Gwyllm.com

“The deepest experience of the creator is feminine, for it is experience of receiving and bearing.” –Rainer Maria Rilke

“Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings.” – Robert Graves

I had a whole theme going, and it just melted away. Maybe I will bring it back in the next entry. Anyway, wrestling with LuLu.com for Dr. Con’s new book. It is all to much. I have been kicking this entry around for 10 days, enough already.

Love and Sprockets,

Gwyllm

_____________

On The Menu:

The Links

Adios Ted

St Germain – Rose Rouge

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes

Zen Parables

American Beauty: Gary Snyder’s Poems

St. Germain – So Flute

__________________________

The Links…

Massive Attack Of The Jellyfish…

Rare Condition Turns Girls Organs Into Crystals…

Dinosaurs From Chicken Eggs?

Bugs For Buddha?

The Dog Who Thinks He Is A Cat…

___________________________

Adios Ted…

“And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

‘I am a part of all that I have met

Tho much is taken, much abides

That which we are, we are –

One equal temper of heroic hearts

Strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

The Atlantic On Ted Kennedy

___________________________

For Leslie & Roberto…

St Germain – Rose Rouge

___________________________

Rainer Maria Rilke Quotes:

“Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.”

“If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no indifferent place.”

“A person isn’t who they are during the last conversation you had with them – they’re who they’ve been throughout your whole relationship.”

“…perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.”

“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”

___________________________

Zen Parables…

The Gift of Insults

There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him.

One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and lightning speed. No one had ever lasted with him in a match beyond the first move.

Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult known to mankind. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and calm. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was defeated, he left feeling shamed.

Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students gathered around the old master and questioned him. “How could you endure such an indignity? How did you drive him away?”

“If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it,” the master replied, “to whom does the gift belong?”

—

Going with the Flow

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. “I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived.”

—

Taming the Mind

After winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master who was renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try, and then split that arrow with his second shot.

“There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!”

Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain.

Curious about the old fellow’s intentions, the champion followed him high into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out onto the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit.

“Now it is your turn,” he said as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground.

Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, no less shoot at a target.

“You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot.”

—

—

The Ghost of my dead wife

The wife of a man became very sick. On her deathbed, she said to him, “I love you so much! I don’t want to leave you, and I don’t want you to betray me. Promise that you will not see any other women once I die, or I will come back to haunt you.”

For several months after her death, the husband did avoid other women, but then he met someone and fell in love. On the night that they were engaged to be married, the ghost of his former wife appeared to him. She blamed him for not keeping the promise, and every night thereafter she returned to taunt him. The ghost would remind him of everything that transpired between him and his fiancee that day, even to the point of repeating, word for word, their conversations. It upset him so badly that he couldn’t sleep at all.

Desperate, he sought the advice of a Zen master who lived near the village. “This is a very clever ghost,” the master said upon hearing the man’s story. “It is!” replied the man. “She remembers every detail of what I say and do. It knows everything!” The master smiled, “You should admire such a ghost, but I will tell you what to do the next time you see it.”

That night the ghost returned. The man responded just as the master had advised. “You are such a wise ghost,” the man said, “You know that I can hide nothing from you. If you can answer me one question, I will break off the engagement and remain single for the rest of my life.” “Ask your question,” the ghost replied. The man scooped up a handful of beans from a large bag on the floor, “Tell me exactly how many beans there are in my hand.”

At that moment the ghost disappeared and never returned.

_________

American Beauty: Gary Snyder’s Poems….

How Poetry Comes to Me

It comes blundering over the

Boulders at night, it stays

Frightened outside the

Range of my campfire

I go to meet it at the

Edge of the light

—

Regarding Wave

The voice of the Dharma

the voice

now

A shimmering bell

through all.

Every hill, still.

Every tree alive. Every leaf.

All the slopes flow.

old woods, new seedlings,

tall grasses plumes.

Dark hollows; peaks of light.

wind stirs the cool side

Each leaf living.

All the hills.

The Voice

is a wife

to

him still.

—

Manzanita

Before dawn the coyotes

weave medicine songs

dream nets – spirit baskets –

milky way music

they cook young girls with

to be woman;

or the whirling dance of

striped boys –

At moon-set the pines are gold-purple

Just before sunrise.

The dog hastens into the undergrowth

Comes back panting

Huge, on the small dry flowers.

A woodpecker

Drums and echoes

Across the still meadow

One man draws, and releases an arrow

Humming, flat,

Misses a gray stump, and splitting

A smooth red twisty manzanita bough.

Manzanita the tips in fruit,

Clusters of hard green berries

The longer you look

The bigger they seem,

`little apples’

—

—

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout

Down valley a smoke haze

Three days heat, after five days rain

Pitch glows on the fir-cones

Across rocks and meadows

Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read

A few friends, but they are in cities.

Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup

Looking down for miles

Through high still air.

—

Civilization

Those are the people who do complicated things.

they’ll grab us by the thousands

and put us to work.

World’s going to hell, with all these

villages and trails.

Wild duck flocks aren’t

what they used to be.

Aurochs grow rare.

Fetch me my feathers and amber

–

A small cricket

on the typescript page of

“Kyoto born in spring song”

grooms himself

in time with The Well-Tempered Clavier.

I quit typing and watch him through a glass.

How well articulated! How neat!

Nobody understands the ANIMAL KINGDOM.

–

When creeks are full

The poems flow

When creeks are down

We heap stones.

______________

St. Germain – So Flute

______________

“What you take in by visionary experience you must give out by love and intelligence in daily life.”

– Aldous Huxley

“BEWARE THE NON-PSYCHEDELIC — A non-psychedelic can NEVER enlighten a psychedelic.” –Ganesh Baba

Illustration Of A Tao Imprint

He stands apart

serene

curiously observing

He stands quietly

looking forlorn

like an infant who has not yet

learned to know what to smile at

He is a little sad for what he sees

While others enjoy their possessions

he lazily drifts, a homeless

do-nothing, owning nothing

Or he moves slowly close to the land

While others are crisp and definite

he seems indecisive

He does not appear to be making his way

in the world

He is different

A wise infant nursing at the breast

Of all life

Inside

-Tim Leary….

Discuss.

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

______

On the Menu:

Zen Quotes

Drug Of A Nation

A Dreamer’s Tales by Lord Dunsany

The Real Buddha – Sayings & Poetry of Huang Po

Jeff Stott – Funky Nawari

Art: Larry Carlson

_____________

Zen Quotes:

Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.

– Alan Watts.

If I were a tree among trees, a cat among animals, this life would have a meaning, or rather this problem would not arise, for I should belong to this world. I should be this world to which I am now opposed by my whole consciousness and my whole insistence upon familiarity. This ridiculous reason is what sets me in opposition to all creation. I cannot cross it out with a stroke of a pen.

– Albert Camus.

Summer at its height– and snow on the rocks! The death of winter-and the withered tree blossoms!

Inside the zendo also dancing evening maple leaves.

– Soen Nakagawa.

The reverse side also has a reverse side.

– Japanese Proverb.

Ride your horse along the edge of a sword; hide yourself in the middle of flames.

I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’ is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness.

-Chuang-tzu.

All conditioned things are impermanent. Work out your own salvation with diligence.

– The Buddha’s last words.

____________________

Drug Of A Nation

____________________

A Dreamer’s Tales by Lord Dunsany

The Hashish Man

I was at a dinner in London the other day. The ladies had gone upstairs, and no one sat on my right; on my left there was a man I did not know, but he knew my name somehow apparently, for he turned to me after a while, and said, “I read a story of yours about Bethmoora in a review.”

Of course I remembered the tale. It was about a beautiful Oriental city that was suddenly deserted in a day–nobody quite knew why. I said, “Oh, yes,” and slowly searched in my mind for some more fitting acknowledgment of the compliment that his memory had paid me.

I was greatly astonished when he said, “You were wrong about the gnousar sickness; it was not that at all.”

I said, “Why! Have you been there?”

And he said, “Yes; I do it with hashish. I know Bethmoora well.” And he took out of his pocket a small box full of some black stuff that looked like tar, but had a stranger smell. He warned me not to touch it with my finger, as the stain remained for days. “I got it from a gipsy,” he said. “He had a lot of it, as it had killed his father.” But I interrupted him, for I wanted to know for certain what it was that had made desolate that beautiful city, Bethmoora, and why they fled from it swiftly in a day. “Was it because of the Desert’s curse?” I asked. And he said, “Partly it was the fury of the Desert and partly the advice of the Emperor Thuba Mleen, for that fearful beast is in some way connected with the Desert on his mother’s side.” And he told me this strange story: “You remember the sailor with the black scar, who was there on the day that you described when the messengers came on mules to the gate of Bethmoora, and all the people fled. I met this man in a tavern, drinking rum, and he told me all about the flight from Bethmoora, but knew no more than you did what the message was, or who had sent it. However, he said he would see Bethmoora once more whenever he touched again at an eastern port, even if he had to face the Devil. He often said that he would face the Devil to find out the mystery of that message that emptied Bethmoora in a day. And in the end he had to face Thuba Mleen, whose weak ferocity he had not imagined. For one day the sailor told me he had found a ship, and I met him no more after that in the tavern drinking rum. It was about that time that I got the hashish from the gipsy, who had a quantity that he did not want. It takes one literally out of oneself. It is like wings. You swoop over distant countries and into other worlds. Once I found out the secret of the universe. I have forgotten what it was, but I know that the Creator does not take Creation seriously, for I remember that He sat in Space with all His work in front of Him and laughed. I have seen incredible things in fearful worlds. As it is your imagination that takes you there, so it is only by your imagination that you can get back. Once out in aether I met a battered, prowling spirit, that had belonged to a man whom drugs had killed a hundred years ago; and he led me to regions that I had never imagined; and we parted in anger beyond the Pleiades, and I could not imagine my way back. And I met a huge grey shape that was the Spirit of some great people, perhaps of a whole star, and I besought It to show me my way home, and It halted beside me like a sudden wind and pointed, and, speaking quite softly, asked me if I discerned a certain tiny light, and I saw a far star faintly, and then It said to me, ‘That is the Solar System,’ and strode tremendously on. And somehow I imagined my way back, and only just in time, for my body was already stiffening in a chair in my room; and the fire had gone out and everything was cold, and I had to move each finger one by one, and there were pins and needles in them, and dreadful pains in the nails, which began to thaw; and at last I could move one arm, and reached a bell, and for a long time no one came, because every one was in bed. But at last a man appeared, and they got a doctor; and HE said that it was hashish poisoning, but it would have been all right if I hadn’t met that battered, prowling spirit.

“I could tell you astounding things that I have seen, but you want to know who sent that message to Bethmoora. Well, it was Thuba Mleen. And this is how I know. I often went to the city after that day you wrote of (I used to take hashish of an evening in my flat), and I always found it uninhabited. Sand had poured into it from the desert, and the streets were yellow and smooth, and through open, swinging doors the sand had drifted.

“One evening I had put the guard in front of the fire, and settled into a chair and eaten my hashish, and the first thing that I saw when I came to Bethmoora was the sailor with the black scar, strolling down the street, and making footprints in the yellow sand. And now I knew that I should see what secret power it was that kept Bethmoora uninhabited.

“I saw that there was anger in the Desert, for there were storm clouds heaving along the skyline, and I heard a muttering amongst the sand.

“The sailor strolled on down the street, looking into the empty houses as he went; sometimes he shouted and sometimes he sang, and sometimes he wrote his name on a marble wall. Then he sat down on a step and ate his dinner. After a while he grew tired of the city, and came back up the street. As he reached the gate of green copper three men on camels appeared.

“I could do nothing. I was only a consciousness, invisible, wandering: my body was in Europe. The sailor fought well with his fists, but he was over-powered and bound with ropes, and led away through the Desert.

“I followed for as long as I could stay, and found that they were going by the way of the Desert round the Hills of Hap towards Utnar Véhi, and then I knew that the camel men belonged to Thuba Mleen.

“I work in an insurance office all day, and I hope you won’t forget me if ever you want to insure–life, fire, or motor–but that’s no part of my story. I was desperately anxious to get back to my flat, though it is not good to take hashish two days running; but I wanted to see what they would do to the poor fellow, for I had heard bad rumours about Thuba Mleen. When at last I got away I had a letter to write; then I rang for my servant, and told him that I must not be disturbed, though I left my door unlocked in case of accidents. After that I made up a good fire, and sat down and partook of the pot of dreams. I was going to the palace of Thuba Mleen.

“I was kept back longer than usual by noises in the street, but suddenly I was up above the town; the European countries rushed by beneath me, and there appeared the thin white palace spires of horrible Thuba Mleen. I found him presently at the end of a little narrow room. A curtain of red leather hung behind him, on which all the names of God, written in Yannish, were worked with a golden thread. Three windows were small and high. The Emperor seemed no more than about twenty, and looked small and weak. No smiles came on his nasty yellow face, though he tittered continually. As I looked from his low forehead to his quivering under lip, I became aware that there was some horror about him, though I was not able to perceive what it was. And then I saw it–the man never blinked; and though later on I watched those eyes for a blink, it never happened once.

“And then I followed the Emperor’s rapt glance, and I saw the sailor lying on the floor, alive but hideously rent, and the royal torturers were at work all round him. They had torn long strips from him, but had not detached them, and they were torturing the ends of them far away from the sailor.” The man that I met at dinner told me many things which I must omit. “The sailor was groaning softly, and every time he groaned Thuba Mleen tittered. I had no sense of smell, but I could hear and see, and I do not know which was the most revolting–the terrible condition of the sailor or the happy unblinking face of horrible Thuba Mleen.

“I wanted to go away, but the time was not yet come, and I had to stay where I was.

“Suddenly the Emperor’s face began to twitch violently and his under lip quivered faster, and he whimpered with anger, and cried with a shrill voice, in Yannish, to the captain of his torturers that there was a spirit in the room. I feared not, for living men cannot lay hands on a spirit, but all the torturers were appalled at his anger, and stopped their work, for their hands trembled in fear. Then two men of the spear-guard slipped from the room, and each of them brought back presently a golden bowl, with knobs on it, full of hashish; and the bowls were large enough for heads to have floated in had they been filled with blood. And the two men fell to rapidly, each eating with two great spoons–there was enough in each spoonful to have given dreams to a hundred men. And there came upon them soon the hashish state, and their spirits hovered, preparing to go free, while I feared horribly, but ever and anon they fell back again to their bodies, recalled by some noise in the room. Still the men ate, but lazily now, and without ferocity. At last the great spoons dropped out of their hands, and their spirits rose and left them. I could not flee. And the spirits were more horrible than the men, because they were young men, and not yet wholly moulded to fit their fearful souls. Still the sailor groaned softly, evoking little titters from the Emperor Thuba Mleen. Then the two spirits rushed at me, and swept me thence as gusts of wind sweep butterflies, and away we went from that small, pale, heinous man. There was no escaping from these spirits’ fierce insistence. The energy in my minute lump of the drug was overwhelmed by the huge spoonsful that these men had eaten with both hands. I was whirled over Arvle Woondery, and brought to the lands of Snith, and swept on still until I came to Kragua, and beyond this to those bleak lands that are nearly unknown to fancy. And we came at last to those ivory hills that are named the Mountains of Madness, and I tried to struggle against the spirits of that frightful Emperor’s men, for I heard on the other side of the ivory hills the pittering of those beasts that prey on the mad, as they prowled up and down. It was no fault of mine that my little lump of hashish could not fight with their horrible spoonsful….”

Some one was tugging at the hall-door bell. Presently a servant came and told our host that a policeman in the hall wished to speak to him at once. He apologised to us, and went outside, and we heard a man in heavy boots, who spoke in a low voice to him. My friend got up and walked over to the window, and opened it, and looked outside. “I should think it will be a fine night,” he said. Then he jumped out. When we put our astonished heads out of the window to look for him, he was already out of sight.

“Alas! the world is full of enormous lights and mysteries, and man shuts them from himself with one small hand!” – Baal Shem Tov

______________________

The Real Buddha – Sayings & Poetry of Huang Po

Here it is – right now. Start thinking about it and you miss it.

