Author: Gwyllm

(Paul Signac – Against the Enamel of a Background Rhythmic with Beats and Angles, Tones and Tints, Portrait of Felix Feneon in 1890)

Steps
from “The Glass Bead Game”

Maybe death’s hour too
will send us out new-born
towards undreamed-lands,
maybe life’s call to us
will never find an end
Courage my heart,
take leave & fare thee well.
- Hermann Hesse
__________________

This started out as an entry about the processes that one goes through as they get older, but it veered rapidly elsewhere…. Anyway, there might be some items of interest for you. I have long self identified (if indeed one can really do that) as an Anarchist. This edition though it draws from the past, looks forward to the future. I dedicate it to Morgan, Tim Acott, Dale Pendell, and old comrades long unseen. Here is to the place where we all meet as equals, where colloquy is paramount, and Love the guiding light.

Meant to have this out for Labor Day, but there ya go.

Hope all is well in your world, from where I am it is raining and exquisitely beautiful.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Abbie Hoffman Quotes
C.O.N. Sequencer – Juniper Hill
ANARCHISM: WHAT IT REALLY STANDS FOR
Anna Wickham Anarchist Poet
Biosphere – The things I tell you
Anarchist Poems: Strewn Thru The Edition…

The centuries have changed little in this art,
The subjects are still the same.
 “For Christ’s sake take off your clothes & get into bed,
We are not going to live forever.”
“Petals fall from the rose,”
We fall from life,
Values fall from history like men from shellfire,
Only a minimum survives,
Only an unknown achievement.
They can put it all on the headstones,
In all the battlefields,
“Poor guy, he never knew what it was all about.”
Spectacled men will come with shovels in a thousand years,
Give lectures in universities on cultural advances, cultural lags. . . .
This year we made four major ascents,
Camped for two weeks at timberline,
Watched Mars swim close to the earth,
Watched the black aurora of war
Spread over the sky of a decayed civilization.
These are the last terrible years of authority.
The disease has reached its crisis,
Ten thousand years of power,
The struggle of two laws,
The rule of iron & spilled blood,
The abiding solidarity of living blood & brain.
— Kenneth Rexroth, 
“August 22, 1939,”
(The anniversary of Sacco & Vanzetti’s execution tonite in 1927, actually the 23rd)

___________________________________
Abbie Hoffman Quotes:

(William Burroughs, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman)

Become an internationalist and learn to respect all life. Make war on machines. And in particular the sterile machines of corporate death and the robots that guard them.

Expedience, not justice, is the rule of contemporary American law.

Free speech means the right to shout ‘theatre’ in a crowded fire.

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.

I was probably the only revolutionary referred to as cute.

Never impose your language on people you wish to reach.

Once you get the right image the details aren’t that important.

Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit.

Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.

Structure is more important than content in the transmission of information.
_____________________

It is snowing white documents
The very rich
get richer still
A white gloved hand
still reaches out the window
for the money in the cup
Liberty is not free
Some poor still ride some trains
The angel
stands on the edge
of the station platform
slowly moving its large white wings
which look too fragile
to lift the body of being
which still breathes the anarchist air
& the train
the train made of nothing but boxcars
jammed with three billion people
still stands in the station
trembling
— Lawrence Ferlinghetti, excerpt, “White on White”
(After reading Breyten Breytenbach,
imprisoned Afrikaans white poet)

_____________________

C.O.N. Sequencer – Juniper Hill

_____________________

ANARCHISM: WHAT IT REALLY STANDS FOR
Emma Goldman

ANARCHY
Ever reviled, accursed, ne’er understood,
Thou art the grisly terror of our age.
“Wreck of all order,” cry the multitude,
“Art thou, and war and murder’s endless rage.”
O, let them cry. To them that ne’er have striven
The truth that lies behind a word to find,
To them the word’s right meaning was not given.
They shall continue blind among the blind.
But thou, O word, so clear, so strong, so pure,
Thou sayest all which I for goal have taken.
I give thee to the future! Thine secure
When each at least unto himself shall waken.
Comes it in sunshine? In the tempest’s thrill?
I cannot tell–but it the earth shall see!
I am an Anarchist! Wherefore I will
Not rule, and also ruled I will not be!
(John Henry MacKay)

The history of human growth and development is at the same time the history of the terrible struggle of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn. In its tenacious hold on tradition, the Old has never hesitated to make use of the foulest and cruelest means to stay the advent of the New, in whatever form or period the latter may have asserted itself. Nor need we retrace our steps into the distant past to realize the enormity of opposition, difficulties, and hardships placed in the path of every progressive idea. The rack, the thumbscrew, and the knout are still with us; so are the convict’s garb and the social wrath, all conspiring against the spirit that is serenely marching on.

Anarchism could not hope to escape the fate of all other ideas of innovation. Indeed, as the most revolutionary and uncompromising innovator, Anarchism must needs meet with the combined ignorance and venom of the world it aims to reconstruct.

To deal even remotely with all that is being said and done against Anarchism would necessitate the writing of a whole volume. I shall therefore meet only two of the principal objections. In so doing, I shall attempt to elucidate what Anarchism really stands for.

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. “Why?” “Because.” Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.

What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,–a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature’s forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life’s essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM:–The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life,–individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

A thorough perusal of the history of human development will disclose two elements in bitter conflict with each other; elements that are only now beginning to be understood, not as foreign to each other, but as closely related and truly harmonious, if only placed in proper environment: the individual and social instincts. The individual and society have waged a relentless and bloody battle for ages, each striving for supremacy, because each was blind to the value and importance of the other. The individual and social instincts,–the one a most potent factor for individual endeavor, for growth, aspiration, self-realization; the other an equally potent factor for mutual helpfulness and social well-being.

The explanation of the storm raging within the individual, and between him and his surroundings, is not far to seek. The primitive man, unable to understand his being, much less the unity of all life, felt himself absolutely dependent on blind, hidden forces ever ready to mock and taunt him. Out of that attitude grew the religious concepts of man as a mere speck of dust dependent on superior powers on high, who can only be appeased by complete surrender. All the early sagas rest on that idea, which continues to be the Leitmotiv of the biblical tales dealing with the relation of man to God, to the State, to society. Again and again the same motif, man is nothing, the powers are everything. Thus Jehovah would only endure man on condition of complete surrender. Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself. The State, society, and moral laws all sing the same refrain: Man can have all the glories of the earth, but he must not become conscious of himself.

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. There is no conflict between the individual and the social instincts, any more than there is between the heart and the lungs: the one the receptacle of a precious life essence, the other the repository of the element that keeps the essence pure and strong. The individual is the heart of society, conserving the essence of social life; society is the lungs which are distributing the element to keep the life essence–that is, the individual–pure and strong.

“The one thing of value in the world,” says Emerson, “is the active soul; this every man contains within him. The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth and creates.” In other words, the individual instinct is the thing of value in the world. It is the true soul that sees and creates the truth alive, out of which is to come a still greater truth, the re-born social soul.

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society.

Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man’s enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man’s mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress.

Property, the dominion of man’s needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, “Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!” The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead.

“Property is robbery,” said the great French Anarchist Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey.

It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.

Real wealth consists in things of utility and beauty, in things that help to create strong, beautiful bodies and surroundings inspiring to live in. But if man is doomed to wind cotton around a spool, or dig coal, or build roads for thirty years of his life, there can be no talk of wealth. What he gives to the world is only gray and hideous things, reflecting a dull and hideous existence,–too weak to live, too cowardly to die. Strange to say, there are people who extol this deadening method of centralized production as the proudest achievement of our age. They fail utterly to realize that if we are to continue in machine subserviency, our slavery is more complete than was our bondage to the King. They do not want to know that centralization is not only the death-knell of liberty, but also of health and beauty, of art and science, all these being impossible in a clock-like, mechanical atmosphere.

Anarchism cannot but repudiate such a method of production: its goal is the freest possible expression of all the latent powers of the individual. Oscar Wilde defines a perfect personality as “one who develops under perfect conditions, who is not wounded, maimed, or in danger.” A perfect personality, then, is only possible in a state of society where man is free to choose the mode of work, the conditions of work, and the freedom to work. One to whom the making of a table, the building of a house, or the tilling of the soil, is what the painting is to the artist and the discovery to the scientist,–the result of inspiration, of intense longing, and deep interest in work as a creative force. That being the ideal of Anarchism, its economic arrangements must consist of voluntary productive and distributive associations, gradually developing into free communism, as the best means of producing with the least waste of human energy. Anarchism, however, also recognizes the right of the individual, or numbers of individuals, to arrange at all times for other forms of work, in harmony with their tastes and desires.

Such free display of human energy being possible only under complete individual and social freedom, Anarchism directs its forces against the third and greatest foe of all social equality; namely, the State, organized authority, or statutory law,–the dominion of human conduct.

Just as religion has fettered the human mind, and as property, or the monopoly of things, has subdued and stifled man’s needs, so has the State enslaved his spirit, dictating every phase of conduct. “All government in essence,” says Emerson, “is tyranny.” It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Referring to the American government, the greatest American Anarchist, David Thoreau, said: “Government, what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instance losing its integrity; it has not the vitality and force of a single living man. Law never made man a whit more just; and by means of their respect for it, even the well disposed are daily made agents of injustice.”

Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty. Thus Ouida is right when she maintains that “the State only aims at instilling those qualities in its public by which its demands are obeyed, and its exchequer is filled. Its highest attainment is the reduction of mankind to clockwork. In its atmosphere all those finer and more delicate liberties, which require treatment and spacious expansion, inevitably dry up and perish. The State requires a taxpaying machine in which there is no hitch, an exchequer in which there is never a deficit, and a public, monotonous, obedient, colorless, spiritless, moving humbly like a flock of sheep along a straight high road between two walls.”

Yet even a flock of sheep would resist the chicanery of the State, if it were not for the corruptive, tyrannical, and oppressive methods it employs to serve its purposes. Therefore Bakunin repudiates the State as synonymous with the surrender of the liberty of the individual or small minorities,–the destruction of social relationship, the curtailment, or complete denial even, of life itself, for its own aggrandizement. The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

In fact, there is hardly a modern thinker who does not agree that government, organized authority, or the State, is necessary only to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only.

Even George Bernard Shaw, who hopes for the miraculous from the State under Fabianism, nevertheless admits that “it is at present a huge machine for robbing and slave-driving of the poor by brute force.” This being the case, it is hard to see why the clever prefacer wishes to uphold the State after poverty shall have ceased to exist.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of people who continue in the fatal belief that government rests on natural laws, that it maintains social order and harmony, that it diminishes crime, and that it prevents the lazy man from fleecing his fellows. I shall therefore examine these contentions.

A natural law is that factor in man which asserts itself freely and spontaneously without any external force, in harmony with the requirements of nature. For instance, the demand for nutrition, for sex gratification, for light, air, and exercise, is a natural law. But its expression needs not the machinery of government, needs not the club, the gun, the handcuff, or the prison. To obey such laws, if we may call it obedience, requires only spontaneity and free opportunity. That governments do not maintain themselves through such harmonious factors is proven by the terrible array of violence, force, and coercion all governments use in order to live. Thus Blackstone is right when he says, “Human laws are invalid, because they are contrary to the laws of nature.”

Unless it be the order of Warsaw after the slaughter of thousands of people, it is difficult to ascribe to governments any capacity for order or social harmony. Order derived through submission and maintained by terror is not much of a safe guaranty; yet that is the only “order” that governments have ever maintained. True social harmony grows naturally out of solidarity of interests. In a society where those who always work never have anything, while those who never work enjoy everything, solidarity of interests is non-existent; hence social harmony is but a myth. The only way organized authority meets this grave situation is by extending still greater privileges to those who have already monopolized the earth, and by still further enslaving the disinherited masses. Thus the entire arsenal of government–laws, police, soldiers, the courts, legislatures, prisons,–is strenuously engaged in “harmonizing” the most antagonistic elements in society.

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. What does society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation. Who that knows this terrible process can fail to see the truth in these words of Peter Kropotkin:

“Those who will hold the balance between the benefits thus attributed to law and punishment and the degrading effect of the latter on humanity; those who will estimate the torrent of depravity poured abroad in human society by the informer, favored by the Judge even, and paid for in clinking cash by governments, under the pretext of aiding to unmask crime; those who will go within prison walls and there see what human beings become when deprived of liberty, when subjected to the care of brutal keepers, to coarse, cruel words, to a thousand stinging, piercing humiliations, will agree with us that the entire apparatus of prison and punishment is an abomination which ought to be brought to an end.”

The deterrent influence of law on the lazy man is too absurd to merit consideration. If society were only relieved of the waste and expense of keeping a lazy class, and the equally great expense of the paraphernalia of protection this lazy class requires, the social tables would contain an abundance for all, including even the occasional lazy individual. Besides, it is well to consider that laziness results either from special privileges, or physical and mental abnormalities. Our present insane system of production fosters both, and the most astounding phenomenon is that people should want to work at all now. Anarchism aims to strip labor of its deadening, dulling aspect, of its gloom and compulsion. It aims to make work an instrument of joy, of strength, of color, of real harmony, so that the poorest sort of a man should find in work both recreation and hope.

To achieve such an arrangement of life, government, with its unjust, arbitrary, repressive measures, must be done away with. At best it has but imposed one single mode of life upon all, without regard to individual and social variations and needs. In destroying government and statutory laws, Anarchism proposes to rescue the self-respect and independence of the individual from all restraint and invasion by authority. Only in freedom can man grow to his full stature. Only in freedom will he learn to think and move, and give the very best in him. Only in freedom will he realize the true force of the social bonds which knit men together, and which are the true foundation of a normal social life.

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism?

Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

This is not a wild fancy or an aberration of the mind. It is the conclusion arrived at by hosts of intellectual men and women the world over; a conclusion resulting from the close and studious observation of the tendencies of modern society: individual liberty and economic equality, the twin forces for the birth of what is fine and true in man.

As to methods. Anarchism is not, as some may suppose, a theory of the future to be realized through divine inspiration. It is a living force in the affairs of our life, constantly creating new conditions. The methods of Anarchism therefore do not comprise an iron-clad program to be carried out under all circumstances. Methods must grow out of the economic needs of each place and clime, and of the intellectual and temperamental requirements of the individual. The serene, calm character of a Tolstoy will wish different methods for social reconstruction than the intense, overflowing personality of a Michael Bakunin or a Peter Kropotkin. Equally so it must be apparent that the economic and political needs of Russia will dictate more drastic measures than would England or America. Anarchism does not stand for military drill and uniformity; it does, however, stand for the spirit of revolt, in whatever form, against everything that hinders human growth. All Anarchists agree in that, as they also agree in their opposition to the political machinery as a means of bringing about the great social change.

“All voting,” says Thoreau, “is a sort of gaming, like checkers, or backgammon, a playing with right and wrong; its obligation never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right thing is doing nothing for it. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority.” A close examination of the machinery of politics and its achievements will bear out the logic of Thoreau.

What does the history of parliamentarism show? Nothing but failure and defeat, not even a single reform to ameliorate the economic and social stress of the people. Laws have been passed and enactments made for the improvement and protection of labor. Thus it was proven only last year that Illinois, with the most rigid laws for mine protection, had the greatest mine disasters. In States where child labor laws prevail, child exploitation is at its highest, and though with us the workers enjoy full political opportunities, capitalism has reached the most brazen zenith.

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith? One has but to bear in mind the process of politics to realize that its path of good intentions is full of pitfalls: wire-pulling, intriguing, flattering, lying, cheating; in fact, chicanery of every description, whereby the political aspirant can achieve success. Added to that is a complete demoralization of character and conviction, until nothing is left that would make one hope for anything from such a human derelict. Time and time again the people were foolish enough to trust, believe, and support with their last farthing aspiring politicians, only to find themselves betrayed and cheated.

It may be claimed that men of integrity would not become corrupt in the political grinding mill. Perhaps not; but such men would be absolutely helpless to exert the slightest influence in behalf of labor, as indeed has been shown in numerous instances. The State is the economic master of its servants. Good men, if such there be, would either remain true to their political faith and lose their economic support, or they would cling to their economic master and be utterly unable to do the slightest good. The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

The political superstition is still holding sway over the hearts and minds of the masses, but the true lovers of liberty will have no more to do with it. Instead, they believe with Stirner that man has as much liberty as he is willing to take. Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits, for “men who are men, and who have a bone in their backs which you cannot pass your hand through.”

Universal suffrage itself owes its existence to direct action. If not for the spirit of rebellion, of the defiance on the part of the American revolutionary fathers, their posterity would still wear the King’s coat. If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man. True, the trade in white flesh is still going on; but that, too, will have to be abolished by direct action. Trade-unionism, the economic arena of the modern gladiator, owes its existence to direct action. It is but recently that law and government have attempted to crush the trade-union movement, and condemned the exponents of man’s right to organize to prison as conspirators. Had they sought to assert their cause through begging, pleading, and compromise, trade-unionism would today be a negligible quantity. In France, in Spain, in Italy, in Russia, nay even in England (witness the growing rebellion of English labor unions), direct, revolutionary, economic action has become so strong a force in the battle for industrial liberty as to make the world realize the tremendous importance of labor’s power. The General Strike, the supreme expression of the economic consciousness of the workers, was ridiculed in America but a short time ago. Today every great strike, in order to win, must realize the importance of the solidaric general protest.

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor. Science, art, literature, the drama, the effort for economic betterment, in fact every individual and social opposition to the existing disorder of things, is illumined by the spiritual light of Anarchism. It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.
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Triumphant at the final breath,
Their senile God, their cops,
All the authorities & friends pro tem
Passing her pillow, keeping her concerned.
But the cowardly obit was already written:
Morning would know she was a common slut.
 — Karl Shapiro, “Death of Emma Goldman,” From Person, Place, & Thing (1942)
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Anna Wickham Anarchist Poet

Reality

Only a starveling singer seeks
The stuff of songs among the Greeks.
Juno is old,
Jove’s loves are cold;
Tales over-told.
By a new risen Attic stream
A mortal singer dreamed a dream.
Fixed he not Fancy’s habitation,
Nor set in bonds Imagination.
There are new waters, and a new Humanity.
For all old myths give us the dream to be.
We are outwearied with Persephone;
Rather than her, we’ll sing Reality.
—-
The Cherry Blossom Wand

I will pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand,
And carry it in my merciless hand,
So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes,
With a beautiful thing that can never grow wise.

Light are the petals that fall from the bough,
And lighter the love that I offer you now;
In a spring day shall the tale be told
Of the beautiful things that will never grow old.

The blossoms shall fall in the night wind,
And I will leave you so, to be kind:
Eternal in beauty, are short-lived flowers,
Eternal in beauty, these exquisite hours.

I will pluck from my tree a cherry-blossom wand,
And carry it in my merciless hand,
So I will drive you, so bewitch your eyes,
With a beautiful thing that shall never grow wise.
—
Song

I was so chill, and overworn, and sad,
To be a lady was the only joy I had.
I walked the street as silent as a mouse,
Buying fine clothes, and fittings for the house.

But since I saw my love
I wear a simple dress,
And happily I move
Forgetting weariness.
—
The Marriage

What a great battle you and I have fought!
A fight of sticks and whips and swords,
A one-armed combat,
For each held the left hand pressed close to the heart,
To save the caskets from assault.

