Month: February 2008

I deeply admire this painting: The Temptation of Saint Anthony. Painted by Max Ernst. It has always moved me since I first saw it so many years ago… It reminds me to this day of an over the top LSA experience…. 80)
Ah…. 2 in a row! I assembled this yesterday, as I felt there was a bit more to say… Well, it looks like I have a place in the muralist exhibit coming up in May! I am pretty jazzed, now I just have to get my studio ready to handle a large piece(s). I have been aching to use airbrush and regular brush for awhile, as all my work has been on the computer for the last couple of years.
My friend Tomas sent this book to me a couple of years back: Earth Prayers From around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for Honoring the Earth
It really is an amazing book. I read from it a couple of times a day, sometimes more, sometimes less. It travels with me. It is a great focusing device, and I use it to bring me back on to the path that I need to follow.
Tomas is a great guy; he has pretty much spent his life in the service and care of others. We met on line maybe 8 years ago, and have had a pretty constant conversation since. He lives back in Rhode Island, so we have only gotten to visit once. I am hoping this year sees him coming out again, or us finally getting to visit back east.
We get to talk on the phone, and at this point are playing phone tag. He works more than he should (don’t we all?) and it isn’t always easy to connect.
Tomas, I am about to buzz ya before I head out!

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On The Menu:

William of the Tree

Rilke: The Ninth Elegy
Have a good one!
Gwyllm

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William of the Tree
In the time long ago there was a king in Erin. He was married to a beautiful queen, and they had but one only daughter. The queen was struck with sickness, and she knew that she would not be long alive. She put the king under gassa (mystical injunctions) that he should not marry again until the grass should be a foot high over her tomb. The daughter was cunning, and she used to go out every night with a scissors, and she used to cut the grass down to the ground.
The king had a great desire to have another wife, and he did not know why the grass was not growing over the grave of the queen. He said to himself: “There is somebody deceiving me.”
That night he went to the churchyard, and he saw the daughter cutting the grass that was on the grave. There came great anger on him then, and he said: “I will marry the first woman I see, let she be old or young.” When he went out on the road he saw an old hag. He brought her home and married her, as he would not break his word.
After marrying her, the daughter of the king was under bitter misery at (the hands of) the hag, and the hag put her under an oath not to tell anything at all to the king, and not to tell to any person anything she should see being done, except only to three who were never baptised.
The next morning on the morrow, the king went out a hunting, and when he was gone, the hag killed a fine hound the king had. When the king came home he asked the old hag “who killed my hound?”
“Your daughter killed it,” says the old woman.
“Why did you kill my hound?” said the king.
“I did not kill your hound,” says the daughter, “and I cannot tell you who killed him.”
“I will make you tell me,” says the king.
He took the daughter with him to a great wood, and he hanged her on a tree, and then he cut off the two hands and the two feet off her, and left her in a state of death. When he was going out of the wood there went a thorn into his foot, and the daughter said: “That you may never get better until I have hands and feet to cure you.”
The king went home, and there grew a tree out of his foot, and it was necessary for him to open the window, to let the top of the tree out.
There was a gentleman going by near the wood, and he heard the king’s daughter a-screeching. He went to the tree, and when he saw the state she was in, he took pity on her, brought her home, and when she got better, married her.
At the end of three quarters (of a year), the king’s daughter had three sons at one birth, and when they were born, Granya Oi came and put hands and feet on the king’s daughter, and told her, “Don’t let your children be baptised until they are able to walk. There is a tree growing out of your father’s foot; it was cut often, but it grows again, and it is with you lies his healing. You are under an oath not to tell the things you saw your stepmother doing to anyone but to three who were never baptised, and God has sent you those three. When they will be a year old bring them to your father’s house, and tell your story before your three sons, and rub your hand on the stump of the tree, and your father will be as well as he was the first day.”
There was great wonderment on the gentleman when he saw hands and feet on the king’s daughter. She told him then every word that Granya Oi said to her.
When the children were a year old, the mother took them with her, and went to the king’s house.
There were doctors from every place in Erin attending on the king, but they were not able to do him any good.
When the daughter came in, the king did not recognise her. She sat down, and the three sons round her, and she told her story to them from top to bottom, and the king was listening to her telling it. Then she left her hand on the sole of the king’s foot and the tree fell off it.
The day on the morrow he hanged the old hag, and he gave his estate to his daughter and to the gentleman.

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Rilke: The Ninth Elegy

Why, if it could begin as laurel, and be spent so,

this space of Being, a little darker than all

the surrounding green, with little waves at the edge

of every leaf (like a breeze’s smile) – : why then

have to be human – and shunning destiny

long for destiny?….

Oh, not because happiness exists,

that over-hasty profit from imminent loss,

not out of curiosity, or to practice the heart,

which could exist in the laurel……

But because being here is much, and because all

that’s here seems to need us, the ephemeral, that

strangely concerns us. We: the most ephemeral. Once,

for each thing, only once. Once, and no more. And we too,

once. Never again. But this

once, to have been, though only once,

to have been an earthly thing – seems irrevocable.
And so we keep pushing on, and trying to achieve it,

trying to contain it in our simple hands,

in the overflowing gaze and the speechless heart.

Trying to become it. Whom to give it to? We would

hold on to it for ever….Ah, what, alas, do we

take into that other dimension? Not the gazing which we

slowly learned here, and nothing that happened. Nothing.

Suffering then. Above all, then, the difficulty,

the long experience of love, then – what is

wholly unsayable. But later,

among the stars, what use is it: it is better unsayable.

Since the traveller does not bring a handful of earth

from mountain-slope to valley, unsayable to others, but only

a word that was won, pure, a yellow and blue

gentian. Are we here, perhaps, for saying: house,

bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit-tree, window –

at most: column, tower……but for saying, realise,

oh, for a saying such as the things themselves would never

have profoundly said. Is not the secret intent

of this discreet Earth to draw lovers on,

so that each and every thing is delight within their feeling?

Threshold: what is it for two

lovers to be wearing their own threshold of the ancient door

a little, they too, after the many before them,

and before those to come……., simple.
Here is the age of the sayable: here is its home.

Speak, and be witness. More than ever

the things of experience are falling away, since

what ousts and replaces them is an act with no image.

An act, under a crust that will split, as soon as

the business within outgrows it, and limit itself differently.

Between the hammers, our heart

lives on, as the tongue

between the teeth, that

in spite of them, keeps praising.

Praise the world to the Angel, not the unsayable: you

can’t impress him with glories of feeling: in the universe,

where he feels more deeply, you are a novice. So show

him a simple thing, fashioned in age after age,

that lives close to hand and in sight.

Tell him things. He’ll be more amazed: as you were,

beside the rope-maker in Rome, or the potter beside the Nile.

Show him how happy things can be, how guiltless and ours,

how even the cry of grief decides on pure form,

serves as a thing, or dies into a thing: transient,

they look to us for deliverance, we, the most transient of all.

Will us to change them completely, in our invisible hearts,

into – oh, endlessly, into us! Whoever, in the end, we are.
Earth, is it not this that you want: to rise

invisibly in us? – Is that not your dream,

to be invisible, one day? – Earth! Invisible!

What is your urgent command if not transformation?

Earth, beloved, I will. O, believe me, you need

no more Spring-times to win me: only one,

ah, one, is already more than my blood can stand.

Namelessly, I have been truly yours, from the first.

You were always right, and your most sacred inspiration

is that familiar Death.

See I live. On what? Neither childhood nor future

grows less……Excess of being

wells up in my heart.