—

All Buddhas and all ordinary beings are nothing but the one mind. This mind is beginningless and endless, unborn and indestructible. It has no color or shape, neither exists nor doesn’t exist, isn’t old or new, long or short, large or small, since it transcends all measures, limits, names, and comparisons. It is what you see in front of you.

—

Start to think about it and immediately you are mistaken. It is like the boundless void, which can’t be fathomed or measured.

—

People are scared to empty their minds fearing that they will be engulfed by the void. What they don’t realize is that their own mind is the void. Huang Po

—

The Buddha and all sentient beings are nothing but expressions of the one mind. There is nothing else.

—

Enlightenment

When practitioners of Zen fail to transcend

the world of their senses and thoughts,

all they do has no value.

Yet, when senses and thoughts are obliterated

all the roads to universal mind are blocked

and there is no entrance.

The primal mind has to be recognised along with the senses and thoughts.

It neither belongs to them nor is independent of them.

Don’t build your understanding on your senses and thoughts,

yet don’t look for the mind separate from your senses and thoughts.

Don’t attempt to grasp Reality by pushing away your senses

and thoughts.

Unobstructed freedom is to be neither attached not detached.

This is enlightenment.

—

The Real Buddha

People perform a vast number of complex practices

hoping to gain spiritual merit as countless as the grains

of sand on the riverbed of the Ganges:

but you are essentially already perfect in every way.

Don’t try and augment perfection with meaningless practice.

If it’s the right occasion to perform them, let practices happen.

When the time has passed, let them stop.

If you are not absolutely sure that mind is the Buddha,

and if you are attached to the ideas of winning merit from spiritual practices, then your thinking is misguided and not in harmony with the Way.

To practice complex spiritual practices is to progress step by step:

but the eternal Buddha is not a Buddha of progressive stages.

Just awaken to the one Mind,

and there is absolutely nothing to be attained.

This is the real Buddha.

______________________

Jeff Stott – Funky Nawari

_______________________

Creation’s Witness

At time’s beginning

that beauty

which polished creation’s mirror

caressed every atom

with a hundred thousand suns.

But this glory

was never witnessed.

When the human eye emerged,

only then was he known.

-Abdul-Qader Bedil

________________

This entry is based on what I placed in my Poetry Sanctuary out front of Caer Llwydd this morning. I find as much pleasure in sharing these as I do in most anything. Every two days, I search out across my books, or the internet and locate poems that fit my mood (or not)… I on occasion will see someone stop and read them. More often than not, Sofie our dog while sitting on the porch will start making a racket… I will look out, and there will be someone reading, usually with a dog hence Sofie giving voice.

It has been a cool week here in Portland. Rain, clouds and early morning breezes. I wake up at 5:00am and go back to sleep. No discipline once more. I have been going through one of those “can’t focus for all the white noise of computer, thoughts, schedules etc. I bog down lately when the stimuli gets overwhelming… I need to cut back a bit it seems…

Anyway, Poetry. I realized/remembered that it has always been there in my life. As I progressively race towards my oblivion, the poets viewpoint becomes so much more focused in my mind’s eye. Poetry is a bridge, one of the bridges to eternity. Within the cadences, you hear and feel the rhythms of the pulse of the universe. We are not cut off at all from creation, we just ignore it due to our ignorance, and the noise factor. Inside, deep inside we move as one with all that there is. When we give voice to it, it speaks in oracular forms. Every poem has a hint of it, sometimes more.

We have been blessed, we are blessed, and we bless with our presence in the eternal now…

Here is to you, in this moment of Love and Bliss,

Gwyllm

________________

Three Poets For Saturday

I became water

and saw myself

a mirage

became an ocean

saw myself a speck

of foam

gained Awareness

saw that all is but

forgetfulness

woke up

and found myself

asleep.

—-

A mystic is one

who passes away –

He abides in the essence

of that which is Real.

Such a person is pure,

clear wine without dregs.

Now whole, he displays

the Most Beautiful Names.

– Binavi Badakhshani –

____________________

So what if love’s idol is hidden? One’s heart will never be far away.

My guide lives many mountains away, but he is visible before me.

Whoever has one grain of love is drunk without wine.

They are true mystics, Bahu, whose graves are alive.

–

I knew God well when love flashed before me

I knew God well when love flashed before me.

It gives me strength by night and day, and shows what lies ahead.

In me are flames, in me is fuel, in me is smoke.

I only found my Beloved, Bahu, when love made me aware.

– Sultan Bahu –

____________________

The eternal mysteries,

following wisdom’s lead,

brought forth

the human form

as their living proof.

As long as the drop

hadn’t emerged from the sea,

the ocean

didn’t notice

the depths of its splendor.

– Abdul-Qader Bedhil –

_______________

“I do not want to squander — the last penny of my soul among youths bred in a hothouse” – Osip Mandlestam, Noise of Time

A short entry….

Gwyllm

On The Menu:

Andy Warhol Quotes

Candy Says” – Lou Reed & Antony

Delmore Schwartz Poetry

Lou Reed – Caroline Says Prt2

_________________________

Andy Warhol Quotes:

“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.”

“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.”

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”

“Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.”

“During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don’t think they’ve ever remembered.”

“Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.”

“Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up and they’re always tax-deductible.”

“Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.”

__________________________

“Candy Says” – Lou Reed & Antony”

__________________________

Delmore Schwartz Poetry….

In The Slight Ripple, The Mind Perceives The Heart

In the slight ripple, the fishes dart

Like fingers, centrifugal, like wishes

Wanton. And pleasures rise

as the eyes fall

Through the lucid water. The small pebble,

The clear clay bottom, the white shell

Are apparent, though superficial.

Who would ask more of the August afternoon?

Who would dig mines and follow shadows?

“I would,” answers bored Heart, “Lounger, rise”

(Underlip trembling, face white with stony anger),

“The old error, the thought of sitting still,

“The senses drinking, by the summer river,

“On the tended lawn, below the traffic,

“As if time would pause,

and afternoon stay.

“No, night comes soon,

“With its cold mountains, with desolation,

unless Love build its city.

—

At This Moment Of Time

Some who are uncertain compel me. They fear

The Ace of Spades. They fear

Loves offered suddenly, turning from the mantelpiece,

Sweet with decision. And they distrust

The fireworks by the lakeside, first the spuft,

Then the colored lights, rising.

Tentative, hesitant, doubtful, they consume

Greedily Caesar at the prow returning,

Locked in the stone of his act and office.

While the brass band brightly bursts over the water

They stand in the crowd lining the shore

Aware of the water beneath Him. They know it. Their eyes

Are haunted by water

Disturb me, compel me. It is not true

That “no man is happy,” but that is not

The sense which guides you. If we are

Unfinished (we are, unless hope is a bad dream),

You are exact. You tug my sleeve

Before I speak, with a shadow’s friendship,

And I remember that we who move

Are moved by clouds that darken midnight.

—

In The Naked Bed, In Plato’s Cave

In the naked bed, in Plato’s cave,

Reflected headlights slowly slid the wall,

Carpenters

hammered under the shaded window,

Wind troubled the window curtains all night long,

A fleet of trucks strained uphill, grinding,

Their freights covered, as usual.

The ceiling lightened again, the slanting diagram

Slid slowly forth.

Hearing the milkman’s clop,

his striving up the stair, the bottle’s chink,

I rose from bed, lit a cigarette,

And walked to the window. The stony street

Displayed the stillness in which buildings stand,

The street-lamp’s vigil and the horse’s

patience.

The winter sky’s pure capital

Turned me back to bed with exhausted eyes.

Strangeness grew in the motionless air. The loose

Film grayed. Shaking wagons, hooves’ waterfalls

,

Sounded far off, increasing, louder and nearer.

A car coughed, starting. Morning softly

Melting the air, lifted the half-covered chair

From underseas, kindled the looking-glass,

Distinguished the dresser and the white wall.

The bird called tentatively, whistled, called,

Bubbled and whistled, so! Perplexed, still wet

With sleep, affectionate, hungry and cold. So, so,

O son of man, the ignorant night, the travail

Of early morning, the mystery of the beginning

Again and again,

while history is unforgiven.

—-

O Love, Sweet Animal

O Love, dark animal,

With your strangeness go

Like any freak or clown:

Appease tee child in her

Because she is alone

Many years ago

Terrified by a look

Which was not meant for her.

Brush your heavy fur

Against her, long and slow

Stare at her like a book,

Her interests being such

No one can look too much.

Tell her how you know

Nothing can be taken

Which has not been given:

For you time is forgiven:

Informed by hell and heaven

You are not mistaken

_______________________

Lou Reed – Caroline Says Prt2

_______________________

“Only those who are lost in error follow the poets.” – Qur’an 26.224, trans. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem

So Lammas/Lugnasadh is upon us… The wheel turns and the Harvest is here:

We have ploughed, we have sowed,

We have reaped, we have mowed,

We have brought home every load,

Hip, hip, hip, Harvest Home!

Now Lammas comes in, our harvest begin,

We have done our endeavours to get the corn in;

We reap and we mow

And we stoutly blow

And cut down the corn

That did sweetly grow …

(anon)

———

A nice harvest of articles, poetry and links. A poem from Laura Pendell…

This is a partial repeat of an entry from 2006. Some subtractions, some additions.

Though Lugnasdh has been transitioning through.. still I feel this is most timely.

There is a brimming of the heart at this season. The moon lies fullest on the horizon, and all of life

most vibrant. The fields are in harvest, and life quickens. The Autumn finally is upon us, and

the promise of Summer slowly begins to fade….

Enjoy,

Gwyllm

__________

On The Menu:

Nightmare – Laura Pendell

The Links

Robin Williamson – Young Girl Milking The Cow

LAMMAS: The First Harvest

Harvest: Poetry for Lammas/Lugnasadh…

Robin Williamson & John Renbourn – The Parting Glass

________________

NIGHTMARE

This is not about the nightmare – you know it –

the one you wake up from. Shaking, maybe screaming.

This is not about finding yourself in the middle

of a sidewalk without your clothes on.

About finding yourself on a ladder

falling over backwards into an abyss.

Or running down a street because something

is chasing you and no matter where you turn it’s still there.

And then you wake up.

This is about the children of south Lebanon.

The children of Qana, Tyre, Gemmayzeh, Beirut.

About two families who took shelter

in an abandoned building on a hillside above Qana.

They did not have money to hire a car to take them north.

This is about two Israeli air strikes an hour after midnight.

It’s about cement and sand and how it filled the mouths

of 37 children and 15 adults

pulled from the wreckage dead

where they had sought safety for the night.

This is about children who now live, if they’re lucky,

in underground garages turned into shelters.

Or in abandoned buildings, if they’re not.

Some sprawled half asleep on pieces of foam.

A curly-headed toddler still in diapers, sucking her thumb,

her mattress covered with blue flannel sheets

printed in yellow with the sun, the stars and the moon.

The ones I see in Kids’ Catalogs that flood my mailbox.

Bush, Blair, Ehud Olmert,

Nasrallah of the Hezbollah.

What do they dream?

I dream of the eyes of Lebanon’s children

who are living a nightmare from which there is no waking.

A little boy staring out at a world of broken buildings.

I don’t even know if he has parents anymore.

We are awake together.

-For the children of Lebanon-

– Laura Pendell

___________

The Links:

Photograph of an boulder floating over a forest…

Decoding Ancient Secrets…

Mystery Face…

HAARP Messing With The Ionosphere

____________

Robin Williamson – Young Girl Milking The Cow

____________

LAMMAS: The First Harvest

by Mike Nichols

It was upon a Lammas Night

When corn rigs are bonny,

Beneath the Moon’s unclouded light,

I held awhile to Annie…

Although in the heat of a Mid-western summer it might be difficult to discern, the festival of Lammas (Aug 1st) marks the end of summer and the beginning of fall. The days now grow visibly shorter and by the time we’ve reached autumn’s end (Oct 31st), we will have run the gammut of temperature from the heat of August to the cold and (sometimes) snow of November. And in the midst of it, a perfect Mid-western autumn.

The history of Lammas is as convoluted as all the rest of the old folk holidays. It is of course a cross-quarter day, one of the four High Holidays or Greater Sabbats of Witchcraft, occuring 1/4 of a year after Beltane. It’s true astrological point is 15 degrees Leo, but tradition has set August 1st as the day Lammas is typically celebrated. The celebration proper would begin on sundown of the previous evening, our July 31st, since the Celts reckon their days from sundown to sundown.

However, British Witches often refer to the astrological date of Aug 6th as Old Lammas, and folklorists call it Lammas O.S. (‘Old Style’). This date has long been considered a ‘power point’ of the Zodiac, and is symbolized by the Lion, one of the ‘tetramorph’ figures found on the Tarot cards, the World and the Wheel of Fortune (the other three figures being the Bull, the Eagle, and the Spirit). Astrologers know these four figures as the symbols of the four ‘fixed’ signs of the Zodiac, and these naturally allign with the four Great Sabbats of Witchcraft. Christians have adopted the same iconography to represent the four gospel-writers.

‘Lammas’ was the medieval Christian name for the holiday and it means ‘loaf-mass’, for this was the day on which loaves of bread were baked from the first grain harvest and laid on the church altars as offerings. It was a day representative of ‘first fruits’ and early harvest.

In Irish Gaelic, the feast was referred to as ‘Lugnasadh’, a feast to commemorate the funeral games of the Irish sun-god Lugh. However, there is some confusion on this point. Although at first glance, it may seem that we are celebrating the death of Lugh, the god of light does not really die (mythically) until the autumnal equinox. And indeed, if we read the Irish myths closer, we discover that it is not Lugh’s death that is being celebrated, but the funeral games which Lugh hosted to commemorate the death of his foster-mother, Taillte. That is why the Lugnasadh celebrations in Ireland are often called the ‘Tailltean Games’.

The time went by with careless heed

Between the late and early,

With small persuasion she agreed

To see me through the barley…

One common feature of the Games were the ‘Tailltean marriages’, a rather informal marriage that lasted for only ‘a year and a day’ or until next Lammas. At that time, the couple could decide to continue the arrangement if it pleased them, or to stand back to back and walk away from one another, thus bringing the Tailltean marriage to a formal close. Such trial marriages (obviously related to the Wiccan ‘Handfasting’) were quite common even into the 1500′s, although it was something one ‘didn’t bother the parish priest about’. Indeed, such ceremonies were usually solemnized by a poet, bard, or shanachie (or, it may be guessed, by a priest or priestess of the Old Religion).

Lammastide was also the traditional time of year for craft festivals. The medieval guilds would create elaborate displays of their wares, decorating their shops and themselves in bright colors and ribbons, marching in parades, and performing strange, ceremonial plays and dances for the entranced onlookers. The atmosphere must have been quite similar to our modern-day Renaissance Festivals, such as the one celebrated in near-by Bonner Springs, Kansas, each fall.

A ceremonial highlight of such festivals was the ‘Catherine wheel’. Although the Roman Church moved St. Catherine’s feast day all around the calender with bewildering frequency, it’s most popular date was Lammas. (They also kept trying to expel this much-loved saint from the ranks of the blessed because she was mythical rather than historical, and because her worship gave rise to the heretical sect known as the Cathari.) At any rate, a large wagon wheel was taken to the top of a near-by hill, covered with tar, set aflame, and ceremoniously rolled down the hill. Some mythologists see in this ritual the remnants of a Pagan rite symbolizing the end of summer, the flaming disk representing the sun-god in his decline. And just as the sun king has now reached the autumn of his years, his rival or dark self has just reached puberty.

Many comentators have bewailed the fact that traditional Gardnerian and Alexandrian Books of Shadows say very little about the holiday of Lammas, stating only that poles should be ridden and a circle dance performed. This seems strange, for Lammas is a holiday of rich mythic and cultural associations, providing endless resources for liturgical celebration.

Corn rigs and barley rigs,

Corn rigs are bonny!

