Blinding Light Of Heaven…

The whole folderol and whoop-de-do about the 1960s was that the crypto-fascist bullshit agenda was damn near overthrown by a bunch of 19 and 20 year olds on campuses scattered around the high tech world. The male dominant agenda is so fragile that any competitor is felt as a deadly foe.—Terence McKenna

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Freezing rain, early morning, just past midnight… Off to bed. Hope all is well with you and the world…

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Sylvian & Fripp – Jean The Birdman

The Links

The Quotes

Sufi Tales… Part 1

David Sylvian & Robert Fripp – God’s Monkey

Sufi Tales Part 2

Poetry: More Robinson Jeffers…

David Sylvian & Robert Fripp – Blinding Light Of Heaven

All Art: Gustave Klimt

Enjoy!

Gwyllm

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Sylvian & Fripp – Jean The Birdman

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The Links:

I could have told you that!

Devil Plant!

The Spicy Cauldron…!

Wandering Wandjina…

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The Quotes:

“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

“One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.”

“Advertisements… contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.”

“You can only be young once. But you can always be immature.”

“Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.”

“If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.”

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Sufi Tales… Part 1

THE FOUR MEN AND THE INTERPRETER

Four people were given a piece of money.

The first was a Persian. He said: ‘I will buy with this some angur.’

The second was an Arab. He said: ‘No, because I want inab.’

The third was Turk. He said: ‘I do not want inab, I want uzum.’

The fourth was a Greek. He said: ‘I want stafil.’

Because they did not know what lay behind the names of things, these four started to fight.

They had information but no knowledge.

One man of wisdom present could have reconciled them all, saying: ‘I can fulfil the needs of all of you, with one and the same piece of money. If you honestly give me your trust, your one coin will become as four; and four at odds will become as one united.’

Such a man would know that each in his own language wanted the same thing, grapes.

– taken from the sufi Jalal-Uddin Rumi (d.1273)

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Mahmud of Ghazna

It is related that Mahmud of Ghazna was once walking in his garden when he stumbled over a blind dervish sleeping beside a bush.

As soon as he awoke, the dervish cried, “You clumsy oaf! Have you no eyes, that you must trample upon the sons of men?”

Mahmud’s companion, who was one of his courtiers, shouted, “Your blindness is equaled only by your stupidity! Since you cannot see, you should be doubly careful of whom you are accusing of heedlessness.”

“If by that you mean”, said the dervish, “that I should not criticize a sultan, it is you who should realize your shallowness.”

Mahmud was impressed that the blind man knew that he was in the presence of the king, and he said mildly, “Why, O dervish, should a king have to listen to vituperation from you?”

“Precisely”, said the dervish, “because it is the shielding of people of any category from criticism appropriate to them which is responsible for their downfall. It is the burnished metal which shines most brightly, the knife struck with the whetstone which cuts best, and the exercised arm which can lift the weight.”

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David Sylvian & Robert Fripp – God’s Monkey

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Sufi Tales Part 2

The Frogs

A group of frogs were traveling through the woods, and two of them fell into a deep pit. All the other frogs gathered around the pit. When they saw how deep the pit was, they told the unfortunate frogs they would never get out. The two frogs ignored the comments and tried to jump up out of the pit.

The other frogs kept telling them to stop, that they were as good as dead. Finally, one of the frogs took heed to what the other frogs were saying and simply gave up. He fell down and died.

The other frog continued to jump as hard as he could. Once again, the crowd of frogs yelled at him to stop the pain and suffering and just die. He jumped even harder and finally made it out. When he got out, the other frogs asked him, “Why did you continue jumping. Didn’t you hear us?”

The frog explained to them that he was deaf. He thought they were encouraging him the entire time.

This story holds two lessons:

1. There is power of life and death in the tongue. An encouraging word to someone who is down can lift them up and help them make it through the day.