First off… I would like to say that the days have been beautiful here in Portland. The skies have cleared, sunlight filters down through the spring haze, and the birds are returning in droves. Mary was out in the garden yesterday, as I was out working… I came back, and the promises of spring are all there. The rabbit is back in his outdoors hutch, the squirrels are chasing each other, and life, is renewed.
I was able to attend a meeting of the Portland Mural Defense for the first time in quite awhile. It seems Joanne Oleksiak, Joe Cotter and Mark Meltzer have been working very hard to get the local ordinances changed. Great stuff is coming down the pike, and I feel pretty confident that The Mirador Mural will finally see the light of day! A big thanks to the organizers! There is also a muralist art show in the works… stay tuned.
Radio Free Earthrites is up and running, and it is feeling kinda lonely! Check out the different feeds at!http://78.105.9.201:8000/

Here is to life, to the beauty, and to poetry.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Saint Mungo Turns 60!

The Links

Small on the outside, infinite on the inside

God behind the Gods

The Poems of Ashraf KhĀn, Khattak…

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Saint Mungo Turns 60! (Mike Crowley)

Yep… he made it. Mike, it is a blessing to have you in our lives. I thank the stars that Clark recommended you to Earthrites.org. You are a saint amongst saints, and a wordsmith supreme.
Bless yer cotton socks!

The Links:

Torture Play-List

‘Earth worship’ on the rise among evangelical youth

Congress may apologize to American Indians

Monsanto, other companies, win Agent Orange case

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Small on the outside, infinite on the inside

=en_US&fs=1&”>

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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.

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THE POEMS OF ASHRAF KHĀN, KHATTAK…

I.
The promise of the kiss, the beloved ever putteth off for to-morrow;

Then how can my heart place confidence in a pledge like this?
Whoso is vain enough to depend upon the affairs of the future,

The wise and sagacious will laugh that foolish man to scorn.
My friend is not acquainted with the deceitfulness of the world;

Yet still she deceiveth, having, in her heart, naught of truthfulness.
Do not presume to this degree, upon the loveliness of the face:

Behold the autumn! doth it ever, to the rose, any bloom impart?
Thou, who through arrogance, attest thus falsely towards me;

Time will pay back unto thee the requital of these deeds of thine.
In the land of association, the appliances of pleasure will be many;

But the troops of bereavement, full speedily, lay it waste.
Never cast thou thine eyes upon the rose, O nightingale!

For separation will make those fresh wounds of thine still worse.
But is the nightingale wont, through advice, the rose to forswear?

No! ’tis the blast of autumn only that separateth them by force!
Full many have departed in sorrow, with the hope of to-morrow;

Then who will place any reliance on life’s fidelity to-day?
Thou, who in the hope of existence therefrom, restest in tranquillity

Doth the empyrean ever any opportunity for continuance allow?
To-day, I perceive the crisis of a contingency on the world impending;

But the future may make apparent unto it some other event.
The Severed had never beheld Bijāpūr, even in his dreams; †

But, at last, that presenteth itself, which his destiny decreed!
II.
When, in the shape of a shield, the hair on the forehead is plaited ‡

The roses wreathed therein, impart the intrinsic virtues of the sun.
The live-coal-like ruby in her nose jewel § is fire itself;

And the red bulāḳ, §§ like unto a spark of fire, is placed by its side.
The chamkala’ī on her forehead is hence red with her lover’s blood,

That every jewel therein, for piercing, is like a lancet disposed.
Her eyebrows are a bent bow; her eyelashes, arrows adjusted:

The ornaments of beauty are sometimes a sword; at others, a dagger made.
The devotee of a hundred years is, with one of her glances undone,

When she decketh out her beauteous person, and goeth forth.
When she disposeth her flowing tresses in curls about her face,

To the Ethiop army she accordeth permission, devastation to make.
Her dark eyes she maketh still more black, by the antimony;

And every eyelash she will make moist in her lover’s blood.
Soft and tender tales she telleth, but they are all dissimulation:

She casteth her enchantments round the heart, by pretexts and pleas.
For her lover, Tartarus and Elysium are ready provided;

Since the sweet Paradise of conjunction, separation turneth to Hell.
The shadow of love is, undoubtedly, the philosopher’s stone;

Since upon whomever it may be rubbed, his body is turned to gold.
The punishment is death, in the creed of passion’s votaries,

For him, who entereth love’s path, and feareth its struggles and strife.
Never let him, at any time, gaze upon the face of the beloved,

Who may be partial unto life, and for his head may fear.
Like unto the inroads the heart-ravishers make my heart upon—

When do the Khaibarīs such upon the Mughals’ heads ever make?
The Separated will not, thro’ injustice, turn his back to the beloved;

Though she should make his body red with blood all over!
III.
With the scar of sorrow, he will his own heart afflict,

If, on the world’s affairs, any one should reliance place.
Do not grow vain of its favour; for all is deception:

Do not imagine, that, in reality, it benevolence showeth.
When it did not act faithfully with those that have gone,

Whoever seeketh constancy from it to-day, erreth greatly.
The foundation of all its acts is on injustice based:

From the age hope not for good faith; for it knoweth it not.
Do not pride thyself on the friendship of that friend,

Who, in the same breath, in a thousand other places smileth.
I place not an hour’s reliance on the permanence of life:

He is a fool who nourisheth great hopes of immutability.
All those splendid edifices, that thou, in the world, beholdest,

Cruel destiny, at last, will them to a naked desert turn.
The Separated, in the Dakhan, would not have a moment stayed;

But when doth fate ever fulfil our wishes and requests!
IV.
What shall I say unto any one regarding the anguish of separation?

Since it hath not even left within me the power to complain!
Since every injury she heapeth upon me is right and lawful;

At least, let the proud one stand once with face towards me.
The gold bracelets upon her wrists make an amazing display:

Fit Let them never become broken from the disasters of fate!
For my case, O physician! thou ever showest commiseration—

Thou sayest, “by antidotes, thou wilt be from thy afflictions relieved.”
The diseases of the body thou knowest, without doubt;

But when is the agony of the heart laid bare unto thee?
Khattak that I am, with exile I am never content;

But affection for my friend hath from my kin severed me.
The grief of The Separated shall be changed into gladness,

If any one, from the tavern, shall bring wine unto me.
V.
Like as absence from the beloved hath made day dark to me,

Let there never be, unto any one, such a dark and lurid day!
Do not be overjoyed, O marplot! on account of my disjunction;

For at last, dark and overcast like this, shall be thy day!
Though constancy may grant to no one the opportunity of association,

The night of separation, at last, shall become the unclouded day!
The spring-time of youth was, than the flowers more pleasant;

But, alas! it was not so very lasting, the constancy of that day!
Draw near, O friend, and honour me with a sight of thee!

For the Almighty hath not in the world created an unchanging day!
Thou that ever puttest off, for to-morrow, the promise of meeting,

Consider what phase may be assumed by to-morrow’s day!
The day of delight and pleasure hath passed, as the wind, away—

For how long shall malice on me be vented by trouble’s day!
TTruly, it will be, at last, like the wind that hath passed away,

This, that I now behold—separation’s long, dreary day!
The grief and joy of fortune’s changes shall not last for aye:

Verily, O Separated! it shall reach its end, this oppression’s day!
VI.
Account as wind or as dust, the world’s pains and pleasures:

The free man is not disquieted, by either its troubles or its cares.
Their coming, and their going, are more speedy than the dawn;

For I have, myself, experienced the heat and the cold of time.
Show thou no hankering for the fare on the board of fortune;

For there is not a morsel thereon, free from bitterness and woe.
In a moment it produceth forms and figures of manifold fashions—

As a mere throw of the dice account the revolutions of fate.
Whoso may plume himself on a lucky turn of good fortune,

It dealeth him a painful wound, at the moment of exulting thereon.
If, with the eye of understanding, its sorrows and joys be viewed,

The permanence of their duration is, than that of the flower no more.
Turn thy back, O Separated! unto evil; thy face towards good,

That, on the Great Day of Assembly, thou mayest not, with fear, be pale.
VII.
In love for thee, O never let my heart grow cold

Like thine, that in perpetrating injustice, never groweth cold!
When will any one a true and sincere lover style me,

If my heart, in grief for thee, unto constancy turn cold?
No! my heart shall never wax cold unto faithfulness;

Nor, in this world, will thy nature, unto tyranny grow cold.
Nal, with all his wrongs, did not his back on Daman turn; †

Then how can any one’s heart now, unto thee turn cold?
What clamour did the unscathed raise on him always;

Yet the love of Majnūn for his Laylā grew not cold.
Advisers would, unto him, good counsel ever give?