I’ll not forget that happy night

Among the rigs with Annie!

[Verse quotations by Robert Burns, as handed down through several Books of Shadows.]

_________

Harvest: Poetry for Lammas/Lugnasadh…

_________

The Harvest Bow

As you plaited the harvest bow

You implicated the mellowed silence in you

In wheat that does not rust

But brightens as it tightens twist by twist

Into a knowable corona,

A throwaway love-knot of straw.

Hands that aged round ashplants and cane sticks

And lapped the spurs on a lifetime of game cocks

Harked to their gift and worked with fine intent

Until your fingers moved somnambulant:

I tell and finger it like braille,

Gleaning the unsaid off the palpable,

And if I spy into its golden loops

I see us walk between the railway slopes

Into an evening of long grass and midges,

Blue smoke straight up, old beds and ploughs in hedges,

An auction notice on an outhouse wall–

You with a harvest bow in your lapel,

Me with the fishing rod, already homesick

For the big lift of these evenings, as your stick

Whacking the tips off weeds and bushes

Beats out of time, and beats, but flushes

Nothing: that original townland

Still tongue-tied in the straw tied by your hand.

The end of art is peace

Could be the motto of this frail device

That I have pinned up on our deal dresser–

Like a drawn snare

Slipped lately by the spirit of the corn

Yet burnished by its passage, and still warm.

Seamus Heaney

—

It was on a Lammas night,

When corn rigs are bonie,

Beneath the moon’s unclouded light,

I held away to Annie:

The time flew by, wi tentless heed,

Till ‘tween the late and early;

Wi’ sma’ persuasion she agreed

To see me thro’ the barley.

The sky was blue, the wind was still,

The moon was shining clearly;

I set her down, wi’ right good will,

Amang the rigs o’barley

I ken’t her heart was a’ my ain;

I lov’d her most sincerely;

I kissed her owre and owre again,

Among the rig o’ barley.

I locked her in my fond embrace;

Her heart was beating rarely:

My blessings on that happy place,

Amang the rigs o’barley.

But by the moon and stars so bright,

That shone that hour so clearly!

She ay shall bless that happy night,

Amang the rigs o’barley.

I hae been blythe wi’ Comrades dear;

I hae been merry drinking;

I hae been joyfu’ gath’rin gear;

I hae been happy thinking:

But a’ the pleasures e’er I saw,

Tho three times doubl’d fairley

That happy night was worth then a’.

Among the rig’s o’ barley.

CHORUS

Corn rigs, an’ barley rigs,

An’ corn rigs are bonie:

I’ll ne’er forget that happy night,

Among the rigs wi’ Annie.

Robert Burns

—-

The Lammas Hireling

After the fair, I’d still a light heart

and a heavy purse, he struck so cheap.

And cattle doted on him: in his time

mine only dropped heifers, fat as cream.

Yields doubled. I grew fond of company

that knew when to shut up. Then one night,

disturbed from dreams of my dear late wife,

I hunted down her torn voice to his pale form.

Stock-still in the light from the dark lantern,

stark-naked but for one bloody boot of fox-trap,

I knew him a warlock, a cow with leather horns.

To go into the hare gets you muckle sorrow,

the wisdom runs, muckle care. I levelled

and blew the small hour through his heart.

The moon came out. By its yellow witness

I saw him fur over like a stone mossing.

His lovely head thinned. His top lip gathered.

His eyes rose like bread. I carried him

in a sack that grew lighter at every step

and dropped him from a bridge. There was no

splash. Now my herd’s elf-shot. I don’t dream

but spend my nights casting ball from half-crowns

and my days here. Bless me Father for I have sinned.

It has been an hour since my last confession.

Ian Duhig

—–

Corn Dolly

Watch her as she moves through golden waves

Where ears ripen beneath the summer sun

Now reapers move across the field, leaving swathes

Binders follow making sheaves; a harvest won

From the soil we have tilled.

Grain that in winter can be milled.

There’s a gentle swish of sickles through the stalk

John Barleycorn is falling to the ground

The rig moves on; girls exchanging daily talk

As carefully they bind each sheaf around

Sweating children work to stook

Where mothers have no time to look.

At eventide the sun falls below the dripping brow

Ceres’ row still stands against the blackthorn hedge

Her spirit to be beaten back where the oxen plough

When winter’s solstice comes they’ll make a pledge

Now its time for sing of joy and mirth

Celebrate the bounteous Mother Earth

Though the bedstraw beckons weary bairns for sleep

And dreams of bitter ales beckon to parched lips

At the centre of the field there’s still a sheaf to reap

The reapers face the stand with hands on hips

Each takes his turn to throw

His sickle at this final row.

To reap the clyack sheaf as custom now demands

Each man in turn the blindfold takes

Thrice times three is turned around by other hands

The sickle then cast forth to the fates

The victor knows from others’ cheer

He shall claim the flowing jug of beer

Rituals that have been passed down to us from ancient times

As these last stalks are gathered up with care

Straw woven with skilled hands to once forgotten rhymes

A neck dolly crafted by young Cerys the fair

‘Could this be Cybele, mother of gods ?’

Her grandmother raises her eyes and nods.

Neck dollies, drop dollies, Brigit’s and kirn child

Some dressed in gay ribbons, others in white

Thin bodies, full bodies, some pagan and wild

Carried home on the last of the wagons tonight

Tokens to hang on each farmhouse wall

To be raised in the spring, a spirit to call.

Under late summer sun sheaves are ripened and dried

The wagons are loaded until Baba remains

Rigs of reapers make circles whilst she is untied

Each takes a step forward and ears are claimed

There’s a bow to the centre from all around

Each reaper touching an ear to the ground.

When all have departed two strangers enter the field

Oat man and oat woman with a dance to perform

Beneath long purple cloaks their dolls are concealed

A grim reaper beheaded, a spirit to enter the corn

The rite of an old Phrygian sacrifice

Crying the neck to bring next year’s life.

David Hopcroft

_____________

Robin Williamson & John Renbourn – The Parting Glass

_____________

‘The Puzzle’

Someone who keeps aloof from suffering

is not a lover. I choose your love

above all else. As for wealth

if that comes, or goes, so be it.

Wealth and love inhabit separate worlds.
But as long as you live here inside me,

I cannot say that I am suffering.

– Sanai….

Don’t speak of your suffering — He is speaking.

Don’t look for Him everywhere — He’s looking for you.
An ant’s foot touches a leaf, He senses it;

A pebble shifts in a streambed, He knows it.
If there’s a worm hidden deep in a rock,

He’ll know its body, tinier than an atom,
The sound of its praise, its secret ecstasy –

All this He knows by divine knowing.
He has given the tiniest worm its food;

He has opened to you the Way of the Holy Ones.

– Sanai
This is a pretty large edition… working on it over the last week, hunting this, hunting that… The weather here has been pretty darn hot, and continues to be so. I was fine with it until yesterday, and had a meltdown. Not a pretty sight! Anyway, here we are with first, some updates on Turfing, Friends & EarthRites Radio, and then into the new stuff.
I hope you enjoy your visit!
—–

You can now follow Turfing via Twitter! I will be announcing updates for all things EarthRites at: http://www.twitter.com/EarthRites

——

Visitors From Afar….

We were blessed with an evening and morning visit from Roberto & Leslie coming south from an art show in Bellevue, on their way home close to Grass Valley, in the Sierra. Monday late afternoon, hanging out. Roberto & Leslie came to us from Laura & Dale Pendell, their neighbors by a few miles. Roberto popped up on my FB account earlier this year, and we have been having some great conversations along the way.
We have lots of common interest, and experiences. Beginning a conversation with the two of them is like you have been friends forever. Of course, this may be very true. I have been blessed with good companions, fellow travelers, friends, family and lovers in my time on this bright and shining sphere.
We had a great time, first some drinks, then a visit to Caer Llwydd, then up the street for dinner at our local Thai Eatery. We came home to a very, very warm house, and finished the evening with Absinthe, laughter, and good company. They headed south early on Tuesday and made it home safely…
If you get a chance, please check out their website. First rate Art, and very wonderful at that. I love the marriage of art/function. Not enough in our world. Roberto & Leslie bring a bit of beauty with them on many levels…!http://www.hiddenspringdesigns.com/

—-
Radio Free EarthRites, is possibly going away. We are trying to save it, but at this point it is off the air, and it looks like it will not come back as we have known it. Our gracious host in the UK can no longer devote time, nor space for it, and that is the short story of it all… So… we are having to move servers, and it will be a bit of a hurdle. If we move back to the US we have to keep the RIAA people off our backs, and this will cost a pretty penny. I will keep you posted! I do think we will survive, but it will change in format. Hopefully I can start doing some live shows again, and we might do some podcast set ups, and mobile phone streaming…80) I have been very touched by all who have stepped forward with offers of help. I was on the verge of giving up hope.
I have felt that Radio Free EarthRites has a great potential. I believe it could be the basis for many aspects of community building, education, and just plain fun. If you would like to help out, let us know. We could create something quite marvelous together!
Thanks,

G
On The Menu:

From The Forthcoming Book…

Anarchist Quotes

Fotheringay – 2 Videos

Tales From The Beat Hotel

Taoist Tales…. 2 stories…

Poetry For Deep Summer – Tu Fu

Tu Fu Biography

Empire Of The Sun – 3 Videos

________________
From “The Forthcoming Book….”
Freiburg im Bresgau, Germany November 1977: Laying on my back in a cold water flat… A blazing sun slowly wheeling inside/overhead. Pinioned on the floor, writhing in fiery heaven, then a frozen hell…. Ancient caravans assemble before tumbled down walls, in deep shadow, a thousand murmuring voices. It seems an infinite moment in time is caught in amber. Golden light fills the great void, as tales of civilizations rising and falling play out in my consciousness. The rays of the sun shear away flesh, blood, bones. I am caught between infinite pleasure and infinite misery…. I am in this place forever. I never existed; I have always existed. I am possessed by angels, I am clay in the hands of demons. The sun is singing and a blazing white light illuminates every cell, every molecule every atom of this thing I call “my beingness’.
Having eaten a gram or so of Hashish, I was following a path set down by Fritz Ludlow a century before. I had become enamored with Ludlow’s work a year of so earlier. I had pursued his ideas from California, to Amsterdam where I had been smoking an ounce or so a week. In this cold water flat, in the ancient part of town, I was now wrestling with the inner core of my being. Everything hinged on these suspended moments, what path I was to follow from here on out… The light was singing, then shrieking, then nothingness. I stepped into the void.
Earlier In Amsterdam: Everything changed in this time. Time took on a new dimension, food and pleasures changed in novel ways. Cigarettes/tobacco were at the service of spliffs only, and my taste for alcohol slowly faded away. I walked through Amsterdam at all hours, haunting museums during the days and walking along the canals at night. Narrow houses, narrow streets, the Provo yellow bicycles everywhere. German tourist couples shopping for thrills in the red light district on the weekends… I would stare out our window and watch the crowds drifting by… Everything was a wonder, trees and shadows giving such delight…

___________________
Anarchist Quotes:

The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.

– Emma Goldman, “What is Anarchy?”
The Anarchists are simply unterrified Jeffersonian Democrats. They believe that ‘the best government is that which governs least,’ and that which governs least is no government at all.

– Benjamin Tucker
“Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.”

– Leo Tolstoy, Russian Novelist and Christian Anarchist
I build no system. I ask an end to privilege, the abolition of slavery, equality of rights, and the reign of law. Justice, nothing else. That is the alpha and omega of my argument.

– Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the first self-labeled anarchist
From my point of view the killing of another, except in defense of human life, is archistic, authoritarian, and therefore, no Anarchist can commit such deeds. It is the very opposite of what Anarchism stands for…

– Joseph Labadie, Anarchism and Crime
In existing States a fresh law is looked upon as a remedy for evil. Instead of themselves altering what is bad, people begin by demanding a law to alter it.

– Peter Kropotkin, “Law and Authority”

__________________

Fotheringay – Gypsy Davey {Live 1970}

Fotheringay [Sandy Denny] – Banks of the Nile (1970)

__________________
Tales From The Beat Hotel

by graham seidman August 7, 2003 5:59 am
BEAT GENERATION, TRANSGRESSIVE
The room was a romantic’s dream … a garret … a real goddamn “la Boheme” garret.
There was no window, only a small skylight. Five hundred years ago this room was probably home to a servant in some Noble’s service. Now it was mine. Five flights up. A Turkish toilet (you had to have the agility of a ten year old to squat on the hole in the floor) outside next to the stairs with sheets of France Soir, the local newspaper, in lieu of toilet paper. I’d been homeless since my Army discharge two years earlier, and this was the first place I’d felt at home since then. The word was that Madam Rachou, the hotel’s owner, let you decorate your room any way you wanted and that she loved Americans. Most important she didn’t mind it if our female guests stayed overnight or all week as long as you filled out the little cards required by the police, which she slipped under your door at the stroke of mid-night. It was Algerian wartime in Paris and everyone, every night had to be accounted for. The rent was the equivalent of $21 a month and I was getting $110 on the GI bill. Add two great meals a day for $15 a month with student restaurant tickets subsidized by the French government and there was plenty left over for wine and grass. It was perfect.

I painted one wall black and one wall ochre, the rest white except for the space around the skylight. There, Wally, my childhood friend, oil painted a blue sky with clouds and stars. Gregory Corso added an angel. I painted the “just big enough for two lovers wrapped around each other” iron bed bright red. The room was as small as a monk’s cell … perhaps six by nine feet. I never measured. There was a small white porcelain sink used for washing (cold water only) and pissing in when it was too cold to run out into the hall. The floor was made of ancient octagon shaped terra-cotta tiles. When it got real cold during the winter one could splash alcohol out of a bottle onto the floor, light it with a match and then get out of bed as the fire went out and the room was warm. I loved that room and it was mine for three years. I was rich. I had two pair of blue Levi’s and two sweatshirts, one pair of desert boots and two pair of socks. I wore one set of clothes in the public shower for a once a week washing. My red plaid-hunting jacket with a dead duck carrying pocket in the back came from Abercrombie & Fitch in NY. I had a one-burner alcohol stove and beside mr camera, only one real valued possession, a PX-bought Phillips portable phonograph with a speaker in the case. Harry Phipps and Peter Duchin laid some Jazz records on me when they left Paris. A girl I knew left me some classical records. I was set.
The duffel bag I hauled from New York was filled with the Hundred Great Books, in paperback. Heavy hauling and heavy reading. I planned to go through them in that room on that red iron bed. Now they lined the seaman’s shelves strung up with rope and driftwood planks plucked from the Seine a half a block away.
One morning I dabbed some cold water on my face, pissed in the sink and flew down the five flights to buy some breakfast makings, usually an egg, a half a baguette, a piece of butter and a yogurt washed down with instant coffee. As I bounded out the door I crashed into a well-dressed elderly gentleman who was passing by. I recognized his now-startled famous face. I went into shock when I realized that he was Charlie Chaplin. It was the shock of awe. I couldn’t speak. I was frozen in awe. He and his wife, who I also recognized, were very concerned, thinking I was struck dumb in the crash. Their famous faces switched from worried frowns to broad smiles as they heard me apologize in English. After we assured ourselves that no damage was done they asked me for directions to a restaurant around the corner on the Quai Des Grandes Augustines. I would like to say that they invited me to lunch but they didn’t. I bounded back up the stairs to get my camera, figuring to get some great photos of the Chaplins in Paris. My head was spinning with images of a LIFE cover or a PARIS MATCH spread, the PULITZER PRIZE maybe, but when I returned to the crash site, they had disappeared. I went back up the five flights and made my breakfast on the alcohol stove. After breakfast, I grabbed a book, put on a Duke Ellington record, got in bed and blew a joint. Life was beautiful.
A light knock on the door. As I opened it Janine slipped in and slipped out of her clothes to join me in the red bed.
A hard knock on the door, my neighbor, “little” Jerry, finding the staircase toilet occupied, danced up and down, begged to piss in my sink. He had his own sink but found the practice too unsanitary to use it.
Another tap on the door, Allen Ginsberg asking if he could borrow some alcohol for his stove for which he planned a great chicken soup.
A scratch at the door. Marteau, the gray hotel cat wanted in and a cup of milk.
Another knock, BJ and Burroughs returning from ZiZi’s Moroccan cafe next to the police station near the Hotel De Ville where they went on a hash-buying mission. Divvy-up-time.
Lured by the noise of loud jazz blaring from the speaker, loud laughter from high loud-mouthers as well as the sweet smell of cannibis mixed with strong black Gauloise cigarette tobacco, Corso, dressed in his green velvet, Hamlet costume descended from his attic room to join us.
Banging on the door, Claude, BJ’s live-in girlfriend came by looking for him. Every time she got angry with BJ, usually about his infidelities, she went and slept with someone famous. Her first husband was an English Jazz guitarist so she stuck mostly to musicians. She told us about Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker and others. A few days ago she found BJ in bed with GiGi and after chasing her out with BJ’s belt, vowed to retaliate heavily.
“GUESS WHAT?” she shouted over the noise. “I JUST FUCKED MARLON BRANDO”
“How was he, any good?” asked Janine as the noise came to an abrupt halt.
“A nice guy” reported Claude “but, oh,so inhibited … he gave me the kimono he wore in ‘Sayonara.’ He wants me to go to Spain with him since I speak Spanish.”
“BRANDO?” a defeated BJ exclaimed, ” Where is he? I’ve got to meet him”
BJ looked as though he stepped out of ‘THE WILD ONE’, Brando’s biker film that launched the HELL’S ANGELS look around the world. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall with a full black beard and dressed only in jeans, black leather jacket, biker’s boots and a black wool hat. Of course he had a motorcycle. BJ wanted to be a “method” actor and Brando was his idol.
“Yeah … YEAH” Corso said, “Brando is shooting ‘THE YOUNG LIONS’ outside Paris, Let’s go out there and dig him.”
“I’m for that,” said Little Jerry who also was an actor. “Me too” came from the rest of us.
“OK, I’ll set it up” … As she said it I could see Claude’s brain excited with the thought of BJ confronting Brando. BJ had once bit the finger of Errol Flynn who was jabbing it into the air in front of his face. But that’s another story.
___________________

Taoist Tales….

