Gwyllm.com

Rowan came back from Country Faire… he loved it, and the tales he has to tell! I will put some in this week if he will but write them up…
Gotta Hop.
Talk Later,

Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Erowid Fund Raiser

Radiohead – House of Cards

The Goose-Girl

The Poetry Of Marie De France

Marie De France: A Possible Biography

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Erowid Fund Raiser

Hey everyone,
I wanted to send a quick message letting you all know about

an event being held in Seattle, WA this weekend as a benefit

for Erowid Center. Hopefully most of you know by now that

Erowid gained non-profit status at the end of last year and

since January 1st is now operating as a 501(c)(3) non-profit

educational organization.
A small group of people are holding a benefit party and

auction in Seattle this weekend (Saturday July 18th) as a

fundraiser for Erowid Center.
We’d love to have anyone who’s in the area join us (Earth

and I, as well as Jon Hanna who recently joined the Erowid

crew will all be there). It’s a “speakeasy cocktail reception”

at the Columbia City Theater and tickets are $25. Ideally,

tickets would be purchased in advance. You’re all welcome

and we hope we might see a few of you there so we have friendly

faces to talk to.
For more info and to buy tickets:

http://www.erowid.org/donations/event/event_2008_seattle.php
And for those who have asked recently about contributing now

that we’re a non-profit and donations are tax-deductible:

http://www.erowid.org/donations/
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Radiohead – House of Cards

In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. …

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The Goose-Girl

ONCE upon a time an old queen, whose husband had been dead for many years, had a beautiful daughter. When she grew up she was betrothed to a prince who lived a great way off. Now, when the time drew near for her to be married and to depart into a foreign kingdom, her old mother gave her much costly baggage, and many ornaments, gold and silver, trinkets and knicknacks, and, in fact, everything that belonged to a royal trousseau, for she loved her daughter very dearly. She gave her a waiting- maid also, who was to ride with her and hand her over to the bridegroom, and she provided each of them with a horse for the journey. Now the Princess’s horse was called Falada, and could speak.
When the hour for departure drew near the old mother went to her bedroom, and taking a small knife she cut her fingers till they bled; then she held a white rag under them, and letting three drops of blood fall into it, she gave it to her daughter, and said: “Dear child, take great care of this rag: it may be of use to you on the journey.”
So they took a sad farewell of each other, and the Princess stuck the rag in front of her dress, mounted her horse, and set forth on the journey to her bridegroom’s kingdom. After they had ridden for about an hour the Princess began to feel very thirsty, and said to her waiting- maid: “Pray get down and fetch me some water in my golden cup out of yonder stream: I would like a drink.” “If you’re thirsty,” said the maid, “dismount yourself, and lie down by the water and drink; I don’t mean to be your servant any longer.” The Princess was so thirsty that she got down, bent over the stream, and drank, for she wasn’t allowed to drink out of the golden goblet. As she drank she murmured: “Oh! heaven, what am I to do?” and the three drops of blood replied:
“If your mother only knew,

Her heart would surely break in two.”

But the Princess was meek, and said nothing about her maid’s rude behavior, and quietly mounted her horse again. They rode on their way for several miles, but the day was hot, and the sun’s rays smote fiercely on them, so that the Princess was soon overcome by thirst again. And as they passed a brook she called once more to her waiting-maid: “Pray get down and give me a drink from my golden cup,” for she had long ago forgotten her maid’s rude words. But the waiting-maid replied, more haughtily even than before: “If you want a drink, you can dismount and get it; I don’t mean to be your servant.” Then the Princess was compelled by her thirst to get down, and bending over the flowing water she cried and said: “Oh! heaven, what am I to do?” and the three drops of blood replied:
“If your mother only knew,

Her heart would surely break in two.”

And as she drank thus, and leaned right over the water, the rag containing the three drops of blood fell from her bosom and floated down the stream, and she in her anxiety never even noticed her loss. But the waiting-maid had observed it with delight, as she knew it gave her power over the bride, for in losing the drops of blood the Princess had become weak and powerless. When she wished to get on her horse Falada again, the waiting- maid called out: “I mean to ride Falada: you must mount my beast”; and this too she had to submit to. Then the waiting-maid commanded her harshly to take off her royal robes, and to put on her common ones, and finally she made her swear by heaven not to say a word about the matter when they reached the palace; and if she hadn’t taken this oath she would have been killed on the spot. But Falada observed everything, and laid it all to heart.
The waiting-maid now mounted Falada, and the real bride the worse horse, and so they continued their journey till at length they arrived at the palace yard. There was great rejoicing over the arrival, and the Prince sprang forward to meet them, and taking the waiting-maid for his bride, he lifted her down from her horse and led her upstairs to the royal chamber. In the meantime the real Princess was left standing below in the courtyard. The old King, who was looking out of his window, beheld her in this plight, and it struck him how sweet and gentle, even beautiful, she looked. He went at once to the royal chamber, and asked the bride who it was she had brought with her and had left thus standing in the court below. “Oh!” replied the bride, “I brought her with me to keep me company on the journey; give the girl something to do, that she may not be idle.” But the old King had no work for her, and couldn’t think of anything; so he said, “I’ve a small boy who looks after the geese, she’d better help him.” The youth’s name was Curdken, and the real bride was made to assist him in herding geese.
Soon after this the false bride said to the Prince: “Dearest husband, I pray you grant me a favor.” He answered: “That I will.” “Then let the slaughterer cut off the head of the horse I rode here upon, because it behaved very badly on the journey.” But the truth was she was afraid lest the horse should speak and tell how she had treated the Princess. She carried her point, and the faithful Falada was doomed to die. When the news came to the ears of the real Princess she went to the slaughterer, and secretly promised him a piece of gold if he would do something for her. There was in the town a large dark gate, through which she had to pass night and morning with the geese; would he “kindly hang up Falada’s head there, that she might see it once again?” The slaughterer said he would do as she desired, chopped off the head, and nailed it firmly over the gateway.
Early next morning, as she and Curdken were driving their flock through the gate, she said as she passed under:
“Oh! Falada, ’tis you hang there”;

and the head replied:
” ‘Tis you; pass under, Princess fair:

If your mother only knew,

Her heart would surely break in two.”

Then she left the tower and drove the geese into a field. And when they had reached the common where the geese fed she sat down and unloosed her hair, which was of pure gold. Curdken loved to see it glitter in the sun, and wanted much to pull some hair out. Then she spoke:
“Wind, wind, gently sway,

Blow Curdken’s hat away;

Let him chase o’er field and wold

Till my locks of ruddy gold,

Now astray and hanging down,

Be combed and plaited in a crown.”

Then a gust of wind blew Curdken’s hat away, and he had to chase it over hill and dale. When he returned from the pursuit she had finished her combing and curling, and his chance of getting any hair was gone. Curdken was very angry, and wouldn’t speak to her. So they herded the geese till evening and then went home.
The next morning, as they passed under the gate, the girl said:
“Oh! Falada, ’tis you hang there”;

and the head replied:
” ‘Tis you; pass under, Princess fair:

If your mother only knew,

Her heart would surely break in two.”

Then she went on her way till she came to the common, where she sat down and began to comb out her hair; then Curdken ran up to her and wanted to grasp some of the hair from her head, but she called out hastily:
“Wind, wind, gently sway,

Blow Curdken’s hat away;

Let him chase o’er field and wold

Till my locks of ruddy gold,

Now astray and hanging down,

Be combed and plaited in a crown.”

Then a puff of wind came and blew Curdken’s hat far away, so that he had to run after it; and when he returned she had long finished putting up her golden locks, and he couldn’t get any hair; so they watched the geese till it was dark.
But that evening when they got home Curdken went to the old King, and said: “I refuse to herd geese any longer with that girl.” “For what reason?” asked the old King. “Because she does nothing but annoy me all day long,” replied Curdken; and he proceeded to relate all her iniquities, and said: “Every morning as we drive the flock through the dark gate she says to a horse’s head that hangs on the wall:
“`Oh! Falada, ’tis you hang there’;
and the head replies:
“`’Tis you; pass under, Princess fair:

If your mother only knew,

Her heart would surely break in two.’”

And Curdken went on to tell what passed on the common where the geese fed, and how he had always to chase his hat.
The old King bade him go and drive forth his flock as usual next day; and when morning came he himself took up his position behind the dark gate, and heard how the goose-girl greeted Falada. Then he followed her through the field, and hid himself behind a bush on the common. He soon saw with his own eyes how the goose-boy and the goose-girl looked after the geese, and how after a time the maiden sat down and loosed her hair, that glittered like gold, and repeated:
“Wind, wind, gently sway,

Blow Curdken’s hat away;

Let him chase o’er field and wold

Till my locks of ruddy gold

Now astray and hanging down,

Be combed and plaited in a crown.”

Then a gust of wind came and blew Curdken’s hat away, so that he had to fly over hill and dale after it, and the girl in the meantime quietly combed and plaited her hair: all this the old King observed, and returned to the palace without anyone having noticed him. In the evening when the goose-girl came home he called her aside, and asked her why she behaved as she did. “I may not tell you why; how dare I confide my woes to anyone? for I swore not to by heaven, otherwise I should have lost my life.” The old King begged her to tell him all, and left her no peace, but he could get nothing out of her. At last he said: “Well, if you won’t tell me, confide your trouble to the iron stove there,” and he went away. Then she crept to the stove, and began to sob and cry and to pour out her poor little heart, and said: “Here I sit, deserted by all the world, I who am a king’s daughter, and a false waiting- maid has forced me to take off my own clothes, and has taken my place with my bridegroom, while I have to fulfill the lowly office of goose-girl.
“If my mother only knew

Her heart would surely break in two.”

But the old King stood outside at the stove chimney, and listened to her words. Then he entered the room again, and bidding her leave the stove, he ordered royal apparel to be put on her, in which she looked amazingly lovely. Then he summoned his son, and revealed to him that he had got the false bride, who was nothing but a waiting-maid, while the real one, in the guise of the ex- goose-girl, was standing at his side. The young King re- joiced from his heart when he saw her beauty and learned how good she was, and a great banquet was prepared, to which everyone was bidden. The bridegroom sat at the head of the table, the Princess on one side of him and the waiting-maid on the other; but she was so dazzled that she did not recognize the Princess in her glittering garments. Now when they had eaten and drunk, and were merry, the old King asked the waiting-maid to solve a knotty point for him. “What,” said he, “should be done to a certain person who has deceived everyone?” and he proceeded to relate the whole story, ending up with, “Now what sentence should be passed?” Then the false bride answered: “She deserves to be put stark naked into a barrel lined with sharp nails, which should be dragged by two white horses up and down the street till she is dead.”
“You are the person,” said the King, “and you have passed sentence on yourself; and even so it shall be done to you.” And when the sentence had been carried out the young King was married to his real bride, and both reigned over the kingdom in peace and happiness.[1]
[1] Grimm.

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The Poetry Of Marie De France

The Lay Of The Honeysuckle….
It pleases me, I’m willing too

To tell you a story plain and true

‘The Honeysuckle’ is its name

Here’s why and how it came.

Many people have told it me,

And much has been written I see,

Of Tristan and of the Queen,

Of their faithful love I mean,

Of which they had many a pain,

Dying for it on the very same day.
King Mark it seems was angry,

With Tristan his nephew, his fury

Because of his love for the Queen:

He drove him out of his country.

He went to the land of his birth

South Wales, his native earth,

And stayed there a year at least,

Unable to cross the sea.

But then again he set his face

Toward his death and disgrace.

That isn’t so amazing,

Whoever’s in love is grieving

Heavy of heart, he’ll perish

If he can’t have his wish.

Tristan was both pensive and sad,

So he left his own land, the lad

And travelled to Cornwall straight

Where the Queen held state.

He hid in the woods, alone,

Not wanting his presence known:

And he only came out at twilight

To look for a bed for the night.

With peasants, among the poor,

He found a welcoming door.

He asked them for all the news

Of what the King might do.

They told him they had heard

The barons had all been stirred,

To Tintagel they must fare

And join the King’s court there,

At Pentecost, among the nation,

In their joy and celebration,

The Queen, and every knight.

Tristan heard it with delight.

She could scarcely go by,

Without his catching her eye.

On the day the King passed through,

Tristan came to a wood en route

By a road down which he was sure

That whole company would pour:

He cut down a hazel bough,

And trimming it, carefully now,

When he’d prepared the same

With a knife he wrote his name.

If it caught the Queen’s bright eye

Who’d be looking on every side

(For on many another day

She’d met with him this way)

She’d quite easily find

His hazel branch: their sign.

So ran a letter to her of old

In which he’d sent and told

How long he’d been lingering

Hidden there sadly waiting

To discover like any spy

A way to only catch her eye,

Since he couldn’t live without her:

They were two bound together

As the honeysuckle binds

To the hazel that it finds.

When it’s caught and enlaced

Around its branches traced,

They can stick fast like glue,

But if anyone parts the two,

The hazel is quickly gone

Honeysuckle then follows on.

‘Sweet love, so it is with us, too:

No you without me, no me without you.’
So the Queen came riding by:

She looked at a slope nearby,

She saw the branch quite clearly,

Made out the letters easily.

The knights ordered to ride

Who all crowded along beside,

She commanded to stop, confessed

She wished to dismount and rest.

They executed her clear command.

While she strayed far from their band,

Calling her faithful maid,

Branguine, to her aid.

She went from the path some way

In the wood found him, hid away,

Who loved her more than all alive.

Between those two what great delight.

He speaks to her at leisure,

She to him all her pleasure:

Then tells him how he may

Be reconciled to the King that day,

And how grieved she had been

That the King sent him overseas,

Because of the accusations made.

Then she left him, in the glade:

But when it came to their goodbyes

Their tears filled both their eyes.

Tristan now returned to Wales

Till his uncle bade him sail.
Because of the joy he had known

In seeing his beloved, his own,

And because of what he’d penned

As the Queen instructed him then,

So he might more easily remember

Tristan who was a fine harp player,

Made of it a fresh new lay:

Whose title I’ll quickly say:

‘Goat-leaf’ is its English name,

‘Honeysuckle’ in French, the same.

Now I’ve told you the true source

Of the lay I sang you here of course.

—
From Lanval….
The adventure of another lay,

Just as it happened, I’ll relay:

It tells of a very nice nobleman,

And it’s called Lanval in Breton.
King Arthur was staying at Carduel –

That King of valiant and courtly estate –

His borders there he guarded well

Against the Pict, against the Scot,

Who’d cross into Logres to devastate

The countryside often, and a lot.
He held court there at Pentecost,

The summer feast we call Whitsun,

Giving gifts of impressive cost

To every count and each baron

And all knights of the Round Table.

Never elsewhere so many, such able

Knights assembled! Women and land

He shared with all – except one vassal

Who’d served him well; he forgot Lanval.

Lanval got nothing at the King’s hand.
For being brave and generous,

For his beauty and his prowess,

He was envied by all the court;

Those who claimed to hold him dear,

If Fortune had brought him up short,

Would not have shed a kindly tear.

A king’s son, he’d a noble lineage,

But now, far from his heritage,

He’d joined the household of the King.

He’d spent all the money he could bring

Already. The King gave him no more –

He gave just what Lanval asked for.

Now Lanval knows not what to do;

He’s very thoughtful, very sad.

My lords, I don’t astonish you:

A man alone, with no counsel – or bad –

A stranger in a strange land

Is sad, when no help’s at hand.
This knight – by now you know the one –

Who’d served the King with many a deed,

One day got on his noble steed

And went riding, just for fun.

Alone he rode out of the town,

And came to a meadow – still alone –

Dismounted by a flowing brook.

But his horse trembled now and shook,

So he took off the tackle and let him go,

Rolling free in the broad meadow.

The knight took his own cloak folded

It into a pillow for his head.

—
From Laustic
The adventure in my next tale

The Bretons made into a lai

Called “Laustic,” I’ve heard them say,

In Brittany; in French they call

The “laustic” a “rossignol”

And in good English, “nightingale.”

Near St. Malo there was a town

(Somewhere thereabouts) of great renown.

Two knights lived there, no lowly vassals,

In houses that were built like castles.

These barons were so good, their fame

Gave their village goodness’s own name.

One of them had married lately:

Polite and polished, such a lady!

She was wise to her own worth

(- Normal in ladies of high birth).

The other lord was a bachelor,

Famed for prowess and for valor,

Loved by all, for he knew how to live:

Joust a lot, spend a lot, what you have give

Away freely. He loved the wife of his neighbor.

He begged so much, and prayed yet more

– And goodness was his striking feature –

So she loved him more than any creature,

Because of the deeds he was famous for,

And because he lived in the castle next door.

Wisely and well they loved, these lovers,

They guarded their love under various covers

And hid it from general sight,

And the lady, at her window, higher,

Speaks, and looks, only desire.

Nights, when the moon her pale light shed,

When her husband had gone to bed,

The lady rose up from his side,

Wrapped herself in a mantle wide,

Went to stand at the window, true

To her friend waiting there, she knew;

For both their lives were just the same,

They waked all night till morning came.

The rapture of looking made them so glad

(That rapture the only one they had).

Marie De France: A Possible Biography
Marie de France was one of the best Old-French poets of the twelfth century. She identifies herself only as Marie who originated in France. Nothing else definite is known about her. Whereas the English poet Denis Piramus (Vie Seint Edmund le rei, after 1170) refers to her as “dame Marie,” emphasizing her noble rank, the scholar Claude Fauchet was the first to coin the name “Marie de France” in his Reueil de l’origine de la langue et poésie françoise (1581). Both the historical circumstances of the manuscripts containing her texts, and linguistic elements of Anglo-Norman, suggest that she lived in England during her adult life, but it seems most likely that she was born in France, probably in the Bretagne. She might have been Marie (I), the abbess of Shaftesbury, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey IV Plantagenet of Anjou, because our poet translated from English into French a collection of fables (Fables) on the basis of those that King Alfred had allegedly translated from Latin into English, though no such adaptation is known today. The convent of Shaftesbury had been founded by Alfred. This abbess Marie, who was also the half-sister of King Henry II (1133-1189), served in her office from 1181 until at least 1215. Marie (II), the abbess of Reading, would be a second option as the Harley manuscript that contains both Marie’s fables and the lais (today housed in the British Library, MS Harley 978) might have been copied at her convent. Marie (III), the eighth child of Waleran II, Count of Meulan, is the third option, as she was brought up in the modern-day French département of Eure wherein is located the town of Pitres. Pitres is mentioned in Marie’s lai “Les Deus Amanz.” This Marie married Hugh Talbot, Baron of Cleuville who had extensive land holdings in Herefordshire which plays an important role in many of Marie’s lais. The fourth option might be Marie (IV), Countess of Boulogne, daughter of King Stephen of England and Marie de Boulogne. This Countess was raised in a convent and later gained the rank of Abbess of Romsey in Hampshire. King Henry II forced her to marry Matthew of Flanders as he wanted to maintain his power over Boulogne. Through her marriage Marie became the sister-in-law of Hervé II, son of Guiomar of Léon. The parallels between the names of Guiomar and Guigemar, the eponymous hero in one of Marie’s lais, are intriguing, yet not completely compelling. Marie de Boulogne returned to a convent sometime between 1168 and 1180, most likely to the convent of Sainte Austreberthe in Montreuil-sur-Mer. None of these four associations with a historically identifiable person are fully convincing, and our Marie might well have been quite a different person otherwise not documented.

Adversus Absynthium (A l’encontre de l’absinthe)
Absynthe, monstre né jadis pour notre perte

De l’Afrique à Paris traînant ta robe verte

Comment donc as-tu pu sous le soleil oser

Souiller ses lèvres d’or de ton âcre baiser

Vile prostituée en tes temples assise

Tu te vends à l’esprit ainsi qu’à la sottise

Et ne fais nul souci aux adieux, laurier

Qui couvre le Poëte ainsi que le guerrier

Hélas ! n’avait-il pas assez de l’amertume

A laquelle en vivant tout grand cœur s’accoutume

Aussi que l’eau du ciel ……

Qu’il ne reste plus rien de ton amer poison

O monstre sois maudit, je te jette à la face

Les imprécations de Tibulle et d’Horace

Et contre toi j’évoque en mon sein irrité

La langue que parlait la belle antiquité.
Fontainebleau, août 1847

Antoni Deschamps

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So I awoke this morning, having dreamt of Absinthe for what seems like quite awhile… This dreaming occurs when I haven’t ventured down the path for awhile, or when I have been in discussion about a certain subject… Anyway, it seems there is a local absinthe now, from Integrity Spirits I had tried one of their earlier batches last Winter Solstice, provided by our friend Morgan. It was a bit over the top with the wormwood, so I am holding back purchasing a bottle until I get a taste.
I have had several people say that they only get an alcohol effect from Absinthe. I find this strange, as from my first experience (and I was genuinely not acquainted with the mythos of it) matched up with what has been claimed over the past couple of centuries… The light changes, time dilates, and you enter into a realm of colloquy and understanding.
This only seems to be achieved though (IMO), if you don’t drink to fast (1 absinthe every hour or so), steadily going for 3 hours or so, allowing the alcohol to work its effects without being overbearing, and allowing the wormwood and other herbs to build up in your system until that magick lever is pushed…. 80)
So kids, take it easy, take it slow and make sure you are with good company that enjoys conversation…!

—

Other Bits… It seems half the known Universe is at Country Fair in Eugene… Rowan is down with friends (photos soon), and as of yesterday had run into his Uncle Peter, Victor (The Lizard Jah), and several friends from school.

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On The Menu:

Absinthe drinker in Paris 1900 (Jean Gabin)

Absinthe Quotes

Absinthe: The Green Goddess – Aleister Crowley

The Green Fairy: Children of the Revolution

Absinthe Poetry

Green Fairy

Art: Absinthe Posters from the Epoch….
Bright Blessings!
Gwyllm
! News Flash: As I was working on this, a package arrived via Fed Ex… Mary had ordered a new absinthe spoon and 4 absinthe coasters from France, done in the old way! Yowza! Dreams do have a way of manifesting! 80)
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Absinthe drinker in Paris 1900…

Featuring Jean Gabin preparing his absinthe in front of the Moulin Rouge in 1900.

From Renoir’s movie French Cancan

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Absinthe Quotes:
Absinthe is the aphrodisiac of the self. The green fairy who lives in the absinthe wants your soul. But you are safe with me.

~Dracula

—

I understand that absinthe makes the tart grow fonder.

~Ernest Dowson

—

“Got tight last night on absinthe and did knife tricks. Great success shooting the knife into the piano. The woodworms are so bad and eat hell out of all furniture that you can always claim the woodworms did it.”

~Ernest Hemingway

—

“For me, my glory is but a humble ephemeral absinthe.”

~Paul Verlaine

—

“Absinthe has a wonderful color, green. A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world. What difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset?”

~Oscar Wilde

—

Come, the Wines go to the beaches,

And the waves by the millions!

See the wild Bitter

Rolling from the top of the mountains!

Let us, wise pilgrims, reach

The Absinthe with the green pillars….

~Comedy of Thirst, Arthur Rimbaud

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Absinthe: The Green Goddess

by Aleister Crowler
I.

