The Harp of Cnoc I'Chosgair

Harp of Cnoc I'Chosgair, you who bring sleep
to eyes long sleepless;
sweet subtle, plangent, glad, cooling grave.
Excellent instrument with smooth gentle curve,
trilling under red fingers,
musician that has charmed us,
red, lion-like of full melody.

You who lure the bird from the flock,
you who refresh the mind,
brown spotted one of sweet words,
ardent, wondrous, passionate.
You who heal every wounded warrior,
joy and allurement to women,
familiar guide over the dark blue water,
mystic sweet sounding music.

You who silence every instrument of music,
yourself a sweet plaintive instrument,
dweller among the Race of Conn,
instrument yellow-brown and firm.
The one darling of sages,
restless, smooth, sweet of tune,
crimson star above the Fairy Hills,
breast jewel of High Kings.

Sweet tender flowers, brown harp of Diarmaid,
shape not unloved by hosts, voice of cuckoos in May!
I have not heard music ever such as your frame makes
since the time of the Fairy People,
fair brown many coloured bough,
gentle, powerful, glorious.

Sound of the calm wave on the beach,
pure shadowing tree of pure music,
carousals are drunk in your company,
voice of the swan over shining streams.
Cry of the Fairy Women from the Fairy Hill of Ler,
no melody can match you,
every house is sweet stringed through your guidance,
you the pinnacle of harp music.

- Gofraidh Fion O Dalaigh. 1385]

Can't sleep - so some Joseph Campbell

From The Hero with a Thousand Faces:

The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, and terrors up into the mind - whether in dream, broad daylight, or insanity; for the human kingdom beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness goes down into unsuspected Aladdin cave. There, not only jewels but dangerous jinn abide: the inconvenient or insistent psychological powers that we have not thought or dared to integrate into our lives. And they remain unsuspected or, on the other hand, a chance word,the smell of a landscape, the taste of a cup of tea, or the glance of an eye may touch a magic spring and then dangerous messengers begin to appear in the brain.

These are dangerous because they threaten the fabric of security into which we have built ourselves and our family. But they are fiendishly fascinating too, for the carry keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of discovery of the self. Destruction of the world that we have built and in which we live, and of ourselves within it; but then a wonderful reconstruction of the bolder, cleaner, more spacious, and fully human life - that is the lure, the promise and terror, of these disturbing night visitants from the mythological realm we carry within.

And then this, because it feels so true:

The so-called rites of passage, which occupy such a prominent place...(ceremonials of birth, naming, puberty, marriage, burial, etc) are distinguished by formal, and usually very severe exercises of severance, whereby the mind is radically cut away from the attitudes, attachments, and life patterns of the stage being left behind. Then follows an interval of more or less extended retirement, during which are enacted rituals designed to introduce the life adventurer to the forms and proper feelings of his new estate, so that when, at last, the time has ripened for the return to the normal world, the initiate will be as good as reborn.

I can see the moon now through the second pane in the second row of my bedroom window. It's hanging low and pale and hiding a little behind the naked branches of the dogwood that grows in the backyard. It must be very late, or very early rather, as that position signifies its already made most of its journey through the sky this night. Goodnight, moon.

Life and a little bit of death I guess

My former mother-in-law, who's 90, had a stroke last week. This woman was playing golf and carrying her own clubs until she was 85. She was still manually trimming her prized azaleas last summer and doing almost all of her own yard work. Her five-bedroom house was spotless and she still cooked dinner every night. No pizza delivery or TV dinners for her.

We'd had a parting of the ways when her son and I divorced. I felt betrayed by her in a way I never did from her son because I expected nothing else from him. I haven't spoken to her in three years. She is bull-headed, strong as an ox, and a crazy old woman. I love her.

Seeing her there in the hospital bed, amazingly relatively mentally unimpaired, but still...not the same and left-sided weak, breath wheezy, and forcing out the words - she was like a child, looking at me with her ancient, watery eyes, telling me like a child that it hurt when they catheterized her through her nose to pull out the blood clot in her brain and asking when she could go home. She told me she loved me and missed me and that I was her friend. I could only hold her hand and keep kissing her papery old cheek and let my tears fall like a child too.

This, combined with the unexpected loss of my sister-in-law last month has been hard on my family. Charles Dickens said "life is full of ever so many partings welded together," and each is unique and agony but still beautiful in its own way, for this is this wheel of life and death that spins for each of us and we need those that go before to show us the way.

Winter Comfort Food

Gaelic steak is a quick dinner to make, but it tastes gourmet. I consider it a winter meal because it uses heavy cream and the whiskey has to be set aflame. I found the recipe in an Irish cookbook years ago, and I like to serve it with a side of linguine so the cream sauce clings to the pasta. It's pretty with something green on the side, like a spring green salad or peas. This is my tweaked recipe and nice served with a Merlot.

INGREDIENTS
2 Ribeye or New York Strip steaks
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
chopped garlic (to taste)
sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup Irish Whiskey
1 cup heavy cream
freshly ground black pepper to taste
sea salt to taste

DIRECTIONS
Dry steaks with a paper towel and season with black pepper
Heat butter and oil in a frying pan and add steaks
Cook steaks until your preferred doneness, turning only once
Return steaks to a warm plate
Saute the garlic and mushrooms until golden
Pour off excess fat from pan
Return pan to stove and add whiskey
Strike match and light whiskey aflame
Reduce heat and add cream right away to douse the flame
Stir, being sure to scrape up drippings from bottom of pan
Simmer for a few minutes until cream thickens
Pour over steaks and serve immediately

In each life, I wonder how many times we slip off an old persona that no longer fits and have to re-invent ourselves to grow into the become. I think of that scene in the book by C.S. Lewis - Voyage of the Dawn Treader - where Eustace, who'd been transformed into a dragon, had to agonizingly tear off his own skin with his claws to expose the boy within again. It's an image that has stayed with me because it feels true. Change is birth and birth is always pain.

Change isn't about adding new layers. It's about stripping down to the nakedness of who we were born to be. The paradox is that in the "becoming," we find who we were all along...that is, if we have the courage and the will to rip away the dragon scales that protect the soft underbelly of our vulnerabilities. It's agony. Is it worth it? I don't know. Tell you on the other side.

Many rooms

Last night, the wind blew my bedroom window open and it woke me as it banged against the wooden casement. I lay quiet, listening to it rip wildly through the trees and hoping none of the old growth would go down on my new roof. The Juniper that someone planted long ago at the corner angle of my room scraped against the house. I can't decide whether it's a soporific comfort or a jarring reminder of all that's left still undone.

It made me think of others who were caretakers of this house before me and those who will come after. It made me think of the many rooms of our lives and how we inhabit them. We make decisions along the way, for good or for ill, which rooms we choose to inhabit and which we keep locked and hidden away.

I normally don't think of Conrad Aiken as a poet, but this gave me the shivers.

The House Of Dust:
~Conrad Aiken


The snow floats down upon us, mingled with rain . . .
It eddies around pale lilac lamps, and falls
Down golden-windowed walls.
We were all born of flesh, in a flare of pain,
We do not remember the red roots whence we rose,
But we know that we rose and walked, that after a while
We shall lie down again.

The snow floats down upon us, we turn, we turn,
Through gorges filled with light we sound and flow . . .
One is struck down and hurt, we crowd about him,
We bear him away, gaze after his listless body;
But whether he lives or dies we do not know.

One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.
And coiling slowly about him, and laughing at him,
And throwing him pennies, we bear away
A mournful echo of other times and places,
And follow a dream . . . a dream that will not stay.

Down long broad flights of lamplit stairs we flow;
Noisy, in scattered waves, crowding and shouting;
In broken slow cascades.
The gardens extend before us . . . We spread out swiftly;
Trees are above us, and darkness. The canyon fades . . .

