Gwyllm.com

This edition is dedicated to my friend Michael Bolan, who came back into our lives after an 18 year hiatus. We first met in the summer of 1969 in Santa Barbara. He was hobbling about with a broken leg/foot from a car accident. He had sandy blond hair, and was taken to wearing corduroy and velvet with usually a white shirt. We soon discovered that we were both head over heels in love with poetry, wine, and young women, and various other endeavors.

Michael and I also found out over time that we both liked David Bowie, (who I was introduced to by Steve Thoreson, who had a copy of Bowie’s second album, Space Oddity – I still have it on vinyl!)… anyway, this intro revolves to some degree around Mr. Bowie, and Mr. Bolan, who turned me onto the “Ziggy Stardust” album one late afternoon at his grandmother’s house in West Hollywood, (near Fairfax HS) when I had moved out of the country back to the city. It was a revelation. We sat listening to Ziggy, and I could hardly breathe. I thought it would become a classic, and I was right about that. Michael and I hunted down rare recordings that Bowie had done, which included the two songs featured in this edition, “Port Of Amsterdam” & “My Death”, both by Jacques Brel who we appreciated for his lyricism.

Mr. Bowie was the bee’s knees, and we enjoyed the fact that he pretty much broke with all of the noise and drama from the 60′s. His music and persona were just perfect for that moment in time. It fueled many a long evening between us, and our friends. As much as we appreciated the music of say, The Stones, or The Beatles, this music looked forward, and not back. I think this is important when you are in your late teens or your early 20′s. It seemed such a brave new world then.

Today is David Bowie’s 65th birthday. Yeah, lots of people are making it an occasion, and it is. Who thought the man would survive so long? I have included a link from the Guardian that talks a bit about his life. It is interesting, if nothing else. Now days, I don’t listen very often to his works. I haven’t really since the early 80′s. Taste change, and all of a sudden listening to his music was looking back over a chasm of time. I do appreciate his work with Brel, and Weil. I like the nod of the hat to say, the continuum that he rose out of. Few artist can do that, and Mr. Bowie did it with a certain grace.

Michael introduced me to Rimbaud and Baudelaire, and we both have shared a long and deep abiding love for Leonard Cohen’s poetry and song. On Michael’s visit, we took up the conversation as if it had never had stopped. The time sped as always, and we were making plans for the next get together when he is back to Portland. I owe him a phone call, and he owes me his email address! I am happy to know him after these 43 years, that seemingly blazed past with such blinding speed. Here is to sitting and talking about adventures in France back when, and to drinking absinthe together again when we next see each other.

Here is to friendship, love, and exploration.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~

On The Menu:
The Links
Pelt – The Film
Jean Genet Quotes
David Bowie – Port Of Amsterdam
The Quest Of The Queen’s Tears
Jacques Brel Lyrics/Poetry
David Bowie – My Death – live 1973
Art: Aladár Kacziány
~~~~~~
The Links:
Obummer…
Palestinian Sesame Street falls victim to US Congress
Happy Birthday David!
Becoming The Blue Lotus Ritual
~~~~~~
Pelt: The Film…
Rowan’s Senior Thesis. Check it out here: Pelt:The Film.

Also, please check out the IndieGoGo Fundraiser Site as well, which is a combination of Pelt and two other films. : Trifecta … Help support these thesis fims by leaving a comment or donating at the Trifecta site! Thanks!

(Pelt: The Film – Concept Art:Austin Hillebrecht)

~~~~~~

Jean Genet Quotes:

“She was happy, and perfectly in line with the tradition of those women they used to call “ruined,” “fallen,” feckless, bitches in heat, ravished dolls, sweet sluts, instant princesses, hot numbers, great lays, succulent morsels, everybody’s darlings . . . ”

“To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance.”

“I could not take lightly the idea that people made love without me.”

“My heart’s in my hand, and my hand is pierced, and my hand’s in the bag, and the bag is shut, and my heart is caught.”

“A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness.”
~~~~~~
David Bowie – Port Of Amsterdam

~~~~~~

~~~~~~
The Quest Of The Queen’s Tears
by Lord Dunsany

Sylvia, Queen of the Woods, in her woodland palace, held court, and made a mockery of her suitors. She would sing to them, she said, she would give them banquets, she would tell them tales of legendary days, her jugglers should caper before them, her armies salute them, her fools crack jests with them and make whimsical quips, only she could not love them.

This was not the way, they said, to treat princes in their splendor and mysterious troubadours concealing kingly names; it was not in accordance with fable; myth had no precedent for it. She should have thrown her glove, they said, into some lion’s den, she should have asked for a score of venomous heads of the serpents of Licantara, or demanded the death of any notable dragon, or sent them all upon some deadly quest, but that she could not love them—! It was unheard of—it had no parallel in the annals of romance.

And then she said that if they must needs have a quest she would offer her hand to him who first should move her to tears: and the quest should be called, for reference in histories or song, the Quest of the Queen’s Tears, and he that achieved them she would wed, be he only a petty duke of lands unknown to romance.

And many were moved to anger, for they hoped for some bloody quest; but the old lords chamberlain said, as they muttered among themselves in a far, dark end of the chamber, that the quest was hard and wise, for that if she could ever weep she might also love. They had known her all her childhood; she had never sighed. Many men had she seen, suitors and courtiers, and had never turned her head after one went by. Her beauty was as still sunsets of bitter evenings when all the world is frore, a wonder and a chill. She was as a sun-stricken mountain uplifted alone, all beautiful with ice, a desolate and lonely radiance late at evening far up beyond the comfortable world, not quite to be companioned by the stars, the doom of the mountaineer.

If she could weep, they said, she could love, they said.

And she smiled pleasantly on those ardent princes, and troubadours concealing kingly names.

Then one by one they told, each suitor prince the story of his love, with outstretched hands and kneeling on the knee; and very sorry and pitiful were the tales, so that often up in the galleries some maid of the palace wept. And very graciously she nodded her head like a listless magnolia in the deeps of the night moving idly to all the breezes its glorious bloom.

And when the princes had told their desperate loves and had departed away with no other spoil than of their own tears only, even then there came the unknown troubadours and told their tales in song, concealing their gracious names.

And there was one, Ackronnion, clothed with rags, on which was the dust of roads, and underneath the rags was war-scarred armour whereon were dints of blows; and when he stroked his harp and sang his song, in the gallery above maidens wept, and even old lords chamberlain whimpered among themselves and thereafter laughed through their tears and said: “It is easy to make old people weep and to bring idle tears from lazy girls; but he will not set a-weeping the Queen of the Woods.”

And graciously she nodded, and he was the last. And disconsolate went away those dukes and princes, and troubadours in disguise. Yet Ackronnion pondered as he went away.

King he was of Afarmah, Lool and Haf, over-lord of Zeroora and hilly Chang, and duke of the dukedoms of Molong and Mlash, none of them unfamiliar with romance or unknown or overlooked in the making of myth. He pondered as he went in his thin disguise.

Now by those that do not remember their childhood, having other things to do, be it understood that underneath fairyland, which is, as all men know, at the edge of the world, there dwelleth the Gladsome Beast. A synonym he for joy.

It is known how the lark in its zenith, children at play out-of-doors, good witches and jolly old parents have all been compared—how aptly!—with this very same Gladsome Beast. Only one “crab” he has (if I may use slang for a moment to make myself perfectly clear), only one drawback, and that is that in the gladness of his heart he spoils the cabbages of the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland,—and of course he eats men.

It must further be understood that whoever may obtain the tears of the Gladsome Beast in a bowl, and become drunken upon them, may move all persons to shed tears of joy so long as he remains inspired by the potion to sing or to make music.

Now Ackronnion pondered in this wise: that if he could obtain the tears of the Gladsome Beast by means of his art, withholding him from violence by the spell of music, and if a friend should slay the Gladsome Beast before his weeping ceased—for an end must come to weeping even with men—that so he might get safe away with the tears, and drink them before the Queen of the Woods and move her to tears of joy. He sought out therefore a humble knightly man who cared not for the beauty of Sylvia, Queen of the Woods, but had found a woodland maiden of his own once long ago in summer. And the man’s name was Arrath, a subject of Ackronnion, a knight-at-arms of the spear-guard: and together they set out through the fields of fable until they came to Fairyland, a kingdom sunning itself (as all men know) for leagues along the edges of the world. And by a strange old pathway they came to the land they sought, through a wind blowing up the pathway sheer from space with a kind of metallic taste from the roving stars. Even so they came to the windy house of thatch where dwells the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland sitting by parlour windows that look away from the world. He made them welcome in his star-ward parlour, telling them tales of Space, and when they named to him their perilous quest he said it would be a charity to kill the Gladsome Beast; for he was clearly one of these that liked not its happy ways. And then he took them out through his back door, for the front door had no pathway nor even a step—from it the old man used to empty his slops sheer on to the Southern Cross—and so they came to the garden wherein his cabbages were, and those flowers that only blow in Fairyland, turning their faces always towards the comet, and he pointed them out the way to the place he called Underneath, where the Gladsome Beast had his lair. Then they manoeuvered. Ackronnion was to go by the way of the steps with his harp and an agate bowl, while Arrath went round by a crag on the other side. Then the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland went back to his windy house, muttering angrily as he passed his cabbages, for he did not love the ways of the Gladsome Beast; and the two friends parted on their separate ways.