Keep always this dim corner for me, that I may sit while the Green Hour glides, a proud pavine of Time. For I am no longer in the city accursed, where Time is horsed on the white gelding Death, his spurs rusted with blood.
There is a corner of the United States which he has overlooked. It lies in New Orleans, between Canal Street and Esplanade Avenue; the Mississippi for its base. Thence it reaches northward to a most curious desert land, where is a cemetery lovely beyond dreams. Its walls low and whitewashed, within which straggles a wilderness of strange and fantastic tombs; and hard by is that great city of brothels which is so cynically mirthful a neighbor. As Felicien Rops wrote,–or was it Edmond d’Haraucourt?–”la Prostitution et la Mort sont frere et soeur–les fils de Dieu!” At least the poet of -Le Legende des Sexes- was right, and the psycho-analysts after him, in identifying the Mother with the Tomb. This, then, is only the beginning and end of things, this “quartier macabre” beyond the North Rampart with the Mississippi on the other side. It is like the space between, our life which flows, and fertilizes as it flows, muddy and malarious as it may be, to empty itself into the warm bosom of the Gulf Stream, which (in our allegory) we may call the Life of God.
But our business is with the heart of things; we must go beyond the crude phenomena of nature if we are to dwell in the spirit. Art is the soul of life and the Old Absinthe House is heart and soul of the old quarter of New Orleans.
For here was the headquarters of no common man–no less than a real pirate–of Captain Lafitte, who not only robbed his neighbors, but defended them against invasion. Here, too, sat Henry Clay, who lived and died to give his name to a cigar. Outside this house no man remembers much more of him than that; but here, authentic and, as I imagine, indignant, his ghost stalks grimly.
Here, too are marble basins hollowed–and hallowed!–by the drippings of the water which creates by baptism the new spirit of absinthe.
I am only sipping the second glass of that “fascinating, but subtle poison, whose ravages eat men’s heart and brain” that I have ever tasted in my life; and as I am not an American anxious for quick action, I am not surprised and disappointed that I do not drop dead upon the spot. But I can taste souls without the aid of absinthe; and besides, this is magic of absinthe! The spirit of the house has entered into it; it is an elixir, the masterpiece of an old alchemist, no common wine.
And so, as I talk with the patron concerning the vanity of things, I perceive the secret of the heart of God himself; this, that everything, even the vilest thing, is so unutterably lovely that it is worthy of the devotion of a God for all eternity.
What other excuse could He give man for making him? In substance, that is my answer to King Solomon.
II.
The barrier between divine and human things is frail but inviolable; the artist and the bourgeois are only divided by a point of view–”A hair divided the false and true.”
I am watching the opalescence of my absinthe, and it leads me to ponder upon a certain very curious mystery, persistent in legend. We may call it the mystery of the rainbow.
Originally in the fantastic but significant legend of the Hebrews, the rainbow is mentioned as the sign of salvation. The world has been purified by water, and was ready for the revelation of Wine. God would never again destroy His work, but ultimately seal its perfection by a baptism of fire.
Now, in this analogue also falls the coat of many colors which was made for Joseph, a legend which was regarded as so important that it was subsequently borrowed for the romance of Jesus. The veil of the Temple, too, was of many colors. We find, further east, that the Manipura Cakkra–the Lotus of the City of Jewels–which is an important centre in Hindu anatomy, and apparently identical with the solar plexus, is the central point of the nervous system of the human body, dividing the sacred from the profane, or the lower from the higher.
In western Mysticism, once more we learn that the middle grade initiation is called Hodos Camelioniis, the Path of the Chameleon. There is here evidently an illusion to this same mystery. We also learn that the middle stage in Alchemy is when the liquor becomes opalescent.
Finally, we note among the visions of the Saints one called the Universal Peacock, in which the totality is perceived thus royally appareled.
Would it were possible to assemble in this place the cohorts of quotation; for indeed they are beautiful with banners, flashing their myriad rays from cothurn and habergeon, gay and gallant in the light of that Sun which knows no fall from Zenith of high noon!
Yet I must needs already have written so much to make clear one pitiful conceit: can it be that in the opalescence of absinthe is some occult link with this mystery of the Rainbow? For undoubtedly one does indefinably and subtly insinuate the drinker in the secret chamber of Beauty, does kindle his thoughts to rapture, adjust his point of view to that of the artists, at least to that degree of which he is originally capable, weave for his fancy a gala dress of stuff as many-colored as the mind of Aphrodite.
Oh Beauty! Long did I love thee, long did I pursue thee, thee elusive, thee intangible! And lo! thou enfoldest me by night and day in the arms of gracious, of luxurious, of shimmering silence. III.
The Prohibitionist must always be a person of no moral character; for he cannot even conceive of the possibility of a man capable of resisting temptation. Still more, he is so obsessed, like the savage, by the fear of the unknown, that he regards alcohol as a fetish, necessarily alluring and tyrannical.
With this ignorance of human nature goes an ever grosser ignorance of the divine nature. He does not understand that the universe has only one possible purpose; that, the business of life being happily completed by the production of the necessities and luxuries incidental to comfort, the residuum of human energy needs an outlet. The surplus of Will must find issue in the elevation of the individual towards the Godhead; and the method of such elevation is by religion, love, and art. These three things are indissolubly bound up with wine, for they are species of intoxication.
Yet against all these things we find the prohibitionist, logically enough. It is true that he usually pretends to admit religion as a proper pursuit for humanity; but what a religion! He has removed from it every element of ecstasy or even of devotion; in his hands it has become cold, fanatical, cruel, and stupid, a thing merciless and formal, without sympathy or humanity. Love and art he rejects altogether; for him the only meaning of love is a mechanical–hardly even physiological!–process necessary for the perpetuation of the human race. (But why perpetuate it?) Art is for him the parasite and pimp of love. He cannot distinguish between the Apollo Belvedere and the crude bestialities of certain Pompeian frescoes, or between Rabelais and Elenor Glyn.
What then is his ideal of human life? one cannot say. So crass a creature can have no true ideal. There have been ascetic philosophers; but the prohibitionist would be as offended by their doctrine as by ours, which, indeed, are not so dissimilar as appears. Wage-slavery and boredom seem to complete his outlook on the world.
There are species which survive because of the feeling of disgust inspired by them: one is reluctant to set the heel firmly upon them, however thick may be one’s boots. But when they are recognized
as utterly noxious to humanity–the more so that they ape its form–then courage must be found, or, rather, nausea must be swallowed. May God send us a Saint George!
IV.
It is notorious that all genius is accompanied by vice. Almost always this takes the form of sexual extravagance. It is to be observed that deficiency, as in the cases of Carlyle and Ruskin, is to be reckoned as extravagance. At least the word abnormalcy will fit all cases. Farther, we see that in a very large number of great men there has also been indulgence in drink or drugs. There are whole periods when practically every great man has been thus marked, and these periods are those during which the heroic spirit has died out of their nation, and the burgeois is apparently triumphant.
In this case the cause is evidently the horror of life induced in the artist by the contemplation of his surroundings. He must find another world, no matter at what cost.
Consider the end of the eighteenth century. In France the men of genius are made, so to speak, possible, by the Revolution. In England, under Castlereagh, we find Blake lost to humanity in mysticism, Shelley and Byron exiles, Coleridge taking refuge in opium, Keats sinking under the weight of circumstance, Wordsworth forced to sell his soul, while the enemy, in the persons of Southey and Moore, triumphantly holds sway.
The poetically similar period in France is 1850 to 1870. Hugo is in exile, and all his brethren are given to absinthe or to hashish or to opium.
There is however another consideration more important. There are some men who possess the understanding of the City of God, and know not the keys; or, if they possess them, have not force to turn them in the wards. Such men often seek to win heaven by forged credentials. Just so a youth who desires love is too often deceived by simulacra, embraces Lydia thinking her to be Lalage.
But the greatest men of all suffer neither the limitations of the former class nor the illusions of the latter. Yet we find them equally given to what is apparently indulgence. Lombroso has foolishly sought to find the source of this in madness–as if insanity could scale the peaks of Progress while Reason recoiled from the bergschrund. The explanation is far otherwise. Imagine to yourself the mental state of him who inherits or attains the full consciousness of the artist, that is to say, the divine consciousness.
He finds himself unutterably lonely, and he must steel himself to endure it. All his peers are dead long since! Even if he find an equal upon earth, there can scarcely be companionship, hardly more than the far courtesy of king to king. There are no twin souls in genius.
Good–he can reconcile himself to the scorn of the world. But yet he feels with anguish his duty towards it. It is therefore essential to him to be human.
Now the divine consciousness is not full flowered in youth. The newness of the objective world preoccupies the soul for many years. It is only as each illusion vanishes before the magic of the master that he gains more and more the power to dwell in the world of Reality. And with this comes the terrible temptation–the desire to enter and enjoy rather than remain among men and suffer their illusions. Yet, since the sole purpose of the incarnation of such a Master was to help humanity, they must make the supreme renunciation. It is the problem of the dreadful bridge of Islam, Al Sirak–the razor-edge will cut the unwary foot, yet it must be trodden firmly, or the traveler will fall to the abyss. I dare not sit in the Old Absinthe House forever, wrapped in the ineffable delight of the Beatific Vision. I must write this essay, that men may thereby come at last to understand true things. But the operation of the creative godhead is not enough. Art is itself too near the reality which must be renounced for a season.
Therefore his work is also part of his temptation; the genius feels himself slipping constantly heavenward. The gravitation of eternity draws him. He is like a ship torn by the tempest from the harbor where the master must needs take on new passengers to the Happy Isles. So he must throw out anchors and the only holding is the mire! Thus in order to maintain the equilibrium of sanity, the artist is obliged to seek fellowship with the grossest of mankind. Like Lord Dunsany or Augustus John, today, or like Teniers or old, he may love to sit in taverns where sailors frequent; or he may wander the country with Gypsies, or he may form liaisons with the vilest men and women. Edward Fitzgerald would seek an illiterate fisherman and spend weeks in his company. Verlaine made associates of Rimbaud and Bibi la Puree. Shakespeare consorted with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton. Marlowe was actually killed during a brawl in a low tavern. And when we consider the sex-relation, it is hard to mention a genius who had a wife or mistress of even tolerable good character. If he had one, he would be sure to neglect her for a Vampire or a Shrew. A good woman is too near that heaven of Reality which he is sworn to renounce!
And this, I suppose, is why I am interested in the woman who has come to sit at the nearest table. Let us find out her story; let us try to see with the eyes of her soul!
V.
She is a woman of no more than thirty years of age, though she looks older. She comes here at irregular intervals, once a week or once a month, but when she comes she sits down to get solidly drunk on that alternation of beer and gin which the best authorities in England deem so efficacious.
As to her story, it is simplicity itself. She was kept in luxury for some years by a wealthy cotton broker, crossed to Europe with him, and lived in London and Paris like a Queen. Then she got the idea of “respectability” and “settling down in life”; so she married a man who could keep her in mere comfort. Result: repentance, and a periodical need to forget her sorrows. She is still “respectable”; she never tires of repeating that she is not one of “those girls” but “a married woman living far uptown,” and that she “never runs about with men.”
It is not the failure of marriage; it is the failure of men to recognize what marriage was ordained to be. By a singular paradox it is the triumph of the bourgeois. Only the hero is capable of marriage as the church understands it; for the marriage oath is a compact of appalling solemnity, an alliance of two souls against the world and against fate, with invocation of the great blessing of the Most High. Death is not the most beautiful of adventures, as Frohman said, for death is unavoidable; marriage is a voluntary heroism. That marriage has today become a matter of convenience is the last word of the commercial spirit. It is as if one should take a vow of knighthood to combat dragons–until the dragons appeared.
So this poor woman, because she did not understand that respectability is a lie, that it is love that makes marriage sacred and not the sanction of church or state, because she took marriage as an asylum instead of as a crusade, has failed in life, and now seeks alcohol under the same fatal error.
Wine is the ripe gladness which accompanies valor and rewards toil; it is the plume on a man’s lancehead, a fluttering gallantry–not good to lean upon. Therefore her eyes are glassed with horror as she gazes uncomprehending upon her fate. That which she did all to avoid confronts her: she does not realize that, had she faced it, it would have fled with all the other phantoms. For the sole reality of this universe is God.
The Old Absinthe House is not a place. It is not bounded by four walls. It is headquarters to an army of philosophies. From this dim corner let me range, wafting thought through every air, salient against every problem of mankind: for it will always return like Noah’s dove to this ark, this strange little sanctuary of the Green Goddess which has been set down not upon Ararat, but by the b
anks of the “Father of Waters.”
VI.

Ah! the Green Goddess! What is the fascination that makes her so adorable and so terrible? Do you know that French sonnet “La legende de l’absinthe?” He must have loved it well, that poet. Here are his witnesses.
_Apollon, qui pleurait le trepas d’Hyacinthe, Ne voulait pas ceder la victoire a la mort. Il fallait que son ame, adepte de l’essor, Trouvat pour la beaute une alchemie plus sainte. Donc de sa main celeste il epuise, il ereinte Les dons les plus subtils de la divine Flore. Leurs corps brises souspirent une exhalaison d’or Dont il nous recueillait la goutte de–l’Absinthe!
Aux cavernes blotties, aux palis petillants, Par un, par deux, buvez ce breuvage d’aimant! Car c’est un sortilege, un propos de dictame, Ce vin d’opale pale avortit la misere, Ouvre de la beaute l’intime sanctuaire –Ensorcelle mon coeur, extasie mort ame!_

What is there in absinthe that makes it a separate cult? The effects of its abuse are totally distinct from those of other stimulants. Even in ruin and in degradation it remains a thing apart: its victims wear a ghastly aureole all their own, and in their peculiar hell yet gloat with a sinister perversion of pride that they are not as other men.
But we are not to reckon up the uses of a thing by contemplating the wreckage of its abuse. We do not curse the sea because of occasional disasters to our marines, or refuse axes to our woodsmen because we sympathize with Charles the First or Louis the Sixteenth. So therefore as special vices and dangers pertinent to absinthe, so also do graces and virtues that adorn no other liquor.
The word is from the Greek apsinthion. It means “undrinkable” or, according to some authorities, “undelightful.” In either case, strange paradox! No: for the wormwood draught itself were bitter beyond human endurance; it must be aromatized and mellowed with other herbs.
Chief among these is the gracious Melissa, of which the great Paracelsus thought so highly that he incorporated it as the preparation of his Ens Melissa Vitae, which he expected to be an elixir of life and a cure for all diseases, but which in his hands never came to perfection.
Then also there are added mint, anise, fennel and hyssop, all holy herbs familiar to all from the Treasury of Hebrew Scripture. And there is even the sacred marjoram which renders man both chaste and passionate; the tender green angelica stalks also infused in this most mystic of concoctions; for like the artemisia absinthium itself it is a plant of Diana, and gives the purity and lucidity, with a touch of the madness, of the Moon; and above all there is the Dittany of Crete of which the eastern Sages say that one flower hath more puissance in high magic than all the other gifts of all the gardens of the world. It is as if the first diviner of absinthe had been indeed a magician intent upon a combination of sacred drugs which should cleanse, fortify and perfume the human soul.
And it is no doubt that in the due employment of this liquor such effects are easy to obtain. A single glass seems to render the breathing freer, the spirit lighter, the heart more ardent, soul and mind alike more capable of executing the great task of doing that particular work in the world which the Father may have sent them to perform. Food itself loses its gross qualities in the presence of absinthe and becomes even as manna, operating the sacrament of nutrition without bodily disturbance.
Let then the pilgrim enter reverently the shrine, and drink his absinthe as a stirrup-cup; for in the right conception of this life as an ordeal of chivalry lies the foundation of every perfection of philosophy. “Whatsoever ye do, whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God!” applies with singular force to the absintheur. So may he come victorious from the battle of life to be received with tender kisses by some green-robed archangel, and crowned with mystic vervain in the Emerald Gateway of the Golden City of God.
VII.
And now the cafe is beginning to fill up. This little room with its dark green woodwork, its boarded ceiling, its sanded floor, its old pictures, its whole air of sympathy with time, is beginning to exert its magic spell. Here comes a curious child, short and sturdy, with a long blonde pigtail, with a jolly little old man who looks as if he had stepped straight out of the pages of Balzac.
Handsome and diminutive, with a fierce mustache almost as big as the rest of him, like a regular little Spanish fighting cock–Frank, the waiter, in his long white apron, struts to them with the glasses of ice-cold pleasure, green as the glaciers themselves. He will stand up bravely with the musicians bye and bye, and sing us a jolly song of old Catalonia.
The door swings open again. A tall dark girl, exquisitely slim and snaky, with masses of black hair knotted about her head, comes in. On her arm is a plump woman with hungry eyes, and a mass of Titian red hair. They seem distracted from the outer world, absorbed in some subject of enthralling interest and they drink their aperitif as if in a dream. I ask the mulatto boy who waits at my table (the sleek and lithe black panther!) who they are; but he knows only that one is a cabaret dancer, the other the owner of a cotton plantation up river. At a round table in the middle of the room sits one of the proprietors with a group of friends; he is burly, rubicund, and jolly, the very type of the Shakespearean “Mine host.” Now a party of a dozen merry boys and girls comes in. The old pianist begins to play a dance, and in a moment the whole cafe is caught up in the music of harmonious motion. Yet still the invisible line is drawn about each soul; the dance does not conflict with the absorption of the two strange women, or with my own mood of detachment.
Then there is a “little laughing lewd gamine” dressed all in black save for a square white collar. Her smile is broad and free as the sun and her gaze as clean and wholesome and inspiring. There is the big jolly blonde Irish girl in the black velvet beret and coat, and the white boots, chatting with two boys in khaki from the border. There is the Creole girl in pure white cap-a-pie, with her small piquant face and its round button of a nose, and its curious deep rose flush, and its red little mouth, impudently smiling. Around these islands seems to flow as a general tide the more stable life of the quarter. Here are honest good-wives seriously discussing their affairs, and heaven only knows if it be love or the price of sugar which engages them so wholly. There are but a few commonplace and uninteresting elements in the cafe; and these are without exception men. The giant Big Business is a great tyrant! He seizes all the men for slaves, and leaves the women to make shift as best they can for–all that makes life worth living. Candies and American Beauty Roses are of no use in an emergency. So, even in this most favored corner, there is dearth of the kind of men that women need.
At the table next to me sits an old, old man. He has done great things in his day, they tell me, an engineer, who first found it possible to dig Artesian wells in the Sahara desert. The Legion of Honor glows red in his shabby surtout. He comes here, one of the many wrecks of the Panama Canal, a piece of jetsam cast up by that tidal wave of speculation and corruption. He is of the old type, the thrifty peasantry; and he has his little income from the Rente. He says that he is too old to cross the ocean–and why should he, with the atmosphere of old France to be had a stone’s throw from his little apartment in Bourbon Street? It is a curious type of house that one finds in this quarter in New Orleans; meagre without, but within one comes unexpectedly upon great spaces, car
ved wooden balconies on which the rooms open. So he dreams away his honored days in the Old Absinthe House. His rusty black, with its worn red button, is a noble wear.
Black, by the way, seems almost universal among the women: is it instinctive good taste? At least, it serves to bring up the general level of good looks. Most American women spoil what little beauty they may have by overdressing. Here there is nothing extravagant, nothing vulgar, none of the near-Paris-gown and the lust-off-Bond-Street hat. Nor is there a single dress to which a Quaker could object. There is neither the mediocrity nor the immodesty of the New York woman, who is tailored or millinered on a garish pattern, with the Eternal Chorus Girl as the Ideal–an ideal which she always attains, though (Heaven knows!) in “society” there are few “front row” types.
On the other side of me a splendid stalwart maid, modern in muscle, old only in the subtle and modest fascination of her manner, her face proud, cruel and amorous, shakes her wild tresses of gold in pagan laughter. Her mood is universal as the wind. What can her cavalier be doing to keep her waiting? It is a little mystery which I will not solve for the reader; on the contrary–
VIII.
Yes, it was my own sweetheart (no! not all the magazines can vulgarize that loveliest of words) who was waiting for me to be done with my musings. She comes in silently and stealthily, preening and purring like a great cat, and sits down, and begins to Enjoy. She know I must never be disturbed until I close my pen. We shall go together to dine at a little Italian restaurant kept by an old navy man, who makes the best ravioli this side of Genoa; then we shall walk the wet and windy streets, rejoicing to feel the warm sub-tropical rain upon our faces. We shall go down to the Mississippi, and watch the lights of the ships, and listen to the tales of travel and adventure of the mariners. There is one tale that moves me greatly; it is like the story of the sentinel of Herculaneum. A cruiser of the U.S. Navy was detailed to Rio de Janeiro. (This was before the days of wireless telegraphy.) The port was in quarantine; the ship had to stand ten miles out to sea. Nevertheless, Yellow Jack managed to come aboard. The men died one by one. There was no way of getting word to Washington; and, as it turned out later, the Navy Department had completely forgotten the existence of the ship. No orders came; the captain stuck to his post for three months. Three months of solitude and death! At last a passing ship was signaled, and the cruiser was moved to happier waters. No doubt the story is a lie; but did that make it less splendid in the telling, as the old scoundrel sat and spat and chewed tobacco? No, we will certainly go down, and ruffle it on the wharves. There is really better fun in life than going to the movies, when you know how to sense Reality.
There is beauty in every incident of life; the true and the false, the wise and the foolish, are all one in the eye that beholds all without passion or prejudice: and the secret appears to lie not in the retirement from the world, but in keeping a part of oneself Vestal, sacred, intact, aloof from that self which makes contact with the external universe. In other words, in a separation of that which is and perceives from that which acts and suffers. And the art of doing this is really the art of being an artist. As a rule, it is a birthright; it may perhaps be attained by prayer and fasting; most surely, it can never be bought.
But if you have it not. This will be the best way to get it–or something like it. Give up your life completely to the task; sit daily for six hours in the Old Absinthe House, and sip the icy opal; endure till all things change insensibly before your eyes, you changing with them; till you become as gods, knowing good and evil, and that they are not two but one.
It may be a long time before the veil lifts; but a moment’s experience of the point of view of the artist is worth a myriad martyrdoms. It solves every problem of life and death–which two also are one.
It translates this universe into intelligible terms, relating truly the ego with the non-ego, and recasting the prose of reason in the poetry of soul. Even as the eye of the sculptor beholds his masterpiece already existing in the shapeless mass of marble, needing only the loving kindness of the chisel to cut away the veils of Isis, so you may (perhaps) learn to behold the sum and summit of all grace and glory from this great observatory, the Old Absinthe House of New Orleans.
V’la, p’tite chatte; c’est fini, le travail. Foutons le camp!
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“The Green Fairy” : Children of the Revolution

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Absinthe Poetry
August Strindberg
Indian summer

From the sickroom’s chloral smelling pillows,

darkened by suffocated sighs

and hitherto unheard blasphemes;

from the bedside table,

encumbered with medicinal bottles,

prayer books and Heine,

I stumbled out on the balcony

to look at the sea.

Shrouded in my flowered blanket

I let the October sun shine

on my yellow cheeks

and onto a bottle of absinthe,

green as the sea,

green as the spruce twigs

on a snowy street

where a funeral cortège had gone ahead.
The sea was dead calm

and the wind slept –

as if nothing had passed!

Then came a butterfly,

a brown awful butterfly,

which once was a caterpillar

but now crawled its way up

out of a newly set heap of leaves,

fooled by the sunshine

oh dear!
Trembling from cold

or unaccostumedness

he sat down

on my flowered blanket.

And he chose among the roses

and the anilin lilacs

the smallest and the ugliest one –

how can one be so stupid!
When the hour had passed

and I got up

to go and get inside,

he still sat there,

the stupid butterfly.

He had fulfilled his destiny

and was dead,

the stupid bastard!

Glenn MacDonough
I will free you first from burning thirst

That is born of a night of the bowl,

Like a sun ’twill rise through the inky skies

That so heavily hang o’er your souls.

At the first cool sip on your fevered lip

You determine to live through the day,

Life’s again worth while as with a dawining smile

You imbibe your absinthe frappé.

—-
Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
Get Drunk!
One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters;

that’s our one imperative need. So as not to feel Time’s

horrible burden one which breaks your shoulders and bows

you down, you must get drunk without cease.
But with what?

With wine, poetry, or virtue

as you choose.