And we recall, with a gleaming stab of sadness,
Vaguely and incoherently, some dream
Of a world we came from, a world of sun-blue hills . . .
A black wood whispers around us, green eyes gleam;
Someone cries in the forest, and someone kills.

We flow to the east, to the white-lined shivering sea;
We reach to the west, where the whirling sun went down;
We close our eyes to music in bright cafees.
We diverge from clamorous streets to streets that are silent.
We loaf where the wind-spilled fountain plays.

And, growing tired, we turn aside at last,
Remember our secret selves, seek out our towers,
Lay weary hands on the banisters, and climb;
Climbing, each, to his little four-square dream
Of love or lust or beauty or death or crime.

Once in a blue moon - December 31, 2009

A Blue Moon occurs when two full moons happen in one calendar month and we're due for one on New Year's Eve, 2009. There won't be another blue moon until August 31, 2012 and the next blue moon to occur on New Year’s Eve won't be until 2028.

Jack Horkheimer's Stargazer link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHiUFB_RhGk

From Crystalinks:

The origin of the term Blue Moon is steeped in folklore, and its meaning has changed and acquired new and interesting meanings and nuances over time. The earliest known recorded usage was in 1528, in a pamphlet entitled Rede Me and Be Not Wrothe: "Yf they say the mone is belewe, we must believe that it is true". This implies the expression had a meaning of something that was absurd, and bears close resemblance to another moon-related adage first recorded in the following year "They woulde make men beleue ... that ye Moone is made of grene chese".

Today, happiness is the sound of hammers and saws

I can't stop smiling hearing the sounds of long-awaited roof repairs going on above my head. Having a bedroom that doesn't rain and a ceiling not in imminent danger of caving in, makes me feel safe and happy! Old houses can be great, but you better have a good contractor!! Love those guys!




Soooo glad it'll be safe for Santa up there now!!

From my bedroom windows this morning...

Snow!! It was 65 degrees two days ago.

Can't sleep

Time to call out a night song - Into the West.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cilaXxRbpr4

New favorite workout song

It's great for elliptical work - Ciara and Justin Timberlake, LoveSexMagic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b14Vedu-b6I

The Living Universe

The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn."
- T.H. White, The Once and Future KingI was watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos on the science channel last night and it started me thinking again about how the human consciousness seems to be implanted with concepts that create an inherent, universal, internal structure from which we, as individuals, build outward depending on our own nature and nurture.

One of those inherent concepts is awe and wonder at the nature of the universe and the seeking to explain our relation to it. All ages of man have built stories about the star-strewn dome of heaven, which is paradoxically both utterly familiar and utterly inexplicable to us. Almost everyone has laid on their back in the grass to watch the nighttime sky and had the sensation of the earth spinning on its axis as the stars hurtled away to unknown destinations and felt dizzy from the sheer magnitude of it.Duane Elgin, author of "The Living Universe" writes:

"Because we find evidence of primary perception or some form of consciousness operating at the level of atoms, molecules, single-cell organisms, plants, and animals, we should not be surprised that sentience is a basic property of the universe. It is when we move to the human realm that we find the most direct evidence that consciousness is not confined within the brain; it is, instead, a field property of the universe itself.

All that exists is vibrating with its unique resonance. We can listen for the hum of existence. In meeting another person, we can listen for the unique song of their soul. In each new situation, we can open to the feeling-tones and qualities of resonance people express. We can discover subtle feelings of harmony or disharmony and express our unique songline as we move through life." ."

I think it's an interesting thought that the universe could be sentient, but where I think that sentience can actually be found is from the collective vibrating strings as expressed by theoretical physics. The string theory that describes the known fundamental forces and matter as a mathematically complete system affirms a universe paradigm wherein all things are in communication with each other at all times and that all objects are "interrelated."I think most of the world in which we walk is invisible - atoms, thoughts, quarks, gravity, spirit, sound waves, desires, and so on. Why should it seem untoward that the universe itself has deeper complexity than its own physical manifestation - a complexity created by the collective consciousness of all that which it contains?

After the Storm

Heat's up, tea's brewed
Clothes strewn around the room
Looks like a wind swept through
Made a wild man out of you
And doesn't anger turn you on
An expectation of a calm
After the storm

And your body feels so warm
After the storm

The wind's blowing the moon down
Underneath the eiderdown
You're taking me to town
And you're tossing me around
And you come on like a hurricane
I'm settling like your weathervane
After the storm

And your body feels so warm
After the storm

And you come on like a hurricane
I'm settling like your weathervane
After the storm
And your body feels so warm
After the storm

Cooking is soothing to the soul

There are some foods that can act as a balm to the spirit. Other than the usual, like homemade macaroni and cheese and meatloaf and mashed potatoes, I like grilled chicken over pesto with mango salsa. It tastes of love and summer and the ocean's salty brine. It has the sweet and savory combination that's so coveted by both our taste buds and world-renowned chefs.
Mango is such a sensual fruit with its stippled green and red skin hiding the soft, orange sweetness within. In combination with the woodiness of the basil leaves, it makes a beautiful marriage.

What is love?

When my father died, in his wallet, was a crackly photograph of my mother taken at the beach when they were first married. She was 22 and was wearing a bathing suit and was laughing into the camera. There was also a lock of her brown hair that she had cut for him once when they were still dating.

He had carried these things in his wallet for the 40 years they were married. There is love, and there is great love. I'm glad they had great love.

Milk and Crackers

It's interesting how memories are jogged sometimes. A photo of simple buckwheat in a bowl with milk made me remember one night when I was maybe eight or nine. My older sister and I shared a room, and we were giggling and jumping on our beds and talking until late into the night.

Our mother had called up the stairway to tell us to settle, but after a few minutes of whispering under the covers, we'd be right back at it again. Finally, we heard our Dad's voice calling us to come downstairs. Eeek! We thought we were in for it!

Dad was standing at the foot of the stairs. He had three bowls. In the bowls were saltines crumbled in milk with a little sugar sprinkled on top. My sister and I sat down on the steps with our bowls and he leaned against the wall and told us about how during the Depression, when he was a boy, this food was often all his mother had to feed her family and how he still liked to eat it sometimes.

I can't say I loved the taste of it; it seemed an odd juxtaposition of flavors, but just sitting there, not being in trouble, and having Dad talk to us about his own childhood in such a companionable way is such a sweet memory of him.

I think about my father now and I'm proud of him. He went into the Navy at 16 with his mother's permission and married my mom at 20 when he got out. He and my mom made a family of 8 children. He often worked an extra part-time job or even two in addition to his regular job as a mechanical engineer to support us. He was hard-working, loyal, and strong in a quiet way. He very clearly loved my mother very much, but was a shower more than a teller. He died rather suddenly 19 years ago this month, just before he was due to retire.

I love you, Dad! I didn't tell you enough.

Chief Seattle's Message to the U.S. Government - 1854

The Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.

The Great Chief also sends us words of friendship and good Will. This is kind of him, since we know he has little need of our friendship in return. But we will consider your offer. For we know that if we do not sell, the white man may come with guns and take our land.

How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.

If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees caries the memories of the red man.

The white man's dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man -- all belong to the same family.

So, when the Great Chief in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land, he asks much of us. So, the Great Chief sends word he will reserve us a place so that we can live comfortably to ourselves. He will he our father and we will be his children. So we will consider your offer to buy our land. But it will not be easy. For this land is sacred to us.

This shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred, and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lake tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my fathers father. The rivers are our brothers, they quench our thirst. The rivers carry our canoes, and feed our children. If we sell you our land, you must remember, and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours, and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother.

The red man has always retreated before the advancing White man, as the mist of the mountain runs before the morning sun. But the ashes of our fathers are sacred. Their graves are holy ground, and so these hills, these trees, this portion of earth is consecrated to us. We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy, and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers graves behind, and he does not care. He kidnaps the earth from his children. He does not care. His fathers graves and his children's birthright are forgotten. He treats his mother the earth, and his brother, the sky as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright heads. His appetite will devour the earth and leave behind only a desert.