Nothing perceived them but that ominous crow glutted overlong already upon the flesh of man.

The wind blew bleak from the stars.

At first there was dangerous climbing, and then Ackronnion gained the smooth, broad steps that led from the edge to the lair, and at that moment heard at the top of the steps the continuous chuckles of the Gladsome Beast.

He feared then that its mirth might be insuperable, not to be saddened by the most grievous song; nevertheless he did not turn back then, but softly climbed the stairs and, placing the agate bowl upon a step, struck up the chaunt called Dolorous. It told of desolate, regretted things befallen happy cities long since in the prime of the world. It told of how the gods and beasts and men had long ago loved beautiful companions, and long ago in vain. It told of the golden host of happy hopes, but not of their achieving. It told how Love scorned Death, but told of Death’s laughter. The contented chuckles of the Gladsome Beast suddenly ceased in his lair. He rose and shook himself. He was still unhappy. Ackronnion still sang on the chaunt called Dolorous. The Gladsome Beast came mournfully up to him. Ackronnion ceased not for the sake of his panic, but still sang on. He sang of the malignity of time. Two tears welled large in the eyes of the Gladsome Beast. Ackronnion moved the agate bowl to a suitable spot with his foot. He sang of autumn and of passing away. The the beast wept as the frore hills weep in the thaw, and the tears splashed big into the agate bowl. Ackronnion desperately chaunted on; he told of the glad unnoticed things men see and do not see again, of sunlight beheld unheeded on faces now withered away. The bowl was full. Ackronnion was desperate: the Beast was so close. Once he thought that its mouth was watering!—but it was only the tears that had run on the lips of the Beast. He felt as a morsel! The Beast was ceasing to weep! He sang of worlds that had disappointed the gods. And all of a sudden, crash! and the staunch spear of Arrath went home behind the shoulder, and the tears and the joyful ways of the Gladsome Beast were ended and over for ever.

And carefully they carried the bowl of tears away leaving the body of the Gladsome Beast as a change of diet for the ominous crow; and going by the windy house of thatch they said farewell to the Old Man Who Looks After Fairyland, who when he heard of the deed rubbed his hands together and mumbled again and again, “And a very good thing, too. My cabbages! My cabbages!”

And not long after Ackronnion sang again in the sylvan palace of the Queen of the Woods, having first drunk all the tears in his agate bowl. And it was a gala night, and all the court were there and ambassadors from the lands of legend and myth, and even some from Terra Cognita.

And Ackronnion sang as he never sang before, and will not sing again. O, but dolorous, dolorous, are all the ways of man, few and fierce are his days, and the end trouble, and vain, vain his endeavor: and woman—who shall tell of it?—her doom is written with man’s by listless, careless gods with their faces to other spheres.

Somewhat thus he began, and then inspiration seized him, and all the trouble in the beauty of his song may not be set down by me: there was much of gladness in it, and all mingled with grief: it was like the way of man: it was like our destiny.

Sobs arose at his song, sighs came back along echoes: seneschals, soldiers, sobbed, and a clear cry made the maidens; like rain the tears came down from gallery to gallery.

All round the Queen of the Woods was a storm of sobbing and sorrow.

But no, she would not weep.
~~~~~~
Jacques Brel Lyrics/Poetry

If You Should Go Away

If you go away on this summer’s day, Then you might as well take the sun away
All the birds that flew in the summer sky
When our love was new and our hearts were high
When the day was young and the nights were long
And the moon stood still for the night bird’s song
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.
But if you stay, I’ll make you a day
Like no day has been, or will be again
We’ll sail on the sun, we’ll ride on the rain
And talk to the trees and worship the wind
But if you go, I’ll understand
Leave me just enough love to fill up my hand
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.
If you go, as I know you will
You must tell the world to stop turning
Till you return again, if you ever do,
For what good is love without loving you?
Can I tell you now, as you turn to go
I’ll be dying slowly till the next hello
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.
But if you stay, I’ll make you a night
Like no night has been, or will be again
I’ll sail on your smile, I’ll ride on your touch
I’ll talk to your eyes that I love so much
But if you go, I won’t cry
Though the good is gone from the word goodbye
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away
. If you go away, as I know you must
There is nothing left in this world to trust
Just an empty room, full of empty space
Like the empty look I see on your face
I’d have been the shadow of your shadow
If you might have kept me by your side
If you go away, if you go away, if you go away.
~~

Amsterdam

In the port of Amsterdam
There’s a sailor who sings
Of the dreams that he brings
From the wide open sea
In the port of Amsterdam
There’s a sailor who sleeps
While the riverbank weeps
With the old willow tree
In the port of Amsterdam
There’s a sailor who dies
Full of beer, full of cries
In a drunken down fight
And in the port of Amsterdam
There’s a sailor who’s born
On a muggy hot morn
By the dawn’s early light
In the port of Amsterdam
Where the sailors all meet
There’s a sailor who eats
Only fishheads and tails
He will show you his teeth
That have rotted too soon
That can swallow the moon
That can haul up the sails
And he yells to the cook
With his arms open wide
Bring me more fish
Put it down by my side
Then he wants so to belch
But he’s too full to try
So he gets up and laughs
And he zips up his fly
In the port of Amsterdam
You can see sailors dance
Paunches bursting their pants
Grinding women to paunch
They’ve forgotten the tune
That their whiskey voice croaks
Splitting the night with the
Roar of their jokes
And they turn and they dance
And they laugh and they lust
Till the rancid sound of
The accordion bursts
Then out to the night
With their pride in their pants
With the slut that they tow
Underneath the street lamps
In the port of Amsterdam
There’s a sailor who drinks
And he drinks and he drinks
And he drinks once again
He drinks to the health
Of the whores of Amsterdam
Who have promised their love
To a thousand other men
They’ve bargained their bodies
And their virtue long gone
For a few dirty coins
And when he can’t go on
He plants his nose in the sky
And he wipes it up above
And he pisses like I cry
For an unfaithful love
In the port of Amsterdam
In the port of Amsterdam
~~

NEXT

Naked as sin, an army towel
Covering my belly
Some of us blush, somehow
Knees turning to jelly
Next, next
I was still just a kid
There were a hundred like me
I followed a naked body
A naked body followed me
next, next
I was still just a kid
When my innocence was lost
In a mobile army whorehouse
Gift for the army, free of cost
Next, next
Me, I really would have liked
A little touch of tenderness
Maybe a word, a smile
An hour of happiness
But, next, next
Oh, it wasn’t so tragic
The high heavens did not fall
But how much of that time
I hated being there at all
Next, next
Now I always will recall
The brothel truck, the flying flags
The queer lieutenant who slapped
Our asses as if we were fags
Next, next
I swear on the wet head
Of my first case of gonorrhea
It is his ugly voice
That I forever hear
Next, next
That voice that stinks of whiskey
Of corpses and of mud
It is the voice of nations
It is the thick voice of blood
Next, next
And since the each woman
I have taken to bed
Seems to laugh in my arms
To whisper through my head
Next, next
All the naked and the dead
Should hold each other’s hands
As they watch me scream at night
In a dream no one understands
Next, next
And when I am not screaming
In a voice grown dry and hollow
I stand on endless naked lines
Of the following and the followed
Next, next
One day I’ll cut my legs off
Or burn myself alive
Anything, I’ll do anything
To get out of line to survive
Not ever to be next
Not ever to be next.
~~

IF WE ONLY HAVE LOVE

If we only have love
Then tomorrow will dawn
And the days of our years
Will rise on that morn
If we only have love
To embrace without fears
We will kiss with our eyes
We will sleep without tears
If we only have love
With our arms open wide
Then the young and the old
Will stand at our side
If we only have love
Love that’s falling like rain
Then the parched desert earth
Will grow green again
If we only have love
For the hymn that we shout
For the song that we sing
Then we’ll have a way out
If we only have love
We can reach those in pain
We can heal all our wounds
We can use our own names
If we only have love
We can melt all the guns
And then give the new world
To our daughters and sons
If we only have love
Then Jerusalem stands
And then death has no shadow
There are no foreign lands
If we only have love
We will never bow down
We’ll be tall as the pines
Neither heroes nor clowns
If we only have love
Then we’ll only be men
And we’ll drink from the Grail
To be born once again
Then with nothing at all
But the little we are
We’ll have conquered all time
All space, the sun, and the stars

~~
David Bowie – My Death – live 1973

~~

“These be fine things, an if they be not sprites. That’s a brave god, and bears celestial liquor. I will kneel to him.” – William Shakespeare

Greetings.
It has been a heck of a week here at Caer Llwydd. My sister-in-law, Claudia past on New Years Day, and on Thursday morning I was informed my step-brother Mike Ward past away in his sleep in Arizona. He was a couple of years older than me, and as teen-agers we shared a room for awhile. I had always been fond of him. Claudia’s funeral is going on today, 11 years plus a day after my half-brother and Claudia wed. My heart goes out to members of the family, and friends.

Life is peculiar in the way it takes its twist and turns. Claudia was incredibly happy to have just moved back to her native home in the Seattle area. Sad. Mike had spent years teaching in High Schools, and coaching young swimmers having been a superb one himself. Everyone thought him to be in excellent health, though a bit heavy.

I dedicate this entry to Claudia and Mike, and to those whose lives they touched.

Gwyllm
~~~~~~
On The Menu:
The Links
Jim Fadiman Interview Link: Invisible College #6!
The Tempest Quotes
Clannad – Morning Dew
The Sonnets
Clannad – New Grange

~~~~~~
The Links:
Alan Moore talking about science and imagination
The Weirdest Events of 2011 according to the Telegraph
Black Keys Interview
Anonymous Takes on Germany’s Far-Right
~~~~~~
Jim Fadiman Interview Link: Invisible College #6!