But get drunk.
And if, at some time, on steps of a palace,

in the green grass of a ditch,

in the bleak solitude of your room,

you are waking and the drunkenness has already abated,

ask the wind, the wave, the stars, the clock,

all that which flees,

all that which groans,

all that which rolls,

all that which sings,

all that which speaks,

ask them, what time it is;

and the wind, the wave, the stars, the birds, and the clock,

they will all reply:
“It is time to get drunk!
So that you may not be the martyred slaves of Time,

get drunk, get drunk,

and never pause for rest!

With wine, poetry, or virtue,

as you choose!”

—

Five o’clock Absinthe – By Raoul Ponchon
When sundown spreads its hyacinth veil

Over Rastaquapolis

It’s surely time for an absinthe

Don’t you think, my son?
It’s especially in summer, when thirst wears you down

– Like a hundred Dreyfus gossips –

That it’s fitting to seek a fresh terrace

Along the boulevards
Where one finds the best absinthe

That of the sons of Pernod

Forget the rest! They’re like a sharp by Gounod:

mere illusion.
I say along the boulevards, and not in Rome,

Nor at the home of the Bonivards;

To be an absinthier is not to be any less a man.

And on our boulevards
One sees pass the sweetest creatures

With the gentlest manners:

You’re drinking, they rouse your nature,

They are exquisite… but let it pass.
You have your absinthe, it’s all about preparation

This is not, believe me,

As the cynics think, a small matter

Banal and without emotion
The heart should not be elsewhere

For the moment at least.

Absinthe wants first, beautiful ice water

The gods are my witness!
Tepid water, none of that: Jupiter condemns it.

Yourself, what say you?

Might as well, my faith, drink donkey piss

Or enema broth
And don’t come on like a German,

And scare her,

With your carafe; she would think, poor dear!

That you want to drown her.
Always rouse her from the first drop …

Like so … and so … very gently

Then behold her quiver, all vibrant

With an innocent smile;
Water must be for her like dew,

You must be certain about that:

Awaken the juices of which she is made

Only little by little.
Such as a young wife hesitates, startled

When, on her wedding night,

Her husband brusquely invades her bed

Thinking only of himself…
But wait: your absinthe has bloomed in the meantime,

See how she flowers,

Iridescent, passing through every shade of the opal

With a rare spirit.
You may sniff now, she is made;

And the beloved liquor

In the same instant brings joy to your head

And indulgence to your heart …

—

Sonnet de l’Absinthe – by Raoul Ponchon
Absinthe, oh my lively liquor

It seems, when I drink you,

I inhale the young forest soul

During the beautiful green season.
Your perfume disconcerts me

Aand in your opalescence,

I see the heavens of yore

Aas through an open gate.
What matter, O refuge of the damned,

That you a vain paradise be,

If you appease my need;
And if, before I enter the gate,

You make me put up with life,

By accustoming me with death

the sterile woman’s icy majesty.

—
[…]

Déridez-la toujours d’une première goutte…

Là… là… tout doucement.

Vous la verrez alors palpiter, vibrer toute,

Sourire ingénûment;
Il faut que l’eau lui soit ainsi qu’une rosée,

Tenez-vous-le pour dit :

N’éveillerez les sucs dont elle est composée

Que petit à petit.
Telle une jeune épouse hésite et s’effarouche

Quand, la première nuit,

Son mari brusquement l’envahit sur sa couche

En ne pensant qu’à lui…

[…]

Translation:

[…]

Always rouse her from the first drop …

Like so … and so … very gently

Then behold her quiver, all vibrant

With an innocent smile;
Water must be for her like dew,

You must be certain about that:

Awaken the juices of which she is made

Only little by little.
Such as a young wife hesitates, startled

When, on her wedding night,

Her husband brusquely invades her bed

Thinking only of himself…

-Raoul Ponchon
__________________________

Green Fairy

__________________________
Have a wonderful weekend, we are!
Gwyllm

On The Radio: Drift ~ ‘Ember (Remember)’

A bit of this and that for Sunday…. Enjoy!
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Zen Quotes

The Links

War Is A Racket….Part 2

Spiritual Teachings Concealed?: Kate Bush

Art: Ernst Fuchs

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I found this list… Though it says Zen Quotes, it throws a wider net – G
Zen Quotes:
Whatever is material shape, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, whether it is far or near — all material shape should be seen by perfect intuitive wisdom as it really is: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” Whatever is feeling, whatever is perception, whatever are habitual tendencies, whatever is consciousness, past, future, present, subjective or objective, gross or subtle, mean or excellent, whether it is far or near — all should be seen by perfect intuitive wisdom as it really is: “This is not mine, this I am not, this is not my self.” …Gautama
Externally keep yourself away from all relationships, and internally have no paintings in your heart; when your mind is like unto a straight-standing wall, you may enter into the Path….Bodhidharma
Just think of the trees: they let the birds perch and fly, with no intention to call them when they come and no longing for their return when they fly away. If people’s hearts can be like the trees, they will not be off the Way.
One single still light shines bright: if you intentionally pursue it, after all it’s hard to see. Suddenly encountering it, people’s hearts are opened up, and the great matter is clear and done. This is really living, without any fetters — no amount of money could replace it. Even if a thousand sages should come, they would all appear in it’s shadow….Chuzhen
When you’re deluded, every statement is an ulcer; when you’re enlightened, every word is wisdom….Zhiqu
The living meaning of Zen is beyond all notions. To realize it in a phrase is completely contrary to the subtle essence; we cannot avoid using words as expedients, though, but this has limitations. Needless to say, of course, random talk is useless. Nonetheless, the matter is not one-sided, so we temporarily set forth a path in the way of teaching, to deal with people….Qingfu
Neither is there Bodhi-tree, Nor yet a mirror bright; Since in reality all is void, Whereon can the dust fall?….Hui Neng
He who wherever he goes is attached to no person and to no place by ties of flesh; who accepts good and evil alike, neither welcoming the one nor shrinking from the other — take it that such a one has attained Perfection. …”Bhagavad-Gita”
The mind that does not understand is the Buddha. There is no other…. Ma-Tsu.
You cannot describe it or draw it. You cannot praise it enough or perceive it. No place can be found in which to put the Original Face; it will not disappear even when the universe is destroyed….Mumon.
No thought, no reflection, no analysis, no cultivation, no intention; let it settle itself….Tilopa.
When you pass through, no one can pin you down, no one can call you back….Ying-An.

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The Links:

Stone-Age Concert Hall?

The evolution of a conspiracy theory

Why Fly When You Could Float?

Gigantic Sand Art!

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I promised to continue with this several weeks ago… duh… here it is-G
G

War Is A Racket….Part 2

CHAPTER TWO
WHO MAKES THE PROFITS?
The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven’t paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children’s children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let’s get it.
Of course, it isn’t put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and “we must all put our shoulders to the wheel,” but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket – and are safely pocketed. Let’s just take a few examples:
Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people – didn’t one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn’t much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let’s look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump – or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
Or, let’s take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let’s look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
Let’s group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren’t the only ones. There are still others. Let’s take leather.
For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That’s all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.
International Nickel Company – and you can’t have a war without nickel – showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public – even before a Senate investigatory body.
But here’s how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought – and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn’t any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it – so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches – one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.
There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.
Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 – count them if you live long enough – was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
Undershirts for soldiers cost 14¢ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30¢ to 40¢ each for them – a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manuf
acturers and the steel helmet manufacturers – all got theirs.
Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment – knapsacks and the things that go to fill them – crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them – and they will do it all over again the next time.
There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.
Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn’t ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.
The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn’t float! The seams opened up – and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying “for some time” methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee – with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator – to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn’t suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses – that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.
Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.

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I first became familiar with Kate back in 1977 when I was living in London. She struck me as a singular, and very unique talent. Beautiful to boot, I learned about her primarily through Mary who had shared dance classes with Kate from the mid-70′s. (Mary has some of the best tales of London!)-G
Spiritual Teachings Concealed?: Kate Bush
Them Heavy People

Them Heavy People

Rolling the ball, rolling the ball, rolling the ball to me

They arrived at an inconvienient time

I was hiding in a room in my mind

They made me look at myself

I saw it well, I’d shut the people out of my life

So now I take the opportunities

Wonderful teachers ready to teach me

I must work on my mind

For now I realize that everyone of us

Has a heaven inside
(Chorus)
Them heavy people hit me in a soft spot

Them heavy people help me

Them heavy people hit me in a soft spot

Rolling the ball, rolling the ball, rolling the ball to me

They open doorways that I thought were shut for good

They read me Gurdjieff and Jesu

They build up my body

Break me emotionally, it’s nearly killing me

But what a lovely feeling!

I love the whirling of the Dervishes

I love the beauty of rare innocence

You don’t need no crystal ball

Don’t fall for a magic wand

We humans got it all, we perform the miracles

(Chorus)

—
Cloud Bursting

Cloud Bursting
I still dream of algernon.

I wake up crying.

Youre making rain,

And youre just in reach,

When you and sleep escape me.
Youre like my yo-yo

That glowed in the dark.

What made it special

Made it dangerous,

So I bury it

And forget.
But every time it rains,

Youre here in my head,

Like the sun coming out–

Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.

And I dont know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.
On top of the world,

Looking over the edge,

You could see them coming.

You looked too small

In their big, black car,

To be a threat to the men in power.
I hid my yo-yo

In the garden.

I cant hide you

From the government.

Oh, god, daddy–

I wont forget,
cause every time it rains,

Youre here in my head,

Like the sun coming out–

Ooh, I just know that something good is going to happen.

And I dont know when,

But just saying it could even make it happen.
The suns coming out.

Your sons coming out.

—-
The Sensual World

The Sensual World
Mmh, yes,
Then Id taken the kiss of seedcake back from his mouth

Going deep south, go down, mmh, yes,

Took six big wheels and rolled our bodies

Off of howth head and into the flesh, mmh, yes,
He said I was a flower of the mountain, yes,

But now Ive powers oer a womans body, yes.
Stepping out of the page into the sensual world.

Stepping out…
To where the water and the earth caress

And the down of a peach says mmh, yes,

Do I look for those millionaires

Like a machiavellian girl would

When I could wear a sunset? mmh, yes,
And how wed wished to live in the sensual world

You dont need words–just one kiss, then another.
Stepping out of the page into the sensual world

Stepping out, off the page, into the sensual world.
And then our arrows of desire rewrite the speech, mmh, yes,

And then he whispered would i, mmh, yes,

Be safe, mmh, yes, from mountain flowers?

And at first with the charm around him, mmh, yes,

He loosened it so if it slipped between my breasts

Hed rescue it, mmh, yes,

And his spark took life in my hand and, mmh, yes,

I said, mmh, yes,

But not yet, mmh, yes,

Mmh, yes.

________________

July 5th….

The 4th came and went, we stayed at home (whilst Rowan went to the Blues Festival again. He is heading down to the Oregon Country Faire with friends this week-end, trying out those new wings for 3 days. If you see him there… say hi!
Rik and Christel over in the South of France sent him the obligatory beret for graduation this weekend! He looks good in it!
Wacked my back again, muscles or something today. argh. This runs interference with life altogether.
I now have a facebook account… check for me with a search for Gwyllm Llwydd… John Archdeacon, and many others are on there as well.
Working on the new Magazine, and uploading, loads of music to the radio station. We will start having radio shows again soon…
Picked up ‘Endogenous Sun’ from the muralist exhibit Tuesday. Getting it cleaned up from where someone spilt coffee or dirty water over it …. argh. Anyway, it looks like it may have found a home… I will keep you posted.
Have a good weekend!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

L’Ham de Foc – Husseyni Azeri

The Cloud Messenger (Parts 1 thru 4)

Ham de Foc – Concert a la ciutat de València

The Poetry Of Ancient India: Kalidasa

Kalidasa Bio

L’ Ham de Foc- el Que vull

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L’Ham de Foc – Husseyni Azeri

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The Cloud Messenger – Part 01

A certain yaksha who had been negligent in the execution of his own duties,

on account of a curse from his master which was to be endured for a year and

which was onerous as it separated him from his beloved, made his residence

among the hermitages of Ramagiri, whose waters were blessed by the bathing

of the daughter of Janaka1 and whose shade trees grew in profusion.
That lover, separated from his beloved, whose gold armlet had slipped from

his bare forearm, having dwelt on that mountain for some months, on the first

day of the month of Asadha, saw a cloud embracing the summit, which

resembled a mature elephant playfully butting a bank.
Managing with difficulty to stand up in front of that cloud which was the

cause of the renewal of his enthusiasm, that attendant of the king of kings,

pondered while holding back his tears. Even the mind of a happy person is

excited at the sight of a cloud. How much more so, when the one who longs to

cling to his neck is far away?
As the month of Nabhas was close at hand, having as his goal the sustaining

of the life of his beloved and wishing to cause the tidings of his own welfare

to be carried by the cloud, the delighted being spoke kind words of welcome

to the cloud to which offerings of fresh kutaja flowers had been made.
Owing to his impatience, not considering the imcompatibility between a cloud

consisting of vapour, light, water and wind and the contents of his message

best delivered by a person of normal faculties, the yaksha made this request to

the cloud, for among sentient and non-sentient things, those afflicted by desire

are naturally miserable:
Without doubt, your path unimpeded, you will see your brother’s wife, intent

on counting the days, faithful and living on. The bond of hope generally

sustains the quickly sinking hearts of women who are alone, and which wilt

like flowers.
Just as the favourable wind drives you slowly onward, this cataka cuckoo,

your kinsman, calls sweetly on the left. Knowing the season for fertilisation,

cranes, like threaded garlands in the sky, lovely to the eye, will serve you.
Your steady passage observed by charming female siddhas who in trepidation

wonder ‘Has the summit been carried off the mountain by the wind?’, you

who are heading north, fly up into the sky from this place where the nicula

trees flourish, avoiding on the way the blows of the trunks of the elephants of

the four quarters of the sky.
This rainbow, resembling the intermingled sparkling of jewels, appears before

Mt Valmikagra, on account of which your dark body takes on a particular

loveliness, as did the body of Vishnu dressed as a cowherd with the peacock’s

feather of glistening lustre.
While being imbibed by the eyes of the country women who are ignorant of

the play of the eyebrows, who are tender in their affection, and who are

thinking ‘The result of the harvest depends on you’, having ascended to a

region whose fields are fragrant from recent ploughing, you should proceed a

little to the west. Your pace is swift. Go north once more.
Mt Amrakuta will carefully bear you upon its head—you whose showers

extinguished its forest fires and who are overcome by fatigue of the road.

Even a lowly being, remembering an earlier kind deed, does not turn its back

on a friend who has come for refuge; how much less, then, one so lofty?
When you, remembling a glossy braid of hair, have ascended its summit, the

mountain whose slopes are covered with forest mangoes, glowing with ripe

fruit, takes on the appearance of a breast of the earth, dark at the centre, the

rest pale, worthy to be beheld by a divine couple.
Having rested for a moment at a bower enjoyed by the forest-dwelling

women, then travelling more swiftly when your waters have been discharged,

the next stage thence is crossed. You will see the river Reva spread at the foot

of Mt Vandhya, made rough with rocks and resembling the pattern formed by

the broken wrinkles on the body of an elephant.
Your showers shed, having partaken of her waters that are scented with the

fragrant exudation of forest elephants and whose flow is impeded by thickets

of rose-apples, you should proceed. Filled with water, the wind will be unable

to lift you, O cloud, for all this is empty is light, while fullness results in

heaviness.
Seeing the yellow-brown nipa with their stamens half erect, eating the kankali

flowers whose first buds have appeared on every bank, and smelling the

highly fragrant scent of the forest earth, the deer will indicate the way to the

cloud.
Watching the cataka cuckoos that are skilled in catching raindrops, and

watching the herons flying in skeins as they count them, the siddhas will hold

you in high regard at the moment of your thundering, having received the

trembling, agitated embraced of their beloved female companions!
I perceive in an instant, friend, your delays on mountain after mountain

scented with kakubha flowers—you who should desire to proceed for the sake

of my beloved. Welcomed by peacocks with teary eyes who have turned their

cries into words of welcome, you should somehow resolve to proceed at once.
Reaching their capital by the name of Vidisha, renowned in all quarters, and

having won at once complete satisfaction of your desires, you will drink the

sweet, rippling water from the Vetravati River which roars pleasantly at the

edge of her banks, rippling as if her face bore a frown.
There, for the sake of rest, your should occupy the mountain known as Nicaih

which seems to thrill at your touch with its full-blown kadamba flowers, and

whose grottoes make known the unbridled youthful deeds of the townsmen by

emitting the scent of intercourse with bought women.
After resting, move on while watering with fresh raindrops the clusters of

jasmine buds that grow in gardens on the banks of the forest rivers—you who

have made a momentary acquaintance with the flower-picking girls by lending

shade to their faces, the lotuses at whose ears are withered and broken as they

wipe away the perspiration from their cheeks.
Even though the route would be circuitous for one who, like you, is

northward-bound, do not turn your back on the love on the palace roofs in

Ujjayini. If you do not enjoy the eyes with flickering eyelids of the women

startled by bolts of lightning there, then you have been deceived!
On the way, after you have ascended to the Nirvandhya River, whose girdles

are flocks of birds calling on account of the turbulence of her waves, whose

gliding motion is rendered delightful with stumbling steps, and whose

exposed navel is her eddies, fill yourself with water, for amorous distraction

is a woman’s first expression of love for their beloved.
When you have passed that, you should duly adopt the means by which the

Sindhu River may cast off her emaciation—she whose waters have become

like a single braid of hair, whose complexion is made pale by the old leaves

falling from the trees on her banks, and who shows you goodwill because she

has been separated from you, O fortunate one.
Having reached Avanti where the village elders are well-versed in the legend

of Udayana, make your way to the aforementioned city of Vishala, filled with

splendour, like a beautiful piece of heaven carried there by means of the

remaining merit of gods who had fallen to earth when the fruits of the good

actions had nearly expired;
Where, at daybreak, the breeze from the Shipra River, carrying abroad the

sweet, clear, impassioned cries of the geese, fragrant from contact with the

scent of full-blown lotuses and pleasing to the body, carries off the lassitude

of the women after their love-play, like a lover making entreaties for further

enjoyment.
And having see by the tens of millions the strings of pearls with shining gems

as their central stones, conches, pearl-shells, emeralds as green as fresh grass

with radiating brilliance and pieces of coral displayed in the market there, the

oceans appear to contain nothing but water;
And where the knowledgeable populace regale visiting relatives thus: ‘Here

the king of the Vatsa brought the precious daughter of Pradyota. Here was the

golden grove of tala-trees of that same monarch. Here, they say, roamed

Nalagiri (the elephant), having pulled out his tie-post in fury.’
Your bulk increased by the incense that is used for perfuming the hair that

issues from the lattices, and honoured with gifts of dance by the domestic

peacocks out of their love for their friend, lay aside the weariness of the

travel while admiring the splendour of its palaces which are scented with

flowers and marked by the hennaed feet of the lovely women.
Observed respectfully by divine retinues who are reminded of the colour of

their master’s throat, you should proceed to the holy abode of the lord of the

three worlds, husband of Chandi, whose gardens are caressed by the winds

from the Gandhavati River, scented with the pollen of the blue lotuses and

perfumed by the bath-oils used by young women who delight in water-play.
Even if you arrive at Mahakala at some other time, O cloud, you should wait

until the sun passes from the range of the eye. Playing the honourable role of

drum at the evening offering to Shiva, you will receive the full reward for

your deep thunder.
There, their girdles jingling to their footsteps, and their hands tired from the

pretty waving of fly-whisks whose handles are brilliant with the sparkle of

jewels, having received from you raindrops at the onset of the rainy season

that soothe the scratches made by fingernails, the courtesans cast you

lingering sidelong glances that resemble rows of honey-bees.
Then, settled above the forests whose trees are like uplifted arms, being round

in shape, producing an evening light, red as a fresh China-rose, at the start of

Shiva’s dance, remove his desire for a fresh elephant skin—you whose

devotion is beheld by Parvati, her agitation stilled and her gaze transfixed.
Reveal the ground with a bolt of lightning that shines like a streak of gold

on a touchstone to the young women in that vicinity going by night to the homes of

their lovers along the royal highroad which has been robbed of light by a

darkness that could be pricked with a needle. Withhold your showers of rain

and rumbling thunder: they would be frightened!
Passing that night above the roof-top of a certain house where pigeons sleep,

you, whose consort the lightning is tired by prolonged sport, should complete

the rest of your journey when the sun reappears. Indeed, those who have

promised to accomplish a task for a friend do not tarry.
At that time, the tears of the wronged wives are to be soothed away by their

husbands. Therefore abandon at once the path of the sun. He too has returned

to remove the tears of dew from the lotus-faces of the lilies. If you obstruct

his rays, he may become greatly incensed.

—
The Cloud Messenger – Part 02

Your naturally beautiful reflection will gain entry into the clear waters of the

Gambhira River, as into a clear mind. Therefore it is not fitting that you, out

of obstinancy, should render futile her glances which are the darting leaps of

little fish, as white as night-lotus flowers.
Removing her blue garment which is her water, exposing her hips which are

her banks, it is clutched by cane-branches as if grasped by her hands.