I do not know. Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring or the rustle of insects' wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night? I am a red man and do not understand. The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with the pinon pine.

The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath -- the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes, Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench. But if we sell you our land, you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its Spirit with all life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. And the wind must also give our children the spirit of life. And if we sell you our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to take the wind that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we decide to accept, I will rank one condition: The white man must treat the beasts of this land as his brothers.

I am a savage and do not understand any other way. I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train. I am a savage and I do not understand how the smoking iron horse can be more important than the buffalo that we kill only to stay alive.

What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man.

All things are connected.You must teach your children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of our grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground they spit upon themselves.

This we know. The earth does not belong to man. man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which unites one family.

All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.But we wilI consider your offer to go to the reservation you have for my; People. We will live apart, and in peace. It matters little Where we spend the rest of our days. Our children have seen their fathers humbled in defeat. Our warriors have felt shame, and after defeat they turn their days in idleness and contaminate thieir bodies with sweet foods and strong drink. It matters little where we pass the rest of our days. They are not many. A few more hours, a few more winters, and none of the children of the great tribes that once lived on this earth or that roam now in small bands in the woods will be left to mourn the graves of a people once as powerful and hopeful as yours. But why should I mourn the passing of my people? Tribes are made of men, nothing more. Men come and go like the waves of the sea.

Even the White man, whose God walks and talks with him as fritnd to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all; we shall see. One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover: our God is the same God. You may think now that you own him as you wish to own our land; but you cannot. He is the God of man, and his compassion is equal for the red man and the white. This earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its Creator. The white too shall pass; perhaps sooner than all other tribes. Continue to contaminate your bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.

But in your perishing you wiIl shine brightly, fired by the strength of the God who brought you to this Iand and for some speciaI purpose gave you dominion over this Iand and over the red man. That destiny is a mystery to us, for we do not understand when the buffalo are all sIaughtered, the wild horses are tamed, the secret corners of the forest heavy with the scent of many men, and the view of the ripe hills blotted by talking wires. Where is the thicket? Gone. Where is the eagle Gone. And What is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

So we will consider your offer to buy our land. If we agree, it wiIl be to secure the reservation you have promised. There, perhaps, we may live out our brief days as we wish. When the last red man has vanished from this earth, and his memnory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, these shores and forests will still hold the spirits of my people. For they love this earth as the newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So if we sell you our land, love it as we've loved it. Care for it as we’ve cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the Iand as it is when you take it. And with all your strength, with all your mind, with all your heart, preserve it for your children. and love it . . . as God loves us all.

One thing we know. Our God is the same God. This earth is precious to him. Even the white man cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We shall see.

A Forest Hymn

~konstantin vasiliev


My heart is awed within me when I think
Of the great miracle that still goes on,
In silence, round me---the perpetual work
Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed
Forever. Written on thy works I read
The lesson of thy own eternity.
Lo! all grow old and die---but see again,
How on the faltering footsteps of decay
Youth presses----ever gay and beautiful youth
In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees
Wave not less proudly that their ancestors
Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost
One of earth's charms: upon her bosom yet,
After the flight of untold centuries,
The freshness of her far beginning lies.

~William Cullen Bryant

Interconnections

In this interconnected universe, every improvement we make in our private world improves the world at large for everyone. We all float on the collective level of consciousness of mankind, so that any increment we add comes back to us. We all add to our common buoyancy by our efforts to benefit life. It is a scientific fact that what is good for you is good for me.
~Dr. David Hawkins

The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?
~Leo Tolstoy

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.
~Mohandas Gandhi


Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.
~Anais Nin
















Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?
~Stephen Hawking

I can feel

Fall in the air. There's a sound like rain, but it's only the dry, yellow leaves rustling through the treetops as the breeze shakes them. A slightly stronger gust, and they scatter across the yard in freefall.




Now is the dying of summer and being born into the time of harvest. An endless cycle of seasons, but the Earth knows exactly what to do in an infinitely intricate dance. Crocuses know they should push through the soil in February even under a blanket of snow, and the green berries on the Liriope turn to black globes in autumn. It seems like magic, except it's science!

A rare white buck

discovered recently in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire.

Today is a soft day

as they call it in Ireland, with grey skies and an intermittent drizzle. It's a good name for the way it feels. It makes you happy to be cosy inside, but it's not so torrential that you don't want to go outside and soak in the feel of the heavy, wet air on your skin or watch as a bead of rain slides its way down the satiny finish of a leaf.

Anglo Saxon Treasure

Some of these artifacts from an Anglo-Saxon horde found recently in Staffordshire, England clearly have Celtic influences or were of Celtic origin. I'm stunned by their beauty and craftsmanship. I think these pieces rival or surpass our contemporary work.

Tonight, in the dark

I sat outside, and the rains fell.

Helen of Troy

Wild flight on flight against the fading dawn
The flames' red wings soar upward duskily.
This is the funeral pyre and Troy is dead
That sparkled so the day I saw it first,
And darkened slowly after. I am she
Who loves all beauty -- yet I wither it.

Why have the high gods made me wreak their wrath --
Forever since my maidenhood to sow
Sorrow and blood about me? Lo, they keep
Their bitter care above me even now.
It was the gods who led me to this lair,
That tho' the burning winds should make me weak,
They should not snatch the life from out my lips.
Olympus let the other women die;
They shall be quiet when the day is done
And have no care to-morrow. Yet for me
There is no rest. The gods are not so kind
To her made half immortal like themselves.

It is to you I owe the cruel gift,
Leda, my mother, and the Swan, my sire,
To you the beauty and to you the bale;
For never woman born of man and maid
Had wrought such havoc on the earth as I,
Or troubled heaven with a sea of flame
That climbed to touch the silent whirling stars
And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.

Have I not made the world to weep enough?
Give death to me. Yet life is more than death;
How could I leave the sound of singing winds,
The strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,
Or shut my eyes forever to the spring?
I will not give the grave my hands to hold,
My shining hair to light oblivion.Have those who wander through the ways of death,
The still wan fields Elysian, any love
To lift their breasts with longing, any lips
To thirst against the quiver of a kiss?
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again,
To make the people love, who hate me now.
My dreams are over, I have ceased to cry
Against the fate that made men love my mouth
And left their spirits all too deaf to hear
The little songs that echoed through my soul.

I have no anger now. The dreams are done;
Yet since the Greeks and Trojans would not see
Aught but my body's fairness, till the end,
In all the islands set in all the seas,
And all the lands that lie beneath the sun,
Till light turn darkness, and till time shall sleep,
Men's lives shall waste with longing after me,
For I shall be the sum of their desire,
The whole of beauty, never seen again.

And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake
With "Helen!" on their lips, and in their eyes
The vision of me. Always I shall be
Limned on the darkness like a shaft of light
That glimmers and is gone. They shall behold
Each one his dream that fashions me anew; --
With hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars
Dark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow
Like burnished gold that still retains the fire.
Yea, I shall haunt until the dusk of time
The heavy eyelids filled with fleeting dreams.

I wait for one who comes with sword to slay --
The king I wronged who searches for me now;
And yet he shall not slay me. I shall stand
With lifted head and look within his eyes,
Baring my breast to him and to the sun.
He shall not have the power to stain with blood
That whiteness -- for the thirsty sword shall fall
And he shall cry and catch me in his arms,
Bearing me back to Sparta on his breast.
Lo, I shall live to conquer Greece again!

-Sara Teasdale

It breaks my heart a little each time

no matter how many times I hear it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSjmvU_8xLY

and because Love battles

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.

