Gwyllm.com

June 17, 2006

Rabia al Basri

On The Menu:

The Links

The Poetry: Rabia al Basri

All Art in this edition comes from a Brilliant Book: The Orientalist – by Kristian Davies

A most delightful, and somewhat controversial work. A wonderful friend of mine sent a copy along for me to check out and enjoy. (He knows my taste in this area of art)

A most cheerful and beautiful day here in the Northwest. Everything from wind and rain to beautiful fleecy clouds under a warm sun.

Worked in the garden and set up the Radio Show ” Solstice Soon”. Full of new music, hopefully to delight your ears. Struggled on the Magazine…

Have a good weekend, and may the Gods smile on you and yours.

Gwyllm

_______

IPOD Must Have!

LSD – You have Victor to thank for turning up this Gem!

A synchronistic bit of Tooning… Thanks to Dr. Con for pointing this one out!

Olde School Insult Generator – Sent in by Mike from PlantConsciousness.com

Re-Engineering the Ark

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Poetry: Rabia al Basri

Love

I have loved Thee with two loves –

a selfish love and a love that is worthy of Thee.

As for the love which is selfish,

Therein I occupy myself with Thee,

to the exclusion of all others.

But in the love which is worthy of Thee,

Thou dost raise the veil that I may see Thee.

Yet is the praise not mine in this or that,

But the praise is to Thee in both that and this.

—–

Reality

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe the true form of Something

In whose presence you are blotted out?

And in whose being you still exist?

And who lives as a sign for your journey?

—–

With My Beloved

With my Beloved I alone have been,

When secrets tenderer than evening airs

Passed, and the Vision blest

Was granted to my prayers,

That crowned me, else obscure, with endless fame;

The while amazed between

His Beauty and His Majesty

I stood in silent ecstasy

Revealing that which o’er my spirit went and came.

Lo, in His face commingled

Is every charm and grace;

The whole of Beauty singled

Into a perfect face

Beholding Him would cry,

‘There is no God but He, and He is the most High.’

—–

If I Adore You

If I adore You out of fear of Hell, burn me in Hell!

If I adore you out of desire for Paradise,

Lock me out of Paradise.

But if I adore you for Yourself alone,

Do not deny to me Your eternal beauty.

—–

In My Soul

my soul

there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque, a church

where I knee.

Prayer should bring us to an altar where no walls or names exist.

Is there not a region of love where the sovereignty is

illumined nothing,

where ecstasy gets poured into itself

and becomes

lost,

where the wing is fully alive

but has no mind or

body?

my soul

there is a temple, a shrine, a mosque,

a church

that dissolve, that

dissolve in

God.

——————–

Though we have talked about her before, here is a nice article on Rabia:

Rabia the Slave

Written by Huda Khattab

Rabia was a mystic, or a holy woman, who spent her whole life in devotion to God. She was born over a thousand years ago, in the city of Basra, in Iraq. Long ago, in the city of Basra, there lived a young woman named Rabia. She came from a poor family. She and her three sisters suffered greatly, for their parents had died and then there was a great famine.

It was a violent and dangerous time. The famine made people cruel, ready to do almost anything to survive. Rabia knew it was not safe to walk alone in the town, but she had to find food. One evening, she slipped out of the house, and into the street. Suddenly, someone caught her, holding her roughly. A hand was over her mouth — she could not cry for help. She had been captured by a wicked dealer in slaves, who then sold her in the market, for just a few coins.

As a slave, Rabia served in the house of a rich man. She had to work hard, for long hours. Yet all the time, through out the day as she worked, she prayed and fasted. Even at night, she slept little. She often stood praying as dawn broke and her daily tasks began.

One hot night, Rabia’s master found he could not sleep. He got up, and walked over to the window of his room. He looked down, into the courtyard below. There, he saw the solitary figure of Rabia, his slave. Her lips moved in prayer, and he could just catch the words in the still night air. Oh God, Thou knowest that the desire of my heart is to obey Thee, and if the affair lay with me, I would not rest one hour from serving Thee, but Thou Thyself has set me under the hand of Thy creature. For this reason I come late to Thy service. . .

There was something very strange about the scene. At first, the master could not quite understand what it was. Then he realized. There was a lamp above Rabia’s head. Ithung there, quite still — but without a chain. As he watched, its light filled the whole house. Suddenly, he was afraid. He returned to his bed, and layawake, thinking of what he had seen. He was certain of only one thing. Such a woman should not be a slave. In the morning, he called Rabia to him, and spoke to her kindly. He told her he would set her free.

“I beg your permission to depart,” murmured Rabia, and her master agreed at once. Rabia set off out of the town, deep into the desert. There she lived as a hermit, alone for awhile, serving God. Later, she went to Makkah as a pilgrim.

June 17, 2006

Solstice Soon Radio Show Tonight at 6:00 PST

CLICK ON THIS TO GO TO EARTH RITES RADIO

Radio Free Earth Rites Presents: “Solstice Soon Radio Show”

6:00 PST Friday, The 16th of June.

Featuring: Bombay Dub Orchestra, Boozoo Bajou – Remixes, Baba Zula & Baraka (lots o’ B’s to listen to~!)

Bright Blessings!

Gwyllm

June 15, 2006

South Central Farm – Special Turf Edition

This is a special Turf, featuring commentary and observations of Scott Taylor and Amanda Hain from The Dolphin Embassy.

I have known of Scott for quite awhile, he is a fellow traveller, and resides in Australia with his partner Amanda. Both are working hard for the Sea Peoples, The Dolphins, The Whales, and the health of all who live in the briny deep.

(All Photos were taken by Scott and Amanda, see below the article.)

More Turf Coming Later on Friday.

Bright Blessings,

Gwyllm

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The Links: The Taking of the Farm – Blue Meanies and all that…

South Central Farm – Quicktime, DSL

South Central Farm – Quicktime, 56k

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The Dolphin Embassy was heading toward LA to rendezvous with our old friend Leslie Morava when she told us of her involvement at the South Central Farm. She began by asking if we knew that there was a 14 acre

organic farm in downtown LA, in the warehouse district. Of course, we, like most people, knew nothing of the farm.

Leslie invited us to meet her there. She warned us before we arrived that we would be trespassing on so called “private land” if we entered the gates, and that we would be participating in a large act

of civil disobedience if we did. We headed straight for the farm.

Arriving in mid-afternoon, we found a huge, two-city-block area, fenced with tall wire fencing topped with razor wire. This was surrounding a paradise of small garden plots, full of food, green herbs, corn, large stands of nopal (the edible cactus of northern

Mexico), banana trees, peach trees, onions, squash and an endless variety of greens and vegetables. Paths wandered between plots, wandering alleyways between fences. There were faucets rising out of

the ground for watering systems. There were sheds and cleaning tables interspersed with shaded arbors overhung with grape vines, under hanging banana bunches.

We parked on a side steet, alongside the fence. We walked around the corner, reading the signs hanging everywhere. “Green, not Greed!”, “SCF is the lungs of LA!”, “AQUI ESTAMOS, Y NO NOS VAMOS!”. The front

gate was guarded by a young man, who looked us over carefully, grinned a huge grin, and welcomed us in.

On a former downtown street, now closed off and enclosed by fences and embraced by a multitude of gardens (over 350 of them), we found a smiling but grim group of determined people. Following signs, we

found our way to the big black walnut tree that was the central area for the protest. There, about 20 feet up, was a small platform, about seven feet long and about two and a half feet wide, upon which

sat a thin and beautiful young woman. Dark hair, intense eyes, and a radiant smile–it was Julia Butterfly Hill. She had lived in a tall tree for two years, in an attempt to save it and all old-growth forests. Her legendary feat gave extra presence to what we were seeing and feeling. She was 14 days into a water-only fast, and she was glowing….

Then a blonde, tall, athletic woman began rappelling down from another, equally small, platform on the other side of the tree. It was Daryl Hannah, the actress from “Splash”, “Revenge of the 50 Foot Tall Woman”, “Clan of the Cave Bear”, and other Hollywood tales. Her commitment to the organic food and alternative energy movements had earned her much credibility in recent years, and we found ourselves

instantly admiring her for her courage and funky charm (see her website for more: www.dhlovelife.com).

We found our friend Leslie, who was excited to tell us that Joan Baez was returning in two days time. On Sunday there was to be a, perhaps last, farmers market, and an interfaith prayer service, and Joan was to come and sing. We were invited to stay. We accepted.

Activism was part of my early life, and I was involved in several large civil disobedience acts in the 60s: at the Pentagon in the fall of 1967, and again in Colorado over the next few years. Then my spiritual quest took over, and I became more inward in my work toward peace, justice, and change in human society. Being on the LA farm, and being part of this brought a new feeling, yet it had old echoes, to be suddenly part of an act of defiance toward the onward rolling bulldozers of greed and social injustice.

We stayed. We ate our meals with the families there, buying tortillas from them as they were hand made before our eyes, eating squash- blossom quesadillas, drinking tamarind juice, and savoring the

“nopalitas”, the delicious cactus salad grown only 30 feet from where we ate them. We helped Leslie to gather pieces of the story for her endless flood of emails and phone calls, we interviewed farmers and

their families and customers, and we did whatever we could to show our solidarity.

On Sunday morning, after Joan Baez had come, sung her exquisite songs (in Spanish), and the priests had said their prayers (the local Traditional Catholic–not Roman Catholic– priest, who leads services

in the area and who had been leading services on the farm for several years, pledged to go barefoot until justice was found, and cast his sandals to the base of the walnut tree), and everyone but those forty of us who were staying overnight were gone, we felt a feeling of dread overcoming us. We wanted to do something for those who remained and for those who would be coming back for the evening prayer vigil (each evening at 7:00 pm there was a candle-light march around the entire farm, led by several Aztec dancers).

We asked around and found that there was a power cord that could be used. Amanda and I set about finding a way to hang our fabric screen, and scrounged together the pieces we needed to put on a video showing. We were asked by Daryl what we were doing, and when she found out she asked if we could download a video she had made that was posted on her website and show it. We agreed, and made a dash to the nearest WiFi site we could find, downloaded her movie and returned.

We got the screen stretched, a barrel was found and a bit of board to balance the laptop, data projector, and hard drive. We set up the sound system, and Ole!, we had an instant movie theater. We had

arranged it so that Julia and Hannah could see the screen from their vantage points. The evening vigil marched around the block and everyone filed back in for the final phase, the prayers around the

tree. The candles were put in a circle at the base of the tree, solemn prayers were intoned, and everyone grew silent.