How tenderly we guarded them;
I would keep mine and still have yours,
And you held fast to yours and coveted mine.
Could we have dropt the caskets
We would have thrown down weapons
And been at each other like apes,
Scratching, biting, hugging
In exasperation.

What a fight!
Thank God that I was strong as you,
And you, though not my master, were my match.
How we panted; we grew dizzy with rage.
We forgot everything but the fight and the love of the caskets.

These we called by great names –
Personality, Liberty, Individuality.

Each fought for right to keep himself a slave
And to redeem his fellow,
How can this be done?

But the fight ended.
For both was victory
For both there was defeat.
Through blood we saw the caskets on the floor.
Our jewels were revealed;
An ugly toad in mine,
While yours was filled with most contemptible small snakes:
One held my vanity, the other held your sloth.

The fight is over, and our eyes are clear. –
Good friend, shake hands.
—

The Singer

If I had peace to sit and sing,
Then I could make a lovely thing;
But I am stung with goads and whips,
So I build songs like iron ships.

Let it be something for my song,
If it is sometimes swift and strong.

A Short Bio Of Anna Wickham:
It is well within the order of things
that man should listen when his mate sings,
but the true male never walked
who liked to listen while his mate talked.

Anna Wickham (1833-1947), a British poet with an Australian upbringing, was associated with an international host of writers: David Garnett, part of the Bloomsbury group; D.H. Lawrence, who recommended her poems to Chicago’s Poetry magazine, then in its infancy; Harold Monro, who was the first to publish her work; Louis Untermeyer, who called her “a magnificent gypsy of a woman;” lesbian heiress Natalie Barney, who was the touchstone for her imagination for almost twenty years; Malcolm Lowry, who counted her among his close friends; and her husband Patrick Hepburn, who tried to silence her and instead goaded her into poetry….

Anna In London…
____________________________

Biosphere – The things I tell you

____________________________

Floating
. . We are tired of paddling.
 All afternoon we have climbed the weak current,
 Up dim meanders, through woods and pastures,
 Past muddy fords where the strong smell of cattle
 Lay thick across the water; singing the songs
 Of perfect, habitual motion; ski songs,
 Nightherding songs, songs of the capstan walk,
 The levee, and the roll of the voyageurs.
-Kenneth Rexroth

(Mikhail Vrubel – Flowers Of The World)

Two come about because of One,
but don’t cling to the One either!
So long as the mind does not stir,
the ten thousand things stay blameless;
no blame, no phenomena,
no stirring, no mind.

The viewer disappears along with the scene,
the scene follows the viewer into oblivion,
for scene becomes scene only through the viewer,
viewer becomes viewer because of the scene.
– Seng-ts’an, 600
____________
The Poetic Meander
Ah…

Well here we are. Burning Man is raging once again, kids are having their last summer adventures, the clouds are moving in from the coast and life stumbles fully into Autumn. Mary and I sat outside yesterday evening and it was a bit chilly. Rain this morning…. I think a lot of the weather weirdness this year revolves around the Iceland volcano eruptions. All the classic signs are there: crop failures, weird storms, too cold here, too warm there. Of course we are always in the middle of climate change. When has it not been changing? Nothing is static, it is just picking up a bit of pace as of late…. 80)

The title of “The Poetic Meander” refers to the Zen poems, parables and other bits mixed into this Entry. It also refers to the state that I am in as of late; drifting from one school of poetry to another, reading T.S. Eliot before I sleep at night, Sufi works during the day, Zen and Celtic works in the evening. There is a flow going on, and it moves my attention from here to there and back again. If one really gets down to it, “The Poetic Meander” reflects on the nature of the human labyrinth that we find ourselves in with our daily, and inner lives. It is a journey of discovery that we are about, and each of play our parts as Theseus within the Labyrinth confronting our own personal Minotaur… If we take the analogy further perhaps the soul is a skein of thread gifted to us by our own inner Ariadne to find our way in and out again, back to the spirit from which we originated.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:
Asteroid Discovery From 1980 – 2010
Random Quotes
Robin Guthrie – Imperial
Quartet: Short Tales by Lord Dunsany
A Visitation: Octavio Paz Poems
Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd – She Is My Strength
Artist: Mikhail Vrubel
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Thanks to Peter for this!
Asteroid Discovery From 1980 – 2010

___________

Direct your eye right inward, and you’ll find
A thousand regions of your mind
Yet undiscovered. Travel them and be
Expert in home-cosmography.

– Henry David Thoreau
Walden
___________
Random Quotes:

Ralph Waldo Emerson | “Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet.”

William James | “The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

Dorothy Nevill | “The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right place but to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.”

Samuel Johnson | “Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Adrienne E. Gusoff | “Any woman who thinks the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach is aiming about 10 inches too high.”

John Gaule | “A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.”

Granville Hicks | “A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.”
___________

Robin Guthrie – Imperial

____________

Quartet: Short Tales by Lord Dunsany

THE GIANT POPPY

I dreamt that I went back to the hills I knew, whence on a clear day you can see the walls of Ilion and the plains of Roncesvalles. There used to be woods along the tops of those hills with clearings in them where the moonlight fell, and there when no one watched the fairies danced.

But there were no woods when I went back, no fairies nor distant glimpse of Ilion or plains of Roncesvalles, only one giant poppy waved in the wind, and as it waved it hummed “Remember not.” And by its oak-like stem a poet sat, dressed like a shepherd and playing an ancient tune softly upon a pipe. I asked him if the fairies had passed that way or anything olden.

He said: “The poppy has grown apace and is killing gods and fairies. Its fumes are suffocating the world, and its roots drain it of its beautiful strength.” And I asked him why he sat on the hills I knew, playing an olden tune.

And he answered: “Because the tune is bad for the poppy, which would otherwise grow more swiftly; and because if the brotherhood of which I am one were to cease to pipe on the hills men would stray over the world and be lost or come to terrible ends. We think we have saved Agamemnon.”

Then he fell to piping again that olden tune, while the wind among the poppy’s sleepy petals murmured “Remember not. Remember not.”
——
THE TOMB OF PAN

“Seeing,” they said, “that old-time Pan is dead, let us now make a tomb for him and a monument, that the dreadful worship of long ago may be remembered and avoided by all.”

So said the people of the enlightened lands. And they built a white and mighty tomb of marble. Slowly it rose under the hands of the builders and longer every evening after sunset it gleamed with rays of the departed sun.

And many mourned for Pan while the builders built; many reviled him. Some called the builders to cease and to weep for Pan and others called them to leave no memorial at all of so infamous a god. But the builders built on steadily.

And one day all was finished, and the tomb stood there like a steep sea-cliff. And Pan was carved thereon with humbled head and the feet of angels pressed upon his neck. And when the tomb was finished the sun had already set, but the afterglow was rosy on the huge bulk of Pan.

And presently all the enlightened people came, and saw the tomb and remembered Pan who was dead, and all deplored him and his wicked age. But a few wept apart because of the death of Pan.

But at evening as he stole out of the forest, and slipped like a shadow softly along the hills, Pan saw the tomb and laughed.
—-
(Mikhail Vrubel – Siren)

THE WORM AND THE ANGEL

As he crawled from the tombs of the fallen a worm met with an angel.

And together they looked upon the kings and kingdoms, and youths and maidens and the cities of men. They saw the old men heavy in their chairs and heard the children singing in the fields. They saw far wars and warriors and walled towns, wisdom and wickedness, and the pomp of kings, and the people of all the lands that the sunlight knew.

And the worm spake to the angel saying: “Behold my food.”

“Be dakeon para Thina poluphloisboio Thalassaes,” murmured the angel, for they walked by the sea, “and can you destroy that too?”

And the worm paled in his anger to a greyness ill to behold, for for three thousand years he had tried to destroy that line and still its melody was ringing in his head.
—-
THE PRAYER OF THE FLOWERS

It was the voice of the flowers on the West wind, the lovable, the old, the lazy West wind, blowing ceaselessly, blowing sleepily, going Greecewards.

“The woods have gone away, they have fallen and left us; men love us no longer, we are lonely by moonlight. Great engines rush over the beautiful fields, their ways lie hard and terrible up and down the land.

“The cancrous cities spread over the grass, they clatter in their lairs continually, they glitter about us blemishing the night.

“The woods are gone, O Pan, the woods, the woods. And thou art far, O Pan, and far away.”

I was standing by night between two railway embankments on the edge of a Midland city. On one of them I saw the trains go by, once in every two minutes, and on the other, the trains went by twice in every five.

Quite close were the glaring factories, and the sky above them wore the fearful look that it wears in dreams of fever.

The flowers were right in the stride of that advancing city, and thence I heard them sending up their cry. And then I heard, beating musically up wind, the voice of Pan reproving them from Arcady—

“Be patient a little, these things are not for long.”
____________

(Mikhail Vrubel – Demon)

Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through the galaxies
A fountain of light, into the very mind–
Not a thing, and yet it appears before me:
Now I know the pearl of the Buddha-nature
Know its use: a boundless perfect sphere.

– Han-Shan, circa 630
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A Visitation: Octavio Paz Poems

Touch

My hands
Open the curtains of your being
Clothe you in a further nudity
Uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
Invent another body for your body

–
As One Listens To The Rain

Listen to me as one listens to the rain,
not attentive, not distracted,
light footsteps, thin drizzle,
water that is air, air that is time,
the day is still leaving,
the night has yet to arrive,
figurations of mist
at the turn of the corner,
figurations of time
at the bend in this pause,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
without listening, hear what I say
with eyes open inward, asleep
with all five senses awake,
it’s raining, light footsteps, a murmur of syllables,
air and water, words with no weight:
what we are and are,
the days and years, this moment,
weightless time and heavy sorrow,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
wet asphalt is shining,
steam rises and walks away,
night unfolds and looks at me,
you are you and your body of steam,
you and your face of night,
you and your hair, unhurried lightning,
you cross the street and enter my forehead,
footsteps of water across my eyes,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the asphalt’s shining, you cross the street,
it is the mist, wandering in the night,
it is the night, asleep in your bed,
it is the surge of waves in your breath,
your fingers of water dampen my forehead,
your fingers of flame burn my eyes,
your fingers of air open eyelids of time,
a spring of visions and resurrections,
listen to me as one listens to the rain,
the years go by, the moments return,
do you hear the footsteps in the next room?
not here, not there: you hear them
in another time that is now,
listen to the footsteps of time,
inventor of places with no weight, nowhere,
listen to the rain running over the terrace,
the night is now more night in the grove,
lightning has nestled among the leaves,
a restless garden adrift-go in,
your shadow covers this page.
–
Counterparts

In my body you search the mountain
for the sun buried in its forest.
In your body I search for the boat
adrift in the middle of the night.
–
Summit And Gravity

There’s a motionless tree
And another one coming forward
A river of trees
Hits my chest
The green surge
Is good fortune
You are dressed in red
You are
The seal of the scorched year
The carnal firebrand
The star fruit
In you like sun
The hour rests
Above an abyss of clarities
The height is clouded by birds
Their beaks construct the night
Their wings carry the day
Planted in the crest of light
Between firmness and vertigo
You are
Transparent balance
–
Last Dawn

Your hair is lost in the forest,
your feet touching mine.
Asleep you are bigger than the night,
but your dream fits within this room.
How much we are who are so little!
Outside a taxi passes
with its load of ghosts.
The river that runs by
is always
running back.
Will tomorrow be another day?
____________

Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd – She Is My Strength

____________
Manjusri, a bodhisattva should regard all living beings as a wise man
Regards the reflection of the moon in water,
As magicians regard men created by magic.
As being like a face in a mirror,
like the water of a mirage;
like the sound of an echo;
like a mass of clouds in the sky;
like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble of water;
like the core of a plantain tree;
like a flash of lightning;
like the appearance of matter in an immaterial realm;
like a sprout from a rotten seed;
like tortoise-hair coat;
like the fun of games for one who wishes to die…

– Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra

(Mikhail Vrubel – Oyster)

Whatever is material shape, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, whether it is far or near — all material shape should be seen by perfect intuitive wisdom as it really is: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” Whatever is feeling, whatever is perception, whatever are habitual tendencies, whatever is consciousness, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, whether it is far or near — all should be seen by perfect intuitive wisdom as it really is: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” – Buddha Gautama (born 563 B.C.)

Still Point…
So… Here we are at the end of August, drifting into September. The rains came this morning, Mary and I stepped outside as it was raining, and the sun was shining as well. Absolute beauty. The day here has had a softness that is beyond compare. Everything has been glowing with light, and even the vegs in the garden are getting a burst all of a sudden.

Life is sweet. Surrounded by friends, family, our furry ones and the creatures that inhabit our neighborhood (new Jays have arrived!) I sense the exhale at this moment in the web of life. We are off to Sauvie Island this week for pickling cucumbers, and celebrating the beauty of the Autumn.

Here is to your Still Point, and all the gifts that it brings.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
Kodak 1922 Kodachrome Test
Surrealism Quotes
Steve Roach – Halcyon Days
Chinese Folk Tales: The Spirit
T.S. Eliot Quartet Extracts
Steve Roach – Earthman
___________

Thanks to Morgan Miller for this: Kodachrome Film Test, 1923…. as you may know, Kodachrome is no longer being produced….

____________
Surrealism Quotes:

JEAN-LOUIS BÉDOUIN: “Surrealism is born of a consciousness of the derisory condition allotted to the individual and his thought, and a refusal to accommodate oneself to it.”

JOHN HERBERT MATTHEWS: “Surrealism was a perception of reality over which reason was denied the opportunity to exercise confining restrictions.”

HENRY MILLER: “Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end.”

CATHRIN KLINGSÖHR-LEROY: “For its adherents, Surrealism was a way of life, a kind of existence that left room for playfulness and creativity. It was about living for the moment, with spontaneity and internal intellectual freedom and a lack of materialism, all of which were completely opposed to the values of the bourgeoisie.”

ANNA BALAKIAN: “Surrealism has come to have two meanings: it was originally the closely-knit spiritual union of artists and writers who operated under the common trademark, worked out their artistic problems together, wrote for the same periodicals, sometimes even collaborated on works. But … in its broader sense it represents a spiritual crisis that stems from the ideological developments of the nineteenth century, and has succeeded in producing a technique of writing and painting that conveys a materio-mystical vision of the universe.”

KATHARINE CONLEY: “Surrealism is embedded in the everyday, in the daily experience.”

ANDRE BRETON: “The mind which plunges into Surrealism, relives with burning excitement the best part of childhood.”
____________

Steve Roach – Halcyon Days

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Chinese Folk Tales: The Spirit

In former times a poor kindhearted man, by trade a fisherman, lived with his family of wife and three children in a straw hut on the banks of a river in the middle of a thick forest.

Unfortunately, the fish had been nearly exterminated by the cormorants, and for several days he carried an empty basket home. There was nothing to eat in the cooking pot. His children cried, his wife scolded, but all he could do was to knit his brows.

One night, when the moon had just disappeared behind the mountains, he was restlessly tossing about in bed. His wife and children were sleeping soundly. Suddenly he seemed to hear a knock at the door. Thinking that no one could be about at such a late hour, he paid no attention, until finally the knocking became very insistent. Having no fear of ghosts, he pulled on some clothes and glanced out of the window near the bed.

The silvery-green disk of the moon was shining through the pines on the western hills, and an icy wind blew in through the window. Going to the door, called out, “Who is there?” “It is I,” answered the voice. “I am bringing you fish. Open the door quickly.” “Oh, are you Little Number Three?” asked the fisherman, because he had once heard that Little Three caught fish for other people. Since the voice answered his question in the affirmative, he opened the door.

A dwarf, clad in a raincoat and a large straw hat, came smiling into the room with a basket full of fish on his back. He told the fisherman to take out half the fish, and to cook and eat the remainder; on no account, though, must he talk to other people about who had brought them.

Little Three did the cooking himself in the simplest fashion. He used no spices—only salt and oil—but the food tasted delicious. When they had finished eating, he made an appointment with the fisherman for the following night at a certain place to catch fish.

The next morning the fisherman sold the fish, bought some rice, and told his wife that a friend had lent him some money. He sat at home all day and pondered over his experience. When his wife urged him to go out, he merely replied that there were no fish and that it was a waste of time to go down to the river.

Night fell and it was soon time to go. His wife and children were asleep; silently the fisherman took a large fishing basket and went off to meet Little Three. He met him by the wild rocks near the river. The spirit impressed on him the need of following closely and not saying a word and of breathing as softly as possible. The fish could not see Little Three, but if they made any noise the fish would swim away at once. The strangest thing was that the dwarf was able to walk on the water, and he only needed to spit on the soles of the fisherman’s shoes to enable him to do the same. Naturally, the fish could not see the fisherman either.

The fisherman did exactly as he was told. He took great care not to breathe too loudly, and when Little Three caught a fish he took it from him and threw it into the basket. He was kept very busy, and soon became quite out of breath. Before they had gone a quarter of the way, the basket was full; he merely threw the rest of the fish back into the water again, because the spirit went on catching fish without bothering to see whether there was any place to put them or not. A little later they both stepped onto the bank, and shivers ran down the fisherman’s spine at the appalling sight of the deep water they had crossed. They returned home, cooked and ate half the fish, and put the other half aside according to the orders the spirit had given.

Every night, except at the time of the full moon, they went out fishing, but the fisherman said nothing to his wife. To avoid all suspicion, he even went fishing during the day from time to time. But he earned so much money that his wife became suspicious, and eventually she discovered everything.

One night she pretended to be asleep and watched to see what her husband would do. She saw him eating fish with another man and then come into the bedroom and go to sleep. She made no sign, but when he had fallen asleep she got up and saw what they had been doing.

The next day she bored a small hole in the plaster wall and watched the two men cooking the fish. she saw how they only cooked half of them, and she thought to herself that if only they could keep the other half they would have food for several days.

She made a plan, and the following night, when Little Three came again and placed the pot on the fire, it suddenly went up in flames. The spirit saw at once that something was wrong and ran away. The fisherman was very angry, but not until his wife came into the room with a smile on her face did he know that the pot had been made of paper. From then on, the spirit never came to cook and eat fish.

from Folk Tales of China by Eberhard
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One of my early great loves, the poetry of T.S. Eliot….

T.S. Eliot Quartet Extracts:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.
——
The detail of the pattern is movement,
As in the figure of the ten stairs.
Desire itself is movement
Not in itself desirable;
Love is itself unmoving,
Only the cause and end of movement,
Timeless, and undesiring
Except in the aspect of time
Caught in the form of limitation
Between un-being and being.
Sudden in a shaft of sunlight
Even while the dust moves
There rises the hidden laughter
Of children in the foliage
Quick now, here, now, always-
Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
—–

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.
________________
Steve Roach – Earthman

“And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing”

On The Music Box: The Fountain Sound Track

This posting is an amalgam of a couple of different threads running through my experiences of late. I have been contemplating Mystery, Labour and Class relations among other subjects as I have gone about the everyday life. I was surprised and saddened to find that the great Jimmy Reid had passed on August 10th. I have included his famous Glasgow University Speech from 1972. Jimmy was part of a long tradition of working class intellectuals that helped craft Glasgow and the Glaswegian intelligensia over the centuries. Though not known so well in the US, he had a deep impact on the ideas of critical thinking, class and labour relationships and the now lost and lamented traditions of shipbuilding upon the Clyde. I have included a eulogy from Billy Connolly as well. It rambles a bit, but it helps shape the image of Jimmy in your mind if you let it.

