Happy are those who find fault with themselves instead of finding fault with others.
– Muhammad
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The Stream of the Week…
Tuesday: On The Music Box: Hildegard Von Bingen
Hey There..
Summer finally opened up it’s doors today in Portland. Up past 80f and not a cloud in the sky, except for the clouds of Mosquito’s that all the damp weather has left us with. Clouds of the little monsters, and I am starting to look like an insect pin cushion. We have set up the back yard most comfortably, but need the citronella candles, and a bag of dry ice to keep the micro-vampires away.
Wednesday: On The Music Box: Harold Budd
Up past 90 today, out doing bids, working on the magazine, and floundering around as usual. I am perhaps the most incompetent person I know. I just flounder harder it seems, generating art and noise out of the mayhem. I am pulling the cord on the internet soon, and removing my main computer from our network when I am working on art and the publications. I fiddle whilst my personal Rome burns. Time seems so short, and on the other hand, everything seems to get done when it is supposed to. I feel art works pressing up against my mind, wanting to come in to be exposed. It is all part of the process….
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Mary and I took the Sophie for a walk yesterday evening early, and the subject of the dreams from the previous week somehow came blurting out. With such coolness, she calmed my heart down. I am moved by the grace that surrounds her, and how it touches everyone who gets to know her. It is amazing really how just a few words can quiet a fire of the heart. The heart work is the hardest it seems. (except of course getting off of ones arse on projects) The hearts gateway is the door to another world. I am not looking for enlightenment as I once did, I feel that is an illusion with all of the rest. Everything fades before kindness, and caring inpov. Through the heart work, all changes are achieved, from what I have seen.
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I want to turn you all on to an artist/friend: Richard Hoyen. His Blog addy is: Richard’s Blog and you can see more of his work at this gallery: Richard’s Gallery I think you will be pleasantly surprised. We went to a show last year, I’d seen his works previously, but he is going in such a fine new direction. Check it out!
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This is an interesting edition (at least to me!), please especially check out the poetry. The Coyote stories are chock full of wisdom, and the quotes from Mircea Eliade and the music from Erik Satie rounds off everything nicely especially with the art of Louis Welden-Hawkins.
Hope this finds you well, with people you love, and who love you.
Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:
Erik Satie – Gnossienne No.4
Mircia Eliade Quotes
Coyote Tales
The Poetry Of Love And Devotion
Erik Satie – Gnossienne No.5
Art: Louis Welden-Hawkins
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Erik Satie – Gnossienne No.4
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Mircia Eliade Quotes
The great cosmic illusion is a hierophany…. One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity. (Images and Symbols)
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“Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being.” (The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion)
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“The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the “founding of the world”: where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.” (The Sacred and the Profane)
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“It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type (“light coming out of darkness”); weaving, the symbol of the “thread of life,” fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of “truths” relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection. ” (The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion)
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“The crude product of nature, the object fashioned by the industry of man, acquire their reality, their identity, only to the extent of their participation in a transcendent reality.” (The Myth of the Eternal Return)
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There are, above all, urgent rectifications to bring to so many clichés still encumbering contemporary culture, for example, Feuerbach’s and Marx’s celebrated interpretations of religion as alienation. As one knows, Feuerbach and Marx proclaimed that religion estranges man from the earth, prevents him from becoming completely human, and so on. But, even if this were correct, such a critique of religion could be applied only to late forms of religiosity such as those of post-Vedic India or of Judeo-Christianity – that is, religions in which the element of ‘other-worldness’ plays an important role. Alienation and estrangement of man from the earth are unknown, and, moreover, inconceivable, in all religions of the cosmic type, ‘primitive’ as well as oriental; in this case (that is to say, in the overwhelming majority of religions known to history), the religious life consists exactly in exalting the solidarity of man with life and nature.” (The Quest, History And Meaining In Religion)
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“In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.” (Myths, Dreams and Mysteries)
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“Neti! Neti! cries the sage of the Upanishads: “No! No! thou art not this; nor art thou that! In other words: you do not belong to the fallen cosmos, as you see it now, you are not necessarily engulfed in this creation; necessarily – that is to say, by virtue of the law of your own being. Now, nature has no true ontological reality; it is, indeed, universal becoming. Every cosmic form, complex and magestic though it may be, ends by disintegrating; the universe itself is periodically reabsorbed by “great dissolutions” (mahapralaya) into the primordial matrix (prakriti).” (Yoga: Immortality and Freedom)
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Coyote Tales
Yaqui: Coyote and Rabbit
ONE DAY rabbit was out on a plain eating when Coyote came up. “I am very hungry,” said Coyote. “I am going to eat you.”