(Jim and Tashi at Powell’s Hawthorne in Portland, this last November)
Here is the full interview of Jim Fadiman Conducted by our Diane Darling! Enjoy!
Click On The Title!
~~~~~~
The Tempest Quotes:
(Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale – “Prospero and Ariel”)

“I prithee,
Remember I have done thee worthy service,
Told thee no lies, made no mistakes, served
Without or grudge or grumblings. Thou did promise
To bate me a full year.”
~~
“As wicked dew as e’er my mother brushed
With raven’s feather from unwholesome fen
Drop on you both! A southwest blow on ye
And blister you all o’er!”
~~
“There’s nothing ill can dwell in such a temple.
If the ill spirit have so fair a house,
Good things will strive to dwell with’t.”
~~
“All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavour.”
~~
“O heaven, O earth, bear witness to this sound,
and crown what I profess with kind event
If I speak true; if hollowly, invert
what best is boded me to mischief: I,
Beyond all limit of what else i’ th’ world,
Do love, prize, honour you.”

~~~~~~
Clannad – Morning Dew

~~~~~~
The Sonnets:

From Mr. Shakespeare, of course…

Sonnet 29: When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
~~

Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips’ red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damask’d, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
~~
Sonnet 05: Those hours that with gentle work did frame

Those hours, that with gentle work did frame
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell,
Will play the tyrants to the very same
And that unfair which fairly doth excel:
For never-resting time leads summer on
To hideous winter and confounds him there;
Sap check’d with frost and lusty leaves quite gone,
Beauty o’ersnow’d and bareness every where:
Then, were not summer’s distillation left,
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,
Beauty’s effect with beauty were bereft,
Nor it nor no remembrance what it was:
But flowers distill’d though they with winter meet,
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.
~~

Sonnet 13: O that you were yourself, but love you are

O, that you were yourself! but, love, you are
No longer yours than you yourself here live:
Against this coming end you should prepare,
And your sweet semblance to some other give.
So should that beauty which you hold in lease
Find no determination: then you were
Yourself again after yourself’s decease,
When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.
Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,
Which husbandry in honour might uphold
Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day
And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?
O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know
You had a father: let your son say so.
~~~~~~
Clannad – New Grange

~~~~~~
(William Hamilton – Prospero & Ariel)

“Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will him about mine ears; and sometime voices,
That if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again, and then in dreaming
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.”
– William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 3.2

As Long As I Live

As long as I live I will eat and drink
The grief of loving You.
I will never give it up to anyone
Even when I am dead.

Tomorrow
At the Resurrection
I will walk forward with this violent thirst
Still storming my head. – Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani

A belated entry. I hope this finds you all well, with the New Year peering over thy shoulder. Lovely time last night at friends.

We are awaiting news on my sister in law Claudia, who had an aneurysm Monday evening. She is being removed from the ventilator today. Our thoughts are with her, and with my brother Chris. I was best man at their wedding, 11 years ago next Saturday the 6th. Life takes such odd turns.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~~~~~

On The Menu:
The Links
Wishery (Disney Remix)
January
Cold Mountain
Bloom (Disney Remix)
Art: Harold Gaze
~~~~~~

The Links:
Flashback! Psychedelic research returns
It’s The Fair Play…
Bees Have Moods?
The War On Drugs.. (Thanks To John!)
~~~~~~~

Wishery (Disney Remix)

~~~~~~~
January

“The name, given to the month of ‘January’, is derived from the ancient Roman name ‘Janus’ who presided over the gate to the new year. He was revered as the ‘God of Gateways’, ‘of Doorways’ and ‘of the Journey.’ Janus protected the ‘Gate of Heaven’, known as the ‘Lord of Beginnings’, is associated with the ‘Goddess Juno-Janus’, and often symbolized by an image of a face that looks forwards and backwards at the same time. This symbolism can easily be associated with the month known by many as the start of a new year which brings new opportunities. We cast out the old and welcome in the new. It is the time when many reflect on events of the previous year and often resolve to redress or improve some aspect of daily life or personal philosophy.”
– Mysitcal World Wide Web

“January is here, with eyes that keenly glow,
A frost-mailed warrior
striding a shadowy steed of snow.”
– Edgar Fawcett

“Nature has undoubtedly mastered the art of winter gardening and even the most experienced gardener can learn from the unrestrained beauty around them.”
– Vincent A. Simeone

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.”
– Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

“The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change. It is imperceptible even as the growth of a child, as you watch it day by day, until the moment comes when with a start of delighted surprise we realize that we can stay out of doors in a
twilight lasting for another quarter of a precious hour.”
– Vita Sackville-West

“January is the quietest month in the garden. … But just because it looks quiet doesn’t mean that nothing is happening. The soil, open to the sky, absorbs the pure rainfall while microorganisms convert tilled-under fodder into usable nutrients for the next crop of plants. The feasting earthworms tunnel along, aerating the soil and preparing it to welcome the seeds and bare roots to come.”
– Rosalie Muller Wright, Editor of Sunset Magazine, 1/99

“There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues.”
– Hal Borland

“Here’s to thee, old apple tree
Whence thou mayest bud
Whence thou mayest blow
Whence thou mayest bear apples enow.”
– Wassailing Songs, England, January 5th

“In order to set the calendar right, the Roman senate, in 153 BC, declared January 1st to be the beginning of the new year. During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Year’s Day. January 1st has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years.”
– New Year’s Day

“You’d be so lean, that blast of January
Would blow you through and through. Now, my fair’st friend,
I would I had some flowers o’ the spring that might
Become your time of day.”
– William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale, Act IV Scene 4

“The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.
The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.
Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.”
– Emily Bronte, Spellbound

~~~~~~~
THE COLD MOUNTAIN POEMS, tr. Gary Snyder

1
The path to Han-shan’s place is laughable,
A path, but no sign of cart or horse.
Converging gorges – hard to trace their twists
Jumbled cliffs – unbelievably rugged.
A thousand grasses bend with dew,
A hill of pines hums in the wind.
And now I’ve lost the shortcut home,
Body asking shadow, how do you keep up?

2
In a tangle of cliffs, I chose a place –
Bird paths, but no trails for me.
What’s beyond the yard?
White clouds clinging to vague rocks.
Now I’ve lived here – how many years –
Again and again, spring and winter pass.
Go tell families with silverware and cars
“What’s the use of all that noise and money?”

3
In the mountains it’s cold.
Always been cold, not just this year.
Jagged scarps forever snowed in
Woods in the dark ravines spitting mist.
Grass is still sprouting at the end of June,
Leaves begin to fall in early August.
And here I am, high on mountains,
Peering and peering, but I can’t even see the sky.

4
I spur my horse through the wrecked town,
The wrecked town sinks my spirit.
High, low, old parapet walls
Big, small, the aging tombs.
I waggle my shadow, all alone;
Not even the crack of a shrinking coffin is heard.
I pity all those ordinary bones,
In the books of the Immortals they are nameless.

5
I wanted a good place to settle:
Cold Mountain would be safe.
Light wind in a hidden pine –
Listen close – the sound gets better.
Under it a gray haired man
Mumbles along reading Huang and Lao.
For ten years I havn’t gone back home
I’ve even forgotten the way by which I came.

6
Men ask the way to Cold Mountain
Cold Mountain: there’s no through trail.
In summer, ice doesn’t melt
The rising sun blurs in swirling fog.
How did I make it?
My heart’s not the same as yours.
If your heart was like mine
You’d get it and be right here.

7
I settled at Cold Mountain long ago,
Already it seems like years and years.
Freely drifting, I prowl the woods and streams
And linger watching things themselves.
Men don’t get this far into the mountains,
White clouds gather and billow.
Thin grass does for a mattress,
The blue sky makes a good quilt.
Happy with a stone under head
Let heaven and earth go about their changes.

8
Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there’s been no rain
The pine sings, but there’s no wind.
Who can leap the word’s ties
And sit with me among the white clouds?

9
Rough and dark – the Cold Mountain trail,
Sharp cobbles – the icy creek bank.
Yammering, chirping – always birds
Bleak, alone, not even a lone hiker.
Whip, whip – the wind slaps my face
Whirled and tumbled – snow piles on my back.
Morning after morning I don’t see the sun
Year after year, not a sign of spring.

10
I have lived at Cold Mountain
These thirty long years.
Yesterday I called on friends and family:
More than half had gone to the Yellow Springs.
Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle;
Forever flowing, like a passing river.
Now, morning, I face my lone shadow:
Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears.

11
Spring water in the green creek is clear
Moonlight on Cold Mountain is white
Silent knowledge – the spirit is enlightened of itself
Contemplate the void: this world exceeds stillness.

12
In my first thirty years of life
I roamed hundreds and thousands of miles.
Walked by rivers through deep green grass
Entered cities of boiling red dust.
Tried drugs, but couldn’t make Immortal;
Read books and wrote poems on history.
Today I’m back at Cold Mountain:
I’ll sleep by the creek and purify my ears.

13
I can’t stand these bird songs
Now I’ll go rest in my straw shack.
The cherry flowers are scarlet
The willow shoots up feathery.
Morning sun drives over blue peaks
Bright clouds wash green ponds.
Who knows that I’m out of the dusty world
Climbing the southern slope of Cold Mountain?

14
Cold Mountain has many hidden wonders,
People who climb here are always getting scared.
When the moon shines, water sparkles clear
When the wind blows, grass swishes and rattles.
On the bare plum, flowers of snow
On the dead stump, leaves of mist.
At the touch of rain it all turns fresh and live
At the wrong season you can’t ford the creeks.

15
There’s a naked bug at Cold Mountain
With a white body and a black head.
His hand holds two book scrolls,
One the Way and one its Power.
His shack’s got no pots or oven,
He goes for a long walk with his shirt and pants askew.
But he always carries the sword of wisdom:
He means to cut down sensless craving.

16
Cold Mountain is a house
Without beans or walls.
The six doors left and right are open
The hall is sky blue.
The rooms all vacant and vague
The east wall beats on the west wall
At the center nothing.

Borrowers don’t bother me
In the cold I build a little fire
When I’m hungry I boil up some greens.
I’ve got no use for the kulak
With hs big barn and pasture –
He just sets uo a prison for himself.
Once in he can’t get out.
Think it over –
You know it might happen to you.

17
If I hide out at Cold Mountain
Living off mountain plants and berries –
All my lifetime, why worry?
One follows his karma through.
Days and months slip by like water,
Time is like sparks knocked off flint.
Go ahead and let the world change –
I’m happy to sit among these cliffs.

18
Most T’ien-t’ai men
Don’t know Han-shan
Don’t know his real thought
And call it silly talk.

19
Once at Cold Mountain, troubles cease –
No more tangled, hung up mind.
I idly scribble poems on the rock cliff,
Taking whatever comes, like a drifting boat.

20
Some critic tried to put me down –
“Your poems lack the Basic Truth of Tao.”
And I recall the old timers
Who were poor and didn’t care.
I have to laugh at him,
He misses the point entirely,
Men like that
Ought to stick to making money.

21
I’ve lived at Cold Mountain – how many autumns.
Alone, I hum a song – utterly without regret.
Hungry, I eat one grain of Immortal medicine
Mind solid and sharp; leaning on a stone.

22
On top of Cold Mountain the lone round moon
Lights the whole clear cloudless sky.
Honor this priceless natural treasure
Concealed in five shadows, sunk deep in the flesh.

23
My home was at Cold Mountain from the start,
Rambling among the hills, far from trouble.

Gone, and a million things leave no trace
Loosed, and it flows through 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.

24
When men see Han-shan
They all say he’s crazy
And not much to look at –
Dressed in rags and hides.
They don’t get what I say
And I don’t talk their language.
All I can say to those I meet:
“Try and make it to Cold Mountain.”
~~~~~~~