There is a wee article on Mystery that I have crafted, part of another work that I have been putting together elsewhere. Mystery, Poetry, Music make up the remainder of this posting.

I should have another Turfing out soon, as I have been crafting another as I was working on this one.

Here is to you all,

Gwyllm
______
On The Menu:
Upon Mystery
Maps – I Dream of Crystal
Mystery Quotes
Fare Thee Well, Jimmy Reid: Still irresistible, a working-class hero’s finest speech
Billy Connolly’s Eulogy For Jimmy Reid
Sentient Fireballs and Biting Lights
The Poems Of Fedrico Garcia Lorca
Maps – Valium In the Sunshine
________________

Upon Mystery
(The Mystery Of It All!) We are born from mystery, swim through our lives with mystery, and with mystery we return to the great depths at the end of life.

Mystery. Give me mystery. that is the heart of the matter. When I contemplate mystery I’m engaged upon a quest opened up to multiple, perhaps infinite possibilities. Mysteries evokes a state of mind that motivates on multiple levels. I would rather have mystery than answers, To have the unformed churning in the mind, is to be on the threshing floor of creation. Mystery by its basic nature shares the event horizon with you.

Answers are perhaps the death of curiosity on many levels. When people think they have the answer(s), they apparently turn off to other possibilities, other paths. Answers move from the fluid state that mystery evokes, to a static state. That which is connected with the quest ceases. With answers, finite horizons assert themselves, what was once wild and boundless, now caged.

Imagine this if you haven’t experienced it… You are on a small craft, beyond the horizon from land, late at night. There is no moon, only stars. The craft is absolutely dark, you kneel by the gunwale, and let your hand drift in the water in the darkness… This is entering into mystery, a mystery rife with surrender, danger, anticipation, questing…

We go through our lives assured by what we think are the answers. Answers are comforting, and assuring. They delineate and guide. They are in the main harmless… We accept answers from an early age, we put innocent faith in those who first answer our questions. For some, this is enough. For others, asking the questions continues. It can leads one down the most peculiar of paths. If you ask the right questions you can end up either on the world stage, in prison, or on the path of wonder. The questing is the key, and the interpreting of the signpost along the way.

Invoke Isis, and she will come forth. Life is the mystery to be lived fully and with intent. (and no… that is not an answer!)

Blessings,
Gwyllm
_______________

MAPS new album: Turning The Mind….
Maps – I Dream of Crystal

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Mystery Quotes:

Oscar Wilde: “The final mystery is oneself.”

Charles de Lint: “Without mysteries, life would be very dull indeed. What would be left to strive for if everything were known?”

Albert Einstein: “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

G. K. Chesterton: “The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.”

Henri Frederic Amiel: “Let mystery have its place in you; do not be always turning up your whole soil with the ploughshare of self-examination, but leave a little fallow corner in your heart ready for any seed the winds may bring…”

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Fare Thee Well, Jimmy Reid: Still irresistible, a working-class hero’s finest speech

Jimmy Reid, the Clydeside trade union activist who died recently, was an inspiring orator. This speech, delivered on his inauguration as rector of Glasgow University in 1972, was compared at the time to the Gettysburg Address. It has lost little of its relevance

Alienation is the precise and correctly applied word for describing the major social problem in Britain today. People feel alienated by society. In some intellectual circles it is treated almost as a new phenomenon. It has, however, been with us for years. What I believe is true is that today it is more widespread, more pervasive than ever before. Let me right at the outset define what I mean by alienation. It is the cry of men who feel themselves the victims of blind economic forces beyond their control. It’s the frustration of ordinary people excluded from the processes of decision-making. The feeling of despair and hopelessness that pervades people who feel with justification that they have no real say in shaping or determining their own destinies.

Many may not have rationalised it. May not even understand, may not be able to articulate it. But they feel it. It therefore conditions and colours their social attitudes. Alienation expresses itself in different ways in different people. It is to be found in what our courts often describe as the criminal antisocial behaviour of a section of the community. It is expressed by those young people who want to opt out of society, by drop-outs, the so-called maladjusted, those who seek to escape permanently from the reality of society through intoxicants and narcotics. Of course, it would be wrong to say it was the sole reason for these things. But it is a much greater factor in all of them than is generally recognised.

Society and its prevailing sense of values leads to another form of alienation. It alienates some from humanity. It partially de-humanises some people, makes them insensitive, ruthless in their handling of fellow human beings, self-centred and grasping. The irony is, they are often considered normal and well-adjusted. It is my sincere contention that anyone who can be totally adjusted to our society is in greater need of psychiatric analysis and treatment than anyone else. They remind me of the character in the novel, Catch 22, the father of Major Major. He was a farmer in the American Mid-West. He hated suggestions for things like medi-care, social services, unemployment benefits or civil rights. He was, however, an enthusiast for the agricultural policies that paid farmers for not bringing their fields under cultivation. From the money he got for not growing alfalfa he bought more land in order not to grow alfalfa. He became rich. Pilgrims came from all over the state to sit at his feet and learn how to be a successful non-grower of alfalfa. His philosophy was simple. The poor didn’t work hard enough and so they were poor. He believed that the good Lord gave him two strong hands to grab as much as he could for himself. He is a comic figure. But think – have you not met his like here in Britain? Here in Scotland? I have.

It is easy and tempting to hate such people. However, it is wrong. They are as much products of society, and of a consequence of that society, human alienation, as the poor drop-out. They are losers. They have lost the essential elements of our common humanity. Man is a social being. Real fulfilment for any person lies in service to his fellow men and women. The big challenge to our civilisation is not Oz, a magazine I haven’t seen, let alone read. Nor is it permissiveness, although I agree our society is too permissive. Any society which, for example, permits over one million people to be unemployed is far too permissive for my liking. Nor is it moral laxity in the narrow sense that this word is generally employed – although in a sense here we come nearer to the problem. It does involve morality, ethics, and our concept of human values. The challenge we face is that of rooting out anything and everything that distorts and devalues human relations.

Let me give two examples from contemporary experience to illustrate the point.

Recently on television I saw an advert. The scene is a banquet. A gentleman is on his feet proposing a toast. His speech is full of phrases like “this full-bodied specimen”. Sitting beside him is a young, buxom woman. The image she projects is not pompous but foolish. She is visibly preening herself, believing that she is the object of the bloke’s eulogy. Then he concludes – “and now I give…”, then a brand name of what used to be described as Empire sherry. Then the laughter. Derisive and cruel laughter. The real point, of course, is this. In this charade, the viewers were obviously expected to identify not with the victim but with her tormentors.

The other illustration is the widespread, implicit acceptance of the concept and term “the rat race”. The picture it conjures up is one where we are scurrying around scrambling for position, trampling on others, back-stabbing, all in pursuit of personal success. Even genuinely intended, friendly advice can sometimes take the form of someone saying to you, “Listen, you look after number one.” Or as they say in London, “Bang the bell, Jack, I’m on the bus.”

To the students [of Glasgow University] I address this appeal. Reject these attitudes. Reject the values and false morality that underlie these attitudes. A rat race is for rats. We’re not rats. We’re human beings. Reject the insidious pressures in society that would blunt your critical faculties to all that is happening around you, that would caution silence in the face of injustice lest you jeopardise your chances of promotion and self-advancement. This is how it starts, and before you know where you are, you’re a fully paid-up member of the rat-pack. The price is too high. It entails the loss of your dignity and human spirit. Or as Christ put it, “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul?”

Profit is the sole criterion used by the establishment to evaluate economic activity. From the rat race to lame ducks. The vocabulary in vogue is a give-away. It’s more reminiscent of a human menagerie than human society. The power structures that have inevitably emerged from this approach threaten and undermine our hard-won democratic rights. The whole process is towards the centralisation and concentration of power in fewer and fewer hands. The facts are there for all who want to see. Giant monopoly companies and consortia dominate almost every branch of our economy. The men who wield effective control within these giants exercise a power over their fellow men which is frightening and is a negation of democracy.

Government by the people for the people becomes meaningless unless it includes major economic decision-making by the people for the people. This is not simply an economic matter. In essence it is an ethical and moral question, for whoever takes the important economic decisions in society ipso facto determines the social priorities of that society.

From the Olympian heights of an executive suite, in an atmosphere where your success is judged by the extent to which you can maximise profits, the overwhelming tendency must be to see people as units of production, as indices in your accountants’ books. To appreciate fully the inhumanity of this situation, you have to see the hurt and despair in the eyes of a man suddenly told he is redundant, without provision made for suitable alternative employment, with the prospect in the West of Scotland, if he is in his late forties or fifties, of spending the rest of his life in the Labour Exchange. Someone, somewhere has decided he is unwanted, unneeded, and is to be thrown on the industrial scrap heap. From the very depth of my being, I challenge the right of any man or any group of men, in business or in government, to tell a fellow human being that he or she is expendable.

The concentration of power in the economic field is matched by the centralisation of decision-making in the political institutions of society. The power of Parliament has undoubtedly been eroded over past decades, with more and more authority being invested in the Executive. The power of local authorities has been and is being systematically undermined. The only justification I can see for local government is as a counter- balance to the centralised character of national government.

Local government is to be restructured. What an opportunity, one would think, for de-centralising as much power as possible back to the local communities. Instead, the proposals are for centralising local government. It’s once again a blue-print for bureaucracy, not democracy. If these proposals are implemented, in a few years when asked “Where do you come from?” I can reply: “The Western Region.” It even sounds like a hospital board.

It stretches from Oban to Girvan and eastwards to include most of the Glasgow conurbation. As in other matters, I must ask the politicians who favour these proposals – where and how in your calculations did you quantify the value of a community? Of community life? Of a sense of belonging? Of the feeling of identification? These are rhetorical questions. I know the answer. Such human considerations do not feature in their thought processes.

Everything that is proposed from the establishment seems almost calculated to minimise the role of the people, to miniaturise man. I can understand how attractive this prospect must be to those at the top. Those of us who refuse to be pawns in their power game can be picked up by their bureaucratic tweezers and dropped in a filing cabinet under “M” for malcontent or maladjusted. When you think of some of the high flats around us, it can hardly be an accident that they are as near as one could get to an architectural representation of a filing cabinet.

If modern technology requires greater and larger productive units, let’s make our wealth-producing resources and potential subject to public control and to social accountability. Let’s gear our society to social need, not personal greed. Given such creative re-orientation of society, there is no doubt in my mind that in a few years we could eradicate in our country the scourge of poverty, the underprivileged, slums, and insecurity.

Even this is not enough. To measure social progress purely by material advance is not enough. Our aim must be the enrichment of the whole quality of life. It requires a social and cultural, or if you wish, a spiritual transformation of our country. A necessary part of this must be the restructuring of the institutions of government and, where necessary, the evolution of additional structures so as to involve the people in the decision-making processes of our society. The so-called experts will tell you that this would be cumbersome or marginally inefficient. I am prepared to sacrifice a margin of efficiency for the value of the people’s participation. Anyway, in the longer term, I reject this argument.

To unleash the latent potential of our people requires that we give them responsibility. The untapped resources of the North Sea are as nothing compared to the untapped resources of our people. I am convinced that the great mass of our people go through life without even a glimmer of what they could have contributed to their fellow human beings. This is a personal tragedy. It’s a social crime. The flowering of each individual’s personality and talents is the pre-condition for everyone’s development.

In this context education has a vital role to play. If automation and technology is accompanied as it must be with a full employment, then the leisure time available to man will be enormously increased. If that is so, then our whole concept of education must change. The whole object must be to equip and educate people for life, not solely for work or a profession. The creative use of leisure, in communion with and in service to our fellow human beings, can and must become an important element in self-fulfilment.

Universities must be in the forefront of development, must meet social needs and not lag behind them. It is my earnest desire that this great University of Glasgow should be in the vanguard, initiating changes and setting the example for others to follow. Part of our educational process must be the involvement of all sections of the university on the governing bodies. The case for student representation is unanswerable. It is inevitable.

My conclusion is to re-affirm what I hope and certainly intend to be the spirit permeating this address. It’s an affirmation of faith in humanity. All that is good in man’s heritage involves recognition of our common humanity, an unashamed acknowledgement that man is good by nature. Burns expressed it in a poem that technically was not his best, yet captured the spirit. In “Why should we idly waste our prime…”:

“The golden age, we’ll then revive, each man shall be a brother,

In harmony we all shall live and till the earth together,

In virtue trained, enlightened youth shall move each fellow creature,

And time shall surely prove the truth that man is good by nature.”

It’s my belief that all the factors to make a practical reality of such a world are maturing now. I would like to think that our generation took mankind some way along the road towards this goal. It’s a goal worth fighting for.
—-
Billy Connolly’s Eulogy For Jimmy Reid
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Sentient Fireballs and Biting Lights

Strange luminous encounters, from fleeting sightings to lethal attacks
Text: Theo Paijmans / Images: Sybille Delacroix

At the fringes of those luminous phenomena which range from spook lights to freak lightning, there are some strange accounts for which there is no ready explanation. These involve lights that show a parti­cular interest in human beings – and not always to their benefit.

Take what befell 12-year-old George Campbell and his father, EW Campbell. They were riding along the ‘Eighty-foot Road’, north of the city of Sherman, Texas, on the night of 4 October 1898. Somewhat after nine o’clock that evening, the boy was witness to a startling phenomenon:

He is a bright, intelligent little fellow, who said he didn’t believe in ghosts; that his parents had never scared him with spook stories, and he is one of the best- behaved scholars in the fourth grade at the Franklin school building. His story as told to a News reporter to-day is as foll ows: “Last night papa and I were riding along the ‘Eighty-foot Road’, about two and a half miles [4km] north of town, when all at once everything got very bright. We saw a great ball of fire coming down toward the ground. It got within about three feet [90cm] of the ground and seemed to rest for a while and then it went back up until it got clear out of sight. There was a buzzing sound all the time.” George describes it as being about 10 feet [3m] in diameter and that it hurt one’s eyes to look at it. Although they were very close to it, he says that he did not feel any heat. [1]

It’s a puzzling tale, one which nowadays might be interpreted as a UFO account.

Another encounter with a mysterious fireball did not have such a fortunate outcome. Twenty-two years previously, also in Texas, near the town of Palestine, another “intelligent boy” appeared, out of breath and “as pale as he could be”. His story was that he’d been trudging along a highway at night.

There was a negro woman riding a horse in the direction the little coloured boy was going. The boy appeared that night in Palestine… He said he saw a ball of fire come out of the sky and strike the woman and set her ablaze. The horse ran away with the woman afire on his back, and he ran to town to tell the people what had happened. The people went to look after further parti culars concerning this curious incid ent, and they found the woman lying on the ground, her clothing burned off, but enough of life in her to tell that she had been struck in the breast by a ball of fire. She died the next day. The horse was afterwards found with his mane singed. People here think that she was struck by a meteor. [2]

In contrast, there are also numerous instances of death from above by freak lightning manifesting as balls of fire. These incidents are no less outré, but in such cases we might console ourselves with a natural explanation. In 1866, Miss Addie Murray, a schoolteacher in Ross township, Vermillion county, Illinois, met her untimely end in this way: “She was sitting in the schoolhouse with two pupils, when the house was struck, and she was found sitt ing in the chair dead, with her clothing nearly burned off, and the child ren severely stunned. The child ren describe the scene as a ball of fire falling into the room.” [3] Something similar struck John Whitton, a driver for a telegraph construction train in Leavenworth that same year. “He had occasion to lift the tele graph line off the ground, when a flash of lightning struck the line at that point, tearing it into small pieces, and instantly killing him. The men who saw the accident state that they saw a ball of fire as large as a man’s fist issue from Whitton’s breast.” [4]

An unfortunate death by a fireball in 1933 was accompan ied by a curious premonition on the part of the unfortunate victim. “In San Rocco, during a thunderstorm, a cleric was killed by lightning. The priest was involved in a discussion with several of his congregation in the village street, when quite slowly a one metre [40in] big, orange-coloured fireball came floating through the air straight towards the priest, which then erupted in his vicinity. The incid ent made quite an impress ion on the superstitious farmers, more so, as the day before the priest had presaged his own demise that was soon to come.” [5]

A different kind of strange light, again attracted by the presence of a human being, was experienced by Alec Campbell, working as a game warden in Southern Rhodesia (now Zim babwe). One night, Campbell was walking by an old burial ground when suddenly a bright light appeared beside him. “The light turned into a ball of fire about the size of a softball and moved along at Campbell’s speed, he said… he turned and stared at the mysterious light. Immediately, the ball started advancing on him.” Campbell remembered the tales that said that if one encountered such a light, the best thing to do was to close one’s eyes, which would cause the light to disappear. He did so, and the light vanished. [6]

Could there be lights not only possessed of some sort of intelli gence but which are capable of forming a unique rapport with a person and even delivering painful stings when they so choose?

This seems to have been the case in Richmond, Indiana, in 1978. The bizarre incident involved local resident Martha Grieswell, 46 at the time, whose house had been plagued by “flashing pinpoints of light” ever since one had come into her bedroom one night in early January that year. Grieswell described how it appeared to her that she and the light were watching each other. The little light approached her: “I said ‘No,’ and it stopped about one and half feet [45cm] away. Then I held out my hand and it came right over and sat in my hand and turned my whole hand a psychedelic purple. It glowed for a while, then shut down to a point of light, then rose from my hand – then the others started to come in…”

Over the following nights, dozens of the “floating, flashing lights”, mostly white and pinhead-sized, entered her bedroom through the closed window; after that, they became her constant companions as soon as evening fell. Grieswell also began to note some of these lights during the daytime, although then they seemed less active. She moved out of the upstairs bedroom, where the lights continued to manifest, and began conducting experiments to try to ascertain what the lights might be. She captured several in containers, including an aluminium cigar ette case, and saw them shining through the container walls. Grieswell also immersed the lights in water, keeping them submerged for two days: “The lights were observed to ‘swim’ freely, and when released, to ‘fly’ free, their lights undimmed.” She got the same results when she locked them up in a freezer. She was only able to conduct these experiments when the lights were willing participants, since at other times they simply escaped through the walls of the containers. Radiation tests and an attempted chemical analysis turned up nothing. She did find out, though, that one thing had an effect on the lights. When she touched one with a burning cigarette, the light made “a crackling sound, as if you had wadded up cellophane very rapidly in your hand”. She was unable to replicate that experiment: “You can’t burn them any more. They move away too fast,” she explained. It dawned upon Mrs Grieswell that the lights might learn from experience and therefore might possess some kind of intelligence. When asked why she wanted to get rid of them, she gave the unnerving answer: “Because they bite.” At times, when the lights became more bright, they would sting or bite, giving off a sensation like “the sting of a sweat bee”, and leaving a very small welt. “They go through a tapping motion… When they land, they raise up, then light again… they feel like bugs when they sit on you and that’s when they burn.”