Pablo Neruda

Spiraling by Sheila Wolk

Song du jour

href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4udD8dwi4U&feature=channel_page">

All is Full of Love by Bjork. It's simple but powerful and sometimes, you just have to take that dive.

Beautiful Swimmer

I bought a beta fish today. It's a male - the beautiful sex of the species. He's iridescent green and blue with a ruffled fin that undulates as he swims. He swims in a cylindrical vessel made of heavy glass and with the top edges fluted outward. The light shines through it and the water is crystal clear. There's a green banana plant set in smooth black rocks in the bottom of the bowl.

He swims around the plant, down to the shining rocks on the bottom, surfaces occasionally. He'll always be alone in his glass cage. He'd rip another fish to shreds. That's his way to be.

Joseph Campbell

"And then the fact that James Joyce grabbed me. You know that wonderful living in a realm of significant fantasy, which is Irish, is there in the Arthurian romances; it's in Joyce; and it's in my life."

This morning, early, I couldn't sleep because there's too much on my mind and my heart is heavy. I made a cup of tea and went and sat on the front porch and it was cool and half-light and the mist still floated around the evergreens in shifting patterns and everything was silent and still.

Just as silently, three red bucks appeared no more than 50 feet from me in the clearing of the lawn in front of my house. They just stood there, as if waiting for something, and all three turned their heads to look at me, but not at all in a threatened posture. After a bit, two of them turned and walked away into the woods across from my yard. The third stayed though. For a full minute, he continued to stand quietly, relaxed, and stare at me unmoving and he was beautiful and strong and young. Then he too withdrew and disappeared into the woods.

It made me think of the role of deer in Celtic mythology, which is that of messenger or guide from the Otherworld. I can see why the Celts held deer to be supernatural creatures. They are luminous in their grace and line. Sometimes the fey in me is hard to deal with. I feel like I have one foot in each world but don't fully belong in either. This has always been so, ever since I can remember.

Catcher in the Rye

When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down that goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, "Sleep tight, ya morons!" I'll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out. Some stupid guy had thrown peanut shells all over the stairs, and I damn near broke my crazy neck.

Holden Caulfield

A' crochadh bhon t-slabhraidh
nam dhà leth;
a' seòladh air cuan
ach ceangailte ri creagan m' àraich;
uaine agus flùran
a' sreap gu grian
agus nèamh;
creagan donn a' bàthadh
fo mhuir agus feamainn
agus dorchadas
Faisg air daoine:
gan coimhead,
gan cluinntinn,
ach cha ruig iad orm -
tha mi ro fhad' air falbh.
Chan urrainn dhomh fàgaiI,
chan urra inn dhomh tilleadh,
's cha tig an dà leth ri chèile.


Anna Frater

If you go chasing rabbits...

Alice: Which road do I take?

Cheshire Cat: Where do you want to go?

Alice: I don't know.

Cheshire Cat: Then, it doesn't matter. If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

--Yeats

I think I hate this place and then I walk down the hill of my street toward the dead end and I see the old homes built pre-civil war and during and after with their different styles of architecture and their different way of being - different their one-style-suits all paradigm.

As I walk down the dead end hill in the dusk and the cool of the evening - I smell the pine and the bottlebrush and the sweet scent of wisteria and phlox and I don't know what else...something ephemeral, yet lasting in the mind and memory.

I've been your caretaker for too many years. I want to be free of you and all your memories. I want the sound of the Atlantic in my ears at night and the brine breeze floating into the casement windows of a cottage in Kerry somewhere, the place of my ancestors and me. I don't want to hear your train whistle on the tracks down the ravine from me at 3:00 am in the morning reminding me of places that I'll never go or see the blue and white lights of a plane on its landing path to BWI flashing in my bedroom window coming from places I'll never be. I want you gone and out of my life.

I'll hardly miss you at all except at dusk with the evening star hanging over the tree tops and when the mist falls down at dawn and when the rain beats a gentle pattern on the old hand-blown glass of the remaining original windows with their wavy pattern that makes everything surreal on the outside of you. One day, you'll fall down and I'll laugh.

A little moth found its way somehow into my tanktop tonight. Its wings beat frantically against my skin and it startled me. I didn't know what was causing such a ruckus in my shirt so I flung it off thinking something horrible was in there, trying to get me!

It was just a brown moth trying like mad to free itself, and in its struggle to free itself, it damaged a wing. I don't think it will fly again.

Struggling against being trapped - by a white, cotton tanktop or by the events of its life - what subtle strings moved destiny to its outcome? The moth could have either continued to struggle or it could have just passively waited for some other event - two choices. Paths not taken, dreams not lived. Either way, its fate was sealed.

I'm going.

A fine line

exists between having a dream and chasing an illusion. It can be hard to figure out which is which when I'm right in the middle of it.

Being rational about a dream is essentially antithetical, but when it involves changing other people's lives as well as my own, I suppose morally, every consideration has to be examined. It's PAINFUL to open the door to the possibility that maybe I'll never be able to have what I think I want because it isn't "real."

I guess I'm being lead to examine that possibility though.

Ugh!!!

A Lemon

Out of lemon flowers
loosed
on the moonlight, love's
lashed and insatiable
essences,
sodden with fragrance,
the lemon tree's yellow
emerges,
the lemons
move down
from the tree's planetarium

Delicate merchandise!
The harbors are big with it-
bazaars
for the light and the
barbarous gold.
We open
the halves
of a miracle,
and a clotting of acids
brims
into the starry
divisions:
creation's
original juices,
irreducible, changeless,
alive:
so the freshness lives on
in a lemon,
in the sweet-smelling house of the rind,
the proportions, arcane and acerb.

Cutting the lemon
the knife
leaves a little cathedral:
alcoves unguessed by the eye
that open acidulous glass
to the light; topazes
riding the droplets,
altars,
aromatic facades.

So, while the hand
holds the cut of the lemon,
half a world
on a trencher,
the gold of the universe
wells
to your touch:
a cup yellow
with miracles,
a breast and a nipple
perfuming the earth;
a flashing made fruitage,
the diminutive fire of a planet.

Pablo Neruda

Among Strangers

Last night I dreamt that some kind of illness was circulating that was forcing people to stay quarantined. Where ever I was, there were six huge rooms where people were staying, but each was locked away from the other.

There was a deadline for when you had to be in one of those rooms before they were locked and no one else could come in or go out until whatever it was had passed. I wasn't in any of the rooms yet though, because I was out looking for something, but I don't know what. I kept looking and looking with a sense of urgency, all the while knowing that time was getting short before the doors were locked and safety was out of reach.

Finally, I made it back to the room just in time that I had been assigned without finding what I was looking for. The room I was in had tables filled with all kinds of food and drink and people circulating talking and laughing in expensive evening wear, not worrying or caring about what was going on outside. I saw someone then in the crowd that I feared and wanted to escape from, and though I couldn't see them, I knew that the other rooms were not as filled, yet they were less empty. I also knew that what I was looking for was in one of the other rooms. I woke up running up a flight of stairs toward a door that I didn't know if I could open or not.

Full moon dream...

Postmodern Poetics

Lateralus

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn beyond the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition, missing opportunities and I must
Feed my will to feel my moment drawing way outside the lines.

Black then white are all I see in my infancy.
red and yellow then came to be, reaching out to me.
lets me see there is so much more
and beckons me to look through to these infinite possibilities.
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine
drawn outside the lines of reason.
Push the envelope. Watch it bend.

Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.
Withering my intuition leaving all these opportunities behind.

Feed my will to feel this moment urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random.
Reaching out to embrace whatever may come.

I embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected
enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired, to fathom the power,
to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
of our divinity and still be a human.

With my feet upon the ground I lose myself
between the sounds and open wide to suck it in,
I feel it move across my skin.
I'm reaching up and reaching out,
I'm reaching for the random or whatever will bewilder me.
And following our will and wind we may just go where no one's been.
We'll ride the spiral to the end and may just go where no one's been.