Bloom (Disney Remix)

~~~~~~~
A stone I died and rose again a plant;
A plant I died and rose an animal;
I died an animal and was born a man.
Why should I fear? What have I lost by death? – Rumi

When my Beloved appears,
With what eye do I see Him?

With His eye, not with mine,
For none sees Him except Himself – Ibn Arabi

Blessings On This Winter Night!
Family and friends gathering, a cup of mulled wine, beauty, sheer beauty.
Here is something to relieve you from the silly season. Poetry, art, myth and a showing of my son’s film, Amour Sincere.

Gwyllm
~~
On The Menu:
Amour Sincere
The Links
Legendary Pink Dots – Disturbance
Beira, Queen of Winter
W.H. Auden Poems
The Legendary Pink Dots – Golden Dawn
Art: LucienLevy-Dhurmer
~~~~~~
Rowan’s “Amour Sincere”
This is available for viewing for a short time only… G

Amour Sincere

Starring:
Meredith Adelaide
Grant Law
Directed by Rowan Spiers-Floyd
Dance Choreography: Ally Yancy
Director of Photography: Jacob Rosen

This is the “Directors Cut”. Using the music that inspired the choreography. An original score for the film is in the works, which will be used for actual release.

For Updates and More: Trifecta!

~~~~~~
The Links:
Cabin Porn
The Accidental Universe
The Education Of An Amphibian
~~~~~~

Legendary Pink Dots – Disturbance

~~~~~~

Wonder
Wonder,
A garden among the flames!

My heart can take on any form:
A meadow for gazelles,
A cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground,
Ka’ba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah,
The scrolls of the Quran.

My creed is Love;
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is my belief,
My faith.

– Ibn Arabi
~~~~~~

Beira, Queen of Winter

Dark Beira was the mother of all the gods and goddesses in Scotland. She was of great height and very old, and everyone feared her. When roused to anger she was as fierce as the biting north wind and harsh as the tempest-stricken sea. Each winter she reigned as Queen of the Four Red Divisions of the world, and none disputed her sway. But when the sweet spring season drew nigh, her subjects began to rebel against her and to long for the coming of the Summer King, Angus of the White Steed, and Bride, his beautiful queen, who were loved by all, for they were the bringers of plenty and of bright and happy days. It enraged Beira greatly to find her power passing away, and she tried her utmost to prolong the winter season by raising spring storms and sending blighting frost to kill early flowers and keep the grass from growing.

Beira lived for hundreds and hundreds of years. The reason she did not die of old age was because, at the beginning of every spring, she drank the magic waters of the Well of Youth which bubbles up in the Green Island of the West. This was a floating island where summer was the only season, and the trees were always bright with blossom and laden with fruit. It drifted about on the silver tides of the blue Atlantic, and sometimes appeared off the western coasts of Ireland and sometimes close to the Hebrides. Many bold mariners have steered their galleys up and down the ocean, searching for Green Island in vain. On a calm morning they might sail past its shores and yet never know it was near at hand, for oft-times it lay hidden in a twinkling mist. Men have caught glimpses of it from the shore, but while they gazed on its beauties with eyes of wonder, it vanished suddenly from sight by sinking beneath the waves like the setting sun. Beira, however, always knew where to find Green Island when the time came for her to visit it.

The waters of the Well of Youth are most potent when the days begin to grow longer, and most potent of all on the first of the lengthening days of spring. Beira always visited the island on the night before the first lengthening day–that is, on the last night of her reign as Queen of Winter. All alone in the darkness she sat beside the Well of Youth, waiting for the dawn. When the first faint beam of light appeared in the eastern sky, she drank the water as it bubbled fresh from a crevice in the rock. It was necessary that she should drink of this magic water before any bird visited the well and before any dog barked. If a bird drank first, or a dog barked ere she began to drink, dark old Beira would crumble into dust.

As soon as Beira tasted the magic water, in silence and alone, she began to grow young again. She left the island and, returning to Scotland, fell into a magic sleep. When, at length, she awoke, in bright sunshine, she rose up as a beautiful girl with long hair yellow as buds of broom, cheeks red as rowan berries, and blue eyes that sparkled like the summer sea in sunshine. Then she went to and fro through Scotland, clad in a robe of green and crowned with a chaplet of bright flowers of many hues. No fairer goddess was to be found in all the land, save Bride, the peerless Queen of Summer.

As each month went past, however, Beira aged quickly. She reached full womanhood in midsummer, and when autumn came on her brows wrinkled and her beauty began to fade. When the season of winter returned once again, she became an old and withered hag, and began to reign as the fierce Queen Beira.

Often on stormy nights in early winter she wandered about, singing this sorrowful song:–
~~~~~~

W.H. Auden Poems

As I Walked Out One Evening

As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
“Love has no ending.

“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,

“I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.

“The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.”

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
“O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

“In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

“In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.

“Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver’s brilliant bow.

“O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you’ve missed.

“The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

“Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

“O look, look in the mirror?
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.

“O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart.”

It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
~~

The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
~~

Voltaire At Ferney

Almost happy now, he looked at his estate.
An exile making watches glanced up as he passed,
And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast
A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell
Some of the trees he’d planted were progressing well.
The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was very great.

Far off in Paris, where his enemies
Whsipered that he was wicked, in an upright chair
A blind old woman longed for death and letters. He would write
“Nothing is better than life.” But was it? Yes, the fight
Against the false and the unfair
Was always worth it. So was gardening. Civilise.

Cajoling, scolding, screaming, cleverest of them all,
He’d had the other children in a holy war
Against the infamous grown-ups, and, like a child, been sly
And humble, when there was occassion for
The two-faced answer or the plain protective lie,
But, patient like a peasant, waited for their fall.

And never doubted, like D’Alembert, he would win:
Only Pascal was a great enemy, the rest
Were rats already poisoned; there was much, though, to be done,
And only himself to count upon.
Dear Diderot was dull but did his best;
Rousseau, he’d always known, would blubber and give in.

So, like a sentinel, he could not sleep. The night was full of wrong,
Earthquakes and executions. Soon he would be dead,
And still all over Europe stood the horrible nurses
Itching to boil their children. Only his verses
Perhaps could stop them: He must go on working: Overhead
The uncomplaining stars composed their lucid song.
~~

In Memory Of W.B. Yeats

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
The snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
~~~~~~