But no admonitions made Wāmik, unto Æaẓrā cold!
Neither did the world show constancy unto the departed;

Nor have the souls of the covetous, unto the world grown cold.
My burnt-up heart hath become as fresh at a sight of thee,

As the seed of sweet basil maketh the heat-stricken cold.
The hope of my meeting hath cooled the fever of absence;

And the perspiration of recovery always maketh the feverish cold.
Even at thy death, The Separated will not thy love renounce;

And forsworn is he, if, in life, his heart unto thee turn cold!
VIII.
O thou, who pridest thyself on the plenitude of the world’s wealth!

How is it that the condition of thy forefathers restraineth thee not?
Their obvious existence, than that of the flowers hath been less;

Place then no reliance upon the mere phantasies of the world.
What is it to thee, though the face of the earth be broad?

But three yards, in its bosom, is all thy portion thereof.
Since, beneath the earth’s surface, thy abode is appointed,

Fruitlessly, upon it, thou buildest thy mansions and thy courts.
Gaiety and enjoyment are intended for the callous and unconscious;

But sorrow and concern are, wholly, the portion of the enlightened.
The votaries of the world are all tyrants and oppressors;

From any one of them, of faithfulness, I have never yet heard.
They evince not a particle of shame, even in humanity’s name:

They worry and rend each other, like unto ravenous beasts.
Outwardly, they may practise the appearance of friendship;

But the heart of every man is filled with opposition and strife.
Those deceptions that the world’s sons now-a-day practise,

Even the fox would not be guilty of such wiles and deceits.
Weep not, though thou shouldst experience adversity’s frowns!

For the evils and afflictions of this transient world shall not endure.
With the true and sincere, O Separated! love and affection are good;

But with the deceitful, friendship advantageth not the least.
IX.
Since I am ever hopeful of meeting thee, either to day or to-morrow,

Uselessly, in this insane idea, passeth my sweet life away.
With cries and supplications, I seek it to-day, but find it not;

For the soldiery of separation destroy the period of my joy.
The tree of prosperity yielded not to me the fruit of my desires:

In wails and lamentations, unjustly, my body I wearied make.
In the beginning, when the tree of affection was created,

Its innate properties brought forth absence’s bitter fruit.
I was wont, unconsciously, to eat of the fruit of separation,

When, in the garden, I planted affection’s tender sprout.
In disjunction, O friends! I perceive no fault whatever:

The heart, this misfortune permitteth, when acquainted therewith.
With the sword of separation, He cleaveth asunder, at last,

The heart of him, whom He, of a lovely face, enamoured maketh.
The game of absence, He at that time made so absorbing,

When, in the world, He thus the mart of affection thronged.
The Separated mentioned not, unto a soul, the secret of love;

But, in the alley of his beloved, the world humiliated him.
X.
When He, of His omnipotence, first the pen produced,

The destiny of every one, He then with its tongue wrote down.
To-day, at every respiration, that allotment arriveth—

To the share of some, He joy assigned; to the lot of others, grief.
By strife and contention now, he cannot great become,

Who, from all eternity, was entered in an inferior degree.
Thro’ the hatred of the envious, never can become crooked—

The lot of him, which, in the beginning, He made straight.
When doth death seize the skirt of any one, out of season?

Yet they will not tarry a moment, whose time is fulfilled.
The will of destiny ejected him from the abode of bliss;

And then it charged unfortunate Adam with the sin.
At the wounds of fortune, O Separated! do not sigh;

For God hath, for the stricken, prepared a wondrous salve!
XI.
Whoever dwelleth in this abode of calamity and affliction,

For every one, there is trouble, each according to his case.
I seek after a place of safety, but I am unable to find one;

The world, to this degree, is so full of misery and woe:
Though fortune may, a thousand joys, on thee bestow,

With one affliction, it trampleth them all in the dust.
Neither is its most propitious time worthy of rejoicing;

Nor is its most portentous hour for lamentation befitting.
Be not cast down at its sorrows, for they do not continue;

And with its pleasures also, do not thou grow overjoyed.
If fortune grant unto thee an interview with a pretty one,

With the sting of separation, it speedily pierceth thy heart.
Prosperity never entereth within the precincts of one’s abode,

Until misery and adversity its companions it maketh.
Good fortune, by its own words, saith, “I am not lasting,”

If thou shouldst but reverse the letters of that word.
The pigeon of vitality, it bringeth quickly down from its flight,

When the falcon of destiny spreadeth its pillions to the wind.
It draweth, without pretext, the dragon from the cave:

From the river it extracteth the fish, weak and paralyzed.
There is no cause for arrogance in life’s immutability;

For it passeth by like the wind, both month and year.
Like a fool, O Separated! do not thou its slave become;

For the world’s joys and sorrows are a phantom and a dream!
XII.
Whoever have fattened on the fleeting wealth of the world,

The worms of the earth, at last, have become glutted with them!
The world’s great ones too, whose history the books relate,

One after the other have fallen, slaughtered by the knife of death!
Their wealth, lands, and mansions, they have transmitted to others:

Body by body, they have fallen asleep in the house of the tomb!
Of the empty adulations of the world, they were amazingly vain;

But they were overcome with regret, when the time of departure came.
Seeing that the world showed no constancy to the departed,

How are those who remain, so ardent, to-day, in its pursuit?
The world is a faithless bride, that destroyeth her husband;

Hence the wise, for this reason, are to her friendship so cold.
The flowers, that every season bloomed in the garden so sweetly,

Have likewise, in the autumn, thus been scattered to the winds.
O thou, of vain pleasures so proud! for thy departure prepare!

Thy cotemporaries have grown weary in looking out for thee!
Behold these graves! say, what wilt thou with gardens do?

Look upon thy dear friends! observe what they have become!
Bend thy looks upon them—comely youths, and youthful brides!

Separate from each other, in their graves they have withered away!
By virtuous actions, O Separated! Heaven is attainable;

Then never follow in the way of those who have gone astray.
XIII.
For the soul’s journey, the white steed became saddled in the heart,

When upon my chin grew white the hair of youthful days.
When the spring-time of youth unto the body bade adieu,

The black hair waxed silvery in the autumn of old age.
Since the miseries of absence have not reduced them to ashes;

What! have these bones of my body, all, into iron turned?
Either my good fortune, fallen asleep, giveth me no aid,

Or the rulers of the present age have stony-hearted grown.
Whereas the heads thereof make no impression on their bodies,

On their armour must have broken the arrows of my sighs.
Sorrow, to this degree, causeth the blood from mine eyes to flow,

That the garments of my body have become tinged therefrom.
Behold the state of my eyeballs, by separation caused!

They have assumed the appearance of red roses within the parterre!
Though in the heart it may not have fallen, woe’s seed sprouteth,

When, by the plough of disjunction, its ground-plot may be turned.
Would, O Separated! that absence were, in the world, unknown;

For from its inroads have become desolate the people thereof!
XIV.
Of the pangs of separation I became deserving that day,

When, weeping and sobbing, from my love I was severed.
At that time, for my life, in tears of blood I mourned,

When, turning my back upon Attak, I weeping began.
How shall I now pine after the rocks and shrubs of my country?

