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Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. Carl Jung

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Ten Degrees

How beautiful the sun as it skims across the air in the hush of ten degrees, disc of palest yellow hope along a sky

of circumstance; how beautifully we watch it fall, the random tern, forgotten mole, the infant tree inside rough winter bark.

How beautiful this frost, female fingers tracing down the glass, how beautiful this world too cold to criticize itself;

how beautiful Earth's creatures are, happy and forever safe from the only perfect tragedy, which is of course to never have been born.

Tom Chandler

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True humanity is no inherent right but an achievement; and only through the earth may we be as one with all who have been and all who are yet to be, sharers and partakers of the mystery of living, reaching to the full of human peace and the full of human joy. Henry Beston

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Emily, This Place, and You

She got out of the car here one day, and it was snowing a little. She could see little glimpses of those mountains, and away down there by the river the curtain of snow would shift, and those deep secret places looked all the more mysterious. It was quiet, you know.

Her life seemed quiet, too. There had been troubles, sure * everyone has some. But now, looking out there, she felt easy, at home in the world * maybe like a casual snowflake. And some people loved her. She would remember that. And remember this place.

As you will, wherever you go after this day, just a stop by the road, and a glimpse of someone's life, and your own, too, how you can look out any time, just being part of things, getting used to being a person, taking it easy, you know.

William Stafford

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One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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You Must Sing

He sings in his father's arms, sings his father to sleep, all the while seeing how on that face grown suddenly strange, wasting to shadow, time moves. Stern time. Sweet time. Because his father

asked, he sings; because they are wholly lost. How else, in immaculate noon, will each find each, who are so close now? So close and lost. His voice stands at windows, runs everywhere.

Was death giant? O, how will he find his father? They are so close. Was death a gust? By which door did it come? All the day's doors are closed. He must go out of those hours, that house,

the enfolding limbs, go burdened to lean: you must sing to be found; when found, you must sing.

~ Li-Young Lee ~

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Let us sing now, not in order to enjoy a life of leisure, but in order to lighten your labors. You should sing as wayfarers do * sing, but continue your journey. Do not be lazy, but sing to make your journey more enjoyable. Sing, but keep going. St. Augustine

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East Coker V (excerpt) -- T. S. Eliot

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated Of dead and living. Not the intense moment Isolated, with no before and after, But a lifetime burning in every moment And not the lifetime of one man only But of old stones that cannot be deciphered. There is a time for the evening under starlight, A time for the evening under lamplight (The evening with the photograph album). Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. Old men ought to be explorers Here or there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For a further union, a deeper communion Through the dark cold and the empty desolation, The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

~ T. S. Eliot ~

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The most important thing is to find out what the most important thing is. Shunryu Suzuki

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Ode to American English

I was missing English one day, American, really, with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English is not the same, if the paperback dictionary I bought at Brentano's on the Avenue de l'Opera is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts, Dick Tracy, Tricky Dick? With their elegant Oxfordian accents, how could they understand my yearning for the hotrod, hotdog, hot flash vocabulary of the U. S. of A., the fragmented fandango of Dagwood's everyday flattening of Mr. Beasley on the sidewalk, fetuses floating on billboards, drive-by monster hip-hop stereos shaking the windows of my dining room like a 7.5 earthquake, Ebonics, Spanglish, "you know" used as comma and period, the inability of 90% of the population to get the past perfect: I have went, I have saw, I have tooken Jesus into my heart, the battle cry of the Bible Belt, but no one uses the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions, in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says, "Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie mummy, "Whoa, I was toasted." Yes, ma'am, I miss the mongrel plentitude of American English, its fall-guy, rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all, the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider, boom-box cruise of it, from New Joisey to Ha-wah-ya with its sly dog, malasada-scarfing beach blanket lingo to the ubiquitous Valley Girl's like-like stuttering, shopaholic rant. I miss its quotidian beauty, its querulous back-biting righteous indignation, its preening rotgut flag-waving cowardice. Suffering Succotash, sputters Sylvester the Cat; sine die, say the pork-bellied legislators of the swamps and plains. I miss all those guys, their Tweety-bird resilience, their Doris Day optimism, the candid unguent of utter unhappiness on every channel, the midnight televangelist euphoric stew, the junk mail, voice mail vernacular. On every boulevard and rue I miss the Tarzan cry of Johnny Weismueller, Johnny Cash, Johnny B. Goode, and all the smart-talking, gum-snapping hard-girl dialogue, finger-popping x-rated street talk, sports babble, Cheetoes, Cheerios, chili dog diatribes. Yeah, I miss them all, sitting here on my sidewalk throne sipping champagne verses lined up like hearses, metaphors juking, nouns zipping in my head like Corvettes on Dexadrine, French verbs slitting my throat, yearning for James Dean to jump my curb.