The Legendary Pink Dots – Golden Dawn

~~~~~~
While the sun’s eye rules my sight,
love sits as sultan in my soul.
His army has made camp in my heart –
passion and yearning, affliction and grief.
When his camp took possession of me
I cried out as the flame of desire
burned in my entrails.
Love stole my sleep, love has bewildered me,
love kills me unjustly, and I am helpless,
love has burdened me with more than I can bear
so that I bequeath him a soul and no body. – Ibn Arabi

Perhaps the shortest post for the shortest day of the year. I hope this finds you with loved ones on our Solstice Night. Soon, the sun shall indeed return.

Much Love,
Gwyllm

On The Menu:
Azam Ali’s NAMI NAMI
To Juan at the Winter Solstice
Conjure One & Azam Ali – Nargis
~~~~
Azam Ali’s NAMI NAMI

~~~~

To Juan at the Winter Solstice

There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether are learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.

Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison of all true kings that ever reigned?

Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.

Or is it of the Virgin’s silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right she crooks a finger smiling,
How may the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.

Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?

Much snow is falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.

Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.

Robert Graves

~~~~
Conjure One & Azam Ali – Nargis

~~~~

It Is Shining… It Is Shining…

990th:
This is my 990th entry for Turfing. I was going to speed it up over the last month and get it to click at a 1000 on the Solstice, but I fell behind. I need inspiration to do these, and the assembly time sometimes is quite large. I have 7 entries sitting in the docking bay waiting to go if I so choose, but they all need polishing.

I hope this finds you and your friends, and family well in this season of emerging light.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
~~

On The Menu:
The Links
Mike Maki
Trobar de Morte – Los duendes del reloj
The Fire-Festivals of Europe: The Midwinter Fires
Stéphane Mallarmé Poems
Trobar de Morte – Yule: The End of The Darkness

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Links:

The earth mother of all neolithic discoveries
Heavy Rainfall Can Cause Huge Earthquakes
This Is So Cool! U.S. Will Not Finance New Research on Chimps
The top ancient mysteries of 2011
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mike Maki
Mike Maki, a friend of ours, and of other members of our close and extended family recently was arrested by the DEA up in Olympia for psilocybin mushroom distribution. Please visit his blog, read his story and if so moved, distribute this information and try to help him and others who are caught by these draconian laws.

Mike is well loved in several communities, he does good work, and has helped many people over the years. He is indeed a keeper, and we want to keep him free, and in our community.

Mike, we Love You.

G

Mushrooms, The Law, and A Friend
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trobar de Morte – Los duendes del reloj

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Fire-Festivals of Europe: The Midwinter Fires

IF THE HEATHEN of ancient Europe celebrated, as we have good reason to believe, the season of Midsummer with a great festival of fire, of which the traces have survived in many places down to our own time, it is natural to suppose that they should have observed with similar rites the corresponding season of Midwinter; for Midsummer and Midwinter, or, in more technical language, the summer solstice and the winter solstice, are the two great turningpoints in the sun’s apparent course through the sky, and from the standpoint of primitive man nothing might seem more appropriate than to kindle fires on earth at the two moments when the fire and heat of the great luminary in heaven begin to wane or to wax.

In modern Christendom the ancient fire-festival of the winter solstice appears to survive, or to have survived down to recent years, in the old custom of the Yule log, clog, or block, as it was variously called in England. The custom was widespread in Europe, but seems to have flourished especially in England, France, and among the South Slavs; at least the fullest accounts of the custom come from these quarters. That the Yule log was only the winter counterpart of the midsummer bonfire, kindled within doors instead of in the open air on account of the cold and inclement weather of the season, was pointed out long ago by our English antiquary John Brand; and the view is supported by the many quaint superstitions attaching to the Yule log, superstitions which have no apparent connexion with Christianity but carry their heathen origin plainly stamped upon them. But while the two solstitial celebrations were both festivals of fire, the necessity or desirability of holding the winter celebration within doors lent it the character of a private or domestic festivity, which contrasts strongly with the publicity of the summer celebration, at which the people gathered on some open space or conspicuous height, kindled a huge bonfire in common, and danced and made merry round it together.

Down to about the middle of the nineteenth century the old rite of the Yule log was kept up in some parts of Central Germany. Thus in the valleys of the Sieg and Lahn the Yule log, a heavy block of oak, was fitted into the floor of the hearth, where, though it glowed under the fire, it was hardly reduced to ashes within a year. When the new log was laid next year, the remains of the old one were ground to powder and strewed over the fields during the Twelve Nights, which was supposed to promote the growth of the crops. In some villages of Westphalia, the practice was to withdraw the Yule log (Christbrand) from the fire so soon as it was slightly charred; it was then kept carefully to be replaced on the fire whenever a thunderstorm broke, because the people believed that lightning would not strike a house in which the Yule log was smouldering. In other villages of Westphalia the old custom was to tie up the Yule log in the last sheaf cut at harvest.

In several provinces of France, and particularly in Provence, the custom of the Yule log or tréfoir, as it was called in many places, was long observed. A French writer of the seventeenth century denounces as superstitious “the belief that a log called the tréfoir or Christmas brand, which you put on the fire for the first time on Christmas Eve and continue to put on the fire for a little while every day till Twelfth Night, can, if kept under the bed, protect the house for a whole year from fire and thunder; that it can prevent the inmates from having chilblains on their heels in winter; that it can cure the cattle of many maladies; that if a piece of it be steeped in the water which cows drink it helps them to calve; and lastly that if the ashes of the log be strewn on the fields it can save the wheat from mildew.”

In some parts of Flanders and France the remains of the Yule log were regularly kept in the house under a bed as a protection against thunder and lightning; in Berry, when thunder was heard, a member of the family used to take a piece of the log and throw it on the fire, which was believed to avert the lightning. Again, in Perigord, the charcoal and ashes are carefully collected and kept for healing swollen glands; the part of the trunk which has not been burnt in the fire is used by ploughmen to make the wedge for their plough, because they allege that it causes the seeds to thrive better; and the women keep pieces of it till Twelfth Night for the sake of their chickens. Some people imagine that they will have as many chickens as there are sparks that fly out of the brands of the log when they shake them; and others place the extinct brands under the bed to drive away vermin. In various parts of France the charred log is thought to guard the house against sorcery as well as against lightning.

In England the customs and beliefs concerning the Yule log used to be similar. On the night of Christmas Eve, says the antiquary John Brand, “our ancestors were wont to light up candles of an uncommon size, called Christmas Candles, and lay a log of wood upon the fire, called a Yule-clog or Christmas-block, to illuminate the house, and, as it were, to turn night into day.” The old custom was to light the Yule log with a fragment of its predecessor, which had been kept throughout the year for the purpose; where it was so kept, the fiend could do no mischief. The remains of the log were also supposed to guard the house against fire and lightning.

To this day the ritual of bringing in the Yule log is observed with much solemnity among the Southern Slavs, especially the Serbians. The log is usually a block of oak, but sometimes of olive or beech. They seem to think that they will have as many calves, lambs, pigs, and kids as they strike sparks out of the burning log. Some people carry a piece of the log out to the fields to protect them against hail. In Albania down to recent years it was a common custom to burn a Yule log at Christmas, and the ashes of the fire were scattered on the fields to make them fertile. The Huzuls, a Slavonic people of the Carpathians, kindle fire by the friction of wood on Christmas Eve (Old Style, the fifth of January) and keep it burning till Twelfth Night.

It is remarkable how common the belief appears to have been that the remains of the Yule log, if kept throughout the year, had power to protect the house against fire and especially against lightning. As the Yule log was frequently of oak, it seems possible that this belief may be a relic of the old Aryan creed which associated the oak-tree with the god of thunder. Whether the curative and fertilising virtues ascribed to the ashes of the Yule log, which are supposed to heal cattle as well as men, to enable cows to calve, and to promote the fruitfulness of the earth, may not be derived from the same ancient source, is a question which deserves to be considered.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stéphane Mallarmé Poems:

 

The Clown Chastised

Eyes, lakes of my simple passion to be reborn
Other than as the actor who gestures with his hand
As with a pen, and evokes the foul soot of the lamps,
Here’s a window in the walls of cloth I’ve torn.

With legs and arms a limpid treacherous swimmer
With endless leaps, disowning the sickness
Hamlet! It’s as if I began to build in the ocean depths
A thousand tombs: to vanish still virgin there.

Mirthful gold of a cymbal beaten with fists,
The sun all at once strikes the pure nakedness
That breathed itself out of my coolness of nacre,

Rancid night of the skin, when you swept over me,
Not knowing, ungrateful one, that it was, this make-up,
My whole anointing, drowned in ice-water perfidy.

The Poem’s Gift

I bring you the child of an Idumean night!
Black, with pale naked bleeding wings, Light
Through the glass, burnished with gold and spice,
Through panes, still dismal, alas, and cold as ice,
Hurled itself, daybreak, against the angelic lamp.
Palm-leaves! And when it showed this relic, damp,
To that father attempting an inimical smile,
The solitude shuddered, azure, sterile.
O lullaby, with your daughter, and the innocence
Of your cold feet, greet a terrible new being:
A voice where harpsichords and viols linger,
Will you press that breast, with your withered finger,
From which Woman flows in Sibylline whiteness to
Those lips starved by the air’s virgin blue?

L’Apres-midi d’un Faune

Eclogue

The Faun

These nymphs, I would perpetuate them.
So bright
Their crimson flesh that hovers there, light
In the air drowsy with dense slumbers.
Did I love a dream?
My doubt, mass of ancient night, ends extreme
In many a subtle branch, that remaining the true
Woods themselves, proves, alas, that I too
Offered myself, alone, as triumph, the false ideal of roses.

Let’s see….
or if those women you note
Reflect your fabulous senses’ desire!
Faun, illusion escapes from the blue eye,
Cold, like a fount of tears, of the most chaste:
But the other, she, all sighs, contrasts you say
Like a breeze of day warm on your fleece?
No! Through the swoon, heavy and motionless
Stifling with heat the cool morning’s struggles
No water, but that which my flute pours, murmurs
To the grove sprinkled with melodies: and the sole breeze
Out of the twin pipes, quick to breathe
Before it scatters the sound in an arid rain,
Is unstirred by any wrinkle of the horizon,
The visible breath, artificial and serene,
Of inspiration returning to heights unseen.

O Sicilian shores of a marshy calm
My vanity plunders vying with the sun,
Silent beneath scintillating flowers, RELATE
‘That I was cutting hollow reeds here tamed
By talent: when, on the green gold of distant
Verdure offering its vine to the fountains,
An animal whiteness undulates to rest:
And as a slow prelude in which the pipes exist
This flight of swans, no, of Naiads cower
Or plunge…’
Inert, all things burn in the tawny hour
Not seeing by what art there fled away together
Too much of hymen desired by one who seeks there
The natural A: then I’ll wake to the primal fever
Erect, alone, beneath the ancient flood, light’s power,
Lily! And the one among you all for artlessness.

Other than this sweet nothing shown by their lip, the kiss
That softly gives assurance of treachery,
My breast, virgin of proof, reveals the mystery
Of the bite from some illustrious tooth planted;
Let that go! Such the arcane chose for confidant,
The great twin reed we play under the azure ceiling,
That turning towards itself the cheek’s quivering,
Dreams, in a long solo, so we might amuse
The beauties round about by false notes that confuse
Between itself and our credulous singing;
And create as far as love can, modulating,
The vanishing, from the common dream of pure flank
Or back followed by my shuttered glances,
Of a sonorous, empty and monotonous line.

Try then, instrument of flights, O malign
Syrinx by the lake where you await me, to flower again!
I, proud of my murmur, intend to speak at length
Of goddesses: and with idolatrous paintings
Remove again from shadow their waists’ bindings:
So that when I’ve sucked the grapes’ brightness
To banish a regret done away with by my pretence,
Laughing, I raise the emptied stem to the summer’s sky
And breathing into those luminous skins, then I,
Desiring drunkenness, gaze through them till evening.

O nymphs, let’s rise again with many memories.
‘My eye, piercing the reeds, speared each immortal
Neck that drowns its burning in the water
With a cry of rage towards the forest sky;
And the splendid bath of hair slipped by
In brightness and shuddering, O jewels!
I rush there: when, at my feet, entwine (bruised
By the languor tasted in their being-two’s evil)
Girls sleeping in each other’s arms’ sole peril:
I seize them without untangling them and run
To this bank of roses wasting in the sun
All perfume, hated by the frivolous shade
Where our frolic should be like a vanished day.’

I adore you, wrath of virgins, O shy
Delight of the nude sacred burden that glides
Away to flee my fiery lip, drinking
The secret terrors of the flesh like quivering
Lightning: from the feet of the heartless one
To the heart of the timid, in a moment abandoned
By innocence wet with wild tears or less sad vapours.
‘Happy at conquering these treacherous fears
My crime’s to have parted the dishevelled tangle
Of kisses that the gods kept so well mingled:
For I’d scarcely begun to hide an ardent laugh
In one girl’s happy depths (holding back
With only a finger, so that her feathery candour
Might be tinted by the passion of her burning sister,
The little one, naïve and not even blushing)
Than from my arms, undone by vague dying,
This prey, forever ungrateful, frees itself and is gone,
Not pitying the sob with which I was still drunk.’

No matter! Others will lead me towards happiness
By the horns on my brow knotted with many a tress:
You know, my passion, how ripe and purple already
Every pomegranate bursts, murmuring with the bees:
And our blood, enamoured of what will seize it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire yet.
At the hour when this wood with gold and ashes heaves
A feast’s excited among the extinguished leaves:
Etna! It’s on your slopes, visited by Venus
Setting in your lava her heels so artless,
When a sad slumber thunders where the flame burns low.

I hold the queen!

O certain punishment…
No, but the soul
Void of words, and this heavy body,
Succumb to noon’s proud silence slowly:
With no more ado, forgetting blasphemy, I
Must sleep, lying on the thirsty sand, and as I
Love, open my mouth to wine’s true constellation!

Farewell to you, both: I go to see the shadow you have become.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
TROBAR DE MORTE – Yule : The End of The Darkness

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Cities Of The Red Night – Ba’dan – Gwyllm)

So… this started out political and kinda jumped away from that.

It really started with a listening to Bombino’s excellent work.(thank you Morgan!) Bombino, who’ll be performing in Portland Saturday Nite at Dante’s! Alas, I shall not see him, but for you my friends I have included 3 songs. He is in my estimation one of the best of the emerging singers and guitarist from the Tuareg peoples.. As I listened to him, I swore that the spirit that inhabits this young man is an ancient and wise one. Just listen to the way his playing and vocals work together. Beautiful.

We have in this editon a brief visit with Meher Baba for quotes, someone who is largely neglected now days. A great sage, and one that people should be aware of. There are stories from Lord Dunsany who is a great favourite of mine, and Poetry from the great Arthur Symon as well.

The art is part of my “Red Cities Of The Night”. a nod to William Burroughs and his Trilogy. These and some of the others may appear in The Invisible College. You saw them here first!

So here is to trying to keep the Acadian Stream flowing, and pushing on intoa long Mid Winter’s Night…

I hope this finds you well, and full of light.

Blessings,
Gwyllm

On The Menu:
Meher Baba Quotes
All You Need Is
Bombino, “Tar Hani” Live
Lord Dunsany: Two Tales
Bombino Concert, Agadez
Arthur Symon – Poet
Bombino (Omar Moctar) – Yamidinine
Art: Gwyllm
~~~~~~~
Meher Baba Quotes:

