Month: February 2007

How it works…. If I write the intro at night, I have plenty to say… if it is in the morning, well you get something like this. 8o) I draw a blank often for the 1st few hours. Formulating thoughts best done late at night kids…

If you haven’t gotten a chance yet to visit our Cafe Press shop, please do. The address is: Gwyllm-Arts @ CafePress.com If anything, you might actually find something you like there.

Have a good weekend!

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Terence Interview…

The Wooing of Olwen

Cannabis And Kids…

The Quotes

The Poetry Of Arthur Rimbaud

Art: Lucien Levy-Dhurmer (1865-1953)

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The Links;

Judge Bans NYPD Videotaping Of Political Protests

Children used for religion

Moments of Zen

Seizure of LSD stash in ’06 anamoly, police say

Impetuous Man That He Is, Penn Jillette Advertises Chinese Viagra

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Terence Interview…

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The Wooing of Olwen

Shortly after the birth of Kilhuch, the son of King Kilyth, his mother died. Before her death she charged the king that he should not take a wife again until he saw a briar with two blossoms upon her grave, and the king sent every morning to see if anything were growing thereon. After many years the briar appeared, and he took to wife the widow of King Doged. She foretold to her stepson, Kilhuch, that it was his destiny to marry a maiden named Olwen, or none other, and he, at his father’s bidding, went to the court of his cousin, King Arthur, to ask as a boon the hand of the maiden. He rode upon a grey steed with shell-formed hoofs, having a bridle of linked gold, and a saddle also of gold. In his hand were two spears of silver, well-tempered, headed with steel, of an edge to wound the wind and cause blood to flow, and swifter than the fall of the dew-drop from the blade of reed grass upon the earth when the dew of June is at its heaviest. A gold-hilted sword was on his thigh, and the blade was of gold, having inlaid upon it a cross of the hue of the lightning of heaven. Two brindled, white-breasted greyhounds, with strong collars of rubies, sported round him, and his courser cast up four sods with its four hoofs like four swallows about his head. Upon the steed was a four-cornered cloth of purple, and an apple of gold was at each corner. Precious gold was upon the stirrups and shoes, and the blade of grass bent not beneath them, so light was the courser’s tread as he went towards the gate of King Arthur’s palace.

Arthur received him with great ceremony, and asked him to remain at the palace; but the youth replied that he came not to consume meat and drink, but to ask a boon of the king.

Then said Arthur, “Since thou wilt not remain here, chieftain, thou shalt receive the boon, whatsoever thy tongue may name, as far as the wind dries and the rain moistens, and the sun revolves, and the sea encircles, and the earth extends, save only my ships and my mantle, my sword, my lance, my shield, my dagger, and Guinevere my wife.”

So Kilhuch craved of him the hand of Olwen, the daughter of Yspathaden Penkawr, and also asked the favour and aid of all Arthur’s court.

Then said Arthur, “O chieftain, I have never heard of the maiden of whom thou speakest, nor of her kindred, but I will gladly send messengers in search of her.”

And the youth said, “I will willingly grant from this night to that at the end of the year to do so.”

Then Arthur sent messengers to every land within his dominions to seek for the maiden; and at the end of the year Arthur’s messengers returned without having gained any knowledge or information concerning Olwen more than on the first day.

Then said Kilhuch, “Every one has received his boon, and I yet lack mine. I will depart and bear away thy honour with me.”

Then said Kay, “Rash chieftain! dost thou reproach Arthur? Go with us, and we will not part until thou dost either confess that the maiden exists not in the world, or until we obtain her.”

Thereupon Kay rose up.

Kay had this peculiarity, that his breath lasted nine nights and nine days under water, and he could exist nine nights and nine days without sleep. A wound from Kay’s sword no physician could heal. Very subtle was Kay. When it pleased him he could render himself as tall as the highest tree in the forest. And he had another peculiarity—so great was the heat of his nature, that, when it rained hardest, whatever he carried remained dry for a handbreadth above and a handbreath below his hand; and when his companions were coldest, it was to them as fuel with which to light their fire.

And Arthur called Bedwyr, who never shrank from any enterprise upon which Kay was bound. None was equal to him in swiftness throughout this island except Arthur and Drych Ail Kibthar. And although he was one-handed, three warriors could not shed blood faster than he on the field of battle. Another property he had; his lance would produce a wound equal to those of nine opposing lances.

And Arthur called to Kynthelig the guide. “Go thou upon this expedition with the Chieftain.” For as good a guide was he in a land which he had never seen as he was in his own.

[He called Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd, because he knew all tongues.

He called Gwalchmai, the son of Gwyar, because he never returned home without achieving the adventure of which he went in quest. He was the best of footmen and the best of knights. He was nephew to Arthur, the son of his sister, and his cousin.

And Arthur called Menw, the son of Teirgwaeth, in order that if they went into a savage country, he might cast a charm and an illusion over them, so that none might see them whilst they could see every one.

They journeyed on till they came to a vast open plain, wherein they saw a great castle, which was the fairest in the world. But so far away was it that at night it seemed no nearer, and they scarcely reached it on the third day. When they came before the castle they beheld a vast flock of sheep, boundless and without end. They told their errand to the herdsman, who endeavoured to dissuade them, since none who had come thither on that quest had returned alive. They gave to him a gold ring, which he conveyed to his wife, telling her who the visitors were.

On the approach of the latter, she ran out with joy to greet them, and sought to throw her arms about their necks. But Kay, snatching a billet out of the pile, placed the log between her two hands, and she squeezed it so that it became a twisted coil.

“O woman,” said Kay, “if thou hadst squeezed me thus, none could ever again have set their affections on me. Evil love were this.”

They entered the house, and after meat she told them that the maiden Olwen came there every Saturday to wash. They pledged their faith that they would not harm her, and a message was sent to her. So Olwen came, clothed in a robe of flame-coloured silk, and with a collar of ruddy gold, in which were emeralds and rubies, about her neck. More golden was her hair than the flower of the broom, and her skin was whiter than the foam of the wave, and fairer were her hands and her fingers than the blossoms of the wood anemone amidst the spray of the meadow fountain. Brighter were her glances than those of a falcon; her bosom was more snowy than the breast of the white swan, her cheek redder than the reddest roses. Whoso beheld was filled with her love. Four white trefoils sprang up wherever she trod, and therefore was she called Olwen.

Then Kilhuch, sitting beside her on a bench, told her his love, and she said that he would win her as his bride if he granted whatever her father asked.

Accordingly they went up to the castle and laid their request before him.

“Raise up the forks beneath my two eyebrows which have fallen over my eyes,” said Yspathaden Penkawr, “that I may see the fashion of my son-in-law.”

They did so, and he promised them an answer on the morrow. But as they were going forth, Yspathaden seized one of the three poisoned darts that lay beside him and threw it back after them.

And Bedwyr caught it and flung it back, wounding Yspathaden in the knee.

Then said he, “A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. I shall ever walk the worse for his rudeness. This poisoned iron pains me like the bite of a gad-fly. Cursed be the smith who forged it, and the anvil whereon it was wrought.”

The knights rested in the house of Custennin the herdsman, but the next day at dawn they returned to the castle and renewed their request.

Yspathaden said it was necessary that he should consult Olwen’s four great-grandmothers and her four great-grandsires.

The knights again withdrew, and as they were going he took the second dart and cast it after them.

But Menw caught it and flung it back, piercing Yspathaden’s breast with it, so that it came out at the small of his back.

“A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly,” says he, “the hard iron pains me like the bite of a horse-leech. Cursed be the hearth whereon it was heated! Henceforth whenever I go up a hill, I shall have a scant in my breath and a pain in my chest.”

On the third day the knights returned once more to the palace, and Yspathaden took the third dart and cast it at them.

But Kilhuch caught it and threw it vigorously, and wounded him through the eyeball, so that the dart came out at the back of his head.

“A cursed ungentle son-in-law, truly. As long as I remain alive my eyesight will be the worse. Whenever I go against the wind my eyes will water, and peradventure my head will burn, and I shall have a giddiness every new moon. Cursed be the fire in which it was forged. Like the bite of a mad dog is the stroke of this poisoned iron.”

And they went to meat.

Said Yspathaden Penkawr, “Is it thou that seekest my daughter?”

“It is I,” answered Kilhuch.

“I must have thy pledge that thou wilt not do towards me otherwise than is just, and when I have gotten that which I shall name, my daughter thou shalt have.”

“I promise thee that willingly,” said Kilhuch, “name what thou wilt.”

“I will do so,” said he.

“Throughout the world there is not a comb or scissors with which I can arrange my hair, on account of its rankness, except the comb and scissors that are between the two ears of Turch Truith, the son of Prince Tared. He will not give them of his own free will, and thou wilt not be able to compel him.”

“It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy.”

“Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. It will not be possible to hunt Turch Truith without Drudwyn the whelp of Greid, the son of Eri, and know that throughout the world there is not a huntsman who can hunt with this dog, except Mabon the son of Modron. He was taken from his mother when three nights old, and it is not known where he now is, nor whether he is living or dead.”

“It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy.”

“Though thou get this, there is yet that which thou wilt not get. Thou wilt not get Mabon, for it is not known where he is, unless thou find Eidoel, his kinsman in blood, the son of Aer. For it would be useless to seek for him. He is his cousin.”

“It will be easy for me to compass this, although thou mayest think that it will not be easy. Horses shall I have, and chivalry; and my lord and kinsman Arthur will obtain for me all these things. And I shall gain thy daughter, and thou shalt lose thy life.”

“Go forward. And thou shalt not be chargeable for food or raiment for my daughter while thou art seeking these things; and when thou hast compassed all these marvels, thou shalt have my daughter for wife.”

Now, when they told Arthur how they had sped, Arthur said, “Which of these marvels will it be best for us to seek first?”

“It will be best,” said they, “to seek Mabon the son of Modron; and he will not be found unless we first find Eidoel, the son of Aer, his kinsman.”

Then Arthur rose up, and the warriors of the Islands of Britain with him, to seek for Eidoel; and they proceeded until they came before the castle of Glivi, where Eidoel was imprisoned.

Glivi stood on the summit of his castle, and said, “Arthur, what requirest thou of me, since nothing remains to me in this fortress, and I have neither joy nor pleasure in it; neither wheat nor oats?”

Said Arthur, “Not to injure thee came I hither, but to seek for the prisoner that is with thee.”

“I will give thee my prisoner, though I had not thought to give him up to any one; and therewith shalt thou have my suport and my aid.”

His followers then said unto Arthur, “Lord, go thou home, thou canst not proceed with thy host in quest of such small adventures as these.”

Then said Arthur, “It were well for thee, Gwrhyr Gwalstawt Ieithoedd, to go upon this quest, for thou knowest all languages, and art familiar with those of the birds and the beasts. Go, Eidoel, likewise with my men in search of thy cousin. And as for you, Kay and Bedwyr, I have hope of whatever adventure ye are in quest of, that ye will achieve it. Achieve ye this adventure for me.”

These went forward until they came to the Ousel of Cilgwri, and Gwrhyr adjured her for the sake of Heaven, saying, “Tell me if thou knowest aught of Mabon, the son of Modron, who was taken when three nights old from between his mother and the wall.

And the Ousel answered, “When I first came here there was a smith’s anvil in this place, and I was then a young bird, and from that time no work has been done upon it, save the pecking of my beak every evening, and now there is not so much as the size of a nut remaining thereof; yet the vengeance of Heaven be upon me if during all that time I have ever heard of the man for whom you inquire. Nevertheless, there is a race of animals who were formed before me, and I will be your guide to them.”

So they proceeded to the place where was the Stag of Redynvre.

“Stag of Redynvre, behold we are come to thee, an embassy from Arthur, for we have not heard of any animal older than thou. Say, knowest thou aught of Mabon?”

The stag said, “When first I came hither, there was a plain all around me, without any trees save one oak sapling, which grew up to be an oak with an hundred branches. And that oak has since perished, so that now nothing remains of it but the withered stump; and from that day to this I have been here, yet have I never heard of the man for whom you inquire. Nevertheless, I will be your guide to the place where there is an animal which was formed before I was.”

So they proceeded to the place where was the Owl of Cwm Cawlwyd, to inquire of him concerning Mabon.

And the owl said, “If I knew I would tell you. When first I came hither, the wide valley you see was a wooded glen. And a race of men came and rooted it up. And there grew there a second wood, and this wood is the third. My wings, are they not withered stumps? Yet all this time, even until to-day, I have never heard of the man for whom you inquire. Nevertheless, I will be the guide of Arthur’s embassy until you come to the place where is the oldest animal in this world, and the one who has travelled most, the eagle of Gwern Abwy.”

When they came to the eagle, Gwrhyr asked it the same question; but it replied, “I have been here for a great space of time, and when I first came hither there was a rock here, from the top of which I pecked at the stars every evening, and now it is not so much as a span high. From that day to this I have been here, and I have never heard of the man for whom you inquire, except once when I went in search of food as far as Llyn Llyw. And when I came there, I struck my talons into a salmon, thinking he would serve me as food for a long time. But he drew me into the deep, and I was scarcely able to escape from him. After that I went with my whole kindred to attack him and to try to destroy him, but he sent messengers and made peace with me, and came and besought me to take fifty fish-spears out of his back. Unless he know something of him whom you seek, I cannot tell you who may. However, I will guide you to the place where he is.”

So they went thither, and the eagle said, “Salmon of Llyn Llyw, I have come to thee with an embassy from Arthur to ask thee if thou knowest aught concerning Mabon, the son of Modron, who was taken away at three nights old from between his mother and the wall.”

And the salmon answered, “As much as I know I will tell thee. With every tide I go along the river upwards, until I come near to the walls of Gloucester, and there have I found such wrong as I never found elsewhere; and to the end that ye may give credence thereto, let one of you go thither upon each of my two shoulders.”

So Kay and Gwrhyr went upon his shoulders, and they proceeded till they came to the wall of the prison, and they heard a great wailing and lamenting from the dungeon.

Said Gwrhyr, “Who is it that laments in this house of stone?”

And the voice replied, “Alas, it is Mabon, the son of Modron, who is here imprisoned!”

Then they returned and told Arthur, who, summoning his warriors, attacked the castle.

And whilst the fight was going on, Kay and Bedwyr, mounting on the shoulders of the fish, broke into the dungeon, and brought away with them Mabon, the son of Modron.

Then Arthur summoned unto him all the warriors that were in the three islands of Britain and in the three islands adjacent; and he went as far as Esgeir Oervel in Ireland where the Boar Truith was with his seven young pigs. And the dogs were let loose upon him from all sides. But he wasted the fifth part of Ireland, and then set forth through the sea to Wales. Arthur and his hosts, and his horses, and his dogs followed hard after him. But ever and awhile the boar made a stand, and many a champion of Arthur’s did he slay. Throughout all Wales did Arthur follow him, and one by one the young pigs were killed. At length, when he would fain have crossed the Severn and escaped into Cornwall, Mabon the son of Modron came up with him, and Arthur fell upon him together with the champions of Britain. On the one side Mabon the son of Modron spurred his steed and snatched his razor from him, whilst Kay came up with him on the other side and took from him the scissors. But before they could obtain the comb he had regained the ground with his feet, and from the moment that he reached the shore, neither dog nor man nor horse could overtake him until he came to Cornwall. There Arthur and his hosts followed in his track until they overtook him in Cornwall. Hard had been their trouble before, but it was child’s play to what they met in seeking the comb. Win it they did, and the Boar Truith they hunted into the deep sea, and it was never known whither he went.

Then Kilhuch set forward, and as many as wished ill to Yspathaden Penkawr. And they took the marvels with them to his court. And Kaw of North Britain came and shaved his beard, skin and flesh clean off to the very bone from ear to ear.

“Art thou shaved, man?” said Kilhuch.

“I am shaved,” answered he.

“Is thy daughter mine now?”

“She is thine, but therefore needst thou not thank me, but Arthur who hath accomplished this for thee. By my free will thou shouldst never have had her, for with her I lose my life.”

Then Goreu the son of Custennin seized him by the hair of his head and dragged him after him to the keep, and cut off his head and placed it on a stake on the citadel.

Thereafter the hosts of Arthur dispersed themselves each man to his own country.

Thus did Kilhuch son of Kelython win to wife Olwen, the daughter of Yspathaden Penkawr.

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Cannabis And Kids…

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The Quotes:

“Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.”

“The power of hiding ourselves from one another is mercifully given, for men are wild beasts, and would devour one another but for this protection.”

“The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.”

“I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.”

“Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to.”

“Washington is a city of Southern efficiency and Northern charm.”

“If little else, the brain is an educational toy.”

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The Poetry Of Arthur Rimbaud

Drunken Boat

I drifted on a river I could not control,

No longer guided by the bargemen’s ropes,

They were captured by howling Indians

Who nailed them naked to colored stakes.

I cared no more for other boats or cargoes:

English cotton, Flemish wheat, all were gone.

When my bargemen could no longer haul me

I forgot about everything and drifted on.

Through the wild splash and surging of the tides

Last winter, deaf as a child’s dark night,

I ran and ran! And the drifting peninsulas

Have never known such conquering delight.

Lighter than cork, I revolved upon waves

That roll the dead forever in the deep,

Ten days, beyond the blinking eyes of land!

Lulled by storms, I drifted seaward from sleep.

Sweeter than children find the taste of sour fruit,

Green water filled my cockle shell of pine.

Anchor and rudder went drifting away,

Washed in vomit and stained with blue wine.

Now I drift through the Poem of the Sea;

This gruel of stars mirrors the milky sky,

Devours green azures; ecstatic flotsam,

Drowned men, pale and thoughtful, sometimes drift by.

Staining the sudden blueness, the slow sounds,

Deliriums that streak the glowing sky,

Stronger than drink and the songs we sing,

It is boiling, bitter, red; it is love!

I watched the lightning tear the sky apart,

Watched waterspouts, and streaming undertow,

And Dawn like Dove-People rising on wings

I’ve seen what men have only dreamed they saw!

I saw the sun with mystic horrors darken

And shimmer through a violet haze;

With a shiver of shutters the waves fell

Like actors in ancient, forgotten plays!

I dreamed of green nights and glittering snow,

Slow kisses rising in the eyes of the Sea,

Unknown liquids flowing, the blue and yellow

Stirring of phosphorescent melody’

For months I watched the surge of the sea,

Hysterical herds attacking the reefs;

I never thought the bright feet of Mary

Could muzzle up the heavy-breathing waves’.

I have jostled-you know ?-unbelievable Floridas

And seen among the flowers the wild eyes

of panthers in the skins of mien! Rainbows

Bridling blind flocks beneath the horizons!

In stinking swamps I have seen great hulksi

A Leviathan that rotted in the reeds!

Water crumbling in the midst of calm

And distances that shatter into foam.

Glaciers, silver suns, waves of pearl, fiery skies,

Giant serpents stranded where lice consume

Them, falling in the depths of dark gulfs

From twisted trees, bathed in black perfume!

I wanted to show children these fishes shining

In the blue wave, the golden fish that sing

A froth of flowers cradled my wandering

And delicate winds tossed me on their wings.

Sometimes, a martyr of poles and latitudes,

The sea rocked me softly in sighing air,

And brought me shadow-flowers with yellow stems

I remained like a woman, kneeling . . .

Almost an island, I balanced on my boat’s sides

Rapacious blond-eyed birds, their dung, their screams.

I drifted on. Through fragile tangled lines

Drowned men, still staring up, sank down to sleep.

Now I, a little lost boat, in swirling debris,

Tossed by the storm into the birdless upper air

-All the Hansa Merchants and Monitors

Could not fish up my body drunk with the sea;

Free and soaring, trailing a violet haze,

Shot through the sky, a reddening wall

Wet with the jam of poets’ inspiration,

Lichens of sun, and snots of bright blue sky;

Lost branch spinning in a herd of hippocamps,

Covered over with electric animals

An everlasting July battering

The glittering sky and its fiery funnels;

Shaking at the sound of monsters roaring,

Rutting Behemoths in thick whirlpools,

Eternal weaver of unmoving blues,

I thought of Europe and its ancient walls!

I have seen archipelagos in the stars,

Feverish skies where I was free to roam!

Are these bottomless nights your exiled nests,

Swarm of golden birds, 0 Strength to come?

True, I’ve cried too much; I am heartsick at dawn.

The moon is bitter and the sun is sour …

Love burns me; I am swollen and slow.

Let my keel break! Oh, let me sink in the sea!

If I long for a shore in Europe,

It’s a small pond, dark, cold, remote,

The odor of evening, and a child full of sorrow

Who stoops to launch a crumpled paper boat.

Washed in your languors, Sea, I cannot trace

The wake of tankers foaming through the cold,

Nor assault the pride of pennants and flags,

Nor endure the slave ship’s stinking hold.

—

Drunken Morning

Oh, my Beautiful! Oh, my Good!

Hideous fanfare where yet I do not stumble!

Oh, rack of enchantments!

For the first time, hurrah for the unheard-of work,

For the marvelous body! For the first time!

It began with the laughter of children, and there it will end.

This poison will stay in our veins even when, as the fanfares depart,

We return to our former disharmony.