“The Innkeeper”
Then the innkeeper said “Tell us the tale of an innkeeper.”

And Ming began the tale of an innkeeper.
Old Innkeeper Huan climbed up, scaled down, sidestepped, parried, and leaped over boxes upon boxes of books to reach the counter.

“I’ve been here for fifteen minutes, watching you leap around the room like a frog in a patch of lily pads. What are in these boxes?” the weary traveler asked. Old Innkeeper Huan lifted his hands off his knees and took three deep breaths. He put one elbow onto the faded wooden counter and wrung the sweat from both eyebrows with his finger before answering.
“The… Inn… records,” was all he could manage to say before passing out. The traveler caught him just before his head hit the wooden, splintered counter. He sat Old Innkeeper Huan in a nearby chair and woke him up with a swift slap to the face.
“What are in these records, Innkeeper?”
A broad smile spread across his wrinkled face.
“For the past 235 years, I’ve jotted down every face that’s passed through these doors. Every article of clothing they’ve worn, every bag they’ve carried, every remark said in this inn is in those books.”
The traveler shook a laugh out of his belly and walked to a box, lifting the cover and pulling out a handful of papers. They slowly crumbled in his hands and blew around the room like desert sand. A piece landed on Old Innkeeper Huan’s shoe. All he could make out was the date.
“That page was 170 years old. I remember the day well. A short, stocky man in a blue shirt stayed in room three. He asked for three pots of tea, and not even a thank you! He ended up staying four nights, paying for only three.”
The traveler’s eyes widened.
“How good is your memory, innkeeper?” he asked.

A broad smile again spread across his wrinkled face.
“I can describe every man, woman, and child that has ever crossed through these doors. Every article of clothing, every bag they’ve carried, every remark they’ve said.”

The traveler smiled at the old man, carefully picked up another page and pointed to the first paragraph.
“These words exist because of meaning. If you have the meaning, you can forget the words on the page. These words are useless to a man with a memory like yours.”
The traveler got rid of the boxes and was allowed to stay in the inn for as long as he wished, free of charge.

—-
“Three Sages”

Then the village leader said “tell us the tale of a leader.”
And Ming began the tale of a leader.
Emperor Ming threw a large celebration for his 150th birthday, inviting every man, woman, and child from every province his messengers could reach. Anxious to understand the meaning of life before his death, he saved three seats at the head of the table for the three sages of Asia: Confucius, Buddha, and Lao Tzu. As they walked through the large iron doors to greet the Emperor, he observed every detail of their behavior.
The first to come was Confucius. Following closely behind him was a young boy holding a large candle. Confucius took five steps, bowed his head, and stopped. The young boy circled around Confucius seventeen times while chanting of filial piety. Confucius took another five steps, bowed his head, and stopped. Again, the young boy circled around Confucius seventeen times while chanting of filial piety. The Emperor, tired of waiting for Confucius to reach him, asked what he was doing.
“It is the ritual for greeting emperors such as yourself. Without these rituals, there would be no order. Without order, life would consist entirely of chaos.”
Emperor Ming frowned as Confucius took another five steps, bowed his head, and stopped. As the young boy circled around Confucius chanting of filial piety, he fell asleep. An hour later, he awoke to find Confucius grabbing the backs of his knees while hitting his head against the back of a chair. Seeing the Emperor’s confused face, he explained:
“It is the ritual for sitting at an elegant feast.”

Confucius continued to grab the backs of his knees while hitting his head against the back of a chair as Emperor Ming called in Buddha and Lao Tzu. Both walked through the large iron doors, bowed to the emperor, and took their seats. The emperor called for the first course, and soon hundreds of servants came bearing bowls of rice topped with a rich, creamy ginger sauce.

Emperor Ming looked up from eating to see Buddha scraping off the ginger sauce and flinging it into Confucius’ hair. Confused, the emperor asked Buddha if there was something wrong with the sauce.
“It is too delicious. Another bite and I would have become attached to it.”
Emperor Ming, disappointed in two of his guests, looked to Lao Tzu, who quietly ate his bowl of rice, a subtle smile visible on his lips. When he finished, Lao Tzu took a spoon and scraped the creamy ginger sauce out of Confucius’ hair, adding it to the bowl of soup placed before him, and began to eat. Confused, Emperor Ming made eye contact with Lao Tzu, to which he only smiled.
“Do you have no rituals to perform between meals?” the emperor asked.
Lao Tzu shook his head.
“And are you not worried about becoming attached to this wonderful meal?”
Lao Tzu again shook his head.
“Then tell me, Lao Tzu, what is the meaning of life?”

Lao Tzu shrugged his shoulders and continued eating.
____________

Poetry For Deep Summer – Tu Fu

A View of Taishan
What shall I say of the Great Peak? —

The ancient dukedoms are everywhere green,

Inspired and stirred by the breath of creation,

With the Twin Forces balancing day and night.

…I bare my breast toward opening clouds,

I strain my sight after birds flying home.

When shall I reach the top and hold

All mountains in a single glance?

–
Gazing at the Great Mount
To what shall I compare

The Sacred Mount that stands,

A balk of green that hath no end,

Betwixt two lands!

Nature did fuse and blend

All mystic beauty there,

Where Dark and Light

Do dusk and dawn unite.
Gazing, soul-cleansed, at Thee

From clouds upsprung, one may

Mark with wide eyes the homing flight

Of birds. Some day

Must I thy topmost height

Mount, at one glance to see

Hills numberless

Dwindle to nothingness.

–
To my retired friend Wei
It is almost as hard for friends to meet

As for the morning and evening stars.

Tonight then is a rare event,

Joining, in the candlelight,

Two men who were young not long ago

But now are turning grey at the temples.
…To find that half our friends are dead

Shocks us, burns our hearts with grief.

We little guessed it would be twenty years

Before I could visit you again.

When I went away, you were still unmarried;

But now these boys and girls in a row

Are very kind to their father’s old friend.
They ask me where I have been on my journey;

And then, when we have talked awhile,

They bring and show me wines and dishes,

Spring chives cut in the night-rain

And brown rice cooked freshly a special way.
…My host proclaims it a festival,
He urges me to drink ten cups —

But what ten cups could make me as drunk

As I always am with your love in my heart?

…Tomorrow the mountains will separate us;

After tomorrow-who can say?

–
A Spring View
Though a country be sundered, hills and rivers endure;

And spring comes green again to trees and grasses

Where petals have been shed like tears

And lonely birds have sung their grief.

… After the war-fires of three months,

One message from home is worth a ton of gold.

… I stroke my white hair. It has grown too thin

To hold the hairpins any more.

–
Restless Night
As bamboo chill drifts into the bedroom,

Moonlight fills every corner of our

Garden. Heavy dew beads and trickles.

Stars suddenly there, sparse, next aren’t.
Fireflies in dark flight flash. Waking

Waterbirds begin calling, one to another.

All things caught between shield and sword,

All grief empty, the clear night passes.

–
Alone in her Beauty
Who is lovelier than she?

Yet she lives alone in an empty valley.

She tells me she came from a good family

Which is humbled now into the dust.

…When trouble arose in the Kuan district,

Her brothers and close kin were killed.

What use were their high offices,

Not even shielding their own lives? —
The world has but scorn for adversity;

Hope goes out, like the light of a candle.

Her husband, with a vagrant heart,

Seeks a new face like a new piece of jade;
And when morning-glories furl at night

And mandarin-ducks lie side by side,

All he can see is the smile of the new love,

While the old love weeps unheard.
The brook was pure in its mountain source,

But away from the mountain its waters darken.

…Waiting for her maid to come from selling pearls

For straw to cover the roof again,
She picks a few flowers, no longer for her hair,

And lets pine-needles fall through her fingers,

And, forgetting her thin silk sleeve and the cold,

She leans in the sunset by a tall bamboo.

__________
Tu Fu or Du Fu Biography
Born into a scholarly family, Du Fu received a traditional Confucian education but failed in the imperial examinations of 735. As a result, he spent much of his youth traveling. During his travels he won renown as a poet and met other poets of the period, including the great Li Bai. After a brief flirtation with Daoism while traveling with Li Bai, Du Fu returned to the capital and to the conventional Confucianism of his youth. He never again met Li Bai, despite his strong admiration for his older, freewheeling contemporary.During the 740s Du Fu was a well-regarded member of a group of high officials, even though he was without money and official position himself and failed a second time in an imperial examination. He married, probably in 741. Between 751 and 755 he tried to attract imperial attention by submitting a succession of literary products that were couched in a language of ornamental flattery, a device that eventually resulted in a nominal position at court. In 755 during An Lushan’s rebellion, Du Fu experienced extreme personal hardships. He escaped, however, and in 757 joined the exiled court, being given the position of censor. His memoranda to the emperor do not appear to have been particularly welcome; he was eventually relieved of his post and endured another period of poverty and hunger. Wandering about until the mid-760s, he briefly served a local warlord, a position that enabled him to acquire some land and to become a gentleman farmer, but in 768 he again started traveling aimlessly toward the south. Popular legend attributes his death (on a riverboat on the Xiang River) to overindulgence in food and wine after a 10-day fast.Du Fu’s early poetry celebrated the beauty of the natural world and bemoaned the passage of time. He soon began to write bitingly of war—as in “Bingqu xing” (“The Ballad of the Army Carts”), a poem about conscription—and with hidden satire—as in “Liren xing” (“The Beautiful Woman”), which speaks of the conspicuous luxury of the court. As he matured, and especially during the tumultuous period of 755 to 759, his verse began to sound a note of profound compassion for humanity caught in the grip of senseless war.Du Fu’s paramount position in the history of Chinese literature rests on his superb classicism. He was highly erudite, and his intimate acquaintance with the literary tradition of the past was equaled only by his complete ease in handling the rules of prosody. His dense, compressed language makes use of all the connotative overtones of a phrase and of all the intonational potentials of the individual word, qualities that no translation can ever reveal. He was an expert in all poetic genres current in his day, but his mastery was at its height in the lüshi, or “regulated verse,” which he refined to a point of glowing intensity.

________________________

These Guys out do Prince doing Prince… very clever, and a real sense of vision. I expect some miracles down the road!

Empire Of The Sun!

Eclipse

Standing on the Shore

Walking On A Dream

_____________

I am fully qualified to work as a doorkeeper, and for this reason:

What is inside me, I don’t let out:

What is outside me, I don’t let in.

If someone comes in, he goes right out again.

He has nothing to do with me at all.

I am a Doorkeeper of the Heart, not a lump of wet clay.

– Rabia al Basri

Juggling, juggling, juggling so many balls. It’s a dance of dyslexic proportions. I am stretched pretty thin. +Must-Learn-To-Prioritize+ I seem to be over committed at this point. It is a learning experience, the one that never ends or so it seems. Along with the summer heat, it seems that everything has quickened. Swimming through the seas of information, relying on the innate pattern recognition that has guided me, often brings me up short. Within the seething chaos are discreet patterns of beauty. I have to start writing it all down again so there is a semblance of order, and that I complete what I dedicate my energies too. I have a canvas down stairs that has been screaming at me, and the Invisible College as well. Soonish?
The Weather: We are heading into the hot zone at this point. 103f/39.4c … Ack. I will maintain a cheerful face, heaven knows this isn’t the first time. I melt… I melt… I am trying the positive approach. Water the plants, watch them grow, realize it is part of a greater cycle, yada yada yada. I am melting regardless of the smiley face bs.

