this—they only knew that the monks and all their prayers brought relief…

Norwegian researchers […] had discovered a correlation between witch trials and outbreaks of ergotism. Both the witches and some of the victims of their witchcraft exhibited symptoms consistent with the condition: hallucinations and burning limbs and numbness of skin. And many of the witches noted that they had been initiated into witchcraft by eating bread. They had met mysterious creatures and, often, the devil himself had appeared to them. Witch trials had taken place in Finnmark to the north, where the poor inhabitants had to import bad grain, as well as in the province of Rogaland in the south, where rye was grown in wet fields.

(Solvej Balle [source])

…and:

My Deepest Condiments

I send you my deepest condiments
was in no way what my old friend
meant to say or write or send
the night she penned a note to me
one week after my father died.

Not condolences, or sentiments,
she sent me her deepest condiments
instead, as if the dead have need
of relish, mustard, and ketchup
on the other side.

O, the word made me laugh
so hard out loud it hurt!
So wonderfully absurd,
and such a sweet relief
at a time when it seemed

only grief was allowed in
after my father’s death,
sweet and simple laughter,
which is nothing more than
breath from so far deep inside

it often brings up with it tears.
And so I laughed and laughed
until my sides were sore.
And later still, I even cried
a little more.

(Taylor Mali [source])

Heed the One Voice You Always Hear

by Leave a Comment

[Image: “Please Refrain Yourself,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

The poet discovers himself alone on a darkened stage, suffering temporary amnesia. What terror not to be able to remember or to imagine what you wanted to say. A language dysfunction, a disease of imagination’s present time. The expectant audience sits unmoving and utterly silent. A small asexual voice offstage prompts the first words of a monologue in whispers, and the poet begins to speak, a time-delayed recitation of the future. A light at the back of his head comes on and moves to direct his footsteps as the ghostly unembodied voice continues to prompt him. When it stops, he asks himself: ‘What was I saying, what was it I wanted to say? This is a play I am making up and someone is directing me from the wings. I want to scratch at the back of my head where the light is coming from, but it only gutters when I swing my hand and remains out of reach. There is a silence you choose and a silence that descends on you when the prompter decides to make you nervous, and that is terrifying. I cannot memorize what I will think to say when it tells me. It is so unnewtonian it takes your breath away.’

(Bruce Whiteman [source])

…and:

Moving Forward

The deep parts of my life pour onward,
as if the river shores were opening out.
It seems that things are more like me now,
that I can see farther into paintings.
I feel closer to what language can’t reach.
With my sense, as with birds, I climb
into the windy heaven, out of the oak,
and in the ponds broken off from the sky
my feeling sinks, as if standing on fishes.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Robert Bly [source])

…and:

By watching our thoughts over a period of time, we can see that the mind is operating literally ‘by itself ‘. Thoughts ‘just appear’ and keep on appearing automatically. We have this feeling that it is ‘me’ who is thinking, but this is just a conditioned reflex caused by the concept of ourself as an individual. By watching thoughts we can see how they appear unbidden, uncalled. Just try not thinking for a even a few seconds and see that it is impossible. No ‘me’ is controlling them. We may have the illusion of purposely thinking about a particular subject, but notice that the idea to purposely think about something comes by itself. Then we do it, automatically, but with the false feeling we are the ‘decider’. That feeling of being the ‘decider’ is not us, it belongs to the mind. It is something we are perceiving.

This is not proven in just a few minutes of thought watching. It often takes many months of diligent watching to really see it and to be convinced. This is because the conditioned feeling of being the ‘thinker’ is so deep that the very idea that the mind goes its own way seems ridiculous. But the payoff of this single discovery is enormous in terms of liberation and deeper understanding of ourselves and the universe.

(Galen Sharp [source: nothing canonical, but found here])

From elsewhere:

One night Werner and Jutta tune in to a scratchy broadcast in which a young man is talking in feathery, accented French about light.

The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

The broadcast hisses and pops.

“What is this?” whispers Jutta.

Werner does not answer. The Frenchman’s voice is velvet. His accent is very different from Frau Elena’s, and yet his voice is so ardent, so hypnotizing, that Werner finds he can understand every word. The Frenchman talks about optical illusions, electromagnetism; there’s a pause and a peal of static, as though a record is being flipped, and then he enthuses about coal.

Consider a single piece glowing in your family’s stove. See it, children? That chunk of coal was once a green plant, a fern or reed that lived one million years ago, or maybe two million, or maybe one hundred million. Can you imagine one hundred million years? Every summer for the whole life of that plant, its leaves caught what light they could and transformed the sun’s energy into itself. Into bark, twigs, stems. Because plants eat light, in much the way we eat food. But then the plant died and fell, probably into water, and decayed into peat, and the peat was folded inside the earth for years upon years—eons in which something like a month or a decade or even your whole life was just a puff of air, a snap of two fingers And eventually the peat dried and became like stone, and someone dug it up, and the coal man brought it into your house, and maybe you yourself carried it to the stove, and now that sunlight—sunlight one hundred million years old—is heating your home tonight….