Barbara Hamby

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Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read. Groucho Marx

Enjoying the holidays: doing more with less

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

 

Imagine a holiday season where the main focus is on time spent with family and friends - a holiday season that celebrates your close connections to the people you love and the planet you treasure.

 

     Ok, back to the present reality.  Anyone feeling a sense of dread at the upcoming holidays? Looking for a way out of the frenzied hyper-commercial holidays? 91% of Americans polled feel that the holidays are too commercial and the idea of "peace on earth" has been forgotten by too many people.

     Just say no! Don't participate in the commercialization of the holidays which emphasizes gift giving over quality time spent with loved ones. Do celebrate the holidays in a way that honors your relationships and shows greater concern for the environment.

 

 

WHY GREENING AND SIMPLIFYING THE HOLIDAYS MATTERS:

 

    * Number of extra tons of trash produced in the U.S. each year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day: 5 Million

 

    * Number of trees cut down: According to the Christmas Tree Growers Association over 30 million natural Christmas trees become a part of our throwaway society each year. An estimated 10 million artificial trees are bought each year. The natural trees are cut, sold, decorated, and discarded all within an eight-week period.

 

    * Wrapping paper: Tons and tons of wrapping paper, much of it containing metal, goes through the same throwaway cycle. Reducing the number of presents bought will have a corresponding effect on wasted paper.

 

    * Holiday cards: This year, Americans will send more than three quarters of a billion Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa cards, according to the National Greeting Card Association. If Americans sent just one out of every ten holiday cards electronically, it would save over 30,000 trees.

 

    * What about those energy and time drainers that are hard to measure like:

      All the time wasted in lines at stores and in traffic;

      All the stress;

      All the non-perishable and non-consumable gifts kept in their boxes and never used.

 

HOW TO SIMPLIFY AND GREEN YOUR HOLIDAYS

 

·         Gifts: Give only gifts that can be consumed like food, beverages, mixes, sweets or gifts that can be re-cycled like books or magazine subscriptions. Other "consumable" items like candles and natural body creams and soaps are great to give and great to receive.

·         Related gift ideas: 

       Favorite recipes with ingredients - maybe even a cooking lesson

           Dictionaries, an atlas with word or geography questions/games

           Sierra Club Membership

           Book: 50 Things you can do to save the Earth

           Gift certificates (either personal commercial)

          Movie tickets

          Donations to a favorite charity in recipient's name

          Bird feeding supplies

 

    * Trees: Buy a live tree and re-plant it. Cut your own from a specialized tree farm, this protects natural forests. The Sierra Club or a local nursery can give you advice about using a live tree for Christmas.

 

    * Wrapping and Cards: Make your own wrappings and cards. Decorate scrap paper or brown bags, or try potato printing on newspapers.  Save and decorate shoe boxes, cookie and coffee cans to put gifts in, pieces of leftover material could be batiked, tie-dyed, or embroidered and used for wrapping gifts. Don't use foil or mylar ribbons - they never decompose. Avoid glossed, glazed or wax papers, they mess up the re-cycling process. Use cotton yarn, twine, or decorative shoelaces instead of plastic ribbon. If you do buy paper and cards, only buy those made from recycled paper.

 

    * Decorations: Make your own. Set aside time for the whole family to make holiday decorations and ornaments: colorful wall-hangings, pine cone wreaths, menorahs, advent calendars, garlands of flowers or colored paper, dried nuts, seeds, or seashells. Lids to tin containers can be made into ornaments by fringing and cutting shapes with scissors and pliers.

 

    * Energy: Try making this a -- low energy -- Christmas by refraining  from buying anything which uses electricity, by leaving the tree lights and spotlights in the attic and decorating with popcorn and cranberries.