Departure will inevitably be difficult for you who tarries, O friend. Who,

having experienced enjoyment, is able to forsake another whose loins are laid

bare?
A cool breeze, grown pleasant through contact with the scent of the earth

refreshed by your showers, which is inhaled by elephants with a pleasing

sound at their nostrils, and which is the ripener of wild figs in the forest,

gently fans you who desire to proceed to Devagiri.
There, you, taking the form of a cloud of flowers, should bathe Skanda, who

always resides there, with a shower of flowers, wet with the water of the

heavenly Ganges. For he is the energy surpassing the sun, that was born into

the mouth of the fire by the bearer of the crescent moon6 for the purpose of

protecting the forces of of the sons of Indra.
Then, with claps of thunder, magnified by their own echoes, you should cause

to dance the peacock of the son of Agni, the corners of whose eyes are bathed

by the light of the crescent moon at the head of Shiva and whose discarded

tail-feather, ringed by rays of light, Parvati placed behind her ear, next

to the petal of the blue lotus, out of her love for her son.
Having worshipped that god born in a reedbed, after you have travelled

further, your route abandoned by siddha-couples carrying lutes because they

fear rain-drops, you should descend while paying homage to the glory of

Randideva, born from the slaughter of the daughter of Surabhi, and who

arose on earth in the form or a river.
When you, the robber of the complexion of bearer of the bow Sharnga, stoop

to drink the water of that river, which is broad but appears narrow from a

distance, those who range the skies, when they look down, will certainly see

that the stream resembles a single string of pearls on the earth, enlarged at

its centre with a sapphire.
Having crossed the river, go on, making yourself into a form worthy of the

curiosity of the eyes of the women of Dashapura, adept in the amorous play of

their tendril-like eyebrows, whose dark and variageted brilliance flashes up at

the fluttering of their eyelashes, and whose splendour has been stolen from the

bees attendant on tossing kunda flowers.
Then, entering the district of Brahmavarta, accompanied by your shadow, you

should proceed to the plain of the Kurus, evocative of the battle of the

warriors, where the one whose bow is Gandiva brought down showers of

hundreds of sharp arrows, just as you bring down showers of rain on the faces

of the lotuses.
Having partaken of the waters of the Sarasvati which were enjoyed by the

bearer of the plough who was averse to war on account of his love for his

kinsfolk, after he had forsaken the wine of agreeable flavour which was

marked by the reflection of Revati’s eyes, you, friend, will be purified within:

only your colour will be black.
From there you should go to the daughter of Jahnu above the Kanakhula

mountains, where she emerges from the Himalaya, who provided a flight of

steps to heaven for the sons of Sagara, and who laughing with her foam at the

frown on the face of Gauri, made a grab at the hair of Shambhu and clasped

his crescent moon with her wave-hands.
If you, like an elephant of the gods, your front partly inclining down from the

sky to drink her waters which are pure as crystal, in an instrant, because of

your reflection on her gliding current, she would become very lovely, as if

united with the Yamuna in second location.
Having reached the mountain which is the source of that very river, whose

crags are made fragrant with the scent of the musk of the deer that recline

there, white with snow, reposing on the summit which dispells the fatigue of

travel, you will take on the splendour like that of the white soil cast up

by the bull of the three-eyed one.
If, when the wind is blowing, a forest fire were to afflict the mountain,

ignited by the friction of branches of the sarala trees, burning with its

flames the tailhairs of the yaks, it would befit you to extinguish it

completely with thousands of torrents of water, for the resources of the

great have as their fruit the alleviation of those who suffer misfortune.
The sharabha there, intent on springing in anger at you who departs from

their path, would lunge at you, only to break their own limbs. You should

cover them with a tumultuous storm of hail and rain. Who, intent upon a

fruitless endeavour, would not be the object of contempt?
There, with your body bowed in devotion, you should circumambulate the

foot-print of the one wears the half-moon diadem, which is continually

heaped with offerings from ascetics, and at the sight of which, at their

departure from the bodies, cleansed of their misdeeds, the faithful are able to

achieve the immuteable state of membership of Shiva’s following.
The bamboo canes filled with the wind sound sweetly. Victory over the three

cities is celebrated in song by the Kinnari demi-gods. If your rumbling like a

muraja drum resounds in the caves, the theme of a concert for Shiva will be

complete.
Having passed various features on the flanks of the Himalayas, proceed thence

north to Krauncarandhra, gateway for wild geese, which was the route to glory

for Bhrgupati—you whose beautiful form is flat and long, like the dark blue

foot of Vishnu uplifted for the suppression of Bali.
And having gone further, become the guest of Mt Kailasa, the seams of whose

peaks were rent by the arms of the ten-faced one and which is a mirror for

the consorts of the Thirty Gods, and which, extending with lofty peaks like

white lotuses, stands in the sky like the loud laughter of the three-eyed

one accumulated day by day.
I foresee that when you, resembling glossy powdered kohl, reach the foot of

that mountain as white as a freshly cut piece of ivory, the imminent beauty

will be fit to be gazed upon with an unerring eye, like the dark blue garment

placed on the shoulder of the plough-carrier.
And if Gauri should take a walk on the foot of that pleasure-hill, lent a hand

by Shiva who has set aside his serpent-bracelet, your shape transformed into a

flight of steps, your torrents of water withheld within yourself, become a

stairway rising in front of her for the ascent of the jewel-slopes.
There the young women of the gods will use you as a shower—you whose

waters are brought forth by the striking together of the diamonds in their

bracelets. If, friend, you were unable to release yourself from them, being

encountered in the hot season, startle them who are intent on playing with

you, with claps of thunder, harsh to the ear.
Partaking of the waters of Manasa which bring forth golden lotuses, bringing

at pleasure momentary delight like a cloth upon the face of Airavata, shaking

with your winds the sprouts of wish-fulfilling trees like garments, enjoy the

king of mountains with various playful actions, O cloud.
Once you, who wander at will, have seen Alaka seated in the lap of the

mountain like a lover, with the Ganges like a garment that has slipped, you

will not fail to recognise her again with her lofty palaces and bearing hosts of

clouds with showers of rain at the time of year when you are present,

resembling a woman whose tresses are interwoven with strings of pearls.

—

The Cloud Messenger – Part 03

Where the palaces are worthy of comparison to you in these various aspects:

you possess lightning, they have lovely women; you have a rainbow, they are

furnished with pictures; they have music provided by resounding drums, you

produce deep, gentle rumbling; you have water within, they have floors made

of gemstones; you are lofty, their rooftops touch the sky;
Where there are decorative lotuses in the hands of the young wives; fresh

jasmine woven into their hair; where the beauty of their faces is made whiter

by the pollen of lodhra flowers; in the thick locks on their crowns are fresh

kurubaka flowers; on their ears charming shirisa flowers; and on the parting

of their hair, nipa flowers that bloom on your arrival;
Where the trees, humming with intoxicated bees, are always in flower; the lily

pools, having rows of wild geese as waistbands, always produce lotuses;

where the tails of the tame peacocks, their necks upstretched to cry out, are

always resplendent; and where the evenings are perpetually moonlit and

pleasant, and darkness has been banished;
Where the tears of the lords of wealth are of utmost joy, having no other

cause, there being no suffering other than that caused by the flower-arrowed

god which is to be assuaged by union with the desired one; where there is

separation other than that arising from lovers’ quarrels; and where there is

indeed no age other than youth;
Where yakshas, having assembled on the upper terraces of the palace, made of

crystal, accompanied by their excellent womenfolk, enjoy ratiphalam wine

produced by a wish-fulfilling tree, while drums whose sound resembles your

deep thunder are beaten softly;
Where the girls fanned by breezes cooled by the waters of the Mandakini

river, the heat dispelled by the shade of the mandara trees that grow on its

banks, are urges by the gods to play with jewels hidden by burying them with

clenched fists in the golden sands and which are to be searched for;
Where the handfuls of powder flung by those red-lipped women bewildered

by shame when their lovers passionately pull away their linen garments, the

ties of which have been loosened and undone by restless hands, although they

reach the long-rayed jewel-lamps, they fail to extinguish them;
Where ragged clouds, like yourself, brought to the upper stories of the palaces

by the leader of the wind, having committed the misdeed of shedding

raindrops on a painting, cleverly imitating puffs of smoke, flee immediately

by way of the lattices as if filled with dread;
Where at night the moonstones, hanging from a web of threads and shedding

full drops of water under the influence of moonbeams bright since the removal

of your obstruction, dispel the physical langour after sexual enjoyment on the

part of the women who are freed from the embraces of their lovers’ arms;

Where lovers, with inexhaustible treasure their residences, together with the

kinnaras who sing with sweet voices of the glory of the lord of wealth,

accompanied by celestial courtesans, engage in conversation and enjoy

everyday the outer grove known as Vaibhraja;
Where at sunrise the route taken by women the previous night is indicated by

mandara flowers with torn petals that were shaken from their hair by the

movement of their walking, by the golden lotuses that slipped from behind

their ears, and by necklaces of strings of pearls the threads of which broke

upon their breasts;
Where a single wish-fulfilling tree produces every adornment for women:

coloured garments, wine which is suitable for introducing an amorous

playfulness to the eyes, flowers together with buds which are distinctive

among ornaments, and red lac dye suitable for application to their lotus-like

feet;
Where horses, as dark as leaves, rival the steeds of the sun; where elephants,

as tall as mountains, pour forth showers, like you, from the pores of their

temples; and where the foremost warriors stood in battle against the ten-faced

one, the splendour of their ornmanets surpassed by the scars of the wounds

from Candrahasa;
Where the god of love does not generally carry his bow strung with bees,

knowing that the god who is the friend of the lord of wealth dwells there in

person: his task is accomplished by the amorous play of talented women

whose glances are cast by means of curved eyebrows and which are not in

vain among the objects of their desire.
There, to the north of the residence of the lord of wealth, our home is to be

recognised from afar by an arched portal as lovely as a rainbow, near which a

young mandara tree, caused to bow down by bunches of flowers that may be

touched by the hand, is cherished by my beloved like an adopted son.
And within is a pool the steps of which are studded with emerald stone, filled

with flowering golden lotuses whose stalks are of smooth chrysoberyl. On its

waters the geese that have take up residence there do not think of Lake Manas

close at hand, and are free from sorrow, having seen you.
On its bank there is a pleasure hill whose summit is studded with fine

sapphires, beautiful to behold with a hedge of golden plantain trees. Having

seen you, O friend, with flashing lightning, near at hand, I recall that mountain

with a despondent mind, thinking, ‘It is enjoyed by my spouse’.
Here is a red ashoka with trembling buds and a charming kesara near a hedge

of kurubaka and a bower of madhavi. One desires (as I do) the touch of your

friend’s left foot. The other longs for a mouthful of wine from her, having as

its pretext a craving.
And between these is a golden perch with a crystal base, studded at its foot

with gems that shine like half-grown bamboo, on which rests your friend the

blue-necked one, who, at the day’s end, is caused to dance by my beloved

with claps of her hands, made pleasant by the jingling of her bracelets.
Having seen the figures of Shanka and Padma painted near the door, by

these signs preserved in yout heart, O noble one, you may distinguish the

residence, now reduced in beauty because of my absence. Indeed, at the

setting of the sun, even the lotus does not display its own splendour.
Having shrunk at once to the size of a small elephant for the sake of a swift

descent, resting on the pleasure mountain with lovely peaks that I have

mentioned, please cast your gaze in the form of a flickering bolt of faint

lightning upon the interior of the house, like the glow of a swarm of fire-flies.

—

The Cloud Messenger – Part 04

The slender young woman who is there would be the premier creation by the

Creator in the sphere of women, with fine teeth, lips like a ripe bimba fruit, a

slim waist, eyes like a startled gazelle’s, a deep navel, a gait slow on account

of the weight of her hips, and who is somewhat bowed down by her breasts.
You should know that she whose words are few, my second life, is like a

solitary female cakravaka duck when I, her mate, am far away. While these

weary days are passing, I think the girl whose longing is deep has taken on an

altered appearance, like a lotus blighted by frost.
Surely the face of my beloved, her eyes swollen from violent weeping, the

colour of her lower lip changed by the heat of her sighs, resting upon her

hand, partially hidden by the hanging locks of her hair, bears the miserable

appearance of the moon with its brightness obscured when pursued by you.
She will come at once into your sight, either engaged in pouring oblations, or

drawing from memory my portrait, but grown thin on account of separation,

or asking the sweet-voiced sarika bird in its cage, ‘I hope you remember the

master, O elegant one, for you are his favourite’;
Or having placed a lute on a dirty cloth on her lap, friend, wanting to sing a

song whose words are contrived to contain my name, and somehow plucking

the strings wet with tears, again and again she forgets the melody, even

though she composed it herself;
Or engaged in counting the remaining months set from the day of our

separation until the end by placing flowers on the ground at the threshold, or

enjoying acts of union that are preserved in her mind. These generally are the

diversions of women when separated from their husbands.
During the day, when she has distractions, separation will not torment her so

much. I fear that your friend will have greater suffering at night without

distraction. You who carry my message, positioned above the palace roof-top,

see the good woman at midnight, lying on the ground, sleepless, and cheer her

thoroughly.
Grown thin with anxiety, lying on one side on a bed of separation, resembling

the body of the moon on the eastern horizon when only one sixteenth part

remains, shedding hot tears, passing that night, lengthened by separation,

which spent in desired enjoyments in company with me would have passed in

an instant.
Covering with eyelashes heavy with tears on account of her sorrow, her eyes

which were raised to face the rays of the moon, which were cool with nectar

and which entered by way of the lattice, fall again on account of her previous

love, like a bed of land-lotuses on an overcast day, neither open nor closed.
She whose sighs that trouble her bud-like lower lip will surely be scattering

the locks of her hair hanging at her cheek, dishevelled after a simple bath,

thinking how enjoyment with me might arise even if only in a dream, yearning

for sleep, the opportunity for which is prevented by the affliction of tears;
She who is repeatedly pushing from the curve of her cheek with her hand

whose nails are unkempt, the single braid, plaited by me, stripped of its

garland, on the first day of our separation, which will be loosened by me when

I am free from sorrow at the expiry of the curse, and which is rough to the

touch, stiff, and hard.
That frail woman, supporting her tender body which he has laid repeatedly in

great suffering on a couch, will certainly cause even you to shed tears in the

form of fresh rain. Generally all tender-hearted beaing have a compassionate

disposition.
I know that the mind of your friend is filled with accumulated love for me. On

account of that I imagine her condition thus at our first separation. Even the

thought of my good fortune does not make me feel like talking. All that I have

said, brother, will be before your eyes before long.
I think of the eyes of that deer-eyed one, the sideways movements of which

are concealed by her hair, which are devoid of the glistening of collyrium,

which have forgotten the play of their eyebrows on account of abstinence

from sweet liqour, and whose upper eyelids tremble when you are near: these

eyes take on the semblance of the beauty of a blue lotus that is trembling with

the movement of a fish.
And her lovely thigh will tremble, being without the impressions of my

fingernails, caused to abandon it long-accustomed string of pearls by the

course of fate, used to the caresses of my hand at the end of our enjoyment,

and as pale as the stem of a beautiful plantain palm.
At that time, O cloud, if she is enjoying the sleep she has found, remaining

behind her, your thunder restrained, wait during the night-watch. Let not the

knot of her creeper-like arms in close embrace with me her beloved, somehow

found in a dream, fall from my neck at once.
Having woken her with a breeze cooled by your own water droplets, she will

be refreshed like the fresh clusters of buds of the malati. Your lightning held

within, being firm, begin to address her with words of thunder; she, the proud

on whose eyes are fixed on the window occupied by you:
‘O you who are not a widow, know me to be a cloud who is a dear friend of

your husband. With messages stored in my heart I have arrived at your side,

and with slow and friendly rumblings I urge along the road a multitude of

weary travellers who are eager to loosen the braids of their womenfolk.’
When this has been said, like Sita looking up at Hanuman, having beheld you

with her heart swollen with longing and having honoured you, she will listen

attentively to you further, O friend. For women, news of their beloved that

brought by a friend is little short of union.
O long-lived one, following my instructions and to bring credit to yourself,

address her thus: ‘Your partner who resides at the ashram on Ramagiri, who is

still alive though separated from you, inquires after your news, madam. This

is the very thing that is first asked by beings who may easily fall into

misfortune.
He whose path is blocked by an invidious command and is at a distance, by

means of these intentions, unites his body with yours, the emaciated with the

emaciated, the afflicted with the deeply afflicted, that which is wet with tears

with that which is tearful, that whose longing is ceaseless with that which is

longed for, that whose sighs are hot with that whose sighs are even more

numerous.
He who has become eager to say what is to be said in words in your ear, in the

presence of your female friends, with a desire to touch your face, he who is

beyond the range of your ears, unseen by your eyes, addresses these words

composed on account of his desire, through the agency of my mouth:
“I perceive your body in the priyangu vines, your glances in the eyes of the

startled deer, the beauty of your face in the moon, your hair in the peacock’s

feathers and the play of your eyebrows in the delicate ripples on the river, but

alas, your whole likeness is not to be found in a single thing, O passionate

one.
Having painted your likeness, with mineral colours on a rock, appearing angry

because of love, as soon as I wish to paint myself fallen at your feet, my

vision is clouded again and again with copious tears. Cruel fate does not

permit our union, even in this picture.
Watching me with my arms stretched up into the air for an ardent embrace

when you have somhow been found by me in a vision or in a dream, the local

deities repeatedly shed teardrops as big as pearls on the buds of the trees.

Those winds from the snowy mountains which having broken open the sepals

of the buds of the devadaru trees become fragrant with their milky sap and

which blow southwards—they are embraced by me, O virtuous one, with the

thought that your body might previously have been touched by them.
How can the night with its long watches by compressed into a moment? How

may a day become cooler in every season? Thus my mind, whose desires are

difficult to satisfy, is rendered without refuge by the deep and burning pangs

of separation from you, O one of trembling eyes.
Indeed, ever brooding, I maintain myself by means of myself alone.

Therefore, O beautiful one, you also should not fear. Whose happiness is

endless or whose suffering is complete? The condition of life rises and falls

like the felly of a wheel.
The the holder of the bow called Sharnga rises from his serpent bed, the

curse will end for me. Having closed your eyes, endure the remaining four

months. After that, we two will indulge our own various desires, increased by

separation, on nights lit by the full autumn moon.”
And he said further, “In the past you embraced my neck as we lay on our bed,

you called out something in your sleep and woke up. When I asked over and

over, you said to me with an inward smile, ‘I saw you in my dream enjoying

another girl, you cheat!’
Having ascertained from the telling of this account that I am well, do not be

suspicious of me on account of any rumour, O dark-eyed one. They say that

love somehow perishes during separation, but because there is no fulfilment,

the love for that which is desired with increasing desire, becomes a even more

ardent.”’
Having comforted her thus, your friens whose sorrow is great in her first

separation, return at once from the mountain whose peaks were cast up by the

bull of three-eyed one. Then you should prop up my life which flags like

kunda flowers in the morning with her words about her welfare, and an

account of her.
I hope, friend, that you are firmly resolved upon this friendly service for me. I

certainly do not regard your silences as indicating refusal. When requested

you also apportion rain to the cataka cuckoos in silence, for the response of

the virtuous to those who make a request is the performance of that which is

desired.
Having undertaken this favour for me who bears this request that is unworthy

of you, with thoughts of compassion for me, either out of friendship or

because you think that I am alone, proceed to your desired destination, O

cloud, your splendour enhanced by rainy season, and may you never be

separated like this even for a moment from your spouse, the lightning.
Kalidasa
___________________

Ham de Foc – Concert a la ciutat de València

___________________

The Poetry Of Ancient India: Kalidasa

AUTUMN

The autumn comes, a maiden fair

In slenderness and grace,

With nodding rice-stems in her hair

And lilies in her face.

In flowers of grasses she is clad;

And as she moves along,

Birds greet her with their cooing glad

Like bracelets’ tinkling song.

A diadem adorns the night

Of multitudinous stars;

Her silken robe is white moonlight,

Set free from cloudy bars;

And on her face (the radiant moon)

Bewitching smiles are shown:

She seems a slender maid, who soon

Will be a woman grown.

Over the rice-fields, laden plants

Are shivering to the breeze;

While in his brisk caresses dance

The blossomed-burdened trees;

He ruffles every lily-pond

Where blossoms kiss and part,

And stirs with lover’s fancies fond

The young man’s eager heart.

—
Look To this Day

Look to this day:

For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

The bliss of growth,

The glory of action,

The splendour of achievement

Are but experiences of time.
For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow is only a vision;

And today well-lived, makes

Yesterday a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day;

Such is the salutation to the ever-new dawn!

—
THE HERO AND THE NYMPH
or Vikramorvasie
A monologue from the play

PURURAVAS: [Angrily] Halt, ruffian, halt! Thou in thy giant arms

Bearest away my Urvasie! He has

Soared up from a great crag in the sky

And wars me, hurling downward bitter rain

Of arrows. With this thunderbolt I smite thee.

[He lifts up a clod and runs as to hurl it; then pauses and looks upward.]

I am deceived! This was a cloud

Equipped for rain, no proud and lustful fiend,

The rainbow, not a weapon drawn to kill,

Quick-driving showers are these, not sleety rain

Of arrows; and that brilliant line like streak

Of gold upon a touchstone, cloud-inarmed,

I saw, was lightning, not my Urvasie.

[Sorrowfully] Where shall I find her now? Where clasp those thighs

Swelling and smooth and white?

This grove, this grove should find her.

And here, O here is something to enrage my resolution.

Red-tinged, expanding, wet and full of rain,

These blossom-cups recall to me her eyes

Brimming with angry tears. How shall I trace her,

Or what thing tells me “Here and here she wandered?”

If she had touched with her beloved feet

The rain-drenched forest-sands, there were a line

Of little gracious footprints seen, with lac

Envermeilled, sinking deeper towards the heel

Because o’erburdened by her hips’ large glories.

I see a hint of her! This way

Then went her angry beauty! Lo, her bodice

Bright green as is a parrot’s belly, smitten

With crimson drops. It once veiled in her bosom

And paused to show her naval deep as love.

These are her tears that from those angry eyes

Went trickling, stealing scarlet from her lips

To spangle all this green. Doubtless her heaving

Tumult of breasts broke its dear hold and, she

Stumbling in anger, from my Heaven it drifted.

I’ll gather it to my kisses.

[He stoops to it, then sorrowfully:]

O my heart!

Only green grass with dragon-wings enamelled!

From whom shall I in all the desolate forest

Have tidings of her, or what creature help me?

Lo, in yon waste of crags the peacock! he

Upon a cool moist rock that breathes of rain

Exults, aspires, his gorgeous mass of plumes

Seized, blown and scattered by the roaring gusts.

Pregnant of shrillness is his outstretched throat,

His look is with the clouds. Him I will question:

Have the bright corners of thine eyes beheld,

O sapphire-throated bird, her, my delight,

My wife, my passion, my sweet grief? Yielding

No answer, he begins his gorgeous dance.

Why should he be so glad of my heart’s woe?

I know thee, peacock. Since my cruel loss

Thy plumes that stream in splendour on the wind,

Have not one rival left. For when her heavy

Dark wave of tresses over all the bed

In softness wide magnificently collapsed

On her smooth shoulders massing purple glory

And bright with flowers, she passioning in my arms,

Who then was ravished with thy brilliant plumes,

Vain bird? I question thee not, heartless thing,

That joyest in others’ pain.

NOTE: This monologue is reprinted from The Hero and the Nymph. Trans. Sri Aurobindo. Hyderabad: Government Central Press, 1911.

_________________
An Indian poet and dramatist, Kalidasa lived sometime between the reign of Agnimitra, the second Shunga king (c. 170 BC) who was the hero of one of his dramas, and the Aihole inscription of AD 634 which praises Kalidasa’s poetic skills. Most scholars now associate him with the reign of Candra Gupta II (reigned c. 380-c. 415).
Little is known about Kalidasa’s life. According to legend, the poet was known for his beauty which brought him to the attention of a princess who married him. However, as legend has it, Kalidasa had grown up without much education, and the princess was ashamed of his ignorance and coarseness. A devoted worshipper of the goddess Kali (his name means literally Kali’s slave), Kalidasa is said to have called upon his goddess for help and was rewarded with a sudden and extraordinary gift of wit. He is then said to have become the most brilliant of the “nine gems” at the court of the fabulous king Vikramaditya of Ujjain. Legend also has it that he was murdered by a courtesan in Sri Lanka during the reign of Kumaradasa.
Kalidasa’s first surviving play, Malavikagnimitra or Malavika and Agnimitra tells the story of King Agnimitra, a ruler who falls in love with the picture of an exiled servant girl named Malavika. When the queen discovers her husbands passion for this girl, she becomes infuriated and has Malavika imprisoned, but as fate would have it, Malavika is in fact a true-born princess, thus legitimizing the affair.
Kalidasa’s second play, generally considered his masterpiece, is the Shakuntala which tells the story of another king, Dushyanta, who falls in love with another girl of lowly birth, the lovely Shakuntala. This time, the couple is happily married and things seem to be going smoothly until Fate intervenes. When the king is called back to court by some pressing business, his new bride unintentionally offends a saint who puts a curse on her, erasing the young girl entirely from the king’s memory. Softening, however, the saint concedes that the king’s memory will return when Shakuntala returns to him the ring he gave her. This seems easy enough–that is, until the girl loses the ring while bathing. And to make matters worse, she soon discovers that she is pregnant with the king’s child. But true love is destined to win the day, and when a fisherman finds the ring, the king’s memory returns and all is well. Shakuntala is remarkable not only for it’s beautiful love poetry, but also for its abundant humor which marks the play from beginning to end.
The last of Kalidasa’s surviving plays, Vikramorvashe or Urvashi Conquered by Valor, is more mystical than the earlier plays. This time, the king (Pururavas) falls in love with a celestial nymph named Urvashi. After writing her mortal suitor a love letter on a birch leaf, Urvashi returns to the heavens to perform in a celestial play. However, she is so smitten that she misses her cue and pronounces her lover’s name during the performance. As a punishment for ruining the play, Urvashi is banished from heaven, but cursed to return the moment her human lover lays eyes on the child that she will bear him. After a series of mishaps, including Urvashi’s temporary transformation into a vine, the curse is eventually lifted, and the lovers are allowed to remain together on Earth. Vikramorvashe is filled poetic beauty and a fanciful humor that is reminiscent of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In addition to his plays, Kalidasa wrote two surviving epic poems Raghuvamsha (“Dynasty of Raghu”) and Kumarasambhava (“Birth of the War God”), as well as the lyric “Meghaduta” (“Cloud Messenger”). He is generally considered to be the greatest Indian writer of any epoch.
___________________

No Visuals, but the music is great….