For, having made my parting salutation, I bade them farewell.
Embedded in my heart, from Roh an arrow I brought away—

I failed to bid adieu to my bower, or its sacrifice to become. †
With much toil, in the world I had a garden laid out;

And, as yet, I had not smelt a flower, when from it I was torn.
The blue heavens laughed from delight until they grew red,

When facing Hoddaey’s mountain ‡ I turned from it away.
There is no magician in the Dakhan that can charm me;

For I am a prisoner become, in a dragon’s cavern profound.
The assignment of union was hung on the horns of the deer,

When I crossed to the other bank of Narbada’s swift stream. †
The riches of association were a hoard that I gloated over;

But in absence’s wars, I have to a mere thread and fibre changed.
How shall I, to-day, complain of bereavement unto any one?

I, myself, made a purchase of sorrow, when I a lover became.
The vast dust of separation hath hidden happiness from me—

I am utterly weary grown at the noise of summoning it back.
I, Khattak, call unto my beloved, but she is not forthcoming:

Mortified and despairing thereat, I have become wedded unto woe!
XV.
Come, my love! let us, in one home, our abode take up;

And from our minds dismiss all long and lingering hope!
Hand in hand we will saunter about; for such is fortunate:

It is not advisable that to-day’s inclinations we for to-morrow defer.
From all eternity, revolving fortune is cruel and unjust:

It is a fallacy if we, to-day, nourish a hope of its constancy.
We were many friends, like unto a flock, gathered together,

When the wolf of separation, by violence, tore us from each other away.
Our dear, dear friends have from the world departed:

How long then shall we exist in this sublunary sphere?
How can any one the hope of joy and happiness entertain?

For He brought us into this abode, grief and misery to endure!
Living, O friend! The Separated would not have left thee;

But ’tis the king’s tyranny that hath, by force, parted us!
XVI.
The wise, for this reason, unto the world’s affairs will be cold;

That all its griefs are like the blast, and like the dust its joys.
Do not, O Darwesh! false account my sorrow and my sighs;

For, at that time, the eyes will weep, when the heart may aching be.
The head of courage will not bow for the sake of throne and crown;

When the man, of spirit free, may know what the world’s gifts are.
That man, who may traffic in perfidiousness, and in iniquity,

Will be pale and ghastly, when he entereth the assembly of the just.
In the estimation of the wise, even worse than the ox they are,

Who may be constantly overwhelmed in gluttony’s cares.
The revolving heavens are a mill, and man the grain therein:

He is no sooner in the world, than he will into meal be ground.
It is out of the question altogether, that in Pus’hto any other bard,

Shall, like The Separated, so unrivalled, in the art poetic be.
XVII.
Completely false and lying are they all, from first to last,

Who are gathered around the table of the transient world!
The universe is like unto the shop of the sweetmeat-seller:

Account its resorters nothing else but the flies that they are!
The degree of affection, that the flies in that quarter bestow,

Is according to the quality of the sweets therein contained.
Place no reliance soever upon the mere display of their sincerity:

Falsely, they deception practise: they are their own weal’s friends!
In the day of prosperity, of constancy, they ever make boast;

But when a slight disaster occurreth, they all take to flight.
The heart’s eyes, for its own objects, show sycophancy to the tongue;

Then do not pride thyself on their oaths; for all are knaves.
Should they become aware of a good friend’s affliction,

Their tongues cry, “Dear! dear!” but they exult in their hearts.
Hope not, in this world, to find a friend, sincere and true;

For the sons of the present day are hypocrites and rogues.
There is neither love, nor affection, nor friendship in them:

By some craft they acquire; for they are all the loaf’s slaves.
The world’s interests and profits are their object, and these they pursue:

They are neither stedfast on faith’s path, nor infidels are they.
Like as they plot against the very heart’s blood of one another,

In hatching each other’s ruin are wolves ever thus occupied?
As yet, the day of doom hath not been viewed by human eye;

But its operations * I, to-day, perceive; since all are for themselves.
Never yet have I found, in any one, either fidelity or truth;

Whether it be in brethren or kinsmen, in relations or friends!
Since I, The Separated, became acquainted with its secrets,

I find the world hath countless women, and but few, few men!

What Survives?

This Edition is for Poets in County Cork, for the Wobblies of Portland, for the Children of the TAZ…. wherever they are participating in the great awakening, that is best translated as the stirrings of the heart, based and founded on a greater love….
One action, One Heart….

On The Menu:
Gerrard Winstanley Quotes
A Running Linkage Of The Times
Gaudi: Bethe Bethe Kese Kese
The Elves
What Survives? Rainer Maria Rilke
Piya Re – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Be your most human. reach out to someone, change the world by your actions.
Blessings,
Gwyllm
_____________
Gerrard Winstanley Quotes:

“When the people stare at the sky and dream of blessedness, or when they quiver with fear for hell after death, their eyes get blinded so they can’t see their own right of primogeniture

“Break in pieces quickly the Band of particular Propriety [property], disown this oppressing Murder, Opression and Thievery of Buying and Selling of Land, owning of landlords and paying of Rents and give thy Free Consent to make the Earth a Common Treasury without grumbling … that all may enjoy the benefit of their Creation.”

“I am assured that if it be rightly searched into, the inward bondages of the minde, as covetousness, pride, hypocrisie, envy, sorrow, fears, desperation, and madness are all occasioned by the outward bondage that one sort of people lay upon another.”
“In the beginning of time God made the earth … Not one word was spoken at the beginning that one branch of mankind should rule over another, but selfish imaginations did set up one man to teach and rule over another … Landowners either got their land by murder or theft … And thereby man was brought into bondage, and became a greater slave than the beasts of the field were to him. ”
______________

A Running Linkage Of The Times…

From Walker: When Change Is Not Enough: The Seven Steps To Revolution
Anarchy in Colonial America: The Prince Edward Island Experience
TAZ!
____________________

From Peter (one of my favourite albums, btw Peter!)

Gaudi: Bethe Bethe Kese Kese

________

The Elves

by the Grimm Brothers

First Tale
A shoemaker, by no fault of his own, had become so poor that at last he had nothing left but leather for one pair of shoes. So in the evening, he cut out the shoes which he wished to begin to make the next morning, and as he had a good conscience, he lay down quietly in his bed, commended himself to God, and fell asleep.

In the morning, after he had said his prayers, and was just going to sit down to work, the two shoes stood quite finished on his table. He was astounded, and knew not what to think. He took the shoes in his hands to observe them closer, and they were so neatly made, with not one bad stitch in them, that it was just as if they were intended as a masterpiece. Before long, a buyer came in, and as the shoes pleased him so well, he paid more for them than was customary, and, with the money, the shoemaker was able to purchase leather for two pairs of shoes. He cut them out at night, and next morning was about to set to work with fresh courage, but he had no need to do so for, when he got up, they were already made, and buyers also were not wanting, who gave him money enough to buy leather for four pairs of shoes. Again the following morning he found the pairs made, and so it went on constantly, what he cut out in the evening was finished by the morning, so that he soon had his honest independence again, and at last became a wealthy man.

Now it befell that one evening not long before Christmas, when the man had been cutting out, he said to his wife, before going to bed, “What think you if we were to stay up to-night to see who it is that lends us this helping hand?”

The woman liked the idea, and lighted a candle, and then they hid themselves in a corner of the room, behind some clothes which were hanging up there, and watched. When it was midnight, two pretty little naked men came, sat down by the shoemaker’s table, took all the work which was cut out before them and began to stitch, and sew, and hammer so skilfully and so quickly with their little fingers that the shoemaker could not avert his eyes for astonishment. They did not stop until all was done, and stood finished on the table, and they ran quickly away.

Next morning the woman said, “The little men have made us rich, and we really must show that we are grateful for it. They run about so, and have nothing on, and must be cold. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I will make them little shirts, and coats, and vests, and trousers, and knit both of them a pair of stockings, and you make them two little pairs of shoes.”