Oh, now, we who are so worthy of these tortures!

Let us re-create ourselves after that superhuman promise

Made to our souls and our bodies at their creation:

That promise, that madness!

Elegance, silence, violence!

They promised to bury in shadows the tree of good and evil,

To banish tyrannical honesty,

So that we might flourish in our very pure love.

It began with a certain disgust, and it ended –

Since we could not immediately seize upon eternity –

It ended in a scattering of perfumes.

Laughter of children, discretion of slaves, austerity of virgins,

Horror of faces and objects here below,

Be sacred in the memory of the evening past.

It began in utter boorishness, and now it ends

In angels of fire and ice.

Little drunken vigil, blessed!

If only for the mask you have left us!

Method, we believe in you! We never forgot that yesterday

You glorified all of our ages.

We have faith in poison.

We will give our lives completely, every day.

FOR THIS IS THE ASSASSIN’S HOUR.

—

Eternity

It is recovered.

What? Eternity.

In the whirling light

Of sun become sea.

Oh my sentinel soul

Let us desire

The nothing of night

And the day on fire.

From the applause of the World

And the striving of Man

You set yourself free

And fly as you can

For out of you only,

Soft silken embers

Duty arises

Nor surfeit remembers.

Then shall all hope fail

No orietur.

Science with patience

The torment is sure.

It is recovered.

What? Eternity.

In the whirling light

Of sun become sea.

—

Remembrance

Water, clear as the salt of children’s tears.

Suddenly in sunlight, women’s bodies, all white;

Streams of silk, pure lilies, bright banners

Beneath ramparts where an armed Maid appeared.

Diversion of angels; Northern current carries gold

And loads its heavy, black, cool arms with grass,

Sinking beneath its canopy of sky . . . and the arch

And shadows of the hill, like curtains, unfold.

II

Watch! This wet square of stream moves in soft swirls,

In endless glassy gold pavilioning its bed;

Like willow trees where birds hop unhindered

Are the green gauzy dresses of the little girls.

Flowers brighter than coin, warm yellow eyes

That trouble waters-O Wife, your conjugal love!

-The rosy Sun at noon burns sullenly above

This dark mirror, reflected through hazy skies.

III

MADAME in the open field stands too straight

In a swirl of snowy threads, her parasol

Unsheathed; she snaps flower tops to watch them fall

Her children read their red-backed book, and wait,

Wait, in the flowering grass. Alas!

He Like a thousand bright angels scattering in flight

Scales the mountaintops and fades from sight!

Behind him runs the black, unbending SHE!

IV

Regret for the thick young arms of virgin grass!

Gold of April moonlight in the sacred bed!

joy Of abandoned boat docks on the riverbank, prey

To the August nights that bred this rottenness !

Now let her weep beneath these walls!

The breath of towering poplars is the only breeze.

And then this water, sourceless, somber, gray,

And a man who drags the bottom in a motionless barge.

V

Toy for this dull eye of water, I cannot reach

-0 motionless boat! Too short, my arms!

These flowers: the yellow one that bothers me

There, nor the blue, friend to water the color of ash!

From wing-shaken willows a powder drifts;

The roses in the reeds have long since dried.

My boat, still motionless; and its chain pulled

Deep in this edgeless eye of water..into what mud?

—

Tale

A Prince was annoyed that he had forever devoted himself

Only to the perfection of vulgar generosities.

He foresaw astonishing revolutions in love,

And suspected that his wives were capable of more

Than an agreeable complacency,

Compounded of luxury and air.

He desired to see the Truth, the time of essential desire

And satisfaction.

Whether this would be an aberration of piety or no,

He desired it. And he possessed extensive human power,

All women who had known him were slaughtered.

What destruction in the garden of beauty!

Beneath the ax, they blessed him.

He ordered no new ones brought …

but women reappeared.

He killed all his followers, after the hunt,

Or his drinking bouts …

But everyone followed him.

He amused himself by slaughtering rare animals.

He put the torch to his palaces.

He came down upon the people, and tore them to pieces …

The crowd, the golden roofs, the beautiful beasts

Were still there.

Is ecstasy possible in destruction ?

Can one grow young in cruelty?

The people made no sound. No one opposed his views.

He was riding one evening proudly alone, and a Genie appeared.

His beauty was ineffable … even inexpressible.

In his face and his bearing shone the promise

Of a complex and many-layered love!

Of happiness unbelievable, almost too much to bear,

The Prince and the Genie were lost in each other – disappearing, probably,

Into essential health.

How could they not have died of this?

Together then, they died.

But the Prince expired in his place, at an ordinary age…

The Prince was the Genie.

The Genie was the Prince

.

Our desire lacks the music of the mind.

—

Vowels

Black A, white E, red I, green U, blue O- vowels,

Some day I will open your silent pregnancies:

A, black belt, hairy with bursting flies,

Bumbling and buzzing over stinking cruelties,

pits of night; E, Candor of sand and pavilions,

High glacial spears, white kings, trembling Queen Anne’s lace;

I, bloody spittle, laughter dribbling from a face

In wild denial or in anger, vermilions;

U… divine movement of viridian seas,

Peace of pastures animal-strewn, peace of calm lines

Drawn on foreheads worn with heavy alchemies;

O… supreme Trumpet, harsh with strange stridencies,

Silences traced in angels and astral designs:

0 … OMEGA … the violet light of His Eyes!

_

I hope your Holiday was a nice one, and you are not to stuffed with chocolate or champagne..

Lots in this edition, so you need to be on your toes!

If you haven’t gotten a chance yet to visit our Cafe Press shop, please do. The address is: Gwyllm-Arts @ CafePress.com If anything, you might actually find something you like there.

Please check this addy out: Journeybook This is a part of the Undergrowth Project, organized by Rak Razam and friends in Australia. It looks like ‘The Invisible College’ has found a friend out there in the land of Internet Magazines… 8o) We are talking about collaborations etc. Exciting stuff. Please pay a visit! Well worth it!

(due to YouTube.com being on the Fritz…. we lost a sizeable chunk of Turf today. More tomorrow hopefully)

Have a good one, heavy rain today here in Portland. Batten down the hatches!

Gwyllm

_____________

The Menu:

The Links

Read And Weep: Terence McKenna’s ex-library

From Sami Land: The Elf Maiden

I Sing the Body Electric

Art: Arthur Rackham

____________

The Links:

UNICEF: U.S., British children worst off

Sleep medication linked to bizarre behaviour

Dan Winter…

‘Are You, Liquid Experienced?’

Woman Charged With Burning Pagan Church Held

___________

Read And Weep: Terence McKenna’s ex-library

by Erik Davis

Last Wednesday, February 7, a 5-alarm blaze erupted in an old building in downtown Monterey. The fire started in a Quinzo’s sub shop, that exemplar of tasteful dining, and went on to thoroughly destroy a number of joints, including Goomba’s Italian Restaurant, a Starbucks, and some storage offices belonging to Big Sur’s Esalen Institute—ground zero for the human potential movement and now an upscale New Age resort. Esalen lost little of their own archives, the vast bulk of their books, photos, audio and videotapes residing elsewhere. Unfortunately, the institute was also using the offices to store the amazing library of Terence McKenna, the visionary psychedelic bard who passed away in 2000. The plan was to eventually install the books at Esalen, a place that Terence loved but which is hardly associated with scholarly pursuit. That plan will never be realized.

For those who knew Terence or enjoyed his library, the fire is a tragedy, and not simply because it consumed his private papers. Terence’s library reflected the multidimensional facets of his own mind: mysticism and history, drugs and dreams, science fiction and systems theory, natural history and art. Terence was a head who fed his head with books more than the drugs he became known for. I will never forget the sheepish look he gave me six months or so before his death, as he forked over a fistful of twenties for a copy of Empson’s Cult of the Peacock Angel, a rare book on the Yezidis that he bought from an esoteric book dealer I knew. It was a look that said, Please don’t tell my girlfriend.

Terence became a bookhound as a wee lad, and stumbled across amazing finds along his tangled way. One time, on the way to India, he came across a Theosophy library in the Seychelles that was closing its doors, and picked up its large collection of occult literature, all bound in red leather, for peanuts. The top floor of the home he built on the big island of Hawaii was designed partly to gather his thousands of volumes in one place. I visited there once towards the end of Terence’s life, to record his last formal interview. When he napped, I had the choice of poking through the library or exploring the gorgeous hideaways of Hawaii. I never left the lair.

Terence’s brother Dennis owns an index of Terence’s collection, which will at least give us an overview of his library—sorta like a playlist without the MP3s. But even this valuable document will not replace the body of knowledge itself—a body that had become, in the weird ways of the memetic world, a kind of second body for Terence’s fabulous and fascinating mind. No budding head will ever be able to poke through this collection again, with its faintly perfumed volumes on Chinese alchemy and butterflies and hash. And the world has one fewer 1659 folio of Isaac Casaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, and one fewer old-school copy of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which Terence swapped for a pound or two of yummies back in the day. The content of these books, at least, is reproducible; Terence, of course, was one-of-a-kind.

___________

From Sami Land: The Elf Maiden

Once upon a time two young men living in a small village fell in love with the same girl. During the winter, it was all night except for an hour or so about noon, when the darkness seemed a little less dark, and then they used to see which of them could tempt her out for a sleigh ride with the Northern Lights flashing above them, or which could persuade her to come to a dance in some neighbouring barn. But when the spring began, and the light grew longer, the hearts of the villagers leapt at the sight of the sun, and a day was fixed for the boats to be brought out, and the great nets to be spread in the bays of some islands that lay a few miles to the north. Everybody went on this expedition, and the two young men and the girl went with them.

They all sailed merrily across the sea chattering like a flock of magpies, or singing their favourite songs. And when they reached the shore, what an unpacking there was! For this was a noted fishing ground, and here they would live, in little wooden huts, till autumn and bad weather came round again.

The maiden and the two young men happened to share the same hut with some friends, and fished daily from the same boat. And as time went on, one of the youths remarked that the girl took less notice of him than she did of his companion. At first he tried to think that he was dreaming, and for a long while he kept his eyes shut very tight to what he did not want to see, but in spite of his efforts, the truth managed to wriggle through, and then the young man gave up trying to deceive himself, and set about finding some way to get the better of his rival.

The plan that he hit upon could not be carried out for some months; but the longer the young man thought of it, the more pleased he was with it, so he made no sign of his feelings, and waited patiently till the moment came. This was the very day that they were all going to leave the islands, and sail back to the mainland for the winter. In the bustle and hurry of departure, the cunning fisherman contrived that their boat should be the last to put off, and when everything was ready, and the sails about to be set, he suddenly called out:

‘Oh, dear, what shall I do! I have left my best knife behind in the hut. Run, like a good fellow, and get it for me, while I raise the anchor and loosen the tiller.’

Not thinking any harm, the youth jumped back on shore and made his way up the steep hank. At the door of the hut he stopped and looked back, then started and gazed in horror. The head of the boat stood out to sea, and he was left alone on the island.

Yes, there was no doubt of it–he was quite alone; and he had nothing to help him except the knife which his comrade had purposely dropped on the ledge of the window. For some minutes he was too stunned by the treachery of his friend to think about anything at all, but after a while he shook himself awake, and determined that he would manage to keep alive somehow, if it were only to revenge himself.

So he put the knife in his pocket and went off to a part of the island which was not so bare as the rest, and had a small grove of trees. :From one of these he cut himself a bow, which he strung with a piece of cord that had been left lying about the huts.

When this was ready the young man ran down to the shore and shot one or two sea-birds, which he plucked and cooked for supper.

In this way the months slipped by, and Christmas came round again. The evening before, the youth went down to the rocks and into the copse, collecting all the drift wood the sea had washed up or the gale had blown down, and he piled it up in a great stack outside the door, so that he might not have to fetch any all the next day. As soon as his task was done, he paused and looked out towards the mainland, thinking of Christmas Eve last year, and the merry dance they had had. The night was still and cold, and by the help of the Northern Lights he could almost sea across to the opposite coast, when, suddenly, he noticed a boat, which seemed steering straight for the island. At first he could hardly stand for joy, the chance of speaking to another man was so delightful; but as the boat drew near there was something, he could not tell what, that was different from the boats which he had been used to all his life, and when it touched the shore he saw that the people that filled it were beings of another world than ours. Then he hastily stepped behind the wood stack, and waited for what might happen next.

The strange folk one by one jumped on to the rocks, each bearing a load of something that they wanted. Among the women he remarked two young girls, more beautiful and better dressed than any of the rest, carrying between them two great baskets full of provisions. The young man peeped out cautiously to see what all this crowd could be doing inside the tiny hut, but in a moment he drew back again, as the girls returned, and looked about as if they wanted to find out what sort of a place the island was.

Their sharp eyes soon discovered the form of a man crouching behind the bundles of sticks, and at first they felt a little frightened, and started as if they would run away. But the youth remained so still, that they took courage and laughed gaily to each other. ‘What a strange creature, let us try what he is made of,’ said one, and she stooped down and gave him a pinch.

Now the young man had a pin sticking in the sleeve of his jacket, and the moment the girl’s hand touched him she pricked it so sharply that the blood came. The girl screamed so loudly that the people all ran out of their huts to see what was the matter. But directly they caught sight of the man they turned and fled in the other direction, and picking up the goods they had brought with them scampered as fast as they could down to the shore. In an instant, boat, people, and goods had vanished completely.

In their hurry they had, however, forgotten two things: a bundle of keys which lay on the table, and the girl whom the pin had pricked, and who now stood pale and helpless beside the wood stack.

‘You will have to make me your wife,’ she said at last, ‘for you have drawn my blood, and I belong to you.’

‘Why not? I am quite willing,’ answered he. ‘But how do you suppose we can manage to live till summer comes round again?’

‘Do not be anxious about that,’ said the girl; ‘if you will only marry me all will be well. I am very rich, and all my family are rich also.’

Then the young man gave her his promise to make her his wife, and the girl fulfilled her part of the bargain, and food was plentiful on the island all through the long winter months, though he never knew how it got there. And by-and-by it was spring once more, and time for the fisher-folk to sail from the mainland.

‘Where are we to go now?’ asked the girl, one day, when the sun seemed brighter and the wind softer than usual.

‘I do not care where I go,’ answered the young man; ‘what do you think?’

The girl replied that she would like to go somewhere right at the other end of the island, and build a house, far away from the huts of the fishing-folk. And he consented, and that very day they set off in search of a sheltered spot on the banks of a stream, so that it would be easy to get water.

In a tiny bay, on the opposite side of the island they found the very thing, which seemed to have been made on purpose for them; and as they were tired with their long walk, they laid themselves down on a bank of moss among some birches and prepared to have a good night’s rest, so as to be fresh for work next day. But before she went to sleep the girl turned to her husband, and said: ‘If in your dreams you fancy that you hear strange noises, be sure you do not stir, or get up to see what it is.’

‘Oh, it is not likely we shall hear any noises in such a quiet place,’ answered he, and fell sound asleep.

Suddenly he was awakened by a great clatter about his ears, as if all the workmen in the world were sawing and hammering and building close to him. He was just going to spring up and go to see what it meant, when he luckily remembered his wife’s words and lay still. But the time till morning seemed very long, and with the first ray of sun they both rose, and pushed aside the branches of the birch trees. There, in the very place they had chosen, stood a beautiful house–doors and windows, and everything all complete!

‘Now you must fix on a spot for your cow-stalls,’ said the girl, when they had breakfasted off wild cherries; ‘and take care it is the proper size, neither too large nor too small.’ And the husband did as he was bid, though he wondered what use a cow-house could be, as they had no cows to put in it. But as he was a little afraid of his wife, who knew so much more than he, he asked no questions.

This night also he was awakened by the same sounds as before, and in the morning they found, near the stream, the most beautiful cow-house that ever was seen, with stalls and milk-pails and stools all complete, indeed, everything that a cow-house could possibly want, except the cows. Then the girl bade him measure out the ground for a storehouse, and this, she said, might be as large as he pleased; and when the storehouse was ready she proposed that they should set off to pay her parents a visit.

The old people welcomed them heartily, and summoned their neighbours, for many miles round, to a great feast in their honour. In fact, for several weeks there was no work done on the farm at all; and at length the young man and his wife grew tired of so much play, and declared that they must return to their own home. But, before they started on the journey, the wife whispered to her husband: ‘Take care to jump over the threshold as quick as you can, or it will be the worse for you.’

The young man listened to her words, and sprang over the threshold like an arrow from a bow; and it was well he did, for, no sooner was he on the other side, than his father-in-law threw a great hammer at him, which would have broken both his legs, if it had only touched them.

When they had gone some distance on the road home, the girl turned to her husband and said: ‘Till you step inside the house, be sure you do not look back, whatever you may hear or see.’

And the husband promised, and for a while all was still; and he thought no more about the matter till he noticed at last that the nearer he drew to the house the louder grew the noise of the trampling of feet behind him. As he laid his hand upon the door he thought he was safe, and turned to look. There, sure enough, was a vast herd of cattle, which had been sent after him by his father-in-law when he found that his daughter had been cleverer than he. Half of the herd were already through the fence and cropping the grass on the banks of the stream, but half still remained outside and faded into nothing, even as he watched them.

However, enough cattle were left to make the young man rich, and he and his wife lived happily together, except that every now and then the girl vanished from his sight, and never told him where she had been. For a long time he kept silence about it; but one day, when he had been complaining of her absence, she said to him: ‘Dear husband, I am bound to go, even against my will, and there is only one way to stop me. Drive a nail into the threshold, and then I can never pass in or out.’

And so he did.

___________

Poetry: Walt Whitman

I Sing the Body Electric

1

I sing the body electric,

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? And if the body

were not the soul, what is the soul?

2

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself

balks account,

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.

The expression of the face balks account,

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of

his hips and wrists,

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist

and knees, dress does not hide him,

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the

folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the

contour of their shape downwards,

The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through

the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls

silently to and from the heave of the water,

The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the

horse-man in his saddle,

Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,

The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open

dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting,

The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or

cow-yard,

The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six

horses through the crowd,

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,

good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown

after work,

The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,

The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;

The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine

muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,

The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes

suddenly again, and the listening on the alert,

The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d

neck and the counting;

Such-like I love–I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s

breast with the little child,

Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with

the firemen, and pause, listen, count.

3

I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,

And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.

This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,

The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and

beard, the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes, the richness

and breadth of his manners,

These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,

He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were

massive, clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,

They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,

They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal

love,

He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet through the

clear-brown skin of his face,

He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself, he

had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner, he had

fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,

When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,

you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of

the gang,

You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit

by him in the boat that you and he might touch each other.

4

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,

To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round

his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?

I do not ask any more delight, I

swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,

and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,

All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

5

This is the female form,

A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,

It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,

I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,

all falls aside but myself and it,

Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what

was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,

Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it, the response

likewise ungovernable,

Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all

diffused, mine too diffused,

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling

and deliciously aching,

Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of

love, white-blow and delirious nice,

Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the

prostrate dawn,

Undulating into the willing and yielding day,

Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.

This the nucleus–after the child is born of woman, man is born

of woman,

This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the

outlet again.

Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest, and is the

exit of the rest,

You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.

The female contains all qualities and tempers them,

She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,

She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,

She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as

daughters.

As I see my soul reflected in Nature,

As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,

sanity, beauty,

See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.

6

The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,

He too is all qualities, he is action and power,

The flush of the known universe is in him,

Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,

The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is

utmost become him well, pride is for him,

The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,

Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing to

the test of himself,

Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail he strikes

soundings at last only here,

(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)

The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,

No matter who it is, it is sacred–is it the meanest one in the

laborers’ gang?

Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?

Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as

much as you,

Each has his or her place in the procession.

(All is a procession,

The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)

Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?

Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight, and he or she has

no right to a sight?

Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float, and

the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,

For you only, and not for him and her?

7

A man’s body at auction,

(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)

I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

Gentlemen look on this wonder,

Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,

For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,

For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

In this head the all-baffling brain,

In it and below it the makings of heroes.

Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,

They shall be stript that you may see them.

Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,

Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby, good-sized

arms and legs,

And wonders within there yet.

Within there runs blood,

The same old blood! the same red-running blood!

There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings,

aspirations,

(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d in

parlors and lecture-rooms?)

This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers

in their turns,

In him the start of populous states and rich republics,

Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.

How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring

through the centuries?

(Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace

back through the centuries?)

8

A woman’s body at auction,

She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,

She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.

Have you ever loved the body of a woman?

Have you ever loved the body of a man?

Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations and

times all over the earth?

If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred,

And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,

And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful

than the most beautiful face.

Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body? or the fool

that corrupted her own live body?

For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.

9

O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,

nor the likes of the parts of you,

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the

soul, (and that they are the soul,)

I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems, and

that they are my poems,

Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s,

father’s, young man’s, young woman’s poems,

Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,

Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking or

sleeping of the lids,

Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the

jaw-hinges,

Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,

Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,

Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders, and the

ample side-round of the chest,

Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,

Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,

finger-joints, finger-nails,

Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,

Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,

Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round, man-balls, man-root,

Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,

Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,

Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;

All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body

or of any one’s body, male or female,

The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,

The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,

Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,

Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,

The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,

love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,

The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,

Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,

Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and

tightening,

The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,

The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,

The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand the naked

meat of the body,

The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,

The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips, and thence downward

toward the knees,

The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the

marrow in the bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of

the soul,

O I say now these are the soul!