L’ Ham de Foc- el Que vull

___________________

Ah… sad day with the fires…

I hope this entry finds you safe, with family, friends, Loved Ones.

Life is fleeting, but beauty, she is everywhere….
On The Menu:

Big Sur Burning

Henry on Big Sur….

Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch…

Big Sur, The Way It Was…

Poet Of The Blessed Coast: Robinson Jeffers

A gift from Mike Crowley: Rabbi Shergill – Bulla Ki Jaana Maen Kaun

___________
Big Sur Burning
This was going to be an edition with some very nice poetry from ancient India, but a fire got in the way.
As I write, Big Sur is burning. Maybe Nepenthes, The Big Sur Store, or Deetjens… Big Sur, has always been a place of great beauty and a location that changes me spiritually from when I was 15, and standing on the shore, to living up Lime Kiln Creek Canyon a half year later.
Big Sur is where Mary and I had our honeymoon, (8 years into our marriage)… staying at Deetjen’s: (this is the original building when the highway ran right past… ) We stayed in the Fireside Room, with nightly visits from the Raccoon’s after they raided the kitchens….
Lots of good memories of that time… Tripping up the Little Sur with the Blessed Little Ones, watching the sunset at Nepenthes, driving down past Esalen, Emile White holding and kissing Mary’s hand and making cooing sounds about her beauty at The Henry Miller Memorial Library…. He must of been about 88 then. We still have his poster on the wall next to Mary’s computer.
Mary says we’ll go south in a year or so, to visit. I have promised Rowan and his friends a road trip south down Highway 1/101. We will end at Lime Kiln Creek where my life took a turn and by the blessings of the sea, sky and land of the Sur, I ended up who I am today. Everything changes everytime I visit. The road opens up, and vision comes clear again.
Big Sur has that effect. Long may it tumble down into the sea….
Blessings,

Gwyllm

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Henry on Big Sur….

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Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch…

“Some will say they do not wish to dream their lives away. As if life itself were not a dream, a very real dream from which there is no awakening! We pass from one state of dream to another: from the dream of sleep to the dream of waking, from the dream of life to the dream of death. Whoever has enjoyed a good dream never complains of having wasted his time. On the contrary, he is delighted to have partaken of a reality which serves to heighten and enhance the reality of everyday.
The oranges of Bosch’s “millennium,” as I said before, exhale this dreamlike reality which constantly eludes us and which is the very substance of life. They are far more delectable, far more potent, than the Sunkist oranges we daily consume in the naive belief that they are laden with wonder-working vitamins. the millennial oranges which Bosch created restore the soul: the ambiance in which he suspended them is the everlasting one of spirit become real.

Every creature, every object, everyplace has it’s own ambiance. Our world itself possesses an ambiance which is unique. But worlds, objects, creatures, places, all have this in common: they are ever in a state of transformative power. when the personality liquefies, so to speak, as it does so deliciously in dream, and the very nature of one’s being is alchemized, when form and substance, time and space, become yeilding and elastic, responsive and obedient to one’s slightest wish, he who awakens from his dream knows beyond all doubt that the imperishable soul which he calls his own is but a vehicle of the eternal element of change”

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Big Sur, The Way It Was…

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Poet Of The Blessed Coast: Robinson Jeffers

Fire On The Hills

The deer were bounding like blown leaves

Under the smoke in front the roaring wave of the brush-fire;

I thought of the smaller lives that were caught.

Beauty is not always lovely; the fire was beautiful, the terror

Of the deer was beautiful; and when I returned

Down the back slopes after the fire had gone by, an eagle

Was perched on the jag of a burnt pine,

Insolent and gorged, cloaked in the folded storms of his shoulders

He had come from far off for the good hunting

With fire for his beater to drive the game; the sky was merciless

Blue, and the hills merciless black,

The sombre-feathered great bird sleepily merciless between them.

I thought, painfully, but the whole mind,

The destruction that brings an eagle from heaven is better than men.

—
July Fourth By The Ocean

The continent’s a tamed ox, with all its mountains,

Powerful and servile; here is for plowland, here is

for park and playground, this helpless

Cataract for power; it lies behind us at heel

All docile between this ocean and the other. If

flood troubles the lowlands, or earthquake

Cracks walls, it is only a slave’s blunder or the

natural

Shudder of a new made slave. Therefore we happy

masters about the solstice

Light bonfires on the shore and celebrate our power.

The bay’s necklaced with fire, the bombs make crystal

fountains in the air, the rockets

Shower swan’s-neck over the night water…. I

imagined

The stars drew apart a little as if from troublesome

children, coldly compassionate;

But the ocean neither seemed astonished nor in awe:

If this had been the little sea that Xerxes whipped,

how it would have feared us.

—

—
The Summit Redwood

Only stand high a long enough time your lightning

will come; that is what blunts the peaks of

redwoods;

But this old tower of life on the hilltop has taken

it more than twice a century, this knows in

every

Cell the salty and the burning taste, the shudder

and the voice.
The fire from heaven; it has

felt the earth’s too

Roaring up hill in autumn, thorned oak-leaves tossing

their bright ruin to the bitter laurel-leaves,

and all

Its under-forest has died and died, and lives to be

burnt; the redwood has lived. Though the fire

entered,

It cored the trunk while the sapwood increased. The

trunk is a tower, the bole of the trunk is a

black cavern,

The mast of the trunk with its green boughs the

mountain stars are strained through

Is like the helmet-spike on the highest head of an

army; black on lit blue or hidden in cloud

It is like the hill’s finger in heaven. And when the

cloud hides it, though in barren summer, the

boughs

Make their own rain.
Old Escobar had a cunning trick

when he stole beef. He and his grandsons

Would drive the cow up here to a starlight death and

hoist the carcass into the tree’s hollow,

Then let them search his cabin he could smile for

pleasure, to think of his meat hanging secure

Exalted over the earth and the ocean, a theft like a

star, secret against the supreme sky.

—
Vulture

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside

Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling

high up in heaven,

And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit

narrowing,

I understood then

That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-

feathers

Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.

I could see the naked red head between the great wings

Bear downward staring. I said, ‘My dear bird, we are wasting time

here.

These old bones will still work; they are not for you.’ But how

beautiful

he looked, gliding down

On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the

sea-light

over the precipice. I tell you solemnly

That I was sorry to have disappointed him. To be eaten by that beak

and

become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes–

What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life

after death.

__________

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Rabbi Shergill – Bulla Ki Jaana Maen Kaun

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Thanks for reading Turfing.

Bright Blessings…

G

A quick one….
I have had the bulk of this sitting about for a week or so. I have been doing art, trying to get the magazine jump started, and dealing with a whole bunch of new customers. Summer is a busy time at Caer Llwydd, and life has been doing a jig in and out the door, through the garden and down our streets.
Mary, Rowan and I had a day together yesterday, first time that we have had an outing in a long time. Took some books to Powell’s warehouse , then off to lunch on NE 23rd at a deli, then to Powell’s itself… Mary picked up some new cook-books (Afghani Food Rocks!), Rowan a gaming book and a small book to carry around for writing down poetry, and I picked up Allen Ginsberg’s Collected Works, 1947-1997, the Gary Snyder Reader, and some design books for the magazine. We had a great time….
California is burning, and my thoughts have been with friends who live in the hills. Here is praying that the fire season passes quickly. I talked to Mike Crowley, who lives in the Trinity Alps, and he says it is beyond smoky where he is. I have emailed other friends on the west slope of the Sierra’s but haven’t heard back yet….

Time to tell ya…. the radio has lots of new music. Please check it out! I am uploading lots of new stuff, and we are looking at doing regular shows again if there is an interest in it from all those good folks who visit it…
There is lots of stuff going on with it, and especially the spoken word channel… as I type this, there is a talk about Ecstasy going on, and there will be poetry coming up shortly…..
Today we are featuring an Italian Folk/Techno outfit: Fiamma Fumana… thanks to Peter for mentioning them in an email.
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
On The Menu:

Italian Quotes

Fiamma Fumana 1.0 Live in Winnipeg

Gary Snyder Interview…

Leonard Cohen Poems: Songs Of Love And Hate

Fiamma Fumana “Di madre in figlia” live in Winnipeg

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Italian Quotes:
“Old wine and friends improve with age.”
“He who knows little quickly tells it”
“Eggs have no business dancing with stones”
“He who is guilty believes all men speak ill of him”
“Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.”
“The teacher is like the candle, which lights others in consuming itself”

__________________
Fiamma Fumana 1.0 Live in Winnipeg

___________________
Gary Snyder Interview…

This interview originated at Caffeine Destiny..
Gary Snyder was born in San Francisco and studied at Reed College in Portland. Zen poet and environmental activist, he’s worked as a logger and a trail-crew member, and studied Oriental langauges at Berkeley. He’s also written many books of poetry and prose, including, The Gary Snyder Reader , No Nature:New and Selected Poems , Riprap , Axe Handles , Regarding Wave, and Turtle Island, which won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
He is currently a professor of English at the University of California, Davis, and recently took the time to answer a few of our questions.
Caffeine Destiny: What is the most satisfying thing for you about writing, and has that changed over the years?

Gary Snyder: The act of making something, bringing elements together and creating a new thing with craft and wit hidden in it, is a great pleasure. It’s not the only sort of pleasure, but it is challenging and satisfying, and not unlike other sorts of creating and building. In Greek “poema” means “makings.” It doesn’t change with the years, or with the centuries.
How do you know when a poem is finished?

It tastes done.
If animals wrote things down, who would you rather hear a poem by – a raccoon or a possum?

A raccoon’s poem is alert and inquisitive, and amazes you by what a mess it makes. A possum’s poem seems sort of slow and dumb at first, but then it rolls over. When you get close to it, it spits in your eye.
What’s the most striking difference to you between California wilderness and Oregon wilderness?

You need to specify east side or west side, north or south, for this to be a useful question. The northwestern California-southwestern Oregon zone is basically one. Southeast Oregon belongs with the Great Basin and then a lot of eastern Oregon to the Columbia Plateau. Lower Columbia includes both sides of the river. The differences, east or west, are expressed basically in precipitation, and the Northern Spotted Owl needs bigger and denser groves than the Southern.
Do you find yourself working on several poems at once, or do you start one poem and see it through to some kind of conclusion before you start on another one?

Both, and also other strategies and variations as well. An artist is a total switch-hitter.
Are there some poets whose work you return to again and again?

Yes, among them Du Fu, Lorca, Basho, Pound, Yeats, Buson, Bai Ju-yi, Li He, Su Shih, Homer, Mira Bhai, Kalidasa.
What is your advice to writers who are just starting out?

Think like a craftsperson, learn your materials, your tools, and then read a lot of poetry so you don’t keep inventing wheels.
Can poetry change the world?

Ha.

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Leonard Cohen Poems: Songs Of Love And Hate

Avalanche
Well I stepped into an avalanche,

it covered up my soul;

when I am not this hunchback that you see,

I sleep beneath the golden hill.

You who wish to conquer pain,

you must learn, learn to serve me well.
You strike my side by accident

as you go down for your gold.

The cripple here that you clothe and feed

is neither starved nor cold;

he does not ask for your company,

not at the centre, the centre of the world.
When I am on a pedestal,

you did not raise me there.

Your laws do not compel me

to kneel grotesque and bare.

I myself am the pedestal

for this ugly hump at which you stare.
You who wish to conquer pain,

you must learn what makes me kind;

the crumbs of love that you offer me,

they’re the crumbs I’ve left behind.

Your pain is no credential here,

it’s just the shadow, shadow of my wound.
I have begun to long for you,

I who have no greed;

I have begun to ask for you,

I who have no need.

You say you’ve gone away from me,

but I can feel you when you breathe.
Do not dress in those rags for me,

I know you are not poor;

you don’t love me quite so fiercely now

when you know that you are not sure,

it is your turn, beloved,

it is your flesh that I wear.

—
Joan Of Arc
Now the flames they followed Joan of Arc

as she came riding through the dark;

no moon to keep her armour bright,

no man to get her through this very smoky night.

She said, “I’m tired of the war,

I want the kind of work I had before,

a wedding dress or something white

to wear upon my swollen appetite.”
Well, I’m glad to hear you talk this way,

you know I’ve watched you riding every day

and something in me yearns to win

such a cold and lonesome heroine.

“And who are you?” she sternly spoke

to the one beneath the smoke.

“Why, I’m fire,” he replied,

“And I love your solitude, I love your pride.”
“Then fire, make your body cold,

I’m going to give you mine to hold,”

saying this she climbed inside

to be his one, to be his only bride.

And deep into his fiery heart

he took the dust of Joan of Arc,

and high above the wedding guests

he hung the ashes of her wedding dress.
It was deep into his fiery heart

he took the dust of Joan of Arc,

and then she clearly understood

if he was fire, oh then she must be wood.

I saw her wince, I saw her cry,

I saw the glory in her eye.

Myself I long for love and light,

but must it come so cruel, and oh so bright?

—
Famous Blue Raincoat
It’s four in the morning, the end of December

I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better

New York is cold, but I like where I’m living

There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening.
I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert

You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record.
Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair

She said that you gave it to her

That night that you planned to go clear

Did you ever go clear?
Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older

Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder

You’d been to the station to meet every train

And you came home without Lili Marlene
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life

And when she came back she was nobody’s wife.
Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth

One more thin gypsy thief

Well I see Jane’s awake –
She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer

What can I possibly say?

I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you

I’m glad you stood in my way.
If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me

Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes

I thought it was there for good so I never tried.
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair

She said that you gave it to her

That night that you planned to go clear

—
Love Calls You By Your Name
You thought that it could never happen

to all the people that you became,

your body lost in legend, the beast so very tame.

But here, right here,

between the birthmark and the stain,

between the ocean and your open vein,

between the snowman and the rain,

once again, once again,

love calls you by your name.
The women in your scrapbook

whom you still praise and blame,

you say they chained you to your fingernails

and you climb the halls of fame.

Oh but here, right here,

between the peanuts and the cage,

between the darkness and the stage,

between the hour and the age,

once again, once again,

love calls you by your name.
Shouldering your loneliness

like a gun that you will not learn to aim,

you stumble into this movie house,

then you climb, you climb into the frame.

Yes, and here, right here

between the moonlight and the lane,

between the tunnel and the train,

between the victim and his stain,

once again, once again,

love calls you by your name.
I leave the lady meditating

on the very love which I, I do not wish to claim,

I journey down the hundred steps,

but the street is still the very same.

And here, right here,

between the dancer and his cane,

between the sailboat and the drain,

between the newsreel and your tiny pain,

once again, once again,

love calls you by your name.
Where are you, Judy, where are you, Anne?

Where are the paths your heroes came?

Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away,

was I, was I only limping, was I really lame?

Oh here, come over here,

between the windmill and the grain,

between the sundial and the chain,

between the traitor and her pain,

once again, once again,

love calls you by your name.
___________________

Fiamma Fumana “Di madre in figlia” live in Winnipeg

__________________

An entry for Wednesday. Some of this has been floating around in my files for awhile…

anyway, if you are free this Saturday, come down to 2nd and SE Washington for the Muralist show blow-out! 5 bands, live painting, closed off block party, the works. I will be there putting together a new piece with spray cans and brush. Come on down, from 12:00 noon on. It is bound to be hot, but we’ll have some fun!
Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm
On The Menu:

Tlemcen de Tetma le doux chant Andalou

The Apocalypse Of Hasheesh

Poetry: Up For A Bit Of Dogen?

Sérénades de Grenade

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Tlemcen de Tetma le doux chant Andalou