“Don’t Worry Be Happy”

“No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.”

“I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play…”

“There are very few things in the mind which eat up as much energy as worry. It is one of the most difficult things not to worry about anything. Worry is experienced when things go wrong, but in relation to past happenings it is idle merely to wish that they might have been otherwise. The frozen past is what it is, and no amount of worrying is going to make it other than what it has been. But the limited ego-mind identifies itself with its past, gets entangled with it and keeps alive the pangs of frustrated desires. Thus worry continues to grow into the mental life of man until the ego-mind is burdened by the past. Worry is also experienced in relation to the future when this future is expected to be disagreeable in some way. In this case it seeks to justify itself as a necessary part of the attempt to prepare for coping with the anticipated situations. But, things can never be helped merely by worrying. Besides, many of the things which are anticipated never turn up, or if they do occur, they turn out to be much more acceptable than they were expected to be. Worry is the product of feverish imagination working under the stimulus of desires. It is a living through of sufferings which are mostly our own creation. Worry has never done anyone any good, and it is very much worse than mere dissipation of psychic energy, for it substantially curtails the joy and fullness of life.”
― Discourses

“The book that I shall make people read
is the book of the heart,
which holds the key
to the mystery of life”

“Love God and find him within – the only treasure worth finding.”

“…What will the present chaos lead to? How will it all end? It can only end in one way. Mankind will be sick of it all….”

“Mastery in Servitude”
~~~~~~~
All You Need Is:
There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy. (“All You Need Is”)