--Tool

God's Grandeur

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Feeling sooo emo today :)

oooooh yeah

Humanity i love you

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shops and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it's there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

ee cummings

Humanity, I hate you

I walked along the waterfront today and there were so many people who had come out to enjoy the beautiful spring day. I watched my fellow humans and felt disconnected from them as though I was not of their species nor they of mine, yet, at least part of me knows that's not true. How can it be possible to be among huge crowds of other creatures that share my genetic coding to the nth degree and still feel so utterly alone?

I was thinking about that e.e. cummings poem "Humanity I love you" and completely understanding his attitude toward the other members of our species. I feel this dichotomous rip between the reality that we are each connected and the reality that we are each alone.

Looking around at the different aspects of genetic coding that were manifesting themselves in eyes, and hair, and height, and weight, and walk, and attitude, and intelligence - it's clear that we are related in a most profound way as descendants of the primal adam and eve - the ancient, seminal gene-givers of our kind who split us away from other, less viable, genetic alternatives.

Yet, it's also clear that we each are little universes of our own, capable only of looking out from within through eyes that are confined by the parameters of who we are by nature and nurture. We can only experience the reality of others by our own. We are bio-microcosms, intent on our own climate, our own fauna, our own non-extinction.

Perhaps I'm noticing this more right now because the dichotomy in my own nature has been raging so strongly within me and I've been trying to make some kind of peace with both. I've felt like a wild animal on a villainous rampage destroying everything in my path to assuage my own pain and at the same time, like a wounded animal seeking a quiet place that's peaceful and calm to lick its wounds.

What I've found though, is that now the wild, wounded animal can still desire destruction, even in that safe place. That is the part that must be laid down. There is no wrong thing in being a destroyer/warrior when circumstances that make it necessary prevail. When it's slay or be slain, fight or be broken - the destroyer, the warrior - is glorious when unleashed.

But that's the bane and the beauty of the warrior side of the spirit, it doesn't like being caged. Once freed, but no longer needed, the next fight has to be to battle that inner warrior back into submission in order to find the calm center again. I have a horrible, sneaking suspicion the only way to do that is through love.

Oh humanity. I love you. Or at least...I want to. : )

OMG

I walked outside and above me all was pink with indigo clouds and the trees were silhouetted against the luminous sky. It smelled like I think Heaven might - like spring and earth and lily of the valley. I kept breathing in because such sublime moments are to be treasured for always. Life is good. : ) Thanks, You.

Leonhard Euler

True story...

So in 1968, a young Italian scientist (Veneziano) was combing through books and documents hunting for work that could describe the strong force (that which holds the nucleus of atoms together). His search was proving futile until he found an old book on the history of mathematics and found a two-hundred year old equation that not only described strong force, but that he was able to use as a proof for the string theory. That equation was written in the mid-seventeen hundreds by a Swiss scientist (living mostly in Berlin and Russia) - Leonhard Euler. How awesome is that?

Euler also wrote another formula (Euler's identity), which has been called "the most remarkable formula in mathematics" by Richard Feynman. In 1988, readers of the Mathematical Intelligencer voted it "the Most Beautiful Mathematical Formula Ever."

A biographer said of him that most of his mathematical arguments were guesswork without any solid physical reasoning. It struck me, because that's EXACTLY what Einstein said about his earliest (and most influential) physics work. I remember reading his biography and he said something like...if I had known all the "laws" of physics at the time, I never would have formulated the theory of relativity. Einstein was working in the Swiss Patent Office when he wrote that work.

I think it's interesting that such far-reaching concepts were born using imagination, not utilitarian function. It's the dreamers leaving behind the confines of the minutiae of parse and diagram who can make the leap into the unknown in order to discover new worlds. Good lesson, I think.

More spirals - Celtic

Moon:


Sun:

Transcendence

freed
from the gravity of
this
earthbound confine
soon I will dive
into the loosening
blue
muscle and sinew
taut
deep breath gasp and
free fall
into the primordial dream
of dark
wet
blue
another of my
own kind waits there
and
i will surrender to him
my spirit
in the depths

Sonnet XXXIV (You are the daughter of the sea)

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.

--Pablo Neruda


Omg, I love Pablo Neruda. His use of words is so passionate and sensual. He makes you want to fall into them and surrender, like a lover brusquely denying an act and then giving in anyway.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel's granary is full,
And the harvest's done

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever-dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful - a faery's child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna-dew,
And sure in language strange she said -
'I love thee true'.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sighed full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dreamed - Ah! woe betide! -
The latest dream I ever dreamt
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
hey cried - 'La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!'

I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.

- Keats

awake to the sound as they peel apart the skin
they pick and they pull
trying to get their fingers in

I've been thinking of that NIN song lately and wondering why someone would dig and tear at the same tender spot until it becomes a wound, especially when they must know their words are hurting.

The Mermaid - Howard Pyle

I am a creature of the Fey
Prepare to give your soul away
My spell is passion and it is art
My song can bind a human heart
And if you chance to know my face
My hold shall be your last embrace.

--Brenna Gwynn

Bavarian Gentians

Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you’ve got to say, and say it hot.

D.H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930)



Not every man has gentians in his house
in soft September, at slow, sad Michaelmas.

Bavarian gentians, big and dark, only dark
darkening the daytime, torch-like, with the smoking blueness of Pluto's
gloom,
ribbed and torch-like, with their blaze of darkness spread blue
down flattening into points, flattened under the sweep of white day
torch-flower of the blue-smoking darkness, Pluto's dark-blue daze,
black lamps from the halls of Dis, burning dark blue,
giving off darkness, blue darkness, as Demeter's pale lamps give off
light,
lead me then, lead the way.

Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
let me guide myself with the blue, forked torch of this flower
down the darker and darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness
even where Persephone goes, just now, from the frosted September
to the sightless realm where darkness is awake upon the dark
and Persephone herself is but a voice
or a darkness invisible enfolded in the deeper dark
of the arms Plutonic, and pierced with the passion of dense gloom,
among the splendor of torches of darkness, shedding darkness on
the lost bride and her groom.

-- D. H. Lawrence

detachment

I've been thinking about detachment in the Buddhist sense, meaning - the determination to be free - not clinging and craving for something or someone. It's silly to be attached to a thing (like a computer) or even people that, for whatever reason, don't work in our lives. I don't find detachment from things that difficult. It makes me feel less burdened when I can give something up that really has no further use in my life. I will admit to having twinges when my computer of five years crashed. It had all my bookmarks, and my RSS feeds, and my favorite desktop shortcuts, but after a couple of days, I realized all that could be easily enough replaced!!

Detachment from people or a specific person is an entirely different matter! The concept of relating to other humans in a detached way is anomalous to our nature - we are social animals first and foremost. I don't think it's wrong to be passionate in how you relate to people. The trick is finding a good balance between emotional intensity and still being capable of maintaining some rationality about it. Is that possible? Quasimodo didn't think so when he loved Esmeralda. The sorrow of that love prompted him to ask the gargoyle..."why was I not made of stone, like thee"?

It'd be a lot easier to maintain detachment that way, but not so good for living your life with passion and intensity. : )

A weird little moment of synchronicity

Okay, so this was a little weird, not a lot weird, but still...

I decide to write a short story about Niamh, daughter of Manannan mac Lir, Celtic god of the sea and ruler of Tir na n'Og, Land of the Ever Young aka The Otherworld. My grandmother's people were from the Isle of Man, and those stories interest me. Anyway, I'm beginning to write the story and of all things, I pick PEA PODS as a conduit of power for my protagonist, and it's a story that involves the sea. Pea pods, I ask you??!!! How likely is that? Not likely, I should think.