______________

Welcome to Wednesday…. Lots going on today! We are introducing the site for Earthrites/Turfing CafePress Shop as well as a very full Turfing for today….

On The Menu:

EarthRites/Turfing Gift Shop

A Most Ancient Holiday….

The Links

Aron Ranen’s Power & Control LSD in The Sixties

The Ayahuasca Effect

The Poetry of Austin Clarke

Art: Pablo Amaringo

Have A Good One!

Gwyllm

________

If you get a chance, check out the Earthrites/Turfing CafePress Shop We have T-Shirts, Bags, Cups, Mousepads for sale. New Designs will appear weekly, at the shop and the sister site soon to go up (with different items)

So pop over, and take a look! Help support Earthrites and Turfing!

Thanks,

G

____________

A Most Ancient Holiday….

14 February. St Valentine’s Day, when birds reputedly start mating. In ancient Rome it was the day of a festival of sexual fever when young men drew womens names from a box to choose their sexual partners. Valentine is a version of the Norse deity Vali, the archer-god, son of Odin. The dedication of the day was transferred to one of two St Valentines, who appeared to be Southern European version of Cupid. A dubious legend maintains that Valentine, bishop of Terni (Interamna) was beaten and beheaded in the third century, and his supposed remains are venerated in St Praxides in Rome.

_____________

The Links:

Death and Taxes

Schools tag out contact games

Large squid lights up for attack

Fossil Meat Found in 380-Million-Year-Old Fish

______________

Aron Ranen’s Power & Control LSD in The Sixties

(If it fails click through to YouTube.com)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

___________________

The Ayahuasca Effect

The world’s most powerful antidepressant and psychotherapeutic agent may be a natural herbal tea.

By Kirby Surprise Psy.D

As many as 40 million Americans will suffer from some form of depression during their lifetimes. For some depression will be a mercifully short episode in their lives, for millions it becomes a chronic experience of emotional pain that devastates all areas of their lives. Depression is notoriously difficult to treat, especially in its chronic form. Talk therapy is often ineffective, and anti-depressive medications sometimes have unwanted side effects. Medications such as Webutrin, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft often leave the client with sexual dysfunction, agitation, sleeplessness and alterations in their personalities. These medications can and do save lives, but for some the side effects make them less than satisfactory answers to long term clinical depression.

Ayahuasca is a tea made from a combination of legally available plants that produces a profound alteration in consciousness. It has been used for thousands of years by South American shamans, and is currently used as a sacrament in at least two Christian based religions in with world wide memberships. It is noted for the power of the experience it produces, and the tendency for it to facilitate positive personal change in those that consume it. It is non-addictive, non-toxic, and in its classical forms, produces no physical or psychological harm to the users. The primary drug involved is N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT), a natural substance that is in the bodies of all mammals, and one of the most powerful hallucinogens known. DMT is extracted from any one of the plant that contain it by brewing it in water that has been made slightly acidic, in effect making tea. Once the tea is made it is considered illegal in most western countries because it contains DMT, which was made illegal as a manufactured hallucinogen before it was known it existed in natural form in the plants used to make ayahuasca. Normally the DMT in the tea would be destroyed in the digestive system by a chemical called mono amine oxidase, rendering the tea completely inactive. With the addition of a second plant containing a mono amine oxidase inhibitor (MAOI), either in the tea with the first DMT containing plant or taken separately, The DMT survives the digestive process and reaches the brain where it alters the persons state of consciousness.

The most common anecdotal reports from use of the tea are of profound psychological and spiritual healing, accompanied by personal insight and integration. It is often reported that the tea breaks even profound depressive episodes in a single use. This positive psychological benefit is what I call the “Ayahuasca Effect.” That is, to produce an intense and positive integrative experience with lasting beneficial effects from use of the tea, with no side effects common to pharmaceutical antidepressants. The following one such personal encounter with ayahuasca; “Sometime during graduate school, while holding two jobs and trying to raise a family, I fell into a major depression. It was the kind of illness that one could fight through to lead a normal life, but it sapped the joy and light from every experience. My wife and I fought often, the world seemed a dark and difficult place.

There should have been the relative leisure of just work and family to enjoy, but the depression hung like a dark resentful fog on every day, coloring it with hopelessness and undeserved despair. In order to keep working I sought medical help, which came in the form of anti-depressant medications. After two years of trying different medications, Zoloft was the final choice. I was told to reconcile myself to having to take this medication every day for the rest of my life. I was grateful for having a chemical floor under my feet, it saved my life, both figuratively and literally, but there were side effects. The medication left me sleepless and mildly agitated much of the time, feeling like a constant infusion of caffeine. It made sex difficult, which played hell with my self-esteem, and it did not make me able to experience happiness or joy. I had been to years of talk therapy, taken the drugs western medicine had to offer, followed the known treatment courses, they had not restored me to wholeness.

Finally, even with the medication, the illness was winning. My ability to make a meaningful connection with my wife was gone, my work was an endless parade of despair, my attitude was permanently dark and agitated. This was not who I wanted to be, not the life I had worked hard to live.

I decided I was not going to be healed by taking the advice of others, I would have to do it from within, I would look for a miracle, I would go back to the study of shamanism and find a way to heal myself. After months of research on shamanic cultures and their use of native plants I learned about ayahuasca, an herbal tea made from plants native to the Amazon basin. I read everything on the web, the books, the articles I could find, and went to an Ayahuasca conference with experts from many fields from all over the world.

What I learned was that studies had been done on members of the UDV, one of the religions that use the tea as a sacrament, which indicated ayahuasca was a powerful anti-depressant which treated the cause of the condition rather than the symptom. In short, most depression is caused by problems with the way the brain processes serotonin, which could be called the “mood” neurotransmitter. Prescription antidepressants work by various means to keep serotonin in the synapses longer. Ayahuasca contains DMT, which bonds to the 5-htp receptor sites, the same sites as serotonin. The DMT bonds at a higher rate, and the body adapts to this by increasing the number of 5-htp receptor sites, making better use of natural serotonin levels. The UDV studies stated regular drinkers of the tea were less depressed, more social and more organized than the control groups, and that there were no physical or mental side effects to long term use in healthy individuals. Ayahuasca seemed to be an anti-depressant that treated the cause, had a better psychological outcome, and no side effects. The final factor in my decision was some of the people who I met at the conference. Many of them were long term drinkers of the tea from countries where it has been legalized. I found them to be some of the most grounded, sane, kind, and generally healthy people I had ever met.

I took the tea at 9:10 P.M. on a Friday night. The setting was a workshop I set up as a meditative space separate from the house. An altar was created, candles lit, the area smudged and cleansed. The meditation and prayer was for relief from depression, and to help me become a better person.

The nausea and lethargy often caused by the tea persisted for two hours, but there were no other noticeable effects. By midnight I believed the session a general failure. I went into the house, ate the dinner I had left in the fridge, having fasted since before lunch, and went to bed with my wife after talking briefly about the lack of significant results. Shortly after that I went to the bathroom and had an episode of explosive diarrhea that expelled the tea. It had passed all the way through my digestive tract with no real effect, and I thought that was the end of the experience.

I laid down next to my wife, who objected to the whole doing ayahuasca to treat depression concept, who I was in marriage counseling with. Despite loving each other, we had not really gotten along for several years. She went to sleep, and I lay there wondering what had gone wrong with the ayahuasca and my life.

Then, in the darkness of my inner vision, colors, in long wispy lines, like gentle rainbow vapors, began to appear. The lines moved in and out of themselves, and appeared to be lined with gear teeth moving in impossible ways. I know now that these were the classic visions of DNA reported by other drinkers. The colors became gradually brighter and the visions more intense and beautiful as I realized this was going to be far more than just some residual effect. The images became ever more beautiful and intense, surpassing any of the comparatively graceless visuals of other drugs, and I realized my body was slipping into sensations of ecstasy more sublime than anything I have ever experienced. As the experience grew ever more powerful the beauty of it became absolutely overpowering. I begged for more, became ever more immersed in indescribable gratitude and utter joy such as I had never even hoped to know. Tears began falling silently, and I remembered again asking to be relieved of my long depression and to receive help to be a better person. The euphoria was so complete it was as if I had been granted heaven itself, washing away the long years of darkness I had groped through. I was astonished that the brain was capable of experiencing such wondrous and complex imagery, of knowing such utter joy. In the midst of this my ability to think was amazingly intact. As the intensity became ever more overwhelming I realized I was losing awareness of my body altogether, into a more shamanic dimension. I mentally called for more and more, and the ecstasy and gratitude that followed seemed infinite.

Then the lessons came. They came from a hidden presence of relentless gentility I had experienced before, only now the presence had a new power and depth. I saw what could be called entities of immense beauty, but knew not to mistake images of things for the reality of something existing outside my drugged brain. Telepathically they said that I had spent most of my life running away from my own pain, manipulating, defending, sleeping, doing anything but experience the natural pain of being a human being. The gratitude I was feeling was indescribable, it filled my entire being, as the ecstasy also became absolute suffering at the same time, and I was infinitely grateful for both. The light became sacredness, pain, ecstasy and beauty as one. I found myself weeping, feeling all these emotions at once, as if I had been emotionally dead for years, and was now suddenly able to feel again. Great warm, wide rivers of tears flowed in gratitude, release and realization that I had been so cold and angry inside for so long, and was now alive and able to feel again.

The weight of how I had treated my wife during the years of depression, , flooded over me, and I sobbed heavily for not cherishing and being grateful for her all those years. This had woken her, and I told her how very sorry I was for the way I had treated her. She told me I was hallucinating, and that it was just the drug, that I didn’t really mean it. I told her I knew I was hallucinating but that it was opening my emotional centers, that this was the idea behind doing it. I tried to lie quietly through the rest of the experience so as not to worry her. I was so grateful to her that I would not dare to burden her with some request for forgiveness, I put her through enough already. We lay together quietly for the next two hours while the rest of the experience ran its course, gradually tapering off, giving ecstasy, pain and insight. Finally, when I was relatively down, we embraced and held each other until we slept. The experience lasted a bit over four hours, and felt like an eternity.

The next day I was grateful for my life for the fist time in years , for my marriage, for my family. I enjoyed parts of my life I considered a burden. Working became easier, and enjoying simple pleasures seemed natural, instead of almost impossible. The experience of not being depressed and just about perpetually irritated, of being emotionally normal again, was beyond anything I hoped for. “

Although the personal mind set and setting of the experience undoubtedly has a profound effect on the person’s experience, the “ayahuasca effect” is based not on the placebo effect, but on the neurochemistry and anatomy of the brain as it interacts with the tea. Although it is not possible to do the research needed to determine the exact cause of the “Ayahuasca effect” because of legal and practical limitations, it is possible to make an educated guess at the mechanism. This is an explanatory fiction, a story that fit’s the facts as they now appear. Let’s look at what is probably happening in the brain when a person ingests ayahuasca.

There are about a hundred billion neurons in the brain, each of these connects to as many as two hundred thousand other neurons. The cell axonal bodies of a neuron can be more than a yard long for each cell. Each neuron sends signals by generating an all or nothing pulse along the axon, which eventually branches out into thousands of dendrites that end in presynaptic membranes that release neurotransmitters that are received by receptor sites on the postsynaptic membranes of the receiving cells. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that carries messages from one cell to another, ayahuasca helps serotonin act more effectively. Substances that help a neurotransmitter act more effectively are called agonists.

There are only two major neurotransmitters in the body, glutamate and GABA. Glutamate is the “turn on” signal to the neuron, GABA is the “turn off” signal. They are essentially + and – chemical signals that pass from neuron to neuron. Each cell receives thousand of these on and off signals from thousands of other cells. When the cell has gotten enough + signals above the – signals, the cell fires and passes the electrical potential to the next cell through the axon, the “cable” it uses to connect with other cells.

On and off signals, Glutamate and GABA, that is the basis of all neural activity. The natural state of the brain is not to be at rest, it is to be at full-bore, flat out, run away seizure, neurological electrical storm. GABA provides the brakes to the natural push for maximum chaotic activity.

To get more subtlety out of the system, and to produce ordered activity, there are other neurotransmitters that modulate GABA, fine tuning it up or down, to regulate the intensity of neural activity. Many of these modulating neurotransmitter receptor sites are more concentrated in some areas of the brain than others, thus some affect different areas specific functions of the brain more than others. Serotonin and dopamine are modulating neurotransmitters, they affect GABA, in most instances inhibiting it, therefore lessening the number of “off” signals it gives neurons. Serotonin therefore, in general, takes off the brakes from neural activity and lets the neurons fire more rapidly.

When someone takes ayahuasca they are taking four chemicals, harmine, harmaline, tetrehydroharmine, and DMT, all of which are serotonin agonists, substances that assist serotonin, attach to serotonin receptors, or otherwise increase its effectiveness at removing the GABA braking system. The result is neurological activity goes up in areas of the brain that use serotonin as a modulator. The altered state of consciousness that results is because of this increased activity.

Herein also lies the reason different hallucinogens produce different types of effects on consciousness. There are many types of neurotransmitter receptor sites. Each is a gateway that when fit with the right chemical keys, opens a passage into the cell through which sodium flows to change the cells electrical balance. Each receptor type and subtype asks for a different key, or set of keys to unlock it. So, one type may want just a GABA and a serotonin molecule, while another might want those, a dopamine, six other amino acids and god knows what else in a specific order before it activates.

All of these receptor sites are distributed unevenly in the brain, therefore there effect on he GABA system in each part of the brain is highly variable. The exact “flavor” of a substance depends on what combination of brain areas are having their neural activity raised by having the GABA braking system inhibited.

Ayahuasca is both a serotonin and dopamine agonist at the same time. The other visionary substances are generally one or the other, ayahuasca is both at the same time. It activates more areas of the brain at once by Affecting GABA through more than one modulating neurotransmitter. The result is more of the brain becomes activated in a better balance than if just one or the other of the modulating neurotransmitters was activated by another single channel GABA inhibiting hallucinogen. In fact, PET scans show neurological activity during ayahuasca experiences raised up to 90% above normal over a wide area of the brain.

Here is the oversimplified short form of what ayahuasca does neurologically, which leads to the explanation of its work as a psychotherapeutic agent and the cause of the “Ayahuasca effect.”

After taking the tea the areas of your brain with the most serotonin and dopamine receptors become uninhibited by GABA and their nuro activity goes up drastically. Think about the word uninhibited fir a moment. What do you normally think of when you say that about someone in a psychological sense? It has connotations of being less in control, freer in actions, of not thinking as much before acting. Being uninhibited in this way, and in the neurological sense, is the exact same phenomena.

The frontal cortex of the brain is where most of what you think of as “you” is located. That is, the parts of the personality that makes the executive decisions on what to do in the world, both internal and external, with the thoughts, information and sensation we are presented with. This area of the brain is heavily wired with axons that run directly from the cells that produce serotonin in the brain stem. The prefrontal cortex’s major GABA inhibitor and modulator is serotonin. Ayahuasca therefore dis-inhibits this area of the brain responsible for judgment and decisions. A decision about anything is made by inhibiting the neural patterns of all other possibilities until the one neural pattern remains. If that area of the brain is disinhibited and neural activity remains high, judgments and evaluations become more difficult to make.

In short, you tend to just accept the information and experience you are having without as much filtration and evaluation. It’s a hypnotic state that renders you more open to suggestion and less likely to critically evaluate the experience and information being received by the frontal cortex.

But there is more to the story than just frontal lobe suggestibility. The effects caused by the tea’s actions on dopamine also play an important role in its potential action as a therapeutic agent. Dopamine modulates GABA in much the same way that serotonin does. Two systems in the brain that use dopamine heavily for GABA regulation are the middle brain limbic system and areas of the brain that control fine motor functions that allow us to control smooth motor motions. The limbic system is a central controller and processor of both emotion and memory. In fact, it appears that emotion and the limbic system are key in forming most lasting memories.

One theory of trauma and repression states that when the brain can not assimilate an experience because it is too foreign to its schema, it’s sense of the way things should be, it represses that experience by sending chemical signals that tell the brain not to use those neural pathways. It stores the experience in pieces all over the brain, but does not complete the integration into memory. Since the instructions not to process, not to be neurologically active, can only be given as GABA signals to keep neurons in the “off” state, this repression of neurological signals must be maintained by modulating neurotransmitters . The presence of elevated levels of dopamine during the ayahuasca experience inhibit GABA in the limbic system, increasing activity there and overriding nurochemical processes that would limit the processing of experiences.

This means that the increase in neural activity in those areas of the brain tends to bring up repressed experiences and start the process of re-integrating them. As these memories and experiences are being once again brought into current processing memory in the mid brain they encounter a brain state profoundly different than the previous state that they were not processed during initially. For one thing, the elevated serotonin levels in the prefrontal cortex have disinhibited executive functioning due to the increase in overall neural activity. The part of the personality that would previously have passed judgment on the incoming experience is no longer as able to perform it’s limiting function. The re-emerging experiences are no longer filtered, no longer repressed out of ongoing processing. So, the higher levels of dopamine cause GABA inhibition and therefore higher activity in the limbic and midbrain systems that bring unprocessed experiences back into activity. Higher serotonin levels cause GABA inhibition and therefore higher activity levels in the prefrontal cortex that hinder the experience being re-repressed.

It is significant that ayahuasca acts on more than one modulating neurotransmitter, that it increases neural activity in a more even and coordinated way than other hallucinogens. Because of this there is far less disturbance of the intricate processing and transfers of information between different areas of the brain. The rising tide of neural activity raises all boats, brain systems as it were. The result is all systems continue to function together in much the same way they normally would. The person hallucinates and has a disinhibited thought process, but that process remains internally coherent without serious delusional processes or breakdown of the personality. Thought and cognition of the internal and external environments remains essentially intact. With other hallucinogens the imbalances brought about by less even regulation of the GABA system produce conditions where some areas of the brain are out of processing sync with others, resulting in more common instances of delusional thinking and loss of touch with reality, which rarely occurs with ayahuasca.

The condition brought in the brain by the tea is therefore ideal for the recalling of repressed experiences and emotions into conscious processing, lessening the chances the experiences will be re-repressed by executive functioning, and having the neural resources available to complete the processing and integration of those experiences.

Even with these advantages for personal integration brought about by high levels of the modulating neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine affecting the GABA system, there is yet another significant advantage ayahuasca gives to this psychotherapeutic process.

One reason experiences remain repressed is people become behaviorally conditioned to avoiding re-experiencing them. If the brain starts to re-integrate an anxiety producing memory the person naturally begins to experience some symptomatic form of anxiety. This often is experienced as sensations within the body such as tension in the muscles, sensations in the gut, changes in breathing, ect. The person literally “feels” anxious. If they then withdraw from the anxiety, by whatever means, they cease to process the experience and send it back to memory storage. The lessening of anxiety is experienced as a reward, it feels good to not be anxious. The person can become behaviorally self-conditioned by this reward effect not to integrate the past experience that causes the anxiety.

Ayahuasca offers a way to break this cycle. All sensations, therefore all anxiety, ultimately are brain states. Dopamine is the primary modulator of activity in the pleasure centers of the brain. Almost all addictive drugs act to produce dopamine-like substances that turn on the reward and pleasure centers. Ayahuasca is a dopamine agonist that increases activity in the pleasure centers. The result is a lessening of the ability to respond with physical sensations of anxiety during the same period that the brain in it’s GABA inhibited higher activity level is trying to process and integrate stored experiences. The higher activity levels in the pleasure centers help eliminate the anxiety that caused the person to become behaviorally conditioned . Ayahuasca interrupts the anxiety feedback loop and lessens the chance that the person will enter into the same avoidant conditioned response again. This is in contrast to addictive substances such as the opiates which lessen anxiety by affecting dopamine, but lower serotonin and decrease the brains ability to process and integrate experience, leaving the user worse off than before in terms of their ability to cope with experiences.

There is one last neurotransmitter to add to this mix, acetocholine. ACH is the neurotransmitter the nerves use to tell the muscles to contract. It is the transmitter that allows us to move voluntarily. The increased dopamine and serotonin levels of the ayahuasca effect also cross-regulate ACH. This means the levels of ACH go down. The less ACH available, the harder it is to voluntarily make the muscles move. The result is often a profound lethargy during the ayahuasca experience at the same time the anesthetic effect of dopamine is in play. The result is the person has a lessened ability to create anxiety feedback in the musculature because it is less able to respond. This further interrupts the conditioned anxiety feedback systems that can condition the person to not integrate experiences.

So, with all of this said, lets run through the ayahuasca effect from beginning to end to complete this explanatory fiction. Soon after the tea is ingested the harmine, harmaline and tetrehydroharmine cause monoamine oxidase inhibition in the digestive tract, allowing the DMT, harmine, harmaline and tetrehydroharmine to pass into the blood stream and eventually into the brain. Once there all four act as serotonin agonists to increase the effect of serotonin inhibition of the GABA systems in the brain. Dopamine is elevated as well.