—

Rowan is taking off to Seattle for a week of filming for his internship. He has been living on stim-drinks, and burritos for 3 weeks now. He is learning bunches, and the whole experience seems to be pretty positive. It has been fun watching him adapt to the new situation of working with professionals. A world of difference. It seems every year that he makes a leap just before the birthday. One leap he is making is probably out of the house when Fall Term begins. He is applying for student housing. Empty Nesters! I have designs on his room…. 80)

—

The Fool: Long one of my favourite cards in the Tarot, I find it is almost a talisman at times. Why is life such a blundering affair that constantly accelerates towards a wall of chaos? How is it that one opens ones mouth and demons fly out, speaking the un-sayable, and making one bray like an ass?
The blessed moment: To find ones self constantly stepping off of the edge, and seemingly always saved by some form of grace. I would but ask a bit more of indulgence, as I muddle through this patch with my usual blinders. I am a process. Imperfect, and bouncing off walls. Nothing is final until the last call. Maybe I will figure it out. Maybe I will move with a sense of ease, and a lack of trepidation. I have been blessed I imagine with a cornucopian vision.
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

______________
On The Menu:

Where The Wild Things Are…

3 BIG Mistakes

Coming Soon -DMT The Movie Part 1 & 2

Magazine – Definitive Gaze

Hildegard Quotes

The Fool Of The World And The Flying Ship

Rabia al Basri Poems…

Fool’s Quotes

Magazine – The Light Pours Out Of Me

______________

All in anticipation of this:Where The Wild Things Are…

______________
The Links:
We Slip Away… Slip Away…

Clothed In Bees

The Marijuana Mine…

The Tiniest Ancestors Tracks In Ancient Times…

______________

3 BIG Mistakes
A DMT injection turns into a “hellish” experience

“I had been up for three days and two nights working on a manuscript. That was the first mistake. The room where the “experiment” was to take place was a dirty, dingy, insanely cluttered pest hole. That was the second mistake. I was told that I would see God. That was the third and worst mistake of all.
“The needle jabbed into my arm and the dimethyl-tryptamine oozed into my bloodstream. At the same time the steam came on with a rhythmic clamor and I remember thinking that it would be nice to have some heat. Within thirty seconds I noticed a change, or rather I noticed that there had never been any change, that I had been in this dreamy unworldly state for millions of years. I told this to Dr.–. who said, “Good, then it is beginning to cross the blood-brain barrier.”
“It was too fast. Much too fast. I looked up at what a minute ago had been doors and cabinets, and all I could see were parallel lines falling away into absurdities. Dimensions were outraged. The geometry of things crashed blindly into one another and crumbled into chaos. I thought to myself, “But he said that I would see God, that I would know the meaning of the universe.” I closed my eyes. Perhaps God was there, behind my eyeballs.
“Something was there, all right; Something, coming at me from a distant and empty horizon. At first it was a pinpoint, then it was a smudge, and then–a formless growing Shape. A sound accompanied its progress towards me–a rising, rhythmic, metallic whine; a staccato meeyow that was issuing from a diamond larynx. And then, there it loomed before me, a devastating horror, a cosmic diamond cat. It filled the sky, it filled all space. There was nowhere to go. It was all that was. There was no other place for me in this–Its universe. I felt leveled under the cruel glare of its crystalline brilliance. My mind, my body, my vestige of self-esteem perished in the hard glint of its diamond cells.
“It moved in rhythmic spasms like some demonic toy; and always there was its voice–a steely, shrill monotony that put an end to hope. There should not be such a voice! It ravaged the nerves and passed its spasms into my head to echo insanely from one dark corridor of my mind to another. Me-e-e-e-yow~ow-ow-ow me~e~yow-ow-ow-ow me-e-e-e-yow-ow-ow-ow–the incessant, insatiable staccato went on. It would not have been so bad if it had just been diabolical noise. The chilling thing was that I knew what it was saying! It told me that I was a wretched, pulpy, flaccid thing; a squishy-squashy worm. I was a thing of soft entrails and slimy fluids and was abhorrent to the calcified God.
“I opened my eyes and jumped up from my chair screaming: ‘I will not have you! I will not have such a God! What is the antidote to this? Give me the antidote!’ But as I said this I doubted my own question for it seemed to me that this was the only reality I had ever known, the one I was born with and the one I would die with. There was no future beyond this state of mind, there was no state of mind beyond this one.
“‘There is no antidote,’ said Dr.–. ‘Relax, it’s only been three minutes. You’ve got at least twenty-five more minutes still to go.’
“I looked around the room. The seething symmetry had calmed down some. Instead of evoking terror it merely made one seasick now. ‘Euclidian nausea,’ I thought, and closed my eyes again. I found myself on a small planet of a distant star. A spaceship built like an amoeba reached with long tentacles out to grab me. The center of the space ship was diaphanous like an embryo’s head with a network of blue veins, flowing blood, and shifting cellular wastes. It pulsed and pulsed and whirred and cackled. I did not wish to be a part of this protoplasmic blob although it was far cheerier than the first vision, and so, as its tentacles were about to enclose me, I opened my eyes and escaped its interstellar plans for me. By this time I was learning how to manage–or should I say Escape from–the experience. I thought that I would start to call my own shots, find my own planet.
“I closed my eyes again to discover a world of blue horses. The land heaved gently and the necks and heads of stately blue horses rose and fell as waves on the planet’s surface. It was a land of perfect peace, a blue equine paradise.
“But still I hadn’t seen the face of God! I would make a final effort at ultimate visions. My eyes closed and I found myself looking through one end of an immensely long cylinder. At first, there was nothing at the other end–a trillion miles away. Then God came and peeked in at me. I burst out laughing.
“The face of God staring at me from the other end of the cylinder was the face of a very wise monkey!”
Concerning this case it may be superfluous to remark that the subject should not be told she is going to “see God” or discover “the meaning of the universe.” Yet more than one researcher and therapist we know of has done this sort of thing repeatedly, and probably never with benefit to the subject or patient. Medical doctors no less than other kinds of workers with psychedelic drugs have promised visions of God, revelations of Ultimate Truth, and so on. And for the self-anointed psychedelic priest, it seems to be just a small further step to assuming the role of God Himself! Sidney Cohen and others have warned about this danger–the threat that an unaccustomed power will corrupt the guide with resulting damage to the subjects, and possibly even greater damage to the guide himself. This, as we also have observed, is a real danger; but psychiatrists have no immunity to the disease and they go astray when advancing such a hazard as a basis for restricting all work with psycho-chemicals to themselves. There exists not a shred of evidence to indicate that the limiting of guiding to one or a few professions will do anything at all to eliminate abuses of power and corruption by power.
R.E.L. Masters and Jean Houston, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, pp.163-164)

______________

Coming Soon… DMT, The Movie…
DMT – The Spirit Molecule 1

DMT – The Spirit Molecule 2

More to come…. I am sure…..

______________

Magazine – Definitive Gaze

______________
Hildegard Quotes:

– “The mystery of God holds you in its all-encompassing arms.”

– “No creature has meaning without the Word of God. God’s Word is in all creation, visible and invisible. The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word flashes out in every creature. This is how the spirit is in the flesh—the Word is indivisible from God.”

– “Listen: there was once a king sitting on his throne. Around him stood great and wonderfully beautiful columns ornamented with ivory, bearing the banners of the king with great honor. Then it pleased the king to raise a small feather from the ground, and he commanded it to fly. The feather flew, not because of anything in itself but because the air bore it along. Thus am I, a feather on the breath of God.”

______________

The Fool Of The World And The Flying Ship

There were once upon a time an old peasant and his wife, and they had three sons. Two of them were clever young men who could borrow money without being cheated, but the third was the Fool of the World. He was as simple as a child, simpler than some children, and he never did any one a harm in his life.
Well, it always happens like that. The father and mother thought a lot of the two smart young men; but the Fool of the World was lucky if he got enough to eat, because they always forgot him unless they happened to be looking at him, and sometimes even then.
But however it was with his father and mother, this is a story that shows that God loves simple folk, and turns things to their advantage in the end. For it happened that the Tzar of that country sent out messengers along the highroads and the rivers, even to huts in the forest like ours, to say that he would give his daughter, the Princess, in marriage to any one who could bring him a flying ship–ay, a ship with wings, that should sail this way and that through the blue sky, like a ship sailing on the sea.
“This is a chance for us,” said the two clever brothers; and that same day they set off together, to see if one of them could not build the flying ship and marry the Tzar’s daughter, and so be a great man indeed.
And their father blessed them, and gave them finer clothes than ever he wore himself. And their mother made them up hampers of food for the road, soft white rolls, and several kinds of cooked meats, and bottles of corn brandy. She went with them as far as the highroad, and waved her hand to them till they were out of sight. And so the two clever brothers set merrily off on their adventure, to see what could be done with their cleverness. And what happened to them I do not know, for they were never heard of again.
The Fool of the World saw them set off, with their fine parcels of food, and their fine clothes, and their bottles of corn brandy.
“Stupid fellow,” says his mother, “what’s the good of your going? Why, if you were to stir from the house you would walk into the arms of a bear; and if not that, then the wolves would eat you before you had finished staring at them.”
But the Fool of the World would not be held back by words.
“I am going,” says he. “I am going. I am going. I am going.”
He went on saying this over and over again, till the old woman his mother saw there was nothing to be done, and was glad to get him out of the house so as to be quit of the sound of his voice. So she put some food in a bag for him to eat by the way. She put in the bag some crusts of dry black bread and a flask of water. She did not even bother to go as far as the footpath to see him on his way. She saw the last of him at the door of the hut, and he had not taken two steps before she had gone back into the hut to see to more important business. No matter. The Fool of the World set off with his bag over his shoulder, singing as he went, for he was off to seek his fortune and marry the Tzar’s daughter. He was sorry his mother had not given him any corn brandy; but he sang merrily for all that. He would have liked white rolls instead of the dry black crusts; but, after all, the main thing on a journey is to have something to eat. So he trudged merrily along the road, and sang because the trees were green and there was a blue sky overhead.
He had not gone very far when he met an ancient old man with a bent back, and a long beard, and eyes hidden under his bushy eyebrows.
“Good-day, young fellow,” says the ancient old man.
“Good-day, grandfather,” says the Fool of the World.
“And where are you off to?” says the ancient old man.
“What!” says the Fool; “haven’t you heard? The Tzar is going to give his daughter to any one who can bring him a flying ship.”
“And you can really make a flying ship?” says the ancient old man.
“No, I do not know how.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“God knows,” says the Fool of the World.
“Well,” says the ancient, “if things are like that, sit you down here. We will rest together and have a bite of food. Bring out what you have in your bag.”
“I am ashamed to offer you what I have here. It is good enough for me, but it is not the sort of meal to which one can ask guests.”
“Never mind that. Out with it. Let us eat what God has given.”
The Fool of the World opened his bag, and could hardly believe his eyes. Instead of black crusts he saw fresh white rolls and cooked meats. He handed them out to the ancient, who said, “You see how God loves simple folk. Although your own mother does not love you, you have not been done out of your share of the good things. Let’s have a sip at the corn brandy….”
The Fool of the World opened his flask, and instead of water there came out corn brandy, and that of the best. So the Fool and the ancient made merry, eating and drinking; and when they had done, and sung a song or two together, the ancient says to the Fool,–
“Listen to me. Off with you into the forest. Go up to the first big tree you see. Make the sacred sign of the cross three times before it. Strike it a blow with your little hatchet. Fall backwards on the ground, and lie there, full length on your back, until somebody wakes you up. Then you will find the ship made, all ready to fly. Sit you down in it, and fly off whither you want to go. But be sure on the way to give a lift to everyone you meet.”
The Fool of the World thanked the ancient old man, said good-bye to him, and went off to the forest. He walked up to a tree, the first big tree he saw, made the sign of the cross three times before it, swung his hatchet round his head, struck a mighty blow on the trunk of the tree, instantly fell backwards flat on the ground, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.
A little time went by, and it seemed to the Fool as he slept that somebody was jogging his elbow. He woke up and opened his eyes. His hatchet, worn out, lay beside him. The big tree was gone, and in its place there stood a little ship, ready and finished. The Fool did not stop to think. He jumped into the ship, seized the tiller, and sat down. Instantly the ship leapt up into the air, and sailed away over the tops of the trees.
The little ship answered the tiller as readily as if she were sailing in water, and the Fool steered for the highroad, and sailed along above it, for he was afraid of losing his way if he tried to steer a course across the open country.
He flew on and on, and looked down, and saw a man lying in the road below him with his ear on the damp ground.
“Good-day to you, uncle,” cried the Fool.
“Good-day to you, Sky-fellow,” cried the man.
“What are you doing down there?” says the Fool.
“I am listening to all that is being done in the world.”
“Take your place in the ship with me.”
The man was willing enough, and sat down in the ship with the Fool, and they flew on together singing songs.
They flew on and on, and looked down, and there was a man on one leg, with the other tied up to his head.
“Good-day, uncle,” says the Fool, bringing the ship to the ground. “Why are you hopping along on one foot?”
“If I were to untie the other I should move too fast. I should be stepping across the world in a single stride.”
“Sit down with us,” says the Fool.
The man sat down with them in the ship, and they flew on together singing songs. They flew on and on, and lo
oked down, and there was a man with a gun, and he was taking aim, but what he was aiming at they could not see.
“Good health to you, uncle,” says the Fool. “But what are you shooting at? There isn’t a bird to be seen.”
“What!” says the man. “If there were a bird that you could see, I should not shoot at it. A bird or a beast a thousand versts away, that’s the sort of mark for me.”
“Take your seat with us,” says the Fool.
The man sat down with them in the ship, and they flew on together. Louder and louder rose their songs.
They flew on and on, and looked down, and there was a man carrying a sack full of bread on his back.
“Good health to you, uncle,” says the Fool, sailing down. “And where are you off to?”
“I am going to get bread for my dinner.”
“But you’ve got a full sack on your back.”
“That–that little scrap! Why, that’s not enough for a single mouthful.”
“Take your seat with us,” says the Fool.
The Eater sat down with them in the ship, and they flew on together, singing louder than ever. They flew on and on, and looked down, and there was a man walking round and round a lake.
“Good health to you, uncle,” says the Fool. “What are you looking for?”
“I want a drink, and I can’t find any water.”
“But there’s a whole lake in front of your eyes. Why can’t you take a drink from that?”
“That little drop!” says the man. “Why, there’s not enough water there to wet the back of my throat if I were to drink it at one gulp.”
“Take your seat with us,” says the Fool.
The Drinker sat down with them, and again they flew on, singing in chorus.
They flew on and on, and looked down, and there was a man walking towards the forest, with a fagot of wood on his shoulders.
“Good-day to you, uncle,” says the Fool. “Why are you taking wood to the forest?”
“This isn’t simple wood,” says the man.
“What is it, then?” says the Fool.
“If it is scattered about, a whole army of soldiers leaps up out of the ground.”
“There’s a place for you with us,” says the Fool.
The man sat down with them, and the ship rose up into the air, and flew on, carrying its singing crew. They flew on and on, and looked down, and there was a man carrying a sack of straw.
“Good health to you, uncle,” says the Fool; “and where are you taking your straw?”
“To the village.”
“Why, are they short of straw in your village?”
“No; but this is such straw that if you scatter it abroad in the very hottest of the summer, instantly the weather turns cold, and there is snow and frost.”
“There’s a place here for you too,” says the Fool.
“Very kind of you,” says the man, and steps in and sits down, and away they all sail together, singing like to burst their lungs.
They did not meet any one else, and presently came flying up to the palace of the Tzar. They flew down and cast anchor in the courtyard.
Just then the Tzar was eating his dinner. He heard their loud singing, and looked out of the window and saw the ship come sailing down into his courtyard. He sent his servant out to ask who was the great prince who had brought him the flying ship, and had come sailing down with such a merry noise of singing. The servant came up to the ship, and saw the Fool of the World and his companions sitting there cracking jokes. He saw they were all moujiks, simple peasants, sitting in the ship; so he did not stop to ask questions, but came back quietly and told the Tzar that there were no gentlemen in the ship at all, but only a lot of dirty peasants.
Now the Tzar was not at all pleased with the idea of giving his only daughter in marriage to a simple peasant, and he began to think how he could get out of his bargain. Thinks he to himself, “I’ll set them such tasks that they will not be able to perform, and they’ll be glad to get off with their lives, and I shall get the ship for nothing.”
So he told his servant to go to the Fool and tell him that before the Tzar had finished his dinner the Fool was to bring him some of the magical water of life.
Now, while the Tzar was giving this order to his servant, the Listener, the first of the Fool’s companions, was listening, and heard the words of the Tzar and repeated them to the Fool.
“What am I to do now?” says the Fool, stopping short in his jokes. “In a year, in a whole century, I never could find that water. And he wants it before he has finished his dinner.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” says the Swift-goer, “I’ll deal with that for you.”
The servant came and announced the Tzar’s command.
“Tell him he shall have it,” says the Fool.
His companion, the Swift-goer, untied his foot from beside his head, put it to the ground, wriggled it a little to get the stiffness out of it, ran off, and was out of sight almost before he had stepped from the ship. Quicker than I can tell it you in words he had come to the water of life, and put some of it in a bottle.
“I shall have plenty of time to get back,” thinks he, and down he sits under a windmill and goes off to sleep.
The royal dinner was coming to an end, and there wasn’t a sign of him. There were no songs and no jokes in the flying ship. Everybody was watching for the Swift-goer, and thinking he would not be in time.
The Listener jumped out and laid his right ear to the damp ground, listened a moment, and said, “What a fellow! He has gone to sleep under the windmill. I can hear him snoring. And there is a fly buzzing with its wings, perched on the windmill close above his head.”
“This is my affair,” says the Far-shooter, and he picked up his gun from between his knees, aimed at the fly on the windmill, and woke the Swift-goer with the thud of the bullet on the wood of the mill close by his head. The Swift-goer leapt up and ran, and in less than a second had brought the magic water of life and given it to the Fool. The Fool gave it to the servant, who took it to the Tzar. The Tzar had not yet left the table, so that his command had been fulfilled as exactly as ever could be.
“What fellows these peasants are,” thought the Tzar. “There is nothing for it but to set them another task.” So the Tzar said to his servant, “Go to the captain of the flying ship and give him this message: ‘If you are such a cunning fellow, you must have a good appetite. Let you and your companions eat at a single meal twelve oxen roasted whole, and as much bread as can be baked in forty ovens!’”
The Listener heard the message, and told the Fool what was coming. The Fool was terrified, and said, “I can’t get through even a single loaf at a sitting.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said the Eater. “It won’t be more than a mouthful for me, and I shall be glad to have a little snack in place of my dinner.” The servant came, and announced the Tzar’s command.
“Good,” says the Fool. “Send the food along, and we’ll know what to do with it.”
So they brought twelve oxen roasted whole, and as much bread as could be baked in forty ovens, and the companions had scarcely sat down to the meal before the Eater had finished the lot.
“Why,” said the Eater, “what a little! They might have given us a decent meal while they were about it.”
The Tzar told his servant to tell the Fool that he and his companions were to drink forty barrels of wine, with forty bucketfuls in every barrel.
The Listener told the Fool what message was coming.
“Why,” says the Fool, “I never in my life drank more than one bucket at a time.”
“Don’t worry,” says the Drinker. “You forget that I am thirsty. It’ll be nothing of a drink for me.”
They brought the forty barrels of wine, and tapped them, and the Drinker tossed them down one after another, one gulp for each barrel. “Little enough,” says he, “Why, I am thirsty still.” “Very good,” says the Tzar to his servant, when he heard that they had eaten all the food and drunk all the wine. “Tell the fellow to get ready for the wedding, and let him go and bathe himself in the bath-house. But let the bathhouse be made so hot that the man will stifle and frizzle as soon as he sets foot inside. It is an iron bath-house. Let it be made red hot.”
The Listener heard all this and told the Fool, who stopped short with his mouth open in the middle of a joke.
“Don’t you worry,” says the moujik with the straw.
Well, they made the bath-house red hot, and called the Fool, and the Fool went along to the bath-house to wash himself, and with him went the moujik with the straw.
They shut them both into the bath-house, and thought that that was the end of them. But the moujik scattered his straw before them as they went in, and it became so cold in there that the Fool of the World had scarcely time to wash himself before the water in the cauldrons froze to solid ice. They lay down on the very stove itself, and spent the night there, shivering. In the morning the servants opened the bathhouse, and there were the Fool of the World and the moujik, alive and well, lying on the stove and singing songs.
They told the Tzar, and the Tzar raged with anger. “There is no getting rid of this fellow,” says he. “But go and tell him that I send him this message: ‘If you are to marry my daughter, you must show that you are able to defend her. Let me see that you have at least a regiment of soldiers,’” Thinks he to himself, “How can a simple peasant raise a troop? He will find it hard enough to raise a single soldier.”
The Listener told the Fool of the World, and the Fool began to lament. “This time,” says he, “I am done indeed. You, my brothers, have saved me from misfortune more than once, but this time, alas, there is nothing to be done.”
“Oh, what a fellow you are!” says the peasant with the fagot of wood. “I suppose you’ve forgotten about me. Remember that I am the man for this little affair, and don’t you worry about it at all.”
The Tzar’s servant came along and gave his message.
“Very good,” says the Fool; “but tell the Tzar that if after this he puts me off again, I’ll make war on his country, and take the Princess by force.” And then, as the servant went back with the message, the whole crew on the flying ship set to their singing again, and sang and laughed and made jokes as if they had not a care in the world.
During the night, while the others slept, the peasant with the fagot of wood went hither and thither, scattering his sticks. Instantly where they fell there appeared a gigantic army. Nobody could count the number of soldiers in it–cavalry, foot soldiers, yes, and guns, and all the guns new and bright, and the men in the finest uniforms that ever were seen.
In the morning, as the Tzar woke and looked from the windows of the palace, he found himself surrounded by troops upon troops of soldiers, and generals in cocked hats bowing in the courtyard and taking orders from the Fool of the World, who sat there joking with his companions in the flying ship. Now it was the Tzar’s turn to be afraid. As quickly as he could he sent his servants to the Fool with presents of rich jewels and fine clothes, invited him to come to the palace, and begged him to marry the Princess.
The Fool of the World put on the fine clothes, and stood there as handsome a young man as a princess could wish for a husband. He presented himself before the Tzar, fell in love with the Princess and he with him, married her the same day, received with her a rich dowry, and became so clever that all the court repeated everything he said. The Tzar and the Tzaritza liked him very much, and as for the Princess, she loved him to distraction.