The wind was gentle that night, and the leaves overhead rustled quietly. The weathered faces of the campesinos and the passionate and tired faces of those who had come to support them were all glowing in

the candle light. A spokeswoman for the community introduced us and told everyone that we wanted to say something…..

Not expecting this, I stepped up and told the crowd that we had come from Australia, that we were working to bring the voice of another people, the people of the sea, to the attention of the big nations of the world. I told them that the dolphins too were in need of recognition, and that we were there in solidarity with them all. And that we wanted to show a little bit of film about the beauty of the dolphins and whales, to remind us all about the beauty of the world of nature.

The spokeswoman translated, and there were cheers. We had not anticipated such a response and were a bit overwhelmed. e showed about 40 minutes of beautiful footage, of dolphins dancing and caressing in the turquoise waters, whales rolling together with

their babies under glittering waves, and sometimes we overlaid these images with footage of forests and flowers, trees and rivers. We ended with Daryl’s video about the farm.

Afterward people came up to us with tears in their eyes, thanking us. For us, it was too little, it was only an offering of what we had to give. We treasure the thanks, and wish we could have given so much

more.

Our itinerary soon took us away from our new friends, but our three days at South Central Farm will live in our hearts forever.

~~~~~~~~~

The Dolphin Embassy is a non-profit, educational organization incorporated in Australia, whose mission is to bring the voice of the dolphins– expressing the needs of dolphins, whales, and porpoises, the Cetacean Nation– to the community of nations. It conducts educational seminars, does presentations, and is currently preparing to join with a consortium of NGOs at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in making suggestions for improving the Earth Charter. We plan to participate in United Nations forums beginning in May of 2007.

We are currently on tour in the US, and will be taking part in a groundbreaking dolphin communication research project in Mexico in July of 2006.

Our website is www.dolphintale.com

Scott Taylor and Amanda Hain

Ambassadors, The Dolphin Embassy

719-360-7049

dolphin@dolphintale.com

All photos by The Dolphin Embassy

2006.

June 15, 2006

The Fisher King

And a man stood there, as still as moss,

A lichen form that stared;

With an old blind hound that, at a loss,

Forever around him fared,

With a snarling fang half bared.

I looked at the man; I saw him plain;

Like a dead weed, gray and wan,

Or a breath of dust. I looked again–

And man and dog were gone,

Like wisps of the graying dawn…

–Madison Cawein, “Wasteland”

When I was young, I imagined “The Fisher King” like the illustration above. I think the best version that I have seen on film is Terry Gilliams. I saw it for the first time tonight.

I recommend it, full of mystery, healing and may I say love.

The whole edition is tied into the story….

Blessings,

Gwyllm

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The Link

Wikipedia on The Waste Land

__________________

The Fisher King was a king encountered during the Quest for the Holy Grail. He is sometimes, but not always, identified with the Maimed King. He is called Pelles in the Vulgate Version, in which the Maimed King is named Parlan or Pellam. In Manessier’s Constitution we are told he was wounded by fragments of a sword which had killed his brother, Goon Desert. By Chretien we are told he could not ride as a result of his infirmity, so he took to fishing as a pastime. Robert de Boron gives his name as Bron and tells us he earned his title by providing fish for Joseph of Arimathea. In Sone de Nausay he is identified with Joseph of Arimathea himself. By Wolfram he is called Anfortas.

__________________

Which leads us to modern times, and T.S. Eliot. A long but fruitful read. I hope you enjoy…

1922 -T.S. Eliot

For Ezra Pound

il miglior fabbro.

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla

pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Sibulla ti qeleiz; respondebat illa:

apoqanein qelw.”

THE WASTE LAND – T.S. Eliot

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee* [A lake near Munich]

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten*, [A park in Munich]

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. [‘I am not Russian at all,

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s, [I am a German from

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled, [Lithuania’]

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

Frisch weht der Wind [‘fresh blows the breeze from the homeland’]

Der heimat zu

Mein Irisch kind, [‘my Irish child, why do you wait?’]

Wo weilest du?

“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;”

“They called me the hyacinth girl.”

–Yet when we came back, late, from the hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

Oed’ und leer das Meer. [‘waste and empty is the sea’]

Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,

Has a bad cold, nevertheless

Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,

With a wicked pack of cards. Here, said she,

Is your card, the drowned Phoenician Sailor.

(Those are pearls that were his eyes. Look!)

Here is Belladonna, the Lady of the Rocks,

The lady of situations.

Here is the man with three staves, and here the Wheel,

And here is the one-eyed merchant, and this card,

Which is blank, is something that he carries on his back,

Which I am forbidden to see. I do not find

The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.

I see crowds of people, walking round in a ring.

Thank you. If you see dear Mrs. Equitone,

Tell her I bring the horoscope myself;

One must be so careful these days.

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,

A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,

I had not thought death had undone so many.

Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,

And each man fixed his eyes before his feet,

Flowed up the hill and down King William Street

To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours

With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying, “Stetson!

You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!

That corpse you planted last year in your garden,

Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?

Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,

Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!

You! hypocrite lecteur!–mon semblable!–mon frère!”

II. A Game of Chess

The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne,

Glowed on the marble, where the glass

Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines

From which a golden Cupidon peeped out

(Another hid his eyes behind his wing)

Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra

Reflecting light upon the table as

The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it,

From satin cases poured in rich profusion.

In vials of ivory and colored glass,

Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes,

Unguent, powdered, or liquid–troubled, confused

And drowned the sense in odors; stirred by the air

That freshened from the window, these ascended

In fattening the prolonged candle-flames,

Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling.

Huge sea-wood fed with copper

Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone,

In which sad light a carved dolphin swam.

Above the antique mantle was displayed

As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene

The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears.

And other withered stumps of time

Were told upon the walls; staring forms

Leaned out, leaning, hushing the world enclosed.

Footsteps shuffled on the stair.

Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair

Spread out in fiery points

Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.

“My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.

“Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.

“What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?

“I never know what you are thinking. Think.”

I think we are in rats’ alley

Where the dead men lost their bones.

“What is that noise?”

The wind under the door.

“What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?”

Nothing again nothing.

“Do

“You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember

“Nothing?”

I remember

Those are pearls that were his eyes.

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”

But

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag–

It’s so elegant

So intelligent

“What shall I do now? What shall I do?”

“I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street

“With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow?

“What shall we ever do?”

The hot water at ten.

And, if it rains, a closed car at four.

And we shall play a game of chess,

Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.

When Lil’s husband got demobbed, I said–

I didn’t mince my words, I said to her myself,

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME [British call-out at pub closing time]

Now Albert’s coming back, make yourself a bit smart.

He’ll want to know what you done with that money he gave you

To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there.

You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set,

He said, I swear, I can’t bear to look at you.

And no more can’t I, I said, and think of poor Albert.

He’s been in the army four years, he wants a good time.

And if you don’t give it him, there’s others will, I said.

Oh is there, she said. Something o’ that, I said.

Then I’ll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look.

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME

If you don’t like it you can get on with it, I said.

Others can pick and choose if you can’t.

But if Albert makes off, it won’t be for lack of telling.

You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique.

(And her only thirty-one.)

I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face,

It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.

(She’s had five already, and nearly died of young George.)

The chemist said it would be all right, but I’ve never been the same.

You are a proper fool, I said.

Well, if Albert won’t leave you alone, there it is, I said.

What you get married for if you don’t want children?

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME

Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon,

And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot–

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME

Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight.

Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight.

Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.

III. The Fire Sermon

The river’s tent is broken; the last fingers of leaf

Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind

Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed.

Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song.

The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers,

Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends

Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed.

And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors;

Departed, have left no addresses.

By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . .

Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,

Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long.

But at my back in a cold blast I hear

The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.

A rat crept softly through the vegetation

Dragging its slimy belly on the bank

While I sat fishing in the dull canal

On a winter evening round behind the gashouse

Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck

And on the king my father’s death before him.

White bodies naked on the low damp ground

And bones cast in a little low dry garret,

Rattled by the rat’s foot only, year to year.

But at my back from time to time I hear

The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring

Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring.

O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter

And on her daughter

They wash their feet in soda water

Et O ces voix d’enfants, chantant dans la coupole!

[‘And oh, the voices of the children singing in the dome!’]

Twit twit twit

Jug jug jug jug jug jug

So rudely forc’d

Tereu

Unreal City

Under the brown fog of a winter noon

Mr. Eugenides, the Smyrna merchant

C.i.f. London: documents at sight,