 

Other Suggested Actions:

 

    * Discuss issue with friends/share simplifying gift ideas with friends

 

    * Tell everyone that may get you a present that you would like only things that can be consumed or recycled

 

    * Give everyone that may get you a gift the Gift exemption card

 

    * Send an "I'm dreaming of a green Christmas /holiday season" e-mail to many in your address book

 

    * When sending your homemade holiday cards, include info on simplifying holidays

 

Here's to a wonderful holiday for everyone.

Hopefully your holiday will be filled with joy and wonder.

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Monet Refuses the Operation

Doctor, you say that there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don't see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of the Thames? I will not return to a universe of objects that don't know each other, as if islands were not the lost children of one great continent. The world is flux, and light becomes what it touches, becomes water, lilies on water, above and below water, becomes lilac and mauve and yellow and white and cerulean lamps, small fists passing sunlight so quickly to one another that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it. To paint the speed of light! Our weighted shapes, these verticals, burn to mix with air and changes our bones, skin, clothes to gases. Doctor, if only you could see how heaven pulls earth into its arms and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

~ Lisel Mueller ~

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The solution which I am urging is to eradicate the fatal disconnection of subjects which kills the vitality of our modern curriculum. There is only one subject matter for education, and that is Life in all its manifestations. Alfred North Whitehead

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Aunt Lil

I They brought her to the hospital On one of those April days That remind us we will never live enough. That the soft smell of leaves, flowering breeze, The silver light flashing from windows, Will always be too much for us.

She kicks the covers back, not caring If we see her enormous thighs, her birthmark Tufted with secret hairs only lovers had seen. When her lips won't form around her thought, She cries out girlishly, "I don't know, I don't know." Her large eyes roll and stare, as if looking For someone to pry her from her failing flesh.

II A beach: scalloped sand, soft rasping waves; My parents searching frantically to see If I had drowned, or if, like the fish In the tale, I could breathe their angry Guilt and make a life of it. With a small boy's genius, I imitated childhood, Taking you, my large-eyed beautiful aunt, to love passionately and simply.

Cruel and soaring, You battered those you loved, As if ecstasy and cruelty were the same. Yet at times you were happier than anyone; so drunk on yourself, you could hardly Walk down stairs for the stumbling heavens at your heels.

III I remember sitting with you on the subway, Thick-headed with fever. You opened your newspaper To a cloud boiling on a stalk of light, A single word, Hiroshima. Amid the screeching of subway metal, The headlines drooping on front pages, your voice, Your immense body, seemed to fill the subway car.

I hadn't heard yet of your manic flights, The electroshock, the family's Embarrassed hush at your desperate ways.

You were sick of too much: Hope fucking laughter. Yet to me you were beautiful, A brown moon of flesh. And the boy who lived as in a cold sleep Came strangely forth into your larger louder life.

IV Old death, Will you come with me today To meet someone I love? We can walk there along the river Past tenements of brick, And barely thickening April branches: The river's grey-shine spinning past us, An orange tugboat, A low-swimming freighter out toward New Jersey.

Will you teach me about her rooms Filled with a westward light, Her books thumbed and bright along one wall? Nowhere the smallest hint of a failed life, No dust balls of loneliness or fright.

Yesterday I sat on her bed, Holding her soft woman's hands. She forgave me for being young, For the scared distance I put between us all these years. her enormous eyes never looked at me, Only her hands spoke, Her fingers stirring so I would know.

Old death, The more I see you, the more I know of restless eyes, vulnerable mouths, Uncertain language of lips.

For I have learned what I came for: My mad old aunt loved life. She only hurt us when she was afraid That it would burst in her. She never gave in to her old age, But expelled it from her, And hung clean sweet living upon her walls.

Paul Zweig

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Where does one person end and another begin? Iris Murdoch

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I Follow Barefoot

I long for You so much I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks

That are high in the mountains That I know are years old.

I long for You so much I have even begun to travel Where I have never been before.

Hafiz, there is no one in this world Who is not looking for God.

Everyone is trudging along With as much dignity, courage And style

As they possibly Can.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Subject Tonight Is Love, versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

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Travelers there is no path paths are made by walking

Antonio Machado

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Passing the Orange

On Halloween night the new teacher gave a party for the parents. She lined up the women on one side of the schoolroom, the men on the other, and they had a race, passing an orange under their chins along each line. The women giggled like girls and dropped their orange before it got halfway, but it was the men's line that we watched. Who would have thought that anyone could get them to do such a thing? Farmers in flannel shirts, in blue overalls and striped overalls. Stout men embracing one another. Our fathers passing the orange, passing the embrace - the kiss of peace - complaining about each other's whiskers, becoming a team, winning the race.

