1123 :]


1
11
1123
11235
112358
...

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.


--Mary Oliver

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety –

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.


--Mary Oliver

Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.
Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.
The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.
The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small, kind gesture.
Then laps the bowl clean.
Then wants to go out into the world
where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason across the lawn,
then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.
I watch her a little while, thinking:
what more could I do with wild words?
I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.
I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.

--Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

--Mary Oliver

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

--Mary Oliver

"O my friend! why is it that the torrent of genius so seldom bursts forth, so seldom rolls in full-flowing stream, overwhelming your astounded soul? Because, on either side of this stream, cold and respectable persons have taken up their abodes, and, forsooth, their summer-houses and tulip-beds would suffer from the torrent; wherefore they dig trenches, and raise embankments betimes, in order to avert the impending danger."

--Goethe


And somehow, I misremembered cabbage rows here, instead of tulip-beds. Still...

http://www.montegrande.ch/eng/home.php

So moving. So inspiring in different areas. It really touched me...

I wish I had lots of money so that I could send many copies to people.

Which touches on some other inspiring moments this weekend... It may be time to actually start thinking about making some serious dough.

      ...I may love a woman very deeply, but as soon as I want to own her, I am attached, and I don't want to let her go.  No matter what I do, she is free, and every time she walks away from me, if I am attached, it's going to hurt.  If I am detached, I respect her freedom.  She can do whatever she wants to do, and it doesn't hurt me at all.
     By being detached, I respect my own freedom, as well...

     For all of our life we have carried a corpse with us.  That corpse is what we believe we are; it is the human form and all those distorted images we identify with.  It is dead and heavy and it rules our life, but we don't want to let it go.  We know our limitations, we know how to suffer, we know how to react with jealousy, with anger, and all that emotional drama makes us feel secure.  As we said before, letting go of what we know, of what we believe, always creates a little fear and anxiety because we are going into unknown territory.

     We don't have to attach to our beliefs.  If we are not attached to our beliefs and a better concept comes to us, we can let go of the old concept, adopt the new concept, and improve our life much faster.  We can let go of the distorted images we identify with.  We can detach from the agreements and beliefs that limit the expression of our creativity and our love.  This frees our energy to create a new dream.  And what we create is a masterpiece of art: our own life.

--Don Miguel Ruiz

Fries in a twist of deli paper. No bag, no napkin, no frills, no logos, no extra salt needed.

It's good to be back.

from wordsmith.org/words/spurtle.html 

A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

spurtle

PRONUNCIATION:

(SPUR-tl)

MEANING:

noun: A wooden stick for stirring porridge. 

ETYMOLOGY:

Of uncertain origin, perhaps from Latin spatula, or from sprit (a pole to extend a sail on a ship). 

NOTES:

There's a word for everything. And there's a contest for everything. There is one for making porridge, grandly named, The Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship, held annually in Scotland. 

USAGE:

"I know hardly anyone who eats anything much in the morning. ... No one yet has owned up to stirring porridge with a spurtle, pouring milk over blocks of desiccated wheat, or even blasting a banana to a pulp in the blender.

Nigel Slater; Oat Cuisine; The Observer (London, UK); May 19, 2002. 

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

Understand this, I mean to arrive at the truth. The truth, however ugly in itself, is always curious and beautiful to seekers after it. -Agatha Christie, author (1890-1976) 

Your Defects
 

An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,

when they are held up to each other,

that's when the real making begins.

That's what art and crafting are.

A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.

The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again

so they can be used for fine carpentry.

Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor.

Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.



--Rumi

The Generations I Praise

 

Yesterday the beauty of early dawn 

came over me, and I wondered who

my heart would reach toward.  Then

this morning again and you.  Who

am I?  Wind and fire and watery 

ground move me mightily because

they're pregnant with love, love

pregnant with God.  These are the 

early morning generations I praise.


--Rumi

Sitting in the Orchard

 

A man sits in an orchard, fruit trees full

and the vines plump.  He has his head

on his knee, his eyes are closed.

His friend says, "Why stay sunk in mystical 

meditation when the world is like this?

Such visible grace."

He replies, "This outer is an elaboration

of the inner.  I prefer the origin."

Natural beauty is a tree limb reflected

in the water of a creek, quivering there, not

there.  The growing that moves the soul

is more real than tree limbs and reflections.

We laugh and feel happy or sad over all this.

Try instead to get a scent 

of the true orchard.  Taste the vineyard

within the vineyard.

--Rumi

in some form or another, from Rumi:



 

All I know of spirit is this love.

 

One Swaying Being

Love is not condescension, never

that, nor books, nor any marking

on paper, nor what people say of

each other.  Love is a tree with 

branches reaching into eternity

and roots set deep in eternity,

and no trunk!  Have you seen it?

The mind cannot.  Your desiring 

cannot.  The longing you feel for

this love comes from inside you.

pulls my thumbs apart,
bends my straight back,
woollens my eyes,
and presses, relentless, 
me into itself...

But

thumbtips find, realign; 
where brain succumbs, muscles remind: 
serpentined into form's noble line;
pulsed eyes open wide
and find...and find...so sublime,
that ache, again, that ache of sleep.
breathe, rinse, repeat. 

 It's been coming out in 1st person, and the thing about that that makes me wonder is, the favorite fiction I can think of off the top of my head is all 3rd, variously aware.

Another something I've noticed is that this 1st person is tending towards my own voice.  Yesterday it was as if I was writing my life as I was living it.  Or rather living it as I was writing it. 

While it's a wonderful exploratory tool, I'm also finding it challenging.  Interesting stuff...

Date:	2009-11-01 10:40
Subject:	84.7
Security:	Public
Mood:	amused

Turns out nanowrimo's my word count widget counts only 84.7% of what the widget on this machine counts.  So I have another 300 or so to go.  

Good news is, we all get an extra hour today from daylight savings (Franklin or whoever was out to lunch on that one, if ya ask me)

 

...but I'm done for the day!

1719 in under 90 min. !?!  I remember last time it would take me hours to do that.  I'm feeling spiffy with such a start.

So good, it felt, (it's been so long) to just let my fingers dance (I do love the action on this keyboard), and the words tumble from my mind.  Of course, it's all a messy jumble, but it begins to tell a story.  Amazing how some of the plot just comes...where I thought there would be inscrutible homogeneity, now there is tension!  Movement!  Dare I say...purpose!

Aha, but what is it?  mwahaha, you will have to wait, dear reader.  I will tell you this much: allegorical science fiction.  (perhaps there's a better, non-obnoxious new name for that?)  Death, and life, and rebirth.  If you do not like the thinking of such things, then best you move along.  Nothing to see here.  If, however, such notions spark even a mild interest, then there may be something for you.  

The slight, tantalizing traces of a memory, long since (almost) forgotten.  

Ah, hubris!  And this too shall pass...


Thank you nanowrimo!  And Joe and Megan for doing it also, and so inspiring me to begin again.