Anyhow, I'm writing the story and need to look up some info about Manannan mac Lir and as I'm reading I came across this:

"He is also believed to have been a magician who could make an illusory fleet from sedge or pea shells in order to discourage would-be invaders."

Is that weird, or what? I do not recall ever reading such a thing. I do not believe I have. What strange little string brought that bit of information to my mind? I'll probably never know...but I can guess. : )

Con te Partiro

When I'm alone
I dream on the horizon
And words fail
Yes, I know there is no light
In a room
Where the sun is not there
If you are not with me
At the windows
Show everyone my heart
Which you set alight
Enclose within me
The light you
Encountered on the street

Time to say goodbye
To countries I never
Saw and shared with you
Now, yes, I shall experience them
I'll go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know
No, no, exist no longer
With you I shall experience them

When you are far away
I dream on the horizon
And words fail
And yes, I know
That you are with me
You, my moon, are here with me
My sun, you are here with me
With me, with me, with me

Time to say goodbye
To countries I never
Saw and shared with you
Now, yes, I shall experience them
I'll go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know
No, no, exist no longer
With you I shall re-experience them
I'll go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know
No, no, exist no longer
With you I shall re-experience them
I'll go with you
I with you

Dilemma

This is almost like the picture in my mind of "my" house, but maybe not quite. Still, it makes me feel like NOT being patient and waiting for a more logical time to do this. The heart wants what it wants. Stupid heart.

I just sent an inquiry about the property!! It will probably be too expensive, but I have to know!!!!!

Love

Colliding Spiral Galaxies of Arp 274


We are two trunks ignited by lightning
Two flames in the midnight forest;
We are two meteors flying in the night,
The double-stinging arrow of a single fate!

We are two horses whose reins are held
By the same hand, - bitten by one spur;
We are two eyes of a single gaze,
Two trembling wings of one dream.

We are a pair of shadows grieving
Over the holy marble grave,
Where ancient Beauty slumbers.

The two-voiced mouth of secrets shared,
We two make a single Sphinx.
The two arms of a single cross.

Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov--

Wind and Stars

Pulsar Nebula B1509



No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.

— Quintus Ennius 239 - c. 169 BC

Synchronicity

....a connection necessarily exists between the psyche to be explained and the objective space-time continuum. These discoveries not only help loosen physics from the iron grip of its materialistic world, but confirmed what I recognized intuitively that matter and consciousness, far from operating independently of each other are, in fact, interconnected in an essential way, functioning as complementary aspects of a unified reality.

Carl Jung--

I love the way Carl Jung thinks because he was courageous enough to develop theories that fluidly move from objective reality to subjective, experiential phenomena. These two things are not antithetical at all but are concepts that normally aren't studied within overlapping spheres. I admit to having a difficult time with how he embraced astrology - but considering his brilliance in other areas, I guess I'd be foolish to not at least take into consideration his thought processes on that subject.

On the other hand, to give skeptical thought its due - I think that the theory of synchronicity can often be caused by itself, meaning that once you become aware of some phenomenon, it becomes more of a conscious noticing than an actual random event. For instance, after reading about the 11:11 number, I began noticing it all the time (okay, twice a day anyway!). That number certainly occurred before but only came into my consciousness once I obtained knowledge of its "significance." I don't think that this is real synchronicity. Synchronicity must be comprised of events that are completely random and independent of our thought or knowledge.

Study in Haiku II

Metamorphosis.
Painted butterfly becomes
brown caterpillar.

Night

wheeling against the darkness,
birds of prey.
I can hear them.
they shriek with greed,
as they wait for their prize.
Let them come.
I raise my fists
and laugh,
to the hungry skies.

Heaven Above, Heaven Below

Night opens wide the burning Macrocosm,-
And heaven's hierarchies come into view
Lo, the spirit sings, and the elements dance
Interwoven with snaky locks of starlight.

And the Microcosm grows distinct in the deep night:
We hear the roar of elements spinning inside us,-
And behold our own hierarchical assemblage
From close stars to dim-eyed spots of light.

There is a milky way in the soul as in the heavens;
There is a multitude in both of these creations:
The same word is stamped in both of these books -

And twin scales measure the same weight.
There is a He in the flames of depths revealed;
There is an I in the deepest miracles.

Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov

Goodnight, Moon : )

bane

fell beauty,
slender cold.

whetted blade,
glinting bright.

battle call,
metal sings.

iron slides,
piercing keen.

time gushes,
tumbles falls

spills among
the scattered stars.

Study in Haiku I

Wild hart, deer that hides.
I lay quiet, secretly
waiting for the moon.

Gone Away

I wonder where they went? How could they have left such a beautiful, tranquil place? Was it voluntary or were they forced out by circumstances? It makes me feel like I want to fix it, to carry the stones by hand, one by one, to rebuild the walls, and to cut the thatch for a roof to protect its inhabitants from the open skies, and to build a peat fire in the hearth so that the fragrant smoke wafts up the chimney and down the hill, beckoning passers by to come in and away from the evening chill.

I wonder who lived and loved there and what the stories are behind those broken walls? Were they looking for other lives, or did the hand of fate set them on a road different from the one that they would have chosen for themselves?

Interconnected Universe

So I read Michio Kaku's book on Hyperspace a few years ago and fell in love with string theory! String theory postulates that all matter consists of connected vibrating strings and that they are in communication with each other at all times. String theory is symmetrical, inclusive, and beautiful. Dirac wins again.

What really gets me about these concepts is how the principle of unity is showcased by each one. All say that at some fundamental level we are connected in a way that we can't perceive but everything affects everything else.


"The symmetries of the subatomic realm are but remnants of the symmetries of higher dimensional space."

Michio Kaku--



"In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: we look out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we don't see is that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the waters."

Dr. C. George Boeree --



"Albert Einstein theorized that space and time are intertwined and that matter is inseparable from an ever-present quantum energy field and this is the sole reality underlying all appearances.

Physicists found that the most basic atomic particles in the cosmos comprise the very fabric of the material universe. An electron, for example, can be shown to be both a wave and a particle depending on the observer's perspective.

This wave/particle duality means that everything is joined or connected together. Space and time is composed of the same essence as matter.

A principle related to this duality is Bell's Theorem. This is a quantum physics law that says that once connected, objects affect one another forever no matter where they are. Following the principle of Bell's Theorem...an invisible stream of energy will always connect any two objects that have been connected in any way in the past.

StarStuffs--

I know Spring is almost here for sure...

I heard the tree frogs tonight for the first time this year. : )

They sound like Spring!

http://www.enature.com/fieldguides/detail.asp?recnum=AR0020

Finding your place in space

Knowing our right place and then actually finding it is hard!!! Kudos for trying, Tiger!!!

Carl Jung - Collective Unconscious and Ancestral Memory

Carl Jung's theory on the collective unconscious and ancestral memory put my world on tilt. That theory seems to explain in a rather simple and beautiful way things that have been bouncing around in my brain. Also, it meets Dirac's standards of beauty in underlying principle so I'm all like...booYAH...this has gotta be right!!!

The Collective Unconscious -

"This part of the human psyche represents a storehouse of memories of the part of both the human and the animal race. This collective unconscious also represents wisdom and self-knowledge at the deepest level."

Carl Jung spoke of archetypes as recognizable symbols that are passed down collectively from generation to generation. These archetypes are shared knowledge and connection among the whole human race (like spirals), but I say it is more than that.

Within each of our minds is a history, a repository of knowledge that has been passed on to us individually from our direct ancestors. Dr. Darold Treffert calls it "inherited knowledge." Marshall Nirenberg, in 1968, wrote a paper on what could possibly be actual DNA/RNA mechanisms for what he calls “Genetic Memory.”

Perhaps we are able to "remember" things genetically from this inherited storehouse, which is why certain music thrills and touches us, or why we long for things we've never actually known, or why we feel a deep and unfathomable connection to a place we've never been.