______________

Some of these are complete, others are fragments that have come down through time to grace us with their existence.

Rabia al Basri Poems…

Reality
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe the true form of Something

In whose presence you are blotted out?

And in whose being you still exist?

And who lives as a sign for your journey?

—
Dream Fable
I saw myself in a wide green garden, more beautiful than I could begin to understand. In this garden was a young girl. I said to her, “How wonderful this place is!”
“Would you like to see a place even more wonderful than this?” she asked.
“Oh yes,” I answered. Then taking me by the hand, she led me on until we came to a magnificent palace, like nothing that was ever seen by human eyes. The young girl knocked on the door, and someone opened it. Immediately both of us were flooded with light.
Only Allah knows the inner meaning of the maidens we saw living there. Each one carried in her hand a serving-tray filled with light. The young girl asked the maidens where they were going, and they answered her, “We are looking for someone who was drowned in the sea, and so became a martyr. She never slept at night, not one wink! We are going to rub funeral spices on her body.”
“Then rub some on my friend here,” the young girl said.
“Once upon a time,” said the maidens, “part of this spice and the fragrance of it clung to her body — but then she shied away.”
Quickly the young girl let go of my hand, turned, and said to me:
“Your prayers are your light;

Your devotion is your strength;

Sleep is the enemy of both.

Your life is the only opportunity that life can give you.

If you ignore it, if you waste it,

You will only turn to dust.”
Then the young girl disappeared.

—
My Beloved
My peace, O my brothers and sisters, is my solitude,

And my Beloved is with me always,

For His love I can find no substitute,

And His love is the test for me among mortal beings,

Whenever His Beauty I may contemplate,

He is my “mihrab”, towards Him is my “qiblah”

If I die of love, before completing satisfaction,

Alas, for my anxiety in the world, alas for my distress,

O Healer (of souls) the heart feeds upon its desire,

The striving after union with Thee has healed my soul,

O my Joy and my Life abidingly,

You were the source of my life and from Thee also came my ecstasy.

I have separated myself from all created beings,

My hope is for union with Thee, for that is the goal of my desire…

—
My Greatest Need Is You
Your hope in my heart is the rarest treasure

Your Name on my tongue is the sweetest word

My choicest hours

Are the hours I spend with You –

O Allah, I can’t live in this world

Without remembering You–

How can I endure the next world

Without seeing Your face?

I am a stranger in Your country

And lonely among Your worshippers:

This is the substance of my complaint.

—
O God, Whenever I listen to the voice of anything

You have made—

The rustling of the trees

The trickling of water

The cries of birds

The flickering of shadow

The roar of the wind

The song of the thunder, I hear it saying:

“God is One! Nothing can be compared with God!”

_________________

Magazine – The Light Pours Out Of Me….

______________
Fool’s Quotes

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

– William Shakespeare
Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.

– Albert Einstein
Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain – and most fools do.

– Dale Carnegie
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

– Epicurus
The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

– Chanakya
A fool and his money are soon elected.

– Will Rogers

In The Poetry Shrine:
Drink Your Tea
Drink your tea slowly and reverently,

as if it is the axis

on which the world earth revolves

– slowly, evenly, without

rushing toward the future;

Live the actual moment.

Only this moment is life.

—
You Are Me
You are me and I am you.

It is obvious that we are inter-are.

You cultivate the flower in

yourself so that I will be beautiful.

I transform the garbage in myself so

that you do not have to suffer.

I support you you support me.

I am here to bring you peace

you are here to bring me joy.

—
Kiss The Earth
Walk and touch peace every moment.

Walk and touch happiness every moment.

Each step brings a fresh breeze.

Each step makes a flower bloom.

Kiss the Earth with your feet.

Bring the Earth your love and happiness.

The Earth will be safe

when we feel safe in ourselves.

—

Be A Bud
Be a bud sitting quietly on the hedge.

Be a smile, one part of wondrous existence.

Stand here. There is no need to depart.
Thich Nhat Hahn

So… it is this. One Poem, one thought slowly changes consciousness. The Bodhisattva comes not as one, but as many. Many, each doing their task, touching others in a collective action of intent.
Wake up, wake up, wake up. There are a million hearts to touch my love. Truly, a million hearts.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

Kate Bush – Them Heavy People

“I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.” – Henry David Thoreau
Sunday… late. I have been assembling this over the last couple of days, and found a new poet in the process. Sweet Reward. I think you might like the selections of this entry.
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

_____________

On The Menu:

The Links

Solar Fields – The Road To Nothingness

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

The Tale Of The Hashish Eater & The Tale Of Two Hashish Eaters

The Poetry Of Yahia Lababidi

Yahia Lababidi Biography

Solar Fields – Dust

____________
The Links:

The Easter Island Cave Complex…

Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?

Lightening And The Beginnings Of Life?

Dorset Ridgeway’s Killing Field: Vikings? Locals?

British Pagan Police When Holiday Rites/Rights….

____________
Solar Fields – The Road To Nothingness (with thanks to Lizard Jah….)

____________
Henry David Thoreau Quotes:
“A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
“Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.”
“Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to keep the head long on a level with the feet.”
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
____________

….Then said she, “Know that I mean to pass this night with thee, that I may tell thee what talk I have heard and console thee with stories of many passion-distraughts whom love hath made sick.” “Nay,” quoth he, “Rather tell me a tale that will gladden my heart and gar my cares depart.” “With joy and good will,” answered she; then she took seat by his side (and that poniard under her dress) and began to say: — Know thou that the pleasantest thing my ears ever heard was
The Tale Of THe Hashish Eater
A certain man loved fair women, and spent his substance on them, till he became so poor that nothing remained to him; the world was straitened upon him and he used to go about the market-streets begging his daily bread. Once upon a time as he went along, behold, a bit of iron nail pierced his finger and drew blood; so he sat down and, wiping away the blood, bound up his finger. Then he arose crying out, and fared forwards till he came to a Hammam and entering took off his clothes, and when he looked about him he found it clean and empty. So he sat him down by the fountain-basin, and ceased not pouring water on his head, till he was tired. —- And Sharazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the One Hundred and Forty-third Night,
She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that the man sat down by the fountain-basin and ceased not pouring water on his head till he was tired. Then he went out to the room in which was the cistern of cold water; and seeing no one there, he found a quiet corner and taking out a piece of Hashísh[1], swallowed it. Presently the fumes mounted to his brain and he rolled over on to the marble floor. Then the Hashish made him fancy that a great lord was shampooing him and that two slaves stood at his head, one bearing a bowl and the other washing gear and all the requisites of the Hammam. When he saw this, he said to himself, “Meseemeth these here be mistaken in me; or else they are of the company of us Hashish-eaters.”[2] Then he stretched out his legs and he imagined that the bathman said to him, “O my master, the time of thy going up to the Palace draweth near and it is to-day thy turn of service.” At this he laughed and said to himself, “As Allah willeth, O Hashish!” Then he sat and said nothing, whilst the bathman arose and took him by the hand and girt his middle with a waist-cloth of black silk, after which the two slaves followed him with the bowls and gear; and they ceased not escorting him till they brought him into a cabinet, wherein they set incense and perfumes a-burning. He found the place full of various kinds of fruits and sweet-scented flowers, and they sliced him a water-melon and seated him on a stool of ebony, whilst the bathman stood to wash him and the slaves poured water on him; after which they rubbed him down well and said, “O our lord, Sir Wazir, health to thee forever!” Then they went out and shut the door on him; and in the vanity of phantasy he arose and removed the waist-cloth from his middle, and laughed till he well nigh fainted. He gave not over laughing for some time and at last quoth he to himself, “What aileth them to address me as if I were a Minister and style me Master, and Sir? Haply they are now blundering; but after an hour they will know me and say, This fellow is a beggar; and will take their fill of cuffing me on the neck.” Presently, feeling hot, he opened the door, whereupon it seemed to him that a little white slave and an eunuch came in to him carrying a parcel. Then the slave opened it and brought out three kerchiefs of silk, one of which he threw over his head, a second over his shoulders, and a third he tied round his waist. Moreover, the eunuch gave him a pair of bath-clogs, and he put them on; after which in came white slaves and eunuchs and supported him (and he laughing the while) to the outer hall, which he found hung and spread with magnificent furniture, such as beseemeth none but kings; and the pages hastened up to him and seated him on the divan. Then they fell to kneading him till sleep overcame him; and he dreamt that he had a girl in his arms. So he kissed her and set her between his thighs; then, sitting to her as a man sitteth to a woman, he took yard in hand and drew her towards him and weighed down upon her and lo! he heard one saying to him, “Awake, thou ne’er-do-well! The noon-hour is come and thou art still asleep.” He opened his eyes and found himself lying on the marge of the cold-water tank, amongst a crowd of people all laughing at him; for his prickle was at point and the napkin had slipped from his middle. So he knew that all this was but a confusion of dreams and an illusion of the Hashish and he was vexed and said to him who had aroused him, “Would thou hadst waited till I had put it in!” Then said the folk, “Art thou not ashamed, O Hashish-eater, to be sleeping stark naked with stiff-standing tool?” And they cuffed him till his neck was red. Now he was starving, yet forsooth he savoured the flavour of pleasure in his dream.
1. The Pers. “Bang”; Indian “Bhang”; Maroccan “Fasúkh” and S. African “Dakhá.” (Pilgrimage i. 64.) I heard of a “Hashish-orgie” in London which ended in half the experimentalists being on their sofas for a week. The drug is useful for stokers, having the curious property of making men insensible to heat. Easterns also use it for “Imsák” prolonging coition, of which I speak presently.