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The Apocalypse Of Hasheesh

by Fitz Hugh Ludlow

In returning from the world of hasheesh, I bring with me many and diverse memories. The echoes of a sublime rapture which thrilled and vibrated on the very edge of pain; of Promethean agonies which wrapt the soul like a mantle of fire; of voluptuous delirium which suffused the body with a blush of exquisite languor — all are mine. But in value far exceeding these, is the remembrance of my spell-bound life as an apocalyptic experience.
Not, indeed, valuable, when all things are considered. Ah no! The slave of the lamp who comes at the summons of the hasheesh Aladdin will not always cringe in the presence of his master. Presently he grows bold and for his service demands a guerdon as tremendous as the treasures he unlocked. Dismiss him, hurl your lamp into the jaws of some fathomless abyss, or take his place while he reigns over you, a tyrant of Gehenna!
The value of this experience to me consists in its having thrown open to my gaze many of those sublime avenues in the spiritual life, at whose gates the soul in its ordinary state is forever blindly groping, mystified, perplexed, yet earnest to the last in its search for that secret spring which, being touched, shall swing back the colossal barrier. In a single instant I have seen the vexed question of a lifetime settled, the mystery of some grand recondite process of mind laid bare, the last grim doubt that hung persistently on the sky of a sublime truth blown away.
How few facts can we trace up to their original reason! In all human speculations how inevitable is the recurrence of the ultimate “Why?” Our discoveries in this latter age but surpass the old-world philosophy in fanning this impenetrable mist but a few steps further up the path of thought, and deferring the distance of a few syllogisms the unanswerable question.
How is it that all the million drops of memory preserve their insulation, and do not run together in the brain into one fluid chaos of impression? How does the great hand of central force stretch on invisibly through ether till it grasps the last sphere that rolls on the boundaries of light-quickened space? How does spirit communicate with matter, and where is their point of tangency? Such are the mysteries which bristle like a harvest far and wide over the grand field of thought.
Problems like these, which had been the perplexity of all my previous life, have I seen unraveled by hasheesh, as in one breathless moment the rationale of inexplicable phenomena has burst upon me in a torrent of light. It may have puzzled me to account for some strange fact of mind; taking hypothesis after hypothesis, I have labored for a demonstration; at last I have given up the attempt in despair. During the progress of the next fantasia of hasheesh, the subject has again unexpectedly presented itself, and in an instant the solution has lain before me as an intuition, compelling my assent to its truth as imperatively as a mathematical axiom. At such a time I have stood trembling with awe at the sublimity of the apocalypse; for though this be not the legitimate way of reaching the explications of riddles which, if of any true utility at all, are intended to strengthen the argumentative faculty, there is still an unutterable sense of majesty in the view one thus discovers of the unimagined scope of the intuitive, which surpasses the loftiest emotions aroused by material grandeur.
I was once walking in the broad daylight of a summer afternoon in the full possession of hasheesh delirium. For an hour the tremendous expansion of all visible things had been growing toward its height; it now reached it, and to the fullest extent I realized the infinity of space. Vistas no longer converged, sight met no barrier; the world was horizonless, for earth and sky stretched endlessly onward in parallel planes. Above me the heavens were terrible with the glory of a fathomless depth. I looked up, but my eyes, unopposed, every moment penetrated further and further into the immensity, and I turned them downward lest they should presently intrude into the fatal splendors of the Great Presence. Joy itself became terrific, for it seemed the ecstasy of a soul stretching its cords and waiting in intense silence to hear them snap and free it from the enthrallment of the body. Unable to bear visible objects, I shut my eyes. In one moment a colossal music filled the whole hemisphere above me, and I thrilled upward through its environment on visionless wings. It was not song, it was not instruments, but the inexpressible spirit of sublime sound — like nothing I had ever heard-impossible to be symbolized; intense, yet not loud; the ideal of harmony, yet distinguishable into a multiplicity of exquisite parts. I opened my eyes, yet it still continued. I sought around me to detect some natural sound which might be exaggerated into such a semblance, but no, it was of unearthly generation, and it thrilled through the universe an inexplicable, a beautiful yet an awful symphony.
Suddenly my mind grew solemn with the consciousness of a quickened perception. I looked abroad on fields, and water, and sky, and read in them all a most startling meaning. I wondered how I had ever regarded them in the light of dead matter, at the furthest only suggesting lessons. They were now grand symbols of the sublimest spiritual truths, truths never before even feebly grasped, utterly unsuspected.
Like a map, the arcana of the universe lay bare before me. I saw how every created thing not only typifies but springs forth from some mighty spiritual law as its offsping, its necessary external development; not the mere clothing of the essence, but the essence incarnate.
Nor did the view stop here. While that music from horizon to horizon was still filling the concave above me, I became conscious of a numerical order which ran through it, and in marking this order I beheld it transferred from the music to every movement of the universe. Every sphere wheeled on in its orbit, every emotion of the soul rose and fell, every smallest moss and fungus germinated and grew, according to some peculiar property of numbers which severally governed them and which was most admirably typified by them in return. An exquisite harmony of proportion reigned through space, and I seemed to realize that the music which I heard was but this numerical harmony making itself objective through the development of a grand harmony of tones.
The vividness with which this conception revealed itself to me made it a thing terrible to bear alone. An unutterable ecstasy was carrying me away, but I dared not abandon myself to it. I was no seer who could look on the unveiling of such glories face to face.
An irrepressible yearning came over me to impart what I beheld, to share with another soul the weight of this colossal revelation. With this purpose I scrutinized the vision; I sought in it for some characteristic which might make it translatable to another mind. There was none! In absolute incommunicableness it stood apart, a thought, a system of thought which as yet had no symbol in spoken language.
For a time, how long, a hasheesh-eater alone can know, I was in an agony. I searched every pocket for my pencil and note-book, that I might at least set down some representative mark which would afterwards recall to me the lineaments of my apocalypse. They were not with me. Jutting into the water of the brook along which I wandered lay a broad flat stone. “Glory in the Highest!” I shouted exultingly, “I will at least grave on this tablet some hieroglyph of what I feel!” Tremblingly I sought for my knife. That, too, was gone! It was then that in a frensy I threw myself prostrate on the stone, and with my nails sought to make some memorial scratch upon it. Hard, hard as flint! In despair I stood up.
Suddenly there came a sense as of some invisible presence walking the dread paths of the vision with me, yet at a
distance as if separated from my side by a long flow of time. Taking courage, I cried, “Who has ever been here before me, who in years past has shared with me this unutterable view?” In tones which linger in my soul to this day, a grand, audible voice responded, “Pythagoras!” In an instant I was calm. I heard the footsteps of that sublime sage echoing upward through the ages, and in celestial light I read my vision unterrified, since it had burst upon his sight before me. For years previous I had been perplexed with his mysterious philosophy. I saw in him an isolation from universal contemporary mind for which I could not account. When the Ionic school was at the height of its dominance, he stood forth alone, the originator of a system as distinct from it as the antipodes of mind. The doctrine of Thales was built up by the uncertain processes of an obscure logic, that of Pythagoras seemed informed by intuition. In his assertions there had always appeared to me a grave conviction of truth, a consciousness of sincerity, which gave them a great weight with me, though seeing them through the dim refracting medium of tradition and grasping their meaning imperfectly. I now saw the truths which he set forth, in their own light. I also saw, as to this day I firmly believe, the source whence their revelation flowed. Tell me not that from Phoenicia he received the wand at whose signal the cohorts of the spheres came trooping up before him in review, unveiling the eternal law and itineracy of their evolutions, and pouring on his spiritual ear that tremendous music to which they marched through space. No! During half a lifetime spent in Egypt and in India, both motherlands of this nepenths, doubt not that he quaffed its apocalyptic draught, and awoke, through its terrific quickening, into the consciousness of that ever-present and all-pervading harmony “which we hear not always, because the coarseness of the daily life hath dulled our ear.” The dim penetralia of the Theban Memnonium, or the silent spice groves of the upper Indua may have been the gymnasium of his wrestling with the mighty revealer; a priest or a gymnospohist may have been the first to annoint him with the palæstric oil, but he conquered alone. On the strange intuitive characteristics of his system, on the spheral music, on the government of all created things and their development according to the laws of number, yes, on the very use of symbols which could alone have force to the esoteric disciple, (and a terrible significancy, indeed, has the simplest form, to a mind hasheesh-quickened to read its meaning) — on all these is the legible stamp of the hasheesh inspiration.
It would be no hard task to prove, to a strong probability, at least, that the initiation into the Pythagorean mysteries and the progressive instruction that succeeded it, to a considerable extent, consisted in the employment, judiciously, if we may use the word, of hasheesh, as giving a critical and analytic power to the mind which enabled the neophyte to roll up the murk and mist from beclouded truths, till they stood distinctly seen in the splendor of their own harmonious beauty as an intuition.
One thing related of Pythagoras and his friends has seemed very striking to me. There is a legend that, as he was passing over a river, its waters called up to him, in the presence of his followers, “Hail, Pythagoras!” Frequently, while in the power of the hasheesh delirium, have I heard inanimate things sonorous with such voices. On every side they have saluted me; from rocks, and trees, and waters, and sky; in my happiness, filling me with intense exultation, as I heard them welcoming their master; in my agony, heaping nameless curses on my head, as I went away into an eternal exile from all sympathy. Of this tradition on Iamblichus, I feel an appreciation which almost convinces me that the voice of the river was, indeed, heard, though only in the quickened mind of some hasheesh-glorified esoteric. Again, it may be that the doctrine of the Metempsychosis was first communicated to Pythagoras by Theban priests; but the astonishing illustration, which hasheesh would contribute to this tenet, should not be overlooked in our attempt to assign its first suggestion and succeeding spread to their proper causes.
A modern critic, in defending the hypothesis, that Pythagoras was an impostor, has triumphantly asked, “Why did he assume the character of Apollo at the Olympic games? why did he boast that his soul had lived in former bodies, and that he had been first Acthalides, the son of Mercury, then Euphorbus, then Pyrrhus of Delos, and at last Pythagoras, but that he might more easily impose upon the credulity of an ignorant and superstitious people!” To us these facts seem rather an evidence of his sincerity. Had he made these assertions without proof, it is difficult to see how they would not have had a precisely contrary effect from that of paving the way to a more complete imposition upon the credulity of the people. Upon our hypothesis, it may be easily shown, not only how he could fully have believed these assertions himself, but, also, have given them a deep significance to the minds of his disciples.
Let us see. We will consider, for example, his assumption of the character of Phoebus at the Olympic games. Let us suppose that Pythagoras, animated with a desire of alluring to the study of his philosophy a choice and enthusiastic number out of that host who, along all the radii of the civilized world, had come up to the solemn festival at Elis, had, by the talisman of hasheesh, called to his aid the magic of a preternatural eloquence; that, while he addressed the throng whoin he had charmed into breathless attention by the weird brilliancy of his eyes, the unearthly imagery of his style, and the oracular insight of his thought, the grand impression flashed upon him from the very honor he was receiving, that he was the incarnation of some sublime deity. What wonder that he burst into the acknowledgment of his godship as a secret too majestic to be hoarded up; what wonder that this sudden revelation of himself, darting forth in burning words and amid such colossal surroundings, wend down with the accessories of time and place along the stream of perpetual tradition?
If I may illustrate great things by small, I well remember many hallucinations of my own which would be exactly parallel to such a fancy in the mind of Pythagoras. There is no impression more deeply stamped upon my past life than one of a walk along the brook which had frequently witnessed my wrestlings with the hasheesh-afreet, and which now beheld me, the immortal Zeus, descended among men to grant them the sublime benediction of renovated life. For this cause I had abandoned the serene seats of Olympus, the convocation of the gods, and the glory of an immortal kingship, while, by my side, Hermes trod the earth with radiant feet, the companion and dispenser of the beneficence of deity. Across lakes and seas, from continent to continent, we strode; the snows of Hæimus and the Himmalehs crunched beneath our sandals; our foreheads were bathed with the upper light, our breasts glowed with the exultant inspiration of the golden ether. Now resting on Chimborazo, I poured forth a majestic blessing upon all my creatures, and in an instant, with one omniscient glance, I beheld every human dwelling-place on the whole sphere irradiated with an unspeakable joy.
I saw the king rule more wisely, the laborer return from his toil to a happier home, the park grow green with an intenser culture, the harvest-field groan under the sheaves of a more prudent and prosperous husbandry; adown blue slopes came new and more populous flocks, led by unvexed and gladsome shepherds, a thousand healthy vineyards sprang up above their new-raised sunny terraces, every smallest heart glowed with an added thrill of exaltation, and the universal rebound of joy came pouring up into my own spirit with an intensity that lit my deity with rapture.
And this was only a poor hasheesh – eater, who, with his friend, walked out into the fields to enjoy his delirium among the beauties of a clear summer afternoon! What, then, of Pythagoras?
The tendency of the hasheesh – hallucination is almost always toward the supernatural or the sublimest forms of the natural. As the millennial Christ, I have put an end to all the jars of the world; by a word I have bound all humanity in etern alligaments of brotherhood; from the depths of the grand untrodden forest I have called the tiger, and with bloodless jaws he came mildly forth to fawn upon his king, a partaker in the universal amnesty. As Rienzi hurling fiery invective against the usurpations of Colonna, I have seen the broad space below the tribune grow populous with a multitude of intense faces, and within myself felt a sense of towering into sublimity, with the consciousness that it was my eloquence which swayed that great host with a storm of indignation, like the sirocco passing over reeds. Or, uplifted mightily by an irresistible impulse, I have risen through the ethereal infinitudes till I stood on the very cope of heaven, with the spheres below me. Suddenly, by an instantaneous revealing, I became aware of a mighty harp, which lay athwart the celestial hemisphere, and filled the whole sweep of vision before me. The lambent flame of myriad stars was burning in the azure spaces between its string, and glorious suns gemmed with unimaginable lustre all its colossal frame-work. While I stood overwhelmed by the visions, a voice spoke clearly from the depths of the surrounding ether, “Behold the harp of the universe!” Again I realized the typefaction of the same grand harmony of creation, which glorified the former vision to which I have referred; for every influence, from that which nerves the wing of Ithuriel down to the humblest force of growth, had there its beautiful and peculiar representative string. As yet the music slept, when the voice spake to me again — “Stretch forth thine hand and wake the harmonies!” Trembling yet daring, I swept the harp, and in an instant all heaven thrilled with an unutterable music. My arm strangely lengthened, I grew bolder, and my hand took a wider range. The symphony grew more intense; overpowered, I ceased, and heard tremendous echoes coming back from the infinitudes. Again I smote the chords; but, unable to endure the sublimity of the sound, I sank into an ecstatic trance, and was thus borne off unconsciously to the portals of some new vision.
But, if I found the supernatural an element of happiness, I also found it many times an agent of most bitter pain. If I once exulted in the thought that I was the millennial Christ, so, also, through a long agony, have I felt myself the crucified. In dim horror, I perceived the nails piercing my hands and feet; but it was not that which seemed the burden of my suffering. Upon my head, in a tremendous and ever-thickening cloud, came slowly down the guilt of all the ages past, and all the world to come; by a dreadful quickening, I beheld every atrocity and nameless crime coming up from all time on lines that centred in myself. The thorns clung to my brow, and bloody drops stood like dew upon my hair, yet, these were not the instruments of my agony. I was withered like a leaf in the breath of a righteous vengeance. The curtain of a lurid blackness hung between me and heaven, mercy was dumb forever, and I bore the anger of Omnipotence alone. Out of a fiery distance, demon chants of triumphant blasphemy came surging on my ear, and whispers of ferocious wickedness ruffled the leaden air about my cross. How long I bore this vicarious agony, I have never known; hours are no measure of time in hasheesh. I only know that, during the whole period, I sat perfectly awake among objects which I recognized as familiar; friends were passing and repassing before me, yet. I sat in speechless horror, convinced that to supplicate their pity, to ask their help in the tortures of my dual existence, would be a demand that men in time should reach out and grasp one in eternity, that mortality should succor immortality.
In my experience of hasheesh there has been one pervading characteristic — the conviction that, encumbered with a mortal body, I was suffering that which the untrammeled immortal soul could alone endure. The spirit seemed to be learning its franchise and, whether in joy or pain, shook the bars of flesh mightily, as if determined to escape from its cage. Many a time, in my sublimest ecstasy, have I asked myself, “Is this experience happiness or torture?” for soul and body gave different verdicts.
Hasheesh is no thing to be played with as a bauble. At its revealing, too-dread paths of spiritual life are flung open, too tremendous views disclosed of what the soul is capable of doing, and being, and suffering, for that soul to contemplate, till, relieved of the body, it can behold them alone.
Up to the time that I read in the September number of this Magazine the paper entitled “The Hasheesh-eater,” I had long walked among the visions of “the weed of insanity.” The recital given there seemed written out of my own soul. In outline and detail it was the counterpart of my own suffering. From that day, I shut the book of hasheesh experience, warned with a warning for which I cannot express myself sufficiently grateful. And now, as utterly escaped, I look back upon the world of visionary yet awful realities, and see the fountains of its Elysium and the flames of its Tartarus growing dimmer and still dimmer in the mists of distance, I hold the remembrance of its apocalypse as something which I shall behold again, when the spirit, looking no longer through windows of sense, shall realize its majesty unterrified, and face to face gaze on its infinite though now unseen surroundings.

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Up For A Bit Of Dogen?

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water.

The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken.

Although its light is wide and great,

The moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.

The whole moon and the entire sky

Are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.

—
Mountain Seclusion
I won’t even stop

at the valley’s brook

for fear that

my shadow

may flow into the world.

—

Viewing Peach Blossoms and Realizing the Way
In spring wind

peach blossoms

begin to come apart.

Doubts do not grow

branches and leaves.

—
On Nondependence of Mind
Water birds

going and coming

their traces disappear

but they never

forget their path.

—
Joyful in this mountain retreat yet still feeling melancholy,

Studying the Lotus Sutra every day,

Practicing zazen singlemindedly;

What do love and hate matter

When I’m here alone,

Listening to the sound of the rain

late in this autumn evening.

—
Drifting pitifully in the whirlwind of birth and death,

As if wandering in a dream,

In the midst of illusion I awaken to the true path;

There is one more matter I must not neglect,

But I need not bother now,

As I listen to the sound of the evening rain

Falling on the roof of my temple retreat

In the deep grass of Fukakusa.

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Sérénades de Grenade

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Andalusia plays strongly in my dreamscapes over the years… Imaginations of what the glories were, with the poetry, philosophy and arts. I am sure I romanticize it all a bit, but looking at what has come down through the ages, it looks damn good from my 21st century perch.
This edition celebrates some of the arts, philosophy, music, and poetry of a gone by period. If you are new to it, just sit back, read and maybe listen to some music from the time period… (yes I know it is Catalan Sephardic, but you’ll get the drift.) 8o)
A kingdom built on the shifting sands of time, a mirage maybe of a time made beautiful by the patina of ages…
Still dealing with the back. People have had some great suggestions, and I am following the advice as I can.
Hope Your Weekend is Sweet!
Bright Blessings, Gwyllm

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On The Menu:

Portland Muralist Show Closing Party!

The Links

Mara Aranda (3)

From My Friend Walt in Ohio…A Plea

From The History Of Philosophy In Islam… The Matter of Andalusia

Mara Aranda (2)

Poets of Andalusia…

Mara Aranda (1)

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The Closing Of The Portland Mural Show Party!
When: Noon Until 6:00 – Saturday, June 28th 2008

Where: Olympic Mills Commerce Center

107 SE Washington Street, PDX
Live Painting (including yours truly) Bands, Beer, You Name It!
See ya there!~

___________
The Links:

The Flying Shields of the Hopi Kachinas

Nut Case:The Teacher That Brands Students For Creationism…

Democrats Have Legalized Bush’s Crimes

Secret of the ‘lost’ tribe that wasn’t

____________

From Aman Aman:

Mara Aranda (3)

____________
From My Friend Walt in Ohio…A Plea
Slightly Modified from his email to ER…

I know that some of Turfings readers are fond of animals. So I’m posting this here. Maybe someone will be interested in helping a horse.
If anyone is interested in a really nice horse, free to a good home, PLEASE write me at pantheist @ mac.c o m (join the letters together!)
The horse in question is a 23 year old, quite beautiful, Palomino Quarter-Horse gelding, named “CB”, He is well trained, and has been ridden both Western and English, and he had dressage training.
Due to a stiffle problem (medial collateral ligament calcification) for which there is no cure, he is no longer rideable, except at a walk. His athletic days clearly are over, but he may still be able to handle some easy trail riding. And he would make a very attractive ‘pasture ornament’ . He is very friendly to people although does not get along well with some other horses. He is regularly de-wormed, and is current on his shots.
I’m trying to find a ‘forever home’ for him. I can’t keep him at home and it is too expensive for me to indefinitely pay for boarding him. Yet I don’t want to have him killed.
So if you might want him, or know someone who would, please contact me.
Thanks,
Walt

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From The History Of Philosophy In Islam…

On The Matter of Andalusia: Philosophy In The West/Beginnings

1. Western North-Africa, Spain and Sicily are reckoned as forming the Muslim West. North-Africa, to begin with, is of subordinate importance: Sicily is regulated by Spain, and is soon overthrown by the Normans of Lower Italy. For our purpose Muslim Spain or Andalusia first falls to be considered.
The drama of culture in the East passes here through a second representation. Just as Arabs there intermarried with Persians, so in the West they intermarry with Spaniards. And instead of Turks and Mongols we have here the Berbers of North-Africa, whose rude force is flung into the play of more refined civilization with a blighting influence ever on the increase.
After the fall of the Omayyads in Syria (750), a member of that House, Abderrakhman ibn Moawiya, betook himself to Spain, where he contrived to work his way up to the dignity of Emir of Cordova and all Andalusia. This Omayyad overlordship lasted for more than 250 years, and after a passing system of petty States, it attained its greatest brilliancy under Abderrakhman III (912-961), the first who assumed the title of Caliph, and his son al-Hakam II (961-976). The tenth century was for Spain, what the ninth was for the East,–the time of highest material and intellectual civilization. If possible, it was more fresh and native here than in the East, and, if it be true that all theorizing betokens either a lack or a stagnation of the power of production, it was more productive also: The sciences, and Philosophy in particular, had far fewer representatives in Spain. Speaking generally, we may say that the relations of intellectual life took a simpler form. There was a smaller number of strata in the new culture than in the old. No doubt there were, besides Muslims, Jews and Christians in Spain, who in the time of Abderrakhman III played their part in this cultivated life, of the Arabic stamp, in common with the rest. But of adherents of Zoroaster, atheists and such like, there were none. Even the sects of Eastern Islam were almost unknown. Only one school of Law, that of Malik, was admitted. No Mutazilite dialectic troubled the peace of the Faith. True enough the Andalusian poets glorified the trinity of Wine, Woman and Song; but flippant freethinking on the one hand, and gloomy theosophy and renunciation of the world on the other, rarely found expression.
On the whole, intellectual culture was dependent upon the East. From the tenth century onwards many journeys in search of knowledge were undertaken thither from Spain, by way of Egypt and as far as Eastern Persia, for the purpose of attending the prelections of scholars of renown. And farther, educational requirements in Andalusia attracted to it many a learned Eastern who found no occupation in his own home. Besides, al-Hakam II caused books to be

copied, all over the East, for his library, which is said to have contained 400,000 volumes.
The West was mainly interested in Mathematics, Natural Science, Astrology and Medicine, precisely as was the case at first in the East. Poetry, History and Geography were cultivated with ardour. But the mind was not yet “sicklied o‘er with the pale cast of thought”, for when Abdallah ibn Masarra of Cordova, under Abderrakhman III, brought home with him from the East a system of Natural Philosophy, he had to submit to see his writings consigned to the flames.

2. In the year 1013 Cordova, “the Gem of the World”, was laid waste by the Berbers, and the kingdom of the Omayyads was split up into a number of minor States. Its second bloom fills up the eleventh century,–the Medicean age of Spain, in which Art and Poetry still flourish in luxuriant growth at the courts of the various cities, upon the ruins of ancient splendour. Art grows refined; poetry becomes sage, and scientific thought subtle. Intellectual nutriment continues to be fetched from the East; and Natural Philosophy, the writings of the Faithful Brethren, and Logic from the school of Abu Sulaiman al-Sidjistani find admission one after the other. Towards the close of the century it is possible to trace the influence even of the writings of Farabi, and the “Medicine” of Ibn Sina becomes known.
The beginnings of philosophical reflection are found chiefly with the numerous men of culture among the Jews. Eastern Natural Philosophy produces a powerful and quite singular impression upon the mind of Ibn Gebirol, the Avencebrol of Christian authors; and Bakhya ibn Pakuda is influenced by the Faithful Brethren. Even the religious poetry of the Jews is affected by the philosophical movement; and what speaks therein is not the Jewish Congregation seeking after God, but the Soul rising towards the Supreme Spirit.
Among the Muslims, however, the number of those who addressed themselves to a thorough study of Philosophy was very limited. No master gathered about him a numerous band of disciples; and meetings of the learned, for the discussion of philosophical subjects, were scarcely ever held. The individual thinker must have felt very lonely in these circumstances. In the West, just as in the East, Philosophy was developed subjectively; but here it was more the concern of a few isolated individuals; and, besides, it stood more apart from the faith of the mass of the people. In the East there were countless intermediary agencies between faith and knowledge,–between the philosophers and the believing community. The problem of the individual thinker, confronted by political society and the faith of narrow-minded fanatical multitudes, was accordingly realized more acutely in the West.

_____________
Mara Aranda (2)

_____________

Poets of Andalusia…

Look at the beautiful sun.

As it rises, it shows one golden eyebrow,

plays miser with the other one,

but we know that soon

it will spread out a radiant veil

over all.
A marvelous mirror that appears in the East

only to hide again at dusk.
The sky is saddened

when the sun leaves

and puts on mourning robes.
I believe that falling stars

are nothing more

than sky’s gem-hard tears.
– Ibn Abi I-Haytham, Andalusia

—-
This beautiful pool,

a brimming eye,

has thick eyelashes of flowers.
Turtles cavort

in their capes of green algae.
Now they squabble on the bank

but when winter comes

they’ll dive below and hide.
At play they resemble

Christian soldiers

wearing on their backs

their leather shield.
Ibn Sarah (d. 1123, Santarem)

—-
Look at the ripe wheat

bending before the wind

like squadrons of horsemen

fleeing in defeat, bleeding

from the wounds of the poppies.
Ibn ‘Iyad (1083-1149, Central Andalusia)

—-
Sparks shooting from his eyes

and wearing a poppy on his head

he arises to announce the death of night.
when he crows he himself listens

to his call to prayer

then hurriedly beats his great wings

against his body.
It seems the king of Persia

gave him his crown

and Maria the Copt, sister of Moses,

hung the pendant around his neck.
He snitched the peacock’s dressiest coat

and to top it off

his strutting walk

he stole from a duck.

Al-As’ad Ibrahim ibn Billitah (11th century Toledo)

—-
The sky darkens:

flowers open their mouths

and search for their udders

of the nurturing rain

as battalions of black

water-laden clouds

parade majestically past

flashing their golden swords.

Ibn Shahayd (992-1034, Cordoba)

—-
If white is the colour

of mourning in Andalusia,

it is a proper custom.

Look at me,

I dress myself in the white

of white hair

in mourning for youth.

Abu l-Hasan al-Husri (d. 1095)

—-
On the morning they left

we said goodbye

filled with sadness

for the absence to come.
Inside the palanquins

on the camels’ backs

I saw their faces beautiful as moons

behind veils of golden cloth.
Beneath the veils

tears crept like scorpions

over the fragrant roses

of their cheeks.
These scorpions do not harm

the cheek they mark.
They save their sting

for the heart of the sorrowful lover.
Ibn Jakh (11th century)

(Poems translated by Emilio Garcia Gomez & Cola Franzen)
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Mara Aranda (1)

_____________

______
Friday finally… I have been laid up for a couple of days, with probably the worse back I have had in maybe 20 years since I broke my pelvis and twisted my lower spine. Unmovable yesterday, slightly mobile today. I am not complaining as much as informing. Through it all I have been removed mostly from the system and making a living… Well, I have made a nuisance of myself with having to have hot/cold packs brought to me where-ever I have been immobile at.
It is getting better, and those who I owe emails, phone calls and time to, I will be back in the game soonish I hope.
Here we are at Solstice already! Rowan is having a gathering of Thespians from his past school, and is generally generating a new life post High School. He is full of energy, and that is good.
Mary and Rowan got our Bee-Box mounted outside in the garden, all we need now is the bees to go with. Mary is in her element this time of year; she loves the garden.
Anyway, lots on this one (started a week ago, sorry!) It is a bit of Cosmic Therapy for yours truly, getting aligned once more to that ol’ Cozmic Flow…
Blessings,
Gwyllm

_________
On The Menu:

The Links

Quotes: Meditations Upon Peace

From Raymond Soulard: Within Within Radio Show

Enzo Avitabile & Bottari – ‘Omunnosemove”

Excerpt from “Psychedelic Psychotherapy and the Shadow”, a talk given by Anne Shulgin

Chuang Tzu Poems…

Chuang Tzu – Bio

Enzo Avitabile – Nuje e ll’acqua

____________
The Links:

The Christian Gene

Joe’s Back!

Does ball lightning have a sense of humour?

When worldviews collide

__________

Quotes: Meditations Upon Peace
Agatha Christie: One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.
Alex Noble: If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate good, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.
Andre Trocme: All who affirm the use of violence admit it is only a means to achieve justice and peace. But peace and justice are nonviolence…the final end of history. Those who abandon nonviolence have no sense of history. Rather they are bypassing history, freezing history, betraying history.
Anton Chekov: We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
Benjamin Franklin: There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Carl Sandburg:

Choose

The single clenched fist lifted and ready,

Or the open hand held out and waiting.

Choose:

For we meet by one or the other.
Croesus: In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

__________
From Raymond Soulard: Within Within Radio Show

Show #275

Time: 21 June 2008 (Saturday) at

19:00 UTC | PST-11am | EST-2pm | UK- 7pm | NZ-8am
High speed listen at: http://yage.net:9000/listen.pls

Dial-up listen at: [currently disabled]

Now Podcasting at: [currently disabled]

Duration: ~3h
On this week’s show:
New Rock Album: Coldplay Viva La Vida (2008)…Last heard from in

2005, this great, sometimes maligned British band collaborated with

meister producer Brian Eno to push their boundaries, find new places

within and those out there in the troubled world…let their passions,

anger and hope, come out new and exciting…
Classic Rock Album: Harry Chapin, Heads & Tales (1972)…every so

often I indulge among the shadows of my past, I let myself remember

some other time through songs…how Harry comforted me in my youth,

singing in my head on the streets of then, before Walkmen and

iPods…there is warmth and melancholy and much strength in these

beautiful songs…
Storybook Time: Continuing Chapter Twenty-one of Breaking Open the

Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

by Daniel Pinchbeck…
Readings from Labyrinthine fixtion & Many Musics poems…& this

week’s featured artist is Elvis Costello, a handful of jittery,

glittery songs from his early years…summer solstice upon us, the year

nutty as a fruitcake, nuttier still…follow the squirrels, maybe they

know the way…
Webcasting to the globe & beyond from the People’s Republic of

Portland, Oregon!
__________

We have two entries from Enzo. Thanks to Peter for revealing this wonderful musician! Peter always has a bit of sonic beauty ready for Turfing. He has turned me on to so much good stuff!