One night, a light got in her eye, which was a painful experience. The next day, she noticed that the eye was bloodshot and the corner crusted. When the lights were not stinging her, they had a tendency to land and crawl over her during the night. They also stung her husband, who wasn’t able to see them. This might be a significant detail; some of the many curious people who visited her house were able to see the lights, yet others were not.

Trying to escape the lights for a while, Mrs Grieswell went to her mother in Decatur, but on the third night after her arrival the lights came in through the window and were also seen by her mother. Perhaps, she reasoned, they had been able to follow her or had hidden themselves in her clothing or luggage. She got the impression that the lights meant to say that she could not flee from them. She sought help, and consulted scientists, ufologists and psychic researchers, but to little avail. As she said to the reporter who visited her (he wasn’t able to see the lights): “I’ve just made up my mind that I’m not going to get rid of them.” [7]

One of the psychic researchers whom Grieswell contacted offered as explanation that she might be “experiencing a stage of consciousness preliminary to becoming a psychic medium”. A plausible suggestion, coming from a psychic researcher, as puzzling luminous phenomena manifest themselves often around mediums, and are well known in the field of para psych ology. It is said that Helène Smith experienced the manifest ation of mysterious globes or lights in her studio where she had taken up painting, long after her association and ensuing break-up with Theo dore Flournoy: “The visions were accompanied by luminous phenomena. They began with a ball of light which expanded and filled the room. This was not a subjective phenomenon. Helène Smith exposed photo graphic plates which indeed registered strong luminous effects.” [8]

Then there is the case of Ada Bessinet, a Toledo medium of the 1920s. Denounced as a subconscious fraud by Professor Hyslop, who had investigated her during 70 sittings between 1909 and 1910, she clearly made more of an impression on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote, describing a séance with her: “Brilliant lights are part of the medium’s power, and even before she had sunk into a trance, they were flying up in graceful curves as high as the ceiling and circling back on us. One nearly rested on my hand. It seems to be a cold light, and its nature has never been determined, but perhaps the cold, vital light of the firefly may be an analogy.” [9] Hereward Carr ing ton was another who was not impressed, but he did state that he observed some very curious lights at a 1922 séance which, “on request, hovered for a few moments over exposed photographic plates and that the plates, when developed, showed unusual markings which he failed to obtain by artificial means”. [10]
==============
Notes
1 “Aerial Phenomena in Texas”, Dallas Morning News, Texas, 5 Oct 1898; “Aerial Phenomena In Texas”, Galveston Daily News, Texas, 6 Oct 1898.
2 “Burned To Death By A Meteor”, Burlington Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, 23 Mar 1876; “Burned To Death By A Meteor”, Ohio Democrat, New Philadelphia, Ohio, 30 Mar 1876; “Burned To Death By A Meteor”, Decatur Daily Repub lican, Decatur, Illinois, 11 April 1876.
3 The North-West, Free port, Illinois, 23 Aug 1866.
4 Bangor Daily Whig And Courier, Bangor, Maine, 26 June 1866.
5 “Vuurbol Doodt Een Priester”, De Gelderlander, ed. Nijmegen, Netherlands, 18 Aug 1933.
6 Sanford Spillman: “Strange To Relate”, Winnipeg Free Press, Canada, 2 Aug 1969.
7 Barry Wood: “What Lights Through Yonder Window Broke?” and Barry Wood: “Others Say They’ve Seen The Lights At Mrs Grieswell’s House”, both in the Pallad ium-Item, Richmond, Indiana, 20 Aug 1978; also summar ised in the Logansport Pharos-Tribune, Logansport, Indiana, 28 Aug 1978. An account of Martha Grieswell’s ordeal was also published in Wonders, Dec 1995, as “Life As We Know It Not”, by Mark A Hall, pp109–118.
8 Nandor Fodor: Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, University Books, 1966, 3rd printing 1969, p350.
9 Walter B. Gibson: “Human Enigmas That Still keep the World Guessing, No. 14 – Ada Besinnet”, Lethbridge Daily Herald, Lethbridge, Canada, 13 Jan 1925.
10 Fodor: Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, p30.
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The Poems Of Fedrico Garcia Lorca

Before The Dawn

But like love
the archers
are blind

Upon the green night,
the piercing saetas
leave traces of warm
lily.

The keel of the moon
breaks through purple clouds
and their quivers
fill with dew.

Ay, but like love
the archers
are blind!
—
Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to withdraw from the tumult of cemetries.
I want to sleep the dream of that child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.

I don’t want to hear again that the dead do not lose their blood,
that the putrid mouth goes on asking for water.
I don’t want to learn of the tortures of the grass,
nor of the moon with a serpent’s mouth
that labors before dawn.

I want to sleep awhile,
awhile, a minute, a century;
but all must know that I have not died;
that there is a stable of gold in my lips;
that I am the small friend of the West wing;
that I am the intense shadows of my tears.

Cover me at dawn with a veil,
because dawn will throw fistfuls of ants at me,
and wet with hard water my shoes
so that the pincers of the scorpion slide.

For I want to sleep the dream of the apples,
to learn a lament that will cleanse me to earth;
for I want to live with that dark child
who wanted to cut his heart on the high seas.
—
Gacela of the Dead Child

Each afternoon in Granada,
each afternoon, a child dies.
Each afternoon the water sits down
and chats with its companions.

The dead wear mossy wings.
The cloudy wind and the clear wind
are two pheasants in flight through the towers,
and the day is a wounded boy.

Not a flicker of lark was left in the air
when I met you in the caverns of wine.
Not the crumb of a cloud was left in the ground
when you were drowned in the river.

A giant of water fell down over the hills,
and the valley was tumbling with lilies and dogs.
In my hands’ violet shadow, your body,
dead on the bank, was an angel of coldness.
—
Gacela of Unforseen Love

No one understood the perfume
of the dark magnolia of your womb.
Nobody knew that you tormented
a hummingbird of love between your teeth.

A thousand Persian little horses fell asleep
in the plaza with moon of your forehead,
while through four nights I embraced
your waist, enemy of the snow.

Between plaster and jasmins, your glance
was a pale branch of seeds.
I sought in my heart to give you
the ivory letters that say “siempre”,

“siempre”, “siempre” : garden of my agony,
your body elusive always,
that blood of your veins in my mouth,
your mouth already lightless for my death.

_______________

Maps – Valium In the Sunshine

Ever anticipated a dream, or wished one and had it occur? I had such an event last night. When I was younger, I had many “Flying Dreams”, where I would flap my arms and take off into the air; swooping, gliding, slowly drifting back to earth, and then springing high into the air. They don’t feel remarkable at all, and at times it seems the dream is more real than the waking. It was a bit of joy to return to this state again, oh the sense of freedom and limitlessness….

This edition of Turfing is made up of wild, rare and wonderful things… from the music of Bob Desper, a little known bard of psychedelic folk music from the Willamette Valley, a wonderful Coyote Tale from the Apaches, to the poetry of Bryce Milligan… I have had fun assembling this edition! Please check out Number 900 and The Great Bay as well.

Thanks,
Gwyllm
__________________

On The Menu:
Number 900: The Entries
The Great Bay
Bob Desper – Time Is Almost Over Now
Coyote in the Underworld
The Poetry Of Bryce Milligan
Bob Desper – Liberty 1974
__________________

Number 900: The Entries…

So, let me explain. This is the 900th entry of Turfing. No. Really…
What started out as an almost daily event has over the years has slowed down a bit, but still, we carry on. It is perhaps the one defining act of art that I have stayed consistently with… Painting I go in and out of, The Invisible College is always around, Poetry comes when not beckoned (less frequently now), but the assemblage of Turfing has been a constant for almost 6 years now. It is the project that is always calling.

I have used it for good and ill; to bring obscure art, poetry and music forward, to ward off working on my other writings, art etc. In the end, it is all the same I think. In dodging something, I create something. That works. I found that I have edited individual postings up to 50 times, photos, music, articles, links… sometimes a post comes together in 15 minutes, sometimes I work off and on on a post for a couple of weeks entailing several hours. I do find myself at a loss on occasion on what to post. This is patently silly, there is so much poetry art, stories and music to publish, let alone commentary that could be made… yet there are times when inspiration flees, and can’t be coaxed back.

I began Turfing thinking I knew a fair amount about art, poetry, music, but over the years as I have expanded my materials, I have become convinced of my lack of true knowledge on these subjects. It doesn’t matter how much you read, there just isn’t enough time. The corpus is just so vast, and the more you discover, the more there is that you have not yet uncovered. I stand among riches beyond compare, and yet so much is unobtainable.

I often despair in the fact that there is a limit to what I can read due to lack of translations… Among many streams, I have a desire to dive into the Urdu schools of poetry, but the translations are so few and far between. As I have gone further and further into the Sufi poets, I realize that many of the gems are in the Urdu languages, and the translations are just not there. I will continue my searches, and true more stuff comes on line all the time. Hopefully, hopefully.

So, over the years, I have watched the postings evolve, and de-evolve. Sometimes I am pleased other times less so. What I do know is that it is an act of Magick: making sense out of the chaos of the last 5000 or more years of cultural tides, influences and dreams. The magick is in the mix, the elements that evolve out of the postings, whether it be Sheikh Nematollah, Ameregin, Oscar Wilde, Radiohead, Shpongle, Erik Davis, Jean Cocteau, Sappho, Petronius, Laura Riding, Allen Ginsberg, Christina Rossetti, or Aldous Huxley. Herein lies the Magick of cultural transmission. We sit together in the cave, seeing the pictures emerge from flame and shadow, out of dreams, and the stories of plants and daemons. Here we connect, across cultures, time, space, gender and different forms of consciousness. There is a stream that knows no beginning or end, that we have all dipped our cups into and drank of…

One of the sweet points of Turfing has been the feedback that I have gotten, most often directly emailed to me. People share that the poetry moved them, a story, or some of my musings. This is like gold to me. I do enjoy the contact with readers, and it is great to know that the assemblage known as “Turfing” touches people.

Off the top of my hat I would like to thank a few people: Ibn, who first put a blog setup together for me and gave it it’s name. He is now travelling around the world with his wife on a long deserved vacation, I wish I were in greater contact with him. Don Ford, for the encouragement and feedback over the years. Lo Ryder, Clark, Diane & Diana, Oliver, Chaff, Scott, Will Penna and many others who have contacted me over the years (Thanks especially to all on the Earthrites List). Col. Kurtz of course with software help, Morgan Miller for being an absolute champ, and a hero. Dale and Laura Pendell for their conversations and encouragement to explore even deeper, and last but not least, Mary who has been my constant Muse for many years. Without her, nothing would have ever floated.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
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The Great Bay – Dale Pendell

In a year that has seen the highest recorded temperatures around the world (102f in Moscow), and with the various ecological disaster scenarios playing out (freezing temperatures in the Amazon, droughts across the northern hemisphere, the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico) the release of “The Great Bay” couldn’t be more timely. we are at a crossroads, there is no doubt, and have been for awhile. Whilst the crossroads remain the same symbolically, the scenario shifts and changes at what appears to be an ever quickening rate.

I have to admit, I have not read much science fiction as of late. I have not been reading Ray Bradbury (happy 90th birthday Ray!), nor William Gibson or Bruce Sterling. It seems most scenarios that I found fascinating in SF years ago have come and gone in rapid succession. (True, I have not seen the great worms of Arrakis, but I certainly have experienced the Spice./ )

The Great Bay moves into another territory altogether. Other books have had elements of it, but the story telling format within The Great Bay is unique. It has been remarked that this is a dystopian tale. Well yes, and certainly no. It has won “The Best Science Fiction” award from the 2010 Green Book Festival… The science is sound, and very well researched. There is great travail and obstacles presented in this collection of future tales and myths, intimately tied into Climate Change and its effects. In many ways it is a cliffhanger. Will the human race and the other inhabitants of earth survive the bumpy ride into the future? It is a chronology, of many characters spread over a vast expanse of time. (and what characters!) It begins with the melt down of world civilization due to the misuse of technology that results in the deaths of billions, leaving the survivors dazed, and scrabbling through the ruins of what once was. As the dust of years settles, that which went before becomes fading memories, stories, myths and then merely the faintest of distant dreams. Landscapes and seascapes change incessantly, and humans end up doing the same as well. Life finds new and unique patterns within the challenges.

I am reading it for a second time. I had to. I am absorbing the tales, the gyres and eddies of future myths and peoples. At times I want the book to hesitate over a certain period and cast of characters. Of course, it moves on. The book rises and falls like its namesake. The trick in reading The Great Bay is to relax into it, become absorbed. Give your self a couple of days; turn off the TV, the Computer, the Stereo. Sit outside, feet in dirt with natural light if you can. I found myself entering an (en-)tranced state several times, sinking down, down into the tales like one does in a lake or quiet river; with murmurs and waves. Some of the tales evolve in high drama; others the everyday of survival in difficult times. Tales of hunters, poets, future zen masters, warriors, priest, mothers, children and lovers swirl around you, drawing your attention this way and that. The characters are richly drawn, and I found an empathy for them. There is great joy and sadness in the tales, and at times a sense of grief early on. There is also more than a share or wryness and wicked sense of humour. It is a good mix.

One of The Great Bay’s subtext is often one of hunger. It lurks under many of the tales and stories, emerging time and again. Other subtexts that one can find, is the love of land, and place. There is a love affair here of California (read the dedication!). The detail given to the land in these tales speak of attention to the Spiritus Loci, and to the subtle shifts of seasons, wind and time as it plays out across the landscape. Several places that are named and presented in the book are near and dear to my heart. I found myself transported to these places in their future guises. Another subtext, and perhaps the one most important is that of community, and how community evolves and mutates. The communities in The Great Bay have a very wonderful part to play in the tales, truly they do.

I think you might enjoy this book as much as I have and am again. On reading the last chapter (for the first time) I felt the hackles rise up on my neck and arms. Prose that speaks as poetry, and fiction that brings out truth, grounded in the most ancient and future expressions of humanity. My one criticism is that I was left wanting more, but then I can be greedy. I hope Dale will re-visit the world he created in The Great Bay in additional stories down the way. This is one you shouldn’t pass up. A great book, excellent tales, and very, very timely.
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Bob Desper – Time Is Almost Over Now

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Jicarilla Apache Tales:
Coyote in the Underworld;
The Origin of the Monsters;
The First Emergence

This coyote was just like a real person in the old times. He was two-faced; he was evil, but he was also good. He had power in both ways, in the evil way and in the good way. The people often use him in the evil way; and in the good way, too, they use him, for he has power to help as well as to harm.

Coyote was down below with the people. The chief down there, before they started to come up, had a wife who seemed to be very sick with rheumatism. This chief tried in every way to cure her. He had all the men with power perform their ceremonies for her, but it did no good. This woman was not really sick; she was only acting sick and making her husband believe it.

She said, “Take me down to the river. It is the coolest place and there I feel well.”

A river was divided at a certain place and flowed from there in two branches. This place was called Divided Water, and it was here that she wished to be taken. The otter had spoken to this woman through his power; that was why she wanted to get to that place. He used his power as love medicine. Otter was a young man. The chief didn’t know about this.

The chief carried his wife down there every morning and took a lunch for her too. Each evening when the sun was going down he called for her.

After a while he got tired of this and wondered why she always insisted on going to this one place.

The next morning he took her there as usual. Then he turned and went back as though he was going straight for his camp. But as soon as he got out of sight, he ran around a hill and approached from another side and lay there in hiding, watching. Within an hour he saw someone come swimming to that place.

She, too, saw that someone was coming. She took off her clothes and jumped in the water. She and Otter met right in the water. So the otter is our brother-in-law.

Now the chief had found out what that woman was doing. He went back to his home. He was not going after her any more. He had seen that she was not sick, for she had jumped up and taken off her clothes and plunged in as though she were very active and entirely well.

When the sun went down he did not go there as usual. He stayed in his camp.

At nightfall, after waiting for him, the woman came crawling in on her hands and knees. She acted as though she was very sick.

She said, “The old man doesn’t feel sorry for this sick person. You see that I’m coming and having a painful time. See, here you are! You do not even come to get me any more.”

The husband had a grindstone at his side. He said, “Yes, I feel sorry for you!” and he picked up the stone and hurled it at her. The woman leaped up and escaped it. She ran to the home of her mother.

The mother-in-law of the chief was very angry with him. She thought the girl was really sick and thought, “Why does that mean man treat her like that?” [Another version relates that the girl’s mother was cognizant of her misbehavior but connived at it.] She called him all sorts of names, though she did not come into his presence. [I.e., despite her anger she did not violate the mother-in-law—son-in-law avoidance relation.]

She said, “The men are worthless! Look how this man has treated my daughter. I had a hard time to raise this girl and now he abuses her. The men think they do everything; they think they supply all the food and clothes and all the necessities. But the women work harder and do more than the men. The women know how to do things. They can do all the men’s work too if necessary.”

The chief came out when he heard her talking like this. He was very angry. He said, “All right! If you think you can do all the men’s work, we shall see. We shall see who has more power.”

He called all the men to him, even the boys, even the baby boys, and he told them that they were to separate from the women. Even the male dogs and male horses were taken on the men’s side. The men and all male things crossed to the other side of the river.

This chief had great power. He spoke to Kogultsude. He dropped four beads in a whirlpool in the water. [Four beads of different colors constitute a common offering to sacred rivers or springs for the Jicarilla.]

He said to Kogultsude [Kogultsude, whose name probably can be translated “he holds in the water,” is a powerful supernatural, the personification of the power of the water], “I want the water wide, so that the women cannot cross over.”

It was made so.

In the springtime the women and men both planted corn. They both hunted too. The women knew how to hunt too. That year the women as well as the men had plenty, all they wanted to eat. The second year the women had less. They were getting tired. They were afraid to go out and hunt as boldly as the men. They didn’t sow enough seeds. The third year they had still less. The fourth year very few of the women had anything to eat. None of them planted crops that year. The men had plenty every year. The women were beginning to starve and suffer.

The women were standing on the bank calling to the men, saying, “Come back and take care of us.”

But the chief would not let the men go. “Let them learn a lesson,” he said. “Let them be punished.”

All the older girls began to cry for the men now. They began to abuse themselves sexually. They masturbated with elk horn; and that is how the elk became an enemy of man. They used rocks also. That’s how it happened that the rock became the enemy of man. And they used eagle feathers too. That is how the eagle became a giant and killed many of the people. The girls also used the feathers of the owl. All the things that afterward killed men, all the monsters, came into being because of what these girls did. For these objects impregnated the girls, and the monsters were later born from these unions. These were the monsters which Killer-of-Enemies was to destroy later on, after the people came to this earth.

The men were affected in the same way as the women by the separation of the sexes. They became sexually aroused and unsatisfied. They tried to make vaginas out of mud and use them but they were unsuccessful.

This went on for a long time. Both sides were having a hard time of it and were punishing themselves because of what that old lady had said. The women couldn’t cross that river; it was too deep and strong.

About that time Coyote came along. Codi is always funny. He went into the river. He found a baby in the whirlpool. He swam in and got it.

He said, “Oh, this is a nice baby! I’ll take it and raise it myself.”

So he went back with it among the men. The child looked just like the babies of men, but it was the child of Kogultsude.