2. A destructive word to someone who is down can be what it takes to kill them. Be careful of what you say. Speak life to those who cross your path.

The power of words… it is sometimes hard to understand that an encouraging word can go such a long way. Anyone can speak words that tend to rob another of the spirit to continue in difficult times.

Special is the individual who will take the time to encourage another.

Why Are You Here?

One day Nasrudin was walking along a deserted road. Night was

falling as he spied a troop of horsemen coming toward him. His

imagination began to work, and he feared that they might rob him,

or impress him into the army. So strong did this fear become that

he leaped over a wall and found himself in a graveyard. The other

travelers, innocent of any such motive as had been assumed by

Nasrudin, became curious and pursued him.

When they came upon him lying motionless, one said, “Can we help

you? And, why are you here in this position?”

Nasrudin, realizing his mistake said, “It is more complicated

than you assume. You see, I am here because of you; and you, you

are here because of me.”

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Poetry: More Robinson Jeffers…

Birth-Dues

Joy is a trick in the air; pleasure is merely

contemptible, the dangled

Carrot the ass follows to market or precipice;

But limitary pain — the rock under the tower

and the hewn coping

That takes thunder at the head of the turret-

Terrible and real. Therefore a mindless dervish

carving himself

With knives will seem to have conquered the world.

The world’s God is treacherous and full of

unreason; a torturer, but also

The only foundation and the only fountain.

Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes

of hunger; who hides in the grave

To escape him is dead; who enters the Indian

Recession to escape him is dead; who falls in

love with the God is washed clean

Of death desired and of death dreaded.

He has joy, but Joy is a trick in the air; and

pleasure, but pleasure is contemptible;

And peace; and is based on solider than pain.

He has broken boundaries a little and that will

estrange him; he is monstrous, but not

To the measure of the God…. But I having told

you–

However I suppose that few in the world have

energy to hear effectively-

Have paid my birth-dues; am quits with the

people.

Fawn’s Foster-Mother

The old woman sits on a bench before the door and quarrels

With her meagre pale demoralized daughter.

Once when I passed I found her alone, laughing in the sun

And saying that when she was first married

She lived in the old farmhouse up Garapatas Canyon.

(It is empty now, the roof has fallen

But the log walls hang on the stone foundation; the redwoods

Have all been cut down, the oaks are standing;

The place is now more solitary than ever before.)

“When I was nursing my second baby

My husband found a day-old fawn hid in a fern-brake

And brought it; I put its mouth to the breast

Rather than let it starve, I had milk enough for three babies.

Hey how it sucked, the little nuzzler,

Digging its little hoofs like quills into my stomach.

I had more joy from that than from the others.”

Her face is deformed with age, furrowed like a bad road

With market-wagons, mean cares and decay.

She is thrown up to the surface of things, a cell of dry skin

Soon to be shed from the earth’s old eye-brows,

I see that once in her spring she lived in the streaming arteries,

The stir of the world, the music of the mountain.

The Broken Balance

I. Reference to a Passage in Plutarch’s Life of Sulla

The people buying and selling, consuming pleasures, talking in the archways,

Were all suddenly struck quiet

And ran from under stone to look up at the sky: so shrill and mournful,

So fierce and final, a brazen

Pealing of trumpets high up in the air, in the summer blue over Tuscany.

They marvelled; the soothsayers answered:

“Although the Gods are little troubled toward men, at the end of each period

A sign is declared in heaven

Indicating new times, new customs, a changed people; the Romans

Rule, and Etruria is finished;

A wise mariner will trim the sails to the wind.”

I heard yesterday

So shrill and mournful a trumpet-blast,

It was hard to be wise…. You must eat change and endure; not be much troubled

For the people; they will have their happiness.

When the republic grows too heavy to endure, then Caesar will carry It;

When life grows hateful, there’s power …

II To the Children

Power’s good; life is not always good but power’s good.

So you must think when abundance

Makes pawns of people and all the loaves are one dough.

