"If there is anything morbid in your processes, just remember that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself of foreign matter; so one must just help it to be sick, to have it's whole sickness and break out with it, for that is its progress"

"All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you"

-Rilke

In the rain
there are always small footsteps in my room
in the forgotten corners where

because of the blankets and
the white walls turned away from me

I sing the silent song
of strange halls and empty doorways

this land as a wound
with monuments of diamond eyed
frozen breath

I live forever in the wooden wombs
of restless bodies

until a whisper in the winds
slight and slow
speaks hands full of rain, and flowers

with an ascent towards that white death
a bounty beautiful as summers dawn

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world".

-Mirbeau

"The mythic world is "within", in the form of our dreams and visions, but also "without" when the outer world seems full of archetypal coincidences and we enact our myths (not always to our advantage...) In addition, part of the power and privilege of a human being, whether we refer to this as magic or religion, is to control (magic) or propitiate (religion) the powers of the spiritual realm.
...In the psychology of this ancient model, a human being has no real or fixed identity, but a kind of hollow space or receptivity that may become filled with spiritual or archetypal energy. When a young man going into battle is filled with the numinous power of the bear or the eagle that has come to him in vision, this might be seen as positive possession. The legendary prowess of the totem animal, which has become his own, enables him to transcend human fear and frailty. However, when someone becomes obsessed or identified with and animal in a psychotic way (such as certain hebephrenic schizophrenics who think they are chickens, for example), the possession is unhealthy, indeed, because in the process he loses his human autonomy, the ability to choose his own behavior".

-Stephen Larsen

dissolve into the grey cupboard of winter
and chew the night's eyes with a mouth of slow breaths
with the fog, I walk towards the trees past the pavement in a dream
touch a picture of my past and read the words written a decade ago
that speak of who we once were

a figure on a hill
an icy walk, slow and skinny in the pale moon
shining through the black lines between November's Earth
behind the streets and dull ordered lights
watching with precision

my heart aches with what I have become
but to tear this away would unravel too much
and I lie amongst the stars, focused on the light
as it comes in slow waves

ME

a little late, but...

happy holidays and a happy 2010 from all of us! Please do click on the wonderful picture.






photo created by/courtesy of Albert Gray

"...Because I was afraid. You forget I am only a magician, whose conjuring raises nothing more formidable than devils. But this is a bit of the Old Magic that is no longer understood, and I prefer not to meddle with it. You, to the contrary, are a poet, and the Old Magic was always favourable to poets."

-James Branch Cabell

near to the window my hands turn colder
and after a time
they scream for this sensation like a moth to the flame

it is a familiar feeling in the colder months
yet now, as always at the start of it all
I feel beckoned, almost challenged
by the night wind through autumn's black window

as in a dream I open my door,
and the secrets whisper all the louder
and the layers unfold again
down the raw streets scratched across with leaves
the incense of the air
swaying with the boughs in cold embrace

all is beautifully stark
somehow clear in its mystery
and inwardly warm
in all its terrible majesty

"As they stared blankly in dumb misery deepening as they slowly realised all they had seen and all they had lost, a capricious little breeze, dancing up from the surface of the water, tossed the aspens, shook the dewy roses and blew lightly and caressingly in their faces; and with its soft touch came instant oblivion. For this is the last best gift that the kindly demi-god is careful to bestow on those to whom he has revealed himself in their helping: the gift of forgetfulness. Lest the awful remembrance should remain and grow, and overshadow mirth and pleasure, and the great haunting memory should spoil all the after-lives of little animals helped out of difficulties, in order that they should be happy and lighthearted as before."

-----------

"It's lucky we've got the stream with us, to take us home. Isn't it jolly to feel the sun again, soaking into one's bones! And hark to the wind playing in the reeds!'

'It's like music--far away music,' said the Mole nodding drowsily.

'So I was thinking,' murmured the Rat, dreamful and languid. 'Dance-music--the lilting sort that runs on without a stop--but with words in it, too--it passes into words and out of them again--I catch them at intervals--then it is dance-music once more, and then nothing but the reeds' soft thin whispering.'

'You hear better than I,' said the Mole sadly. 'I cannot catch the words.'