Enzo Avitabile & Bottari – ‘Omunnosemove”

__________
Thanks To Dr. Con for the pointer…

Excerpt from “Psychedelic Psychotherapy and the Shadow”, a talk given by Anne Shulgin

I’ve come to realize that the most important part of the process, was working with the Shadow. I think you’ve all, um, of what Carl Jung calls, the Shadow. The term most often used in the society at large is the dark-side. I think it’s safe to say that this Shadow aspect of the human psyche, while it remains unconscious, can be blamed for all wars, from tribal conflicts to battles between great nations, it causes racial prejudice, it underlies jealousy and resentment. You see the Shadow in every vampire and werewolf movie. And its face is the face of a very popular figure called the Devil, or Satan. In our present time we have Darth Vader. However there is a difference between Darth Vader and the earlier demonic figures, in that Darth Vader was created by a film-maker who understood what he represented. After all George Lucas was a student of Joseph Campbell.
However, when work on the Shadow is underway, when it begins to drift towards conscious awareness, it carries with it gifts. To give you a brief clue to what I mean, think about the great works of art in painting and music for instance, and recognize that pure light and beauty, sweetness and gentleness, by themselves, will give pleasure only for a short time. For what we experience as greatness, fullness and authenticity, there needs to be an edge – a touch of darkness, a bitter-sweetness, even a shade of sadness or pain contained in the work. If you want an illustration, I hope I don’t offend too many people, but if you want an illustration of too much sweetness in light, um, becoming cloying to say the least, you may have seen the paintings of a very famous and very wealthy called Thomas Kincaid. That sort of illustrates what I mean.
The Shadow, made conscious, becomes an ally for us – a fearless, brash, not quite housebroken ally and friend. I want to go back to the beginning: a newborn baby has no Shadow, he has only a survival function. All those instincts that are hardwired into him to maximize his chances of survival, but he has no Shadow.
At the risk of oversimplifying a somewhat complex matter, I think the best way to understand how the Shadow is created is to remember that it is the part of that we have learned, we are taught, to reject. We have learned from our parents, our teachers, our rabbis and priests, and our neighbors, what part of ourselves are not loveable, not acceptable, not okay. Certain actions were punished or at least disproved of, so we came to feel that whatever was inside us that made us want to do those forbidden things must be “bad” or “wrong”. Every society and every community has to socialize it’s young. In different countries there are different rules to be obeyed. In some societies boys and girls are treated very differently. Just think of Muslim societies, for instance. But in all cases there are certain words and actions that are not acceptable and the children are gradually molded into what their particular community regards as citizens. In some places, and at certain times in history, the desires and the urges and the inclinations which led children, and even some adults, to act in certain ways their society found inappropriate, and wrong, were blamed not on simple human nature, but on demonic forces. The Devil, in other words, made them do it. In fact, in some societies like what we call the Puritans, human nature was equated with pure evil, with what is still referred to in certain religions as Original Sin. In such communities, both kinds of nature, the natural world around us, and human nature were regarded with suspicion and distrust. This attitude, it is sad to say, is still alive and well in the world. If you’re brought up in such a community, the general attitude toward the natural world is one of taming and controlling it – not letting the natural forces in the world have their way. And the attitude towards human nature is the same.
In a very restrictive society it is inevitable that most of its citizens will develop very big, ugly Shadow-monsters because so many of their natural instincts have been labeled wicked and bad. In such places the most artistic and creative people will run into the most trouble, because creativity springs from forces in the unconscious, that they don’t easily allow themselves to be controlled and shackled. In order to be loved and accepted, to be smiled at by our parents, we learned gradually to control certain urges, and to speak and act in the right ways. So, what happened to those bad desires and unacceptable urges? They got sucked down into the basement of ourselves, pushed into a dark corner, and the door to that secret room was locked with an iron key. If you hear echoes of some fairy tales, you’re absolutely right.
One of the reasons that the classic fairy tales have lasted hundreds of years, is that they contain spiritual truths which were disguised, I think, as tales for children. And these continue to resonate for the child and the adult. Beauty and the Beast, for instance, is a tale of the encounter of a Soul, called Beauty, and it’s Shadow, called the Beast. And the lesson couldn’t be more clear: Not until you can embrace and love your Shadow, as a part of who you are, not until then can the rejected, feared, horrendous monster transform into a prince, and join you in making a whole human being. Which, of course, the part that goes, “And they lived happily ever after.”
So, what’s wrong with having the difficult and unacceptable parts of your self be banished into the cellar, where they can be kept chained in the dark and eventually forgotten? Well, the first problem your faced with is the philosophical one which I’m not going to pursue at the moment, namely, “Who is defining what is acceptable and what is not? Whose standards are to be followed? Whose philosophy and view of the universe, and their place in it, are to be regarded as the one and only truth, which all citizens will accept, believe, and follow?” As I said we’re not going to step into that morass right now. But going back to the original question, “what’s wrong with suppressing and then forgetting the more bothersome parts of yourself? Wouldn’t it make for a much more peaceful life, and a happy society?” Uh, well, it doesn’t work out that way. The problem is, those suppressed parts of you not only include destructive impulses, they include creative ones. And above all the Shadow beast does not remain quiet and docile. The longer it remains in the dark, the longer it remains in the unconscious, the more powerful it becomes. In fact, the name of the Shadow’s game is Power.
I’ll give the most obvious and well known example: the gentle and sweet-natured man who changes when he drinks alcohol. Suddenly everybody’s best friend becomes a sarcastic, mean spirited, even vicious enemy or destroyer. And by the way, this applies to women, of course. It is just easier to stick with one gender. Usually we refer to therapists as female and patients as male, but that’s simply a matter of convenience, and I assume you realize that. Alcohol is in our society the most commonly used way by which the Shadow gets released from its chains once in awhile. But it’s certainly not the only way. Some people under extreme stress, or in situations involving emotions, might burst out words that shock with their hate and malice. Others with even less control over themselves will even become physically abusive and destructive. Certain drugs will allow the same kind of things to happen for some people in some situations. Neither the drugs nor the alcohol are responsible. What is responsible is the unconsciousness of the Shadow.
Just to make things more complicated, let me remind you that while I’m talking about the most common kind of Shadow, common to our society anyway, a Shadow composed of repressed and forbidden anger, resentment, destructive impulses, malice and jealousy, among other nice things, there are multitudes of Shadow mons
ters. For instance, let’s take a family in which the father is a Korean military man. The mother is a daughter of a military family, and most friends are in the military. Very often there is a family tradition of military service. And the male children are expected to follow in their father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. Let’s take the boy child because the girls in this family we treat differently. As he grows up, the scorned aspects will be soft ones. They will often be referred to as “woman’s feelings”, and the word “woman” will be said with contempt. Inclinations toward gentleness and empathy, trying to understand other people, will be squashed. Professions such as social work, psychology and psychiatry will be talked off with sarcasm. People who follow such professions will be either dismissed or laughed at. I’m sure you’ve met some of those kind of people. The boy’s Shadow will be composed of all those feelings and ideas that tend toward compassion, sympathy, and the feminine. Aggressive acts, as long as they are not directed at authority figures, will be tolerated or shrugged at. Any signs of artistic ability will be either ignored or discouraged. Since acceptance and affection depend on the boy’s acting like a warrior, his Shadow will be made of artistic impulses, whimsicality, offbeat humor, empathetic feelings, and all desires to nurture small wild animals instead of shooting them. Um, I exaggerate but not much.
One of my best friends was the son of two physicians, his siblings were doctors, and he was expected to go to medical school, too, which he did. He had a gift for intricate drawing, and he made absolutely delightful pictures, which I first saw in the margins of an autopsy report which he’d put on my desk. When I made a fuss over the exquisite art work he was really taken aback. He explained that nobody in his family had ever commented, or even noticed, his drawings, and so he’d come to think of them as doodles of no importance. And when I expressed some outrage at his family treating his gift that way, he said “You can understand their attitude because their entire world was medicine, and only medicine, and art simply didn’t matter to them.” So, alright, back to the point, which is that the Shadow is not in itself evil or bad, it is only whatever is repressed – whatever has been forbidden and treated with contempt by the authority figures surrounding the child. It is those aspects of the person which he has come to think of as unacceptable, awful, terrible, unlovable, and even dangerous. And all of those so-called bad aspects of himself have become unconscious, gradually gathering power in the dark.
Now, power to do what? If the Shadow aspects of a person remain unconscious, they get projected! One of the best illustrations of how this works is something like this:
Let’s say that you go to a party, and you see a person that you haven’t met before. Now, if you in this case are a woman, you dress well, you’re always well-groomed, you’re finger nails are clean and so is your hair. This stranger is also a woman, but she appears to be just a little slobby. Her movements are aloof and unguarded, and her voice is just a fraction too high for your comfort. You find yourself watching her with increasing dislike. After awhile you’re feeling more than dislike, it’s closer to hostility, and you don’t seem to be able to look away or focus on anybody else. You leave the party early, disturbed by your own feelings of antipathy toward a stranger. You think to yourself, “All she was doing was enjoying herself, why do I feel such dislike? It doesn’t make sense!”
What you’ve just experienced is a projection. The stranger reminded your unconscious of certain aspects of your repressed self, your Shadow. But since your Shadow has been buried in the unconscious, the dark, for years, you’re unaware of its existence or what it contains. Certain traits have projected themselves onto this woman, where you have been able to see them and react to them with revulsion. And any time you find yourself reacting with strong negativity to a person or a certain group of people, you should suspect that you’re experiencing a projection of your Shadow. This applies to racial prejudice as this is where it originates.
Now, under the influence of a psychedelic drug, projections are common. We’ve all seen the faces of friends, or lovers, distorted, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes not. And the first inclination is that you assume that what you are seeing is some hidden aspect of the person. After awhile most of learn that what we’re seeing is a projection of a part of ourselves. As long as the Shadow remains unavailable to conscious awareness it can determine a lot of how we live our lives and respond to others around us. It erupts unexpectedly with malicious words, and do damage to a really valuable relationship. We are not in control of ourselves as much as we’d like to be because this other inside us can take charge suddenly, leaving emotional or physical wreckage behind it.
Now, most of us don’t have to be afraid a hidden axe murderer lurking in our psychic basement. There are actually more of us who are afraid of something equivalent to that than you would expect. I suspect that’s one of the reasons that people are very afraid of psychedelic drugs, people who haven’t taken them. But there are people whose parents were so dysfunctional and hostile, that by the time they reach young adulthood their Shadows are murderers. The eruptions of these Shadows will truly cause death and destruction around them. Our society is presently in the dark ages when it comes to understanding, much less knowing, how to handle such traumatized and ruined people. And part of our Shadow as a nation is that we don’t really want to understand them.
It’s not only individual human beings that have Shadow identities, but nations do, too. Again, it’s easy to over-simplify but our own country can serve as an illustration of this! Our consciously accepted identity is one of generosity, tolerance, kindness, lawfulness, and respect for the individual citizens rights. Yet to give just one example, the instant that a person is placed under arrest, he becomes a victim of the societies projection of its own Shadow. Our press, without which I think our country would be a huge, nuclear armed, totalitarian menace on the world scene, this valuable press of ours give voice to our national Shadow by trying, convicting, and all but executing the arrested person before he ever sees the inside of a courtroom! All of us has seen it happen over and over again. Adopting the British system, which forbids discussion in the press of any criminal manner before the accused has been tried in court, which I think is just wonderful, simply cannot be suggested to this country. We need our bad guys, too much, as scapegoats for our unconscious desires and our hidden Shadow selves. How the British ever got that thought I don’t know but it would be a great thing for our country if the press could just be persuaded to leave alone anybody who was arrested for anything, until they’ve been tried and found guilty or innocent.
So, what is our Shadow, our individual Shadow? If we manage to bring it up to the light, it transforms, it changes. It’s still there, but no longer as a monster. When you allow yourself to acknowledge without fear, without hatred, the part of you that wants to punish, or even kill, the guy cuts you off on the highway. When you can accept the fact that along with the love for your grandmother, there exists a purely selfish hope that she will leave you some of her money when she dies. When you can allow yourself to have those darker thoughts or feelings, along with the more admirable ones, then you’ve become free. You’ve become authentic, or at least you’re on your way to authenticity.
Now how does one go about bringing the hidden beast out of the cellar, and into consciousness? In other words how do we turn that nasty monster into a prince? Well, it takes work. It also takes a therapist who has undergo
ne her own confrontation with her Shadow. Only someone who has done this kind of work on herself, can understand the overwhelming fear that can threaten to take over a patient at certain stages of this process. (Ed. Note: Personal experience has shown that when the presence of a trained therapist is not available, one CAN do this work on their own, although it is tricky work, and sometimes even dangerous territory. Caution is advised, but education is the lamp that will guide you through the woods.) After all, he is being asked to go down a long stairway to a place inside where there is no light, or barely enough. To allow himself to see a figure of darkness which is the embodiment of everything he hates or fears about himself, everything he’s ashamed of, everything he wants to reject or forget. Not only is he being urged to face this thing which, by the way, often takes the form of a huge, dark, sometimes vicious animal. But after he’s faced it, he has to go deliberately up to it, and step into it, and turn around and look out it’s eyes! This is something my hypnotherapist friend and I developed, which is one step further beyond what the Jungian therapists will have you do. The Jungians encourage the patient to first see this figure, this animal, or whatever form it’s taken, and then with a lot of help from the therapist they begin to understand where this evolved from – what was the beginning, what words were said at what times, if that’s possible. We took it one step further and had the person step inside the skin of his own Shadow, and then feel what its like inside, and look out at the world through the Shadow’s eyes. It’s quite an experience. And remember that all this time, the person believes that this Shadow monster, this horrid, putrid, evil beast, is actually the bedrock identity, the very essence of who and what he is.
So I believe that this process takes more courage then just about anything else anyone could expect to be asked to do in his life. That’s why his therapist must have undergone this experience herself. Only someone who has undergone this journey can be believed when she tells her patient, you know, “What you’ll see is not your true self. It is part of you, certainly, but it’s not what you truly are. Once you’re inside it, you’ll discover there is no more fear. The only thing your Shadow is afraid of, is being discovered. It prefers to stay in the dark where it can keep its power. Once you’ve found it, and stepped inside, you’ll feel only power and total lack of fear.” Or she’ll say something like that, and that’s actually what happens. There’s no more fear inside there, it’s just this great power!
So, when does the princely transformation take place? It begins at the point where you begin to look out the monsters eyes. Which is also the point which you forget to be afraid. When you have reached that place, and step outside of the beast, and go back up the stairs, because you have nothing to be afraid of anymore, what more is there to fear?
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This confrontation with the Shadow usually takes a long time. And of course, it isn’t finished until you’ve gone back, and gone back in again, to look at the Shadow monster who will be shrinking in size – no longer quite hairy and probably without it’s sharp teeth, so to speak. And the process is not truly finished until you’ve learned to have compassion, then affection, for your Shadow beast. The compassion is not so terribly difficult once your therapist helps to point out that all of this Shadow form took place because of things that were told to you, done to you, that you are not responsible for this, that you dealt with all of this rejection and repression the only way that you could. It is important, as the patient, to look back on the completely vulnerable child your were, and how helpless you felt, and how completely lacking in understanding you were about these things you were told were bad. So, after awhile you can begin to feel a bit of compassion for this horrid, self-thing. Feeling love for it takes a little longer, but eventually it will happen.
Now, how and it what way does the transformed Shadow become your ally? Well if you face aspects of yourself that you used to be ashamed of, and tried to deny, you will be able to deliberately decide whether or not to make use of any of these aspects at certain times in your life. To give a relatively minor example, when I sit down at a chess board, I can give myself permission to turn on my aggressive side, no more Mrs. Nice Guy, and if my partner doesn’t like it then to hell with him! Just tough! Or more seriously, if I find myself walking a dark street in a strange city and I hear footsteps walking behind me, I don’t have to hesitate before I become my growling, big cat, killer self. It’s okay, my killer is there to be used if he’s needed. The difference is that I am not in danger of being taken over by one of these aspects of my Shadow, without my consent, and perhaps under the wrong circumstances which is what happens when it remains unconscious. I can make conscious choices about whether to use my dark, or ally, or not.
Insight into your darker side, without self-hatred, without shame, is what you have begin with to do Shadow work – very hard to manage for most of us. Acceptance of all the things you are with love and compassion.
The Buddhists teach that the soul, immediately after death, the soul will encounter demonic figures known as Guardians of the Gate, and that one must keep in mind that they are aspects of himself, and he cannot move forth into the spiritual world until he has acknowledged and embraced them – until he has owned them. Which is another way of reminding us that spiritual wholeness requires that we accept and own all parts of our self, and that we must find a way to love all that we are, and eventually, to love all that other living things are, rejecting none. I don’t know if it was Oscar Wilde, or who it was, that made that wonderful statement, “Nothing human is alien to me.” That’s what we have to get to. The closest people come to looking in the eye’s of God are when we look at the face of a newborn baby. Looking in the eyes of a newborn is quite an experience. And what does a newborn baby show us? All the possibilities for light and dark, good and evil, love and hate – the potential is there for anything and everything that a human being can be. Now those of us who have used psychedelics to achieve greater consciousness have sometimes managed to understand just a little bit, that the great mind of God, if you believe such a thing, contains all things, all dualities, all opposites, all light and all darkness. The difficult part of that is that some psychedelic travelers, like some non-psychedelic travelers in these realms, also come back and state that everything that exists is contained in love, which makes no sense whatsoever but it seems to be part of the truth. In doing work to bring our own Shadow selves into awareness, and find that we can feel compassion for our dark twisted ugly aspects, thereby transforming them, we might come a little closer to understanding, not with the mind, but with the heart, what is meant by that otherwise incomprehensible phrase: “God is Love!”

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Chuang Tzu Poems…

The Giant Peng Bird
In the Northern Sea there is a fish

Its name is Kun

The great size of Kun

We know not how many thousand leagues
Its name is Peng

The wingspan of Peng

We know not how many thousand leagues

It surges into flight.
Its wings are like the clouds that hang from the sky

This bird, when the ocean begins to heave

Will travel to the Southern Sea

The Southern Sea – the heavenly pond

—
Distinguishing Ego from Self
All that is limited by form, semblance, sound, color is called object.

Among them all, man alone is more than an object.

Though, like objects, he has form and semblance,

He is not limited to form.

He is more.

He can attain to formlessness.
When he is beyond form and semblance, beyond “this” and “that,”

where is the comparison with another object?

Where is the conflict?

What can stand in his way?

He will rest in his eternal place which is no-place.

He will be hidden in his own unfathomable secret.

His nature sinks to its root in the One.

His vitality, his power hide in secret Tao.

–
Letting go of thoughts
The mind remains undetermined in the great Void.

Here the highest knowledge is unbounded.

That which gives things their thusness cannot be delimited by things.

So when we speak of ‘limits’, we remain confined to limited things.

The limit of the unlimited is called ‘fullness.’

The limitlessness of the limited is called ‘emptiness.’

Tao is the source of both.

But it is itself neither fullness nor emptiness.

—
Creation and Destruction
When you break something up, you create things.

When you create something, you destroy things.

Material things have no creation or destruction.

Ultimately these concepts connect as one.
Only the enlightened know that they connect as one,

So instead of debating this with your preconceptions,

Approach it in an ordinary way.
Those with this ordinary approach, simply apply the idea.

Those who apply it, connect with it.

Those who connect with it, attain it.

This easily attained understanding is not far off.

—
Goods and Possessions
Goods and possessions are no gain in his eyes.

He stays far from wealth and honor.

Long life is no ground for joy, nor early death for sorrow.

Success is not for him to be pround of, failure is no shame.

Had he all the world’s power he would not hold it as his own.

If he conquered everything he would not take it to himself.

His glory is in knowing that all things come together in One and life and death are equal.

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Bio: Chuang Tzu was a leading thinker representing the Taoist strain in Chinese thought. Using parable and anecdote, allegory and paradox, he set forth the early ideas of what was to become the Taoist school. Central in these is the belief that only by understanding Tao (the Way of Nature) and dwelling in unity can man achieve true happiness and be truly free, in both life and death. Witty and imaginative, enriched by brilliant imagery, making sportive use of both mythological and historical personages (including even Confucius), the book which bears Chuang Tzu’s name has for centuries been savored by Chinese readers.”
When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples signified their wish to give him a grand burial. `I shall have heaven and earth for my coffin and its shell; the sun and moon for my two round symbols of jade, the stars and constellations for my pearls and jewels; and all things assisting as he mourners. Will not the provisions for my funeral be complete? What could you add to them?’

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Enzo Avitabile – ‘Nuje e ll’acqua’

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The problem is, if god is dead, then you lose the most important word in your language and you will need a substitute. God was one end, one extreme, and when one extreme disappears from your mental vision the necessary and inevitable is that you will fall to the other extreme, and that is what has happened… Instead of god, fuck has become the most important word in our language.—Osho, Strange Consequences

Pentangle…
It has been a busy week. I have had this entry ready pretty much since last Thursday, but havoc has been the rule for days. I got a new system, which is unfortunately dead in the water… (God I dislike VISTA!) I am awaiting some assistance, out of my element on this one!
Lots of work, and good events. Bowling with friends, hanging out, working in the garden (lots) putting together boxes for veg and herbs, etc.
Anyway, enough.
Hope This finds you well!
Bright Blessings,
Gwyllm
One Of My Favourite Bands…

On The Menu:

Rowan Gets A Scholarship!

The Links

A Pentangle For Your Thoughts…

The Story of Deidre

In Between Worlds: Rumi Poetry

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Rowan Gets A Scholarship!

So on this past Thursday, we went down to the facility that manages the Outdoor School Program with Rowan. If you don’t know what the Outdoor School is, it is a program that takes all Portland/Metro area 6th grade kids out to the country for a week to learn the natural sciences, and to have a break from middle school… This program deeply affected Rowan when he was a 6th grader, and he vowed he would be a student counselor at Outdoor School when he hit High School. Well, he did become one, and went back repeatedly, becoming an integral part of Camp Namanu student leader staff in the fall and Spring. He taught animal studies, and became an all around asset to the camp.
A few weeks back he was called upon to come testify at Metro Council (The Tri-Counties Gov’t Agency) where funding discussions were going on regarding the Outdoor School. Rowan was the last person in (out of 5 student leaders), and according to the head of Outdoor School, (if I understood correctly) Rowan’s testimony swayed the one vote that enabled Outdoor School to get additional funding of 1.5 million dollars that would allow all 6th grade students to attend… (some schools were asking parents to pay $100. per child as there was a shortage of funding)
Rowan was recognized with a scholarship for his work at Namanu and his presentation at Metro this past Thursday, along with 7 other outstanding student leaders.
We are pretty proud of him! The Outdoor School concept should be spread… check out their link, and think how you can bring this worthy program to the children of your community…

M.E.S.D. Outdoor School!

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The Links:

Backyard Hive… This site shows an illustration of our new beehive!

Twat-o-Tron

And Two Entries From Doctor Con!

The Neural Buddhists

James Kent…sheds new light on music and psychedelics

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A Pentangle For Your Thoughts…
I was turned on to Pentangle by students of Sufi Sam Lewis back in San Anselmo many years ago (1969 or so) I have had years where I didn’t listen to them, but, I always come back again. I am a fan of the solo work of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn in particular. I hear they have reunited with the delightful Jackie McShea. I’d love to see them.
These video entries are from a presentation by the Beeb (BBC) back in 1970.
4 songs in all, I hope You enjoy!