The man said, “I shall be very glad to do it.” And one night, when everything was ready, they laid their presents all together on the table instead of the cut-out work, and then concealed themselves to see how the little men would behave.
At midnight they came bounding in, and wanted to get to work at once, but as they did not find any leather cut out, but only the pretty little articles of clothing, they were at first astonished, and then they showed intense delight. They dressed themselves with the greatest rapidity, put on the beautiful clothes, and sang,
“Now we are boys so fine to see, Why should we longer cobblers be?”

Then they danced and skipped and leapt over chairs and benches. At last they danced out of doors. From that time forth they came no more, but as long as the shoemaker lived all went well with him, and all his efforts prospered.

Second Tale
There was once a poor servant-girl who was industrious and cleanly and swept the house every day, and emptied her sweepings on the great heap in front of the door.

One morning when she was just going back to her work, she found a letter on this heap, and as she could not read, she put her broom in the corner, and took the letter to her employers, and behold it was an invitation from the elves, who asked the girl to hold a child for them at its christening. The girl did not know what to do, but, at length, after much persuasion, and as they told her that it was not right to refuse an invitation of this kind, she consented.

Then three elves came and conducted her to a hollow mountain, where the little folks lived. Everything there was small, but more elegant and beautiful than can be described. The baby’s mother lay in a bed of black ebony ornamented with pearls, the covers were embroidered with gold, the cradle was of ivory, the bath-tub of gold. The girl stood as godmother, and then wanted to go home again, but the little elves urgently entreated her to stay three days with them. So she stayed, and passed the time in pleasure and gaiety, and the little folks did all they could to make her happy.

At last she set out on her way home. But first they filled her pockets quite full of money, and then they led her out of the mountain again. When she got home, she wanted to to begin her work, and took the broom, which was still standing in the corner, in her hand and began to sweep. Then some strangers came out of the house, who asked her who she was, and what business she had there. And she had not, as she thought, been three days with the little men in the mountains, but seven years, and in the meantime her former masters had died.

Third Tale
A certain mother had her child taken out of its cradle by the elves, and a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, which would do nothing but eat and drink, lay in its place.

In her trouble she went to her neighbor, and asked her advice. The neighbour said that she was to carry the changeling into the kitchen, set it down on the hearth, light a fire, and boil some water in two egg-shells, which would make the changeling laugh, and if he laughed, all would be over with him.

The woman did everything that her neighbor bade her. When she put the egg-shells with water on the fire, Goggle-eyes said, “I am as old now as the Wester Forest, but never yet have I seen anyone boil anything in an egg-shell.”

And he began to laugh at it. Whilst he was laughing, suddenly came a host of little elves, who brought the right child, set it down on the hearth, and took the changeling away with them.
_______________

What Survives? Rainer Maria Rilke

Lady at a Mirror

As in sleeping-drink spices
softly she loosens in the liquid-clear
mirror her fatigued demeanor;
and she puts her smile deep inside.
And she waits while the liquid
rises from it; then she pours her hair
into the mirror, and, lifting one
wondrous shoulder from the evening gown,
she drinks quietly from her image. She drinks
what a lover would drink feeling dazed,
searching it, full of mistrust; and she only
beckons to her maid when at the bottom
of her mirror she finds candles, wardrobes,
and the cloudy dregs of a late hour.

—
What Survives

Who says that all must vanish?
Who knows, perhaps the flight
of the bird you wound remains,
and perhaps flowers survive
caresses in us, in their ground.
It isn’t the gesture that lasts,
but it dresses you again in gold
armor -from breast to knees-
and the battle was so pure
an Angel wears it after you.

—
The Swan

This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the akward walking of the swan.
And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall
into waters, which receive him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.

—
Song of the Sea

(Capri, Piccola Marina)

Timeless sea breezes,
sea-wind of the night:
you come for no one;
if someone should wake,
he must be prepared
how to survive you.
Timeless sea breezes,
that for aeons have
blown ancient rocks,
you are purest space
coming from afar…
Oh, how a fruit-bearing
fig tree feels your coming
high up in the moonlight.
_______

Piya Re – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Saturday morning, seasonal change rapidly coming down the road here in P-Town. This of course means waking with a massive pressure headache. You would think that I had a migraine to go with it by the way it is going….
OTOH… Radio Free EarthRites has a new address:
Tattoo this on yer forhead! Radio Free EarthRites: http://78.105.9.201:8000/
Big Thanks to Doug in the UK for putting another pence in the meter… and for being ever so patient and generous. He is re-uploading the music onto our 100Gig hard-drive, and his recent addition of 9 gigs of spoken word files is very appreciated as well!.
Stay tuned to EarthRites Radio… some nice changes coming on…. Now that I have Skype we may be able to do some interviews that will be exclusive to EarthRites, and we will be implementing Week-End shows as well.

—
I am looking to opening up Earthrites.org as a larger site with more input via blogs etc., and a new format… looking for Volunteers to help make this happen…
I am going back to a daily feed for Turfing, though reduced in size… (Thanks for the suggestion Laura!)… More poetry, less articles. Articles and such on the weekend.

—-

Well, it is almost here. It will more than likely will be out in a variety formats…
PDF Web Edition: Free, though not as large as other formats.. at 72 dpi on Earthrites.org
PDF Down Load Version: Small Fee, Complete Edition downloadable at 300 DPI for printing.
Soft Back Version: Complete Edition in traditional magazine format
Hard Back Version: Complete Edition with Slip Cover, highly collectable…
Stay Tuned!

____
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:

Linkage…

Liban the Sea Woman

Fintain’s Yew Tree

A Visit With William Butler Yeats…

Sheila Chandra: Lament of McCrimmon/Song of the Banshee

____________________

The Links

Migraine, Hallucinations, The Whole Nine Yards…(Thanks To Morgan For This!

In Canada: The Smell Of Marijuana…

FREAKANGELS: Episode One

Domestic Access to Spy Imagery Expands

____________________
Liban the Sea Woman
The time Angus Og sent away Eochaid and Ribh from the plain of Bregia that was his playing ground, he gave them the loan of a very big horse to carry all they had northward. And Eochaid went on with the horse till he came to the Grey Thornbush in Ulster; and a well broke out where he stopped, and he made his dwelling-house beside it, and he made a cover for the well and put a woman to mind it. But one time she did not shut down the cover, and the water rose up and covered the Grey Thornbush, and Eochaid was drowned with his children; and the water spread out into a great lake that has the name of Loch Neach to this day. But Liban that was one of Eochaid’s daughters was not drowned, but she was in her sunny-house under the lake and her little dog with her for a full year, and God protected her from the waters. And one day she said “O Lord, it would be well to be in the shape of a salmon, to be going through the sea the way they do.” Then the one half of her took the shape of a salmon and the other half kept the shape of a woman; and she went swimming the sea, and her little dog following her in the shape of an otter and never leaving her or parting from her at all. And one time Caoilte was out at a hunting near Beinn Boirche with the King of Ulster, and they came to the shore of the sea. And when they looked out over it they saw a young girl on the waves, and she swimming with the side-stroke and the foot-stroke. And when she came opposite them she sat up on a wave, as anyone would sit upon a stone or a hillock and she lifted her head and she said “Is not that Caoilte Son of Ronan?” “It is myself surely” said he. “It is many a day” she said “we saw you upon that rock, and the best man of Ireland or of Scotland with you, that was Finn son of Cumhal. “Who are you so girl?” said Caoilte. “I am Liban daughter of Eochaid, and I am in the water these hundred years, and I never showed my face to anyone since the going away of the King of the Fianna to this day. And it is what led me to lift my head to-day” she said “was to see yourself Caoilte.” Just then the deer that were running before the hounds made for the sea and swam out into it. “Your spear to me Caoilte!” said Liban. Then he put the spear into her hand and she killed the deer with it, and sent them back to him where he was with the King of Ulster; and then she threw him back the spear and with that she went away. And that is the way she was until the time Beoan son of Innle was sent by Comgall to Rome, to have talk with Gregory and to bring back rules and orders. And when he and his people were going over the sea they heard what was like the singing of angels under the currach. “What is that song?” said Beoan. “It is I myself am making it” said Liban. “Who are you?” said Beoan. “I am Liban daughter of Eochaid son Mairid, and I am going through the sea these three hundred years.’ Then she told him all her story, and how it was under the round hulls of ships she had her dwelling-place, and the waves were the roofing of her house, and the strands its walls. “And it is what I am come for now” she said “to tell you that I will come to meet you on this day twelve-month at Inver Ollorba; and do not fail to meet me there for the sake of all the saints of Dalaradia.” And at the year’s end the nets were spread along the coast where she said she would come, and it was in the net of Fergus from Miluic she was taken. And the clerks gave her her choice either to be baptized and go then and there to heaven, or to stay living through another three hundred years and at the end of that time to go to heaven; and the choice she made was to die. Then Comgall baptized her and the name he gave her was Muirgheis, the Birth of the Sea. So she died, and the messengers that came and that carried her to her burying place, were horned deer that were sent by the angels of God.