'Let me try and give you them,' said the Rat softly, his eyes still closed. 'Now it is turning into words again--faint but clear--Lest the awe should dwell--And turn your frolic to fret--You shall look on my power at the helping hour--But then you shall forget! Now the reeds take it up--forget, forget, they sigh, and it dies away in a rustle and a whisper. Then the voice returns--

'Lest limbs be reddened and rent--I spring the trap that is set--As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there--For surely you shall forget! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter.

'Helper and healer, I cheer--Small waifs in the woodland wet--Strays I find in it, wounds I bind in it--Bidding them all forget! Nearer, Mole, nearer! No, it is no good; the song has died away into reed-talk.'

'But what do the words mean?' asked the wondering Mole.

'That I do not know,' said the Rat simply. 'I passed them on to you as they reached me. Ah! now they return again, and this time full and clear! This time, at last, it is the real, the unmistakable thing, simple--passionate--perfect----'

'Well, let's have it, then,' said the Mole, after he had waited patiently for a few minutes, half-dozing in the hot sun.

But no answer came. He looked, and understood the silence. With a smile of much happiness on his face, and something of a listening look still lingering there, the weary Rat was fast asleep."

-Kenneth Grahame, from The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, a chapter of The Wind in the Willows

"This triteness is really the penalty of 'appropriation': the things that are trite, or (in a bad sense) familiar, are the things that we have appropriated, legally or mentally. We say we know them. They have become like the things which once attracted us by their glitter, or their colour, or their shape, and we laid hands on them, and then locked them in our hoard, acquired them, and acquiring ceased to look at them."

-Tolkien

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."

Anais Nin

"My cosmic schmuck principle holds that, if you occasionally notice that you've been thinking or acting like a cosmic schmuck, you''ll become less of a cosmic schmuck. And the more often you notice that you're thinking and acting like a cosmic schmuck, the less of a cosmic schmuck you become. On the other hand if you never, never, never suspect that you might be thinking or acting like a cosmic schmuck, you will remain a cosmic schmuck for the rest of your life."

-Robert Anton Wilson

"Writing poetry consists in letting the word be heard behind words"

-Gerhart Hauptmann

"But the cult of the self, which is really at the engine of consumer society and which now dominates our culture...is very differnt...it is about a kind of breakage of community...and of course this is what consumer society is about - it's about creating anxieties and fears quite consciously...this cult at its core has many of the traits of psychopaths. It's about superficial charm, it's about grandiosity, self-importance, a need for constant stimulation, a penchant for lying, deception, and manipulation, and an incapacity for remorse or guilt. It's about presentation, not about integrity. It's about image. And this is exceedingly dangerous."

-Chris Hedges

"The blind was down; but outside the moon rose up out of the sea, and laid the silver path across the waters that is the way to places at the edge of the world and beyond, for those that can walk on it."

-Tolkien

"...when we begin to practice and to learn more, we may think we should be adding tricks or embellishments of all kinds to our practice. This is the approach of spiritual materialism. It seems fascinating and efficient to use more gadgets to run our domestic scene, office scene, spiritual scene or whatever scenes we may have. American society already has enough gadgets, but we want more.

In the long run, that approach is wasteful and creates further chaos. Spiritual discipline is not about advancement, but it is a question of undoing what we have created already. We are not talking about extending ourselves to become greater or more professional meditators, we are talking about meditation as unlearning.

We should be aware that spiritual materialism creates garbage. Some of the mental tricks associated with spirituality are so fantastic and outlandish that one wonders who dreamed up such things. One might feel dwarfed by such seemingly impressive wisdom. We purchase this stuff. We pile up one cardboard box of spiritual stuff after another. We bring it home and take it out of the cardboard box it came in, and then we find that our garage is completely filled with boxes after boxes with labels on them. A lot of these complicated techniques are just garbage that is being imposed on us. They have nothing to do with unlearning, undoing, or simplifying at all.

We have all made these kinds of collections. In fact, without them, we couldn’t come to the spiritual path. Some people like to collect junk, some like to collect antiques, some like to collect stamps. You have your own style of collecting. Some of these collections may be worthwhile. In the practice of meditation, you are surrendering the collections you have made, and that process could be genuine and beautiful. On the other hand, sometimes we are aggressive about holding onto our collections-we want to get something out of them."

-Chogyam Trungpa