GABA in the prefrontal cortex in inhibited, and as a result prefrontal cortex activity rises. The person’s thought processes become disinhibited, and the ability to judge and repress is inhibited as a direct result. At the same time elevated dopamine levels have inhibited GABA in the limbic and midbrain, causing increased neural activity in the areas of the brain responsible for integration of memory and experiencing emotion.

Experiences comes to conscious awareness because of the disinhabition in the limbic system, which then presents the experiences to the executive functions in the prefrontal cortex for a decision on whether or not to proceed with processing and integration. Normally this area of the brain would look at it’s self concept and view of the world and decide not to proceed because the experience was to discordant and produced unacceptable levels of anxiety as read from the somatic reactions from lower brain function. But now the prefrontal cortex is less able to limit those decisions because GABA has been inhibited, and the processing is not stopped.

In addition, the body is not getting the same somatic anxiety response because the elevated dopamine levels have the pleasure centers more active, and the musculature is somewhat unresponsive due to decreased levels of ACH. The result is the integration and processing goes forward this time, and the person experiences the full emotional experience without the somatic feedback and inhibition that previously stopped the process. Because the level of neurological activity is uniformly higher than normal, the experience is conscious rather than unconscious, allowing full memories to be integrated into present moment conscious experience. Because the person has elevated dopamine and ACH levels, they are not re-traumatized by the experience and the cycle of conditioned avoidance is interrupted. Both personal integration of experience and the making of the unconscious conscious are in this way achieved with the aid of the “ayahuasca effect.”

Anecdotal evidence from users of the tea treating depression suggest it can be effective in treating serotonin based depression, but it is not a magic bullet or cure-all. The tea tends to lift depression, but does not change the underlying personality. If the user was depressed because of trauma or had other personality issues before the depression, these issues will still be present if the tea lifts the depression. I have known people who were depressed with many somatic symptoms, took the tea, and had their aliments and depression replaced by anger. The anger was what the depression was keeping repressed, in some cases the anger was over incest or other traumatic abuses. The people were generally then able to move on into doing the work of healing and restructuring the way they think about their experiences. Ayahuasca gave them the opportunity and ability to do the work, but did not do it for them. My personal experience was the tea broke the cycle of depression and medications that prevented me from moving on to actual healing. Ayahuasca is potentially one of the most powerful antidepressant and psychotherapeutic therapies ever seen. At present the legal issues and lack of medical support and understanding around its use leave much of that potential unexplored. It is my hope that an understanding of the “ayahuasca effect” may someday allow direct research studies to be done of it’s effectiveness as an antidepressant treatment and tool of self awareness.

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The Poetry of Austin Clarke

The Planter’s Daughter

When night stirred at sea,

An the fire brought a crowd in

They say that her beauty

Was music in mouth

And few in the candlelight

Thought her too proud,

For the house of the planter

Is known by the trees.

Men that had seen her

Drank deep and were silent,

The women were speaking

Wherever she went –

As a bell that is rung

Or a wonder told shyly

And O she was the Sunday

In every week.

—

Inscription for a Headstone

What Larkin bawled to hungry crowds

Is murmured now in dining-hall

And study. Faith bestirs itself

Lest infidels in their impatience

Leave it behind. Who could have guessed

Batons were blessings in disguise,

When every ambulance was filled

With half-killed men and Sunday trampled

Upon unrest? Such fear can harden

Or soften heart, knowing too clearly

His name endures on our holiest page,

Scrawled in a rage by Dublin’s poor.

—

The Blackbird Of Derrycairn

Stop, stop and listen for the bough top

Is whistling and the sun is brighter

Than God’s own shadow in the cup now!

Forget the hour-bell. Mournful matins

Will sound, Patric, as well at nightfall.

Faintly through mist of broken water

Fionn heard my melody in Norway.

He found the forest track, he brought back

This beak to gild the branch and tell, there,

Why men must welcome in the daylight.

He loved the breeze that warns the black grouse,

The shouts of gillies in the morning

When packs are counted and the swans cloud

Loch Erne, but more than all those voices

My throat rejoicing from the hawthorn.

In little cells behind a cashel,

Patric, no handbell gives a glad sound.

But knowledge is found among the branches.

Listen! That song that shakes my feathers

Will thong the leather of your satchels.

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Dear Friends,

Stay Tuned… There will be another entry today of some note…

We lost everything on site yesterday, and had to have a restore done from the previous morning, losing an entry, which I partially recovered by memory. Sorry about the links, gone, gone, gone… I have to institute another back-up for the web-log, which might happen this week. I found out there are some 500 plus entries, of considerable size, lots of writing that hasn’t been archived.

The technology is fragile when you look at it.

Today we revisit Robert Anton Wilson again (I miss him!) and we take our hat of to some of the Indian Pantheon as well. We visit again wiht Seamus Heaney… and move along down the road.

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Links

Morgans’ Take on the Cock-Up on Earthrites Yesterday…

God behind the Gods

Bugs Bunny And Other UFO Victims -Reality isn’t always consensual

Poems for Mid February: Seamus Heaney

Art: Indian Portrayals of Brahman

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The Links

Pagans push peace, not politics

The danger of a ‘chosen’ nation

Burial mound plans sounds alarm

Mystery Ailment Strikes Honeybees

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Morgans’ take on yesterday on Earthrites…. 8o)

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God behind the Gods

The gods and the demons had been having a war. Somehow the gods won, at least for the time being. But they did not realize that the power of Brahman, the Supreme Being, had made their victory possible. The gods took the credit themselves. When Brahman saw them congratulating each other, he decided to act, and to teach them a good lesson.

So he appeared before them in a form something like a ghost. The gods said to each other in great wonder, “What is this awesome spirit?”

Then they asked Agni, the god of fire, if he would try to find out who it was, and he agreed. He ran toward the spirit and that spirit said, “Stop! Who are you?”

“I am Agni, the god of fire,” he proudly replied.

“I see. And what power do you have?” asked Brahman.

“Why, I can burn anything on the earth,” said Agni.

So Brahman, in that spirit form, put a straw on the ground in front of him, saying, “is that so? Burn this, then!” Agni went toward it, his fiery breath crackling and arms ablaze, but in no way could he burn that straw, for some strange reason, no matter how hard he tried. Going back to the other gods, he told them shamefully that he had not been able to find out who that being was. Now they had to ask someone else to try.

This time they chose Vayu, the god of the wind. “You please try to find out who this spirit is,” they said. Vayu agreed and ran boldly toward the spirit, who told him, “Stop! Tell me who you are.”

“I am Vayu, god of air and wind,” he answered.

“Oh! What power do you have?” asked Brahman.

“Why, I make hurricanes and cyclones. I can lift up anything on this earth,” said Vayu.

“Is that so?” said the spirit, placing a straw in front of him. “Then lift up this!” Vayu rushed at it with a terrific noise but no matter how he huffed and puffed, the straw remained on the ground. He too returned to the gods, ashamed, and let them know that the spirit baffled him.

Finally the gods chose Indra, their highest and best, and asked him to do the job. Indra agreed to it. But when he approached that spirit, it suddenly disappeared! In its place was seen the shining form of the goddess Uma, a lovely woman adorned with gems, who is called the revealer of Truth. “Who is that spirit,” Indra asked her, “whom we have been seeing here?”

“That is Brahman, the Supreme Spirit,” she answered. “It is all due to the power of Brahman that you have had victory over the demons, and have become great. Don’t you know that?”

Then Indra understood.

This story explains why Agni, Vayu and Indra rank higher than the other gods. They came “nearest” to Brahman. And, of these, Indra deserves first place, for it was to him that the Truth was first revealed. That Truth is Brahman, the desire of every heart. Meditate on him, the sages say, for those who know him are rare and very precious to the world.

Kenopanishad

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Bugs Bunny And Other UFO Victims -Reality isn’t always consensual

by Robert Anton Wilson

Although few people remember this, Bugs Bunny was the first UFO “abductee” in a 1952 cartoon called “Hasty Hare.”

The next case did not occur until nine years later, in 1961, when Betty and Barney Hill famously encountered the “greys” from Zeta Reticuli, who molested them sexually and otherwise, and were also wearing Nazi uniforms. At least, Barney Hill remembered the malign midgets as garbed in Nazi regalia; Betty, for some reason, never did recall that poignantly puzzling detail

Now, many millions have allegedly suffered the same sort of “extraterrestrial” sexual abuse, according to Abductees Anonymous, a support group for survivors. Budd Hopkins has become rock star famous for helping people “remember” such experiences. And this is not just another New Age fad. Dr. John Mack, a distinguished scientist on the staff of the psychiatry department at Harvard University, has written two books on the subject. And Harvard, which once gave Dr. Timothy Leary the bum’s rush for having weird ideas, allows Dr. Mack to remain on their staff, with all the prestige that bestows upon this eldritch and Lovecraftian topic.

I’ve met Dr. Mack, and he seems like a sane and sensible man. He frankly admits that he’s not quite sure what kind of “reality” these experiences occur in, except that it sure ain’t consensus reality. It’s something more like the non-ordinary reality of Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan books, or of the mystics of all traditions — or of Leary and his merry band of acid astronauts.

Peculiarly, both law enforcement and mainstream science seem to have no interest in this matter at all.

I find that startling. Imagine what would happen if “many millions” of U.S. citizens said they had been sexually assaulted by aliens from Mexico or Iraq, instead of aliens from Outer Space. Obviously, there would be no scientific taboo against investigating such cases, and Congress might even have declared war on the invaders by now. If the subjects claimed, as most of Dr. Mack’s subjects do, that they now love their kidnappers and have received important ecological warnings from them, as well as learning from their extraterrestrial sermons about how wicked and wretched our society is, this would be considered evidence that they had been “brainwashed” as well as raped (think Stockholm Syndrome). The differences in scientific and political reactions to atrocities by human aliens and nonhuman aliens seem even more confusing than the rest of this mystery.

Bill Cooper, who claims to be a former Naval Intelligence officer, alleges that he saw papers revealing a treaty between our government and the “greys,” who are providing our military with advanced technology. The little bastards have broken the treaty, Cooper says, not only by meddling sexually and/or genetically with our citizens, but also by mutilating a lot of cattle. But our government can’t stop them because of their superior weapons. The Outer Space monsters were also behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he says.

Dr. Mack, on the other hand, isn’t sure about the literalness of alien abductions. In his second book, Passport to the Cosmos (Crown) he no longer calls his subjects “abductees,” but “experiencers,” although he remains convinced that they experienced something and that the experience is real in some sense.

Consider, in this context, the investigations of Dr. Corey Hammond of the University of Utah, former president of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. Dr. Hammond has had a lot of clients who, under hypnosis, remember hideous incidents of Satanic rituals, infant sacrifice, sadomasochism, coprophilia and assorted horrors. Dr. Hammond believes that these cases, and the data he has unearthed on Satanic cults in general, prove that three distinct groups are working together — Nazis, the CIA, and NASA — who have been secretly and brutally programming American children for over 50 years to make them part of “a Satanic order that will rule the world.”

Can we believe both Dr. Mack and Dr. Hammond at the same time, and accept that while extraterrestrials or even weirder nonhumans have been raping people and teaching ecology, another conspiracy is simultaneously torturing and reeducating children to make them Slaves of Satan? Or might we more economically assume that a lot of people have had a lot of non-ordinary experiences — psychedelic trips without drugs — and we all tend to interpret these according to our own hopes and fears?

Consider the model offered by Dr. Jacques Vallee, who has been investigating UFOs for more than 30 years. Dr. Vallee has suggested as one possible explanation a vast experiment in mind control and behavior modification by some Intelligence Agency (he doesn’t try to guess which one). Could both Dr. Mack’s cases and Dr. Hammond’s cases represent persons who fell victim to this and retain only shattered and distorted memories of their ordeal? Considering what has already leaked about the CIA’s MK-ULTRA research, this hypothesis does not seem altogether extravagant.

Bill Cooper, the guy who says the greys were behind the JFK hit, has also considered a variation on Vallee’s theory. He himself, Cooper says, may have been deceived by his superiors in Naval Intelligence. But in that case, he points out, the government (I no longer feel safe in calling it “our government”) must be using the “grey mythology” as a cover-up to hide something else — something even worse than selling us out to rapists from Reticuli.

Frankly, I cannot accept either the blind faith of the True Believers or the dogmatic denials of the Establishment. Like Dr. Mack, I think the whole topic needs less sensationalism and more open-minded research.

After all, the next person engulfed by this non-ordinary reality might be you or me.

Robert Anton Wilson is the author of 32 books, including Everything Is Under Control, an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, and maintains the Web’s strangest site @ www.rawilson.com. He also serves as CEO of CSICON (the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal).

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Poems for Mid February: Seamus Heaney

Sweeney’s Last Poem

There was a time when I preferred

the turtle-dove’s soft jublilation

as it flitted round a pool

to the murmur of conversation.

There was a time when I preferred

the blackbird singing on a hill

and the stag loud against the storm

to the clinking tongue of this bell.

There was a time when I preferred

the mountain grouse crying at dawn

to the voice and closeness

of a beautiful woman.

There was a time when I preferred

wolf-packs yelping and howling

to the sheepish voice of a cleric

bleating out plainsong.

You are welcome to pledge healths

and carouse in your drinking dens;

I will dip and steal water

from a well with my open palm.

You are welcome to that cloistered hush

of your students’ conversation;

I will study the pure chant

of hounds baying in Glen Bolcain.

You are welcome to your salt meat

and fresh meat in feasting-houses;

I will live content elsewhere

on tufts of green watercress.

The herd’s sharp spear wounded me

and passed clean through my body.

Ah Christ, who disposed all things, why

was I not killed at Moira?

Of all the innocent lairs I made

the length and breadth of Ireland

I remember an open bed

above the lough in Mourne.

Of all the innocent lairs I made

the length and breadth of Ireland

I remember bedding down

above the wood in Glen Bolcain.

To you, Christ, I give thanks

for your Body in communion

Whatever evil I have done

in this world, I repent.

Then Sweeney’s death-swoon came over him and Moling,

attended by his clerics, rose up and each of them placed a

stone on Sweeney’s grave.

—

Brigid’s Girdle

Last time I wrote I wrote from a rustic table

Under magnolias in South Carolina

As blossoms fell on me, and a white gable

As clean-lined as the prow of a white liner

Bisected sunlight in the sunlit yard.

I was glad of the early heat and the first quiet

I’d had for weeks. I heard the mocking bird

And a delicious, articulate

Flight of small feminine plinkings from a dulcimer

Like feminine rhymes migrating to the north

Where you faced the music and the ache of summer

And earth’s foreknowledge gathered in the earth.

Now it’s Saint Brigid’s Day and the first snowdrop

In County Wicklow, and this a Brigid’s Girdle

I’m plaiting for you, an airy fairy hoop

(Like one of those old crinolines they’d trindle),

Twisted straw that’s lifted in a circle

To handsel and to heal, a rite of spring

As strange and lightsome and traditional

As the motions you go through going through the thing.

—

Remembering Malibu

(for Brian Moore)

The Pacific at your door was wider and colder

than my notion of the Pacific

and that was perfect, for I would have rotted

beside the luke-warm ocean I imagined.

Yet no way was its cold ascetic

as our monk-fished, snowed-into Atlantic;

no beehived hut for you

on the abstract sands of Malibu –

it was early Mondrian and his dunes

misting toward the ideal forms

though the wind and sea neighed loud

as wind and sea noise amplified.

I was there in the flesh

where I’d imagined I might be

and underwent the bluster of the day:

but why would it not come home to me?

Atlantic storms have flensed the cells

on the the Great Skellig, the steps cut in the rock

I never climbed

between the graveyard and the boatslip

are welted solid to my instep.

But to rear and kick and cast that shoe –

beside that other western sea

far from the Skelligs, and far, far

from the suck of puddled, wintry ground,

our footsteps filled with blowing sand.

_______

This is as good as it gets… the recovered bits of Mondays’ Trainwreck on Turfing, and Earthrites in general. argh….

Turfing & EarthRites.org Swag coming soon! Priceless Items! Keep the wheels of this site running!

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

—-

On The Recovered Menu:

Psychedelic Healing Part 1 & 2

Bonus!: A Sufi Tale thrown in to the mix!!!

Coming Again -The orgasmic release of the Apocalypse myth

Poetry: Spring Has Sprung – Phil Whalen

Art: Jean-Leon Gerome

________

Psychedelic Healing Part 1

________

Psychedelic Healing Part 2

________

The Tiger and the Fox

A fox who lived in the deep forest of long ago had lost its front legs. No one knew how: perhaps escaping from a trap. A man who lived on the edge of the forest , seeing the fox from time to time, wondered how in the world it managed to get its food. One day when the fox was not far from him he had to hide himself quickly because a tiger was approaching. The tiger had fresh game in its claws. Lying down on the ground, it ate its fill, leaving the rest for the fox.

Again the next day the great Provider of this world sent provisions to the fox by this same tiger. The man began to think: “If this fox is taken care of in this mysterious way, its food sent by some unseen Higher Power, why don’t I just rest in a corner and have my daily meal provided for me?”

Because he had a lot of faith, he let the days pass, waiting for food. Nothing happened. He just went on losing weight and strength until he was nearly a skeleton. Close to losing consciousness, he heard a Voice which said: “O you, who have mistaken the way, see now the Truth! You should have followed the example of that tiger instead of imitating the disabled fox.”

(And Rumi said, “You have feet; why pretend that you are lame?”)

________

______

Coming Again -The orgasmic release of the Apocalypse myth

by Robert Anton Wilson Published November 15, 1999 in Whoa!

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! — Chicken Little

Back in the early 1980s, Vicki Weaver, a pious Christian lady, persuaded her husband Randy that the Bible proved that the final battle between Christ and Antichrist would take place in 1987, beginning with an attempted slaughter of the Christians by ZOG — the Zionist Occupied Government in Washington, D.C. The two of them (and their children) logically moved to a high hill in Idaho — Ruby Ridge — where they planned to stage their own last fight for the Lord.

Alas, 1987 passed, Vicki had to recalculate, and things were a bit fuzzy there for a while. But then the ’90s came ’round, Randy sold a sawed-off shotgun to a government informer, and the Feds arrived to arrest him. Randy and Vicki thought they were facing the ZOG, the Feds thought they were dealing with lunatics, and the results were so bloody all around that Ruby Ridge remains controversial to this day.

Sometimes, the Apocalypse can ruin your whole week.

On the other hand, I have survived Doomsday so many times that it has begun to bore me. In the last three months alone, I have — we all have — lived right on through three dates that leading eschatologists have authoritatively named as the Day of Reckoning (11 August, 11 September, and 7 November.).

I wonder why so many people have such a lascivious longing for the Apocalypse? It seems a far more popular fantasy game than Dungeons & Dragons, and, of course, it has all the thrills and chills of a slasher movie.

But there may be more here, just as there is to horror and catastrophe movies if you think about them. Neo-Freudians, and especially Reichians, suggest that our form of civilization stifles and constricts us so much that at times we all long to experience some orgasmic but catastrophic “explosion,” like King Kong breaking his chains and wrecking New York, or even more like the masochist in bondage, according to Dr. Reich. This sudden release from the bondage-and-discipline of our jobs and our taxes — actually called the Rapture by Fundamentalists — seems ghoulishly attractive to Christians, New Agers, and others who believe in a “spirit” that will survive the general wreckage. In that case, the end of the world seems no worse than a visit to the dentist: You know you’ll feel better afterwards. This sort of desire for Total Escape/Total Annihilation has always had its bards and visionaries.

Christianity, for instance, started out as a typical Doomsday cult:

Verily, I say unto you, there will be some of them that stand here which shall not taste of death until they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power. — Mark 9:1

And there shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars… This generation shall not pass until all be fulfilled. — Luke 21: 25,32

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven … This generation shall not pass until all these things be fulfilled. — Matt 24: 30,34

Of course, when all the marks standing there and their whole generation did pass without the Apocalypse coming, these prophecies required reinterpretation. The second most common talent among Doomsayers — after their unparalleled ability to predict dates on which the world perversely does not end — is their capacity to recalculate. But, then, theology is logic with deuces and one-eyed jacks wild.

Among those not committed to the Rapture, prophecies of doom usually have another loophole: Only most of humanity will perish. In these scenarios, those with the Right Ideas will survive, although they will probably need to stockpile food, water, and guns in advance.

Those with the Right Ideas are the ones who believe in the Prophet, of course. Thus there seems an element of sadism mixed in with the masochism of the Millennialist mentality: We will suffer only a little, these folks say, but the rest of you motherfuckers are really going to get the works. Well, Freud himself pronounced that sadism and masochism always contain a bit of one another.

Here’s a brief list of some of the Doomsdays that had to be postponed:

1141 CE — Hildegard of Bingen predicted the world would end that year. It didn’t.

October 22, 1844 — This was Doomsday, as calculated from the Bible by William Miller, who had previously goofed by announcing that it would occur in 1843. When the 1844 prophecy also failed, new calculations from the same texts gave birth to the Adventists, the Seventh-day Adventists and, later, the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Jehovah’s Witnesses originally picked 1914 as the jackpot year. Some of them rejoiced in the bloody World War that began that year, as the palpable, visible, undeniable “beginning” of the end. But others calculated exact years for the end of the end: 1918, 1920, 1925, 1941, 1975, and 1994, for instance. I survived all of them, and I guess you did, too, or you wouldn’t be reading this.