_____________
Fintain’s Yew Tree
And when Fintain came to Ireland is not known; but anyway it was for him and for Tuan that Diarmuid King of Teamhuir sent one time when there was a dispute about land and about the old custom. And when Fintain came he had eighteen troops with him, nine before him and nine after him, that were all of them his children’s children. And when the king’s people asked how far did his memory go back “I will tell you that” he said. “I passed one day through the west of Munster, and I brought home with me a red berry of a yew tree and I planted it in my garden and it grew there till it was the height of a man. I took it out of the garden then and I planted it in the green lawn before my house, and it grew in that lawn till a hundred fighting men could come together under its branches, and find shelter there from wind and rain and cold and heat. And I myself and my yew tree were wearing out our time together, till at last all the leaves withered and fell from it. And then to get some profit from it I cut it down and I made from it seven vats, seven kieves, seven barrels, seven churns, seven pitchers, seven measures, seven methers, with hoops for all. I went on then with my yew vessels till the hoops fell from them with age and rottenness. After that I made them over again, but all I could get was a kieve out of the vat, a barrel out of the kieve, a mug out of the barrel, a pitcher out of the mug, a measure out of the pitcher, and a mether out of the measure. And I leave it to the great God” he said “that I do not know where is their dust now, after the crumbling of them away from me through age.”

_____________
A Visit With William Butler Yeats…

A Poet to his Beloved
I bring you with reverent hands

The books of my numberless dreams;

White woman that passion has worn

As the tide wears the dove-gray sands,

And with heart more old than the horn

That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams

I bring you my passionate rhyme.

—
The Everlasting Voices
O sweet everlasting Voices be still;

Go to the guards of the heavenly fold

And bid them wander obeying your will

Flame under flame, till Time be no more;

Have you not heard that our hearts are old,

That you call in birds, in wind on the hill,

In shaken boughs, in tide on the shore?

O sweet everlasting Voices be still.

—

Into the Twilight
Out-worn heart, in a time out-worn,

Come clear of the nets of wrong and right;

Laugh heart again in the gray twilight,

Sigh, heart, again in the dew of the morn.

Your mother Eire is always young,

Dew ever shining and twilight gray;

Though hope fall from you and love decay,

Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:

For there the mystical brotherhood

Of sun and moon and hollow and wood

And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,

And time and the world are ever in flight;

And love is less kind than the gray twilight,

And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

—
The Song of Wandering Aengus
I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor

I went to blow the fire a-flame,

But something rustled on the floor,

And someone called me by my name:

It had become a glimmering girl

With apple blossom in her hair

Who called me by my name and ran

And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done,

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

___________
Sheila Chandra: Lament of McCrimmon/Song of the Banshee

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On The Music Box: Kila – Gamblers’ Ball

Monday swings around… A weekend filled with finishing up work, visiting friends, running Rowan & Ivy out to Gresham for final film editing on “The Gamble”… this is the running title for their film that they are entering into the next festival. Somehow, they got 3 hours down to 12 minutes, including credits etc. We all went out for dinner last night after Mary and I picked them up… the two of them were glowing with having finished in time to make it for one of the entries as the cut off was today.
Ran into Andrew and Will at Hollywood Freddie’s… both were kinda illish, and Will had a jones for a corn-dog, to no avail. Nice seeing them!
Mike Hoffman sent me some new poems, which I will be featuring on Turfing in a couple of days.
Talked to Doug in London, he said the radio will be up on Wednesday… I am thinking of changing out lots of the music, sticking some more vocals and ethnic folk music on… thoughts?
Magazine is still going on. I made very little headway this weekend. Slogging…. slogging…
Hope this finds you well…
Blessings,
Gwyllm

_______
On The Menu:

Red Eye Express: Aqua

A Flash From The Past: Terence McKenna

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes…

Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Mia – You Are My Love

Art: Arthur Rackham!

________
Red Eye Express: Aqua

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___________

A Flash From The Past: Terence McKenna

The DMT Experience

(from Food of the Gods, pp. 257-260)
What can be said of DMT as an experience and in relation to our own spiritual emptiness? Does it offer us answers? Do the short-acting tryptamines offer an analogy to the ecstasy of the partnership society before Eden became a memory? And if they do, then what can we say about it?
What has impressed me repeatedly during my many glimpses into the world of the hallucinogenic indoles, and what seems generally to have escaped comment, is the transformation of narrative and language. The experience that engulfs one’s entire being as one slips beneath the surface of the DMT ecstasy feels like the penetration of a membrane. The mind and the self literally unfold before one’s eyes. There is a sense that one is made new, yet unchanged, as if one were made of gold and had just been recast in the furnace of one’s birth. Breathing is normal, heartbeat steady, the mind clear and observing. But what of the world? What of incoming sensory data?
Under the influence of DMT, the world becomes an Arabian labyrinth, a palace, a more than possible Martian jewel, vast with motifs that flood the gaping mind with complex and wordless awe. Color and the sense of a reality-unlocking secret nearby pervade the experience. There is a sense of other times, and of one’s own infancy, and of wonder, wonder and more wonder. It is an audience with the alien nuncio. In the midst of this experience, apparently at the end of human history, guarding gates that seem surely to open on the howling maelstrom of the unspeakable emptiness between the stars, is the Aeon.
The Aeon, as Heraclitus presciently observed, is a child at play with colored balls. Many diminutive beings are present there — the tykes, the self-transforming machine elves of hyperspace. Are they the children destined to be father to the man? One has the impression of entering into an ecology of souls that lies beyond the portals of what we naively call death. I do not know. Are they the synesthetic embodiment of ourselves as the Other, or of the Other as ourselves? Are they the elves lost to us since the fading of the magic light of childhood? Here is a tremendum barely to be told, an epiphany beyond our wildest dreams. Here is the realm of that which is stranger than we can suppose. Here is the mystery, alive, unscathed, still as new for us as when our ancestors lived it fifteen thousand summers ago. The tryptamine entities offer the gift of new language, they sing in pearly voices that rain down as colored petals and flow through the air like hot metal to become toys and such gifts as gods would give their children. The sense of emotional connection is terrifying and intense. The Mysteries revealed are real and if ever fully told will leave no stone upon another in the small world we have gone so ill in.
This is not the mercurial world of the UFO, to be invoked from lonely hilltops; this is not the siren song of lost Atlantis wailing through the trailer courts of crack-crazed America. DMT is not one of our irrational illusions. What we experience in the presence of DMT is real news. It is a nearby dimension — frightening, transformative, and beyond our powers to imagine, and yet to be explored in the usual way. We must send fearless experts, whatever that may come to mean, to explore and to report on what they find.