Kogultsude missed his child. He made the water rise so that his child would be brought back. He sent the water out to wash it back, to draw back his lost baby.

The chief was worried now. He said to the men, “We must go across the river and find out what has happened. Something has been done against this river that it acts this way.”

So the men swam over and were now reunited with the women. They all went to the mountains to escape the water which was still rising. Some of the men and women were drowned. The rest got on the top of a big mountain.

They said to Coyote, “You must help us. Save us from the water.”

So Coyote used his power to make the mountain grow. It grew and grew, but the water rose ever faster. All the time Coyote had the child under his cloak. At that time he had the same kind of fur that he wears now, only then he wore it as a man does a robe. No one knew that he had this baby under the robe.

The mountain rose and came right up to the present earth, this world. All the shamans were praying. But the water was still rising. All the people fell on this coyote. The water came right up to the edge of this world. It ran all over the country.

Now they were all getting after Coyote and scolding him. They said, “He is always the funny one! He must have done something.”

So at last he said, “I have this baby. I thought he was not going to get this baby again.”

The baby was almost dead; it was drying up. He took it out and showed it to the people, and then threw it into the water again. At once the water began to recede.

Before that there was no water on this earth, nor were there any mountains. The people didn’t like this place. They wanted to go down below again. So Coyote made the mountain go down again, and it shrank. But the water which had spread over the earth stayed, and this was the water that was present at the time of the real emergence. Before that there was none on this earth.

The people went down below again and stayed there for about nine or ten months. Then they started making the sun and moon down below after this. These people were supernaturals.

By the time the emergnce occurred, the girls who had abused themselves were already big with children. They had been impregnated from intercourse with the things they had used. These children they were carrying were therefore born here on earth, and they became the monsters that preyed on man, the monsters which Killer-of-Enemies had to destroy before men could multiply.

It was after the people went down below again that Hactcin’s dog asked that people be made for him as companions. So people of a different kind were made and these were the real Jicarilla. They intermarried with these first supernaturals who dwelt there, and so they were half human and half supernatural.

The supernaturals who were drowned when Kogultsude made the waters rise did not die. They turned to frogs and fishes. There was no death in those days.

That is why Raven and Buzzard had to decide whether man would die. It was half and half. In those days the dead were coming to life every four days. Then Buzzard threw a scraping pole in the water and said, “If this sinks man will die.” It came to the surface. Then Raven threw in a mano and said, “If this sinks man will die.” It sank; therefore man dies.
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The Poetry Of Bryce Milligan: Lost And Certain Of It

Five Years Gone
for Jane Kenyon

Behind the house, Jane’s garden is overgrown;
between there and Eagle Pond only ghosts:
trains that run silent over the grade’s gray stones
littered with rusted steel spikes, heavy bolts.
Beside the lake, a favored spot, good for sun,
good for water, only slightly wilder than
Jane’s garden where her spring ministrations
kept the volunteer maples down, so eager
to see the seasons in and out, in and out.
Down the road a mile there is a stone where
anonymous hands swap scraps of poetry
and sea shells for pine cones, single ear rings
or other scraps of poetry, some of it
Jane’s, mostly not, some taking, some giving.
Just over the fence, a small apple tree drops
the sweetest fruit I have ever tasted.

–
Visiting the Painter Lady:
Canyon, Texas, 1917

Once a week for six weeks, while farmboys died in France
Pauline visited Georgia – packed up her precious paints,
her half-finished flower scenes, cranked up the Model T
and rattled down the rutted wagon track that led
away west to the newly grated gravel road,
gearing down and down toward the top of the one long hill,
pausing there to catch a breath of wind and pretend
for a moment that the scent of scrub cedar was sweet pine,
then sailing the other side in neutral, fast enough to skim
the sometime-quicksand crust of the Canadian River ford.
Pauline spent an hour with the painter lady at the College,
two neat brick buildings overlooking Palo Duro Canyon,
that sudden red rift across tawny plains so stark
as to inspire imagination in a fence post, just to fill in
the colossal emptiness. Pauline painted scenes
of mountain meadows she had never seen, portraits
of unborn daughters in starched pinafores,
a woman in a grass skirt with a ukulele. Georgia
shaped colors: rich red rifts across tawny dreams
beneath looming orchid skies.
–
Wild mustard

for Mance
Sudden sunlight steams the wild mustard,
heavy headed with the vanishing mist,
and for miles the scent makes the sodden heat
worth enduring: windows down, elbow slung
against the warm damp wind.
All along this southern highway clouds
rise out of the ground to surround treetop
islands, each mysterious just so long
as it takes the gray incensed fog to fade
into the yellow light.
One hot May morning thirty years gone
I walked these Navasota bottomlands
with old man Lipscomb: “I’s up way early
for a bluesman,” and he laughed at the sun.
We stood in that rich light
until Mama’s sausage and biscuits
drew us inside to a day of stories
and guitar licks I would never get right –
not even understand until I smelled
wild mustard in your hair.

—
Lost and certain of it

Lost and certain of it, the woods crowd in
allowing only glimpses of the track
that was so clear and broad and well traveled
only moments back where the sun fell bright
between the leaves to dapple the mast, but
lost and certain of it, the woods crowd in
spinning the senses like leaves in a wind
risen from the past to obscure the path
that was so clear and broad and well traveled.
A broad green stream appears for a moment
strewn with rippled light and autumn’s soft flames.
Lost and certain of it, the woods crowd in
and the stream slips away into the deeper shade,
taking with it the desire for the path
that was so clear and broad and well traveled,
taking with it the memory of the last
dregs of love and I am glad that I am
lost and certain of it.
Let the woods crowd out
all that is clear and broad and well traveled.

Find a copy here at the excellent Wings Press!

__________________________

__________________________

Bob Desper – Liberty – 1974

Information on Bob Desper’s Long Lost Album…
___________________

When geometric diagrams and digits
Are no longer the keys to living things,
When people who go about singing or kissing
Know deeper things than the great scholars,
When society is returned once more
To unimprisoned life, and to the universe,
And when light and darkness mate
Once more and make something entirely transparent,
And people see in poems and fairy tales
The true history of the world,
Then our entire twisted nature will turn
And run when a single secret word is spoken. – Novalis
____________

Sunday, August 8th, 2010 – Today is our son Rowan’s 20th birthday, he arrived at 1:30PM 1990 on a very hot August day, in Mt. Shasta California.
(Here he is at almost a year old with his Mum)

He arrived in in a hurry (though not early), it was perhaps the fastest birth I have ever been aware of… anyway, he has always been in a rush, running before he walked leaping head long into one adventure after another. He spent his early life in Mt. Shasta and out on the coast at Arcata & Eureka, where he learned to love the beach and ocean, a passion he shares with his parents. He has lived in Oregon since just before his 2nd birthday.

If you have been a frequenter of Turfing lately, you know Rowan is in Art College now; becoming a cinematographer which has been his only real goal since he was five years old. (John Bormann’s “Excalibur” did the trick) He writes treatments and scripts all the time. I come home, and find scripts on my desk, or revisions for me to peruse. He recognizes that the Muse can withdraw her favours, so he works to please her, and offers up his hours of work with a joy and an enthusiasm that is moving to behold.

So here is to his new year on this blue orb; he is sitting now with friends in the back yard; some that he has known since kindergarten, and others from high school and college. They are laughing and shouting, full of joy and youth. Rowan moves through his world with a wonderful sense of grace and sharing; he attracts good people and situations… We love the lad as all parents love their offspring, we take great joy in all that he does.

Happy 20th Rowan!
__________________

On The Menu:

The Model of the Universe…
Brendan Perry – Babylon
A Machen Short Story
The Poetry of Pamela Uschuk
Brendan Perry – The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
____________

The Model of the Universe…

Model describes universe with no big bang, no beginning, and no end
(PhysOrg.com) — By suggesting that mass, time, and length can be converted into one another as the universe evolves, Wun-Yi Shu has proposed a new class of cosmological models that may fit observations of the universe better than the current big bang model. What this means specifically is that the new models might explain the increasing acceleration of the universe without relying on a cosmological constant such as dark energy, as well as solve or eliminate other cosmological dilemmas such as the flatness problem and the horizon problem.

I have never been comfortable with the Big Bang Theory. Big Pulse though, I can get my head (sorta) around. While we will never really know the scenario as our glimpse of the whole process is so brief, so minute, this feels “closer” IMPOV. This is a great article if you get a chance to read it…
____________
Brendan Perry – Babylon

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A Machen Short Story:

A Double Return (1890)

One of the first of Machen’s new racy and very contemporary tales of the early 1890s, it succeeds in evoking eeriness and being (at least a little) salaciously shocking, though without the faintest touch of crudity. Oscar Wilde read this tale and was impressed with it; on its strength he took the young Machen out to dinner and encouraged him in his chosen career.

The express from the west rushed through Acton with a scream, whirling clouds of dust around it; and Frank Halswell knocked out the ashes from his pipe and proceeded to gather from various quarters of the carriage his newspapers, his hat-box, his handbag, and, chief of all, a large portfolio carefully packed in brown paper. He looked at his watch, and said to himself: “6.30; we shall be at Paddington in five minutes; and only five minutes late, for a wonder.” But he congratulated himself and the railway company rather too soon: a few minutes later and the train began to slacken, the speed grew slower and slower, and at last came the grinding sound of the brakes and a dead stop. Halswell looked out of the window over the dreary expanse of Wormwood Scrubbs, and heard someone in the next carriage explaining the cause of the delay with pardonable pride in his technical knowledge. “You see, them there signals is against us, and if we was to go on we should jolly well go to kingdom come, we should.” Halswell looked at his watch again and drummed his heels against the floor, wondering impatiently when they would be at Paddington, when, with a sudden whirl, a down train swept by them and the western express once more moved on. Halswell rubbed his eyes; he had looked up as the down train passed, and in one of the carriages he thought he had seen his own face. It was only for a second, and he could not be sure. “It must have been a reflection,” he kept on saying, “from the glass of one window to the other. Still, I fancied I saw a black coat, and mine is light. But of course it was a reflection.”

The express rolled into the terminus with dignity – it was only ten minutes late, after all; and Frank Halswell bundled himself and his traps into a hansom, congratulating himself on the paucity of his bags and the absence of his trunks as he watched the excited mob rushing madly at a Redan of luggage. “153, the Mall, Kensington!” he shouted to the driver above the hubbub of the platform; and they were soon threading deftly along the dingy streets that looked so much dingier than usual after the blue mist upon the sea, the purple heather and the sunny fields. Frank (he was a very popular artist in those days – a rising man, indeed) had been on a sketching tour in Devon and Cornwall: he had wandered along the deep sheltered lanes from hill to hill, by the orchards already red and gold, by moorland and lowland, by the rocky coast and combes sinking down to the wondrous sea.

On the Cornish roads he had seen those many ancient crosses, with their weird interlacing carving, which sometimes stand upon a mound and mark where two ways meet; and as he put his portfolio beside him he could not help feeling a glow of pride at its contents. “I fancy I shall make a pretty good show by next spring,” he thought, Poor fellow! he was never to paint another picture; but he did not know it. Then, as the hansom verged westward, gliding with its ringing bells past the great mansions facing the park, Halswell’s thoughts went back to the hotel at Plymouth and the acquaintance he had made there. “Yes; Kerr was an amusing fellow,” he thought; “glad I gave him my card. Louie is sure to get on with him. Curious thing, too, he was wonderfully like me, if he had been only clean shaven and not ‘bearded like the pard,’ Dare say we shall see him before long; he said he was going to pay a short visit to London. I fancy he must be an actor; I never saw such a fellow to imitate a man’s voice and gestures. I wonder what made him go off in such a hurry yesterday. Hullo! here we are; hi, cabman! there’s 153.”

The twin doors of the hansom banged open; the garden gate shrieked and clanged, and Halswell bounded up the steps and rapped loudly at the door. The maid opened it. Even as he said, “Thank you, Jane; your mistress quite well, I suppose?” he thought he noticed a strange look, half questioning, half surprised, in her eyes; but he ran past her, up the stairs, and burst into the pretty drawing-room. His wife was lying on the sofa; but she rose with a cry as he came in.

“Frank! Back again so soon? I am so glad! I thought you said you might have to be away a week.”

“My dear Louie, what do you mean? I have been away three weeks, haven’t I? I rather think I left for Devonshire in the first week of August.”

“Yes, of course, my dear: but then you came back late last night.”

“What! I came back last night? I slept last night at Plymouth. What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be silly, Frank. You know very well you rang us all up at twelve o’clock. Just like you, to come home in the middle of the night when nobody expected you. You know you said in your last letter you were not coming until to-day.”

“Louise dear, you must be dreaming. I never came here last night. Here is my bill at the hotel; you see, it is dated this morning.”
Mrs. Halswell stared blankly at the bill; then she got up and rang the bell. How hot it was! The close air of the London street seemed to choke her. Halswell walked a few paces across the room then suddenly stopped and shuddered.
“Jane, I want to ask you whether your master did not come here last night at twelve o’clock; and whether you did not get him a cab early this morning?”

“Yes, mum, at least -”

“At least what? You let him in yourself.”

“Yes, mum, of course I did. But, begging your pardon, sir, I thought as how your voice didn’t sound quite natural this morning when you called out to the cabman to drive to Stepney, because you had changed your mind, and didn’t want to go to Waterloo.”

“Good God! What are you thinking about? I never came here. I was in Plymouth.”

“Frank! You are joking! Look here, you left this behind you.”

She showed him a little silver cigarette case with his initials engraved on it. It was a present from his wife, he had missed it one day when he was strolling with Kerr, and had regretted it deeply, searching in the grass in vain.

Halswell held the toy in his hand. He thought he was indeed in a dream, and through the open window came the shrieks of the newsboys, “Extry speshal! extry speshal!” The light had faded; it was getting dark. But suddenly it all flashed upon him. He remembered Kerr and the face he had caught sight of in the passing train; he remembered the strange likeness; he knew who had found the cigarette case; he knew well who it was that had come to his house.

The maid was a good girl; she had stolen away. No one knows what manner of conversation Frank and his wife had together in the darkness; but that night he went away, as it was said, to America. Mrs. Halswell was dead before the next summer.
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The Poetry of Pamela Uschuk

Flying Through Thunder
(for John and Galway Kinnell)

I
From expectant sunflowers, mountain
blue birds, western meadowlarks
and the melancholy shadows
of their songs in sage; from
the spin and groan of the planet
we roar up, bucking through
the blue fury of thunderheads
on our final leg home.

The small turbo prop pitches
toward glacial peaks, saints gleaming
in the numen of autumn sun, while the pilot
warns us that it will be a rough flight.
As if we didn’t know, caroming
on the backs of jet stream storms, that
there are few smooth flights, as if we don’t read
headlines that daily explode the world.

Below us dump trucks erect a Denver landfill
into the shape of a Mayan temple
burying the relics of our excess
while lightning cracks its knuckles
on the Front Range and thunder
rattles the thin skin of this twin engine plane
shaking us from our loneliness.
Between bellicose clouds jut
sheer curtains of light.

In this space that freezes our imaginations
we bounce then drop through
air pockets rough as alcoholic fists,
dry sockets of turbulence.

II
I have no choice but release any illusion
of control, break my white-knuckled grip
on steel armrests that would splinter on impact
against rock crags that never learned my name.

In the row ahead of me the carefully coifed woman
checks her lipstick as a baby screams
and I wonder at vanity pitching
fragile as a cacoon 20,000 feet above tree line.

I think of the passion of poets
holding their hearts like worn ball caps
in their bruised hands, defying
the spiked teeth of hungry gods
swallowing truth whole before they eat them alive.

III
Even the stocky steward wipes sweat
from his forehead, groans as if he’s giving birth
when we yaw half-over, pushed
by stratospheric gusts we are blind to.

I remember the way my stomach dropped
as a child pumping my swing high,
pretending I was a pilot bombing enemies,
pretending I wasn’t afraid.
At the acme of my pendulum, the swing set ground
against its cemented feet, threatening
to slingshot me into space, and my brother
dared me to jump with him. His green eyes
were wild as a cougar’s, voice screech-pitched
with the blood of pretend death, hands
itching to let go of the chains.

Bomb’s away! We’re hit. Jump. Jump.
We’re on fire! Jump!

How could I refuse the catapult
out of my careening or forsee
my brother sent to paratrooper school,
to ruin his young knees
when he landed just off the training mark
preparing for Vietnam?
When the army found out he attended rallies, preached peace,
he was shipped to Da Nang, to dousings
with Agent Orange, to the burning
of village peoples, to daily mortar attacks
and sniper fire he still fights to live through.
Leaping from the swing’s apogee, what
I savored most was fear’s pure torch
scalding my body as it arced, suspended
before the plunge, that moment
gravity kicked in, and I knew
what real death would feel like,
hanging a long breath in space
astonished at the constellation of my life
coming into exquisite focus—family,
friends, ambition, anger, even love—before everything
ndropped away
like a billowing parachute.

IV
Now as the plane lunges, engines
steady above the Continental Divide,
I regard razor backed ridges
older than memory, vaster
than scars. They comfort me
in their lack of pity, their indifference
to our cares. Perhaps this is
all I need to know. It is not until
we begin to fall that we might learn
what it takes to survive.
—

The Horseman of the Crass and Vulernable Word
For J.H.

The hemlock loses the tanager,
a bright blood streak
in a whirling gauze of snow.
Where do we go?
You told me the eye was lost,
old lens in a dish of milk
going to blue-veined cheese,
a lens that sneezed
when you laughed the mockingbird’s laugh,
the horse’s white laugh,
saying your brother accidentally
shot it out as you crawled
under barb wire, hunting.

I was young and fell in love
with your wounds, your tongue,
half-song, half-glands,
strong as the Calvinist hands
that whacked and fed your swampy youth.
I was young and drank vermouth
while you fell to your knees
in the Ford’s back seat where you teased
until I laughed too much
when you begged please,
and your one-eyed touch
stared up at the night jar sky,
blinked at Orion, your
archer, saying good-bye.
I laughed but I feared your tongue,
your thighs. I was young.
I had heard.
Never love a poet at his word.

You were the man who could maim me
in those days when whiskey
clarified any dark thing.
Like Bobby and Annette we’d sing,
Baby, you’re my beach blanket;
I’m your Mickey Mouse coquette.

You knew my crippled heart, my blind side
but I’d ride ride
ride on that edge where the heart’s not given,
can’t be taken
or lost to an archer or poet with one eye.
Oh, the heart has a spongy hide
believing in love’s bromide.
Mine found its bed unmade, undone
when you left with your joking tongue.