In 1957, a pastor named Mihran Ask chose April 23, 1957 as the Last Day; I remember that vividly because Paul Krassner claimed in the next issue of The Realist that the world had really ended that day and we just weren’t paying attention.

In 1986, Moses David of the Children of God predicted the battle of Armageddon would happen that year and Christ would return in 1993.

In 1983, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh predicted the catastrophes would begin in 1984 and climax in 1999.

The famous psychic Edgar Cayce predicted that Christ would return in 1998. Why haven’t we heard from him? Maybe he’s having trouble finding a place to rent.

Another psychic, Criswell — best remembered for his oratorical performances in Ed Wood’s movies — predicted August 18, 1999 as the end of time.

This is only a very, very small selection of failed end-times prophecy; if you are curious, you can find longer lists of Doomsdays here and here.

So far, the batting average of all Doomsayers has stayed firm at 0.000. That, of course, will not stop this ever-popular guessing game. We survived the alleged three meteors of November 7, but we still have Y2K ahead of us; and if we survive that, well, the Weekly World News recently reported the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to be in the vicinity of Santa Fe, heading east.

As long as people enjoy scaring themselves and scaring one another, horror movies will remain popular, and so will Doomsday. Pick a date — any date — and you may become the leader of a new cult. You may even get as rich as Rajneesh or the Pope.

Robert Anton Wilson is the author of 32 books, including Everything Is Under Control, an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, and maintains the Web’s strangest site @ www.rawilson.com. He also serves as CEO of CSICON (the Committee for Surrealist Investigation of Claims of the Normal).

________

Spring Has Sprung: Phil Whalen

Homage to St. Patrick, Garcia Lorca, & the Itinerant Grocer

FOR M-D. SCHNEIDER

A big part of this page (a big part of my head)

Is missing. That cabin where I expected to sit in the

Woods and write a novel got sold

out from under my imagination

I had it all figured out

in the green filter of a vine-maple shade

The itinerant grocer would arrive every week

There was no doubt in my mind that I’d have money

To trade for cabbages and bread

Where did that vision take place-maybe Arizona

Or New Mexico, where trees are much appreciated-

I looked forward to having many of my own

possessed them in a nonexistent future green world of lovely prose

Lost them in actual present poems in Berkeley

All changed, all strange, all new; none green.

—

The Bay Trees Were About to Bloom

For each of us there is a place

Wherein we will tolerate no disorder.

We habitually clean and reorder it,

But we allow many other surfaces and regions

To grow dusty, rank and wild.

So I walk as far as a clump of bay trees

Beside the creek’s milky sunshine

To hunt for words under the stones

Blessing the demons also that they may be freed

From Hell and demonic being

As I might be a cop, “Awright, move it along, folks,

It’s all over, now, nothing more to see, just keep

Moving right along”

I can move along also

“Bring your little self and come on”

What I wanted to see was a section of creek

Where the west bank is a smooth basalt cliff

Huge tilted slab sticking out of the mountain

Rocks on the opposite side channel all the water

Which moves fast, not more than a foot deep,

Without sloshing or foaming.

—-

What About It?

When I began to grow old I searched out the Land

Of the Gods in the West, where our people have always said it is.

Once I floated there on the water. Once I flew there.

I heard their music and saw the magic dancing.

They appeared in many shapes; once as kachina,

Once I could only see shining feet and radiant clothes

Their houses blend into water, trees and stone.

A curtain moved. Water fell in certain order.

Sometimes there was a great mirror of polished bronze.

Other messages were smell of hinoki, sugi, gingko

Newly watered stones.

The land itself delivers a certain intelligence.

How embarrassing to note that four days are gone.

All I can say right now is I can see clouds in the sky

If I stand still and look out the window.

Diane Di Prima came and told me, “If we leave

Two hours of the day open for them

The poems will come in or out or however;

Anyway, to devote time in return for a place

That makes us accessible to them.”

—

Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Tsung Ping (375-443). “Now I am old and infirm.

I fear I shall no more be able to roam among the beautiful mountains.

Clarifying my mind. I meditate on the mountain trails and wander

about only in dreams.”

-in The Spirit of the Brush, tr. by Shio Sakanishi. p. 34.

FOR KENNETH REXROTH

I always say I won’t go back to the mountains

I am too old and fat there are bugs mean mules

And pancakes every morning of the world

Mr. Edward Wyman (63)

Steams along the trail ahead of us all

Moaning, “My poor old feet ache, my back

Is tired and I’ve got a stiff prick”

Uprooting alder shoots in the rain

Then I’m alone in a glass house on a ridge

Encircled by chiming mountains

With one sun roaring through the house all day

& the others crashing through the glass all night

Conscious even while sleeping

Morning fog in the southern gorge

Gleaming foam restoring the old sea-level

The lakes in two lights green soap and indigo

The high cirque-lake black half-open eye

Ptarmigan hunt for bugs in the snow

Bear peers through the wad at noon

Deer crowd up to see the lamp

A mouse nearly drowns in the honey

I see my bootprints mingle with deer-foot

Bear-paw mule-shoe in the dusty path to the privy

Much later I write down:

“raging, Viking sunrise

The gorgeous death of summer in the east”

(Influence of a Byronic landscape-

Bent pages exhibiting depravity of style.)

Outside the lookout I lay nude on the granite

Mountain hot September sun but inside my head

Calm dark night with all the other stars

HERACLITUS: “The Waking have one common world

But the sleeping turn aside

Each into a world of his own.”

I keep telling myself what I really like

Are music, books, certain land and sea-scapes

The way light falls across them, diffusion of

Light through agate, light itself…I suppose

I’m still afraid of the dark

“Remember smart-guy there’s something

Bigger something smarter than you.”

Ireland’s fear of unknown holies drives

My father’s voice (a country neither he

Nor his great-grandfather ever saw)

A sparkly tomb a plated grave

A holy thumb beneath a wave

Everything else they hauled across Atlantic

Scattered and lost in the buffalo plains

Among these trees and mountains

From Duns Scotus to this page

A thousand years

(” . . . a dog walking on his hind legs-

not that he does it well but that he

does it at all.”)

Virtually a blank except for the hypothesis

That there is more to a man

Than the contents of his jock-strap

EMPEDOCLES: “At one time all the limbs

Which are the body’s portion are brought together

By Love in blooming life’s high season; at another

Severed by cruel Strife, they wander each alone

By the breakers of life’s sea.”

Fire and pressure from the sun bear down

Bear down centipede shadow of palm-frond

A limestone lithograph-oysters and clams of stone

Half a black rock bomb displaying brilliant crystals

Fire and pressure Love and Strife bear down

Brontosaurus, look away

My sweat runs down the rock

HERACLITUS: “The transformations of fire

are, first of all, sea; and half of the sea

is earth, half whirlwind. . . .

It scatters and it gathers; it advances

and retires.”

I move out of a sweaty pool

(The sea!) .

And sit up higher on the rock

Is anything burning?

The sun itself! Dying

Pooping out, exhausted

Having produced brontosaurus, Heraclitus

This rock, me,

To no purpose

I tell you anyway (as a kind of loving) . . .

Flies & other insects come from miles around

To listen

I also address the rock, the heather,

The alpine fir

BUDDHA: “All the constituents of being are Transitory: Work out your salvation with diligence.”

(And everything, as one eminent disciple of that master Pointed out, has been tediously complex ever since.)

There was a bird

Lived in an egg

And by ingenious chemistry

Wrought molecules of albumen

To beak and eye

Gizzard and craw

Feather and claw

My grandmother said:

“Look at them poor bed-

raggled pigeons!”

And the sign in McAlister Street:

IF YOU CAN’T COME IN

SMILE AS YOU GO BY

LOVE THE BUTCHER

I destroy myself, the universe (an egg)

And time-to get an answer:

There are a smiler, a sleeper, and a dancer

We repeat our conversation in the glittering dark

Floating beside the sleeper.

The child remarks, “You knew it all the time.”

I: “I keep forgetting that the smiler is

Sleeping; the sleeper, dancing.”

From Sauk Lookout two years before

Some of the view was down the Skagit

To Puget Sound: From above the lower ranges,

Deep in forest-lighthouses on clear nights.

This year’s rock is a spur from the main range

Cuts the valley in two and is broken

By the river; Ross Dam repairs the break,

Makes trolley buses run

Through the streets of dim Seattle far away.

I’m surrounded by mountains here

A circle of 108 beads, originally seeds

of ficus religiosa

Bo-Tree

A circle, continuous, one odd bead

Larger than the rest and bearing

A tassel (hair-tuft) (the man who sat

under the tree)

In the center of the circle,

A void, an empty figure containing

All that’s multiplied;

Each bead a repetition, a world

Of ignorance and sleep.

Today is the day the goose gets cooked

Day of liberation for the crumbling flower

Knobcone pinecone in the flames

Brandy in the sun

Which, as I said, will disappear

Anyway it’ll be invisible soon

Exchanging places with stars now in my head

To be growing rice in China through the night.

Magnetic storms across the solar plains

Make Aurora Borealis shimmy bright

Beyond the mountains to the north.

Closing the lookout in the morning

Thick ice on the shutters

Coyote almost whistling on a nearby ridge

The mountain is THERE (between two lakes)

I brought back a piece of its rock

Heavy dark-honey color

With a seam of crystal, some of the quartz

Stained by its matrix

Practically indestructible

A shift from opacity to brilliance

(The Zenbos say, “Lightning-flash & flint-spark”)

Like the mountains where it was made

What we see of the world is the mind’s

Invention and the mind

Though stained by it, becoming

Rivers, sun, mule-dung, flies-

Can shift instantly

A dirty bird in a square time

Gone

Gone

REALLY gone

Into the cool

O MAMA

Like they say, “Four times up,

Three times down.” I’m still on the mountain.

Sourdough Mountain I5:viii:55

Berkeley 27-28:viii:56

NOTE: The quotes of Empedocles and Heraclitus are from John

Burnet’s Early Greek Philosophy, Meridian Books, New York.

__________

Quiet day in the northland… scuttling clouds, dogs barking half heartedly outside. The sun comes and goes, and the earth is breathing…’spring’. Buds everywhere, flowers appearing.

Life returns to the north country…!

Have a good day…!

On The Menu

The Links

The Battle Of The Birds

Gutei’s Finger

The Poetry Of Yeats

Art: Briton Rivière

Riviere was an animal painter, and was widely regarded as the successor of Landseer [1802-1873]. He was also one of the few painters with an Oxford University Degree. He was the son of a well known artist. Riviere lived near to London Zoo, where he spent much time studying the physiology of animals. He painted glorified, romanticised pictures of wild animals. Another speciality was sentimental, rather humanised paintings of dogs, which found a considerable market. Rather surprisingly he only was narrowly beaten to the Presidency of the Royal Academy by Edward Poynter [1836-1919] in 1896.

______________

The Links:

A liking for Vikings

Wizardry book in school library upsets some parents

Witchcraft destroying the Catholic Church in Africa, experts say

N.D. Senate OKs Cohabitation Law Change

___________

From Scotland: The Battle Of The Birds

There was to be a great battle between all the creatures of the earth and the birds of the air. News of it went abroad, and the son of the king of Tethertown said that when the battle was fought he would be there to see it, and would bring back word who was to be king. But in spite of that, he was almost too late, and every fight had been fought save the last, which was between a snake and a great black raven. Both struck hard, but in the end the snake proved the stronger, and would have twisted himself round the neck of the raven till he died had not the king’s son drawn his sword, and cut off the head of the snake at a single blow. And when the raven beheld that his enemy was dead, he was grateful, and said:

‘For thy kindness to me this day, I will show thee a sight. So come up now on the root of my two wings.’ The king’s son did as he was bid, and before the raven stopped flying, they had passed over seven bens and seven glens and seven mountain moors.

‘Do you see that house yonder?’ said the raven at last. ‘Go straight for it, for a sister of mine dwells there, and she will make you right welcome. And if she asks, “Wert thou at the battle of the birds?” answer that thou wert, and if she asks, “Didst thou see my likeness?” answer that thou sawest it, but be sure thou meetest me in the morning at this place.’

The king’s son followed what the raven told him and that night he had meat of each meat, and drink of each drink, warm water for his feet, and a soft bed to lie in.

Thus it happened the next day, and the next, but on the fourth meeting, instead of meeting the raven, in his place the king’s son found waiting for him the handsomest youth that ever was seen, with a bundle in his hand.

‘Is there a raven hereabouts?’ asked the king’s son, and the youth answered:

‘I am that raven, and I was delivered by thee from the spells that bound me, and in reward thou wilt get this bundle. Go back by the road thou camest, and lie as before, a night in each house, but be careful not to unloose the bundle till thou art in the place wherein thou wouldst most wish to dwell.’

Then the king’s son set out, and thus it happened as it had happened before, till he entered a thick wood near his father’s house. He had walked a long way and suddenly the bundle seemed to grow heavier; first he put it down under a tree, and next he thought he would look at it.

The string was easy to untie, and the king’s son soon unfastened the bundle. What was it he saw there? Why, a great castle with an orchard all about it, and in the orchard fruit and flowers and birds of very kind. It was all ready for him to dwell in, but instead of being in the midst of the forest, he did wish he had left the bundle unloosed till he had reached the green valley close to his father’s palace. Well, it was no use wishing, and with a sigh he glanced up, and beheld a huge giant coming towards him.

‘Bad is the place where thou hast built thy house, king’s son,’ said the giant.

‘True; it is not here that I wish to be,’ answered the king’s son.

‘What reward wilt thou give me if I put it back in the bundle?’ asked the giant.

‘What reward dost thou ask?’ answered the king’s son.

‘The first boy thou hast when he is seven years old,’ said the giant.

‘If I have a boy thou shalt get him,’ answered the king’s son, and as he spoke the castle and the orchard were tied up in the bundle again.

‘Now take thy road, and I will take mine,’ said the giant. ‘And if thou forgettest thy promise, I will remember it.’

Light of heart the king’s son went on his road, till he came to the green valley near his father’s palace. Slowly he unloosed the bundle, fearing lest he should find nothing but a heap of stones or rags. But no! all was as it had been before, and as he opened the castle door there stood within the most beautiful maiden that ever was seen.

‘Enter, king’s son,’ said she, ‘all is ready, and we will be married at once,’ and so they were.

The maiden proved a good wife, and the king’s son, now himself a king, was so happy that he forgot all about the giant. Seven years and a day had gone by, when one morning, while standing on the ramparts, he beheld the giant striding towards the castle. Then he remembered his promise, and remembered, too, that he had told the queen nothing about it. Now he must tell her, and perhaps she might help him in his trouble.

The queen listened in silence to his tale, and after he had finished, she only said:

‘Leave thou the matter between me and the giant,’ and as she spoke, the giant entered the hall and stood before them.

‘Bring out your son,’ cried he to the king, ‘as you promised me seven years and a day since.’

The king glanced at his wife, who nodded, so he answered:

‘Let his mother first put him in order,’ and the queen left the hall, and took the cook’s son and dressed him in the prince’s clothes, and led him up to the giant, who held his hand, and together they went out along the road. They had not walked far when the giant stopped and stretched out a stick to the boy.

‘If your father had that stick, what would he do with it?’ asked he.

‘If my father had that stick, he would beat the dogs and cats that steal the king’s meat,’ replied the boy.

‘Thou art the cook’s son!’ cried the giant. ‘Go home to thy mother’; and turning his back he strode straight to the castle.

‘If you seek to trick me this time, the highest stone will soon be the lowest,’ said he, and the king and queen trembled, but they could not bear to give up their boy.

‘The butler’s son is the same age as ours,’ whispered the queen; ‘he will not know the difference,’ and she took the child and dressed him in the prince’s clothes, and the giant let him away along the road. Before they had gone far he stopped, and held out a stick.

‘If thy father had that rod, what would he do with it?’ asked the giant.

‘He would beat the dogs and cats that break the king’s glasses,’ answered the boy.

‘Thou art the son of the butler!’ cried the giant. ‘Go home to thy mother’; and turning round he strode back angrily to the castle.

‘Bring out thy son at once,’ roared he, ‘or the stone that is highest will be lowest,’ and this time the real prince was brought.

But though his parents wept bitterly and fancied the child was suffering all kinds of dreadful things, the giant treated him like his own son, though he never allowed him to see his daughters. The boy grew to be a big boy, and one day the giant told him that he would have to amuse himself alone for many hours, as he had a journey to make. So the boy wandered to the top of the castle, where he had never been before. There he paused, for the sound of music broke upon his ears, and opening a door near him, he beheld a girl sitting by the window, holding a harp.

‘Haste and begone, I see the giant close at hand,’ she whispered hurriedly, ‘but when he is asleep, return hither, for I would speak with thee.’ And the prince did as he was bid, and when midnight struck he crept back to the top of the castle.

‘To-morrow,’ said the girl, who was the giant’s daughter, ‘to- morrow thou wilt get the choice of my two sisters to marry, but thou must answer that thou wilt not take either, but only me. This will anger him greatly, for he wishes to betroth me to the son of the king of the Green City, whom I like not at all.’

Then they parted, and on the morrow, as the girl had said, the giant called his three daughters to him, and likewise the young prince to whom he spoke.

‘Now, O son of the king of Tethertown, the time has come for us to part. Choose one of my two elder daughters to wife, and thou shalt take her to your father’s house the day after the wedding.’

‘Give me the youngest instead,’ replied the youth, and the giant’s face darkened as he heard him.

‘Three things must thou do first,’ said he.

‘Say on, I will do them,’ replied the prince, and the giant left the house, and bade him follow to the byre, where the cows were kept.

‘For a hundred years no man has swept this byre,’ said the giant, ‘but if by nightfall, when I reach home, thou has not cleaned it so that a golden apple can roll through it from end to end, thy blood shall pay for it.’

All day long the youth toiled, but he might as well have tried to empty the ocean. At length, when he was so tired he could hardly move, the giant’s youngest daughter stood in the doorway.

‘Lay down thy weariness,’ said she, and the king’s son, thinking he could only die once, sank on the floor at her bidding, and fell sound asleep. When he woke the girl had disappeared, and the byre was so clean that a golden apple could roll from end to end of it. He jumped up in surprise, and at that moment in came the giant.

‘Hast thou cleaned the byre, king’s son?’ asked he.

‘I have cleaned it,’ answered he.

‘Well, since thou wert so active to-day, to-morrow thou wilt thatch this byre with a feather from every different bird, or else thy blood shall pay for it,’ and he went out.

Before the sun was up, the youth took his bow and his quiver and set off to kill the birds. Off to the moor he went, but never a bird was to be seen that day. At last he got so tired with running to and fro that he gave up heart.

‘There is but one death I can die,’ thought he. Then at midday came the giant’s daughter.

‘Thou art tired, king’s son?’ asked she.

‘I am,’ answered he; ‘all these hours have I wandered, and there fell but these two blackbirds, both of one colour.’

‘Lay down thy weariness on the grass,’ said she, and he did as she bade him, and fell fast asleep.

When he woke the girl had disappeared, and he got up, and returned to the byre. As he drew near, he rubbed his eyes hard, thinking he was dreaming, for there it was, beautifully thatched, just as the giant had wished. At the door of the house he met the giant.

‘Hast thou thatched the byre, king’s son?’

‘I have thatched it.’

‘Well, since thou hast been so active to-day, I have something else for thee! Beside the loch thou seest over yonder there grows a fir tree. On the top of the fir tree is a magpie’s nest, and in the nest are five eggs. Thou wilt bring me those eggs for breakfast, and if one is cracked or broken, thy blood shall pay for it.’

Before it was light next day, the king’s son jumped out of bed and ran down to the loch. The tree was not hard to find, for the rising sun shone red on the trunk, which was five hundred feet from the ground to its first branch. Time after time he walked round it, trying to find some knots, however small, where he could put his feet, but the bark was quite smooth, and he soon saw that if he was to reach the top at all, it must be by climbing up with his knees like a sailor. But then he was a king’s son and not a sailor, which made all the difference.

However, it was no use standing there staring at the fir, at least he must try to do his best, and try he did till his hands and knees were sore, for as soon as he had struggled up a few feet, he slid back again. Once he climbed a little higher than before, and hope rose in his heart, then down he came with such force that his hands and knees smarted worse than ever.

‘This is no time for stopping,’ said the voice of the giant’s daughter, as he leant against the trunk to recover his breath.

‘Alas! I am no sooner up than down,’ answered he.

‘Try once more,’ said she, and she laid a finger against the tree and bade him put his foot on it. Then she placed another finger a little higher up, and so on till he reached the top, where the magpie had built her nest.

‘Make haste now with the nest,’ she cried, ‘for my father’s breath is burning my back,’ and down he scrambled as fast as he could, but the girl’s little finger had caught in a branch at the top, and she was obliged to leave it there. But she was too busy to pay heed to this, for the sun was getting high over the hills.

‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘This night my two sisters and I will be dressed in the same garments, and you will not know me. But when my father says ‘Go to thy wife, king’s son,’ come to the one whose right hand has no little finger.’

So he went and gave the eggs to the giant, who nodded his head.

‘Make ready for thy marriage,’ cried he, ‘for the wedding shall take place this very night, and I will summon thy bride to greet thee.’ Then his three daughters were sent for, and they all entered dressed in green silk of the same fashion, and with golden circlets round their heads. The king’s son looked from one to another. Which was the youngest? Suddenly his eyes fell on the hand of the middle one, and there was no little finger.

‘Thou hast aimed well this time too,’ said the giant, as the king’s son laid his hand on her shoulder, ‘but perhaps we may meet some other way’; and though he pretended to laugh, the bride saw a gleam in his eye which warned her of danger.

The wedding took place that very night, and the hall was filled with giants and gentlemen, and they danced till the house shook from top to bottom. At last everyone grew tired, and the guests went away, and the king’s son and his bride were left alone.

‘If we stay here till dawn my father will kill thee,’ she whispered, ‘but thou art my husband and I will save thee, as I did before,’ and she cut an apple into nine pieces, and put two pieces at the head of the bed, and two pieces at the foot, and two pieces at the door of the kitchen, and two at the big door, and one outside the house. And when this was done, and she heard the giant snoring, she and the king’s son crept out softly and stole across to the stable, where she led out the blue-grey mare and jumped on its back, and her husband mounted behind her. Not long after, the giant awoke.

‘Are you asleep?’ asked he.

‘Not yet,’ answered the apple at the head of the bed, and the giant turned over, and soon was snoring as loudly as before. By and bye he called again.

‘Are you asleep?’

‘Not yet,’ said the apple at the foot of the bed, and the giant was satisfied. After a while, he called a third time, ‘Are you asleep?’

‘Not yet,’ replied the apple in the kitchen, but when in a few minutes, he put the question for the fourth time and received an answer from the apple outside the house door, he guessed what had happened, and ran to the room to look for himself.

The bed was cold and empty!

‘My father’s breath is burning my back,’ cried the girl, ‘put thy hand into the ear of the mare, and whatever thou findest there, throw it behind thee.’ And in the mare’s ear there was a twig of sloe tree, and as he threw it behind him there sprung up twenty miles of thornwood so thick that scarce a weasel could go through it. And the giant, who was striding headlong forwards, got caught in it, and it pulled his hair and beard.

‘This is one of my daughter’s tricks,’ he said to himself, ‘but if I had my big axe and my wood-knife, I would not be long making a way through this,’ and off he went home and brought back the axe and the wood-knife.

It took him but a short time to cut a road through the blackthorn, and then he laid the axe and the knife under a tree.

‘I will leave them there till I return,’ he murmured to himself, but a hoodie crow, which was sitting on a branch above, heard him.

‘If thou leavest them,’ said the hoodie, ‘we will steal them.’

‘You will,’ answered the giant, ‘and I must take them home.’ So he took them home, and started afresh on his journey.

‘My father’s breath is burning my back,’ cried the girl at midday. ‘Put thy finger in the mare’s ear and throw behind thee whatever thou findest in it,’ and the king’s son found a splinter of grey stone, and threw it behind him, and in a twinkling twenty miles of solid rock lay between them and the giant.

‘My daughter’s tricks are the hardest things that ever met me,’ said the giant, ‘but if I had my lever and my crowbar, I would not be long in making my way through this rock also,’ but as he had got them, he had to go home and fetch them. Then it took him but a short time to hew his way through the rock.

‘I will leave the tools here,’ he murmured aloud when he had finished.

‘If thou leavest them, we will steal them,’ said a hoodie who was perched on a stone above him, and the giant answered:

‘Steal them if thou wilt; there is no time to go back.’

‘My father’s breath is burning my back,’ cried the girl; ‘look in the mare’s ear, king’s son, or we are lost,’ and he looked, and found a tiny bladder full of water, which he threw behind him, and it became a great lock. And the giant, who was striding on so fast, could not stop himself, and he walked right into the middle and was drowned.

The blue-grey mare galloped on like the wind, and the next day the king’s son came in sight of his father’s house.

‘Get down and go in,’ said the bride, ‘and tell them that thou hast married me. But take heed that neither man nor beast kiss thee, for then thou wilt cease to remember me at all.’

‘I will do thy bidding,’ answered he, and left her at the gate. All who met him bade him welcome, and he charged his father and mother not to kiss him, but as he greeted them his old greyhound leapt on his neck, and kissed him on the mouth. And after that he did not remember the giant’s daughter.

All that day she sat on a well which was near the gate, waiting, waiting, but the king’s son never came. In the darkness she climbed up into an oak tree that shadowed the well, and there she lay all night, waiting, waiting.

On the morrow, at midday, the wife of a shoemaker who dwelt near the well went to draw water for her husband to drink, and she saw the shadow of the girl in the tree, and thought it was her own shadow.

‘How handsome I am, to be sure,’ said she, gazing into the well, and as she stopped to behold herself better, the jug struck against the stones and broke in pieces, and she was forced to return to her husband without the water, and this angered him.

‘Thou hast turned crazy,’ said he in wrath. ‘Go thou, my daughter, and fetch me a drink,’ and the girl went, and the same thing befell her as had befallen her mother.

‘Where is the water?’ asked the shoemaker, when she came back, and as she held nothing save the handle of the jug he went to the well himself. He too saw the reflection of the woman in the tree, but looked up to discover whence it came, and there above him sat the most beautiful woman in the world.

‘Come down,’ he said, ‘for a while thou canst stay in my house,’ and glad enough the girl was to come.

Now the king of the country was about to marry, and the young men about the court thronged the shoemaker’s shop to buy fine shoes to wear at the wedding.

‘Thou hast a pretty daughter,’ said they when they beheld the girl sitting at work.

‘Pretty she is,’ answered the shoemaker, ‘but no daughter of mine.’

‘I would give a hundred pounds to marry her,’ said one.

‘And I,’ ‘And I,’ cried the others.

‘That is no business of mine,’ answered the shoemaker, and the young men bade him ask her if she would choose one of them for a husband, and to tell them on the morrow. Then the shoemaker asked her, and the girl said that she would marry the one who would bring his purse with him. So the shoemaker hurried to the youth who had first spoken, and he came back, and after giving the shoemaker a hundred pounds for his news, he sought the girl, who was waiting for him.

‘Is it thou?’ inquired she. ‘I am thirsty, give me a drink from the well that is yonder.’ And he poured out the water, but he could not move from the place where he was; and there he stayed till many hours had passed by.

‘Take away that foolish boy,’ cried the girl to the shoemaker at last, ‘I am tired of him,’ and then suddenly he was able to walk, and betook himself to his home, but he did not tell the others what had happened to him.

Next day there arrived one of the other young men, and in the evening, when the shoemaker had gone out and they were alone, she said to him, ‘See if the latch is on the door.’ The young man hastened to do her bidding, but as soon as he touched the latch, his fingers stuck to it, and there he had to stay for many hours, till the shoemaker came back, and the girl let him go. Hanging his head, he went home, but he told no one what had befallen him.

Then was the turn of the third man, and his foot remained fastened to the floor, till the girl unloosed it. And thankfully, he ran off, and was not seen looking behind him.

‘Take the purse of gold,’ said the girl to the shoemaker, ‘I have no need of it, and it will better thee.’ And the shoemaker took it and told the girl he must carry the shoes for the wedding up to the castle.

‘I would fain get a sight of the king’s son before he marries,’ sighed she.

‘Come with me, then,’ answered he; ‘the servants are all my friends, and they will let you stand in the passage down which the king’s son will pass, and all the company too.’

Up they went to the castle, and when the young men saw the girl standing there, they led her into the hall where the banquet was laid out and poured her out some wine. She was just raising the glass to drink when a flame went up out of it, and out of the flame sprang two pigeons, one of gold and one of silver. They flew round and round the head of the girl, when three grains of barley fell on the floor, and the silver pigeon dived down, and swallowed them.

‘If thou hadst remembered how I cleaned the byre, thou wouldst have given me my share,’ cooed the golden pigeon, and as he spoke three more grains fell, and the silver pigeon ate them as before.

‘If thou hadst remembered how I thatched the byre, thou wouldst have given me my share,’ cooed the golden pigeon again; and as he spoke three more grains fell, and for the third time they were eaten by the silver pigeon.

‘If thou hadst remembered how I got the magpie’s nest, thou wouldst have given me my share,’ cooed the golden pigeon.

Then the king’s son understood that they had come to remind him of what he had forgotten, and his lost memory came back, and he knew his wife, and kissed her. But as the preparations had been made, it seemed a pity to waste them, so they were married a second time, and sat down to the wedding feast.

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Gutei’s Finger

Gutei raised his finger whenever he was asked a question about Zen. A boy attendant began to imitate him in this way. When anyone asked the boy what his master had preached about, the boy would raise his finger.

Gutei heard about the boy’s mischief. He seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and ran away. Gutei called and stopped him. When the boy turned his head to Gutei, Gutei raised up his own finger. In that instant the boy was enlightened.

When Gutei was about to pass from this world he gathered his monks around him. `I attained my finger-Zen,’ he said, `from my teacher Tenryu, and in my whole life I could not exhaust it.’ Then he passed away.

Mumon’s comment: Enlightenment, which Gutei and the boy attained, has nothing to do with a finger. If anyone clings to a finger, Tenyru will be so disappointed that he will annihilate Gutei, the boy and the clinger all together.

Gutei cheapens the teaching of Tenyru,

Emancipating the boy with a knife.

Compared to the Chinese god who pushed aside a mountain with one hand

Old Gutei is a poor imitator.

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The Poetry Of Yeats…

The Well and the Tree

‘The Man that I praise,’

Cries out the empty well,

‘Lives all his days

Where a hand on the bell

Can call the milch-cows

To the comfortable door of his house.

Who but an idiot would praise

Dry stones in a well?’

‘The Man that I praise,’

Cries out the leafless tree,

‘Has married and stays

By an old hearth, and he

On naught has set store

But children and dogs on the floor.

Who but an idiot would praise

A withered tree?’

—

When Helen lived

We have cried in our despair

That men desert,

For some trivial affair

Or noisy, insolent, sport,

Beauty that we have won

From bitterest hours;

Yet we, had we walked within

Those topless towers

Where Helen walked with her boy,

Had given but as the rest

Of the men and women of Troy,

A word and a jest.

—

Against Unworthy Praise

O Heart, be at peace, because

Nor knave nor dolt can break

What’s not for their applause,

Being for a woman’s sake.

Enough if the work has seemed,

So did she your strength renew,

A dream that a lion had dreamed

Till the wilderness cried aloud,

A secret between you two,

Between the proud and the proud.

What, still you would have their praise!

But here’s a haughtier text,

The labyrinth of her days

That her own strangeness perplexed;

And how what her dreaming gave

Earned slander, ingratitude,

From self-same dolt and knave;

Aye, and worse wrong than these.

Yet she, singing upon her road,

Half lion, half child, is at peace.

—-

To a Child dancing in the Wind

I

Dance there upon the shore;

What need have you to care

For wind or water’s roar?

And tumble out your hair

That the salt drops have wet;

Being young you have not known

The fool’s triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won,

Nor the best labourer dead

And all the sheaves to bind.

What need have you to dread

The monstrous crying of wind?

II

Has no one said those daring

Kind eyes should be more learn’d?

Or warned you how despairing

The moths are when they are burned,

I could have warned you, but you are young,

So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever’s offered

And dream that all the world’s a friend,

Suffer as your mother suffered,

Be as broken in the end.

But I am old and you are young,

And I speak a barbarous tongue.

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Off to work… Last day for this temp job. I am thankful that the work popped up. Good people out there, and love shows itself in wondrous ways.

I am touching on voices of Catalan today with Turfing. A lovely part of the world, and unique in so many ways. The poets… the poets… and the music that has come out of those coastlines and hills.

Anyway, the weekend is here, and there are projects I must get on with. I hope you have a good one, and remember to share in the beauty of this life with your loved ones and friends.

Have a good day!

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

The Quotes

A wee bit of Guitar

A Fairytale from Catalan:The Water Of Life

A Voice Of Catalan: The Poetry Of Agustí Bartra

Art: Selkies and Mermaids….

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The Quotes:

“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”

“Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.”

“I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.”

“Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else.”

“In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress.”

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From Catalan:The Water Of Life

Three brothers and one sister lived together in a small cottage, and they loved one another dearly. One day the eldest brother, who had never done anything but amuse himself from sunrise to sunset, said to the rest, ‘Let us all work hard, and perhaps we shall grow rich, and be able to build ourselves a palace.’

And his brothers and sister answered joyfully, ‘Yes, we will all work!’

So they fell to working with all their might, till at last they became rich, and were able to build themselves a beautiful palace; and everyone came from miles round to see its wonders, and to say how splendid it was. No one thought of finding any faults, till at length an old woman, who had been walking through the rooms with a crowd of people, suddenly exclaimed, ‘Yes, it is a splendid palace, but there is still something it needs!’

‘And what may that be?’

‘A church.’

When they heard this the brothers set to work again to earn some more money, and when they had got enough they set about building a church, which should be as large and beautiful as the palace itself.

And after the church was finished greater numbers of people than ever flocked to see the palace and the church and vast gardens and magnificent halls.

But one day, as the brothers were as usual doing the honours to their guests, an old man turned to them and said, ‘Yes, it is all most beautiful, but there is still something it needs!’

‘And what may that be?’

‘A pitcher of the water of life, a branch of the tree the smell of whose flowers gives eternal beauty, and the talking bird.’

‘And where am I to find all those?’

‘Go to the mountain that is far off yonder, and you will find what you seek.’

After the old man had bowed politely and taken farewell of them the eldest brother said to the rest, ‘I will go in search of the water of life, and the talking bird, and the tree of beauty.’

‘But suppose some evil thing befalls you?’ asked his sister. ‘How shall we know?’

‘You are right,’ he replied; ‘ I had not thought of that!’

Then they followed the old man, and said to him, ‘My eldest brother wishes to seek for the water of life, and the tree of beauty, and the talking bird, that you tell him are needful to make our palace perfect. But how shall we know if any evil thing befall him?’

So the old man took them a knife, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Keep this carefully, and as long as the blade is bright all is well; but if the blade is bloody, then know that evil has befallen him.’

The brothers thanked him, and departed, and went straight to the palace, where they found the young man making ready to set out for the mountain where the treasures he longed for lay hid.

And he walked, and he walked, and he walked, till he had gone a great way, and there he met a giant.

‘Can you tell me how much further I have still to go before I reach that mountain yonder?’

‘And why do you wish to go there?’

‘I am seeking the water of life, the talking bird, and a branch of the tree of beauty.’

‘Many have passed by seeking those treasures, but none have ever come back; and you will never come back either, unless you mark my words. Follow this path, and when you reach the mountain you will find it covered with stones. Do not stop to look at them, but keep on your way. As you go you will hear scoffs and laughs behind you; it will be the stones that mock. Do not heed them; above all, do not turn round. If you do you will become as one of them. Walk straight on till you get to the top, and then take all you wish for.’

The young man thanked him for his counsel, and walked, and walked, and walked, till he reached the mountain. And as he climbed he heard behind him scoffs and jeers, but he kept his ears steadily closed to them. At last the noise grew so loud that he lost patience, and he stooped to pick up a stone to hurl into the midst of the clamour, when suddenly his arm seemed to stiffen, and the next moment he was a stone himself!

That day his sister, who thought her brother’s steps were long in returning, took out the knife and found the blade was red as blood. Then she cried out to her brothers that something terrible had come to pass.

‘I will go and find him,’ said the second. And he went. And he walked, and he walked, and he walked, till he met the giant, and asked him if he had seen a young man travelling towards the mountain.

And the giant answered, ‘Yes, I have seen him pass, but I have not seen him come back. The spell must have worked upon him.’

‘Then what can I do to disenchant him, and find the water of life, the talking bird, and a branch of the tree of beauty?’

‘Follow this path, and when you reach the mountain you will find it covered with stones. Do not stop to look at them, but climb steadily on. Above all, heed not the laughs and scoffs that will arise on all sides, and never turn round. And when you reach the top you can then take all you desire.’

The young man thanked him for his counsel, and set out for the mountain. But no sooner did he reach it than loud jests and gibes broke out on every side, and almost deafened him. For some time he let them rail, and pushed boldly on, till he had passed the place which his brother had gained; then suddenly he thought that among the scoffing sounds he heard his brother’s voice. He stopped and looked back; and another stone was added to the number.

Meanwhile the sister left at home was counting the days when her two brothers should return to her. The time seemed long, and it would be hard to say how often she took out the knife and looked at its polished blade to make sure that this one at least was still safe. The blade was always bright and clear; each time she looked she had the happiness of knowing that all was well, till one evening, tired and anxious, as she frequently was at the end of the day, she took it from its drawer, and behold! the blade was red with blood. Her cry of horror brought her youngest brother to her, and, unable to speak, she held out the knife!

‘I will go,’ he said.

So he walked, and he walked, and he walked, until he met the giant, and he asked, ‘Have two young men, making for yonder mountain, passed this way?’

And the giant answered, ‘Yes, they have passed by, but they never came back, and by this I know that the spell has fallen upon them.’

‘Then what must I do to free them, and to get the water of life, and the talking bird, and the branch of the tree of beauty?’

‘Go to the mountain, which you will find so thickly covered with stones that you will hardly be able to place your feet, and walk straight forward, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, and paying no heed to the laughs and scoffs which will follow you, till you reach the top, and then you may take all that you desire.’

The young man thanked the giant for his counsel, and set forth to the mountain. And when he began to climb there burst forth all around him a storm of scoffs and jeers; but he thought of the giant’s words, and looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, till the mountain top lay straight before him. A moment now and he would have gained it, when, through the groans and yells, he heard his brothers’ voices. He turned, and there was one stone the more.

And all this while his sister was pacing up and down the palace, hardly letting the knife out of her hand, and dreading what she knew she would see, and what she did see. The blade grew red before her eyes, and she said, ‘Now it is my turn.’

So she walked, and she walked, and she walked till she came to the giant, and prayed him to tell her if he had seen three young men pass that way seeking the distant mountain.

‘I have seen them pass, but they have never returned, and by this I know that the spell has fallen upon them.’

‘And what must I do to set them free, and to find the water of life, and the talking bird, and a branch of the tree of beauty?’

‘You must go to that mountain, which is so full of stones that your feet will hardly find a place to tread, and as you climb you will hear a noise as if all the stones in the world were mocking you; but pay no heed to anything you may hear, and, once you gain the top, you have gained everything.’

The girl thanked him for his counsel, and set out for the mountain; and scarcely had she gone a few steps upwards when cries and screams broke forth around her, and she felt as if each stone she trod on was a living thing. But she remembered the words of the giant, and knew not what had befallen her brothers, and kept her face steadily towards the mountain top, which grew nearer and nearer every moment. But as she mounted the clamour increased sevenfold: high above them all rang the voices of her three brothers. But the girl took no heed, and at last her feet stood upon the top.

Then she looked round, and saw, lying in a hollow, the pool of the water of life. And she took the brazen pitcher that she had brought with her, and filled it to the brim. By the side of the pool stood the tree of beauty, with the talking bird on one of its boughs; and she caught the bird, and placed it in a cage, and broke off one of the branches.

After that she turned, and went joyfully down the hill again, carrying her treasures, but her long climb had tired her out, and the brazen pitcher was very heavy, and as she walked a few drops of the water spilt on the stones, and as it touched them they changed into young men and maidens, crowding about her to give thanks for their deliverance.

So she learnt by this how the evil spell might be broken, and she carefully sprinkled every stone till there was not one left–only a great company of youths and girls who followed her down the mountain.

When they arrived at the palace she did not lose a moment in planting the branch of the tree of beauty and watering it with the water of life. And the branch shot up into a tree, and was heavy with flowers, and the talking bird nestled in its branches.

Now the fame of these wonders was noised abroad, and the people flocked in great numbers to see the three marvels, and the maiden who had won them; and among the sightseers came the king’s son, who would not go till everything was shown him, and till he had heard how it had all happened. And the prince admired the strangeness and beauty of the treasures in the palace, but more than all he admired the beauty and courage of the maiden who had brought them there. So he went home and told his parents, and gained their consent to wed her for his wife.

Then the marriage was celebrated in the church adjoining the palace. Then the bridegroom took her to his own home, where they lived happy for ever after.

___________

___________

A Voice Of Catalan: The Poetry Of Agustí Bartra

(Barcelona, 1908 – Terrassa, 1982)

When, finally, there is nothing left…

When, finally, there is nothing left of me but my words

Perched like birds on the taut wires

Of spirits faithful to the hymns of life,

A hammer will cry out for the extinguished light.

The day will wear mimosa wreaths.

Perhaps there will be forgiveness on the ceaseless sea.

The sun will bear in its mouth, by the stem, its everlasting

And new voices will say the joy of water.

The wind will lay waste streetlights and statues.

Summer will wear its yellow smock

And the white cane of the blind will tap on grey cobblestones.