Asked me in demotic* French [vulgar]

To luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel

Followed by a weekend at the Metropole.

At the violet hour, when the eyes and back

Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits

Like a taxi throbbing waiting,

I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,

Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see

At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives

Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea,

The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights

Her stove, and lays out food in tins.

Out of the window perilously spread

Her drying combinations touched by the sun’s last rays,

On the divan are piled (at night her bed)

Stockings, slippers, camisoles and stays.

I Tiresias, old man with wrinkled dugs

Perceived the scene, and foretold the rest–

I too awaited the expected guest.

He, the young man carbuncular, arrives,

A small house agent’s clerk, with a bold stare,

One of the low on whom assurance sits

As a silk hat on a Bradford millionaire.

The time is now propitious, as he guesses;

The meal is ended, she is bored and tired.

Endeavors to engage her in caresses

Which still are unreproved, if undesired.

Flushed and decided, he assaults at once;

Exploring hands encounter no defense.;

His vanity requires no response,

And makes a welcome of indifference.

(And I Tiresias have foresuffered all

Enacted on this same divan or bed;

I who have sat by Thebes below the wall

And walked among the lowest of the dead.)

Bestows one final patronizing kiss,

And gropes his way, finding the stairs unlit . . .

She turns and looks a moment in the glass,

Hardly aware of her departed lover;

Her brain allows one half-formed thought to pass:

“Well now that’s done, and I’m glad it’s over.”

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Paces about her room again, alone,

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,

And puts a record on the gramophone.

“The music crept by me upon the waters”,

And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.

O City city, I can sometimes hear

Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street,

The pleasant whining of a mandoline

And a clatter and a chatter from within

Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls

Of Magnus Martyr hold

Inexplicable splendor of Ionian white and gold.

The river sweats

Oil and tar

The barges drift

With the turning tide

Red sails

Wide

To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.

The barges wash

Drifting logs

Down Greenwich reach

Past the Isle of Dogs.

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

Elizabeth and Leicester

Beating oars

The stern was formed

A gilded shell

Red and gold

The brisk swell

Rippled both shores

Southwest wind

Carried down stream

The peal of bells

White towers

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

“Trams and dusty trees.

Highbury bore me. Richmond and Kew

Undid me. By Richmond I raised my knees

Supine on the floor of a narrow canoe.”

“My feet are at Moorgate, and my heart

Under my feet. After the event

He wept. He promised `a new start.’

I made no comment. What should I resent?”

“On Margate Sands

I can connect

Nothing with nothing.

The broken fingernails of dirty hands

My people humble people who expect

Nothing.”

la la

To Carthage then I came

Burning burning burning burning

O Lord thou pluckest me out

O Lord thou pluckest

burning

IV. Death by Water

Phlebas the Phoenician, a fortnight dead,

Forgot the cry of gulls, the deep sea swell

And the profit and loss.

A current under sea

Picked his bones in whispers. As he rose and fell

He passed the stages of his age and youth,

Entering the whirlpool.

Gentile or Jew

O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

V. What the Thunder Said

After the torchlight red on sweaty faces

After the frosty silence in the gardens

After the agony in stony places

The shouting and the crying

Prison and palace and reverberation

Of thunder of spring over distant mountains

He who was living is now dead

We who were living are now dying

With a little patience

Here is no water but only rock

Rock and no water and the sandy road

The road winding above among the mountains

Which are mountains of rock without water

If there were water we should stop and drink

Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think

Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand

If there were only water amongst the rock

Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit

Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit

There is not even silence in the mountains

But dry sterile thunder without rain

There is not even solitude in the mountains

But red sullen faces sneer and snarl

From doors of mudcracked houses

If there were water

And no rock

If there were rock

And also water

And water

A spring

A pool among the rock

If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing

But sound of water over a rock

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But here there is no water

Who is the third who walks always beside you?

When I count, there are only you and I together

But when I look ahead, up the white road

There is always another one walking beside you,

Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

I do not know whether a man or a woman

–But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air

Murmur of maternal lamentation

Who are those hooded hordes swarming

Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth

Ringed by the flat horizon only

What is the city over the mountains

Cracks and reforms and bursts in violet air

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains,

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind’s home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Dry bones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning. Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

Ganga was sunken, and the limp leaves

Waited for rain, while the black clouds

Gathered far distant, over Himavant.

The jungle crouched, humped in silence.

Then spoke the thunder

Datta: what have we given?

My friend, blood shaking my heart

The awful daring of a moment’s surrender

Which an age of prudence can never retract,

By this, and this only, we have existed,

Which is not to be found in our obituaries

Or in memories draped by the beneficent spider

Or under seals broken by the lean solicitor

In our empty rooms

Dayadhvam: I have heard the key

Turn in the door once and turn once only

We think of the key, each in his prison

Thinking of the key, each confirms his prison

Only at nightfall, aethereal rumors

Revive for a moment a broken Coriolanus

Damyata: the boat responded

Gaily, to the hand expert with sail and oar

The sea was calm, your heart would have responded

Gaily, when invited, beating obedient

To controlling hands

I sat upon the shore

Fishing, with the arid plain behind me

Shall I at least set my lands in order?

London bridge is falling down falling down falling down

Poi s’ascose nel foco che gli affina

Quando fiam uti chelidon–O swallow swallow

Le prince d’Aquitaine a la tour abolie

These fragments I have shored against my ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo’s mad againe.

Da. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

T. S. Eliot

_______

June 14, 2006

Dreaming of Lorca

A nice night. Andrew (my nephew) brought his lovely new girlfriend Miss Catherine, over for dinner at our house. We ended up outside, sitting by the fire, eating melon, drinking wine (yours truly working with absinthe again as well…) eating fudge cookies, talking about Catherines’ home back in New Orleans. She came out here first getting away from Katrina, and finishing her semester out, and the second time for Andrew. He beams, he beams.

I am very happy for the both of them! It is truly delightful to see.

Rowan is finishing art projects tonight, tomorrow being his last day at school. I tried to talk him into working with me tomorrow afternoon, but nooooo. He is off for some bowling with friends. His art work is truly bizarre. Strangely Surreal in a Rowanian kinda way.

I have been dreaming of Spain. I have for years. All the dreams tend to be from the 1930′s, set in the Civil War. Durutti Column, Abraham Lincoln Bridgade… you know the routine. I have pondered this for some 25 years and I have yet to figure it out. The events happened 15 years before I was born, and yet I remember it. Ideas?

So, the title of the entry today says it all. One of my all time favourite poets. I need to pick up a new copy of his works, preferably in Spanish with a decent English translation… His works are so moving, and so “present”. I am dreaming and I feel ghost, and I see Lorca…. smiling forever.

Pax,

Gwyllm

——

On the Menu:

The Links

The Article: Backs to the Future

The Poetry: Lorca

_________

The Links:

Ive found God, says man who cracked the genome

Putting the Dark into the Dark Age

Life Saving Beer Ingredient!

Coming Soon To Radio Free EarthRites: Bombay Dub Orchestra!

Much played at Caer Llwydd, soon migrating to the playlist at Radio Free EarthRites. Some 20 tracks on 2 CDs, and not a duff track in the bunch.

Fairly Lush, with a nice blending of Eastern and Western Musics. It could be Bollywood, it could be Hollywood, but what it really is, is Chilled, delightfully…

Check out the site, and look up their MySpace account if you can. Sample it!

Approaching Singularity…

So I was hanging off of a 30 foot roof scraping moss during a rain and the beginning of a passing thunderstorm. Nothing like being on an aluminium ladder in those situations for you to realize that it may be time to find another way of entertaining/making a living. Really, no reasonable offer refused at this point. If it can have good art and poetry thrown in… that would cinch that deal in a moment.

We watched the recent release of “Tristan and Isolde” this weekend. I enjoyed it, and thought it a worthy effort. If you get a chance check it out. Good cast, and the story is pretty close to what you find in the mythology books, as opposed to lots of the Hollywood tripe that is out there…

Muggy and Wet -I have not seen a June quite like this one in Oregon. It reminds me more of the East Coast than here. Usually some rain, but not weeks of it. I think a trend is developing. We had rain last year as well, not as long, but longer than before… It is warming up a bit.

On The Menu:

Art Education & Happenings This Summer and Fall with Martina & Roberto

The Links

The Article: inna bug conference: Bad Shaman Interview

The Poetry: Hafiz!

I have gotten enquiries into where the &@%(!!! is the Magazine? It will be here soon dear readers. I ran out of steam and inspiration. It happens. My relation to the Muse is a complicated one. I have just a bit more to do and it will all be here… patience please!

Thanks For Looking in on this ongoing project & thanks for the feedback, it means much to me!

Gwyllm

____________

I wanted to alert you to some great art and people happenings… Roberto Venosa and Martina Hoffmann teach classes every year in some quite wonderful places… If you have the time, and you want to make a leap forward with you art, these are idea situations! Great Locations, excellent company, and Art with a capital “A”.

The String Chees Incident Show, and Burning Man are unique happenings, take a chance on a wonderful opportunity!

—-

Martina & Roberto’s Summer Schedule…

+ Our annual Cadaques, Spain painting workshop (September 17 30, 2006) is now almost filled with

the exception of three spaces remaining.

To see images of the villa and to find detailed workshop information please visit:

Cadaques Spain Workshop

+ Beginning this Sunday we will be teaching a 7 day class at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY

June 18, 2006 – June 25, 2006

For Workshop info:

Omega Institute Workshop…

+ From July 8 21, 2006 we will be on the gorgeous Island of Skyros in Greece at the Skyros

Institute for a 2 week painting workshop and to celebrate Mediterranean life:

Painting Workshop on Skyros

+ On July 2, 2006 we will be painting live on stage with String Cheese Incident at the fabulous Red

Rocks amphitheater. It would be great to see you there! We hear that tickets are selling quickly.

+ August 28 September 4, 2006 we will be at Burning Man with an exhibition/installation in a 40 dome

as part of the MAPS village. If you dont do anything else crazy this Summer than this could be your

opportunity to feed your counter-culture needs:

Burning Man!

__________

The Links:

Do not be Deceived…

Edge of a Galaxy

From The Sixties in France… Hara-kiri Covers…

Sweet Summer Solstice Balances Life’s Bitterness