2. Arab. “Hashsháshín;” whence Dr Sacy derived “assassin.” A notable effect of the Hashish preparation is wildly to excite the imagination, a kind of delirium imaginans sive phantasticum

—-

The Tale Of Two Hashish Eaters (Traditional)

From 1001 Arabian Nights
There was once, my lord and crown upon my head, a man in a certain city, who was a fisherman by trade and a hashish-eater by occupation. When he had earned his daily wage, he would spend a little of it on food and the rest on a sufficiency of that hilarious herb. He took his hashish three times a day: once in the morning on an empty stomach, once at noon, and once at sundown. Thus he was never lacking in extravagent gaity. Yet he worked hard enough at his fishing, though sometimes in a very extravagent fashion.
On a certain evening, for instance, when he had taken a larger dose of his favorite drug than usual, he lit a tallow candle and sat in front of it, asking himself eager questions and answering with obliging wit. After some hours of this delight, he became aware of the cool silence of the night about him and the clear light of a full moon abouve his head, and exclaimed affably to himself: “Dear friend, the silent streets and the cool of the moon invite us to a walk. Let us go forth, while all the world is in bed and none may mar our solitary exaltation.” Speaking in this way to himself, the fisherman left his house and began to walk towards the river; but, as he went, he saw the light of the full moon lying in the roadway and took it to be the water of the river. “My dear old friend the fisherman,” he said, “get your line and take the best of the fishing, while your rivals are indoors.” So he ran back and fetched his hook and line, and cast into the glittering patch of moonlight on the road.
Soon an enormous dog, tempted by the smell of the bait, swallowed the hook greedily and then, feeling the barb, made desperate efforts to get loose. The fisherman struggled for some time against this enormous fish, but at last he was pulled over and rolled into the moonlight. Even then he would not let go his line, but held on grimly, uttering frightened cries. “Help, help, good Mussulmans!” he shouted. “Help me to secure this mighty fish, for he is dragging me into the deeps! Help, help, good friends, for I am drowning!” The guards of that quarter ran up at the noise and began laughing at the fisherman’s antics; but when he yelled: “Allah curse you, O sons of bitches! Is it a time to laugh when I am drowning?” they grew angry and, after giving him a sound beating, dragged him into the presence of the kadi.
At this point Shahrazad saw the approach of morning and discreetly fell silent.
BUT WHEN THE SEVEN-HUNDRED-AND-NINETY-EIGHTH NIGHT HAD COME SHE said:
Allah had willed that the kadi should also be addicted to the use of hashish; recognizing that the prisoner was under that jocund influence, he rated the guards soundly and dismissed them. Then he handed over the fisherman to his slaves that they might give him a bed for calm sleep. After a pleasant night and a day given up to the consumption of excellent food, the fisherman was called to the kadi in the evening and received by him like a brother. His host supped with him; and then the two sat opposite the lighted candles and each swallowed enough hashish to destroy a hundred-year-old elephant. When the drug exalted their natural dispositions, they undressed completely and began to dance about, singing and committing a thousand extravagances.
Now it happened that the Sultan and his wazir were walking through the city, disguised as merchants, and heard a strange noise rising from the kadi’s house. They entered through the unlatched door and found two naked men, who stopped dancing at their entrance and welcomed them without the least embarrassment. The Sultan sat down to watch his venerable kadi dance again; but when he saw that the other man had a dark and lively zabb, so long that the eye might not carry to the end of it, he whispered in his wazir’s startled ear: “As Allah lives, our kadi is not as well hung as his guest!” “What are you whispering about?” cried the fisherman. “I am the Sultan of this city and I order you to watch my dance respectfully, otherwise I will have your head cut off. I am the Sultan, this is my wazir; I hold the whole world like a fish in the palm of my right hand.” The Sultan and his wazir realized that they were in the presence of two hashish-eaters, and the wazir, to amuse his master, addressed the fisherman, saying: “How long have you been Sultan, dear master, and can you tell me what has happened to your predecessor?” “I deposed the fellow,” answered the fisherman. “I said: ‘Go Away!’ and he went away.”
“Did he not protest?” asked the wazir.
“Not at all,” replied the fisherman. “He was delighted to be relased from the burden of kingship. He abdicated with such good grace that I keep him by me as a servant. He is an excellent dancer. When he pines for his throne, I tell him stories. Now I want to piss.” So saying, he lifted up his interminable tool and, walking over to the Sultan, seemed to be about to discharge upon him.
“I also want to piss,” exclaimed the kadi, and took up the same threatening position in front of the wazir. The two victims shouted with laughter and fled from that house, crying over their shoulders: “God’s curse on all hashish-eaters!”
Next morning, that the jest might be complete, the Sultan called the kadi and his guest before him. “O discreet pillar of our law,” he said, “I have called you to me because I wish to learn the most convenient manner of pissing. Should one squat and carefully lift the robe, as religion prescribes? Should one stand up, as is the unclean habit of unbelievers? Or should one undress completely and piss against one’s friends, as is the custom of two hashish-eaters of my acquaintance?”
Knowing that the Sultan used to walk about the city in disguise, the kadi realized in a flash the identity of his last night’s visitors, and fell on his knees, crying: “My lord, my lord, the hashish spake in these indelicacies, not I!”
But the fisherman, who by his careful daily taking of the drug was always under its effect, called somewhat sharply: “And what of it? You are in your palace this morning, we were in our palace last night.”
“O sweetest noise in all our kingdom,” answered the delighted King, “as we are both Sultans of this city, I think you had better henceforth stay with me in my palace. If you can tell stories, I trust that you will at once sweeten our hearing with a chosen one.”
“I will do so gladly, as soon as you have pardoned my wazir,” replied the fisherman; so the Sultan bade the kadi rise and sent him back forgiven to his duties.

______
The Poetry Of Yahia Lababidi

Cairo
I buried your face, someplace

by the side of the new road

so I would not trip over it

every morning or on evening strolls
still, I am helplessly drawn

to the scene of this crime

for fear of forgetting

the sum of your splendor
then there’s also the rain

that loosens the soil

to reveal a bewitching feature

awash with emotion

an eye, perhaps tender or

a pale, becalmed cheek

a mouth tight with reproach or

lips pursed in a deathless smile
other times you are inscrutable

worse, is when I seem to lose you

and pick at the earth like a scab

frantic, and faithful, like a dog.

—

Clouds
to find the origin,

trace back the manifestations.

Tao
Between being and non-being

barely there

these sails of water, ice, air –
Indifferent drifters, wandering

high on freedom

of the homeless
Restlessly swithering

like ghosts, slithering through substance

in puffs and wisps
Lending an enchanting or ominous air

luminous or casting shadows,

ambivalent filters of reality
Bequeathing wreaths, or

modesty veils to great natural beauties

like mountain peaks
Sometimes simply hanging there

airborne abstract art

in open air
Suspended animation

continually contorting:

great sky whales, now, horse drawn carriages
unpinpointable thought forms,

punctuating the endless sentence of the sky.

—

What do animals dream?
Do they dream of past lives and unlived dreams

unspeakably human or unimaginably bestial?
Do they struggle to catch in their slumber

what is too slippery for the fingers of day?
Are there subtle nocturnal intimations

to illuminate their undreaming hours?
Are they haunted by specters of regret

do they visit their dead in drowsy gratitude?
Or are they revisited by their crimes

transcribed in tantalizing hieroglyphs?
Do they retrace the outline of their wounds

or dream of transformation, instead?
Do they tug at obstinate knots

inassimilable longings and thwarted strivings?
Are there agitations, upheavals or mutinies

against their perceived selves or fate?

Are they free of strengths and weaknesses peculiar

to horse, deer, bird, goat, snake, lamb or lion?
Are they ever neither animal nor human

but creature and Being?
Do they have holy moments of understanding

deep in the seat of their entity?
Do they experience their existence more fully

relieved of the burden of wakefulness?
Do they suspect, with poets, that all we see or seem

is but a dream within a dream?
Or is it merely a small dying

a little taste of nothingness that gathers in their mouths?

—

Dawning
There are hours when every thing creaks

when chairs stretch their arms, tables their legs

and closets crack their backs, incautiously
Fed up with the polite fantasy

of having to stay in one place

and stick to their stations
Humans too, at work, or in love

know such aches and growing pains

when inner furnishings defiantly shift
As decisively, and imperceptibly, as a continent

some thing will stretch, croak or come undone

so that everything else must be reconsidered
One restless dawn, unable to suppress the itch

of wanderlust, with a heavy door left ajar

semi-deliberately, and a new light teasing in
Some piece of immobility will finally quit

suddenly nimble on wooden limbs

as fast as a horse, fleeing the stable.

—

Words
Words are like days:

coloring books or pickpockets,

signposts or scratching posts,

fakirs over hot coals.
Certain words must be earned

just as emotions are suffered

before they can be uttered

– clean as a kept promise.
Words as witnesses

testifying their truths

squalid or rarefied

inevitable, irrefutable.
But, words must not carry

more than they can

it’s not good for their backs

or their reputations.
For, whether they dance alone

or with an invisible partner,

every word is a cosmos

dissolving the inarticulate
______________
Yahia Lababidi Biography

Yahia Lababidi, born 1973, is an internationally published writer of Egyptian – Lebanese origin. Lababidi’s first book, Signposts to Elsewhere (2006) received generous reviews from writers in the USA and the Middle East.
Lababidi’s aphorisms are included in an encyclopedia of The World’s Great Aphorists (Bloomsbury) by former Time editor James Geary, out in October 2007.
Otherwise, Lababidi’s poems and essays have appeared, or are forthcoming, in journals world-wide, including: Leviathan: Melville studies (USA), Cimarron Review (USA), Mizna: journal of Arab American literature (USA), Haight Ashbury Literary Journal (USA), Islamica Magazine (USA), Philosophy Now (UK), The Wildean (UK), The Idler (UK), Other Poetry (UK), Dream Catcher (UK), Arena (Australia), Montreal Serai (Canada), Al Ahram Weekly (Egypt), Iranian Times (Iran), Bidoun: Middle East Arts and Culture magazine, as well as online literary communities such as RAWI: Radius of Arab American Writers, Inc. and The Other Voices International Project.

______________
Solar Fields – Dust

______________

The days flee so fast in the summertime… We have been working away on various projects, painting, editing, taking care of the grounds, installing this and that. We must catch our breathes, and relax a bit. The summer is our busiest times of the year for us work-wise, all a bit hard to do.
I have been thinking much on Gerrard Winstanley of late, and of William Blake. These ruminations have proved to be the basis of this entry; working it out in process I would venture. Still the themes that are running through my head at this point are just at the juncture of putting something down pen to paper. I feel a welling up of thought and emotions that has me going into another tangent in my life. Stay tuned.
This entry is dedicated to my friend Morgan Miller. He knows the reasons why.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

________________
On The Menu:

The Caer Llwydd Poetry Shrine…

Gerard Winstanley Quotes

The Great Dictator Remix

Geoffrey Oryema – Lapowny

The Case For The Phenomena Of William Blake Experiencing Cosmic Consciousness

William Blake Poetry: A Summer’s Reading…

William Blake Biography

Geoffrey Oryema – Land of Anaka

William Blake – Art

__________
The Caer Llwydd Poetry Shrine…

The First Entry On Our Poetry Shrine:
The tao that can be told

is not the eternal Tao

The name that can be named

is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.

Naming is the origin

of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.

Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations

arise from the same source.

This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.

The gateway to all understanding.

—

This is of course the first part of the Tao Te Ching… I thought it appropriate for the initiation of the shrine.
I had seen a couple of similar set ups out and about in other parts of Portland. A brilliant idea, and with a little extra flair ours is unique, and hopefully the beginning of more in our neighborhood. Our friend Paul Hoagland put the shrine together on my design ideas, and he provided all of the materials. If you are interested in having one, let me know. I am installing a small altar for incense and flowers as well this week. I will update with photos, and maybe list the poems as we go.

___________
Gerard Winstanley Quotes:

“All men have stood for freedom… For freedom is the man that will turn the world upside down.”
“Let reason rule the man and he dares not trespass against his fellow creatures, but will do as he would be done unto, For Reason tells him is thy neighbour hungry and naked today, do thou feed and clothe him, it may be thy case tomorrow and then he will be ready to help thee.”
“Everyone that gets an authority into his hands tyrannizes over others; as many husbands, parents, masters, magistrates, that live after the flesh do carry themselves like oppressing lords over such as are under them, not knowing that their wives, children, servants, subjects are their fellow creatures, and hath an equal privilege to share them in the blessing of liberty.”
“For surely this particular property of mine and thine hath brought in all misery upon people. For first, it hath occasioned people to steal one from another. Secondly, it hath made laws to hang those that did steal. It tempts people to do an evil action and then kills them for doing it. Let all judge if this not be a great devil.”
“When this universal law of equity rises up in every man and woman, then none shall lay claim to any creature and say, This is mine, and that is yours. This is my work, that is yours. But everyone shall put their hands to till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth shall be common to all; when a man hath need of any corn or cattle, take from the next store-house he meets with. There shall be no buying and selling, no fairs or markets, but the whole earth shall be the common treasury for every man, for the earth is the Lord’s…

“When a man hath eat, and drink, and clothes, he hath enough. And all shall cheerfully put to their hands to make these things that are needful, one helping another. There shall be none lords over others, but everyone shall be a lord of himself, subject to the law of righteousness, reason and equity, which shall dwell and rule in him, which is the Lord.”
“When the people stare at the sky and dream of blessedness, or when they quiver with fear for hell after death, their eyes get blinded so they can’t see their own right of primogeniture.”

_________________
The Great Dictator Remix:

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an Emperor – that’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible — Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another; human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful.
But we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.
To those who can hear me I say, “Do not despair.” The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass and dictators die; and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers: Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel; who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate; only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.
Soldiers: Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written, “the kingdom of God is within man” — not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men, in you, you the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite!! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people!! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise!! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.
Soldiers: In the name of democracy, let us all unite!!!