But I tell you this now,
horseman of the crass and vulnerable word,
love is damp as a cloud-blown beach
and crawls in your bones
that never lose their ache.
When I dreamed your face- –
so blindly polite, just the glimpse
of a lens of a face, just before
the horse, the dark and slippery horse I rode
so far out to sea
that the shore was a crumb the gulls couldn’t eat- –
I went numb in my sleep.
Even numbness passes.
I am half-blind in this half-blind night
but I’ve learned to ferment
wine from ash.
And you, it’s always late–
you’ve broken your horse,
now lie under it.
—
Finding Peaches in the Desert

They taste like a woman, you say
and bite deep into the sweet heat
squeezing through tender skin,
while I laugh, taking the fruit you offer.
We close our eyes and transport
this delicious host to our loves
flown distant as time in dreams.
You can never eat too many, I say and pull
another ripe peach from the desert tree.
It fills my palm, my mouth as I suck
the unhusbanded nectar.
It is delicious as stealing light,
such innocent grace, a holiday
from history and eternity.
We bare our breasts to sun
as women have done for centuries
beside the blue water pool at ease with rabbits, shrill
wasps, the shy steps of occasional deer,
while vultures funnel mid-heaven.
Struck dumb by sun cauterizing
the Sonoran sky that flings its blue skirt
all the way across the ripe hip of Mexico,
we feast on peach after peach, while
peach-colored tanagers, wet
green hummingbirds and the topaz eyes of lizards
attend our anointment.
When I wipe one quarter across my breasts
and down my stomach to my thighs, I
am amazed at the baked odor of love
rising from everything I touch.
This is our ceremony to alter the news
of troops that mass for attack
in the Middle East, to alchemize all hatred
and greed, whatever name
it is given by multinational interests.
There is no aggression in sharing rare fruit
priceless as the wide imaginings of sky
or the brilliant coinage of dragonfly wings.
Even squadrons of wasps and fire ants
armed with nuclear stingers turn
from attack to the pungency of this
ritual feast that celebrates love
in the desert stunned green by unusual rain.

Crazy Love…. At the wonderfully eclectic Wings Press!

_____________

Brendan Perry – The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

“All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions. Nothing ever exists entirely alone; everything is in relation to everything else.” -Buddha

Whether you are going or staying or sitting or lying down,
the whole world is your own self.
You must find out
whether the mountains, rivers, grass, and forests
exist in your own mind or exist outside it.
Analyze the ten thousand things,
dissect them minutely,
and when you take this to the limit
you will come to the limitless,
when you search into it you come to the end of search,
where thinking goes no further and distinctions vanish.
When you smash the citadel of doubt,
then the Buddha is simply yourself.
– Daikaku

Late Sommer Arcing ….
I have found myself writing again;(not just for the magazine or Turfing) which of course is one of those acts that I do… either well, or poorly. I cannot pretend that I have a great talent at it, as I fledge at it whereas others soar. It is in the elbow grease; don’t give lip service to that which you don’t apply yourself to, right? I am finding that writing down notes as you go is pretty effective; inspiration hits me more often when I am away from the computer than when I am on it. The art of writing out by hand trumps typing for the capture of the pure thought. Typing is like herding words into the corral of structure, whereas writing is like climbing an open face of granite. Perilous at times, but so satisfying.

I have been reading Dale Pendell’s new book, “The Great Bay”. There is a review soon to follow, but suffice to say, it’s a page turner. (I am not going to give it away yet!) It is a complete new direction for his writing, and has already won the “Best Science Fiction” award for the 2010 Green Book Festival. It is very, very good.

I want to promote an event for another writer friend, Graham St. John this Friday in San Francisco for the American release of his wonderful “Technomad”. If you are not familiar with Graham’s work, follow the links below. It is really an impressive bit of anthropological work.

Anyway, on the Caer Llwydd front. Rowan has been working on film weekly since his new quarter started at the Art Institute. We will soon be posting a video or two of his, so stay tuned. Summer has somewhat arrived in Oregon. It is very odd though, unlike any summer I remember here. Intensely warm/hot for several days, then the temperature drops, and everything is extremely cool again. It must be playing havoc with the poor farmers. Life flows on here, every other day there is another film crew working in the house, Mary is in the garden and life is sweet as summer arcs into harvest. Fall, the old traditional Autumn, is but a few days away. How does it go so quickly? We walk together on the street at night, everything is just so perfect and the beauty of life shimmers all around us. Catch your breath, life tumbles on.

I hope this finds you with those you love, doing that which means the most to you, as we swim together through the air…

I hope you enjoy this edition.

Gwyllm
__________

On The Menu:
Technomad Book Launch
Anarchist Quotes
Silversun Pickups – Growing Old Is Getting Old (Live on MTV: Unplugged)
The Future of the Future – Robert Anton Wilson
The Daoist Poet: Yuan Mei
Silversun Pickups – “Kissing Families”

______________________________
I will soon have a review on Technomad, but meanwhile if you are in the Bay area this Friday, you might consider attending the US launch event!

Technomad Book Launch : San Francisco
Friday, JULY 30th 9:00pm – 10:00pm
1015 Folsom, 1015 Folsom Avenue San Francisco, CA

Book Launch for Graham St John’s Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures. Panel discussion on San Francisco, Burning Man and its contributions to the “Global Tribal Revival”. Graham will read from his landmark book and discuss the contributions that Bay Area groups and projects have made to the international rave and festival
culture, including a panel discussion with: Marian Goodell (Burning Man), Michael Gosney (Digital Be-In, Earthdance) and Brad Olson (How Weird Street Faire/CCC)

The Launch is part of SOUL OF THE CITY: Transforming Metropolis at
1015 Folsom July 30 8:00pm – 3:00am
A benefit for Entheon Village, Red Lightning, Sacred Spaces and Feed the Artists at Burning Man 2010 – Celebrating the Evolution of the Revolution

Cost:
$15 in advance
$10 before 9pm (for Talks/Book Launch)
$20 at the door after 9pm

TICKETS @ http://thesoulofthecity.eventbrite.com/

PERFORMANCE LINE-UP

MAIN STAGE
9:00pm – 10:30pm
Outersect – DJ Set

10:30pm – 11:30pm
OM Live! – Live Act
First Bay Area live performance since Lost At Last for the new band featuring Digital Shaman Om with Kali’s Angel Amy Carr.

11:30pm – 12:30am
Lux D’Coda / DJ Goz – Live/DJ Act
The cosmic muse of Foxgluv is back to enthrall us with potent new magic, morphing into DJ Goz trance grooves.

Niema Lightseed, Prayer Performance

12:30am – 2:00am
AFROLICIOUS featuring DJ Oz – Live/DJ Act
A full on electronic live act featuring Afro-Tropi-Electro-Funk-Disco-House to dance yourself into bliss

2:00am – 3:00am
DJ tba

DOWNSTAIRS – Sacred Sound Temple
– Talks by Graham St John and Radhanath Swami
– Kirtan by Radhanath Swami
– Alan Tower’s Sound Eggs
– Graham Lightfinger
– Healing Zone
– Sacred Metropolis Community Altars

FRONT ROOM:
– CHLOROPHIL
– MODA – Romentum.com – LA
– OUTERSECT
– AIRE REDTREE

BM 2010 Interactive Art Preview
Food and Drink

More info: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130737523616731
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

BOOK PREVIEW

Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures
by Graham St John (Equinox, 2009)

A cultural history of global electronic dance music countercultures, Technomad explores the pleasurable and activist trajectories of post-rave culture.

“Technomad: Global Raving Countercultures is the most wide-ranging and detailed of all the books on rave. More than the study of a musical movement or genre, Technomad offers an alternate history of cultural politics since the 1960s, from hippies and Acid Tests through the sound systems and ‘vibe-tribes’ of the 1990s and beyond…. Like Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces, Technomad makes unexpected but entirely convincing connections between people, movements and events. Like Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Koolaid Acid Test, St John’s book introduces us to unknown heroes, committed geniuses and genuine revolutionaries. Beautifully written, with a genuinely international perspective on electronic dance music culture, Technomad is one of the best books on music I’ve read in some time.” – Professor Will Straw, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University

(Get the book from the Earthdance Bookshelf <http://www.earthdancenetwork.com/page/bookshelf-1>)

Online excerpts from Technomad:
Digital Be-In: http://www.earthdancenetwork.com/notes/Conscious_Parties_and_Cybertribes
Burning Man: http://www.undergrowth.org/burning_time_begoggled_in_the_mega_vibe_burning_man_by_graham_st_john

Graham
____________________________________

Anarchist Quotes:

Anarchists are opposed to violence; everyone knows that. The main plank of anarchism is the removal of violence from human relations. It is life based on freedom of the individual, without the intervention of the gendarme. For this reason we are the enemies of capitalism which depends on the protection of the gendarme to oblige workers to allow themselves to be exploited–or even to remain idle and go hungry when it is not in the interest of the bosses to exploit them. We are therefore enemies of the State which is the coercive violent organization of society. – Errico Malatesta

I am an anarchist! Wherefore I will not rule and also ruled I will not be. – John Henry Mackay

Anarchism…stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. – Emma Goldman

The political arena leaves one no alternatives, one must be either a dunce or a rogue. – Emma Goldman

The poor object to being governed badly, while the rich object to being governed at all. – G.K. Chesterton

For every complex problem there is a solution which is straightforward, simple, and wrong. – H.L. Mencken
____________________________________

A Wonderful Band!
Silversun Pickups – Growing Old Is Getting Old (Live on MTV: Unplugged)

________________________________
The Future of the Future
– Robert Anton Wilson

There was a Fundamentalist Futurist back in the 1890′s who demonstrated that New York City would be abandoned as unfit for habitation by the 1930s. His argument was based on projection forward of population trends, and he correctly estimated that population would grow from 4 million to over 7 million in 40 years. (He didn’t guess it would reach over 12 million by now.) It was then obvious, he said, that the amount of horses necessary to provide transportation for that many people would result in a public health hazard of incredible dimensions: there would be horse manure up to the third floor windows everywhere in Manhattan. This illustrates the most frequent fallacy found in Future projections: the “elementalistic fallacy” named by Alfred Korzybski. The elementalistic fallacy as Korzybski noted, seems to be built into our very language. We can talk about Joe Smith in isolation from his (or any) environment; we can therefore think about Mr. Smith in such fictitious isolation; and in such “elementalistic fallacy” we will always draw wrong conclusions, because Mr. Smith cannot exist without some environment. (He will explode in a vacuum, and without a social world his mind will similarly explode — or implode — or at least mutate shockingly, as isolation experiments have shown. )

Projecting population forward without projecting other factors forward has produced numerous elementalistic fallacies similar to thinking of Joe Smith without an environment. Malthus, for instance, “proved” that population will always increase faster than resources, but this was disproven by technological history, and we now understand that “resources” only exist when identified by analysis and each new discovery in pure science shows us new resources everywhere.

One example: the Newtonian system allowed us to tap 0.001 per cent of the energy in a glass of water; 19th Century thermodynamics showed us how to tap 0.01 per cent of that energy; we can now tap 1.0 per cent. Nobody knows how much we’ll be able to tap in 50 years.

Elementalistic fallacies abound in Future projections (including my own). We are only gradually and gropingly learning to think “non-elementalistically” (in Korzybski’s phrase) or “synergetically” as Bucky Fuller liked to say. I have found one quick way to avoid the more obvious elementalistic and Fundamentalistic errors, which is this:

Whenever I project one trend forward, I then re-analyze the situation, projecting at minimum five other trends forward also.

For instance, lifespan and population have both been increasing in the past 200 years. Projecting these trends forward elementalistically (in isolation) has led to some notable Doomsday scenarios in which humanity overcrowds itself to death. An entirely different picture emerges, however, if one projects these trends synergetically along with five other trends, such as:

The effect of industrialism on population. As documented by Fuller (Critical Path) a nation’s population only rises rapidly in the transition from feudalism to industrialism, then levels off when industrialism is well established in a country.

The emergence of Feminism and self-choice among women, beginning with the 18th century radicalism of Mary Wollstonecraft and now including Women’s Liberation movements in all parts of the world — even dawningly in Islamic nations.

The movement of communication technology into space, with clear trends indicating that “industrial” (or more likely, post-industrial) technology will follow, with workers and then families and then schools and grocers and museums, etc. moving into space colonies.

The continued improvement in birth control technology and the fading line between contraception and abortion. There is already a heated debate, for instance, about whether certain devices — e.g. the IUD — “are” or “are not” abortifacients.

The neuroscience revolution (or H.E.A.D. Revolution — Hedonic Engineering And Development) with its increasing promise that humans in the near future will achieve more freedom from mechanical conditioned reflexes (both “physical” and “mental”) than ever before.

Whenever I try to project all five of these trends even 40 years into the future, I find the “overcrowding” problem seems less likely than New York being buried in horse manure. To get a feel for synergetic thinking, try your own projection, “guestimating” what the next decade will bring in each of these fields, and the decade after that, and so on, to 2029.
________________________________

The Daoist Poet: Yuan Mei

Nearing Hao-pa

(I saw in the mist a little village of a few tiled roofs and joyfully admired it.)

There’s a stream, and there’s bamboo,
there’s mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hid, clouded hamlet,
a mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
have to live, to get
that simple.
–
Just Done

A month alone behind closed doors
forgotten books, remembered, clear again.
Poems come, like water to the pool
Welling,
up and out,
from perfect silence
–
Climbing The Mountain

I burned incense, swept the earth, and waited
for a poem to come…

Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain,
leaning on my staff.

How I’d love to be a master
of the blue sky’s art:

see how many sprigs of snow-white cloud
he’s brushed in so far today.
–
Mad Words

To learn to be without desire
you must desire that.
Better to do as you please:
sing idleness.
Foating clouds, and water idly running –
Where’s their source?
In all the vastness of the sea and sky,
you’ll never find it.
____________

Silversun Pickups – “Kissing Families”

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have corpses in their mouths.” – Raoul Vaneigem

_____________

It has been a rough and tumble few weeks. I am not here for the complaining tho; I made it through and I am looking forward to new adventures, friends coming a-visiting, and new opportunities.

We are not going to spin wheels, but spin tales and display some wonders for you all. In this edition, we cover some of the territory from older editions of Turfing. I find the cycling interesting.

Remember the beauty that surrounds, remember the relationship that is.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

_____________

On The Menu:
The Links
“Above & Beyond”
Review: Opium For The Masses
Liza Gerrard – The Song of Amergin
Celtic Wonder Tales: Inisfail
The Poetry of Gabriel Rosenstock
Liza Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy – Amergin’s Invocation
___________________

The Links:
Inside Insides
Learning From The Ancients
The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense
I Have Been Saying This For Years…
African Child Witches On The Increase
___________________
“Above & Beyond”
We find out this week if Rowan & his friends film “Above & Beyond” goes to the national competition! We are very excited around here about this!

Above and Beyond – Portland 24 Hour Film Race from William Schultz on Vimeo.

Shooting for Amour Sincère resumes this next week as well!
__________________
Review: Opium For The Masses

Opium for the Masses – Harvesting Nature’s Best Pain Medication
By Jim Hogshire

“Contrary to general belief, there is no federal law against growing
P. somniferum – Martha Stewart Living

I have to tell you; just the cover alone…. 80)

Michal Pollan wrote a lengthy feature (“Opium, made easy”) about Jim Hogshire in Harpers Magazine, amazed that the Opium Poppy which grows wild, grows legal and is available at craft and hobby stores and nurseries, could also be made into a drinkable tea that acts in a way similar to codeine or vicodin. (I am searching for a copy of this!)

This is perhaps one of the most important books for the home herbalist; in it one finds the folklore, the formulations, and the functions of the Opium Poppy in all its applications. Because of the propaganda, bad press and general ignorance of the modern age many have suffered needlessly. I have seen many sides of P. somniferum and its various constituents since I was young; from codeine, to morphine, heroin, darvon, vicodin, etc. etc,. I have seen the use, and the misuse of this ancient companion plant.

Let me be forthright; I feel people should be in charge of their own health, autonomous in as much as they can be. This includes using herbs, tinctures, exercising, meditation and more. It also includes pain management. In Opium for the Masses, you will discover information that is of great use for safe pain management. Opium and its derivatives have been in the cabinets and gardens of the apothecary since at least the Mesolithic. Fact: Until the late 19th century and 20th century, most people in Europe, Asia and parts in between had access to Opium without the crazed response in the west and elsewhere since Opiate Prohibition was initiated. (Originally instituted as a racist policy against the yellow peril in the US) It was commonly available in apothecary’s, pharmacies, in the garden, and in the wise woman’s bag of tricks back in the ancient of days. Opium eased the pain and agony of countless humans, and eased the passage of end of life for those in need of it; We still see its constituents used to this day in such worthy exercises like Home Hospice, and in countless hospitals around the world.

There is so much knowledge to be digested from Opium for the Masses. Histories, formulations, myths, the lies, truths, and anecdotes about this most intriguing of plants. The book is laid out in succinct order, the writing is very tight and flowing. It covers artist, addiction, and various forms of misuse. It illustrates the proper preparation of various opium formulas from poppy tea to laudanum. The book covers laws, and what one must be prudent about.

I would purchase this book just to have it on the forbidden knowledge shelf. Thankfully, it is in print again after 15 years of being out of print. Do yourself a favour, pick up a copy.
___________________

Liza Gerrard – The Song of Amergin

______________________

Celtic Wonder Tales: Inisfail

It was on the First of May that the Milesians came into Ireland. They came with their wives and their children and all their treasures. There were many of them. They came in ships, and it is said by some that they came from a land beyond the utmost blueness of the sky and that their ships left the track among the stars that can still be seen on winter nights.

When they were come to Ireland they drew up their ships. They put the fastening of a year and a day on them and set foot on the Sacred Land. Amergin was the first to set foot on the Land, and he made this rann in honour of it. He chanted the rann because he was the chief poet and druid among the Milesians.

THE RANN.

I am The Wind That Blows Over The Sea,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Wave 0f The Sea,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Sound The Sea Makes,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Ox Of The Seven Combats,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Vulture Upon The Rock,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Ray Of The Sun,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Fairest Of Plants,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Wild Boar,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Salmon in The Water,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Lake In The Plain,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Word 0f Knowledge,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The Spear-Point Of Battle,
Ah-ro-he!
I am The God Who Kindles Fire In The Head,
Ah-ro-he!
Who makes wise the company on the mountain?
Who makes known the ages of the moon?
Who knows the secret resting-place of the sun?
Ah-ro-he!

The Milesians gave a victory-shout at the end of the rann, and Amergin said:

“We will go forward now, and when we reach the place where it seems good to rest we will light a fire and put Three Names of Power on the Land so that it may belong to us for ever.”

They went forward then and they saw no one till Brigit took the shape of a woman that has known hardship, and came to try them. She wrapped herself in the cloak of Sorrow and sat by the roadside. She made a great keening.

“O woman,” said Amergin, “why is there such heavy sorrow on you, and why do you make such a shrill keening?”

“I am keening lost possessions, and lost queen-ship, and a name cried down the wind of change and forgotten.”

“Whose name is cried down the wind?”

“The name of Banba that was queen of this land.”

“Her name shall not be whirled into forgetfulness. I will put it on this land: it shall be called Banba.”

“My blessing on you, Stag with Golden Horns, and may the name-giving bring you luck!”

So Amergin gave away the First Name. They went on from that place, and Brigit took the shape of a fierce beautiful queen that has lost a battle, and came again to try them.

“O Queen,” said Amergin, “may all the roads of the world be pleasant to you!”

“O King,” said Brigit, “all the roads of the world are hard when those who were wont to go in chariots walk barefoot on them.”

“O Queen,” said Amergin, “I would fain better your fortune.”