_____________

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Quotes…
A man may devote himself to death and destruction to save a nation; but no nation will devote itself to death and destruction to save mankind.
A poet ought not to pick nature’s pocket. Let him borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write from recollection, and trust more to the imagination than the memory.
Advice is like snow – the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper in sinks into the mind.
Alas! they had been friends in youth; but whispering tongues can poison truth.
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
All thoughts, all passions, all delights Whatever stirs this mortal frame All are but ministers of Love And feed His sacred flame.
And though thou notest from thy safe recess old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air love them for what they are; nor love them less, because to thee they are not what they were.
As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale – my dreams become the substances of my life.

______________

Poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Psyche
The butterfly the ancient Grecians made

The soul’s fair emblem, and its only name–

But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade

Of mortal life !–For in this earthly frame

Ours is the reptile’s lot, much toil, much blame,

Manifold motions making little speed,

And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.
—

The Pains of Sleep
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,

It hath not been my use to pray

With moving lips or bended knees ;

But silently, by slow degrees,

My spirit I to Love compose,

In humble trust mine eye-lids close,

With reverential resignation,

No wish conceived, no thought exprest,

Only a sense of supplication ;

A sense o’er all my soul imprest

That I am weak, yet not unblest,

Since in me, round me, every where

Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.
But yester-night I prayed aloud

In anguish and in agony,

Up-starting from the fiendish crowd

Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me :

A lurid light, a trampling throng,

Sense of intolerable wrong,

And whom I scorned, those only strong !

Thirst of revenge, the powerless will

Still baffled, and yet burning still !

Desire with loathing strangely mixed

On wild or hateful objects fixed.

Fantastic passions ! maddening brawl !

And shame and terror over all !

Deeds to be hid which were not hid,

Which all confused I could not know

Whether I suffered, or I did :

For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe,

My own or others still the same

Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame.
So two nights passed : the night’s dismay

Saddened and stunned the coming day.

Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me

Distemper’s worst calamity.

The third night, when my own loud scream

Had waked me from the fiendish dream,

O’ercome with sufferings strange and wild,

I wept as I had been a child ;

And having thus by tears subdued

My anguish to a milder mood,

Such punishments, I said, were due

To natures deepliest stained with sin,–

For aye entempesting anew

The unfathomable hell within,

The horror of their deeds to view,

To know and loathe, yet wish and do !

Such griefs with such men well agree,

But wherefore, wherefore fall on me ?

To be beloved is all I need,

And whom I love, I love indeed.
—

Kubla Khan

Or, A Vision In A Dream… A Fragment
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree :

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round :

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !

A savage place ! as holy and enchanted

As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover !

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced :

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst

Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :

And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever

It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion

Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,

Then reached the caverns measureless to man,

And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :

And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far

Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves ;

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight ‘twould win me,

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !

His flashing eyes, his floating hair !

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

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Mia – You Are My Love (I am sure this inhabits dance floors somewhere…)

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The Eightfold Path

consists of:

(1) right understanding,

(2) right thought,

(3) right speech,

(4) right action,

(5) right livelihood,

(6) right effort,

(7) right mindfulness, and

(8) right concentration.

The divisions of the Path are: knowledge (and faith), conduct (with morality), and meditation.

Radio Free EarthRites… Will be down for a few more days as British Telecom can’t seem to do anything in a timely manner. (this is not news if you have lived in the UK) After all, they are doing you a favour by turning on the switch…
Our friend Doug has been graciously hosting the radio for the last year or so… he had to move from his locale (a brilliant view of British Rail…. every 5 minutes another train) up the hill towards St. John’s Wood.
EarthRites has been blessed with his assistance in all things teckie….

—

Rowan has a marathon editing session this week end with Ivy to finish the film up for the up-coming film festival at his school. He would like to win the prize, as it would allow him to pay for supplies for the next four films. He has a grueling filming schedule coming up for the next couple of months, but is quite eager to get on with it!

—
Musical Note… Side LinerI have heard this group on compilations (and they have been on Radio Free EarthRitees… but I found some videos recently…. see below
On The Menu:

Side Liner – Haunted Thoughts

Zen Tales…

Extracts from The Dhammapada

Side Liner – Morning Dewdrops
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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Side Liner – Haunted Thoughts

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Zen Tales…
Two traveling monks reached a river where they met a young woman. Wary of the current, she asked if they could carry her across. One of the monks hesitated, but the other quickly picked her up onto his shoulders, transported her across the water, and put her down on

the other bank. She thanked him and departed. As the monks continued on their way, the one was brooding and preoccupied.
Unable to hold his silence, he spoke out. “Brother, our spiritual training teaches us to avoid any contact with women, but you picked that one up on your shoulders and carried her!”
“Brother,” the second monk replied, “I set her down on the other side, while you are still

carrying her.”

______
Ryokan, a Zen master, lived the simplest kind of life in a little hut at the foot of a mountain.

One evening a thief visited the hut only to discover there was nothing to steal. Ryokan returned and caught him. “You have come a long way to visit me,” he told the prowler, “and you should not return empty-handed. Please take my clothes as a gift.” The thief was bewildered. He took the clothes and slunk away. Ryoken sat naked, watching the moon.

“Poor fellow,” he mused, “I wish I could have given him this beautiful moon.”

______
The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there.

In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly.

Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, “Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?”

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(Extracts from The Dhammapada – version by Thomas Byrom)
Choices

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with an impure mind

And trouble will follow you

As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

We are what we think.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts we make the world.

Speak or act with a pure mind

And happiness will follow you

As your shadow, unshakable.

“Look how he abused me and hurt me,

How he threw me down and robbed me.”

Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.

“Look how he abused me and hurt me,

How he threw me down and robbed me.”

Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.

In this world

Hate never yet dispelled hate.

Only love dispels hate.

This is the law,

Ancient and inexhaustible.

You too shall pass away.

Knowing this, how can you quarrel?

How easily the wind overturns a frail tree.

Seek happiness in the senses,

Indulge in food and sleep,

And you too will be uprooted.

The wind cannot overturn a mountain.

Temptation cannot touch the man

Who is awake, strong and humble,

Who masters himself and minds the dharma.

If a man’s thoughts are muddy,

If he is reckless and full of deceit,

How can he wear the yellow robe?

Whoever is master of his own nature,

Bright, clear and true,

He may indeed wear the yellow robe.

Mistaking the false for the true,

And the true for the false,

You overlook the heart

And fill yourself with desire.

See the false as false,

The true as true.

Look into your heart.

Follow your nature.

An unreflecting mind is a poor roof.

Passion, like the rain, floods the house.

But if the roof is strong, there is shelter.

Whoever follows impure thoughts

Suffers in this world and the next.

In both worlds he suffers

And how greatly

When he sees the wrong he has done.

But whoever follows the dharma

Is joyful here and joyful there.

In both worlds he rejoices

And how greatly

When he sees the good he has done.

For great is the harvest in this world,

And greater still in the next.

However many holy words you read,

However many you speak,

What good will they do you

If you do not act upon them?

Are you a shepherd

Who counts another man’s sheep,

Never sharing the way?

Read as few words as you like,

And speak fewer.

But act upon the dharma.

Give up the old ways –

Passion, enmity, folly.

Know the truth and find peace.

Share the way.

—
The Wise Man
The wise man tells you

Where you have fallen

And where you yet may fall –

Invaluable secrets!

Follow him, follow the way.

Let him chasten and teach you

and keep you from mischief.

The world may hate him.

But good men love him.

Do not look for bad company

Or live with men who do not care.

Find friends who love the truth.

Drink deeply.

Live in serenity and joy.

The wise man delights in the truth

And follows the law of the awakened.

The farmer channels water to his land.

The fletcher whittles his arrows.

And the carpenter turns his wood.

So the wise man directs his mind.

The wind cannot shake a mountain.

Neither praise nor blame moves the wise man.

He is clarity.

Hearing the truth,

He is like a lake,

Pure and tranquil and deep.

Want nothing.

Where there is desire,

Say nothing.