Open your eyes, concludes the man, and see what you can with them before they close forever, and then a piano comes on, playing a lonely song that sounds to Werner like a golden boat traveling a dark river, a progression of harmonies that transfigures Zollverein: the houses turned to mist, the mines filled in, the smokestacks fallen, an ancient sea spilling through the streets, and the air streaming with possibility.

(Anthony Doerr [source])

…and:

# 41: Marlene Dietrich is widely said to have claimed, somewhere: “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” Good for her, and good for her friends. And I don’t disagree, except to add, y’know, that I can always call up my own mind. (And I bet she could, too.)

(JES, Maxims for Nostalgists)

You Already Know What to Attend to — Now You’ve Just Gotta Attend to It

by 1 Comment

[Image: “The Fight to Focus,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Around you is a subtle electromagnetic body of energy that is sometimes called the subtle body and is normally unseen by the naked eye. The ancient Greeks called it the etheric body. This is where the real you resides. It’s also where your real feelings reside.

Imagine it to be a faint energy field, like a colorless mist. But, unlike a slow, wafting mist, the etheric is moving very, very quickly. Flashing through it are mini-lightning bolts of energy, and fingers of flamelike etheric sunbursts that shoot out from you in all directions. Underlying the flashes are great waves of rolling energy that move up and down and sometimes outward, tumbling and turning in response to emotion. You walk inside an amazing glowing bubble of light that sometimes projects three or four feet away from you in every direction.

The etheric is fascinating and beautiful to watch. I find it very humbling — the secret human is all there to see, spiritually naked in his or her identity. In the etheric, you see how the human condition is complicated by the ego/personality, but you can have a deep compassion for it. For a human is not just a mind, a body, or an emotion — it is light. The brilliance of that human light overshadows the personality traits and weaknesses that come from human frailty.

(Stuart Wilde [source])

…and:

we came whirling
out of nothingness
scattering stars
like dust

the stars made a circle
and in the middle
we dance

the wheel of heaven
circles God
like a mill

if you grab a spoke
it will tear your hand off

turning and turning
it sunders
all attachment

were that wheel not in love
it would cry
               “enough! how long is this turning?”

every atom
turns bewildered

beggars circle tables
dogs circle carrion
the lover circles
               his own heart

ashamed,
I circle shame
a ruined water wheel
whichever way I turn,
is the river

if that rusty old sky
creaks to a stop
still, still I turn

and it is only God
circling Himself

(Jalaluddin Rumi [source])

From elsewhere:

Zero Gravity

The dry basin of the moon must have held
the bones of a race, radiant minerals,
or something devoid of genesis, angel-heavy,
idea-pure. All summer we had waited for it,

our faces off-blue in front of the TV screen.
Nothing could be more ordinary—two figures
digging dirt in outer space—while mother repeated
Neil Armstrong’s words, like a prayer

electronically conveyed. The dunes were lit
like ancient silk, like clandestine pearl.
In the constant lunar night this luminescence
was all we hoped for. A creature unto itself,

it poured into the room like a gradual flood
of lightning, touching every object with the cool burn
of something not quite on fire. If we stepped out
Manila would be blank ether, way station,

a breathless abeyance. It didn’t matter,
at that moment, where our lives would lead:
father would disown one brother,
one sister was going to die. Not yet unhappy,

we were ready to walk on the moon. Reckless
in our need for the possible, we knew
there was no turning back, our bags already packed,
the future a religion we could believe in.

(Eric Gamalinda [source])

…and:

What the shamans of ancient Mexico found out when they focused their seeing on the dark sea of awareness was the revelation that the entire cosmos is made of luminous filaments that extend themselves infinitely. Shamans describe them as luminous filaments that go every which way without ever touching one another. They saw that they are individual filaments, and yet, they are grouped in inconceivably enormous masses.

Another of such masses of filaments, besides the dark sea of awareness which the shamans observed and liked because of its vibration, was something they called intent, and the act of individual shamans focusing their attention on such a mass, they called intending. They saw that the entire universe was a universe of intent, and intent, for them, was the equivalent of intelligence. The universe, therefore, was, for them, a universe of supreme intelligence. Their conclusion, which became part of their cognitive world, was that vibratory energy, aware of itself, was intelligent in the extreme. They saw that the mass of intent in the cosmos was responsible for all the possible mutations, all the possible variations which happened in the universe, not because of arbitrary, blind circumstances, but because of the intending done by the vibratory energy, at the level of the flux of energy itself.

(Carlos Castaneda [source])

…and:

Every day as a wide field, every page

1

Standing outside
staring at a tree
gentles our eyes

We cheer
to see fireflies
winking again

Where have our friends been
all the long hours?
Minds stretching

beyond the field
become
their own skies

Windows doors
grow more
important

Look through a word
swing that sentence
wide open

Kneeling outside
to find
sturdy green

glistening blossoms
under the breeze
that carries us silently

2

And there were so many more poems to read!
Countless friends to listen to.
We didn’t have to be in the same room—
the great modern magic.
Everywhere together now.
Even scared together now
from all points of the globe
which lessened it somehow.
Hopeful together too, exchanging
winks in the dark, the little lights blinking.
When your hope shrinks
you might feel the hope of
someone far away lifting you up.
Hope is the thing?…
Hope was always the thing!
What else did we give each other
from such distances?
Breath of syllables,
sing to me from your balcony
please! Befriend me
in the deep space.
When you paused for a poem
it could reshape the day
you had just been living.

