The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing. –Rainer Maria Rilke
“Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.” – Robert Graves
I had a whole theme going, and it just melted away. Maybe I will bring it back in the next entry. Anyway, wrestling with LuLu.com for Dr. Con’s new book. It is all to much. I have been kicking this entry around for 10 days, enough already.
Love and Sprockets,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Links
Adios Ted
St Germain – Rose Rouge
Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes
Zen Parables
American Beauty: Gary Snyder’s Poems
St. Germain – So Flute
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The Links…
Massive Attack Of The Jellyfish…
Rare Condition Turns Girls Organs Into Crystals…
The Dog Who Thinks He Is A Cat…
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Adios Ted…
“And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:
‘I am a part of all that I have met
Tho much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are –
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’
For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.
For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
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For Leslie & Roberto…
St Germain – Rose Rouge
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Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes:
Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.
If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.
A person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them – they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship.
…perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.
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Zen Parables…
The Gift of Insults
There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him.
One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and lightning speed. No one had ever lasted with him in a match beyond the first move.
Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult known to mankind. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and calm. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was defeated, he left feeling shamed.
Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students gathered around the old master and questioned him. “How could you endure such an indignity? How did you drive him away?”
“If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it,” the master replied, “to whom does the gift belong?”
—
Going with the Flow
A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. “I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived.”
—
Taming the Mind
After winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master who was renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try, and then split that arrow with his second shot.
“There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!”
Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain.
Curious about the old fellow’s intentions, the champion followed him high into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out onto the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit.
“Now it is your turn,” he said as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground.
Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, no less shoot at a target.
“You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot.”
—
—
The Ghost of my dead wife
The wife of a man became very sick. On her deathbed, she said to him, “I love you so much! I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want you to betray me. Promise that you will not see any other women once I die, or I will come back to haunt you.”
For several months after her death, the husband did avoid other women, but then he met someone and fell in love. On the night that they were engaged to be married, the ghost of his former wife appeared to him. She blamed him for not keeping the promise, and every night thereafter she returned to taunt him. The ghost would remind him of everything that transpired between him and his fiancee that day, even to the point of repeating, word for word, their conversations. It upset him so badly that he couldn’t sleep at all.
Desperate, he sought the advice of a Zen master who lived near the village. “This is a very clever ghost,” the master said upon hearing the man’s story. “It is!” replied the man. “She remembers every detail of what I say and do. It knows everything!” The master smiled, “You should admire such a ghost, but I will tell you what to do the next time you see it.”
That night the ghost returned. The man responded just as the master had advised. “You are such a wise ghost,” the man said, “You know that I can hide nothing from you. If you can answer me one question, I will break off the engagement and remain single for the rest of my life.” “Ask your question,” the ghost replied. The man scooped up a handful of beans from a large bag on the floor, “Tell me exactly how many beans there are in my hand.”
At that moment the ghost disappeared and never returned.
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American Beauty: Gary Snyder’s Poems….
How Poetry Comes to Me
It comes blundering over the
Boulders at night, it stays
Frightened outside the
Range of my campfire
I go to meet it at the
Edge of the light
—
Regarding Wave
The voice of the Dharma
the voice
now
A shimmering bell
through all.
Every hill, still.
Every tree alive. Every leaf.
All the slopes flow.
old woods, new seedlings,
tall grasses plumes.
Dark hollows; peaks of light.
wind stirs the cool side
Each leaf living.
All the hills.
The Voice
is a wife
to
him still.
—
Manzanita
Before dawn the coyotes
weave medicine songs
dream nets spirit baskets
milky way music
they cook young girls with
to be woman;
or the whirling dance of
striped boys
At moon-set the pines are gold-purple
Just before sunrise.
The dog hastens into the undergrowth
Comes back panting
Huge, on the small dry flowers.
A woodpecker
Drums and echoes
Across the still meadow
One man draws, and releases an arrow
Humming, flat,
Misses a gray stump, and splitting
A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.
Manzanita the tips in fruit,
Clusters of hard green berries
The longer you look
The bigger they seem,
`little apples’
—
—
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
—
Civilization
Those are the people who do complicated things.
they’ll grab us by the thousands
and put us to work.
World’s going to hell, with all these
villages and trails.
Wild duck flocks aren’t
what they used to be.
Aurochs grow rare.
Fetch me my feathers and amber
–
A small cricket
on the typescript page of
“Kyoto born in spring song”
grooms himself
in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I quit typing and watch him through a glass.
How well articulated! How neat!
Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM.
–
When creeks are full
The poems flow
When creeks are down
We heap stones.
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St. Germain – So Flute
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“What you take in by visionary experience you must give out by love and intelligence in daily life.”
– Aldous Huxley