The steep singleness of passion

Dies; they will say, “What was that?” but the power triumphs.

Loveliness will live under glass

And beauty will go savage in the secret mountains.

There is beauty in power also.

You children must widen your minds’ eyes to take mountains

Instead of faces, and millions

Instead of persons; not to hate life; and massed power

After the lone hawk’s dead.

III

That light blood-loving weasel, a tongue of yellow

Fire licking the sides of the gray stones,

Has a more passionate and more pure heart

In the snake-slender flanks than man can imagine;

But he is betrayed by his own courage,

The man who kills him is like a cloud hiding a star.

Then praise the jewel-eyed hawk and the tall blue heron;

The black cormorants that fatten their sea-rock

With shining slime; even that ruiner of anthills

The red-shafted woodpecker flying,

A white star between blood-color wing-clouds,

Across the glades of the wood and the green lakes of shade.

These live their felt natures; they know their norm

And live it to the brim; they understand life.

While men moulding themselves to the anthill have choked

Their natures until the souls the in them;

They have sold themselves for toys and protection:

No, but consider awhile: what else? Men sold for toys.

Uneasy and fractional people, having no center

But in the eyes and mouths that surround them,

Having no function but to serve and support

Civilization, the enemy of man,

No wonder they live insanely, and desire

With their tongues, progress; with their eyes, pleasure; with their hearts, death.

Their ancestors were good hunters, good herdsmen and swordsman,

But now the world is turned upside down;

The good do evil, the hope’s in criminals; in vice

That dissolves the cities and war to destroy them.

Through wars and corruptions the house will fall.

Mourn whom it falls on. Be glad: the house is mined, it will fall.

IV

Rain, hail and brutal sun, the plow in the roots,

The pitiless pruning-iron in the branches,

Strengthen the vines, they are all feeding friends

Or powerless foes until the grapes purple.

But when you have ripened your berries it is time to begin to perish.

The world sickens with change, rain becomes poison,

The earth is a pit, it Is time to perish.

The vines are fey, the very kindness of nature

Corrupts what her cruelty before strengthened.

When you stand on the peak of time it is time to begin to perish.

Reach down the long morbid roots that forget the plow,

Discover the depths; let the long pale tendrils

Spend all to discover the sky, now nothing is good

But only the steel mirrors of discovery . . .

And the beautiful enormous dawns of time, after we perish.

V

Mourning the broken balance, the hopeless prostration of the earth

Under men’s hands and their minds,

The beautiful places killed like rabbits to make a city,

The spreading fungus, the slime-threads

And spores; my own coast’s obscene future: I remember the farther

Future, and the last man dying

Without succession under the confident eyes of the stars.

It was only a moment’s accident,

The race that plagued us; the world resumes the old lonely immortal

Splendor; from here I can even

Perceive that that snuffed candle had something . . . a fantastic virtue,

A faint and unshapely pathos . . .

So death will flatter them at last: what, even the bald ape’s by-shot

Was moderately admirable?

VI Palinode

All summer neither rain nor wave washes the cormorants’

Perch, and their droppings have painted it shining white.

If the excrement of fish-eaters makes the brown rock a snow-mountain

At noon, a rose in the morning, a beacon at moonrise

On the black water: it is barely possible that even men’s present

Lives are something; their arts and sciences (by moonlight)

Not wholly ridiculous, nor their cities merely an offense.

VII

Under my windows, between the road and the sea-cliff, bitter wild grass

Stands narrowed between the people and the storm.

The ocean winter after winter gnaws at its earth, the wheels and the feet

Summer after summer encroach and destroy.

Stubborn green life, for the cliff-eater I cannot comfort you, ignorant which color,

Gray-blue or pale-green, will please the late stars;

But laugh at the other, your seed shall enjoy wonderful vengeances and suck

The arteries and walk in triumph on the faces.

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Sylvian & Fripp – Blinding Light Of Heaven

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