“Grant me then a queen’s asking.”

“Name your asking.”

“I am Eriu, wife of Mac Grian, Son of the Sun, and I would have my name fastened on this land for ever.”

“I will put your name on this land: it shall be called Eriu.”

“My blessing on you, Sun-Crested Eagle, and may the name-giving bring you luck!”

So Amergin gave away the Second Name. They went on from that place, and Brigit took the form of an old wrinkled crone bent double with age, and came again to try them. She was gathering sticks, and the bundle was heavy.

“O woman,” said Amergin, “it is hard to see you lifting a bundle when age has bent you so low already. I would fain better your fortune.”

Brigit raised herself, and said:–

“Though I am an old crone now, bent and withered, yet I was once a great queen, and I will take nothing less than a queen’s asking from you.”

“What is your asking? ”

“Let my name be on this land: I am Fiola.”

“I will put your name on this land: it shall be called Fiola.”

“My blessing on you, Silver-Spotted Salmon of Knowledge, and may the name-giving bring you luck!”

So Amergin gave away the Third Name. It was after that they made a fire for themselves, and when the smoke of it rose against the sky, Ogma, Nuada, and the Dagda, came to try them.

“What people are you? ” asked Nuada, “and from what country have you come?”

“We are the sons of Milesius,” they answered; “he himself is the son of a god–even of Beltu, the Haughty Father. We are come from Moy More, the Great Plain that is beyond the horizon of the world.”

“How got you knowledge of Ireland?” asked Ogma.

“O Champion,” answered Amergin, “from the centre of the Great Plain there rises a tower of crystal. Its top pierces the heavens, and from the ramparts of it the wisest one among us got sight of this land. When he saw it his heart was filled with longing, and when he told us of it our hearts too were filled with longing. Therefore we set out to seek that land, and behold we have come to it. We have come to Inisfail, the Island of Destiny.”

“And ye have come to it,” said the Dagda, “like thieves in the night; without proclamation; without weapon-challenge. Ye have lighted a fire here, as if this were a no-man’s land. Judge ye if this be hero conduct.”

“Your words have the bitterness of truth in them,” said Amergin. “Say now what you would have us do.”

“You are a druid and a leader among your people,” said Nuada. “Give judgment, therefore, between yourselves and us.”

“I will give judgment,” said Amergin “I judge it right that we should return to our ships and go out the distance of nine waves from the land. Use all your power against us, and we will use all our power against you. We will take the Island of Destiny by the strength of our hands, or die fighting for it!”

“It is a good judgment,” said Ogma, “Get back to your ships! We will gather our battle-chiefs for the fight.”

Ogma, Nuada, and the Dagda, went away then from the Milesians.

The Milesians began to put out the fire they. had kindled, and as they were quenching the embers, Brigit threw her mantle of power about her and came to the Milesians in her own shape. When Amergin saw her he knew that she was the Mighty Mother, and he cried out:

“O Ashless Flame, put a blessing on us now, that our luck may not be extinguished with these embers.”

“O Druid,” said Brigit, “if you had wisdom you would know that before the First Fire is extinguished the name-blessing should be pronounced over it.”

“O Mother of All Wisdom, I know it, but the name-blessing is gone from me. I met three queens as I came hither, and each one asked the name-gift of me. They were queens discrowned: I could not put refusal on them.”

Brigit began to laugh then, and she cried:

“O Amergin, you are not counted a fool, yet it seems to me that if you had much wit you would know the eyes of Brigit under any cloak in the world. It was I, myself, who asked the name-gift from you three times, and got it Do not ask a fourth blessing from me now, for I have blessed you three times already.”

She stooped and lifted a half-quenched ember from the fire. She blew on it till it became a golden flame–till it became a star. She tossed it from one hand to the other as a child tosses a ball. She went away laughing.

The Milesians went back to their ships. They put the distance of nine waves between themselves and the land. The Tuatha De Danaan loosed the Fomor on them, and a mighty tempest broke about their ships. Great waves leaped over them and huge abysses of water engulped them. The utmost power of the Milesians could not bring the ships a hair’s breadth nearer to the shore. A terrible wind beat on them. Ireland disappeared. Then Amergin cried out:

“O Land, that has drawn us hither, help us! Show us the noble fellowship of thy trees: we will be comrades to them. Show us the shining companies of thy rivers: we will put a blessing on every fish that swims in them. Show us thy hero-hearted mountains: we will light fires of rejoicing for them. O Land, help us! help us! help us!”

Ireland heard him, and sent help. The darkness cleared away and the wind was stilled.

Then Amergin said:

“O Sea, help us! O mighty fruitful Sea! I call on every wave that ever touched the land. O Sea, help us!”

The sea heard him, and the three waves that go round Ireland–the wave of Thoth, the wave of Rury and the long slow white foaming wave of Cleena. The three waves came and lifted the ships to the shore. The Milesians landed. The Tuatha De Danaan came down to make trial of their battle-strength. Hard was the contest between them. The Milesians held their own against the gods. When they saw that the Milesians could hold their own, the Tuatha De Danaan drew themselves out of the fight. They laughed and cried to the Milesians:

“Good heroes are ye, and worthy to win the earth: we put our blessing on you.”

Nuada shook the bell-branch, and the glory that the Tuatha De Danaan had in Tir-na-Moe before they ever set themselves to the shaping of the earth–that glory–came back to them. They had such splendour that the Milesians veiled their eyes before them.

“Do not veil your eyes!” said Nuada, “we will draw the Cloak of invisibility, the Faed Feea, about us. We give you Ireland: but, since our hands have fashioned it, we will not utterly leave the country. We will be in the white mist that clings to the mountains; we will be the quiet that broods on the lakes; we will be the joy-shout of the rivers; we will be the secret wisdom of the woods. Long after your descendants have forgotten us, they will hear our music on sunny raths and see our great white horses lift their heads from the mountain-tarns and shake the night-dew from their crested manes: in the end they will know that all the beauty in the world comes back to us, and their battles are only echoes of ours. Lift up your faces, Children of Milesius, Children of Beltu the Haughty Father, and greet the land that belongs to you!”

The Milesians lifted up their heads. No glory blinded them, for the Tuatha De Danaan had drawn the Faed Feea about themselves. They saw the sunlight on the grass like emerald fire; they saw the blueness of the sky and the solemn darkness of the pine trees; they heard the myriad sound of shaken branches and running water, and behind it echoed the laughter of Brigit.
______________________
The Poetry of Gabriel Rosenstock

Le Breis is Míle Bliain

Mo ghrá Thú!
Gach soicind.
Nuair a chorraíonn an ghaoth an féar
Lingim Chugat ionam
Id bharróg dhorcha soilsím
Is mé Aimhirghin – cé eile? –
Mholas T’ainm thar chách

For More than a Thousand Years

I love You!
Every second
When wind rustles the grass –
Now and tomorrow –
I leap to You in me
In your dark embrace I shine
I am Amergin – who else –
I have praised Your name over all.
—

As gach póir Díot

As gach póir Díot scallann an ghrian
Ar Do dhamhsa gan chríoch
Taobh dorcha na gealaí is geal
Má osclaíonn Tú Do bhéal
Éalóidh réaltaí, canfaidh iomainn Duit
Is Tusa iadsan
Ealaí ag eitilt go gasta ar gcúl
Conas a shamhlóinn barróg Uait
Mura bpléascfainn Id réaltbhuíon?

From Each And Every Pore

From each and every pore look how the sun beams
On Your eternal dance
The dark side of the moon is bright
If You open Your mouth
Stars will escape and chant their hymns for You
You are they
Swiftly swans fly backwards
How can I imagine Your embrace
Without exploding in Your galaxy?
—
slowly like Venice I am sinking (from Uttering Her Name)

Dar Óma
slowly like Venice
I am sinking
into Your beauty

Your grace
lapping at my door

when will I drown
in the spume-bright story of Your smile?
–
the grace showered on me (from Uttering Her Name)

Dar Óma
unbelievable
the grace showered on me
in my darkest hour
I didn’t know above from below

were grace to fall
it would beat on closed casements

in crazy crystals it came
Your disembodied love

I no longer whimper
for Your touch

a tree of love is growing
I sit in its shade

the night sings
ghazals to the absent moon

______________________
Liza Gerrard & Patrick Cassidy – Amergin’s Invocation

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Of all social theories Anarchism alone steadfastly proclaims that society exists for man, not man for society. The sole legitimate purpose of society is to serve the needs and advance the aspiration of the individual. Only by doing so can it justify its existence and be an aid to progress and culture.
– Emma Goldman

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….
–
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.
–
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!
–
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)
–
“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)
–
“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)
–
“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)
–
“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)
–
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)
–
“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)
–
“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.
—
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
______________________

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.
—
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

_____________

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.

–

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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Intro: Not only do beings and things have spirits that in turn take the forms of beings and things, but deeds, words, thoughts, and feelings also have spirits of their own. Thus is may happen that the soul of a beautiful deed may assume the form of an angel. – Sheikh Badruddin

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Greetings…
One of those dry periods for Turfing entries, (unless you get “The Mini Turf” of course (If you want to notified about Turfing or The Mini-Turf send me your email addy of choice to – llwydd (at sign) earthrites.org – and I will add you right away) though I have been thinking about Turfing (like the new look?) and fiddling about.

So much to write about, but I shan’t burden you with all of the details in this intro. It has been a wild couple of weeks, in so many ways. We installed a new poetry pole, and still moving forward with The Invisible College. I cover what else that has been going on in The Cabinet Of Wonders

I hope you enjoy this entry!

Blessings,
Gwyllm
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On The Menu:
The Short Note: Event Of The Week!
The Cabinet Of Wonders
The Links
In Tom’s Head
Vieux Farka Touré : Bullet The Blue Sky
The Angel Of Death
Ahmed Taha Poems on Anwar Kamal
Vieux Farka Touré – Fafa
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The Short Note: Event Of The Week!

In This Pic: Guido Orio (Grip-Writer), Rowan Spiers-Floyd (Assistant Director/Producer-Writer), Wiley Parker (Director – Writer & Fill in Actor!)

Rowan worked in concert with a group on a 24 hour film project this past weekend on “Above and Beyond”, and their film will be first shown tomorrow night at the Hollywood Theatre at 42nd & NE Sandy, at the Portland Film Race 2010 Screening.
Here is the addy and other info:
Portland Film Race 2010 Screening
Location:The Hollywood Theatre
Time:Wednesday, 30 June 2010 19:00
Admission is 10.00 at the door
Be there early, “Above and Beyond” will be the first film shown!
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The Cabinet Of Wonders:

Well, it’s been awhile. I have been working hard in the actual world, and trying to figure out this place we call Here and Now… I am going to describe some events from the last couple of weeks.

First: It’s in between rain showers, and Mary and I are working in North East Portland. I hear a cry from the air, and see a hummingbird, doing a dance. It hovers, and then climbs, climbs, and climbs up through the ladders of air, dives straight down and as it almost hits a roof it pulls up and cries out. This ritual is done everyday at the same time, at the same place. It is absolutely beautiful.

Second: “Oh what is that!” I hear Mary cry in the darkening of the evening outside. I look to where she is pointing, and up on a roof nearly 3 stories up is a very, very large shape. It is circling the roof, and then settles in on the South West corner. “Is it a raccoon?” Mary asks, and as I flash my torch up at it, I see it is a cat. So large, at first I thought it a Lynx or a Wildcat, but no, it is a domestic cat. Obviously it had climbed the cedar next to the house perhaps in pursuit of a squirrel, and gotten struck. I bring Sophie (our dog) out and tried to point it out. She just doesn’t see it. The cat is staying stock still, Sofie being a sight hound doesn’t see it until Mary’s torch later catches only its shining eyes moving. Sophie goes absolutely nuts. In the morning, the cat is gone, having finally figured out a way off the roof. I had visions of the fire department coming to get it off of the roof if he was still stuck.

Third: Late night: After working in our yard together, Mary and are sitting in chairs outside. The moon rises up, and everything glows with beauty. We sit together, as we have all these years, sharing in the moment with the arch of the heavens above. In that moment, everything is right. Buster the cat lies in front of Mary, and Sophie lies where I can rest my foot on her. I feel the now deeply, and I drink it in.

Fourth: I have several nights of dreams about un-finished emotional work stemming from events that happened in my teens. Two nights of heart rending memories welling up, with mornings filled with hauntings. The third night, I wake up, and my heart feels like a knife is passing though it. No matter what you have done to change things, sometimes you carry actions by others and yourself for life. These are the depths that run often unexplored. Yet, in the end all must come to that place where truth abides, and all the stories culminate. Sad as these moments are, they must acknowledged whatever the cost. How do you reach across decades to people you no longer are in contact with?

Fifth: We show up to work at a clients house. Mary works mainly on the outside, and I am repairing a mural I painted on her neighbors garage wall. The old balloon with her family I had painted had faded to nothing due to my use of florescent paints. I get up on the wall, and slowly obliterate the balloon, and then the basket with her family. The client, her two children, and then last her husband who’d died 5 years previously. Just like that, as if they never were under a covering of white. I move further down the wall towards the street, and start anew. Different balloon, different basket, and maybe the family again.

Sixth: I am reading Essential Sufism, edited by James Fadiman & Robert Frager. I can’t describe the beauty of this book, I write James and tell him of my early adventures in the world of Sufism. He writes back with some wondrous tales of his own. I find that the book goes with me everywhere. I read it before I go to sleep, I read a page or two during the day. It is almost a home coming on many levels.

Seventh: Mary and I are working in the yard, taking down old beds, moving the dirt, going to the plant nursery, coming home and prepping, cutting back bamboo and blackberries for the summer. We work together like the matched pair, she has the drive and direction, and I the brute strength where it is needed. She talks, and before my eyes she creates the garden for this summer around us. What was virtually jungle now has her imprint upon it. This is a story that goes back before the neolithic, and it plays out in our small space. Loam between fingers, the smell of earth, and the salt of sweat in ones eyes. We sleep the sleep of the dead, and give it another go the next day, trying to catch up along with all the other workers of the soil, the gardeners, and the farmers after out very, very wet spring.
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The Links:
Shark’s Carrying Anti-Bacterial Monsters
The World Fire
Burning To Leave The Office?
The Nuclear Reactor Next Door…
Moments with Shams
_______________________
In Tom’s Head

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Vieux Farka Touré : Bullet The Blue Sky

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Folk-lore of the Holy Land, Moslem, Christian and Jewish, by J. E. Hanauer [1907]

The Angel Of Death

Three mighty angels were standing before the throne of Allah with the most profound reverence, waiting to fulfil His high behests, and Allah said to one of them, “Descend to the Earth and bring hither a handful of its dust.” On receiving this command the messenger, with swift wing cleaving the atmosphere, descended to the Earth, and gathered a handful of its dust in obedience to the most High. No sooner, however, had he begun to do this, than the whole world shuddered and trembled from its centre to its circumference and groaned most pitifully; and, moved and startled by the distress and anguish which his attempt had caused, the gentle angel let the dust which he had gathered fall back, earth to earth, and returned weeping and ashamed to the Presence of Him that had sent him. And Allah said, “I blame thee not, it was not written on the tablet of destiny that this should be thine office. Stand now aside for other service.” Then Allah said to the second of the three angels, “Go thou, and fetch a handful of Earth’s dust.” He, too, flew swiftly down to Earth and tried to gather up a handful of its dust, but when he saw how the Earth shook and shuddered, and when he heard its groans, the gentle angel could not do the deed but let that which he had gathered fall, dust unto dust, and lifting up himself, he returned ashamed and weeping to the Presence of Him Who had sent him. And Allah said, “This task was not for thee. I blame thee not, but stand thou too aside, and other service shall be thine.” Then Allah sent the third angel, who descended swiftly, and gathered up the dust. But when the Earth began to groan and shudder in great pain and fearful anguish, the sad angel said, “This sore task was given me by Allah, and His Will must be done, even though hearts break with pain and sorrow.” Then he returned and presented the handful of Earth’s dust at Allah’s throne. And Allah said, “As thou the deed hast done, so now the office shall be thine, O Azrael, to gather up for me the souls of men and women when their time has come; the souls of saints and sinners, of beggars and of princes, of the old or young, whate’er befall; and even though friends weep, and hearts of loved ones ache with sorrow and with anguish, when bereft of those they love.” So Azrael became the messenger of Death. Azrael had done some wrong in Heaven, to expiate which he was obliged to live a man’s life on earth, without, however, neglecting his duties as Angel of Death; so he became a physician and, as such, attained wide celebrity. He married and got a son; but his wife was a dreadful shrew; and it did not increase his happiness in her society to know that she was destined to outlive him.

When Azrael had grown old, and the time for his release drew near, he revealed his real character to his son under oath of the strictest secrecy. “As I am shortly to depart,” he said, “it is my duty to provide for your future. You know all that can be known of the science and practice of medicine. Now I am going to tell you a secret which will secure infallible success in that profession. Whenever you are called to a bedside, I shall be present, visible to you alone. If I stand at the head of the bed, be sure the patient will die in spite of all your remedies; if at the foot, he will recover though you gave him the deadliest poison.” Azrael died, as was predestined; and his son, following his instructions, soon grew rich and famous. But he was a spendthrift, and laid by nothing out of all he earned. One day, when his purse was quite empty, he was called to the bedside of a rich notable, who lay at death’s door. On entering the sickroom, he saw his father standing at the head of the bed; so, after going through a form of examination and deliberation, he pronounced the patient’s case quite hopeless. At that the poor rich man, beside himself with fear, clasped the doctor’s knees, and promised him half his possessions if he would save his life. The son of Azrael was sorely tempted. “Well,” he said at length, “I will see what I can do, if you will make it three-fourths of your wealth, to be mine whether I succeed or no.” The patient in fear of death consented, and a contract was drawn up, signed and sealed and witnessed. Then the physician turned to his father, and by frantic gestures implored him to move to the foot of the bed, but the Angel of Death would not budge. Then, having called in four strong men, he bade each take a corner of the bed and, lifting all together, turn it round quickly so that the sick man’s head should be where his feet had been. This was done very cleverly, but Azrael still stood at the head. The manœuvre was oft repeated, but Azrael always moved with the bed. The son was forced to rack his brains for some new expedient. Having dismissed the four porters, he suddenly fell atrembling and whispered, “Father, I hear mother coming.” In a trice fear flamed in the grim angel’s orbs, and he was gone. So the sick man recovered. But from that day forth Azrael ceased to appear to his son, who made so many mistakes in his practice that his reputation fast declined.

One day he had been at the funeral of a Jew, his victim, and was strolling down Wady-en-Nâr, 1 in sad thought of his father, when he saw Azrael standing at the door of a cave. “In a few minutes you are going to die,” said the father sternly. “For thwarting me in my duties, your life has been shortened.” The youth implored his mercy, falling at his feet and kissing them, till Azrael said more kindly, “Well, come into my workshop, and see if your wits can find a way out of the difficulty. Though I myself am powerless now to help you, it is possible that you may yet help yourself.” They passed through a suite of seven chambers, the sides of which looked like the walls of an apothecary’s shop, being covered with shelves on which were all sorts of bottles, urns and boxes; each of which, as Azrael explained, contained the means of death for some human being. Taking down a vessel, he unscrewed its metal lid, and it seemed to the son as if some air escaped. “A certain youth,” he explained has to die within a few minutes by a fall from his horse, and I have just let loose the ‘afrìt’ who will scare that horse.” Of a second vessel he said, “This contains egg-shells of the safat, a strange bird, which never alights, even when mating. Its eggs are laid while on the wing and hatched before they reach the ground. The shells only fall to the earth, for the young are able to fly as soon as they leave the egg. These shells are often found and devoured by the greedy and blood-thirsty shibeh, 1 which goes mad in consequence and bites every creature that comes in its way, thus spreading hydrophobia and giving me plenty of work.”