__________

inna bug conference: Bad Shaman Interview

Spiros Antonopoulos

Insectoidal Nourishment and the Bad Shaman

The Bad Shaman, while barely known, needs nor wants little introduction. He’s a hard-working American ayahuascero. A successful entrepreneur. Conscientious psychonaut. Researcher of arcane plants, animals and insects. He remains perfectly comfortable surfing the edge of obscurity. Like the shaman in many of history’s archaic societies, he lives and works on the outskirts. We visit the shaman as a last resort. His ways elude sense and nonsense. His mojo works, but never as we expect and always at a price. He would be the first to push you down the stairs, if it might cure what ailed you. He may even ask to eat your brains, but that’s another story.

humans eating bugs

Trip: What’s the history of bug eating?

Bad Shaman: Primates and humans have consumed insects since Neolithic and Prehistoric times. Only recently, within the last 100 years, has insect eating gone out of fashion, except in small rural areas of Mexico, China and a handful of other remote areas. Throughout history, insect eating has been a main source of food for most mammals and birds.

How do bugs taste?

Of the 70 species of insects that I’ve sampled, the only ones that weren’t very appetizing were ladybugs. And I’ve eaten grubs, larvae, beetles, wasps, sow bugs (roly-poly bugs), mealworms, pine grubs, post beetles, earwigs… Insects are surprisingly tasty and comprise the spectrum of flavors, from nuts to vegetables.

Earwigs couldn’t be too tasty.

They are surprisingly tasty. Stir fried with rice and snow peas. Very yummy. I’d like to order some take-out right now.

Which bugs are the yummiest?

The roly-poly bugs. They can taste like anything from spinach to oysters depending upon habitat. And if you cook them, they can be made to taste like just about anything.

If folks could get over the base level aversion, it sounds like roly-poly bugs could usurp tofu.

Yep, and that leads me to my basic assertion: If you eat shrimp and you can’t eat grasshoppers, you better re-examine your taxonomy and zoology.

ant eating

Tell us about psychoactive insects.

Psychoactivity in insects is esoteric at best. Certainly there have been reports of psychoactive honeys from bees in the new world and the old world. Rumors and stories abound. There is a tradition in southern California and the Southwest of eating red harvester ants for their hallucinogenic psychoactivity in the acquisition of spirit helpers.

How did you come upon such esoteric knowledge?

I have been interested in ant consumption by humans in different cultures around the world for over 25 years, and I read scientific papers. For example, ants are no longer an imaginary food source. There are serious papers being presented by entomologists suggesting that eating more insects may solve some world hunger problems and be an excellent source of nutrients for humans.

Traditionally, insect information and lore have been considered a female knowledge since the hunter-gatherer societies didn’t share equally in the vertebrate proteins. That is, men would kill the animals and thus procure most of the vertebrate proteins, leaving women to gathering plants. In doing so the women would also learn about what bugs you could eat. They knew that since insects and plants co-evolved in such a similar environment and parallel evolutionary scheme, their ability to transform plant products into insect poisons is an evolutionary strategy that nature has tried again and again successfully. Insect and arachnid poisons are currently being researched in venom therapies, much like the bee venom therapies used by the Greeks and Romans for thousands of years.

Where do the ants come in?

Primarily in central and southern California. Several tribes used the Pogo for their spirit helper acquisition powers. A person ate a prescribed number of ants and went into a dream state for a couple of hours in which (God willing) a spirit helper would appear in the form of an animal.

So this isn’t recreational bug use.

No, their use was mostly therapeutic. Ants have had therapeutic values with the tribes in southern California and other native peoples throughout the Americas. I met a Dr. Rodriguez from the University of California at Irvine who told me, 25 years ago, that there are 20,000 species of ants in Columbia. And Columbia is already the mother source of many of the poisons that the world is aware of today: tobacco, coca, those sorts of things…

How have you used the red harvester ants?

Over the years I have eaten ants both therapeutically and for the psychoactive effects. I had heard tales of ants being used for arthritis and rheumatism for years. And I have found sources indicating that indigenous cultures from South, Central, and North America have used ants in that way. So I would capture and eat a small quantity of ants for their beneficial effects with rheumatism. The ant that we have in New Mexico is a particular harvester ant in the species Pogonomyrmex californicus, which is specifically known for its venom. There are so many types of ants and each ant has a different ability to produce different types of chemicals and venoms.

Ants have the oldest history of farming. They invented agriculture over 60,000 years ago. They are able to grow funguses on harvested plant materials and control the growth of unwanted fungi and microorganisms with antiseptic sprays that they produce with their bodies.

The particular ant of which I currently speak has a historical tradition, and people at the turn of the last century knew about it. J.P. Harrington, a researcher who worked and lived at that time in the Santa Barbara area, documented two matching ceremonial accounts of ant consumption.

Have the venoms been analyzed for their active constituents?

To a small degree. But since there are so many compounds in ant venoms, it’s a process that’s ongoing. I suspect that even in the back annals of scientific literature, this is probably not a popular subject. But it is becoming more popular (see references).

vision questions

Please explain the traditional ceremonial techniques.

In the recorded anecdotes of native peoples giving ants in a prescribed way, that is, ceremonially, eagle down or cotton is used. The ants would be collected from the ant hive, four or five per cotton ball or feather. The cotton ball was then bitten and swallowed. The person would then wait a period of time, and then with the help of an administrator, would go into a sleep state for a couple of hours, after which they would be administered warm water which would help them regurgitate whatever ants might be left in their stomach. It was important that they consume ants while they were still alive.

I’ve eaten a couple of hundred ants and I find that there certainly is a neurotoxic or psychoactive effect. But as far as going into a dream state, passing out, and acquiring spirit helpers, I have yet to reach that level of saturation.

Can one obtain the same prescribed effect from dead ants or the extract? What has been your most successful experimental technique to date?

Ants are plentiful and easy to collect. I’ve found that using a glass pie pan with beer, water, juice or mescal, one can collect a rather large amount of ants in a short amount of time. The LD50, i.e., the lethal dose of ants, is about 1000, swallowing live ants, so a participant would want to consume about a third to half that amount. Be aware that there is a lethal toxicity to the harvester ants which have been traditionally used, and which I have been consuming.

It’s a bit like walking towards death…

People who are interested should research the literature before attempting to consume any ants. Again, it can be fatal and I don’t recommend it. The bite from this ant is extremely painful and will linger for hours, sometimes days.

Why are you using these particular liquids as the base for your extractions?

This is how we find out what solution is more likely to extract the ant’s psychoactive properties. The beer may extract qualities with alcohols that mescal doesn’t have. It may turn out that eating live ants is ultimately what has to be done to get them to exude their compounds in the time that you want and the quantity that you need.

Are the compounds oil-based?

There are high molecular weight compounds and low molecular weight ones. So I would think that they would have an affinity to many things because it is such a complex mix of proteins and histamines and seratonin-like compounds.

About an hour after I sampled the mescal extract, I was overcome with a severe heaviness. It was rather dark, but not particularly scary. Definitely a meet-your-maker heaviness. Is this typical?

I’m sure there’s a dose-response curve where at lower doses one could have physical benefits while at higher doses you could have psychoactivity, and at even higher doses one could have hallucinogenic activity. But this is an area of avant-garde research. Very basic work still needs to be done, but certainly here is an open field of potential for beginning to understand psychoactive insects as we have with psychoactive plants.

In Mexico, centipedes and wasps were commonly revered for their poisonous qualities and there were often beverages made from them.

How would you compare the ant buzz to a more commonly known psychoactive plant-based poison like datura?

Oh, it’s nothing like datura. And actually that’s not a fair comparison at all. It’s much more like the poison of the tarantella, the wolf spider of Europe.

Would you like to see some ants that I’ve collected?

juicing antcastles

This one has a very peculiar taste…

Very ant-y…

How would you describe the taste of ants?

Different ants have different tastes. These particular ants have a lemon-lime, Sprite-like taste. Not the formaldehyde and formic acid tastes of other types of ants. Nor the sweet buttery taste of black ants. Or the honey taste of honey pod ants.

While this is unexplored territory, it’s not for the faint or foolhardy.

No. It’s literally like playing in a wasp’s or hornet’s nest. Ants pack as powerful a venom and sting as those insects.

You’ve been bitten a few times playing in the nest.

When the ants bit my tongue it took about four or five hours for the burning sting to dissipate.

What about other psychoactive bugs?

These were gathered in the Mexican province of Chululah near Puebla. Terence McKenna speculated that the iridescent green was a signature of psychoactivity in bugs. These guys lived in an acacia tree at night and were attracted to the local poppies during the daytime. So I thought that may be a good indication that they were sequestering some psychoactive properties from the trees and flowers.

Have you tried them?

Well, we’ve smoked them and eaten them and there’s mild psychoactivity. But we really haven’t jumped into these bugs with both feet yet. We’re still trying to collect more background information before I start consuming something that could always be potentially lethal in its poison.

How does it compare to the ants?

That’s comparing apples and oranges. Beetles and wasp-like ants. I was reading, however, that there’s a beetle in Brazil that is raised in peanuts and eaten for rheumatism and arthritis. So I suppose there are a few parallels. Insects are often medicine in traditional cultures; the problem is the scarcity of professionally trained ethno-entomologists that can ask the question, “What insects were/are you using for medicines?” Interestingly, Merck currently has an agreement with Costa Rica to categorize not only all their plants but all of their insects, aware that insects are a possible source for chemicals and medicine. And why wouldn’t they be? Plants are certainly a source of medicine. Perhaps this is just the tip of an iceberg that we’ve yet to explore scientifically. It could hold a cure… perhaps even the cockroach holds the cure for cancer or some other unimaginable terminal disease.

Even so, do you have any moral issues with ant eating?

I do. I am concerned with the taking of life for certain solely psychoactive purposes, but for therapeutic purposes I find that it’s a medicine that’s worthwhile.

There’s a theory that the ant colony is a collective consciousness and that the living anima rests not within the individual ant, but with large groups of them…

Within their collective brain the ability to learn advances with each generation. The ants on this mound probably exist over a quarter acre or so. They know this environment so intimately because they are constantly searching to see what’s out there and what’s available. And the sheer quantity of them. We have no idea what it’s like. They’ve dug underneath all of this area. There are literally tens of thousands of them.