“No, wait here and I will bring you a really good meal of chicken. They are cooking it over there.” Rabbit ran off toward the monte and Coyote happily waited, singing in anticipation of a fine meal. He waited a long time. At last he became angry and followed the tracks of Rabbit.
He found Rabbit in an arroyo standing by the cliff wall holding his forepaws against the cliff. “What are you doing?” asked Coyote.
“I am holding this cliff up,” said Rabbit. At that moment a little rock fell and he held the cliff up harder than ever. “Here,” he said to Coyote, “you hold it up while I go and get the food I told you about. It is almost ready.”
Coyote put his paws against the cliff, pushing desperately while Rabbit ran off. Another rock fell and Coyote pushed all the harder. He waited for a long time. He was very tired and terribly hungry. Suddenly he let go of the cliff and ran as fast as he could. Nothing happened. He followed the tracks of Rabbit.
‘Now I really am going to eat you!”
“Just sit down,” said Rabbit. “They are going to bring that food right here. They’ll be here soon.” So Coyote sat down, looking hungrily at Rabbit. Rabbit jumped up saying, “I’ll hurry them. You wait here just a minute.” He ran off. Coyote waited.
Meanwhile, Rabbit set fire all around the edges of the thicket. Then he ran back to Coyote. “Hear the cohetes?” he shouted to Coyote. “The fiesta is coming. They are bringing you a wonderful meal.” Then Rabbit ran away as fast as he could to avoid the fire. Coyote happily danced and sang as he waited for his meal. The fire soon surrounded him and he was burned up.
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Shoshoni: Coyote And The Bear Cubs; The Death Of Wolf
One day Wolf said to his brother, Coyote. “I would like some seeds. I like them better than meat. Go to your aunt’s place and get some for me.” Coyote said, “We have no relatives.” Wolf said, “Yes; we have. You go over there and see.”
Coyote went out to find the seeds and met two girl cousins, two bear cubs. They looked like twins. They were gathering seeds. Coyote talked to them for a little while. Then he choked both of them; they died. He laid them side by side and covered them up with a rabbit-skin blanket. Then he started to gather seeds.
About sundown, Coyote’s aunt, Bear, came to where the girls were. She was carrying seeds. She said, “What are you doing there, sleeping at this time?” She walked over to them, and pushed and pinched them, trying to wake them up. When they didn’t move she looked under the blanket and saw that they were dead. This made her angry. She ran to Coyote and clawed all the meat off his back with her fingers. Coyote howled, “Wheeeeee.” Then he ran away.
Coyote covered his back with a blanket and went home without his seeds.
When he arrived at his home, Wolf asked for the seeds. Coyote said, “I did not see any.” Wolf, who knew everything, said “Yes, you did. Why do you cover your back? I know you killed those girls and your aunt clawed you.” Coyote admitted that this was so.
Wolf wished Coyote asleep. He had this power. Wolf then went out hunting and killed a very small fawn. He cut the meat off its back in thin strips. It was very smooth and tender. When he got home, Coyote was still curled up asleep. Wolf slipped Coyote’s blanket off and mended his back with the fawn’s back muscles. He made it smooth, just like new.
In the morning, Coyote stretched himself and felt his back. He said, “My back meat has returned. Last night it was gone and there were just bones back there, but now it has come back. It is fine and smooth!”
Wolf said to Coyote, “Now you be good. You are always fooling me. Don’t go back and bother your aunt. But, if you do, be sure to skin her and cut up all the meat and bring it home. Don’t leave any of it.”
Coyote said he would not go back, but he went nevertheless. He met Bear and cut her throat. He skinned her and cut up all the meat and wrapped it in the skin, but he forgot a piece of tripe. On the way home he remembered the tripe, and what Wolf had said about bringing all the meat home, so he went back for it. The Tripe had moved to the north. Coyote chased it but could not catch it. He asked, “What are you doing?” Tripe said, “I am well now. I am going to tell my people what you have done to my daughters.” Coyote said, “Go ahead. I am glad.”
When Coyote returned to the camp with the meat, he told Wolf he had brought it all home. Wolf said, “No you didn’t. You had better watch out. When you see your people, you will find out why.” Coyote said, “There are no people here. What is the matter?” Wolf only said, “In a few days you will see.”