Pentangle – Light Flight

Pentangle – The Hunting Song

Pentangle – Train Song

Pentangle – House Carpenter

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The Story of Deidre

There was a man in Ireland once who was called Malcolm Harper. The man was a right good man, and he had a goodly share of this world’s goods. He had a wife, but no family. What did Malcolm hear but that a soothsayer had come home to the place, and as the man was a right good man, he wished that the soothsayer might come near them. Whether it was that he was invited or that he came of himself, the soothsayer came to the house of Malcolm.
“Are you doing any soothsaying?” says Malcolm.
“Yes, I am doing a little. Are you in need of soothsaying?”
“Well, I do not mind taking soothsaying from you, if you had soothsaying for me, and you would be willing to do it.”
“Well, I will do soothsaying for you. What kind of soothsaying do you want?”
“Well, the soothsaying I wanted was that you would tell me my lot or what will happen to me, if you can give me knowledge o it.”
“Well, I am going out, and when I return, I will tell you.”
And the soothsayer went forth out of the house and he was not long outside when he returned.
“Well,” said the soothsayer, “I saw in my second sight that it is on account of a daughter of yours that the greatest amount of blood shall be shed that has ever been shed in Erin since time and race began. And the three most famous heroes that ever were found will lose their heads on her account.”
After a time a daughter was born to Malcolm, he did not allow a living being to come to his house, only himself and the nurse. He asked this woman, “Will you yourself bring up the child to keep her in hiding far away where eye will not see a sight of her nor ear hear a word about her?”
The woman said she would, so Malcolm got three men, and he took them away to a large mountain, distant and far from reach, without the knowledge or notice of any one. He caused there a hillock, round and green, to be dug out of the middle, and the hole thus made to be covered carefully over so that a little company could dwell there together. This was done.
Deirdre and her foster-mother dwelt in the bothy mid the hills without the knowledge or the suspicion of any living person about them and without anything occurring, until Deirdre was sixteen years of age. Deirdre grew like the white sapling, straight and trim as the rash on the moss. She was the creature of fairest form, of loveliest aspect, and of gentlest nature that existed between earth and heaven in all Ireland-whatever colour of hue she had before, there was nobody that looked into her face but she would blush fiery red over it.
The woman that had charge of her, gave Deirdre every information and skill of which she herself had knowledge and skill. There was not a blade of grass growing from root, nor a bird singing in the wood, nor a star shining from heaven but Deirdre had a name for it. But one thing, she did not wish her to have either part or parley with any single living man of the rest of the world. But on a gloomy winter night, with black, scowling clouds, a hunter of game was wearily travelling the hills, and what happened but that he missed the trail of the hunt, and lost his course and companions. A drowsiness came upon the man as he wearily wandered over the hills, and he lay down by the side of the beautiful green knoll in which Deirdre lived, and he slept. The man was faint from hunger and wandering, and benumbed with cold, and a deep sleep fell upon him. When he lay down beside the green hill where Deirdre was, a troubled dream came to the man, and he thought that he enjoyed the warmth of a fairy broch, the fairies being inside playing music. The hunter shouted out in his dream, if there was any one in the broch, to let him in for the Holy One’s sake. Deirdre heard the voice and said to her foster-mother: “O foster-mother, what cry is that?” “It is nothing at all, Deirdre–merely the birds of the air astray and seeking each other. But let them go past to the bosky glade. There is no shelter or house for them here.” “Oh, foster-mother, the bird asked to get inside for the sake of the God of the Elements, and you yourself tell me that anything that is asked in His name we ought to do. If you will not allow the bird that is being benumbed with cold, and done to death with hunger, to be let in, I do not think much of your language or your faith. But since I give credence to your language and to your faith, which you taught me, I will myself let in the bird.” And Deirdre arose and drew the bolt from the leaf of the door, and she let in the hunter. She placed a seat in the place for sitting, food in the place for eating, and drink in the place for drinking for the man who came to the house. ” Oh, for this life and raiment, you man that came in, keep restraint on your tongue!” said the old woman. “It is not a great thing for you to keep your mouth shut and your tongue quiet when you get a home and shelter of a hearth on a gloomy winter’s night.” “Well,” said the hunter, “I may do that–keep my mouth shut and my tongue quiet, since I came to the house and received hospitality from you; but by the hand of thy father and grandfather, and by your own two hands, if some other of the people of the world saw this beauteous creature you have here hid away, they would not long leave her with you, I swear.”
“What men are these you refer to?” said Deirdre.
“Well, I will tell you, young woman, said the hunter.

“They are Naois, son of Uisnech, and Allen and Arden his two brothers.”
“What like are these men when seen, if we were to see them?” said Deirdre.
“Why, the aspect and form of the men when seen are these,” said the hunter: “they have the colour of the raven on their hair, their skin like swan on the wave in whiteness, and their cheeks as the blood of the brindled red calf, and their speed and their leap are those of the salmon of the torrent and the deer of the grey mountain side. And Naois is head and shoulders over the rest of the people of Erin.”
“However they are,” said the nurse, “be you off from here and take another road. And, King of Light and Sun! in good sooth and certainty, little are my thanks for yourself or for her that let you in! “
The hunter went away, and went straight to’ the palace of King Connachar. He sent word in to the king that he wished to speak to him if he pleased. The king answered the message and came out to speak to the man. “What is the reason of your journey? ” said the king to the hunter.
“I have only to tell you, O king,” said the hunter, “that I saw the fairest creature that ever was born in Erin, and I came to tell you of it.”
“Who is this beauty and where is she to be seen, when she was not seen before till you saw her, if you did see her?”
“Well, I did see her,” said the hunter. ” But, if I did, no man else can see her unless he get directions from me as to where she is dwelling.”
“And will you direct me to where she dwells? and the reward of your directing me will be as good as the reward of your message,” said the king.
“Well, I will direct you, O king, although it is likely that this will not be what they want,” said the hunter.
Connachar, King of Ulster, sent for his nearest kinsmen, and he told them of his intent. Though early rose the song of the birds mid the rocky caves and the music of the birds in the grove, earlier than that did Connachar, King of Ulster, arise, with his little troop of dear friends, in the delightful twilight of the fres
h and gentle May; the dew was heavy on each bush and flower and stem, as they went to bring Deirdre forth from the green knoll where she stayed. Many a youth was there who had a lithe leaping and lissom step when they started whose step was faint, failing, and faltering when they reached the bothy on account of the length of the way and roughness of the road. “Yonder, now, down in the bottom of the glen is the bothy where the woman dwells, but I will not go nearer than this to the old woman,” said the hunter.
Connachar with his band of kinsfolk went down to the green knoll where Deirdre dwelt and he knocked at the door of the bothy. The nurse replied, “No less than a king’s command and a king’s army could put me out of my bothy tonight. And I should be obliged to you, were you to tell who it is that wants me to open my bothy door.” “It is I, Connachar, King of Ulster.” When the poor woman heard who was at the door, she rose with haste and let in the king and all that could get in of his retinue.
When the king saw the woman that was before him that he had been in quest of, he thought he never saw in the course of the day nor in the dream of night a creature so fair as Deirdre and he gave his full heart’s weight of love to her. Deirdre was raised on the topmost of the heroes’ shoulders and she and her foster-mother were brought to the Court of King Connachar of Ulster.
With the love that Connachar had for her, he wanted to marry Deirdre right off there and then, will she nill she marry him. But she said to him, “I would be obliged to you if you will give me the respite of a year and a day.” He said “I will grant you that, hard though it is, if you will give me your unfailing promise that you will marry me at the year’s end.” And she gave the promise. Connachar got for her a woman-teacher and merry modest maidens fair that would lie down and rise with her, that would play and speak with her. Deirdre was clever in maidenly duties and wifely understanding, and Connachar thought he never saw with bodily eye a creature that pleased him more.
Deirdre and her women companions were one day out on the hillock behind the house enjoying the scene, and drinking in the sun’s heat. What did they see coming but three men a-journeying. Deirdre was looking at the men that were coming, and wondering at them. When the men neared them, Deirdre remembered the language of the huntsman, and she said to herself that these were the three sons of Uisnech, and that this was Naois, he having what was above the bend of the two shoulders above the men of Erin all. The three brothers went past without taking any notice of them, without even glancing at the young girls on the hillock. What happened but that love for Naois struck the heart of Deirdre, so that she could not but follow after him. She girded up her raiment and went after the men that went past the base of the knoll, leaving her women attendants there. Allen and Arden had heard of the woman that Connachar, King of Ulster, had with him, and they thought that, if Naois, their brother, saw her, he would have her himself, more especially as she was not married to the King. They perceived the woman coming, and called on one another to hasten their step as they had a long distance to travel, and the dusk of night was coming on. They did so. She cried “Naois, son of Uisnech, will you leave me?” “What piercing, shrill cry is that-the most melodious my ear ever heard, and the shrillest that ever struck my heart of all the cries I ever heard?” “It is anything else but the wail of the wave-swans of Connachar,” said his brothers. “No! yonder is a woman’s cry of distress,” said Naois, and he swore he would not go further until he saw from whom the cry came, and Naois turned back. Naois and Deirdre met, and Deirdre kissed Naois three times, and a kiss each to his brothers. With the confusion that she was in, Deirdre went into a crimson blaze of fire, and her colour came and went as rapidly as the movement of the aspen by the stream side. Naois thought he never saw a fairer creature, and Naois gave Deirdre the love that he never gave to thing, to vision, or to creature but to herself.
Then Naois placed Deirdre on the topmost height of his shoulder, and told his brothers to keep up their pace, and they kept up their pace. Naois thought that it would not be well for him to remain in Erin on account of the way in which Connachar, King of Ulster, his uncle’s son, had gone against him because of the woman, though he had not married her; and he turned back to Alba, that is, Scotland. He reached the side of Loch-Ness and made his habitation there. He could kill the salmon of the torrent from out his own door, and the deer of the grey gorge from out his window. Naois and Deirdre and Allen and Arden dwelt in a tower, and they were happy so long a time as they were there.
By this time the end of the period came at which Deirdre had to marry Connachar, King of Ulster. Connachar made up his mind to take Deirdre away by the sword whether she was married to Naois or not. So he prepared a great and gleeful feast. He sent word far and wide through Erin all to his kinspeople to come to the feast. Connachar thought to himself that Naois would not come though he should bid him; and the scheme that arose in his mind was to send for his father’s brother, Ferchar Mac Ro, and to send him on an embassy to Naois. He did so; and Connachar said to Ferchar, ” Tell Naois, son of Uisnech, that I am setting forth a great and gleeful feast to my friends and kinspeople throughout the wide extent of Erin all, and that I shall not have rest by day nor sleep by night if he and Allen and Arden be not partakers of the feast.”
Ferchar Mac Ro and his three sons went on their journey, and reached the tower where Naois was dwelling by the side of Loch Etive. The sons of Uisnech gave a cordial kindly welcome to Ferchar Mac Ro and his three sons, and asked of him the news of Erin. “The best news that I have for you,” said the hardy hero, “is that Connachar, King of Ulster, is setting forth a great sumptuous feast to his friends and kinspeople throughout the wide extent of Erin all, and he has vowed by the earth beneath him, by the high heaven above him, and by the sun that wends to the west, that he will have no rest by day nor sleep by night if the sons of Uisnech, the sons of his own father’s brother, will not come back to the land of their home and the Soil of their nativity, and to the feast likewise, and he has sent us on embassy to invite you.”
“We will go with you,” said Naois.
“We will,” said his brothers.
But Deirdre did not wish to go with Ferchar Mac Ro, and she tried every prayer to turn Naois from going with him-she said:
“I saw a vision, Naois, and do you interpret it to me,” said Deirdre–then she sang:
O Naois, son of Uisnech, hear

What was shown in a dream to me.
There came three white doves out of the South

Flying over the sea,

And drops of honey were in their mouth

From the hive of the honey-bee.
O Naois, son of Uisnech, hear,

What was shown in a dream to me.
I saw three grey hawks out of the south

Come flying over the sea,

And the red red drops they bare in their mouth

They were dearer than life to me.
Said Naois:–
It is nought but the fear of woman’s heart,

And a dream of the night, Deirdre.
“The day that Connachar sent the invitation to his feast will be unlucky for us if we don’t go, O Deirdre.”
“You will go there,” said Ferchar Mac Ro; “and if Connachar show kindness to you, show ye kindness to him; and if he will display wrath towards you display ye wrath towards him, and I and my three sons will be with you.”
“We will,” said Daring Drop. “We will,” said Hardy Holly. “We will,” said Fiallan the Fair.
“I have three sons, and they are three heroes, and in any harm or danger that may befall you, they will be with you, and I myself will be along with them.” And Ferchar Mac Ro gave his vow and his word in presence of his arms that, in any harm or danger that came in the way of the sons of Uisnech, he and his three sons would not leave head on live body in Erin, despite sword or helmet, spear or shield, blade or mail, be they ever so good.
Deirdre was unwilling to leave Alba, but she went with Naois. Deirdre wept tears in showers and she sang:
Dear is the land, the land over there,

Alba full of woods and lakes;

Bitter to my heart is leaving thee,

But I go away with Naois.
Ferchar Mac Ro did not stop till he got the sons of Uisnech away with him, despite the suspicion of Deirdre.
The coracle was put to sea,

The sail was hoisted to it;

And the second morrow they arrived

On the white shores of Erin.
As soon as the sons of Uisnech landed in Erin, Ferchar Mac Ro sent word to Connachar, king of Ulster, that the men whom he wanted were come, and let him now show kindness to them. “Well,” said Connachar, “I did not expect that the sons of Uisnech would come, though I sent for them, and I am not quite ready to receive them. But there is a house down yonder where I keep strangers, and let them go down to it to-day, and my house will be ready before them to-morrow.”
But he that was up in the palace felt it long that he was not getting word as to how matters were going on for those down in the house of the strangers. “Go you, Gelban Grednach, son of Lochlin’s King, go you down and bring me information as to whether her former hue and complexion are on Deirdre. If they be, I will take her out with edge of blade and point of sword, and if not, let Naois, son of Uisnech, have her for himself,” said Connachar.
Gelban, the cheering and charming son of Lochlin’s King, went down to the place of the strangers, where the sons of Uisnech and Deirdre were staying. He looked in through the bicker-hole on the door-leaf. Now she that he gazed upon used to go into a crimson blaze of blushes when any one looked at her. Naois looked at Deirdre and knew that some one was looking at her from the back of the door-leaf. He seized one of the dice on the table before him and fired it through the bicker-hole, and knocked the eye out of Gelban Grednach the Cheerful and Charming, right through the back of his head. Gelban returned back to the palace of King Connachar.
“You were cheerful, charming, going away, but you are cheerless, charmless, returning. What has happened to you, Gelban? But have you seen her, and are Deirdre’s hue and complexion as before?” said Connachar.
“Well, I have seen Deirdre, and I saw her also truly, and while I was looking at her through the bicker-hole on the door, Naois, son of Uisnech, knocked out my eye with one of the dice in his hand. But of a truth and verity, although he put out even my eye, it were my desire still to remain looking at her with the other eye, were it not for the hurry you told me to be in,” said Gelban.
“That is true,” said Connachar; “let three hundred brave heroes go down to the abode of the strangers, and let them bring hither to me Deirdre, and kill the rest.”
Connachar ordered three hundred active heroes to go down to the abode of the strangers and to take Deirdre up with them and kill the rest. “The pursuit is coming,” said Deirdre.
Yes, but I will myself go out and stop the pursuit,” said Naois.
“It is not you, but we that will go,” said Daring Drop, and Hardy Holly, and Fiallan the Fair; “it is to us that our father entrusted your defence from harm and danger when he himself left for home.” And the gallant youths, full noble, full manly, full handsome, with beauteous brown locks, went forth girt with battle arms fit for fierce fight and clothed with combat dress for fierce contest fit, which was burnished, bright, brilliant, bladed, blazing, on which were many pictures of beasts and birds and creeping things, lions and lithe-limbed tigers, brown eagle and harrying hawk and adder fierce; and the young heroes laid low three-thirds of the company.
Connachar came out in haste and cried with wrath: “Who is there on the floor of fight, slaughtering my men?”
“We, the three sons of Ferchar Mac Ro.”
“Well,” said the king, “I will give a free bridge to your grandfather, a free bridge to your father, and a free bridge each to you three brothers, if you come over to my side tonight.”
“Well, Connachar, we will not accept that offer from you nor thank you for it. Greater by far do we prefer to go home to our father and tell the deeds of heroism we have done, than accept anything on these terms from you. Naois, son of Uisnech, and Allen and Arden are as nearly related to yourself as they are to us, though you are so keen to shed their blood, and you would shed our blood also, Connachar.” And the noble, manly, handsome youths with beauteous, brown locks returned inside. “We are now,” said they, “going home to tell our father that you are now safe from the hands of the king.” And the youths all fresh and tall and lithe and beautiful, went home to their father to tell that the sons of Uisnech were safe. This happened at the parting of the day and night in the morning twilight time, and Naois said they must go away, leave that house, and return to Alba.
Naois and Deirdre, Allan and Arden started to return to Alba. Word came to the king that the company he was in pursuit of were gone. The king then sent for Duanan Gacha Druid, the best magician he had, and he spoke to him as follows:–”Much wealth have I expended on you, Duanan Gacha Druid, to give schooling and learning and magic mystery to you, if these people get away from me to-day without care, without consideration or regard for me, without chance of overtaking them, and without power to stop them.”
“Well, I will stop them,” said the magician, “until the company you send in pursuit return.” And the magician placed a wood before them through which no man could go, but the sons of Uisnech marched through the wood without halt or hesitation, and Deirdre held on to Naois’s hand.
“What is the good of that? that will not do yet,” said Connachar. “They are off without bending of their feet or stopping of their step, without heed or respect to me, and I am without power to keep up to them or opportunity to turn them back this night.”
“I will try another plan on them,” said the druid; and he placed before them a grey sea instead of a green plain. The three heroes stripped and tied their clothes behind their heads, and Naois placed Deirdre on the top of his shoulder.
They stretched their sides to the stream,

And sea and land were to them the same,

The rough grey ocean was the same

As meadow-land green and plain.
“Though that be good, O Duanan, it will not make the heroes return,” said Connachar; “they are gone without regard for me, and without honour to me, and without power on my part to pursue them or to force them to return this night.”
“We shall try another method on them, since yon one did not stop them,” said the druid. And the druid froze the grey ridged sea into hard rocky knobs, the sharpness of sword being on the one edge and the poison power of adders on the other. Then Arden cried that he was getting tired, and nearly giving over. “Come you, Arden, and sit on my right shoulder,” said Naois. Arden came and sat on Naois’s shoulder. Arden was long in this posture when he died; but though he was dead Naois would not let him go. Allen then cried out that he was getting faint and nigh-well giving up. When Naois heard his prayer, he gave forth the piercing sigh of death, and asked Allen to lay hold of him and he would bring him to land. Allen was not long when the weakness of death came on him and his hold failed. Naois looked round, and when he saw his two well-beloved brothers dead, he cared not whether he lived or died, and he gave forth the bitter sigh of death and his heart burst.
“They are gone,” said Duanan Gacha Druid to the king, “and I have done what you desired me. The sons of Uisnech are dead and they will trouble you no more; and you have your wife hale and whole to yourself.”

“Blessings for that upon you and may the good results accrue to me, Duanan. I count it no loss what I spent in the schooling and teaching of you. Now dry up the flood, and let me see if I can behold Deirdre,” said Connachar. And Duanan Gacha Druid dried up the flood from the plain and the three sons of Uisnech were lying together dead, without breath of life, side by side on the green meadow plain and Deirdre bending above showering down her tears.
Then Deirdre said this lament: “Fair one, loved one, flower of beauty; beloved upright and strong; beloved noble and modest warrior. Fair one, blue-eyed, beloved of thy wife; lovely to me at the trysting-place came thy clear voice through the woods of Ireland. I cannot eat or smile henceforth. Break not today, my heart: soon enough shall I lie within my grave. Strong are the waves of sorrow, but stronger is sorrow’s self, Connachar.”
The people then gathered round the heroes’ bodies and asked Connachar what was to be done with the bodies.The order that he gave was that they should dig a pit and put the three brothers in it side by side.
Deirdre kept sitting on the brink of the grave, constantly asking the gravediggers to dig the pit wide and free. When the bodies of the brothers were put in the grave, Deirdre said:–
Come over hither, Naois, my love,

Let Arden close to Allen lie;

If the dead had any sense to feel.

Ye would have made a place for Deirdre.
The men did as she told them. She jumped into the grave and lay down by Naois, and she was dead by his side.
The king ordered the body to be raised from out the grave and to be buried on the other side of the loch. It was done as the king bade, and the pit closed. Thereupon a fir shoot grew out of the grave of Deirdre and a fir shoot from the grave of Naois. and the two shoots united in a knot above the loch. The king ordered the shoots to be cut down, and this was done twice, until, at the third time, the wife whom the king had married caused him to stop this work of evil and his vengeance on the remains of the dead.

_____________________

In Between Worlds: Rumi Poetry

The Dream That Must Be Interpreted
This place is a dream.

Only a sleeper considers it real.
Then death comes like dawn,

and you wake up laughing

at what you thought was your grief.
But there’s a difference with this dream.

Everything cruel and unconscious

done in the illusion of the present world,

all that does not fade away at the death-waking.
It stays,

and it must be interpreted.
All the mean laughing,

all the quick, sexual wanting,

those torn coats of Joseph,

they change into powerful wolves

that you must face.
The retaliation that sometimes comes now,

the swift, payback hit,

is just a boy’s game

to what the other will be.
You know about circumcision here.

It’s full castration there!
And this groggy time we live,

this is what it’s like:
A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams he’s living

in another town.
In the dream, he doesn’t remember

the town he’s sleeping in his bed in. He believes

the reality of the dream town.
The world is that kind of sleep.
The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,
but we are older than those cities.

We began

as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state, and then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we slightly recall

being green again.

That’s how a young person turns

toward a teacher. That’s how a baby leans

toward the breast, without knowing the secret

of its desire, yet turning instinctively.
Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness

that directs the dream,
and that will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

—
Shadow and Light Source Both
How does a part of the world leave the world?

How does wetness leave water? Dont’ try to
put out fire by throwing on more fire! Don’t

wash a wound with blood. No matter how fast
you run, your shadow keeps up. Sometimes it’s

in front! Only full overhead sun diminishes
your shadow. But that shadow has been serving

you. What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is
your candle. Your boundaries are your quest.

I could explain this, but it will break the
glass cover on your heart, and there’s no

fixing that. You must have shadow and light
source both. Listen, and lay your head under

the tree of awe. When from that tree feathers
and wings sprout on you, be quieter than

a dove. Don’t even open your mouth for even a coo.

—
Who Says Words With My Mouth?
All day I think about it, then at night I say it.

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that,

and I intend to end up there.
This drunkenness began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I’ll be completely sober. Meanwhile,

I’m like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?
Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn’t come here of my own accord, and I can’t leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
This poetry, I never know what I’m going to say.

I don’t plan it.

When I’m outside the saying of it,

I get very quiet and rarely speak at all.

—
Out of your love the fire of youth will rise.

In the chest, visions of the soul will rise.

If you are going to kill me, kill me, it is alright.

When the friend kills, a new life will rise.

—
Any lifetime that is spent without seeing the master

Is either death in disguise or a deep sleep.

The water that pollutes you is poison;

The poison that purifies you is water.

Out of your love the fire of youth will rise.

In the chest, visions of the soul will rise.

If you are going to kill me, kill me, it is alright.

When the friend kills, a new life will rise.

—
I am blasphemy and religion, pure and impure;

Old, young, and a small child.

If I die, don’t say that he died.

Say he was dead, became alive, and was taken by the

Beloved.

—
A Smile and A Gentleness
There is a smile and a gentleness

inside. When I learned the name
and address of that, I went to where

you sell perfume. I begged you not
to trouble me so with longing. Come

out and play! Flirt more naturally.
Teach me how to kiss. On the ground

a spread blanket, flame that’s caught
and burning well, cumin seeds browning,

I am inside all of this with my soul.

—
Some Kiss We Want
There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body. Seawater

begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately

it needs some wild darling! At
night, I open the window and ask

the moon to come and press its
face against mine. Breathe into

me. Close the language- door and
open the love window. The moon

won’t use the door, only the window.