~~~~~~
Bombino, “Tar Hani” Live

~~~~~

The Giant Poppy
Author: Lord Dunsany

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 Secret Of The Gods

Zyni Moe, the small snake, saw the cool river gleaming before him afar off and set out over the burning sand to reach it.

Uldoon, the prophet, came out of the desert and followed up the bank of the river towards his old home. Thirty years since Uldoon had left the city, where he was born, to live his life in a silent place where he might search for the secret of the gods. The name of his home was the City by the River, and in that city many prophets taught concerning many gods, and men made many secrets for themselves, but all the while none knew the Secret of the gods. Nor might any seek to find it, for if any sought men said of him:

“This man sins, for he giveth no worship to the gods that speak to our prophets by starlight when none heareth.”

And Uldoon perceived that the mind of a man is as a garden, and that his thoughts are as the flowers, and the prophets of a man’s city are as many gardeners who weed and trim, and who have made in the garden paths both smooth and straight, and only along these paths is a man’s soul permitted to go lest the gardeners say, “This soul transgresseth.” And from the paths the gardeners weed out every flower that grows, and in the garden they cut off all flowers that grow tall, saying:

“It is customary,” and “it is written,” and “this hath ever been,” or “that hath not been before.”

Therefore Uldoon saw that not in that city might he discover the Secret of the gods. And Uldoon said to the people:

“When the worlds began, the Secret of the gods lay written clear over the whole earth, but the feet of many prophets have trampled it out. Your prophets are all true men, but I go into the desert to find a truth which is truer than your prophets.” Therefore Uldoon went into the desert and in storm and still he sought for many years. When the thunder roared over the mountains that limited the desert he sought the Secret in the thunder, but the gods spake not by the thunder. When the voices of the beasts disturbed the stillness under the stars he sought the secret there, but the gods spake not by the beasts.

Uldoon grew old and all the voices of the desert had spoken to Uldoon, but not the gods, when one night he heard Them whispering beyond the hills. And the gods whispered one to another, and turning Their faces earthward They all wept. And Uldoon though he saw not the gods yet saw Their shadows turn as They went back to a great hollow in the hills; and there, all standing in the valley’s mouth, They said:

“Oh, Morning Zai, oh, oldest of the gods, the faith of thee is gone, and yesterday for the last time thy name was spoken upon earth.” And turning earthward they all wept again. And the gods tore white clouds out of the sky and draped them about the body of Morning Zai and bore him forth from his valley behind the hills, and muffled the mountain peaks with snow, and beat upon their summits with drum sticks carved of ebony, playing the dirge of the gods. And the echoes rolled about the passes and the winds howled, because the faith of the olden days was gone, and with it had sped the soul of Morning Zai. So through the mountain passes the gods came at night bearing Their dead father. And Uldoon followed. And the gods came to a great sepulchre of onyx that stood upon four fluted pillars of white marble, each carved out of four mountains, and therein the gods laid Morning Zai because the old faith was fallen. And there at the tomb of Their father the gods spake and Uldoon heard the Secret of the gods, and it became to him a simple thing such as a man might well guess–yet hath not. Then the soul of the desert arose and cast over the tomb its wreath of forgetfulness devised of drifting sand, and the gods strode home across the mountains to Their hollow land. But Uldoon left the desert and travelled many days, and so came to the river where it passes beyond the city to seek the sea, and following its bank came near to his old home. And the people of the City by the River, seeing him far off, cried out:

“Hast thou found the Secret of the gods?”

And he answered:

“I have found it, and the Secret of the gods is this”–:

Zyni Moe, the small snake, seeing the figure and the shadow of a man between him and the cool river, raised his head and struck once. And the gods are pleased with Zyni Moe, and have called him the protector of the Secret of the gods.

~~~~~
Bombino Concert, Agadez

~~~~~
Arthur Symon – Poet

The Poem Of Hasish

Behind the door, beyond the light,
Who is it waits there in the night?
When he has entered he will stand,
Imposing with his silent hand
Some silent thing upon the night.

Behold the image of my fear.
O rise not, move not, come not near!
That moment, when you turned your face,
A demon seemed to leap through space;
His gesture strangled me with fear.

And yet I am the lord of all,
And this brave world magnifical,
Veiled in so variable a mist
It may be rose or amethyst,
Demands me for the lord of all!

Who said the world is but a mood
In the eternal thought of God?
I know it, real though it seem,
The phantom of a haschisch dream
In that insomnia which is God
–

The Loom Of Dreams

I broider the world upon a loom,
I broider with dreams my tapestry;
Here in a little lonely room
I am master of earth and sea,
And the planets come to me.

I broider my life into the frame,
I broider my love, thread upon thread;
The world goes by with its glory and shame,
Crowns are bartered and blood is shed;
I sit and broider my dreams instead.

And the only world is the world of my dreams,
And my weaving the only happiness;
For what is the world but what it seems?
And who knows but that God, beyond our guess,
Sits weaving worlds out of loneliness?
–

The Opium-Smoker

I am engulfed, and drown deliciously.
Soft music like a perfume, and sweet light
Golden with audible odours exquisite,
Swathe me with cerements for eternity.
Time is no more. I pause and yet I flee.
A million ages wrap me round with night.
I drain a million ages of delight.
I hold the future in my memory.

Also I have this garret which I rent,
This bed of straw, and this that was a chair,
This worn-out body like a tattered tent,
This crust, of which the rats have eaten part,
This pipe of opium; rage, remorse, despair;
This soul at pawn and this delirious heart.
–

Love And Sleep

I have laid sorrow to sleep;
Love sleeps.
She who oft made me weep
Now weeps.

I loved, and have forgot,
And yet
Love tells me she will not
Forget.

She it was bid me go;
Love goes
By what strange ways, ah! no
One knows.

Because I cease to weep,
She weeps.
Here by the sea in sleep,
Love sleeps

~~~~~
Bombino (Omar Moctar) – Yamidinine

~~~~~
(Cities Of The Red Night – Ghadis – Gwyllm)

Thursday Night. So much going on in the world, trying to make sense of it all, to parse it and to form a vision. A vision is all I have, and love.
I dedicate this to all who are trying to make a change in the world, and all who feel the urgency.
I have waited for decades for this moment, and I am happy to be here to share it with you.

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
__

On The Menu:
The Links
Gertrude Stein Quotes
The Vote Heard Round the World — The Video
The next 10 years will be very unlike the last 10 years
To a Tea Partier From an Occupier
Rahman Baba Poems
Jwaydan – standing our ground (Song for the Egyptian revolution)

~~~~~~~~~
The Links:
Occupy Wall Street Independent Media Team
March On Blair Mountain
Awakening the Giant
Earth First! Journal Too Popular for Facebook
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gertrude Stein Quotes:
A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

A writer should write with his eyes and a painter paint with his ears.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite.

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Seeing this today gave me such hope!
The Vote Heard Round the World — The Video

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks to Christelle Behrens for this!
The next 10 years will be very unlike the last 10 years

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To a Tea Partier From an Occupier

Dale Pendell

Hey neighbor! I like that tri-cornered hat. And I like having you for a neighbor. Also, I like the Tea Party — the Boston Tea Party — that was an anti-corporate action. The citizens of Boston tossed 90,000 pounds of tea into Boston Harbor. All that tea belonged to the East India Company — about a third of their total annual import.

The real issue wasn’t the tea tax — the tea would have cost less than people in England were paying — the issue was that the East India Company wanted to set up what today is called “vertical marketing.” That is, they wanted control of the distribution and sales of tea — all tea — a monopoly. All the Colonists had to do to get cheap foreign goods was to accept global corporatism. They didn’t, and we could say that this country was born in an anti-corporate action. So why aren’t you standing with us Occupiers?

(More At This Link: To a Tea Partier From an Occupier
~~~~~~~~~~

Rahman Baba Poems

Awal Din, 65, stands amid the rubble of the Sufi poet Rahman Baba’s mausoleum after it was bombed by the Taliban.

Antics of the Age

Contemplate the frantic
Efforts of the age
Countless are its antics
Boundless is its rage

Grieve in silence, brother!
Lest you keep your poise
Good men will be bothered
Evil men rejoice

Patience is a virtue
With the sweetest taste
When impatience hurts you,
Know, that haste is waste

Take on trust your fate if
You desire repose,
You would soon regret if
Something else you chose

Freedom cannot flourish
In your daily job
If a dream you nourish
Give your labour up

Falter shall the bustling
World, as I have said,
Should Rahman but trust in
What has got to fade?
~~

Sow Flowers

Sow flowers to make a garden bloom around you,
The thorns you sow will prick your own feet.

Arrows shot at others
Will return to hit you as they fall.

You yourself will come to teeter on the lip
Of a well dug to undermine another.

Though you look at others with contempt,
It’s you whose body will be reduced to dust.

Humanity is all one body;
To torture another is simply to wound yourself.

When you don’t look for faults in others,
They will conceal your weaknesses in return.

Make your path straight now, by the bright light of day;
For pitch darkness will come without warning.

Consider no wickedness insignificant, however slight;
For the little deeds of darkness soon pile up.

If another does you harm, return them good;
Or evil will devour you too.

The heart that is safe in the storm
Is the one which carries
Others’ burdens
Like a
Boat.
~~

The One

If for a soul-mate you dream,
See past the alluring fashion of her dress.

The vision of such flowing hair
Entwines around the heart, but
Constricts and squeezes out the one it treasures most.

Instead, follow the creator of this world;
Who fashioned each soul from love,
And made passion the highest goal.

The time to start the quest is now.
There is no second chance
To embrace the joy, the pain,
Of the one
Who longs
For you.
~~~~~

Jwaydan – standing our ground (Song for the Egyptian revolution)

The migrating bird
leaves no trace behind
and does not need a guide. – Dogen

So this is like, Turfing 3.0. New design, and now you can view it on your mobile devices! Thanks to Morgan for suggesting the wp software. I am playing with backgrounds etc. until I get the feel of it.

Perhaps the most important item on Turfing today is the Trifecta link. Check it out, please!

If you have any feedback on design, looks, or the feel of the new Turfing, let me know, or just drop a comment, they are always appreciated!

Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
__
On The Menu:
Trifecta
The Links
Red Sparowes – We Stood Transfixed…
The Prince And The Beggars
Two Poems, Three Poets
Grimes – Heartbeats (LAUREL HALO Remix)
Art: Thomas Cooper Gotch
____________________

Trifecta

So, I wanted to hip you to a new film project: Trifecta. that Rowan is involved with his friends Adam and Robert. They are putting together 3 different film projects, (each directing one) and working in collaboration on each others projects! Check out the video, and help out if ya can!
_________________

Links
Why I Don’t Dig Buddhism
Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators
Top Five Regrets For The Dying
_________________

Red Sparowes – We Stood Transfixed…

_________________

The Prince And The Beggars

Here are some stories about a Muslim whose name was Ibrahim ibn Adham. Like the man who became the Buddha, he was a prince in a small Kingdom in Persia. Ibrahim was very pious and spent many hours a day at prayer. He said his prayers in a beautiful gem-studded chapel of his palace. One day while praying he heard a terrible noise above him on the roof. It sounded like the clattering of horses’ hooves! Rushing out, he looked up to the roof and, sure enough, there was his palace guard — twenty men on horseback. (In such countries the roofs usually are flat.)