Hell, it’s more crowded in New York City, so humans do actually have an idea of what it’s like. What do you think about the ol’ role reversal, HG Wells’ Empire of the Ants and perhaps ants eating humans?

How do we know they don’t? Fuck this article, we should do a movie.

Spiros Antonopoulos was a contributing editor for the dearly departed Fringeware Review.

The Bad Shaman’s insect-eating reading list:

The Eat A Bug Cookbook by David George Gordon

Man Eating Bugs : The Art and Science of Eating Insects by Peter Menzel, Faith D’Aluisio

* Creepy Crawly Cuisine : The Gourmet Guide to Edible Insects by Julieta Ramos-Elorduy, Peter Menzel

____________

Poetry: The Great Hafiz

LAST night I dreamed that angels stood without

The tavern door, and knocked in vain, and wept;

They took the clay of Adam, and, methought,

Moulded a cup therewith while all men slept.

Oh dwellers in the halls of Chastity!

You brought Love’s passionate red wine to me,

Down to the dust I am, your bright feet stept.

For Heaven’s self was all too weak, to bear

The burden of His love God laid on it,

He turned to seek a messenger elsewhere,

And in the Book of Fate my name was writ.

Between my Lord and me such concord lies.

As makes the Huris glad in Paradise,

With songs of praise through the green glades they flit.

A hundred dreams of Fancy’s garnered store

Assail me – Father Adam went astray

Tempted by one poor grain of corn! Wherefore

Absolve and pardon him that turns away

Though the soft breath of Truth reaches his ears,

For two-and-seventy Jangling creeds he hears,

And loud-voiced Fable calls him ceaselessly.

That, that is not the flame of Love’s true fire

Which makes the torchlight shadows dance in rings,

But where the radiance draws the moth’s desire

And send him fort with scorched and drooping wings.

The heart of one who dwells retired shall break,

Rememb’ring a black mole and a red cheek,

And his life ebb, sapped at its secret springs.

Yet since the earliest time that man has sought

To comb the locks of Speech, his goodly bride,

Not one, like Hafiz, from the face of Thought

Has torn the veil of Ignorance aside.

—-

There is the righteous one, here is ruined me.

See how far it is from one to the other!

What link do piety and righteousness have to the rend’s way?

There is the sound of the sermon, here is the melody of the rabab.

My heart grew weary of the cloister, the hypocrite’s cloak.

Where is the monastery of the Magi? Where is pure wine?

The day of union are gone. Let them be a joyful memory.

Where is that amorous glance? Where is that reproach?

What can the enemy’s heart find in my love’s face?

There is that dead lamp, here is this sun candle.

Do not be seduced by her dimpled chin, there is a well in that road.

Where are you going, O heart, in such a hurry?

Since the kohl of our insight is the dust of your doorway,

Please tell us, where do we go from this threshold?

Do not cover rest and sleep from Hafiz, O friend.

What is rest? Which is patience? And where is sleep?

—-

Oh Cup-bearer, set my glass afire

With the light of wine! oh minstrel, sing:

The world fulfilleth my heart’s desire!

Reflected within the goblet’s ring

I see the glow of my Love’s red cheek,

And scant of wit, ye who fail to seek

The pleasures that wine alone can bring!

Let not the blandishments be checked

That slender beauties lavish on me,

Until in the grace of the cypress decked,

Love shall come like a ruddy pine-tree

He cannot perish whose heart doth hold

The life love breathes – though my days are told,

In the Book of the World lives my constancy.

But when the Day of Reckoning is here,

I fancy little will be the gain

That accrues to the Sheikh for his lawful cheer,

Or to me for the drought forbidden I drain.

The drunken eyes of my comrades shine,

And I too, stretching my hand to the wine,

On the neck of drunkenness loosen the rein.

Oh wind, if thou passest the garden close

Of my heart’s dear master, carry for me

The message I send to him, wind that blows!

“Why hast thou thrust from thy memory

My hapless name?” breathe low in his ear;

“Knowest thou not that the day is near

When nor thou nor any shall think on me?”

If with tears, oh Hafiz, thine eyes are wet,

Scatter them round thee like grain, and snare

The Bird of joy when it comes to thy net.

As the tulip shrinks from the cold night air,

So shrank my heart and quailed in the shade;

Oh Song-bird Fortune, the toils are laid,

When shall thy bright wings lie pinioned there?

The heavens’ green sea and the bark therein,

The slender bark of the crescent moon,

Are lost in thy bounty’s radiant noon,

Vizir and pilgrim, Kawameddin!

——-

An Infant in your Arms

The tide of my love

Has risen so high let me flood

over

You.

Close your eyes for a moment

And maybe all your

fears and fantasies

Will end.

If that happened

God would become an infant in your

Arms

And then you

Would have to nurse all

Creation!

June 12, 2006

Hakim Sana’i

Nice Day… sitting outside, we witnessed a Crow Riot (lots of beatings handed out between different groups) A Blue Heron hanging out in our trees, then taking off… and a multitude of Bees all over the Blackberries and Rasberries.

Cat came in, a horrible mood afflicting him. Getting old does not agree with him, he gets a shorter temper daily. “I demand an immeadiate rub, with some attention to the belly (not too much as I will scratch) followed by feeding, with a back rub simultaneously.”

Headed over to Randies and DeDa’s for dinner, hanging out above OHSU… lovely evening indeed.

Came home in the gloaming, and have begun to upload a new show on the radio, of several hours length, stay tuned…

Our concentration for this entry is on the great Afghan Sufi Mystical Poet: Hakim Sana’i. Excellent, all of it.

On the menu:

The Links

The Article: A Dose Of Genius

Poetry: Hakim Sana’i (with Bio)

The Art: Illustrations from Ancient Islamic Afghanistan

Pax,

Gwyllm

_______

The Links:

Meet the Press in Hell

Crows Have Human-Like Intelligence, Author Says

Hitler ‘Tested Small Atom Bomb’

Russian Official Jailed for Forcing Subordinates to Study Scientology

_______________

A Dose Of Genius

Smart Pills’ Are on The Rise. But Is Taking Them Wise?

By Joel Garreau

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, June 11, 2006; Page D01

Studying with diligent friends is fine, says Heidi Lessing, a University of Delaware sophomore.

But after a couple of hours, it’s time for a break, a little gossip: “I want to talk about somebody walking by in the library.”

One of those friends, however, is working too hard for dish — way too hard.

Instead of joining in the gossip, “She says, ‘Be quiet,’ ” Lessing says, astonishment still registering in her voice.

Her friend’s attention is laserlike, totally focused on her texts, even after an evening of study. “We were so bored,” Lessing says. But the friend was still “really into it. It’s annoying.”

The reason for the difference: Her pal is fueled with “smart pills” that increase her concentration, focus, wakefulness and short-term memory.

As university students all over the country emerge from final exam hell this month, the number of healthy people using bootleg pharmaceuticals of this sort seems to be soaring.

Such brand-name prescription drugs “were around in high school, but they really exploded in my third and fourth years” of college, says Katie Garrett, a 2005 University of Virginia graduate.

The bootleg use even in her high school years was erupting, according to a study published in February in an international biomedical and psychosocial journal, Drug and Alcohol Dependence. Mining 2002 data, it noted that even then, more than 7 million Americans used bootleg prescription stimulants, and 1.6 million of those users were of student age. By the time students reach college nowadays, they’re already apt to know about these drugs, obtained with or without a prescription.

Comparable accounts are common on other campuses, according to dozens of interviews with university students in Virginia, the District, Maryland and Delaware, as well as reports in student newspapers serving campuses in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Michigan, Indiana and Missouri.

“I’m a varsity athlete in crew,” says Katharine Malone, a George Washington University junior. “So we’re pretty careful about what we put in our bodies. So among my personal friends, I’d say the use is only like 50 or 60 percent.”

Seen by some ambitious students as the winner’s edge — the difference between a 3.8 average and a 4.0, maybe their ticket to Harvard Law — these “brain steroids” can be purchased on many campuses for as little as $3 to $5 per pill, though they are often obtained free from friends with legitimate prescriptions, students report.

These drugs represent only the first primitive, halting generation of cognitive enhancers. Memory drugs will soon make it to market if human clinical trials continue successfully.

There are lots of the first-generation drugs around. Total sales have increased by more than 300 percent in only four years, topping $3.6 billion last year, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical information company. They include Adderall, which was originally aimed at people with attention-deficit disorder, and Provigil, which was aimed at narcoleptics, who fall asleep uncontrollably. In the healthy, this class of drugs variously aids concentration, alertness, focus, short-term memory and wakefulness — useful qualities in students working on complex term papers and pulling all-nighters before exams. Adderall sales are up 3,135.6 percent over the same period. Provigil is up 359.7 percent.

In May, the Partnership for a Drug-Free America issued its annual attitude-tracking study on drug use. It is a survey of more than 7,300 seventh- through 12th-graders, designed to be representative of the larger U.S. population and with an accuracy of plus or minus 1.5 percent, according to Thomas A. Hedrick Jr., a founding director of the organization. It reported that among kids of middle school and high school age, 2.25 million are using stimulants such as Ritalin without a prescription.

That’s about one in 10 of the 22 million students in those grades, as calculated by the U.S. Department of Education. Half the time, the study reported, the students were using these drugs not so much to get high as “to help me with my problems” or “to help me with specific tasks.” That motivation was growing rapidly, Hedrick says.

Why should we be surprised? This generation is the one we have pushed to get into the best high schools and colleges, to have the best grades and résumés. Computer nerds are culture heroes, SAT scores are measures of our worth and the Ivy League is Valhalla. Hermione Granger in “Harry Potter” is a heroine despite being such a goody two-shoes that she doubles up her course load with a spell that allows her to be in two places at once. This is the kind of focused overachievement that is addressed by smart pills.

A student Web site for a consortium of tony Philadelphia prep schools makes the point with one of those jokes that’s not really a joke: You know you are part of this elite educational set if:

· “You applied to Penn as a backup school.”

· “You tend to think anything below a 1400 is a mediocre SAT score.”

· “You could get adderall in less than 5 minutes at practically any time of the school day.”

Smart-pill use has not been the focus of much data collection. This comes as no surprise to researchers such as Richard Restak, a Washington neurologist and president of the American Neuropsychiatric Association, who has written extensively about smart drugs in his 2003 book, “The New Brain: How the Modern Age Is Rewiring Your Mind,” as well as his forthcoming “The Naked Brain: How the Neurosociety Is Changing How We Live, Work and Love.”

Contributing to this dearth, he points out, is that these drugs are not famous for being abused recreationally and they are not being used by people with a disease.

This is not “the type of data collected by the FDA,” he says. Law-enforcement activity has been sparse. “Who is the complainant?”

Compared with the kind of drug users who get police attention, “This is an entirely different population of people — from the unmotivated to the super-motivated,” Restak says. These “drug users may be at the top of the class, instead of the ones hanging around the corners.”

Smart-pill use generally doesn’t show up in campus health center reports, he says, because “This is not the kind of stuff that you would overdose on” easily. Amphetamines are associated with addiction and bodily damage, but in use by ambitious students, “if you go a little over you get wired up but it wears off in a couple of hours. And Provigil has a pretty good safety record.” Finally, smart-pill use is a relatively recent development that has not yet achieved widespread attention, much less study, although Restak expects that to change.