_____________

Geoffrey Oryema – Lapowny

____________
The Case For The Phenomena Of William Blake Experiencing Cosmic Consciousness

By – Richard Maurice Bucke
If Blake had Cosmic Consciousness the words written above as to the vastly greater scope and variety of this than of self consciousness will receive from his case illustration. The few short extracts from his writings, below quoted, almost prove that he had the Cosmic Sense, which he called “Imaginative Vision” [95: 166], and he must have attained to it within a very few years after reaching the thirtieth of his age. There do not appear to be any details extant of his entrance into it, but his writings may fairly be allowed to prove the fact of possession.
I.
W. M. Rossetti, in the “Prefatory Memoir” to “The Poetical Works of William Blake” [52], gives an admirable sketch of Blake’s actual life and apparently a fair estimate of his abilities and defects. The following extracts therefrom will materially assist us in the inquiry now before us; that is: Had Blake Cosmic Consciousness?
– The difficulty of Blake’s biographers, subsequent to 1863, the date of Mr. Gilchrist’s book, is of a different kind altogether. It is the difficulty of stating sufficiently high the extraordinary claims of Blake to admiration and reverence, without slurring over those other considerations which need to be plainly and fully set forth if we would obtain any real idea of the man as he was—of his total unlikeness to his contemporaries, of his amazing genius and noble performances in two arts, of the height by which he transcended other men, and the incapacity which he always evinced for performing at all what others accomplish easily. He could do vastly more than they, but he could seldom do the like. By some unknown process he had soared to the top of a cloud-capped Alp, while they were crouching in the valley: But to reach a middle station on the mountain was what they could readily manage step by step, while Blake found that ordinary achievement impracticable. He could not and he would not do it; the want of will, or rather the utter alienation of will, the resolve to soar (which was natural to him), and not to walk (which was unnatural and repulsive), constituted or counted instead of an actual want of power [139:9].
Rapt in a passionate yearning, he realized, even on this earth and in his mortal body, a species of Nirvâna: his whole faculty, his whole personality, the very essence of his mind and mould, attained to absorption into his ideal ultimate, into that which Dante’s profound phrase designates “il Ben dell’ intelletto” [139: 11].
– William Blake’s education was of the scantiest, being confined to reading p. 193 and writing; arithmetic may also be guessed at, but is not recorded, and very probably his capacity for acquiring or retaining that item of knowledge was far below the average [139:14].
– In the fact that Blake soared beyond, and far beyond, men of self consciousness merely, but could not see or do many things that these saw clearly and could do easily, we see a relationship between him and the great illuminati. For surely the very same thing could be said of all these. In worldly matters they are all, or nearly all, as little children, while in spiritual things they are as gods. Note Balzac contracting enormous debts for want of ordinary business common sense and laboring vainly for years to pay them while in the full exercise of enough genius to equip a regiment of Rothschilds. Bacon showered upon the human race intellectual and spiritual riches beyond all computation, but with every apparent advantage (position at court, hereditary prestige, influential friends) he labors in vain for years for position in the self conscious sphere, and after getting it cannot hold it. Buddha, Jesus, Paul, Las Casas, Yepes, Behmen and Whitman were wise: They saw that the things of the Cosmic Sense were enough, and they simply put by the things of self consciousness, but had they tried for these the chances are they would have failed to obtain them.
– Blake, too, found the world of the Cosmic Sense enough, and wisely did not waste time and energy seeking for the so-called goods and riches of the self-conscious life.
– These men are independent of education, and most of them—like Blake himself—p. 193 think it useless or worse. Blake says of it: “There is no use in education: I hold it to be wrong. It is the great sin; it is eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This was the fault of Plato. He knew of nothing but the virtues and vices, and good and evil. There is nothing in all that. Everything is good in God’s eyes” [139: 80]. This reminds us of what Hawley said of Bacon: “He had not his knowledge from books, but from some grounds within himself” [141: 47], and of Whitman’s “You shall no longer feed on the spectres in books” [193: 30].
– In the preface to “The Jerusalem” Blake speaks of that composition as paving been “dictated” to him, and other expressions of his prove that he regarded it rather as a revelation of which he was the scribe than as the product of his own inventing and fashioning brain. Blake considered it “the grandest poem that this world contains;” adding, “I may praise it, since I dare not pretend to be any other than the secretary—the authors are in eternity.” In an earlier letter (April 25th, 1803) he had said: “I have written this poem from immediate dictation, twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time, without premeditation, and even against my will” [139:41].
– Blake had a mental intuition, inspiration, or revelation—call it what we will; it was as real to his spiritual eye as a material object could be to his bodily eye; and no doubt his bodily eye, the eye of a designer or painter with a great gift of invention and composition, was far more than normally ready at following the dictate of the spiritual eye, and seeing, with an almost instantaneously creative and fashioning act, the visual semblance of a visionary essence [139:62].
– His unworldliness, extreme as it was, did not degenerate into ineptitude. He apprehended the requirements of practical life, was prepared to meet them in a resolute and diligent spirit from day to day, and could on occasions display a full share of sagacity. He was of lofty and independent spirit, not caring to refute any odd stories that were current regarding his conduct or demeanor, neither parading nor concealing his poverty, and seldom accepting any sort of aid for which he could not and did not supply a full equivalent [139:69].
– This is the declaration of each possessor of the Cosmic Sense. It is not I, the visible man who speaks, but (as Jesus says) “As the Father hath said unto me so I speak” [14: 12: 50]; or as Paul writes: “I will not dare to speak of any things save those which Christ wrought through me” [16: 15:18]. “Loose the stop from your throat” [193: 32] says Whitman to the Cosmic Sense. And so universally.
– “O I am sure,” says Whitman, “they really came from Thee—the urge, the ardor, the potent, felt, interior, command, a message from the heavens” [193: 324]. “The noble truths,” Gautama said, ”were not among the doctrines banded down, but there arose within him the eye to perceive them” [159: 150].
– Each word of this passage is strictly true of Whitman, and allowing for difference of manners and customs in other times and countries, the paragraph could be read into the life of any one of the men discussed in this book.
He knows that what he does is not inferior to the gran
dest antiques. Superior it cannot be, for human power cannot go beyond either what he does or what they have done. It is the gift of God, it is inspiration and vision [139:72].
It must be allowed that in many instances Blake spoke of himself with measureless and rather provoking self-applause. This is in truth one conspicuous outcome of that very simplicity of character of which I have just spoken; egotism it is, but not worldly, self-seeking [139: 71].
That he was on the whole and in the best sense happy is, considering all his trials and crosses, one of the very highest evidences in his praise. “If asked,” writes Mr. Palmer, “whether I ever knew among the intellectual a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me.” Visionary and ideal aspirations of the intensest kind; the imaginative life wholly predominating over the corporeal and mundane life, and almost swallowing it up; and a child-like simplicity of personal character, free from self-interest, and ignorant or careless of any policy of self-control, though habitually guided and regulated by noble emotions and a resolute loyalty to duty—these are the main lines which we trace throughout the entire career of Blake, in his life and death, in his writings and his art. This it is which makes him so peculiarly lovable and admirable as a man, and invests his works, especially his poems, with so delightful a charm. We feel that he is truly “of the kingdom of heaven”: above the firmament, his soul holds converse with archangels; on the earth, he is as the little child whom Jesus “sat in the midst of them” [139:70].
The essence of Blake’s faculty, the power by which he achieved his work, was intuition: this holds good of his artistic productions, and still more so of his poems. Intuition reigns supreme in them; and even the reader has to apprehend them intuitively, or else to leave them aside altogether [139:74].
Ample evidence exists to satisfy us that Blake had real conceptions In the metaphysical or supersensual regions of thought—conceptions which might have been termed speculations in other people, but in him rather intuitions; and that the “Prophetic Books” embody these in some sort of way cannot be disputed [139: 120].
– “Divine am I,” says Whitman, “inside and out” [193: 49].
– “I conned old times,” says Whitman; “I sat studying at the feet of the great masters, now if eligible O that the great masters might return and study me” [193: 20].
– Happiness is one of the marks of the Cosmic Sense.
– It is too bad that these “Prophetic Books” are not published. It seems almost certain that they embody (behind thick veils, doubtless) revelations of extraordinary value—news from “the kingdom of heaven”—from the better world—the world of the Cosmic Sense.
As to his religious belief, it should be understood that Blake was a Christian in a certain way, and a truly fervent Christian; but it was a way of his own, exceedingly different from that of any of the churches. For the last forty years of his life he never entered a place of worship [139:76].
He believed—with a great profundity and ardor of faith—in God; but he believed also that men are gods, or that collective man is God. He believed in Christ; but exactly what he believed him to be is a separate question. “Jesus Christ,” he said, conversing with Mr. Robinson, “is the only God, and so am I, and so are you” [139:77].
In immortality Blake seems to have believed implicitly, and (in some main essentials) without much deviation from other people’s credence. When he heard of Flaxman’s death (December 7th, 1826), he observes, “I cannot think of death as more than the going out of one room into another.” In one of his writings he says: “The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body” [139:79].
Blake had in all probability read in his youth some of the mystical or cabalistic writers —Paracelsus, Jacob Böhme, Cornelius Agrippa; and there is a good deal in his speculations, in substance and tone, and sometimes in detail, which can be traced back to authors of this class [139: 80].
– Blake’s religion—his attitude toward the Church—toward God—toward immortality—is the characteristic attitude of the man who has attained to Cosmic Consciousness—as shown in each life and in all the writings of these men.
-His attitude toward death is that of all the illuminati. He does not believe in “another life.” He does not think he will be immortal. He has eternal life.
-So writes George Frederic Parsons about Balzac [6: 11]. Thoreau makes a similar suggestion as to Whitman [38: 143], and generally it is constantly being hinted or intimated that some of these men have been reading others of them. This may of course sometimes happen, but, speaking generally, it does not, for many of them are quite illiterate, and the studies of others, as, for instance, Bacon, do not lie in that direction. Blake, Balzac, Yepes, Behmen, Whitman, Carpenter and the rest has each seen for himself that other world of which he tells us. No one can tell of it at second hand, for no one who has not seen something of it can conceive it.
Blake’s death was as noble and characteristic as his life. Gilchrist [94: 360–1] gives us the following simple and touching account of it:
“His illness was not violent, but a gradual and gentle failure of physical powers which nowise affected the mind. The speedy end was not foreseen by his friends. It came on a Sunday, August 12, 1827, nearly three months before completion of his seventieth year. ‘On the day of his death,’ writes Smith, who had his account from the widow, ‘he composed and uttered songs to his Maker so sweetly to the ear of his Catharine that when she stood to hear him he, looking upon her most affectionately, said: “My beloved, they are not mine—no, they are not mine!” He told her they would not be parted; he should always be about her to take care of her. To the pious songs followed, about six in the summer evening, a calm and painless withdrawal of breath; the exact moment almost unperceived by his wife, who sat by his side. A humble female neighbor, her only other companion, said afterwards: “I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed angel.”
II.
It remains to quote certain declarations emanating from Blake and which seem to bear upon the point under consideration—viz., upon the question, Was Blake a case of Cosmic Consciousness?
The world of imagination is the world of eternity. It is the divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the vegetated body. This world of imagination is infinite and eternal, whereas the world of generation, of vegetation, is finite and temporal. There exist in that eternal world the permanent realities of everything which we see reflected in this vegetable glass of nature [95: 163].
We are in a world of generation and death, and this world we must cast off if we would be artists such as Raphael, Michael Angelo and the ancient sculptors. If we do not cast off this world we shall be only Venetian painters, who will be cast off and lost from art [95:172].
The player is a liar when he says: Angels are happier than men because they are better! Angels are happier than men and devils because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan’s gratification [95:176].
– Blake’s name for Cosmic Consciousness. With this paragraph compare Whitman’s “I swear I think now that everything without exception has an eternal soul! The trees have rooted in the ground! The weeds of the sea have! The animals” [193: 337].
– The world of self consciousness. Balzac says: (Self conscious) “man judge
s all things by his abstractions—good, evil, virtue, crime. His formulas of right are his scales, and his justice is blind; the justice of God [i.e., of the Cosmic Sense] sees—in that is everything” [5: 142].
– “Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age. Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they discuss I am silent” [193: 31].
The last judgment is an overwhelming of bad art and science [95: 176].
Some people flatter themselves that there will be no last judgment. . . .- I will not flatter them. Error is created; truth is eternal. Error or creation will be burned up, and then, and not till then, truth or eternity will appear. It [error] is burned up the moment men cease to behold it. I assert for myself that I do not behold outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. “What!” it will be questioned, “when the sun rises do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?” “Oh, no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’” I question not my corporeal eye* any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it and not with it [95: 176].
Beneath the figures of Adam and Eve (descending the generative stream from there) is the seat of the harlot, named mystery [self conscious life], in the Revelations. She (mystery) is seized by two beings (life and death), each with three heads; they represent vegetative existence. As it is written in Revelations, they strip her naked and burn her with fire [i.e., death strips her naked, and the passions of the self conscious life burn it as with fire]. It represents the eternal consumption of vegetable life and death [the life and death of the merely self conscious] with its lusts. The wreathed torches in their hands [in the hands of life and death] represent eternal fire, which is the fire of generation or vegetation; it is an eternal consummation. Those who are blessed with imaginative vision [Cosmic Consciousness]* see this eternal female [mystery—the self conscious life] and tremble at what others fear not; while they despise and laugh at what others fear [95:166].
-I am not ashamed, afraid or averse to tell you what ought to be told—that I am under the direction of messengers from heaven, daily and nightly. But the nature of such things is not, as some suppose, without trouble or care [95: 185].
– I.e., it is the advent of universal Cosmic Consciousness. “Specialism [the Cosmic Sense] opens to man,” says Balzac, “his true career; the infinite dawns upon him” [5: 144]. “The audit of nature, though delayed, must be answered, and her quietus is to render thee” [Cosmic Consciousness] [176: 126].
– Blake says his self conscious faculties are a hindrance to him, not a help. So Balzac: “Baneful, it [self consciousness] exempts man from entering the path of specialism [Cosmic Consciousness], which leads to the infinite” [5: 142]. So the Hindoo experts teach and have always taught, that suppression and effacement of many of the self conscious faculties are necessary conditions to illumination [56: 166 et seq.].
– So Carpenter asks (knowing well the answer): ”Does there not exist in truth . . an inner illumination . . . by which we can ultimately see things as they are, beholding all creation . . . in its true being and order [57:98].
– “Their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched” [12: 9: 48], said by Jesus of the self conscious life, which (also) is the hell of Dante.
– So Whitman: “I laugh at what you call dissolution.”
– “He [my other self], nor that affable, familiar ghost [the Cosmic Sense] which nightly gulls him with intelligence” [176: 86].
“A message from the Heavens whispering to me even in sleep” [193: 324].
III.

SUMMARY.
a. Blake seems to have entered into Cosmic Consciousness when a little more than thirty years of age.
b. The present editor does not know anything of the occurrence of subjective light in his case.
c. The fact of great intellectual illumination seems clear.
d. His moral elevation was very marked.
e. He seems to have had the sense of immortality that belongs to Cosmic Consciousness.
f. Specific details of proof are in this case, as they must inevitably often be, largely wanting, but a study of Blake’s life, writings (he is not in a position nor is he competent to judge Blake from his drawings) and death convinces the writer that he was a genuine and even probably a great case.

____________

William Blake Poetry: A Summer’s Reading…

Love’s Secret

Never seek to tell thy love,

Love that never told can be,

For the gentle wind doth move

Silently, invisibly.

I told my love, I told my love,

I told her all my heart,

Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears.

Ah! she did depart!

Soon after she was gone from me,

A traveller came by,

Silently, invisibly,

He took her with a sigh.

—
To The Evening Star
Thou fair-hair’d angel of the evening,

Now, whilst the sun rests on the mountains, light

Thy bright torch of love; thy radiant crown

Put on, and smile upon our evening bed!

Smile on our loves, and while thou drawest the

Blue curtains of the sky, scatter thy silver dew

On every flower that shuts its sweet eyes

In timely sleep. Let thy west wind sleep on

The lake; speak silence with thy glimmering eyes,

And wash the dusk with silver. Soon, full soon,

Dost thou withdraw; then the wolf rages wide,

And then the lion glares through the dun forest:

The fleeces of our flocks are cover’d with

Thy sacred dew: protect them with thine influence!

—
The Garden of Love

I laid me down upon a bank,

Where Love lay sleeping;

I heard among the rushes dank

Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,

To the thistles and thorns of the waste;

And they told me how they were beguiled,

Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen;

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut

And “Thou shalt not,” writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tombstones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

—
The Voice of the Ancient Bard

Youth of delight! come hither

And see the opening morn,

Image of Truth new-born.

Doubt is fled, and clouds of reason,

Dark disputes and artful teazing.

Folly is an endless maze;

Tangled roots perplex her ways;

How many have fallen there!

They stumble all night over bones of the dead;

And feel — they know not what but care;

And wish to lead others, when they should be led.

—
To Summer
O thou who passest thro’ our valleys in

Thy strength, curb thy fierce steeds, allay the heat

That flames from their large nostrils! thou, O Summer,

Oft pitched’st here thy goldent tent, and oft

Beneath our oaks hast slept, while we beheld

With joy thy ruddy limbs and flourishing hair.

Beneath our thickest shades we oft have heard

Thy voice, when noon upon his fervid car

Rode o’er the deep of heaven; beside our springs

Sit down, and in our mossy valleys, on

Some bank beside a river clear, throw thy

Silk draperies off, and rush into the stream:

Our valleys love the Summer in his pride.

Our bards are fam’d who strike the silver wire:

Our youth are bolder than the southern swains:

Our maidens fairer in the sprightly dance:

We lack not songs, nor instruments of joy,

Nor echoes sweet, nor waters clear as heaven,

Nor laurel wreaths against the sultry heat.

___________

William Blake – Biography

“To see a World in a grain of sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the Palm of your hand

And Eternity in an Hour.”

from Auguries of Innocence
William Blake was born on November 28, 1757 in London, the third of five children. His father James was a hosier, and could only afford to give William enough schooling to learn the basics of reading and writing, though for a short time he was able to attend a drawing school run by Henry Par.
William worked in his father’s shop until his talent for drawing became so obvious that he was apprenticed to engraver James Basire at age 14. He finished his apprenticeship at age 21, and set out to make his living as an engraver.
Blake married Catherine Boucher at age 25, and she worked with him on most of his artistic creations. Together they published a book of Blake’s poems and drawings called Songs of Innocence.
Blake engraved the words and pictures on copper plates (a method he claimed he received in a dream), and Catherine coloured the plates and bound the books. Songs of Innocence sold slowly during Blake’s lifetime, indeed Blake struggled close to poverty for much of his life.
More successful was a series of copperplate engravings Blake did to illustrate the Book of Job for a new edition of the Old Testament.
Blake did not have a head for business, and he turned down publisher’s requests to focus on his own subjects. In his choice of subject Blake was often guided by his gentle, mystical views of Christianity. Songs of Experience (1794) was followed by Milton (1804-1808), and Jerusalem (1804-1820).
In 1800 Blake gained a patron in William Hayley, who commissioned him to illustrate his Life of Cowper, and to create busts of famous poets for his house in Felpham, Suurey.
While at Felpham, Blake was involved in a bizarre episode which could have proven disastrous; he was accused by a drunken soldier of cursing the king, and on this testimony he was brought to trial for treason. The case against Blake proved flimsy, and he was cleared of the charges.
Blake poured his whole being into his work. The lack of public recognition sent him into a severe depression which lasted from 1810-1817, and even his close friends thought him insane.
Unlike painters like Gainsborough, Blake worked on a small scale; most of his engravings are little more than inches in height, yet the detailed rendering is superb and exact. Blake’s work received far more public acclaim after his death, and an excerpt from his poem Milton was set to music, becoming a sort of unofficial Christian anthem of English nationalism in the 20th century.
William Blake died on August 12, 1827, and is buried in an unmarked grave at Bunhill Fields, London.

___________
Geoffrey Oryema – Land of Anaka

___________