Among the jagged rocks and in foresta of souls

Orpheus will seduce the anonymous beast.

Full moons will come to make maidens shudder,

Those who await the advent of love amid cricket and acacia.

I will be faceless. In my ears of grass

Time will ring a bell made of stars…

February 7, 1978

—-

Like he who departs with the tide and twilight,

Like the rain that settles to sleep on the leaves of the willow,

Like the footfall of the lover toward his love who sighs,

Like the wind that transforms the listless face of water,

Like the conqueror who unites land and flag,

Like the frothy vowels of the laughing sea:

Thus, I would have you come to me, Poetry,

Bearing birds, bonfires, dreams and stars…

March 26, 1978

—-

Angel Of Light

Allow me to stand upon the earth once more,

Oh angel of light, as you draw wealth, aloft,

From change and the stubborn root that persists.

Let me be idle upon the living earth

And behold the birth of roads that take their start

Below the stars and near the eyes of water,

While my heart searches the song of the nightingtale

And interrogates the night that bows its head under mystery.

Allow me, smiling angel of return and balance,

To soar like a poplar, trembling all over with existence,

Toward the fountainhead of the rim of horizon where spring is born.

Touched by your fingers, let the smell of haylofts

Come to lie down, near me, as if beside its master.

Don’t leave me, angel, to the salary of charity

That suffering pays out as it lessens.

I am naked. And vulnerable to the diamond of day.

Let us go to ward the larks!

A red colt grazes.

The east comes, with the gull.

Oh angel of power among blind shapes,

Let me feel the titanic force

Of a blade of grass as it grows,

The prayer of the waters,

The enigma of fire.

Come, angel, accompany me with your necessary light.

Come, come, don’t leave me, luminous beauty,

Creation and solace,

Piety turned spirit.

Look, angel, deep in the Valley — Demeter sleeps; lying,

Solemn and vast, she makes a great gesture with her hand,

A gesture of protection and order, and all birds take flight,

And later, murmuring, she slowly changes position…

And the angel makes the Sign: the eternal circle.

Terrassa, March 25, 1982

—–

If I Don’t Have You…

If I don’t have you I stand alone,

Mutilated solitude.

Silence dressed in mourning

At the most fateful hour,

No laughter, no flight:

Start to count the eyes of dawn

And the birds in every flock.

If I don’t have you I stand alone

And my voice, a cavern.

If I don’t have you I stand alone,

A scarecrow on the edge of the fields.

I can no longer wear the sun,

No longer wear the cape of air,

I move about like the slow snail

That bears its house upon its back.

If I don’t have you I sand alone

And my voice, chimera.

If I don’t have you I stand alone

Like the tallest weather vane.

As you come up, path

Of sweetscented fatigue;

As you go down, brook

Of foamy riders,

Say along with me: if I stand alone

My voice is but despair.

If I don’t have you I stand alone

Like the Evening Star.

Sound, cosmic shawm,

As you strip me of fear

On days when the sky is in revolt,

And bring thimbles of water to my eyes.

If I don’t have you I stand alone

And my voice is crucified.

Terrassa, May 5, 1982

Our Lady of the Remedy Clinic

_______

Agustí Bartra (Barcelona, 1908 – Terrassa, 1982) was a poet, novelist, translator and playwright, one of several writers who had to go into exile because of the Spanish Civil War. In 1940, with the writer Anna Murià, he settled in Mexico where he worked as a translator. During this period he received grants that enabled him to make several trips to the United States, which he combined with intense literary activity, producing for example Antologia de la lírica nord-americana (Anthology of American Poetry, 1951). He returned to Catalonia in 1970 and went to live in Terrassa. Outstanding among his works are the novel Crist de 200.000 braços (Christ of 200,000 Arms, 1968) in which he describes the collective experience of the concentration camps, and his book of poems entitled Ecce homo (1968), which reflects his personal cosmology through the four elements: earth, fire, air and water.

Bartra’s poetry has traditionally been compared with that of Walt Whitman, but he also followed in the footsteps of German Romantic poets such as Novalis, Hölderlin and Rilke. The Generalitat (Government) of Catalonia rendered homage to Bartra and his work by awarding him the Creu de Sant Jordi (Saint George Cross).

____________

Kinda of a hefty Turf today… Best get your cuppa and sit back. Lots to digest, and to have fun with.

There is a fresh wind coming…. it looks like A Change In The Weather.

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

—

On The Menu:

John Bauer Biography

The Emperor

The Links

A Change in the Weather

Zen Koans

Poetry: The Mystical Poetry of Teixeira de Pascoaes

Art: The Fairy Art of John Bauer

John Bauer was born in Jonkoping, Sweden, in 1882, the third of four children born to Emma and Joseph Bauer. The loss of his sister Anna, two years his senior, who died when John was only 11, which affected his family very much. At 16, John went to Stockholm to begin his art studies. After two years, he was accepted at The Royal Academy of Art, where Classical Art classes, Anatomy, Perspective, and History of Art lectures comprised seven lecture hours, with overtime and drawing assignments at home. There he met his wife, Esther, whom he married in December, 1906. Esther was the model for The Fairy Princess and many of his later illustrations. In the spring of 1908, John and Esther traveled to Italy, settling in a villa above Volterra. They stayed in Italy for nearly two years. Bauer was stricken by the beauty of 14th century works he found in the museum of Naples, causing him to say “I notice more and more, that it is from the oldest and most primitive artists that one must learn to become an artist oneself”.

The details of John Bauer’s work are accurate — Bronze Age axes and medieval ironwork. The costumes in his fairy tales are modeled from books in found in the Royal Library. In 1904, he was commissioned to do a book about Lappland and spent a summer following the Lapps on their migrations. Some of the details of their dress are included in the costumes of his trolls.

His most famous work, the illustrations to the first of eight volumes of Bland tomtar och Troll (Among Gnomes and Trolls), a collection of fary tales written by Swedish authors, was published in 1907. It was hugely successful. In the early volumes, the illustrations were printed in grey tones only, sometimes with yellow color added. In the later volumes we find the famous examples of his mature work: Princess tuvstarr and Skutt the moose against the twilight sky. In the later volumes, his illustrations were printed in color.

In 1915, he resigned from the commission to illustrate BTT because he wanted to take his art in a different direction. He painted Adam and Eve, a fresco of St. Martin, a large oil painting on canvas, Freja. He suffered from depression, and doubted his abilities and purpose. By 1918, his marriage was on the rocks, divorce was being discussed, and the world was at war. The country house at Bjorkudden was too remote for Esther and a new home was built in Stockholm with assistance from John’s father. Esther and John, and their two-year old son, Bengt or Putte, hoped to start a new life in the new home in Stockholm. John distrusted trains and insisted that they return by ferry, but the Per Brahe capsized in stormy weather and all aboard drowned.

_____________________________

Big Thanks To Morgan For This….

_______________

The Links:

DNA clue to presidential puzzle

Roman descendants found in China?

Art sleuth looks for lost Da Vinci masterpiece

_______________

A Change in the Weather

Progressive Dennis Kucinich takes over a new House subcommittee, signaling changes in national drug policy

~ By DEAN KUIPERS ~

~ The drug hawk’s worst nightmare: Kucinich’s hearings will raise a ruckus ~

The Democratic sweep in the 2006 mid-term elections has done more than finally install a woman as speaker of the House. It has also put one of the most vocal critics of the ill-starred “War on Drugs” in a position to affect federal drug policy. On January 18, Ohio Congressman and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, one of the most progressive Democratic voices in the House, was appointed as chair of the new House Government Reform and Oversight subcommittee on domestic policy, causing drug reform organizations coast-to-coast to rejoice in hopes that a moment for significant change may have finally come.

This subcommittee replaces the now-defunct Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources subcommittee, which was headed up by staunch drug warrior, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN). Kucinich will assume many of his oversight duties, including policy oversight of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and appointed Drug Czar John Walters. One commentator on Stopthedrugwar.org crowed that “the responsibility of overseeing the ONDCP has effectively been transferred from Congress’s most reckless drug warrior to its most outspoken drug policy reformer” [his emphasis].

“He is certainly the polar opposite of his predecessor, Mark Souder,” says Allen St. Pierre, spokesman for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML. “Since the time the [ONDCP] was created in 1988, there have always been friendly people in that subcommittee and the ONDCP has always been able to get what they want under the guise of protecting children and saving America from drugs. But Kucinich doesn’t believe any of that. Any of it!”

For instance, St. Pierre notes, Kucinich is a supporter of industrial hemp, the non-psychoactive product of the cannabis sativa plant. He is also a supporter of medical marijuana and of the federal rescheduling of marijuana, where it is currently illegal as a Schedule I drug, classified as having “no medical value.” This classification clashes with states such as California, which have legalized medical use of marijuana, and leads directly to the current rash of raids on medical marijuana dispensaries by the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Kucinich is expected, St. Pierre says, to be a sponsor of a new bill to be introduced in March that would decriminalize pot.

Washington insiders, however, are not holding their breath for great upheaval in federal drug policy overall. Sources close to the appointment, who asked not to be named, say that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Democratic leadership have effectively embargoed major crime or drug policy legislation for the next two years, to avoid looking soft on crime in the 2008 election.

Kucinich, however, is promising a couple years of entertaining and edifying hearings.

“We’re going to open up the discussion to new hearings,” says Kucinich, interviewed Sunday in Culver City, where he presented his bill for Universal Health Care, which is co-sponsored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). “We want to explore the federal government’s policies and the Department of Justice’s policies on medical marijuana, for example. We need to also look at the drug laws that have brought about mandatory minimum sentences that have put people in jail for long periods of time. I think it’s an appropriate time to look at the proliferation of drugs in America, and how that fits in with our health care crisis, and how that fits in with law enforcement.”

The ONDCP did not reply to several requests for comment. That office, however, which is a function of the executive branch, has been deeply involved in pushing heavy sentences for nonviolent drug offenders and resisting medical marijuana, buying big-money ad campaigns attacking marijuana in states trying to legalize at the state level. Controlling that ad money could be a key to reform. When asked if his subcommittee has any budget oversight or other muscle, Kucinich shook his head and added, “No, this committee does not have control of the budgets, but it does have control of the policy, and it can ask questions and get documents that others couldn’t get.”

That can make a difference, says Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, one of the nation’s biggest drug policy reform organizations. His group plans to push for incremental slices of legislation that can move a progressive agenda while not upsetting Democratic unity, adding that Kucinich can “hold hearings on some of the subjects that haven’t been addressed in, you know, decades. Like a hearing on America having the highest incarceration rate in the world. Or maybe a hearing on why the DEA has jurisdiction over medical issues.

“One can obviously empathize with the democratic leadership’s desire to be cautious when it comes to supporting drug policy reforms and other sentencing reforms,” he adds. “But when you have a growing number of Republicans supporting sentencing reform, this might be a good time for the Democrats to show a little leadership.”

In fact, several activists point out, the new Congress may be the most sympathetic to drug-law reform that America has ever seen. Progressives like Senator Richard Durbin and Reps. Pelosi, George Miller, Conyers, Barney Frank, Henry Waxman, Kucinich, and Bobby Scott have all turned up in leadership positions.

“If we had to pick out our 40 best friends in Congress, they’d be disproportionately in leadership positions,” says Nadelmann. He includes Sen. Patrick Leahy on that list, but cautions: “Mind you, seven years ago, Leahy said that sentencing reform was one of the top priorities, but now it’s not even a top-10 priority. Part of that’s because there’s so much other stuff to deal with.”

Still, action on several fronts is expected. Sentencing reform should get some attention, with an aim of reducing the number of non-violent drug offenders currently getting long prison sentences, which has given the U.S. the highest per-capita incarceration rate in the world. One such change would be to make sentences involving crack cocaine equal to those given for powdered cocaine, as community activists have long contended these simply punish the black and poor who are more likely to use the drug in the form of crack. Hearings might also bring new media scrutiny to decades-long marijuana rescheduling motions and several Data Quality Act petitions, which force bodies like the Food and Drug Administration to make decisions based on science rather than ideology, and which have been roundly ignored by the Bush administration.

St. Pierre points out another potential point of influence: High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas, or HIDTAs. Congress funnels millions of dollars to local law enforcement for use in these areas, and activists have long argued they are wrongly prioritized.

“That’s a very obscure acronym, but when it comes down to the billions of dollars that get channeled out to local governments and their law enforcement, HIDTA is the battleground. That’s where Dennis can come in and say, ‘Mr. Walters, we the Congress, and, clearly, your own constituents want methamphetamines as the number one priority, not marijuana, and certainly not in the states that have medical marijuana laws.’ A couple of weeks ago, Walters was out in Fresno giving awards away for busting buyers’ clubs. Dennis can clip those wings. It all depends on how he’s going to want to pull the trigger.”

________________

___________

Zen Koans

The Voice of Happiness

After Bankei had passed away, a blind man who lived near the master’s temple told a friend:

“Since I am blind, I cannot watch a person’s face, so I must judge his character by the sound of his voice. Ordinarily when I hear someone congratulate another upon his happiness or success, I also hear a secret tone of envy. When condolence is expressed for the misfortune of another, I hear pleasure and satisfaction, as if the one condoling was really glad there was something left to gain in his own world.

“In all my experience, however, Bankei’s voice was always sincere. Whenever he expressed happiness, I heard nothing but happiness, and whenever he expressed sorrow, sorrow was all I heard.”

—

Every-Minute Zen

Zen students are with their masters at least ten years before they presume to teach others. Nan-in was visited by Tenno, who, having passed his apprenticeship, had become a teacher. The day happened to be rainy, so Tenno wore wooden clogs and carried an umbrella. After greeting him Nan-in remarked: “I suppose you left your wodden clogs in the vestibule. I want to know if your umbrella is on the right or left side of the clogs.”

Tenno, confused, had no instant answer. He realized that he was unable to carry his Zen every minute. He became Nan-in’s pupil, and he studied six more years to accomplish his every-minute Zen.

—

Arresting the Stone Buddha

A merchant bearing fifty rolls of cotton goods on his shoulders stopped to rest from the heat of the day beneath a shelter where a large stone Buddha was standing. There he fell asleep, and when he awoke his goods had disappeared. He immediately reported the matter to the police.

A judge named O-oka opened court to investigate. “That stone Buddha must have stolen the goods,” concluded the judge. “He is supposed to care for the welfare of the people, but he has failed to perform his holy duty. Arrest him.”

The police arrested the stone Buddha and carried it into the court. A noisy croud followed the statue, curious to learn what kind of a sentence the judge was about to impose.

When O-oka appeared on the bench he rebuked the boisterous audience. “What right have you people to appear before the court laughing and joking in this manner? You are in contempt of court and subject to a fine and imprisonment.”

The people hastened to apologize. “I shall have to impose a fine on you,” said the judge, “but I will remit it provided each one of you brings one roll of cotton goods to the court within three days. Anyone failing to do this will be arrested.”

One of the rolls of cloth which the people brought was quickly recognized by the merchant as his own, and thus the thief was easily discovered. The merchant recovered his goods, and the cotton rolls were returned to the people.

____________

The Poetry: Teixeira de Pascoaes

Encounter

My living encounter with the humble

Things of Nature gives birth to souls,

Divine apparitions,

Which abstractly behold me from I don’t know where,

From I don’t know what unfamiliar place

Outside this space

In which trees and rocks appear.

I see specters, images of Mystery,

Fantastical figures,

Glowing outlines imprinted on the dusk,

Like so many omens. . .

Outlines of pallor emerging in the distance,

And sorrows that are fading portraits

Of unknown Divinities. . .

Statues of silence and melancholy

In the solitude of the hills. . .

Sphinxian postures in the desert,

The shadows of the Pyramids in the sun,

And Plato dragging his tunic of light

Among Egypt’s sad and solemn priests

Wearing vestments of dust and dead penumbras,

In temples of moonlight and petrified clouds. . .

I see before me fantastical presences,

Dreamed horizons that gird me

In a painful embrace! Dark birds that alight

On my brow, where night has fallen,

And winds that carry me through

Mists and lightning. . .

Already lost and dead, I’m no more

Than a human appearance,

Floating over the waves of emotion

That surge inside me like blood

From an open wound. . .

And I ride the waves, which spread

Over shores of snow and white foam,

In blue distances of endless clarity,

And in the nocturnal vagueness where stars

Emerge, like smiles of the devil. . .

I float on a lofty dream,

In heights of mystic splendor,

Where the white lily of moonlight opens.

I float on a lofty dream, in which I see

Myself as an indefinite being. . . The vast night,

Spreading over me its black wings,

Cannot hide me. My face,

Risen above the darkness,

Contemplates the divine Moon.

—

INDEFINITE SONG XXII

Fraternal things, cosmic memory

Of the divine hope

Which expands in an infinite thrust

And cools into forms of granite,

Earth and fire – beautiful brute forms!

And it kindles in the imperfect creature

(Humanized, embodied night)

Souls, which are intimate stars.

Of all its vast creation

The deepest and most vital inspiration

Leaves, in words of ink, the splendor of a verse.

So too hope, endlessly burning,

Following its ethereal course,

Leaves in space the forms of the Universe,

Smoky vestiges,

Mortal recollections of its divine being.

—

WIND OF THE SPIRIT

I felt a mysterious wind pass by

In a profound and cosmic whirl.

It took me in its arms; I avidly

Went; and I saw the Spirit of the World.

Earth’s solitary things, glowing

Like an unconscious gaze of night,

Like a tear’s dead light, felt none

Of that tragic gust, which ruffled

Only my soul! O lofty wind!

Wind of Prophecy and Exaltation!

Wind that blows in waves of mystery,

Stirring me up, making me ecstatic!

Strange wind, raging without touching

The tenderest flower! But it inflames

My entire being, causing it to give off

God’s light, love’s light, infinite light!

O wind that nothing resists except

An invisible shadow. . . A forest

Or rough stone is, for you, a wispy

Essence, and I am a rugged cliff.

At night, O crazy wind, you pound

My troubled soul, and a loud whoosh wraps it

And swoops it away; and so it passes

From life to life, and from death to death.

Wind that took me to I don’t know where. . .

But I know I went, and I saw close up,

Before my eyes, the burning mist that hides

God’s ghost, hovering over the desert!

And I also saw the hazy light

That loomed out of the darkness, enlightening

My heart, which soars beyond life,

Shedding its burden of tears.

That great wind overturned

My calm existence; and ancient sorrow

Drenched my mean and feeble body,

Like rain the tatters of a beggar woman.

In a great wind I went; I went and saw:

I saw God’s Shadow. And in that shadow

I lay down, ravished, and felt within me

The earth in bloom and the sky aglitter.

——

Teixeira de Pascoaes

[Portugal] 1877–1952

A mystic poet who felt profoundly connected to the humblest things and to the brightest stars, Teixeira de Pascoaes was born and died in the small town of Amarante, in northern Portugal, and led a relatively uneventful life. In 1896 he went to Coimbra to study law, though poetry and contemplation were his favorite endeavors. University life was, at the time, a rather boisterous affair, but Pascoaes kept out of student brawls and political rows, devoting himself to study and writing. He published his first three books of poems while at university (not counting the book, later repudiated, that he had published a year before arriving at Coimbra), and these already show his attraction to an idealized nature, to the darkly mysterious, to the vague and ethereal. He worked for a few years as a lawyer and a judge, but then retreated, as it were, into his inner life. He was by no means a recluse, however. His religiosity had a missionary side: Pascoaes became the chief apostle and theoretician of saudosismo.

Saudosismo was a movement that promulgated saudade as a national spiritual value that could have transformative power. Saudade means “longing, nostalgia, yearning” for something absent, but it is a feeling fraught with more emotional weight and affective intensity than corresponding words from English and other languages convey. Pascoaes gave this unique Portuguese word a philosophical and spiritual twist. In an article published in 1913, he wrote that “saudade is creation, a perpetual and fruitful marriage of Remembrance with Desire, of Evil with God, of Life with Death . . .”. And in a conference delivered that same year, he spoke of “the action of desire on remembrance and of remembrance on desire, the two intimate elements of saudade”, described elsewhere in the conference as “the perfect and living fusion of Nature and the Spirit”. Saudade was, in Pascoaes’ conception, a species of élan vital.

From 1910 to 1916, Pascoaes was editor of A Águia, an Oporto-based magazine that became the mouthpiece for the Renascença Portuguesa (Portuguese Renaissance), a movement of which saudosismo was part and parcel. It was by cultivating saudade, considered to be the defining characteristic of the ‘Portuguese soul’, that a national renaissance was supposed to take place. This signified not “a simple return to the Past” (wrote Pascoaes in A Águia in 1912) but a “return to the original wellsprings of life in order to create a new life”. To achieve this Renaissance he advocated, among other things, the establishment of a Portuguese Church, which could better accommodate the original spirit of the nation, part Christian but also part pagan.