Leo Dangel

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The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

-Ray Bradbury, science-fiction writer (1920- )

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Fix

The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives Buying what they are told to buy, Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,

Baseball and football, romance and beauty, Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling* True believers in liberty, and also security,

And of course sex*cheating on each other For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,

Or on the violent screen, which they adore. Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.

They are mostly puzzled and at a loss As if someone pulled the floor out from under them, They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.

You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station *Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want, Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud*

The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost

That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us, Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable

So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness? What the hell is it? America is perplexed. We would fix it if we knew what was broken. Alicia Suskin Ostriker

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The principal contributor to loneliness in this country is television. What happens is that the family 'gets together' alone. -Ashley Montagu, anthropologist and writer (1905-1999)

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Rain

A teacher asked Paul what he would remember from third grade, and he sat a long time before writing "this year sumbody tutched me on the sholder" and turned his paper in. Later she showed it to me as an example of her wasted life. The words he wrote were large as houses in a landscape. He wanted to go inside them and live, he could fill in the windows of "o" and "d" and be safe while outside birds building nests in drainpipes knew nothing of the coming rain.

Naomi Shihab Nye

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You cannot hope to build a better world without improving individuals. To that end each of us must work for his own improvement and at the same time share a general responsibility for all humanity, our particular duty being to aid those to whom we think we can be most useful. ~Marie Curie~

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Sabbaths 1998, VI

By expenditure of hope, Intelligence, and work, You think you have it fixed. It is unfixed by rule. Within the darkness, all Is being changed, and you Also will be changed. Now I recall to mind A costly year: Jane Kenyon, Bill Lippert, Philip Sherrard, All in the same spring dead, So much companionship Gone as the river goes. And my good workhorse Nick Dead, who called out to me In his conclusive pain To ask my help. I had No help to give. And flood Covered the cropland twice. By summer's end there are No more perfect leaves. But won't you be ashamed To count the passing year At its mere cost, your debt Inevitably paid? For every year is costly, As you know well. Nothing Is given that is not Taken, and nothing taken That was not first a gift. The gift is balanced by Its total loss, and yet, And yet the light breaks in, Heaven seizing its moments That are at once its own And yours. The day ends And is unending where The summer tanager, Warbler, and vireo Sing as they move among Illuminated leaves.

~ Wendell Berry ~

I've believed ever since that living on the edge, living in and through your fear, is the summit of life, and that people who refuse to take that dare condemn themselves to a life of living death. John H. Johnson (American Businessman, Founder of Johnson Publishing)

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Sonnets to Orpheus, Part Two, XXIX

Quiet friend who has come so far, feel how your breathing makes more space around you. Let this darkness be a bell tower and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength. Move back and forth into the change. What is it like, such intensity of pain? If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night, be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses, the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

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It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them. -Leo Buscaglia, author (1924-1998)

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Happiness

So early it's still almost dark out. I'm near the window with coffee, and the usual early morning stuff that passes for thought. When I see the boy and his friend walking up the road to deliver the newspaper. They wear caps and sweaters, and one boy has a bag over his shoulder. They are so happy they aren't saying anything, these boys. I think if they could, they would take each other's arm. It's early in the morning, and they are doing this thing together. They come on, slowly. The sky is taking on light, though the moon still hangs pale over the water. Such beauty that for a minute death and ambition, even love, doesn't enter into this. Happiness. It comes on unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really, any early morning talk about it.

Stuart Kestenbaum

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Everything you've learned in school as `obvious' becomes less and less obvious as you begin to study the universe. For example, there are no solids in the universe. There's not even a suggestion of a solid. There are no absolute continuums. There are no surfaces. There are no straight lines. -R. Buckminster Fuller, engineer, designer, and architect (1895-1983)

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Borrowed Time

I will not die tonight I will lie in bed with my wife beside me, curled on the right like an animal burrowing. I will fit myself against her and we will keep each other warm.

I will not die tonight. My son who is seven will not slide beneath the ice like the boy on the news. The divers will not have to look for him in the cold water. He will call, "Daddy, can I get up now?" in the morning.

I will not die tonight. I will balance the checkbook, wash up the dishes and sit in front of the TV drinking one beer.