I do think, down the long corridor of birth, and death, and recollection, there are ancestral memories stronger in some than in others. Perhaps the "imprinting" from certain antecedents can be dominant, just like a dominant genetic trait will always rise to the top.

Two vignettes...for Carl Jung

She'd had two experiences that made her think Carl Jung was on to something. They were weird little snippets that maybe were really someone else's memories, and not her own.

The first was a dream she'd had at around 18. The dream had stayed with her because of the incredible strength of feeling evoked from it. She'd never forgotten. It was brief and had no real context.

"She" was standing in front of a mirror in a hallway. It was dark, but there were candle sconces on either side of the mirror that were lit and it was maybe the Regency period, sometime around 1790 - 1820? The person in the mirror was her, but it wasn't her either. She was blonde and light-eyed and quite beautiful. Her hair was swept up on her head in an elaborate style and she was wearing a long, low-cut, burgundy dress made out of velvet or something heavy.

In the dream, she stood in front of the ornate mirror and tears were running down her face. The feeling of sadness was indescribable. It was because "he" wasn't coming back. The dreamer didn't know who "he" was or why he wasn't coming, but it was agony, and she woke up crying, inconsolable.

And that was all.

Then, later, during a bad patch in her life, she went to counseling to learn relaxation techniques to bring down the stress level.

The counselor dimmed the lights, and there was some kind of very low music in the background, and started reading something in a very soporific voice - repetitive, innocuous, then told her to imagine herself in the safest place she can think of. She was supposed to imagine herself going down, down, down until she felt she was in that safe place.

In her mind, she's walking down a long flight of sweeping marble steps that curve toward the end opening into a spacious foyer. She walked into a room to the right and it was clearly Christmas day. The strangeness of it was that part of her was lying on a chair in a dim room and part of her was there by the Christmas tree in that other room of long ago and it was sometime during WWI or WWII, she wasn't sure. Anyway, "he" was there. He was standing by the Christmas tree, and their children were there too, but she didn't even look at them. She only had eyes for him. He only had eyes for her. When they looked at each other, everything else fell away.

He was tall and had very dark hair and amazing blue eyes. She walked straight into his arms, only again, there was a terrible sadness. He was dressed in a uniform, it was brown, and she knew he had to leave.

He never came back.

The person sitting in the chair in a meditation state "remembered" that. Her "memory" also told her that he was her safest place.

Way to go, Carl.

The moon was like this tonight

I think a waxing crescent?

Moon!

I am becoming fascinated with images of the moon, and I have no idea why - especially since my astrological sign (again, have a hard time with this kind of stuff), is the sun!!!

Leda and the Swan

One of my favorite Yeats' poems. Zeus came to Leda, a human woman, in the form of a swan.




A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.

Being so caught up,

So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

OMG, Gnomes!!!! YAY!!!

All in Green Went My Love Riding

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.


four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the merry deer ran before.

Fleeter be they than dappled dreams
the swift sweet deer
the red rare deer.

Horn at hip went my love riding
riding the echo down
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the level meadows ran before.

Softer be they than slippered sleep
the lean lithe deer
the fleet flown deer.

Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrows sang before.

Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.

Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.

Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.

All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.

four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.

ee cummings--

Love and Death

Topics that seem diametrically opposed, but both deal with human frailty and a loss of "self." Loving means giving away part of yourself and allowing that emptiness to be filled with "other." It is a weakness, yet, it's the most powerful human force and motivator. Dying is giving up the house of your spirit to allow the spirit ascendancy over the physical. It also is a weakness, but hopefully only as a temporal sequence of continuing events!!!

Two beautiful Celtic-inspired songs about love and death.

Song of the Banshee - Aine Minogue - based on Celtic legend of the bean-si, a female dweller of a sidhe, or fairy mound. She is a messenger from the Otherworld and her wail presages death. She is usually depicted as a woman in a grey or white dress with long, fair hair that she's brushing with a silver comb.

http://www.rhapsody.com/player?type=track&id=tra.8750967&remote=false&page=&pageregion=&guid=&from=&hasrhapx=false&__pcode=

Anam Cara - by Aeone and based on the beautiful Celtic concept of "soul friend."

"When you had an “Anam Cara”, your friendship cut across all convention, morality and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the “friend of your soul”. The Celtic understanding did not set limitations of space or time on the soul. There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you and into your Other."

John O'Donohue from "Anam Cara - Wisdom of the Celtic World

http://www.imeem.com/dux82/music/ggzWCrX3/aeone_anam_cara/


postcript: Or, in the alternative - we're all just worm nummies and love is simply an illusion created by pheromones to facilitate continuance of the species. Who the hell knows!!! : )

Newgrange

Newgrange is older than the pyramids. It's a megalithic passage tomb built around 3200 BC. It's also a Winter Solstice indicator. Newgrange is one of many monuments that are gathered near the River Boyne. They're collectively known as Bru na Boinne. Standing on the hill of Newgrange, on a clear day, you can see into the next county. You can also see other mounds that have not yet been excavated.

The way our ancestors buried their dead was so much truer to the human state than our own rituals created to distance ourselves from death. Whether people were laid to rest in simple cairns or stunningly complex passage/mound tombs, the flesh and bone were allowed to become one again with the earth. Why do we think that lead coffins lined with silk can somehow contain the inevitable decay that will occur? Let the life chain be complete and our ashes and dust provide the foundation of metamorphosis into new life!

Listen!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hB_laE72y2Q

Clannad--

There is a place on the east
Mysterious ring, a magical ring of stones
The druids lived here once, they said
Forgotten is the race that no one knows

The circled tomb of a different age
Secret lines carved on ancient stones
Heroic kings laid down to rest
Forgotten is the race that no one knows

Wait for the sun on a winter's day
And a beam of light shines across the floor
Mysterious ring, a magical ring
Forgotten is the race that no one knows

The Caged Skylark

AS a dare-gale skylark scanted in a dull cage
Man’s mounting spirit in his bone-house, mean house, dwells—
That bird beyond the remembering his free fells;
This in drudgery, day-labouring-out life’s age.

Though aloft on turf or perch or poor low stage,
Both sing sometímes the sweetest, sweetest spells,
Yet both droop deadly sómetimes in their cells
Or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage.

Not that the sweet-fowl, song-fowl, needs no rest—
Why, hear him, hear him babble and drop down to his nest,
But his own nest, wild nest, no prison.

Man’s spirit will be flesh-bound when found at best,
But uncumbered: meadow-down is not distressed
For a rainbow footing it nor he for his bónes rísen.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

Bonefire

Bonefire burns on a distant hill
messenger to the Otherworld.
White-hot light leaps to studded sky
ancient mating between heaven and earth.

Flames roar, sparks dance, consumed
by the passion of voracious dark.
Unlike Persephone,
they fly upward to their doom.

The Pleiades scatter their hazy blue across
midnight skies as spiral galaxies hurtle away
to worlds unknown in fractured time.
I call down the moon.

Light pours from my fingers
until jealous clouds intersect at perigee
pulling the dream from my hands.
Moontide races backward, riding the waves
across the crest of trees in a silent forest.

Powers of light and dark found in ancient rhythms
Time-worn cycles of sun, moon, wind, rain.
We chant, we spin, we weave, we bring forth
life from the incandescent flames. Then we sing to the sky and
we burn.

Searching for Dirac

I think there must be no coincidence that spirals are found both in micro and macrocosms relating to the human state. It is the shape of our DNA and the shape of the superstructures of our universe. How could it be possible that these two things occurred randomly? It always surprises me when I think about how the universe began in such terrible chaos, yet beauty arose from that chaos and is contained in the underlying principles that bind it all together.

I'm drawn to Dirac's Principle of Mathematic Beauty - "A physical law must possess mathematical beauty," and there seems something very beautiful to me in this structure that repeats itself on such amazingly different levels. Maybe God/Creator/LifeForce is speaking to us through that beauty and symmetry and showing us that everything started as one and everything is still one.