“What in the world are you doing up there?” Ibrahim shouted.

“Your Majesty,” yelled the captain of the guard, “we are searching for our camels that have wandered away.”

“But why, O fools, are you searching camels on the palace roof?” asked the prince. “We are only following the example of Your Majesty, who seeks for God while living in all the luxuries and power of a royal palace,” came the reply.

The prince also had a charitable nature. He arranged a place where wandering beggars and holy men could come and receive free food and drink, on one of the porches of the palace. This facility closed, however, at nightfall and no one was allowed inside the palace after dark.

One day a tall strong man of radiant appearance arrived just at sunset and asked for food. When he had eaten his fill he told the guard that as he had nowhere else to stay he wished to spend the night in the screened porch. The guard told him it was against the rule and asked him to leave at once.

“I demand to see the master of this rest-house and I will not leave until I do,” said the stranger.

“This is not a rest-house, and His Majesty is saying his prayers,” the guard replied. So the argument went on until finally the servant went to the door of his master’s chapel and knocked.

“There is a beggar on the porch, sire, who calls the palace a rest-house and refuses to leave. He insists on speaking to Your Majesty.”

The prince was astonished. “Let me just go and hear this madman,” said he, and went out to the end of the porch.

They met, the prince and the beggar. “You have heard the rule of this place,” said the former, “why have you not left as others do?”

“This is a rest-house,” the wanderer replied. “The night is chill, and I wish to spend it here under Your Majesty’s protection.”

“What do you mean, a ‘rest-house’,” said Ibrahim. “Do you not see that it is a palace?”

“Did you build the palace?”

“Certainly not. I have inherited it.”

“Did your father build it, then?”

“Not even he. His father’s father built it, long ago.”

“And each of these has come and gone, passed through this palace and out of it again?”

“Of course,” said the prince, impatiently.

“And you too will do the same. Yet you say it is not a rest-house!”

The eyes of Ibrahim’s understanding were opened. He brought the wise man into the palace and the two talked long into the night.

When Prince Ibrahim one day looked from his palace window he saw near the brook a beggar dressed in rags, weary and hungry, pulling from his knapsack a chunk of stale bread. The man dipped this in the water, sprinkled some salt on it, and hungrily devoured it. Then he lay down on the hard ground and fell asleep. After some time Ibrahim sent a messenger to ask the man to come and meet him at the palace gate. The beggar, in wonder, stumbled to the gate. The prince asked him if he had eaten to his satisfaction. “Praise Allah, sir, I did.” Then he was asked if he had slept peacefully on the ground. “Indeed, I did, sir, for I have no worries, thanks be to God.”

It is said that Ibrahim, comparing the wanderer’s life with his own, so full of anxiety, thought deeply about his own unhappiness with life. That very night he changed his royal robes for castoff rags and leaving his family and palace, went out to a life of poverty and wandering.
_________________

Two Poems, Three Poets

Hakuin:

Past, present, future: unattainable

Past, present, future: unattainable,
Yet clear as the moteless sky.
Late at night the stool’s cold as iron,
But the moonlit window smells of plum.
–

You no sooner attain the great void

You no sooner attain the great void
Than body and mind are lost together.
Heaven and Hell — a straw.
The Buddha-realm, Pandemonium — shambles.
Listen: a nightingale strains her voice, serenading the snow.
Look: a tortoise wearing a sword climbs the lampstand.
Should you desire the great tranquility,
Prepare to sweat white beads.
____

Meng Hao-jan:

A Night on the River

Moored in island mist,
as the sun sets, a traveler’s grief arises.

Beyond the great plain, the sky closes on trees.
On this gentle river, the moon arrives.
–

Master I’s Chamber in the Ta-yu Temple

I-Kung’s place to practice Ch’an:
a hut in an empty grove.

Outside the door, a single pretty peak.
Before the stair, deep valleys.

Sunset confused in footprints of the rain.
Blue of the void in the shade of the court.

Look, and see the lotus blossom’s purity:
know then that nothing taints this heart.
____

Dogen:

Like Tangled Hair

Like tangled hair,
The circular delusion
Of beginning and end,
When straightened out,
A dream no longer.
–

True person manifest throughout the ten quarters of the world

The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But, like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone, everywhere in the world.

_________________

Grimes – Heartbeats (LAUREL HALO Remix)

_________________

Because the flowers blooming
In our original home
Are everlasting,
Though springtimes may come and go
Their colors do not fade. – Dogen

I built my hut within where others live,
But there is no noise of carriages and horses.
You ask how this is possible:
When the heart is distant, solitude comes.
I pluck chrysanthemums by the eastern fence
And see the distant southern mountains.
The mountain air is fresh at dusk.
Flying birds return in flocks.
In these things there lies a great truth,
But when I try to express it, I cannot find the words. – T’ao Ch’ien

Aladár Kacziány – Composition symbolique

The Last Evening Of November…

Quiet, the dog wanders the house.
Shared cider with friends, Morgan’s Birthday, it seems.
Sickle Moon on the Western Horizon, clear air, the stars dance.
I ask nothing and receive everything, I desire and obtain not a thing.

Blessings,
Gwyllm
________
The Menu:
The Links
Lamb – Angelica
Daoist Parables
Daoist Poets
Lamb – Gorecki
________
The Links:
Babbage…
Assume Value
Poo Power!
________

Lamb – Angelica

________

Daoist Parables:
A monk and his novice were walking through the forest. They come to a stream. On the bank there was a beautifully dressed woman, crying. The monks asked her what was the matter. “I am on my way to a wedding. I have to cross the stream to get there, but the bridge has been washed away. I was searching for a place to cross where I wouldn’t ruin the dress, but I can’t find one and if I don’t make it across soon, I will be late.”

Without a word, the elder monk scooped her into his arms, waded across the stream, and deposited her on the other side. Ignoring her thanks, he waded back and the two monks resume their walk. They continued on their journey, but the younger monk was agitated and obviously had something on his mind. The elder monk stopped and asked him what was the matter.

“Elder, I am confused. Our vows prohibit us from fleshly contact with women, yet you embraced that woman in your arms. How can this be?” The elder monk eyed his novice with kindly concern. “Novice,” he asked, “I left her on the bank of the stream. Why do you still carry her?”
__

There was once a monk who would carry a mirror where ever he went. A priest noticed this one day and thought to himself “This monk must be so preoccupied with the way he looks that he has to carry that mirror all the time. He should not worry about the way he looks on the outside, it’s what’s inside that counts.” So the priest went up to the monk and asked “Why do you always carry that mirror?” thinking for sure this would prove his guilt.

The monk pulled the mirror from his bag and pointed it at the priest. Then he said “I use it in times of trouble. I look into it and it shows me the source of my problems as well as the solution to my problems.”
__

Once there was a horse tied up on the side of the street. Whenever someone tried to pass, the horse would kick them. Soon a crowd gathered around the horse until a wise man was seen coming close. The people said “This horse will surely kill anyone who tries to pass. What are we going to do?” The wise man looked at the horse, turned and walked down another street.

________
Aladár Kacziány – Rêve

________

Daoist Poets

Yuan Mei

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.
–

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
__

Lu Tung Pin

People may sit till the cushion is worn through

People may sit till the cushion is worn through,
But never quite know the real Truth:
Let me tell about the ultimate Tao:
It is here, enshrined within us.
_

What is Tao?

What is Tao?
It is just this.
It cannot be rendered into speech.
If you insist on an explanation,
This means exactly this.
__

Feng-kan (Big Stick)

Actually there isn’t a thing
much less any dust to wipe away
who can master this
doesn’t need to sit there stiff
_

Sinking like a rock in the sea
drifting through the Three Worlds
poor ethereal creature
ever immersed in scenes
until a flash of lightning shows
life and death are dust in space
__

T’ao Ch’ien

Around my door and yard no dust or noise

Around my door and yard no dust or noise.
In my bare rooms, no busyness.
After so long a prisoner in a cage
I have returned to things as they are
–

In youth I could not do what everyone else did

In youth I could not do what everyone else did;
It was my nature to love the mountains and hills.
By mistake I got caught in the dusty snare,
I went away and stayed for thirteen years.
________

Lamb – Gorecki

________

Success and failure? No known address.
This or that goes on, depending on the other.
And who can say if Milord Shao was happier
ruling a city, or sacked, his excellent melon patch?
Hot, cold, summer, winter: don’t they alternate?
Mayn’t a man’s way wander on just so?
Yes, those who “get there” know their opportunities…
have learned to untie the knots of knowledge.
But was it the notable or the notorious that our Sage spoke of?
The latter he called opportunists. Those who get there, doubtless,
know doubt nor care no more. Yet, doubt you not, nor do dead generals,
who plotted carefully at what seemed opportune,
and knew naught, right or wrong.
If, of a sudden, you’re offered fine wine,
let the sun sink. Enjoy it. – T’ao Ch’ien

Aladár Kacziány – Musique