For the moment I hold a winning ticket. It's my turn to buy cold cuts at the grocery store. I fill my basket carefully.

For like the rain that comes now to the roof and slides down the gutter I am headed to the earth. And like the others, all the lost and all the lovers, I will follow an old path not marked on any map.

by David Moreau

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One of life's most painful moments comes when we must admit that we didn't do our homework, that we are not prepared. Merlin Olsen (American Football Player, Sports Broadcaster, Actor)

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Yes William Stafford

It could happen any time, tornado, earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen. Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could you know. That's why we wake and look out--no guarantees in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning, like right now, like noon, like evening.

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Education is not merely a means for earning a living or an instrument for the acquisition of wealth. It is an initiation into life of spirit, a training of the human soul in the pursuit of truth and the practice of virtue. ~ Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit ~

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And Yet*

It's true, we carry the world inside us, Always present like light. And yet, this hilltop where the sun sits, Heavy and red, every evening; My house shuttered now, the gravel courtyard Sprouting weeds; myself, woefully transient, My suitcase packed, listening for My neighbor who will take me to the train, And the stillness mobbing past, Strangely clamorous and thick, It's true, I know. And yet, and yet!

Paul Zweig

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May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. -Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)

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Off the Trail For Carole

We are free to find our own way Over rocks---through the trees--- Where there are no trails. The ridge and the forest Present themselves tour eyes and feet Which decide for themselves In their old learned wisdom of doing Where the wild will take us. We have Been here before. It's more intimate somehow Than walking the paths that lay out some route That you stick to, All paths are possible, many will work, Being blocked is its own kind of pleasure, Getting through is a joy, the side-trips And detours show down logs and flowers, The deer paths straight up, the squirrel tracks Across, the outcroppings lead us on over. Resting on treetrunks, Stepping out on the bedrock, angling and eyeing Both making choices---now parting our ways--- And later rejoin; I'm right, you're right, We come together. Mattake, "Pine Mushroom," Heaves at the base of a stump. The dense matted floor Of Red Fir needles and twigs. This is wild! We laugh, wild for sure, Because no place is more than another, All places total, And our ankles, knees, shoulders & Haunches know right where they are. Recall how the Dao De Jing puts it: the trail's not the way. No path will get you there, we're off the trail, You and I, and we chose it! Our trips out of doors Through the years have been practice For this ramble together, Deep in the mountains Side by side, Over rocks, through the trees.

--Gary Snyder

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We Collect Gull Feathers

As the evening dies over Pepin, we collect gull feathers, black and white ones, and pretend they were dropped by the eagle whose track and wing marked the gray Mississippi sandbar.

Jesse remarked as we arrived, "If I point at hawks they fly away, but if I don't they stay in their trees."

The river moves heavily, south, and the sun drops beyond the bluffs. The air chills me. I want to keep my fingers in my pocket, because everything moves on here, except that sweet pain of love that knows he's growing up to leave me.

Timothy Young

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Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity; and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life. -John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)

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Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair. -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist (1883-1931)

p

Eyes of Night-Time

On the roads at night I saw the glitter of eyes: My dark around me let shine one ray; that black allowed their eyes : spangles in the cat's, air in the moth's eye shine, mosaic of the fly, ruby-eyed beetle, the eyes that never weep, the horned toad sitting and its tear of blood, fighters and prisoners in the forest, people aware in this almost total dark, with the difference, the one broad fact of light.

Eyes on the road at night, sides of a road like rhyme; the floor of the illumined shadow sea and shallows with their assembling flash and show of sight, root, holdfast, eyes of the brittle stars. And your eyes in the shadowy red room, scent of the forest entering, various time

calling and the light of wood along the ceiling and over us birds calling and their circuit eyes. And in our bodies the eyes of the dead and the living giving us gifts at hand, the glitter of all their eyes.