I wonder why ancient cultures revered the spiral so much when clearly they could not have seen into the cosmos or unlocked the secrets of DNA. So many used it as a symbol of power anyway - the chinese, maori, celts, Hopi to name a few. I've read the spiral is the most ancient symbol found on every civilized continent. How did they know???

Descartes theorized that, "wonder is a sudden surprise of the soul that brings it about that the soul goes on to consider with attention the objects that seem rare and extraordinary to it." Maybe spirals are just hard-wired to bring wonder into the human soul.

Spirals - Galaxies

Spirals - DNA

Spirals - Newgrange

Excerpt

The tiny dwelling was formed from part of a tree trunk twisting around a sloping roof of green leaves. There was a low round window framed in ivy vines and narrow brown timbers crossed each other in front of wattle and daub walls. It had been whitewashed and there was an old bucket near the door containing brightly colored flowers spilling every which way onto the stoop.

It was impossible to go through the door without bending down but upon entering, a large airy room furnished was quite cosily with two old armchairs. The down cushions were covered in blue and white fabric and they were sitting close together in a friendly sort of way. They had feet elaborately carved to resemble griffin’s claws and faced a stone fireplace. The makings of a fire had already been laid for the cool October evening and the mantelpiece contained a jumble of items including candles, dried herbs, and a box made of twigs.

Long rectangular windows on either side of the room had shutters that could be pulled closed, but right now they were open to allow the afternoon sun freedom to pour into the room. A round table sat near the window on the left with three chairs that didn’t match, and a wooden shelf hewn from a fallen tree trunk held pretty blue and white china plates and a lovely fat teapot with a slightly chipped round lid. There were several watercolor paintings hanging on the whitewashed walls which showed in careful detail a fern, a maple leaf, and a mole with silky fur and warm brown eyes.

There were books everywhere. Books filled every cranny of the room and in one corner there was a stack that almost touched the ceiling. There were books on astronomy, calculus, botany, origami, and drawing with charcoal pencils. There were books on history, science, weaponry, and farming.

There was one called A Treatise on the Woodland Habitat of Mice, Gnomes, June Beetles, and Other Forest Creatures. There was another called Lost Cities and How Did They Get Lost Anyway? There was a huge book called 1001 Party Jokes That You Are Sure to Forget and Probably Ought.

A Once Upon A Time Story

Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived in a deep, dark forest. Her name was Danika and her hair was spun of moonbeams.

She was the daughter of a fair maiden and a gust of laughter borne on a passing breeze. A smile was never far from her lips and it was said you could find your way out of the forest in the dark of night by the twinkle in her eyes. She wore a golden robe made from daffodils and there was a wreath of shining ivy in her shining moonbeam hair.

Merrily she lived alone there and her songs of spring made the leaves unfurl so they could better hear and the sleepy beasties of the wood woke from their winter slumber to play about her feet, and the cold ran away before her laughter.

The eons passed, and still she called spring to the wood and through her spirit the forest prospered and no whisper of fear or trouble ever came there.

All good things must come to an end though, and the day arrived that a dark pall fell over her beloved wood. An evil spirit had taken up residence there, smashing and defiling everything that came into his path. His evil was such that even Hell had cast him out, and there was no human in this world or the next who could withstand his wicked malice. He was known by the name (most foul) of OdumCarlock.

He had only three fat fingers on each hand and wispy patches of orange-red hair and his nose hung down over his mouth like a hemlock root gone mad. He left a path of death in his wake - the bones of a half-consumed wee squirrel thrown aside on the path, flowers trodden and crushed, living birch trees felled for only the joy of wielding his wicked axe against the silvery wood, and the broken minds of once fair maids who had no recourse to the court system for proper restitution.

Danika wept then, and the light went out of the forest.

At this grave misfortune, the animals of the wood convened in a last, desperate, heroic attempt to salvage something from the wreckage of their once tranquil existence and rescue their beloved Danika from a fate too horrible to mention on a G-rated profile page.

None had the courage or the fortitude to face the primal evil that was OdumCarlock however, and despair fell upon them like ice-laden tears, until one tiny field mouse, who was the bravest of them all or possibly just insane, volunteered to aid OdumCarlock in meeting his long-overdue doom.

You may naysay now, and ask how such a small creature could overcome such ponderous evil but I would tell you to stop being impatient and wait until the end of the story. The tiny fieldmouse (whose name was Bob by the way), knew that even in the smallest of things could lie kind or cruel destiny.

Bob scurried home as fast as he could, for he had a treasure that few on this earth would ever possess. For generations, his humble family had kept safe a tiny seed. It was shriveled, gray, and wrinkled and seemed of no value or merit - yet it had fallen from the Tree of Life that had sprouted as a sapling at the beginning of time in that very wood. Bob did not know the full extent of its powers, but he did think it more than a match for the troll, OdumCarlock.

So keeping to untrod ways in the silent forest, Bob found his way back to Danika, and they both eventually found the place where the hideous evil slept snoring with his mouth agape and his hands folded over his belly, which was protruding scandalously after feasting on some of Bob's distant cousins for his evening repast.

It was an easy thing for Bob to bring the seed to Danika, who had the wisdom to drop it into the troll's mouth as it slept and then scurry away to a safe distance to watch. Nothing happened for a few moments and Danika and Bob began to get worried, but soon, the acrid smell of smoke began to rise in the air and they saw that the troll seemed to be on fire, but from within. The magic of the seed from the Tree of Life was such that its sole purpose was to create life, and none existed within the heart of OdumCarlock. The seminal forces of the tiny seed therefore had an anti-effect in the soul of the troll and so all life was extinguished as a puff of smoke from a dampened fire. A terrifying wail was heard on the wind as the smoke dissipated in the still air over the quiet forest, and the evil troglodyte was never heard from again.

Danika's tears dried and laughter and spring returned to the forest and she and Bob live together to this day in peace and tranquility, and often reminisce about how they saved the forest - UnmitigatedDrama - from certain death and trollery.

The End.

Proust

Your soul is a dark forest. But the trees are of a particular species, they are genealogical trees.

In Dreams....

Last night I dreamt I was in Scotland sitting at a long wooden table in an ancient castle on the shores of a loch, and there were other tables and other people, and all were singing in a harmony that blended intricately and seemed to rise up and out of the confines of the hall.

I was also singing but was somehow apart, and when the song was over, the other singers all left together. I stood alone on the stone pavement outside the great doors, and the sky was indigo and I could see the tree tops silhouetted darkly against the night sky as I looked down toward the loch.

I started making my way up along the path that would take me to where ever it was I was going, but then I turned and looked back where I had come from. In my dream, I lifted my hands and stretched them out and swirls of golden light sprung from them and spiraled downward into the glen until the castle was hidden from view.

I woke up then, and I was lying in a shaft of pale light streaming across my bed from the full moon shining in my window. The full moon always wakes me up. I don't know why and I find it hard to sleep those nights. Probably I should get some curtains for my bedroom windows...

Also, I wonder what Freud would say. Crikeys!!

Latitude and Longitude

The world has turned and is
falling into night.
Latitude and longitude divide us,
as if those lines had substance.
My love stretches away into infinity and has no beginning
and no end
but there is only darkness here.
Voiceless I cry out to you.
You
don't
hear.
The air hangs heavy and hot; filled
with words not spoken.
Their message is compressed,
forced into straight lines connecting
in the atmosphere,
but gravity pulls them back to Earth
and they remain unheard.

Take Me With You

Take me with you on this journey
Where the boundaries of time are now tossed
In cathedrals of the forest
In the words of tongues now lost

Find the answers, ask the questions
Find the roots of an ancient tree
Take me dancing, take me singing
I'll ride on till moon meets sea

- Loreena McKennit