“We’re going to see it not only in schools, but in businesses, especially where mental endurance matters.” Restak can easily imagine a boss saying, ” ‘You’ve been here 14 hours; could you do another six?’ It’s a very competitive world out there, and this gives people an edge.”

That’s why even small surveys conducted by students themselves are suggestive. For a senior project this semester, Christopher Salantrie conducted a random survey of 150 University of Delaware students at the university’s Morris Library and Trabant Student Center.

“With rising competition for admissions and classes becoming harder and harder by the day, a hypothesis was made that at least half of students at the university have at one point used/experienced such ‘smart drugs,’ ” Salantrie writes in his report. He found his hunch easy to confirm.

“What was a surprise, though, was the alarming rate of senior business majors who have used” the drugs, he writes. Almost 90 percent reported at least occasional use of “smart pills” at crunch times such as final exams, including Adderall, Ritalin, Strattera and others. Of those, three-quarters did not have a legitimate prescription, obtaining the pills from friends. “We were shocked,” Salantrie writes. He says that in his report, he was “attempting to bring to light the secondary market for Adderall” specifically because “most of the university is not aware” of its extent, he says.

When you start asking questions about smart pills, the answers you get divide sharply into two groups.

When you ask the grown-ups — deans, crisis counselors, health counselors — they tell you they don’t know too much about the subject, but they don’t think it is much of a problem at their institutions.

“I’m not sure of the size and scope,” says Jonathan Kandell, a psychologist and assistant director at the University of Maryland Counseling Center. “I have heard about it. But I don’t get a sense it’s a major thing that they come to the center about.”

When you ask the students, they look at you like you’re from the planet Zircon. They ask why you weren’t on this story three years ago. Even if some of these drugs are amphetamines, it’s medicine parents give to 8-year-olds, they say. It’s brand-name stuff, in precise dosages. How bad can it be? Sure, there are problems with weight loss, sleep loss, jitters and throwing up, they say. But other unintended consequences are not what you might expect. Universities now sport some of the cleanest apartments in the history of undergraduate education. Says one student who asked for anonymity because she has been an off-prescription user of these drugs: “You’ve done all your work, but you’re still focused. So you start with the bathroom, and then move on to the kitchen . . . .”

Warning: Side Effects

In the name of altering mood, energy and thinking patterns, we have been marinating our brains in chemicals for a very long time.

Caffeine is as old as coffee in Arabia, tea in China, and chocolate in the New World. Alcohol, coca leaves, tobacco and peyote go way back.

Even psychopharmaceuticals have been around for generations. Amphetamines — which are the active ingredient in Adderall and Ritalin — were first synthesized in Germany in 1887. Students have been using them for generations, in the form of Benzedrine and Dexedrine.

Beta blockers have been the dirty little secret of classical musicians since the 1970s. Originally prescribed to treat high blood pressure, they became the “steroids of the symphony” when it became clear Inderal controlled stage fright. As long ago as 1987, a study of the 51 largest orchestras in the United States found one in four musicians using them to improve their live performances, with 70 percent of those getting their pills illicitly.

What’s new is the range, scope, quantity and quality of substances, old and new, aimed at boosting our brains — as well as the increase in what’s in the pipeline. Current psychopharmaceuticals represent only the beginning of cognitive enhancers aimed at improving attention, reasoning, planning and even social skills.

The memory compounds being raced to market by four U.S. companies are initially aimed at the severely impaired, such as early-stage Alzheimer’s patients. But researchers expect the market for memory drugs to rapidly extend into the aging population we think of as normal, such as the more than 70 million baby boomers who are tired of forgetting what they meant to buy at the shopping mall and then realizing they’ve forgotten where they parked their cars, too. Or students who think such drugs could gain them hundreds of points on their SATs.

In research now underway, one such substance, ampakines, boosts the activity of glutamate, a key neurotransmitter that makes it easier to learn and encode memory. How useful they might be in a French or law exam.

But there are side effects with every drug. Strattera — the ADHD medicine that is not a stimulant and may be taken for weeks before it shows an effect — comes with a warning that it can result in fatal liver failure. The FDA warns it also may increase thoughts of suicide in young people. For a while last year, Canada pulled a form of Adderall from its markets as a result of sudden unexplained deaths in children with cardiac abnormalities. Provigil can decrease the effectiveness of birth control. All of these drugs come with a raft of side-effect warnings.

Nonetheless, pharmaceutical companies are racing to bring to market new drugs aimed at fundamentally altering our attitudes toward having a healthy brain. The idea is less to treat a specific disease than it is to, in the words of the old Army recruiting commercial, “Be all that you can be.”

Of Mice and Men

Is this what smart has come to in the early 21st century? Is Ken Jennings, the “Jeopardy” phenom, our model of smart? Do SATs and grade-point averages measure all of what it means to be intelligent? If so, these drugs have a potent future. But definitions of intelligence may change — already, some colleges have stopped requiring SAT scores from applicants.

Howard Gardner of Harvard is the godfather of the idea that smart is more than what IQ tests test. In his seminal 1983 book, “Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,” and later works, he laid out a then-novel model of cognition that included many other kinds of sagacity.

“I feel that what we call ‘intelligence’ is almost always ‘scholastic skill’ — what it takes to do well on a certain kind of short-answer instrument in a certain kind of Western school,” he writes in an e-mail. “Other uses of intellect — musical competence, facility in the use of one’s hands, understanding of other people, sensitivity to distinctions in the natural world, alertness to one’s own and others’ emotional states etc. — are not included in our definitions of intelligence, though I think that they should be. Unless performances in these other domains were directly tapped, we’d have no idea of whether ‘performance enhancing pills’ affect these other forms of intelligence as well.”

Eric R. Kandel is shocked by the idea that powerful elixirs like the ones he is developing might rapidly trickle down to ambitious college kids. He shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in medicine for his research on the physiological basis of memory storage in neurons. He also founded Memory Pharmaceuticals.

“That’s awful! Why should they be taking drugs? They should just study! I think this is absurd. What’s so terrible about having a 3.9? The idea that character and functioning and intelligence is to be judged by a small difference on an exam — that’s absurd. This is just like Barry Bonds and steroids. Exactly what you want to discourage. These kids are very sensitive. Their brains are still developing. Who knows what might happen. I went to Harvard. I like Harvard. It ain’t worth it.”

The mind amplifiers he’s working on, he insists, could have major effects on lots of needy people — those with mental retardation or Down syndrome, or those with memory loss from depression or Alzheimer’s or cancer chemotherapy or schizophrenia. “There are lots of populations out there that really, really need help,” he says.

Kandel is hugely enthusiastic about taking a memory that has slipped and bringing it back up to reasonable. His compounds are terrific in aging mice, he says.

But ambitious college kids?

Why take the risk?

In normal mice, he says, his stuff improves memory — only by 20 percent to 50 percent.

_________

Afghan Sufi Poetry – Hakim Sana’i

Saki,

bring wine

& don’t stop the flow!

Our old friend has broken his vows

of repentence. He’s lifted the siege of Self-denial

& Duty, & come to loiter round the

tavern with a notorious beauty!

He’s vacuumed his head of hypocrisy &

pious attitudinizing, & all at once he’s sprung him-

self from his monastery. He’s freed his ankle from

Religion’s chains-but cinched his waist with a

Fireworshipper’s sash. How he drinks! And urges me,

“Have one yourself! Stay drunk as long as you can!

Stick to this path toward nothingness

& light a fire beneath all

that survives!”

(Translated by Hakim Bey)

——–

The Good Darkness

There is great joy in darkness.

Deepen it.

Blushing embarrassments

in the half-light

confuse,

but a scorched, blackened, face

can laugh like an Ethiopian,

or a candled moth,

coming closer to God.

Brighter than any moon, Bilal,

Muhammed’s Black Friend,

shadowed him on the night journey.

Keep your deepest secret hidden

in the dark beneath daylight’s

uncovering and night’s spreading veil.

Whatever’s given you by those two

is for your desires. They poison,

eventually. Deeper down, where your face

gets erased, where life-water runs silently,

there’s a prison with no food and drink,

and no moral instruction, that opens on a garden

where there’s only God. No self,

only the creation-word, BE.

You, listening to me, roll up the carpet

of time and space, Step beyond,

into the one word.

In blindness, receive what I say.

Take “There is no good…”

for your wealth and your strength.

Let “There is nothing…” be

a love-wisdom in your wine.

—–

The Wild Rose of Praise

Those unable to grieve,

or to speak of their love,

or to be grateful, those

who can’t remember God

as the source of everything,

might be described as a vacant wind,

or a cold anvil, or a group

of frightened old people.

Say the Name. Moisten your tongue

with praise, and be the spring ground,

waking. Let your mouth be given

its gold-yellow stamen like the wild rose’s.

As you fill with wisdom,

and your heart with love,

there’s no more thirst.

There’s only unselfed patience

waiting on the doorsill, a silence

which doesn’t listen to advice

from people passing in the street.

—–

The Way of the Holy Ones

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

Don’t look for Him everywhere — He’s looking for you.

An ant’s foot touches a leaf, He senses it;

A pebble shifts in a streambed, He knows it.

If there’s a worm hidden deep in a rock,

He’ll know its body, tinier than an atom,

The sound of its praise, its secret ecstasy –

All this He knows by divine knowing.

He has given the tiniest worm its food;

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

—-

The Great Provider

Allah sets the table for all living things,

and lays out more edibles than eaters!

Everyone has its spirit, its days, its daily bread,

blessings and happiness from Allah.

Allah brings to light everyone’s daily bread,

then leaves the larder door wide open!

Unbeliever, believer, wretched and happy alike,

all creatures will find new sustenance and new life there.

A Bearded Man Leans on a Stick, Persian, 1630-40. Click for larger image.

While the N of need still sticks in their throats,

the M of His munificence has already provisioned them.

Nothing nurtures us other than bread,

and we eat it only because of our hunger for it.

Allah does not leap to the command of servants!

Having blessed us with our hunger for bread,

He will give us that bread as well.

Your bread and your soul are both in the divine treasury;

they are Allah’s buried treasure, if you only knew it!

If your meal waits for you in China,

the horse you will ride to it is already saddled and waiting.

Either you will be carried there quickly,

or your bread will be brought to your side while you sleep.

Did Allah not say,

“I am your Provider, the Knower of things secret, the Knower of things open.

I give you life, and I will give you bread.

Whatever you wish, I will give you in good time”?

Know that the work of daily bread is at your door like the dawn;

and that bread is a souvenir of the day.