Thus they passed from room to room till they came to a mighty hall, where, on rows upon rows of tables, were myriads of earthen lamps of various forms and sizes; some of which burned brightly, others with a doubtful flame, while many were going out. “These are the lives of men,” said Azrael. “It is Gabriel’s place to fill and light them; but he is rather careless. See! he has left his pitcher of oil on the table next to you.” “My lamp! where is my lamp?” cried the son feverishly. The Angel of Death pointed to one in the act of going out. “O father, for pity’s sake, refill it!” “That is Gabriel’s place, not mine. But I shall not take your life for a minute, as I have got to collect those lamps at the end of the hall, which have just gone out.” The son, left standing by his dying flame, grasped Gabriel’s pitcher and tried to pour some oil into his vessel; but in his nervous haste he upset the lamp and put it out. Azrael came and took up his son’s empty lamp, carrying it back through the rooms to the mouth of the cave, where the dead body of the physician was found later. “Silly fellow,” he thought to himself. “Why must he interfere in the work of angels. But at any rate he cannot say I killed him.” Azrael always finds an excuse, as the saying goes.

Among the soldiers of Herod there was an Italian named Francesco, a brave young man who had distinguished himself in the wars and was a favourite with his master as with all who knew him. He was gentle with the weak, kind to the poor, and except in fair fight had never been known to hurt a living thing. Children especially used to delight in his companionship. He had but one vice: he was an inveterate gambler, and all his spare moments were spent at cards.

Not only did he gamble himself, but he seemed to take a special delight in persuading others to follow his example. He would waylay boys and lads on their way to school, and apprentices sent running upon errands, and entice them to try their luck at a game. Nay, so infatuated did he become, that he is said to have ventured to accost some respectable Pharisees on their way to and from the Temple and invite them to join him at his loved diversion. At last, things went so far that the Chief Priests and Rulers betook themselves to Herod in a body and demanded his punishment. But card-playing happened to be a pastime in which Herod himself delighted so he did not take the charge against Francesco very seriously. Only, when the Jewish rulers kept on worrying him, he gave the Italian his discharge, and bade him leave Jerusalem and never again be seen within its walls.

Francesco entered on a new course of life. Gathering round him certain of his former comrades whose time of service had expired, he became the leader of a band of armed men whose business it was to waylay travellers on their way to and from the Holy City. Their principal haunt was a large cave on the road a little to the north of El Bìreh, the ancient Beeroth. In no case were they guilty of violence and they always let the poor go unmolested. Their mode of procedure was singular. They used to stop and surround travellers who seemed wealthy and invite them to their cave to play a game with Francesco. The travellers dared not refuse so courteous an invitation when delivered by a band of armed brigands. They were politely welcomed by the gambler, treated to wine, and made to stake at cards whatever valuables they had with them. If they won, they went undespoiled; if they lost, they were compassionated and begged to come again with more money and try their luck a second time.

This went on for a long while, till, on a certain day, the sentinel on the look-out announced that a party of pedestrians was in sight. “If they are on foot,” said the leader of the outlaws, “they are not likely to have with them anything worth playing for; still, let us see. How many of them are there?” “Thirteen,” was the answer. “Thirteen,” said Francesco musingly, “that is a curious number. Now where was it that I met a party of just thirteen men? Ah! now I remember; it was at Capernaum, where the Carpenter-rabbi of Nazareth cured the servant of one of the centurions belonging to our legion. I wonder whether by any chance, he and his twelve pupils can be coming this way. I must go and see for myself.” So saying he came out of the cave and joined the watchman at his point of vantage. The travellers were now near enough for Francesco to know them for Our Lord and His Apostles. He hastily called his men together, and told them that this time a really good man and a great prophet was coming, and that they must hide away the cards and all else that was sinful, for this was quite a different sort of person from the hypocrites of Jerusalem. Leaving them to prepare for the coming guests, he hurried down the road and, saluting the Saviour and His companions, pressed them, seeing evening was at hand and a storm threatening, to honour him and his comrades by spending the night with them. The invitation was accepted, and Jesus and His followers became the guests of the outlaws, who did their best to make them comfortable and, after supper, gathered round the Divine Teacher and, drinking in his gracious words, wondered. Although in all He said there was not a word that could be construed into blame of their way of life, yet a sense of guilt fell on them as they listened. The brigands made the guests lie down on their own rough beds, whilst they themselves wrapped their abâyehs around them and slept on the bare ground. That night it was Francesco’s turn to keep the watch. It chanced to strike him that the Saviour, lying fast asleep, had not sufficient covering, so he took off his own abâyeh and laid it over Him. He himself walked up and down to keep warm, but could not help shivering. Next morning, having breakfasted with the outlaws, Jesus and His Apostles departed, Francesco and some of his own men setting them on their way. Before parting, the Saviour thanked Francesco for his hospitality and that of his comrades and asked whether it were in His power to gratify any special wish he might have. “Not one, O Lord, but four,” replied the gambler. “What are they?” asked Jesus. “First,” said Francesco, “I am fond of playing cards, and I beg Thee to grant that whoever I play with, whether human or otherwise, I may always win. Next, that in case I invite any one to sit upon a certain stone seat at the door of our cave, he may not be able to get up without my permission. Thirdly, there is a lemon tree growing near the said cave, and I ask that nobody who climbs it at my request, may be able to descend to the ground unless I bid him. And lastly, I beg that in whatever disguise Azrael may come to take away my soul, I may detect him before he come too near, and be ready for him.” On hearing these strange petitions, the Saviour smiled sadly and answered, “My son, thou has spoken childishly and not in wisdom. Still, that which thou hast asked in thy simplicity shall be granted, and I will add thereto the promise, that when thou shalt see thy error, and desire to make a fresh request, it shall be granted. Fare thee well.”

Years passed away and many of Francesco’s comrades had left him, when one day the Angel of Death, disguised as a wayfarer, was seen approaching. Francesco knew him from afar, and when Azrael came to the door of the cave, the gambler invited him to sit down on the stone seat without. Having seen the angel fairly seated, Francesco cried, “I know thee. Thou hast come to take my soul, or the soul of one of my comrades, but I defy thee! I entertained the Lord of Life in this cave years ago, and He gave me power to forbid, any one who sits on that seat to rise from it without my leave.” The angel at once struggled to get up but found himself paralysed. Finding rage of no avail, he humbly begged to be released. Francesco extorted from him a solemn oath not to seek his soul nor that of any of his comrades for the space of fifteen years, then let him go.

The fifteen years passed, and Francesco now dwelt alone in his cave as a godly hermit, when the Angel of Death drew near once more. The recluse at once withdrew into the cave and lay down on his bed, groaning as if in agony. This time, Azrael entered the cave dressed in a monk’s habit. “What ails thee, my son?” he asked. “I have fever and I thirst,” came the reply. “I beg you to gather a lemon for me off the tree which grows close to the cave, and to mix a little of its juice with f water that my thirst may be slaked.” As it wanted yet some minutes of the time appointed, Azrael saw in the request a good excuse for administering a mortal draught; so he climbed the tree to reach the fruit. But, no sooner was he up in the branches than he heard a laugh and, looking down, beheld Francesco in the best of health. He strove to descend but could not move without Francesco’s leave, which was not granted until he had pledged his word to keep away for other fifteen years.

That term elapsed and Azrael came a third time. “Do you intend to play any more vile tricks on me?” he inquired of Francesco, now an aged man. “Not if you will grant me one favour,” answered Francesco, “and allow me to take my pack of cards into the other world.” “Will my giving you the permission lead to some fresh practical joke at my expense?” “No, I most solemnly assure you,” replied the old man. Hereupon the Angel of Death snatched up Francesco’s soul and his pack of cards and went with them to the gate of Paradise where St Peter sits to admit the souls of the righteous. Francesco was told to knock at the gate. He did so and it was opened, but when the porter saw who it was, and that he had brought his cards with him, he slammed the door in his face. So Azrael lifted the poor soul up again and descended with him to the gate of Hell where Iblìs sits, eager to seize and torment dead sinners. On beholding who it was that the Angel of Death had brought, he said in great glee, “Here you are at last, my dear. I have waited long for your arrival, and so have many others with whom you played cards on Earth. They all hope to see you beaten at your own game, for as you did not allow travellers to reach the Holy City till they had played with you, so shall I not allow you to roast on the red-hot coals till you have played a game with me. You have your cards, I see, so we will begin at once.” So Francesco and the Evil One began to play, and to the surprise of both Francesco won the game. Satan insisted on a fresh trial of skill, and when he was once more defeated, he would insist on another trial, till at last, when he had been beaten seven times, he lost his temper and drove out Francesco, saying that he could not have any one in Hell who excelled him in any thing even though it were a game. On hearing this, fresh hope was roused in the poor sinner’s heart, and, recalling the Saviour’s pledge to grant him one more boon, he begged Azrael who had stopped to watch the game to take him back to the gates of Paradise, as he felt sure the Saviour would not treat him as harshly as the Prince of Saints and the chief of lost spirits had done. So Azrael took the poor soul to Heaven’s gate and it once more knocked thereat, and when St Peter opened, and would have driven it away, it pleaded the Saviour’s promise to grant one more boon. So St Peter called his Master, Who, when Francesco asked for admission, confessing that his life had been one great mistake and offering to throw away his pack of cards, told Mar Butrus to let him in; and so the lifelong gambler entered Paradise.

Footnotes

177:1 This account of the appointment of Azrael was given by a Moslem lady of rank to a Christian woman, who passed it on to my wife.

179:1 Hell has seven gates, one of which is in Wady-en-Nâr; and the Angel of Death has his workshop in one of the caves in that gloomy valley, as appears in this story.

180:1 Shibeh (lit. “the leaper”) is one of the names of the leopard. But in folk-lore it is described as a creature combining the characteristics of the badger and the hyæna.
____________

Ahmed Taha Poems on Anwar Kamal

From: The empire of walls (cantos and stories)

Portrait of Anwar Kamel

You extend your spider web
beyond all exiles
and beyond the years that escaped you
this is why
the regime’s soldiers couldn’t hunt you
and your fragile threads remained
a dusky home for
the comrades who died or immigrated

How do you forget that you’re the one
who started departing
then invented your face
that we see so enigmatic
and the fingers that take refuge
in your eyes
whenever you hide
behind a stone table
or a silk coat

How do you hear now the beats of your body
whenever you read Nietzsche or Paul Eluard
you extend your hands to the desert
in order to meet God away from both the “Pasha” square
and the chairs of the “Odeon” café
you whisper to him about your rebellion
you remember your briefcase,
so you gesture to him
and give him the nearest poem, he reads it
and leans toward you
and the eyes smile
—

From: A final portrait of Anwar Kamel

Notes:
Anwar Kamel was an important member of the Egyptian avant-garde in the forties, a friend of George Henein and Edmond Jabes. Kamel was an early Trotskyite and wrote a book “El-ketab El-mamnoo’” that was banned then. After the military takeover in 1952, most of his friends either immigrated or were forced into exile. In the eighties, an old man, he published the new generation of Egyptian poets in his free, limited distribution, magazine/flyer “Fasilah”.

Shobra is a very crowded lower middle class neighborhood in Cairo where Ahmed grew up.
________
Anwar Kamel widens his exile:

For thirty years
you were alone in your exile
meanwhile, we crawled,
screamed,
and wore fatigues

You knew
that our path goes through here
so you were widening your exile
and building a fortress of names between your tomb
and the regime’s soldiers:

this is George Henein
taking out maps from his armpit
in order to pick where he would be born
and where he would get lost

this is Trotsky
bending over a book
and pointing to his heartache

this is Ramsis Younan
drawing a city of dreams and illusions
and disappearing in its streets

this is Besheer El-Sebaai
writing a romantic apology
for not dying in 1848

this is Ahmed Taha
creating these traps and holes
around himself
in order to chase his runaway childhood

this is Cairo, your city
not a single alphabet letter can penetrate it
to disclose its streets that host different epochs
like homeless old people
these streets where deities are conversing
as if they were friends in a coffee shop

and this is “Shobra”
a body that extends like a graveyard
that is big enough for everyone
yet doesn’t fit a single person
Shobra that is embarrassed of its sagging breasts
so it kneels
and the dead,
the hungry,
the kids,
and the grieving women
drop from it
like warm milk
yet the armies of police remain,
the empty cable cars remain,
the train graveyard in the north end of Shobra remains,
also the kids whose skin is mere dust,
men who mumble at night
and yell during the day,
women who weep — the same way they laugh —
beneath the weight of their husbands
or behind their coffins
women who get impregnated with men’s panting
and under their gowns their kids walk.
—
Anwar Kamel dies a natural death:

I always saw you
lying on the road
bullets gathered around you like flocks of flies
meanwhile your gray coat is completely open
and next to you, was this dark featherless bird
that — moments ago — used to be your leather briefcase
before they removed your papers from it

Yet you died an ordinary death
that is similar to your last escape
and similar to this awful type of death that we have in
Cairo,
Hegazz,
Nagd,
and Damascus
out of hunger
overeating,
laughter,
and depression

This canned death
that has already expired
and can only bring
vomit
and headache
this death that can be defeated by
aspirin and valium

You must feel jealous then of our surreal death
coming from the desert
riding its camouflaged camel
with computerized rockets in its saddlebag
and in the distance between its head and its fingers
a bowl of the leftover Fatta*
from yesterday’s dinner
________________
* Fatta is a Bedouin food

Anwar Kamel didn’t build a home country in his briefcase:

For thirty years
you were alone in your exile
and you were thinking
“Where does the original Cairo sleep
and how did the barracks extend to reach my window”

You were thinking
“How could the lost George Henein
have a home country
to put his arm around
or sit with in a café
and maybe feel its body after his second drink”

As for you
the home country that sits next to you doesn’t know your name
even after ten drinks
it may stretch
you may rub your eyes a little
then it would go about its daily journey
and you would go with your daily journey”

Well, let it be then
you only have this chest without nipples
after all the comrades have left forever
like wandering butterflies
where nipples grow like grass
on coffee shop tables
waiting for the dry lips
of those who migrated from the east

Let it be then
you will surrender your body to them
without any sign that points to your
specializing in death for thirty years
let them bury it in the graveyard of July
and you go back to what you were:
a spirit that wanders
in the relics of Heliopolis
—
A last dance with Anwar Kamel

As usual
I’ll slightly disagree with you
regarding who should die first:
Marx
or the husband of the woman I’m sleeping with?.

The General who is in khaki,
or the General who is in jeans?

Yet we will agree before the night ends
that everyone should die
and we will agree that we will organize everything
whenever the time permits
in the evening that follows
your final departure
—
Anwar Kamel celebrates the 14th of July:

Don’t say that all these defeats have colored me
with the color that doesn’t show in the darkness
this was my color from the beginning
as it is your color now
call it whatever you want
it is all you have

There is not a half death for you to die
and there is not half a color for me to live it
this is why I will stay — as I was created — a terrorist
and stuff my head with these big-bellied dying children
and ambush these blonde worms
like a fat spider

I won’t suck their viscous blood
I will organize them in my old notebooks
placed deep in each of their chests, a spear.
I will return their horns they put in museum halls
and their eyes that were stuck to the heads of fish
maybe I would dance around their corpses
that are lined up without shiny coffins
maybe I would fill their limbs with my words
that don’t know Rousseau or Voltaire
and don’t care about the 14th of July
and don’t resemble these three words
that fall from the pages of books
like fetuses in their third month
that stuck to the rears of cannons
like genital flees

But I embrace every moment with this shiny sword
that falls like an angry god
to put the heads of kings, prostitutes,
poetry recite-rs, revolutionary intellectuals,
Generals, beautiful women, and men of God in one basket

I wish if I were there
I would have brushed against the shoulders of these women
who are peeling their vegetables
then would have sat immediately behind that basket
wetting my quill with fresh blood
and write a love poem daily
on my sweetheart’s head

How did the gods ask about the tomb of Anwar Kamel:

There should be a dark universe
where the gods who created it stumble
while searching in the rubble of ancient cities
for any monument from the past
I’ll guide them like blind people
through the ruins that I know well
pointing at what remained of
steel,
plastic,
and canned sex organs

I’ll lie to them whenever I can
like tourist guides lie
to old folks seeking immortality

I will point at Paris’ skull and say:
here Anwar Kamel was born
and point to London’s vagina that is covered with gray hair:
here the faces of the revolutions of third world countries got stuck
and to Washington’s ass:
here third world countries’ officers became leaders
and to Moscow’s breasts that drip rotten milk:
here the leaders turned into philosophers

And when the gods try to return to their far skies
while holding their fake monuments
their eldest will ask me with his dignified voice:
what do you want you obedient servant?

I’ll kneel down in front of him
holding back a chuckle
and chant in a pious tone:
I want more flourishing cities,
more T.N.T.,
and more valium.
—

—
Anwar Kamel doesn’t intend to be a saint:

Now, here are the comrades: The Decembrists, the Octoberists
and the romantic assassin writers
unifying their death
they all arrive
with their unkempt beards dangling
with lit pipes.

They will fill the earth with saliva
the air with coughs,
and the sky with something dark
that resembles smoke

In between their sporadic exhalation
their teary voices will echo
while reciting the books of the ancestors
who followed God’s calling
so their blood flowed on His door
while carrying sharp-edged crosses

And you never return

Here are the comrades
raising the white flags
with bloody stripes
and the smallpox scars that resemble the stars
and chant the book of the Ecclesiastes

And you never return

Here are the comrades
their feet shaking absently
while they pray for exodus
the jazz music calms down,
the psalms begin,
their bodies are free from December’s ice
and they begin the New Testament
with their feet flying in the air
their beards touch in ecstasy
and moans that are louder than rock music
in front of the sacrifice scene

And you never return

Maybe you will write the last page
starting with a greeting
and ending with an apology
not for specializing in death for thirty years
and not for escaping from the time of the military and the Bedouins
and certainly not for migrating with the birds in the fall
but because — unlike these birds —
you won’t return the next spring.

_________

Vieux Farka Touré – Fafa

_________
Outro:
This spirit of divine origin appears in a man as man, in beast as beast, and in plant as plant. And it appears differently even within each species, appearing in each person in a different manner in accordance with his different capacity and predisposition. The spirit neither disappears not diminishes nor changes when the body is destroyed.
The body, until its end, is in continuous transformation, whereas the spirit never changes. It cannot be identified by anything other than the body it inhabits. There is no identification without appearance; therefore, it is essential for the spirit to have a form. Yet if the spirit becomes fully identified with a specific body, it cannot return to its origin. – Sheikh Badruddin