Happiness or sorrow –

Whatever befalls you,

Walk on

Untouched, unattached.

Do not ask for family or power or wealth,

Either for yourself or for another.

Can a wise man wish to rise unjustly?

Few cross over the river.

Most are stranded on this side.

On the riverbank they run up and down.

But the wise man, following the way,

Crosses over, beyond the reach of death.

He leaves the dark way

For the way of light.

He leaves his home, seeking

Happiness on the hard road.

Free from desire,

Free from possessions,

Free from the dark places of the heart.

Free from attachment and appetite,

Following the seven lights of awakening,

And rejoicing greatly in his freedom,

In this world the wise man

Becomes himself a light,

Pure, shining, free.

—

The Master
At the end of the way

The master finds freedom

From desire and sorrow –

Freedom without bounds.

Those who awaken

Never rest in one place.

Like swans, they rise

And leave the lake.

On the air they rise

And fly an invisible course,

Gathering nothing, storing nothing.

Their food is knowledge.

They live upon emptiness.

They have seen how to break free.

Who can follow them?

Only the master,

Such is his purity.

Like a bird,

He rises on the limitless air

And flies an invisible course.

He wishes for nothing.

His food is knowledge.

He lives upon emptiness.

He has broken free.

He is the charioteer.

He has tamed his horses,

Pride and the senses.

Even the gods admire him.

Yielding like the earth,

Joyous and clear like the lake,

Still as the stone at the door,

He is free from life and death.

His thoughts are still.

His words are still.

His work is stillness.

He sees his freedom and is free.

The master surrenders his beliefs.

He sees beyond the end and the beginning.

He cuts all ties.

He gives up all desires.

He resists all temptations.

And he rises.

And wherever he lives,

In the city or the country,

In the valley or in the hills,

There is great joy.

Even in the empty forest

He finds joy

Because he wants nothing.

—
Violence
All beings tremble before violence.

All fear death.

All love life.

See yourself in other.

Then whom can you hurt?

What harm can you do?

He who seeks happiness

By hurting those who seek happiness

Will never find happiness.

For your brother is like you.

He wants to be happy.

Never harm him

And when you leave this life

You too will find happiness.

Never speak harsh words

For they will rebound upon you.

Angry words hurt

And the hurt rebounds.

Like a broken gong

Be still, and silent.

Know the stillness of freedom

Where there is no more striving.

Like herdsmen driving their cows into the fields,

Old age and death will drive you before them.

But the fool in his mischief forgets

And he lights the fire

Wherein one day he must burn.

He who harms the harmless

Or hurts the innocent,

Ten times shall he fall –

Into torment or infirmity,

Injury or disease or madness,

Persecution or fearful accusation,

Loss of family, loss of fortune.

Fire from heaven shall strike his house

And when his body has been struck down,

He shall rise in hell.

He who goes naked,

With matted hair, mud bespattered,

Who fasts and sleeps on the ground

And smears his body with ashes

And sits in endless meditation –

So long as he is not free from doubts,

He will not find freedom.

But he who lives purely and self-assured,

In quietness and virtue,

Who is without harm or hurt or blame,

Even if he wears fine clothes,

So long as he also has faith,

He is a true seeker.

A noble horse rarely

Feels the touch of the whip.

Who is there in this world as blameless?

Then like a noble horse

Smart under the whip.

Burn and be swift.

Believe, meditate, see.

Be harmless, be blameless.

Awake to the dharma.

And from all sorrows free yourself.

The farmer channels water to his land.

The fletcher whittles his arrows.

The carpenter turns his wood.

And the wise man masters himself.

____________
Side Liner – Morning Dewdrops

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It is called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

-George Carlin
So…. here we are at Powell’s in Portland Oregon… in our part of town the great South East (The Peoples Autonomous Republic Of Hawthorne!)

And here is The Invisible College 3rd edition on the shelves in the Small Press Section! WahoooO! Finishing up the 4th issue this week, hopefully we’ll have it out soon…
This one will be packed with art, literature, reviews, poetry, more than the last issue… It went through a major redesign during December, and this held back the publication date among other hurdles… So…… check back and find out about our new publication date…

—-
Forward

Weather has been most foul in the Northwest, massive snows, ice and other wonders of the winters world… They did not all disappear on Imbolc, which was a bit of a bother… We were out today and heard a crow talking (no, really!) It was saying ‘Hello?…. Hello?… Hello? Truly amazing for the pair of us…
On The Menu:

The Links

River Man

Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few

Nick Drake Lyrics/Poems

Bright Blessings, and happy February!
Gwyllm

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The Links:
Brigid’s birds and biddy boys

Pug!

A New Anarchy Blog I discovered…..

The Rich Stand Accused

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River Man

Betty came by on her way

Said she had a word to say

About things today

And fallen leaves.
Said she hadn’t heard the news

Hadn’t had the time to choose

A way to lose

But she believes.
Going to see the river man

Going to tell him all I can

About the plan

For lilac time.
If he tells me all he knows

About the way his river flows

And all night shows

In summertime.
Betty said she prayed today

For the sky to blow away

Or maybe stay

She wasn’t sure.
For when she thought of summer rain

Calling for her mind again

She lost the pain

And stayed for more.
Going to see the river man

Going to tell him all I can

About the ban

On feeling free.
If he tells me all he knows

About the way his river flows

I don’t suppose

It’s meant for me.
Oh, how they come and go

Oh, how they come and go

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 1

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 2nd part

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 3rd part

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 4th part

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Nick Drake – A Skin Too Few (Documentary) 5th part

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Nick Drake Lyrics/Poems

Parasite
Lifting the mask from from a local clown

Feeling down like him

Seeing the light in a station bar

And travelling far in sin

Sailing downstairs to the northern line

Watching the shine of the shoes

And hearing the trial of the people there

Who’s to care if they lose.

And take a look you may see me on the ground

For I am the parasite of this town.
Dancing a jig in a church with chimes

A sign of the times today

And hearing no bell from a steeple tall

People all in dismay

Falling so far on a silver spoon

Making the moon for fun

And changing a rope for a size too small

People all get hung.

Take a look and see me coming through

For I am the parasite who travels two by two.
When lifting the mask from a local clown

And feeling down like him

And I’m seeing the light in a station bar

And travelling far in sin

And I’m sailing downstair to the northern line

Watching the shine of the shoes

And hearing the trials of the people there

Who’s to care if they lose.

And take a look you may see me on the ground

For I am the parasite of this town.

And take a look you may see me in the dirt

For i am the parasite who hangs from your skirt.

—

Time of no reply
Summer was gone and the heat died down

And Autumn reached for her golden crown

I looked behind as I heard a sigh

But this was the time of no reply.
The sun went down and the crowd went home

I was left by the roadside all alone

I turned to speak as they went by

But this was the time of no reply.
The time of no reply is calling me to stay

There is no hello and no goodbye

To leave there is no way.
The trees on the hill had nothing to say

They would keep their dreams till another day

So they stood and thought and wondered why

For this was the time of no reply.
Time goes by from year to year

And no one asks why I am standing here

But I have my answer as I look to the sky

This is the time of no reply.
The time of no reply is calling me to stay

There`s no hello and no goodbye

To leave there is no way.

—-

The thoughts of Mary Jane
Who can know

The thoughts of Mary jane

Why she flies

Or goes out in the rain

Where she’s been

And who she’s seen

In her journey to the stars.
Who can know

The reasons for her smile

What are her dreams

When they’ve journeyed for a mile

The way she sings

And her brightly coloured rings

Make her the princess of the sky.
Who can know

What happens in her mind

Did she come from a strange world

And leave her mind behind

Her long lost sighs

And her brightly coloured eyes

Tell her story to the wind.
Who can know

The thoughts of Mary Jane

Why she flies

Or goes out in the rain

Where she’s been

And who she’s seen

In her journey to the stars.