The Mean One fears this truth,

and avoids the leftovers of the Wise.

The lion does not devour its prey alone

when it’s had its fill, it leaves the rest.

Allah’s kindness is with you,

so you trade the life your hold in your hand for a crumb.

Mind your soul, for, just like bread,

loaf follows loaf till the edge of the grave.

Allah grants no one life without granting bread,

because the soul is sustained by it.

Take this seriously eat now,

and soon you will eat the food of the soul…

Your daily bread is granted to you by the Knowing, Powerful One,

so don’t shake your fist at the King and the tax-collector!

When the soul flies from your body,

be certain that your daily bread has arrived at last.

It arrives through the gate of Allah,

not the gate of your teeth or throat.

You may sit at the head of the table, but only way of great suffering

especially if you weren’t wealthy or wise to begin with!

So forget that place!

To rise to such a rank would assure you nothing but heartache and scattered desires Let Allah be enough to fill you.

In any state, in any event, it is better that you seek support from Allah

than that you should seek it from an ass-powered mill or a sack.

In any state, in any event, it is better that you depend upon the benevolence of Allah

than that you should depend on an ass-powered mill and the sack.

______

Hakim Sanai

Timeline (1044? – 1150?)

Not much is known about Hakim Sanai, often just called Sanai or Sanai of Ghazna. Sanai is one of the earlier Sufi poets. He was born in the province of Ghazna in southern Afghanistan in the middle of the 11th century and probably died around 1150.

Rumi acknowledged Sanai and Attar as his two primary inspirations, saying, “Attar is the soul and Sanai its two eyes, I came after Sanai and Attar.”

Sanai was originally a court poet who was engaged in writing praises for the Sultan of Ghazna.

The story is told of how the Sultan decided to lead a military attack against neighboring India and Sanai, as a court poet, was summoned to join the expedition to record the Sultan’s exploits. As Sanai was making his way to the court, he passed an enclosed garden frequented by a notorious drunk named Lai Khur.

As Sanai was passing by, he heard Lai Khur loudly proclaim a toast to the blindness of the Sultan for greedily choosing to attack India, when there was so much beauty in Ghazna. Sanai was shocked and stopped. Lai Khur then proposed a toast to the blindness of the famous young poet Sanai who, with his gifts of insight and expression, couldn’t see the pointlessness of his existence as a poet praising such a foolish Sultan.

These words were like an earthquake to Hakim Sanai, because he knew they were true. He abandoned his life as a pampered court poet, even declining marriage to the Sultan’s own sister, and began to study with a Sufi master named Yusef Hamdani.

Sanai soon went on pilgrimage to Mecca. When he returned, he composed his Hadiqatu’l Haqiqat or The Walled Garden of Truth. There was a double meaning in this title for, in Persian, the word for a walled garden is the same word for paradise, but it was also from within a walled garden that Lai Khur uttered the harsh truths that set Hakim Sanai on the path of wisdom.

June 8, 2006

Marys’ Garden, Part II

Some of these girls I have had since they were little clonelettes, back in 1996. They don’t survive in ground over winter, but have to be dug up, or cloned out again and re-root in jars over winter. I am going to experiment with straw and compost this fall, to see if they survive the wintering. I will take starts of course…

I have had great satisfaction in the growing of this plant. I thoroughly enjoy our interactions in and out of the ground…

Mary and Rowan being good sports. You my as well tie their ankles to a stake than get a willing photo out of them. My camera has become an object to flee around here, unfortunately.

They see it come out, and they scatter like the wind.

My ex-sister in law, Lisa gave us a moon and a star that have solar batteries. Usually, I like pitch dark at night but for some reason I like thetwo lights out there.

Thanks Lisa!

Mary and Rowan hanging out in the Gloaming. My favourite time, the in-betweenies as I say.

If the insects leave you alone (which does occur, usually when my mind is unclouded, I find this one of the better periods for quiet contemplation.

Ah, that is the secret of the garden I think, it reflects back very well, and also seems to ground one very well….

Putting your hands into earth, caring for all the little beings and plants gets one out of ones self.

On the Menu:

The Links

The Quote of the Day

The Article: Big Brother Bugs Portland

On the Garden: Zen Quotes & Poetry

Life and Death in the Garden.

The Bee was caught in the web of the Spider, and of course the spider was delighted, the Bee lless so. Their dance went on for hours. I wanted to free the Bee, but desisted. Obviously from the early moments of creation, this moment had been forming, and now was in full flower.

Eventually, they killed each other in their struggles…

___________

The Links:

Pentagon sets its sights on social networking websites

Bollywood Beatles… their version of “I wanna hold your hand”

bill bennet explains marriage

Brazilian Margarine Commercial…

______________

Quote of the Day:

The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.

Robert Anton Wilson

The inner leaves of our Variegated Brugmansia. Amazing flowers on this little darling, which somehow survives year after year here. (with a bit of help of course)

We have tons of datura this year, always a good omen…

_______________

Big Brother Bugs Portland

Simon Maxwell Apter

To George H.W. Bush, Portland, Oregon, is ” Little Beirut.” Downtown’s omnipresent bicycle messengers call the city “Stumptown,” and officially, the town is known as the City of Roses. In a move more befitting, perhaps, the presidential Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires circa 1982, and not the Rose City of Portland circa 2006, the FBI has been accused by Portland Mayor Tom Potter of “trying to place an informant inside the offices of Portland’s elected officials and employees, in order to inform on City Council and others.”

Since the end of the Age of Aquarius, when thousands of Californians began to migrate north to Oregon, Portland has never been particularly welcoming to the executive branch of the federal government–especially when said branch is in Republican control. Portland’s two Representatives in Congress are Democrats, and Portland’s county, Multnomah, voted for John Kerry over Bush in 2004 by nearly a 3-to-1 ratio. Moreover, in April 2005, the City Council voted, along with the mayor–and with overwhelming support from the citizenry–to withdraw Portland’s participation in the FBI-led Joint Terrorism Task Force project.

Upon Portland’s withdrawal from the task force, NPR’s Larry Abramson noted, “Portlanders seem proud of their bluer-than-blue reputation, of the bumper stickers that proclaim ‘Keep Portland Weird.’ So maybe it was predictable that the city mocked as Little Beirut by conservatives is considering a symbolic declaration of independence.” And tucked away in the Pacific Northwest, with no Jerry Garcia or Kurt Cobain to worship, Portland has made its commitment to progressive politics the city’s calling card. The mayor’s seat is officially nonpartisan, and where major policy is concerned, the mayor has little more power than anyone else on the four-member City Council. With a robust public referendum system that presents voters with potential tax proposals, constitutional amendments and bond issues, Portland’s political system does Montesquieu proud.

By state law, police officers in Oregon are barred from investigating citizens based solely on their political, religious or social leanings, and Portlanders will be quick to point out that it was the Feds, and not local cops, who erroneously arrested local attorney Brandon Mayfield in connection to the 3/11 Madrid train bombings in May 2004. After the bogus fingerprint evidence used to arrest him fell through, the only credible “reason” behind the police action turned out to be Mayfield’s religion, which happened to be Islam.

“In the absence of any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing,” wrote Mayor Potter in an open letter to the city, “I believe the FBI’s recent actions smack of ‘Big Brother.’ Spying on local government without justification or cause is not acceptable to me. I hope it is not acceptable to you, either.”

Of course, the FBI has a different take. In a press release coming on the heels of Potter’s letter, the Portland office of the FBI stated, “It is entirely proper for an FBI agent to ask willing citizens to provide information when those citizens feel it is appropriate to do so regarding potential criminal conduct–whether that information involves a bank robbery, kidnapping, public corruption or other crime.” Like most of America’s major cities, Portland is rife with problems, many stemming from poverty and racism–but a Tammany or Richard J. Daley-style system has never taken root in City Hall at Southwest Fourth and Madison.

Few, including Mayor Potter, Portland’s former chief of police, doubt the capability of information gathered in the field to further the prosecution of governmental graft. In Portland’s case, though, there were and are no reasons to suspect corruption at City Hall. Indeed, when Potter first complained about the incident to the FBI on May 15, special agent Robert Jordan, head of the FBI field office in Portland, wondered if his man was merely hitting on the city employee.

With no evidence unearthed at City Hall to warrant a federal investigation, it’s a “presumed guilty” situation. Potter acknowledges as much, writing, “When there is no information to indicate ANY public corruption on the part of City Council members or employees, the FBI has no legitimate role in surreptitiously monitoring elected officials and city employees.”

If the NSA has claimed ordinary civilians as their own targets for surveillance, perhaps it’s only fitting that the FBI is now venturing into the rotundas and council rooms of America’s cities to find its own prey.

____________

On the Garden: Zen Quotes & Poetry

Mountain fruit drop in the rain

and grass insects sing under my oil lamp.

White hair, after all, can never change

as yellow gold cannot be created.

If you want to know how to get rid

of age, its sickness, study nonbeing.

– Wang Wei, 699-761

———

Crape myrtle, brilliant red, bursting forth;

Hiding the garden.

Some days, only the Garden, entire, serene;

Yet, hiding from sight, shy, single plants.

Seeing Both, seldom, but as One:

Sweat poured from my startled brow,

Dripping on the dry earth,

And all became Sunshine

And shadows of surprise unraveling.

– Michael P. Garofalo, Above the Fog

———-

Being and non-being produce each other.

Difficulty and ease bring about each other.

Long and short delimit each other.

High and low rest on each other.

Sound and voice harmonize each other.

Front and back follow each other.

Therefore the sage abides in the condition of unattached action.

And carries out the wordless teaching.

Here, the myriad things are made, yet not separated.

———

Dust and sand in his eyes, dirt in his ears,

He doesn’t consent to stay in the myriad peaks.

Falling flowers, flowing streams, very vast.

Suddenly raising my eyebrows – where has he gone?

– Hsueh-tou (980-1052)

———-

Even plants and trees,

Which have no heart,

Wither with the passing days;

Beholding this,

Can anyone help but feel chagrin?

– Dogen, 1200 – 1253

——–

Long ago there was an immortal man

Who lived on the slope of Shooting Mountain.

Riding clouds and commanding flying dragons,

He did his breathing and supped on precious flowers.

He could be heard, but not seen.

Sighing sorrows and full emotions,

Self-tortured, he had no companion;

Grief and heartbreak piled upon him

“Study the familiar to penetrate the sublime”

But time is short and what’s to be done?

– Juan Chi (210-263 CE)

Moon to the south… our last photo entry on this track, more to come I am sure…

Pax,

Gwyllm

June 8, 2006

True Thomas…

Thursday Night. My friend Terry comes over , and we go to explore a semi-new Organic Brewery, “Roots” down on 7th off of Hawthorne. Tasty IPA, nice crowd, Reggae Music, Dance Hall and some Dub pounding out of the door.

After 2 IPAs’ we head up the street to Caer Llwydd, settle back and crack open the Absinthe and settle in, listening to XM channel 100 (The French Channel)… Conversations dance in and out of some 40 years, touching on the latest screw-ups in Iraq to our dear Ann Coulters latest verbal car-wrecks…