In a few days Wolf said to Coyote, “Stand away from the fire and look to the north.” Coyote said, “Why should I? It is cold.” But he looked, and in the north there was a crowd of people. They looked black in the distance. There was lightning. Finally Coyote said, “It looks like people coming closer. I can see arms and legs. You look, Wolf.” Wolf would not look, but he said to Coyote, “You had better pack everything, and move away.” Coyote said, “Why should I move?”
Wolf went out to see the people coming. The men in the crowd shot Wolf and he died. Then they skinned him, and taking the skin with them they went back to the north. Coyote was afraid, but he followed their tracks until he came to a big camp. The people had made things ready for a circle dance around a fire.
Coyote didn’t dare go into the camp, but stayed on the outside, watching them. An old woman came up to him there and said, “Maybe you are Coyote.” Coyote said “What is this Coyote?” The old woman said, “He lives at Tin Mountain (i. e., Charleston Peak), Coyote said, “What is he, a bad Indian?” She said, “I think you must be Coyote.” He said, “I come from the north, but my grandfather told me about Coyote’s brother, Wolf, who lives on Tin Mountain. Have you ever heard of him?” The old woman said, “Yes, my son has killed Wolf. My people have Wolf’s hide. At sundown we will dance all night.” The old woman then told Coyote that during the dance she tended the children of the dancers. She gathered them all around her and covered them all up with Wolf’s hide. She said that was why she was crying. She told him that during the night while the children slept she, too, could dance a little, but in the morning the children would cry, “Mama, mama, come and take care of me.”
When Coyote heard this, he had an idea. He killed the old woman. He beat her and beat her and broke all her bones. He then made a little opening in her skin and pulled all the bones out and made a sack. He climbed into this sack and looked just like the old woman. He took her stick and hobbled into the camp. The children all cried, “Grandma is coming.” After sundown, the people all said, “Mama, look after the babies while we dance.”
While the people were dancing, Coyote quietly choked the children to death. He held their noses, and choked them. The people thought the children were asleep and they asked him to dance. Coyote said, “All right.” Then he jumped out of the old woman’s skin and put on Wolf’s hide. He ran out of the house shouting, “I am the man you killed,” and then fled from the camp.
The people followed him, but he ran, ran, ran, ran, and finally came to a wooded mountain. Here the people lost the track and returned home. Coyote walked back to the place where Wolf had been killed. Wolf’s carcass was all dried up and stiff like wood. Very carefully, he fitted Wolf’s skin over the carcass.
In the morning he went out to look and saw that the nose had moved a little and was slightly wet. The next morning Coyote was awakened by hearing Wolf howl. He got up to look, but found that Wolf had gone to the northeast. Wolf was alive but he was very angry.
He left Tin Mountain and never came back. That is why there are no wolves or bears on Tin Mountain now.
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The Poetry Of Love And Devotion
The whole world is a marketplace for Love,
For naught that is, from Love remains remote.
The Eternal Wisdom made all things in Love.
On Love they all depend, to Love all turn.
The earth, the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars
The center of their orbit find in Love.
By Love are all bewildered, stupefied,
Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.
From each, Love demands a mystic silence.
What do all seek so earnestly? “Tis Love.
Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,
In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,
For self has passed away in the Beloved.
Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,
And in the temple of mine inmost soul
Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.
He who would know the secret of both worlds
Will find that the secret of them both is Love.
– Farid ud Din Attar
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Come,
let’s scatter roses and pour wine in the glass;
we’ll shatter heaven’s roof and lay a new foundation.
If sorrow raises armies to shed the blood of lovers,
I’ll join with the wine bearer so we can overthrow them.
With a sweet string at hand, play a sweet song, my friend,
so we can clap and sing a song and lose our heads in dancing.
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The sun
Won a beauty contest and became a jewel
Set upon God’s right hand.
The earth agreed to be a toe ring on the
Beloved’s foot
And has never regretted its decision.
The mountains got tired
Of sitting amongst a sleeping audience
And are now stretching their arms
Toward the Roof.
The clouds gave my soul an idea
So I pawned my gills
And rose like a winged diamond
Ever trying to be near
More love, more love
Like you.
The Mountain got tired of sitting
Amongst a snoring crowd inside of me
And rose like a rip sun
Into my eye.
My soul gave my heart a brilliant idea
So Hafiz is rising like a
Winged diamond.
– Hafiz
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You’ve no idea how hard I’ve looked for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What’s the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the Ocean.
Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient.
It’s no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these.
So- I’ve brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.
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Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quiteness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full moon
comes out now.
– Rumi
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Erik Satie – Gnossienne No.5
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