We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust – Rumi
Love Is The Master…
Love is the One who masters all things;
I am mastered totally by Love.
By my passion of love for Love
I have ground sweet as sugar.
O furious Wind, I am only a straw before you;
How could I know where I will be blown next?
Whoever claims to have made a pact with Destiny
Reveals himself a liar and a fool;
What is any of us but a straw in a storm?
How could anyone make a pact with a hurricane?
God is working everywhere his massive Resurrection;
How can we pretend to act on our own?
In the hand of Love I am like a cat in a sack;
Sometimes Love hoists me into the air,
Sometimes Love flings me into the air,
Love swings me round and round His head;
I have no peace, in this world or any other.
The lovers of God have fallen in a furious river;
They have surrendered themselves to Love’s commands.
Like mill wheels they turn, day and night, day and night,
Constantly turning and turning, and crying out.
-Rumi
Winter in the North West… oh it is so cooooold.
Have been up to Olympia to do some interior mural work, mural repair and other bits at Peter’s house. Lots of cloud work, and a solar mandala (still in process). We had a nice weekend visiting, although Margo was not feeling up for a visit (cold and all), we did get to see Sarah, Paul & young Miss Melissa, (Peter’s sisters family) for the first time in 10 or so years. The time, she flies. It was truly a nice time. The temperature in Olympia got down to 11f, thankfully we were not to out and about in it.
The poetry of Jack Gilbert is the main course of this entry. Laura Pendell turned me on to his work (Thanks Laura!) I am really taken with his work. I am in the process of trying to catch up with contemporary American Poets. Truth be told, every time I settled into the stream of it, I would end up reading academic poets much to my dismay. Yes, I am sure there are good ones, but not enough passion for yours truly. So, I am up to some exploring.
The music on this entry is Porcupine Tree, a psychedelic/progressive/metal band out of Britain. I am very impressed with their work, and especially… “Time Flies” They are a very cool unit.
Hope this finds you in health and happiness.
Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Links
Porcupine Tree: Time Flies
Rumi Quotes On Passion
Irish Folk Tales: The Ghost of Sneem
The Poetry Of The Heart: Jack Gilbert
Porcupine Tree – Dark Matter
Artist: Nikolaj Rerih
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The Links:
In The Era Of Mass Extinctions… 10,000 years ago
Note To Self: Must Buy Property In Mexico
Death Certificate Imprinted On Shroud Of Turin?
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Wonderful Band. A most poignant of songs…
Porcupine Tree: Time Flies…
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Rumi Quotes On Passion:
“The way you make love is the way God will be with you.”
“The agony of lovers burns with the fire of passion.”
“Lovers leave traces of where they’ve been.”
“The wailing of broken hearts is the doorway to God.”
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.”
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Irish Folk Tales: The Ghost of Sneem
Some time after Pat Doyle was killed by the ghost, my husband, Martin Doyle, was at work on an estate at some distance from Sneem, and one evening the gentleman who employed Martin told him to go that night on an errand to Sneem.
“Well,” said he, “it’s too late and the road is very lonesome. There is no one to care for my mother but me, and if anything should happen to me she’d be without support. I’ll go in the morning.”
“That will not do,” said the gentleman: “I want to send a letter, and it must be delivered to-night.”
“I’ll not risk it; I’ll not go,” said Martin.
Martin had a cousin James, who heard the conversation and, stepping up, he said, “I’ll go. I am not afraid of ghost or spirit, and many a night have I spent on that road.”
The gentleman thanked him and said:
“Here is a sword for you, if you need it.” He gave James the letter with directions for delivering it.
James started off, and took every short cut and by-path, and when he thought he was half-way to Sneem a ghost stood before him in the road, and began to make at him. Whenever the ghost came near, James made a drive at him with the steel sword, for there is great virtue in steel, and above all in steel made by an Irish blacksmith. The ghost was darting at James, and he driving at the ghost with his sword till he came to a cross-road near Sneem. There the ghost disappeared, and James hurried on with great speed to Sneem. There he found that the gentleman who was to receive the letter had moved to a place six miles away, near Blackwater bridge, half-way between Sneem and Kenmare. The place has a very bad name to this day, and old people declare that there is no night without spirits and headless people being around Blackwater bridge. James knew what the place was, but he made up his mind to deliver the letter. When he came to the bridge and was going to cross it a ghost attacked him. This ghost had a venomous look and was stronger than the first one. He ran twice at James, who struck at him with the sword. Just then he saw a big man without a head running across the road at the other side of the bridge and up the cliff, though there was no path there. The ghost stopped attacking and ran after the headless man. James crossed the bridge and walked a little farther, when he met a stranger, and the two saluted each other and the man asked James where he lived, and he said: “I came from Drumfada.” “Do you know what time it is?” asked James. “I do not; but when I was passing that house just below there the cocks were beginning to crow. Did you see anything?” “I did,” said James, and he told him how the ghost attacked him and then ran away up the cliff after the headless man.
“Oh,” said the stranger, “that headless body is always roaming around the bridge at night; hundreds of people have seen it. It ran up the cliff and disappeared at cock-crow, and the ghost that attacked you followed when the cocks crowed.”
The stranger went on and James delivered the letter. The man who received it was very thankful and paid him well. James came home safe and sound, but he said: “I’d be a dead man this day but for the steel.”
“Could you tell me a real fairy tale?” asked I of the old woman. “I could,” said she, “but to-day I’ll tell you only what I saw one night beyond Cahirciveen:
Once I spent the night at a house near Waterville, about six miles from Derrynane. The woman of the house was lying in bed at the time and a young child with her. The husband heard an infant crying outside under the window, and running to the bed he said:
“Yerra, Mary, have you the child with you?”
“Indeed, then, I have, John.”
“Well, I heard a child crying under the window. I’ll go this minute and see whose it is.”
“In the name of God,” screamed the wife, “stop inside! Get the holy water and sprinkle it over the children and over me and yourself.”
He did this, and then sprinkled some in the kitchen. He heard the crying go off farther and farther till it seemed half a mile away: it was very pitiful and sad. If he had gone to the door the man of the house would have got a fairy stroke and the mother would have been taken as a nurse to the fort.
This is all the old woman told. When going she promised to come on the following day, but I have not seen her since. The blind man informed me some evenings later that she was sick and in the “ashpitl” (hospital). Her sickness was caused, as she said, by telling me tales in the daytime. Many of the old people will tell tales only in the evening; it is not right, not lucky, to do so during daylight.
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The Poetry Of The Heart: Jack Gilbert
Tear It Down
We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.
—
Going There
Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.
—
The Great Fires
Love is apart from all things.
Desire and excitement are nothing beside it.
It is not the body that finds love.
What leads us there is the body.
What is not love provokes it.
What is not love quenches it.
Love lays hold of everything we know.
The passions which are called love
also change everything to a newness
at first. Passion is clearly the path
but does not bring us to love.
It opens the castle of our spirit
so that we might find the love which is
a mystery hidden there.
Love is one of many great fires.
Passion is a fire made of many woods,
each of which gives off its special odor
so we can know the many kinds
that are not love. Passion is the paper
and twigs that kindle the flames
but cannot sustain them. Desire perishes
because it tries to be love.
Love is eaten away by appetite.
Love does not last, but it is different
from the passions that do not last.
Love lasts by not lasting.
Isaiah said each man walks in his own fire
for his sins. Love allows us to walk
in the sweet music of our particular heart.
—
Failing and Flying
Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It’s the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.
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No visuals… good music though
Porcupine Tree – Dark Matter
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Every object, every being,
is a jar full of delight. – Rumi
