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Sun/Tax day… perking up with a cuppa, to do the dirty deed. Why is it that 50% of all our taxes go to weapons and destruction and the other 50% seems to go to welfare for corporations? Notice I said seems.
About to embark on the tax thingy. Maybe in the best of worlds, I would be able to choose where my hard earned monies go? Hmmmmmm?
Tom & Cheryl Charlesworth visited for a bit on Saturday night (flying up from Sedona for Barista classes), they are opening up an Italian desert thingie in Sedona Arizona with their friend Pam who was along as well. Nice evening.
I hope this finds you well and happy. Sunny here in P-town. Check out Radio Free EarthRites… Playing some great stuff today!
Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
America On Parade Links:
Peters’ Picks: Nostalgia: the orb – little fluffy clouds
Two Koans
Poetry: Joaquin Miller
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Americana On Parade Links:
Outsourced prayer lines confuse callers
FDA: ‘Cocaine’ drink marketed unlawfully
Lonesome Highway to Another World?
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Peters’ Picks: Nostalgia: the orb – little fluffy clouds
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Big Sur River…
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Two Koans:
No Water, No Moon
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail, and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem:
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about
to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
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Real Prosperity
A rich man asked Sengai to write something for the continued prosperity of his family so that it might be treasured from generation to generation.
Sengai obtained a large sheet of paper and wrote: “Father dies, son dies, grandson dies.”
The rich man became angry. “I asked you to write something for the happiness of my family! Why do you make such a joke as this?”
“No joke is intended,” explained Sengai. “If before you yourself die you son should die, this would grieve you greatly. If your grandson should pass away before your son, both of you would be broken-hearted. If your family, generation after generation, passes away in the order I have named, it will be the natural course of life. I call this real prosperity.”
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Poetry: Joaquin Miller (1841-1913)
Midnight Pencillings
I am sitting alone in the moonlight,
In the moonlight soft and clear,
And a thousand thoughts steal o’er me,
While penciling, sitting here;
And the cricket is chirping, a chirping
And sings as I sit alone,
In the tall willow grass around me,
In a low and plaintive tone.
But fancy goes flitting and flying,
And I cannot keep it here,
Though the crickets are singing so plaintive,
And the moon shines never so clear.
Away in the hazy future
Afar by the foaming sea
I am painting a cot in my fancy
A cottage, and “Minnie” and me.
Now fancy grows dim in the distance
So dim in the long since past,
That I scarce can take the fair picture
Of the playmates I spotted with last.
But away in the western wildwood
In the woodland wild and wier,
I relive in fancy my childhood
And sigh that I’m sitting here.
Yet I know ’tis wrong to be sighing
And seeking a future too fair,
Or to call up old hopes that are lying
A wreck in the sea of despair;
I know that the present has pleasures
That I ought to enjoy and embrace,
Lest I sigh for these days that are passing
When the future has taken their place.
Yet, as I sit in the moonlit meadow,
With no voice but nature’s near,
Save the chirp and the chime of the cricket
Falling plaintively on the ear,
I cannot control my fancy,
My thoughts are so wayward and wild,
That I ever will dream of the future,
Or wish I again were a child.
—
SEA-BLOWN
Ah! there be souls none understand;
Like clouds, they cannot touch the land.
Unanchored ships, they blow and blow,
Sail to and fro, and then go down
In unknown seas that none shall know,
Without one ripple of renown.
Call these not fools, the test of worth
Is not the hold you have of earth.
Ay, there be gentlest souls sea-blown
That know not any harbor known.
Now it may be the reason is,
They touch on fairer shores than this.
—
BYRON
In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,
In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.
—
THE YUKON
The moon resumed all heaven now,
She shepherded the stars below
Along her wide, white steeps of snow,
Nor stooped nor rested, where or how.
She bared her full white breast, she dared
The sun e’er show his face again.
She seemed to know no change, she kept
Carousal constantly, nor slept,
Nor turned aside a breath, nor spared
The fearful meaning, the mad pain,
The weary eyes, the poor dazed brain,
That came at last to feel, to see
The dread, dead touch of lunacy.
How loud the silence! Oh, how loud!
How more than beautiful the shroud
Of dead Light in the moon-mad north
When great torch-tipping stars stand forth
Above the black, slow-moving pall
As at some fearful funeral!
The moon blares as mad trumpets blare
To marshaled warriors long and loud;
The cobalt blue knows not a cloud,
But oh, beware that moon, beware
Her ghostly, graveyard, moon-mad stare!
Beware white silence more than white!
Beware the five-horned starry rune;
Beware the groaning gorge below;
Beware the wide, white world of snow,
Where trees hang white as hooded nun–
No thing not white, not one, not one!
But most beware that mad white moon.
All day, all day, all night, all night
Nay, nay, not yet or night or day.
Just whiteness, whiteness, ghastly white,
Made doubly white by that mad moon
And strange stars jangled out of tune!
At last, he saw, or seemed to see,
Above, beyond, another world.
Far up the ice-hung path there curled
A red-veined cloud, a canopy
That topt the fearful ice-built peak
That seemed to prop the very porch
Of God’s house; then, as if a torch
Burned fierce, there flushed a fiery streak,
A flush, a blush, on heaven’s cheek!
The dogs sat down, men sat the sled
And watched the flush, the blush of red.
The little wooly dogs, they knew,
Yet scarcely knew what they were about.
They thrust their noses up and out,
They drank the Light, what else to do?
Their little feet, so worn, so true,
Could scarcely keep quiet for delight.
They knew, they knew, how much they knew
The mighty breaking up of night!
Their bright eyes sparkled with such joy
That they at last should see loved Light!
The tandem sudden broke all rule;
Swung back, each leaping like a boy
Let loose from some dark, ugly school–
Leaped up and tried to lick his hand–
Stood up as happy children stand.
How tenderly God’s finger set
His crimson flower on that height
Above the battered walls of night!
A little space it flourished yet,
And then His angel, His first-born,
Burst through, as on that primal morn!
The Little Sur River emptying into the Pacific…
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