The nationalist program of saudosismo is only latently felt in most of Pascoaes’ poetry, for his bent was predominantly spiritual, and in a lecture delivered in the last year of his life, he remarked: “Man does not belong only to society; he belongs, first and foremost, to the Cosmos. Society is not an end but a means for facilitating man’s mission on earth, which is to be the consciousness of the Universe.” This point of view informs virtually all of his poetry, which is, in large measure, a pantheistic celebration of life – not just life on earth, but also the life of the imagination and the universe. In the early poem ‘Poet’, he states that “I am, in the future, time past” – the embodiment, in effect, of saudade. He claims to be “a mountain cliff”, “an astral mist”, “a living mystery”, “God’s delirium”, and so on, which is why he also says, “I’m man fleeing from himself”. Not limited to his own body, he connects with the rest of reality, to the point of interpenetrating and becoming its other manifestations.

Pascoaes’ universe is one of correspondences between seeming opposites: the past with the future, nostalgia with hope, sorrow with joy, the material with the spiritual. The dynamic nature of this unity of opposites is well expressed by two verses greatly admired by Fernando Pessoa: “The leaf that fell /Was a soul that ascended” (from a poem titled ‘Elegy of Love’). Far from being a fixed machine of integrated moving parts, Pascoaes’ universe is in continual expansion, through the creative energy of hope, sorrow, desire, saudade. Just as poetic inspiration leaves “the splendor of a verse” on the printed page, “so too hope, endlessly burning, (…) / Leaves in space the forms of the Universe, (…) / Mortal recollections of its divine being” (in ‘Indefinite Song XXII’). And man, through his “living encounter” with the things of Nature “gives birth to souls, / Divine apparitions” (in ‘Encounter’).

Profoundly religious in spirit, Pascoaes did not seem to have or to need any clear notion of God. His poetry is an ongoing hymn to a Nature made divine, in which man’s role is to see and sing it.

(Richard Zenith)

Some delightful stuff today…

Great Pics from Australia (Thanks Kath!) Strange Links, A Folktale from Brittany, a bit of Portuguese Poetry, and the wonderful art of Kay Nielsen…

Made it to the coast and back, on my own as Morgan had other things to do. The quickest visit I have ever had to the beach. Down to Pacific City, hit the Brewery for some barrels and back. The Coast is looking a little ragged, as well as the pass over the coastal range. A terrific number of trees are down as well as many land slides. They have been catching the brunt of it all weather-wise this year. Still, such beauty. If I could, I would live on the coast, hands down.

Have To Hop, more on the way!

Gwyllm

—

On The Menu

Pics From The Rainbow Serpent Festival

The Links

Folktales of Brittany: The Magic Rose

The Poetry of Luis Vaz de Camoes

Art: Kay Nielsen

_________________

Received an email from Kath in Australia… She and many friends (including Graham the man) had attended the Rainbow Serpent Festtival for the last week in Victoria….

Pics o’ Interest:

Kath and Rak Razam giving a talk at the Rainbow Serpent Festival…

Web Grrl’s collection of Photos from the festival (some 9000 gathered!)

__________

The Links:

Mind Games…

Google search history and privacy

And So It Rages On: Global Warming: The Cold, Hard Facts?

Pollen Reveals Terracotta Army Origins

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Folktales of Brittany: The Magic Rose

An aged Breton couple had two sons, the elder of whom went to Paris to seek his fortune, while the younger one was timid by nature and would not leave the paternal roof. His mother, w, ho felt the burden of her age, wished the stay-at-home to marry. At first he would not hear of the idea, but at last, persuaded by her, he took a wife. He had only been married a few weeks, however, when his young bride sickened and died. La Rose, for such was his name, was inconsolable. Every evening he went to the cemetery where his wife was buried, and wept over her tomb.

One night he was about to enter the graveyard on his sad errand when he beheld a terrible phantom standing before him, which asked him in awful tones what he did there. “I am going to pray at the tomb of my wife,” replied the terrified La Rose.

“Do you wish that she were alive again?” asked the spirit.

“Ah, yes!” cried the sorrowing husband. “There is nothing that I would not do in order that she might be restored to me.”

“Hearken, then,” said the phantom. “Return to this place to-morrow night at the same hour. Provide yourself with a pick and you will see what comes to pass.”

On the following night the young widower was punctually at the rendezvous. The phantom presented itself before him and said:

“Go to the tomb of your wife and strike it with your pick; the earth will turn aside and you will behold her lying in her shroud. Take this little silver box, which contains a rose; open it and pass it before her nostrils three times, when she will awake as if from a deep sleep.”

La Rose hastened to the tomb of his wife, and everything happened as the phantom had predicted. He placed the box containing the rose to his wife’s nostrils and she awoke with a sigh, saying: “Ah, I have been asleep for a long time.” Her husband provided her with clothes which he had brought with him, and they returned to their house, much to the joy of his parents.

Some time afterward La Rose’s father died at a great age, and the grief-stricken mother was not long in following him to the grave. La Rose wrote to his brother in Paris to return to Brittany in order to receive his portion of the paternal inheritance, but he was unable to leave the capital, so La Rose had perforce to journey to Paris. He promised his wife before leaving that he would write to her every day, but on his arrival in the city he found his brother very ill, and in the anxiety of nursing him back to health he quite forgot to send his wife news of how he fared. The weeks passed and La Rose’s wife, without word of, her husband, began to dread that something untoward had happened to him. Day by day she sat at her, window weeping and watching for the courier who brought letters from Paris. A regiment of dragoons chanced to be billeted in the town, and the captain, who lodged at the inn directly opposite La Rose’s house, was greatly attracted by the young wife. He inquired of the landlady who was the beautiful dame who sat constantly weeping at her window, and learned, the details of her history. He wrote a letter to her purporting to come from La Rose’s brother in Paris, telling her that her husband had died in the capital, and some time after paid his addresses to the supposed widow, who accepted him. They were married, and. when the regiment left the town the newly wedded pair accompanied it. Meanwhile La Rose’s brother recovered from his illness, and the eager husband hastened back to Brittany. But when he arrived at his home he was surprised to find the doors closed, and was speedily informed of what had occurred during his absence. For a while he was too grief-stricken to act, but, recovering himself somewhat, he resolved to enlist in the regiment of dragoons in which the false captain held his commission. The beauty of his handwriting procured him the post of secretary to one of the lieutenants, but although he frequently attempted to gain sight of his wife he never succeeded in doing so. One day the captain entered the lieutenant’s office, observed the writing of La Rose, and asked his brother officer if he would kindly lend him his secretary for a few days to assist him with some correspondence. While helping the captain La Rose beheld his wife, who did not, however, recognize him. Greatly pleased with his work, the captain invited him to dinner. During the repast a servant, who had stolen a silver dish, fearing that it was about to be missed, slid it into La Rose’s pocket, and when it could not be found, accused the secretary of the theft. La Rose was brought before a court-martial, which condemned him to be shot.

While in prison awaiting his execution La Rose struck up an acquaintance with an old veteran named Père La Chique, who brought him his meals and seemed kindly disposed to him.

“Père La Chique,” said La Rose one day, “I have two thousand francs; if you will do as I ask you they shall be yours.”

The veteran promised instantly, and La Rose requested that after he was shot La Chique should go to the cemetery where he was buried and resuscitate him with the magic rose, which he had carefully preserved. On the appointed day La Rose was duly executed, but Père La Chique, with his pockets full of money, went from inn to inn, drinking and making merry. Whenever the thought of La Rose crossed his mind, he muttered to himself in bibulous accents: “Poor fellow, poor fellow, he is better dead. This is a weary world; why should I bring him back to it?”

When Père La Chique had caroused with his comrades for some days the two thousand francs had almost disappeared. Then remorse assailed him and he made up his mind to do as La Rose had wished. Taking a pick and an axe he went to the graveyard, but when he struck the grave with his tools and the earth rolled back, disclosing the body of La Rose, the old fellow was so terrified that he ran helter-skelter from the spot A draught of good wine brought back his failing courage, however, and he returned and passed the rose three times under the nostrils of his late acquaintance. Instantly La Rose sat up.

“By my faith, I’ve had a good sleep!” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Where are my clothes?”

Père La Chique handed him his garments, and after he had donned them they quitted the graveyard with all haste.

La Rose now found it necessary to cast about for a living. One day he heard the sound of a drum in the street, and, following it, found that it was beaten by a crier who promised in the King’s name a large reward to those who would enlist as sentinels to guard a chapel where the King’s daughter, who had been changed into a monster, was imprisoned. La Rose accepted the offer, and then learned to his dismay that the sentinel who guarded the place between the hours of eleven and midnight was never seen again. On the very first night that he took up his duties this perilous watch fell to his lot. He felt his courage deserting him, and he was about to fly when he heard a voice say: “La Rose, where are you?”

La Rose trembled. “What do you wish with me?” he asked.

“Hearken to me, and no evil will befall you,” replied the voice. “Soon a great and grisly beast will appear. Leave your musket by the side of the sentrybox, climb on the top, and the beast will not touch you.

As eleven o’clock struck La Rose heard a noise and hastened to climb on the top of the sentry-box. Soon a hideous monster came out of the chapel, breathing flames and crying: “Sentinel of my father, where art thou, that I may devour thee?” As it uttered these words, it fell against the musket, which it seized between its teeth. Then the creature disappeared into the chapel and La Rose descended from his perch. He found the musket broken into a thousand pieces.

The old King was delighted to learn that his sentinel had not been devoured, for in order that his daughter should be delivered from her enchantment as a beast it was necessary that the same sentinel should mount guard for three consecutive nights between the hours of eleven and midnight.

On the following night La Rose was pacing up and down on guard, when the same voice addressed him, telling him on this occasion to place his musket before the door of the chapel. The beast issued as before, seized the musket, broke it into small Pieces, and returned to the chapel. On the third night the voice advised him to throw open the door of the chapel, and when the beast came out to run into the building himself, where he would see a leaden shrine, behind which he could take refuge, and where he would find a small bottle, with the contents of which he was to sprinkle the beast’s head. With its usual dreadful roar the monster issued from the chapel. La Rose leapt past it and ran for the leaden shrine. It followed him with hideous howls, and he only reached the protective sanctuary in time. Seizing the little bottle which lay there, he fearlessly confronted the beast and sprinkled its contents over its head. Instantly it changed into a beautiful princess, whom La Rose escorted to her delighted parents. La Rose and the princess were betrothed and duly married, and shortly afterward the King gave up his throne to his son-in-law.

One day the new King was inspecting the regiment of dragoons to which he had once belonged.

“Colonel,” he said, “I miss a man from your regiment.”

“It is true, sire,” replied the Colonel. “It is an old fellow called Père La Chique, whom we have left at the barracks playing his violin, the old good-for-nothing!”

“I wish to see him,” said the King.

Père La Chique was brought forward trembling, and the King, tearing the epaulettes from the shoulders of the captain who had stolen his wife, placed them on those of Père La Chique. He then gave orders for a great fire to be lit, in which were burned the wicked captain and the wife who had so soon forgotten her husband.

La Rose and his Queen lived happily ever afterward–which is rather odd, is it not, when one thinks of the treatment meted out to his resuscitated spouse? But if the lights in folk-tale are bright, the shadows are correspondingly heavy, and rarely does justice go hand in hand with mercy in legend!

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The Poetry of Luis Vaz de Camoes (1524-1580)

Sonnet: That Sad And Joyful Dawn

That sad and joyful dawn,

light full of pity and grief,

while the world wakes in loneliness

I’ll praise it and remember it.

The mild light was breaking, shadows

ran from the sun. Light was the eye of the world –

it saw the parting of two souls,

two wills I thought were indivisible.

And light witnessed the tears

that fell from their eyes, ran together. and formed

a river as long and broad as the Amazon –

and heard the bitter, heartsick words

that made the fires of Hell burn cold

and soothed the lost spirits under the world.

—

Dear Gentle Soul

Dear gentle soul, who went so soon away

Departing from this life in discontent,

Repose in that far sky to which you went

While on this earth I linger in dismay.

In the ethereal seat where you must be,

If you consent to memories of our sphere,

Recall the love which, burning pure and clear;

So often in my eyes you used to see!

If then, in the incurable, long anguish

Of having lost you, as I pine and languish,

You see some merit-do this favour for me:

And to the God who cut your life short, pray

That he as early to your sight restore me

As from my own he swept you far away.

—

On a Shipmate, Pero Moniz, Dying At Sea

My years on earth were short, but long for me,

And full of bitter hardship at the best:

My light of day sinks early in the sea:

Five lustres from my birth I took my rest.

Through distant lands and seas I was a ranger

Seeking some cure or remedy for life,

Which he whom Fortune loves not as a wife,

Will seek in vain through strife, and toil, and danger

Portugal reared me in my green, my darling

Alanguer but the dank, corrupted air

That festers in the marshes around there

Has made me food for fish here in the snarling,

Fierce seas that dark the Abyssinian shore,

Far from the happy homeland I adore.

—

Sonnet: My Errors My Loves My Unlucky Star

My errors my loves my unlucky star

these three things have been my curse.

My luck and my errors were bad enough

but love was the worst.

I have survived. But the pain

has bitten so deep in the bone

the rage and grief will not let go –

too hurt to want contentment now.

The blunders scattered through my life

are like a broken rosary.

I gave myself to fortune; fortune broke me.

Of love there is hardly a ghost left.

O who what angel of power can assuage

my terrible demon of revenge!

—

There is only one time in the history of each planet when its inhabitants first wire up its innumerable parts to make one large machine…You and I are alive at this moment.—Kevin Kelly

Off to the coast with Morgan… down to Pacific City. Hopefully, a good drive. Pacific City is very beautiful… I may bring some pictures back.

Weather seems to be changing fast everywhere. I am amazed at what is going on. If the predictions are correct, much of what we love here as the Pacific Coast and its small towns are going to change very dramatically, very soon.

More on this later,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu

The Links

Quotes from: Thich Nhat Hanh

From Walker – Bombay Dub Orchestra/Monsoon Malabar

Ancient Tales: Story of the betel leaf and the areca nut

Ancient Tales: How the Tiger got his stripes

Vietnamese Poetry: Lâm Thi My Da

Art: Portrayals of Maitreya….

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The Links:

Pagans Want Their Ancestors Bones Reburied

Home Grown Terrorist? 8o)

China and India both know about underground UFO base in the Himalayan border area deep into the tectonic plates

Computer stunner for family

Beauty Sued For Marrying A Tree

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Quotes from: Thich Nhat Hanh

“Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.”

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

“We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize.”

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts.”

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From Walker – Bombay Dub Orchestra/Monsoon Malabar

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Ancient Tales: Story of the betel leaf and the areca nut

(From Viet Nam)

There were two twin brothers of the Cao family. Their names were Tan for the eldest brother, and Lang for the youngest one. They got schooling with a Taoist named Chu Chu who lived with his eighteen-year old daughter. He then married her to Tân, and the young couple lived their conjugal life happily. But, Lang found out that his brother treated him less intimately since he got married. In fact, Lang left the house wandering around the country. He reached a larger river and couldn’t cross it. Not even a small boat was in the vicinity to transport him to the other side of the river. He was so sad that he kept on weeping till death and was transformed into a lime-stone lying by the river side.

Troubled by the long absence of his brother, Tân went out to look for him. When he reached the riverside he sat on the lime-stone and died by exhaustion and weariness. He was transformed into an areca tree. The young woman in turn was upset by the long absence of her husband and got out for a search. She reached the same place where the areca tree had grown, leaned against the tree and died, transformed into a plant with large piquant leaves climbing on the areca tree. Hearing of this tragic love story, local inhabitants in the area set up a temple to their memory.

One day, King Hùng went by the site and gained knowledge of this story from local people. He ordered his men to take and ground together a leaf of betel, an areca nut and a piece of lime. A juice as red as human blood was squeezed out from the melange. He tasted the juice and found it delicious. Then he recommended the use of betel chewed along with areca nut and lime at every marital ceremony. From this time on, chewing betel became a custom for Vietnamese, and very often they began their conversation with a quid of betel. 1

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Ancient Tales: How the Tiger got his stripes

(From Viet Nam)

This story took place in prehistoric times, when animals still had the power of speech. A young farmer had just stopped plowing his rice paddy. It was noon, and he sat down to eat his lunch in the shade of banana plant near his land. Not far away his water buffalo was grazing along the grass-covered dikes enclosing rice fields. After the meal the farmer reclined and observed the stout beast which was chewing quietly. From time to time it would chase away the obnoxious flies with a vigorous swing of its massive head.

Suddenly the great beast became alarmed; the wind carried the odor of a dangerous animal. The buffalo rose to its feet, and awaited the arrival of the enemy. With the speed of lighting a tiger sprang into the clearing.

“I have not come as an enemy,” he said. “I only wish to have something explained. I have been watching you every day from the edge of the forest, and I have observed the strange spectacle of your common labour with the man. That man, that small and vertical being, who has neither great strength nor sharp vision, nor even a keen sense of smell, has been able to keep you in bondage and work for his profit. You are actually ten times heavier than he, much stronger, and more hardened to heavy labour. Yet he rules you. What is the source of his magic power?”

“To tell the truth,” said the buffalo, “I know nothing about all that. I only know I shall never be freed of his power, for he has a talisman he calls wisdom.”

“I must ask him about that,” said the tiger, “because, you see, if I could get this wisdom I would have even greater power over the other animals. Instead of having to conceal myself and spring on them unawares, I could simply order them to remain motionless. I could choose from among all the animals, at my whim and fancy, the most delicious meats.”

“Well!” replied the startled buffalo. “Why don’t you ask the farmer about his wisdom.”

The tiger decided to approach the farmer.

“Mr Man,” he said, “I am big, strong, and quick but I want to be more so. I have heard it said that you have something called wisdom which makes it possible for you to rule over all the animals. Can you transfer this wisdom to me? It would be of great value to me in my daily search for food.”

“Unfortunately,” replied the man, “I have left wisdom at home. I never bring it with me to the fields. But if you like I will go there for it.”

“May I accompany you?” asked the tiger, delighted with what had just heard.

“No, you had better stay here,” replied the farmer, “if the villagers see you with me they may become alarmed and perhaps beat you to death. Wait here, I will find what you need and return.”

And the farmer took a few steps, as if to set off homeward. But then he turned around and with wrinkled brow addressed the tiger.

“I am somewhat disturbed by the possibility that during my absence you might be seized with the desire to eat my buffalo. I have great need of it in my daily work. Who would repay me for such a loss?”

The tiger did not know what to say.

The farmer continued: “If you consent, I will tie you to a tree; then my mind will be free.”

The tiger wanted the mysterious wisdom very much so much, in fact, that he was willing to agree to anything. He permitted the farmer to pass ropes round his body and to tie him to the trunk of big tree.

The farmer then went home and gathered a great armload of dry straw. He returned to the big tree and placed the straw under the tiger and set it on fire.

“Be hold my wisdom!” he shouted at his unfortunate victim, as the flames encircled the tiger and burned him fiercely. The tiger roared so loudly that the neighbouring trees trembled. He raged and pleaded, but the farmer would not untie him. Finally, the fire burned through the ropes and he was able to free himself from cremation. He bounded away into the forest, howling with pain.

In time his wounds healed, but he was never able to rid himself of the long black stripes of the ropes which the flames had seared into his flesh.

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Vietnamese Poetry: Lâm Thi My Da

Friends

My friends are gathered here

Like a cluster of fresh fruit.

Bright as red monordica

Soothing as custard apples

Sharp and keen as star-fruit

They give, like gold persimmons.

The durian behind its thorn

Exudes an unearthly scent.

Outside green, inside red —

O, sweet watermelon.

My friends love serenely

Like squash on low vines.

When we talk over snail soup

And laugh, our voices rise.

None of us has much time

But we give to one another.

When one of us goes away

The others stand by her boat.

I love you deeply, friends.

Though life is passing by

I hope our sharing of sweetness

And sorrow never ends.

I have carried friendship with me

On all my many journeys —

An undepleted treasure

Like the vibrant shimmering sky.

And if in dark moments

My life seems dull and bleak,

I am warmed by the hearts of friends

Like pineapple, fresh and sweet.

—-

Night Harvest

The white circles of conical hats have come out

Like the quiet skies of our childhood,

Like an egret’s spreading wings in the night:

White circles evoking the open sky.

The golds of rice and cluster-bombs blend together.

Even delayed-fuse bombs bring no fear:

Our spirits have known many years of war.

Come, sisters, let us gather the harvest.

Each of us wears her own small moon

Glittering on a carpet of gold rice.

We are the harvesters of my village,

Twelve white hats bright in the long night.

We are not frightened by bullets and bombs in the air —

Only by dew wetting our lime-scented hair.

— 1971

Dedicated To A Dream

A bird brings a dream and flies away.

A little boy sleeps under a starlit sky;

He has no worries.

What did you dream last night?

I dreamed I became a bird.

What was the voice of the bird in the dream?

The bird in the dream was silent

Like a mermaid,

Its radiant song

Kept all its life

As a gift for one person.

Flying through a thousand nights

Flying through a thousand stars

Leaves gleaming a magical color

Flowers shaped like fingers and hands —

Sleep now sleep

Now sleep.

Who was the boy?

I was the boy.

Who was the bird?

I was the bird.

Who was the dream?

I was the dream.

Last night

I dreamed I became myself.

I dreamed I became a bird.

I dreamed I became a dream.