(Naomi Shihab Nye [source])

Pick One: Perfect Work, or Work That Doesn’t Fail

by Leave a Comment

[Image: “Lose It In the Trees,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river’s commonplace book:

Tune: “Thinking of Maiden Chin”

I ascend high on the storied pavilion,
Below, mountains scatter in disorder;
The uncultivated plain extends
Far in the light mist.
In the light mist,
Crows have returned to their nests;
The evening horn is heard in the dusk.

Burnt-out incense, left-over wine —
My melancholy heart!
The evening wind hastens
The wu t’ung leaves fall.

The wu t’ung leaves fall,
Again the autumn becomes beautiful,
Again the heart is lonesome.

(Li Qingzhao, translated by Lucy Chow Ho [source; alternative translation by Kenneth Rexroth here])

…and:

How do we learn? I’ve heard it a thousand times, without yet fully applying it to my own experience, that it is axiomatically the height of delusion to think of one meditation object as superior to any other. Phenomena are all the same in being fleeting, unsatisfying, and ungovernable–a true meditator notices whatever is happening and lets it go its own way without preferences.

Let come whatever comes. Let go of all that goes. I’m still working on that one.

(Kate Wheeler [source])

…and:

During his sermon a monk asked him, “In whom does Buddha cause passion?” Chao-chou said, “Buddha causes passion in all of us.” The monk asked, “How do we get rid of it?” Chao-chou said, “Why should we get rid of it?”

(Chang Chung-yuan [source])

…and (italicized portion):

It is not possible to overthrow pride. It is not possible because we ourselves are pride; Pride the Dragon and Pride the Deceiver as it is called in Mythology. But we can witness the defeat of pride because pride can not hold out. Pride is not real so sooner or later it must go down…

We cannot and do not slay the Dragon, that is a medieval idea, I guess. We have to become completely familiar with him and hope that he sleeps. The way things are most of the time, is that he is awake and we are asleep. What we hope is the opposite.

I have known some very young artists who are familiar with the Dragon and know many of his ways. They also recognize fear and are independent of judgement. They recognize themselves as mere shadows in reality. They like to be alone and seem to have had plenty of practice of being alone since early childhood. All that is a tremendous head start in art work and these artists are correctly recognized as geniuses.

We will all get there someday however and do the work that we are supposed to do. Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be. I want to say that all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes and all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step…

What was the reaction of the person who first made a symmetrical house. He felt new contentment in the house. He could see that it reflected himself. He felt a satisfaction in having built it and perhaps an awareness of clarity in his mind as the means. (A contentment with oneself that is success. Do not stop short of real contentment. You may as well never have been born if you remain discontented.)

Perfection is not necessary. Perfection you can not have. If you do what you want to do and what you can do and if you can then recognize it you will be contented. You cannot possibly know what it will be but looking back you will not be surprised at what you have done.

(Agnes Martin [source])

From elsewhere:

The first thing to do is to lift your foot. Breathe in. Put your foot down in front of you, first your heel and then your toes. Feel your feet solid on the Earth. You have already arrived.

(Thich Nhat Hanh [source])

…and:

On the subject of rules and patterns, I think we are absolutely schizophrenic. We are drawn to the symmetry of a snowflake, and we are also drawn to the amorphous shape of a cloud floating high in the sky. We appreciate the regular features of animals of a pure breed, and we are also fascinated by hybrids and mongrels that do not fit into any classification scheme. We honor those people who have lived upright and sensible lives, and we also esteem the mavericks who have broken the mold. In some perplexing and ill-understood manner, we human beings with our oversized craniums seem to have a fondness both for the predictable and the unpredictable, the rational and the irrational, regularity and irregularity. Yes, we are certainly a difficult mess of self-contradictions…

We like order, but we also like surprises. We like the predictable. But we also like the unpredictable. Every once in a while, we demand a fly in the ointment.

(Alan Lightman [source])

…and:

Description

Humans: beings directional,
symmetrical.

With left and right hands,
left and right feet,
ears that hear lullabies
from one side or the other,
nostrils that know fear or food
from one side or the other.

Beings who sneeze
while following a trail
through wet woods
to whose asters and mosses
two eyes bring stereoscopic depth.

Sometimes, it’s true, the ears mishear:
death.

Sometimes the feet’s direction is only away.

Sometimes the hands misunderstand their task.
They tremble.
They ask their wrists: This?

Fingers with such sensitive nerve ends,
such solicitude holding a chisel or cello,
they thought they were meant to inflict only beauty and kindness.

(Jane Hirshfield [source])

Verified by MonsterInsights