--Muriel Rukeyser

From Collected Poems, 1978

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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. -Friedrich Nietzsche, philosopher (1844-1900)

p

An Ox Looks at Man

They are more delicate even than shrubs and they run and run from one side to the other, always forgetting something. Surely they lack I don't know what basic ingredient, though they present themselves as noble or serious, at times. Oh, terribly serious, even tragic. Poor things, one would say that they hear neither the song of the air nor the secrets of hay; likewise they seem not to see what is visible and common to each of us, in space. And they are sad, and in the wake of sadness they come to cruelty. All their expression lives in their eyes--and loses itself to a simple lowering of lids, to a shadow. And since there is little of the mountain about them -- nothing in the hair or in the terribly fragile limbs but coldness and secrecy -- it is impossible for them to settle themselves into forms that are calm, lasting and necessary. They have, perhaps, a kind of melancholy grace (one minute) and with this they allow themselves to forget the problems and translucent inner emptiness that make them so poor and so lacking when it comes to uttering silly and painful sounds: desire, love, jealousy (what do we know?) -- sounds that scatter and fall in the field like troubled stones and burn the herbs and the water, and after this it is hard to keep chewing away at our truth.

~ Carlos Drummond de Andrade ~

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Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That's why it's a comfort to go hand in hand. -Emily Kimbrough, author and broadcaster (1899-1989)

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One Heart

Look at the birds. Even flying is born

out of nothing. The first sky is inside you, friend, open

at either end of day. The work of wings

was always freedom, fastening one heart to every falling thing.

~ Li-Young Lee ~

p

On a single blade of grass a cool breeze lingers

Issa (trans. by Nanao Sakaki)

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How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was? Satchel Paige

p

The great sea has set me in motion. Set me adrift, And I move as a weed in the river.

The arch of sky and mightiness of storms Encompasses me, And I am left Trembling with joy.

Eskimo song

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You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf. John Kabat Zinn

Fwd: p

>>> Stephen Wilder 7/10/05 10:08 AM >>> Keeping Quiet

And now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still . . .

For once on the face of the earth let's not speak in any language, let's stop for one second, and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines, we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victory with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. (Life is what it is about, I want no truck with death.)

If we were not so singleminded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count to twelve, and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda (trans. Alistair Reid)

p

The day we die the wind comes down to take away our footprints.

The wind makes dust to cover up the marks we left while walking

For otherwise the thing would seem as if we were still living.

Therefore the wind is he who comes to blow away our footprints.

Southern Bushmen (San people) song

q

What is life? It is the flash of the firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. Crowfoot (a Blackfoot Indian, 1821-1890)

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Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things! This beautiful place defaced with a crop of suburban houses * How beautiful when we first beheld it, Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs; No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing, Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads * Now the spoiler has come: does it care? Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide That swells and in time will ebb, and all Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty Lives in the very grain of the granite, Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff. * As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves; We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Robinson Jeffers

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Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security doesn't exist in nature, not do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure. Helen Keller

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Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say it is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you every where like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

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The more you have, the more you are occupied, the less you give. But the less you have, the more free you are. Mother Teresa

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the dog, reminding us of our mortality, grows old

the daffodils, reminding us of our life, bloom freely

the breeze, reminding us to love, kisses our cheek

Stephen Wilder

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Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, a man will not himself find peace. Albert Schweitzer

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Whenever I hear the edgeless sound in the deep night O Mother! I find you again.

Whenever I stand beneath the light of the seamless sky O Father! I bow my head.

The sun goes down Our shadows dissolve The pine tree darken O Darling! We must go home

Kyozan Joshu Sasaki

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As soon as a man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins. Albert Schweitzer

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Esalen's Law: (1) You always teach others what you most need to learn yourself (2) You are your own worst student

Richard Price

p - another fine poem by one of us

If leaves bleed in autumn, beautiful before the descent, why should we question giving to live or living to die?

Chiyo

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It is only with humility, the humility that comes from being in the presence of sacred things and knowing the simple quality called respect, that real knowing, teaching and learning are possible. Parker Palmer

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If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. Maya Angelou

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eating habits of the old man

for yasunari kawabata, in beauty and sadness

 

when i lost my teeth

all of them

i couldn’t eat loquats

the way i used to

in one, two bites

 

now i glide them against

the soft of my mouth

a pink ridge wrinkled to a smooth roughness

like the insides of a pickled oyster

 

the membrane of the fruit

in a soft crush

juice sucked clean by a regular puckering

the lips almost swallow back mouth

 

when i am through

with the meat of the loquat

i kick the pit out

with the tip of my tongue

 

my wife won’t eat

at the same table

with me and my loquats

but then we never did get along very well

 

i have always loved loquats

and now without teeth

well, the pleasure is double

 

Alan Chong Lau

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Only in growth, reform and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found. Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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each day like the last clouds slip by unceasingly leaves drop one by one

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...we often look so long and so reverently at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us. Helen Keller