The evening moves on, from 7:30, and now at 12:46 Friday morning, we talk about the failures of the education system for most of the kids…

A nice night, good music, good friendship…. 8o)

On the Menu…

The Linkage:

Article: Scotland’s Nostradamus and the Queen of the Fairies

The Ballads in two different Versions: “True Thomas”

Enjoy…!

Gwyllm

________

The Linkage:

Survivalist Personals…

Loony Tunes: Ann Coulter’s Further Adventures…

Bullied by the Eunuchs

Hijaras in Pakistan…

_____________

Scotland’s Nostradamus and the Queen of the Fairies

IAIN LUNDY

True Thomas sat on Huntley bank,

And he beheld a lady gay;

A lady that was brisk and bold,

Come riding oer the ferny brae.

Her skirt was of the grass green silk,

Her mantle of the velvet fine;

At every lock of her horses mane,

Hung fifty silver bells and nine.

SO BEGINS the ballad of the quaint 13th-century figure known as Scotland’s Nostradamus and his enchantment by the Queen of the Fairies. Thomas of Ercildoune – more commonly known as Thomas the Rhymer – was a soothsayer of such repute that for a time his fame rivalled that of the Arthurian magician Merlin.

The accuracy of what happened to Thomas and how he gained his supernatural powers has become confused over the centuries, but there are common threads running through every variation of the story. It is, in essence, a fairy story but one which seeks to explain how Thomas was able to predict some of the most important events in Scottish history, including the defeat by the English at the Battle of Flodden and the Union of the Crowns of Scotland and England.

Very few “fairy stories” are given such credence as that of Thomas and his dalliance with the Queen of Elfland. After all, he was no fairy. He was a real person and his predictions which were written down – were treated so seriously that they were consulted before both the two Jacobite rebellions.

So who was Thomas and why was he singled out for mystical powers? Born around 1220, he lived in Learmont Tower, near Ercildoune, now Earlston in Berwickshire. Close by there stood a grove of hardwood trees on the banks of Huntly Burn and as a youngster Thomas had a favourite tree under which he used to lie.

The story goes that as he lay there one day he saw the beautiful Queen of the Fairies approaching on her graceful white horse. She was wearing green silk and velvet and on her horse’s mane there hung 59 silver bells. Thomas was entranced by her beauty and readily complied when the Queen asked him to kiss her underneath his favourite tree. He then agreed to accompany her, and the two rode off into the Eildon Hills where Thomas spent seven years as the Queen’s lover in her fairy home in Elfland.

The years seemed only a few minutes to Thomas. But when the time came for the Queen to return him to mortal land, she made him promise never to speak of what he had seen. He agreed and she gave him an apple and said: “Take this for thy wages Thomas, it will give thee a tongue that can never lie.”

From then on he was known as “True Thomas”. The Queen also conferred on him the gift of prophecy.

He used his new powers to prophesy several significant historical events including the death of King Alexander lll; the succession of Robert the Bruce to the throne of Scotland; the defeat of the Scots at the Battle of Flodden; the defeat of Mary, Queen of Scots’ forces at the Battle of Pinkie in 1567; and the Union of the Crowns in 1603.

He is also said to have predicted the Scottish success at the Battle of Bannockburn and the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745.

The story of Thomas is told in the ballad Thomas the Rhymer, which was included by Sir Walter Scott in his work, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. In recent years recordings of the ballad have been made by the folk-rock band Steeleye Span and Scottish folk musician Ewan MacColl.

Thomas himself was a noted poet and is supposed to be the author of one of the oldest-known surviving Scottish stories, Sir Tristrem, also edited by Sir Walter himself.

There is one final twist to the saga of Thomas the Rhymer. One day, many years after returning from Elfland, he walked out of his house to his favourite tree under which he had first met the Queen. He has never returned and has not been seen since.

According to legend he will return one day to help Scotland in her hour of greatest need. Some might say that time is not far off.

______

Two Ballad Versions of the Tale:

Campbell HISS, II, 83

As Thomas lay on Huntlie banks –

A wat a weel bred man was he

And there he spied a lady fair,

Coming riding down by the Eildon tree.

The horse she rode on was dapple gray,

And in her hand she held bells nine;

I thought I heard this fair lady say

These fair siller bells they should a’ be mine.

It’s Thomas even forward went,

And lootit low down on his knee

‘ Weed met thee save, my lady fair,

For thou’rt the flower o this countrie.’

O no, O no, Thomas,’ she says,

‘O no, O no, that can never be,

For I’m but a lady of an unto land.

Comd out a hunting, as ye may see.

O harp and carp, Thomas,’ she says,

‘O harp and carp, and go wi me;

It’s be seven years, Thomas, and a day.

Or you see man or woman in your am countrie.’

It’s she has rode, and Thomas ran.

Until they cam to yon water clear ;

He’s coosten off his hose and shon,

And he’s wooden the water up to the knee.

It’s she has rode, and Thomas ran,

Until they cam to yon garden green ;

He’s put up his hand for to pull down ane,

For the lack o food he was like to tyne.

‘Hold your hand, Thomas,’ she says,

‘Hold your hand, that must not be;

It was a’ that cursed fruit o thine

Beggared man and woman in your countrie

‘ But I have a loaf and a soup o wine,

And ye shall go and dine wi me;

And lay yer head down in my lap,

And, I will tell ye farlies three.

‘It ‘s dont ye see yon broad broad way,

That leadeth down by yon skerry fell?

It’s ill’s the man that dothe thereon gang,

For it leadeth him straight to the gates o hell.

It’s dont ye see yon narrow way,

That leadeth down by yon lillie lea?

It’s weel’s the man that doth therein gang,

For it leads him straight to the heaven hie.’

—–

It’s when she cam into the hall

I wat a weel bred man was he –

They’ve asked him question[s], one and all,

But he answered none but that fair ladie.

O they speerd at her where she did him get,

And she told them at the Eildon tree;

______

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 251, ed. 1802

TRUE Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,

A ferlie he spied wi’ his ee,

And there be saw a lady bright,

Come riding down by the Eildon Tree.

Her shirt was o the grass-green silk,

Her mantle o the velvet fyne,

At ilka tett of her horse’s mane

Hang fifty siller bells and nine.

True Thomas, he pulld aff his cap,

And louted low down to his knee

‘All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!

For thy peer on earth I never did see.’

`O no, O no, Thomas,’ she said,

‘ That name does not belang to me;

I am but the queen of fair Elfland,

That am hither come to visit thee.

‘ Harp and carp. Thomas.’ she said,

‘Harp and carp along wi me,

And if ye dare to kiss my lips.

Sure of your bodie I will be.’

‘ Betide me weal, betide me woe,

That weird shall never daunton me ; ‘

Syne he has kissed her rosy lips,

All underneath the Eildon Tree.

‘Now ye maun go wi me,’ she said,

True Thomas, Ye maun no wi me,

And ye maun serve me seven years.

Thro weal or woe, as may chance to be.’

She mounted on her milk-white steed,

She’s taen True Thomas up behind,

And aye wheneer her bridle rung,

The steed flew swifter than the wind.

O they rade on, and farther on –

The steed gaed swifter than the wind –

Untill they reached a desart wide,

And living land was left behind.

‘ Light down, light down, now, True Thomas,

And lean your head upon my knee;

Abide and rest a little space,

And I will shew you ferlies three.

see ye not yon narrow road,

So thick beset with thorns and briers?

That is the path of righteousness,

Tho after it but few enquires.

‘And see not ye that braid braid road,

That lies across that lily leven?

That is the path of wickedness,

Tho some call it the road to heaven.

`And see not ye that bonny road,

That winds about the fernie brae?

That is the road to fair Elfland

Where thou and I this night maun gae.

‘ But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,

Whatever ye may hear or see,

For, if you speak word in Elflyn land,

Ye’Il neer get back to your ain countrie.’

they rade on, and farther on,

And they waded thro rivers aboon the knee,

And they saw neither sun nor moon,

But they heard the roaring of the sea.

It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light,

And they waded thro red blade to the knee;

For a’ the blude that’s shed on earth

Rins thro the springs o that countrie.

Syne they came on to a garden green,

And she pu’d an apple frae a tree

Take this for thy wages, True Thomas,

It will give the tongue that can never lie.’

‘ My tongue is mine ain,’ Tree Thomas said

‘ A gudely gift ye wad gie to me!

I neither dought to buy nor sell,

At fair or tryst where I may be.

‘ I dought neither speak to prince or peer,

Nor ask of grace from fair ladye :’

Now hold thy peace,’ the lady said,

‘ For as I say, so must it be.’

He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,

And a pair of shoes of velvet green,

And till seven years were gane and past

True Thomas on earth was never seen.

____________

A. 7 stands 15 in the MS

82. golden green if only my copy is right.

112,3are 112,3 in the MS: the order of words is still not simple enough for a ballad.

144. goe

Jamison has a few variations, which I suppose to be his own.

11, oer yonder bank. 34. your like. 44. And I am come here to. 64. her steed. 82. garden, rightly. 102. clarry. 112. Lay your head. 121. see you not. 124. there’s few. 13. see ye not yon. 141. see ye yon. 142. which winds.

B. 32. her knee. 38. thou save.

121. MS perhaps unto.

131,2 follows st. 12 without separation.

C. 201. a cloth

_____________

June 7, 2006

Marys’ Garden Pt 1

The groves were God’s first temples.

– William Cullen Bryant, A Forest Hymn

Mary’s Garden Assistant. This is the 2nd year that she has come back. We rescued her when she was young, having fallen out of the tree. We saved her from the cats, fed her and helped her to fly.

Miss Robin joins Mary when she working in the garden, often no more than a foot or two away from Mary, waiting for bugs and worms. Sadly, she turns her beak up at slugs. A bit of retraining?

She is a member of a family that has come to the same tree since we have been here at our house. I begin to suspect that there are traditional grounds for most animals…. There are also areas of our yards where swarms of gnats appear every year, like clock work.

The Tao of life, the Morphic Fields abound around and within us. The Squirrels, the Crow Tribe, The Raccoon Raiders… all have their place in our world. The gnats, the bees… (oh the bees!) all have their parts to play in the divine dance, of the garden.

They shouldn’t grow here, but somehow they do. I have raised most of them since they were wee pups. Good friends, and a wonder for the garden here in the NW.

I have always loved raising cactus. I started in San Francisco some 30 years ago. Fascinating plants, and very patient and forgiving.

A trio of beings who really dodge the camera at the best of times. This is looking to the SW…

We have some challenges for growing in our garden, as our neighbor believes that if you trim trees, they will only grow more. Thank goodness this logic doesn’t run to keeping the yard trimmed. Way to much shade!

Our Challenge every year….

Our new Fire Pit. Rowan is wild for this little number. We were looking for one of those portable ones, but ended up sticking to earth and rock, the old standbys…

Since we have put it in, we don’t eat inside any more. Nice!

I love watching the flames. It brings out the dreaming… and it turns Marys’ Garden into a magickal place for us.

More tomorrow!

On the Menu:

Big Brother’s new toy: Another bloated gas bag watching you from the sky

Quotes: On Gardeners & Trees

Two Poems on Nature: William Cullen Bryant

I hope you enjoy this edition.

Big Love,

Gwyllm

__________

Big Brother’s new toy: Another bloated gas bag watching you from the sky

By James Renner – Cleveland Free Times

Last week, a fire ignited at the Akron Airdock that once housed a fleet of Goodyear blimps. Firemen rushed to the 211-foot-tall structure and quickly doused the flames. Reporters and photographers descended on the landmark. Many were surprised to learn the blimps were no longer being stored there.

Turns out Lockheed Martin — the company that gave us the Trident intercontinental ballistic missile — was renovating the site for an upcoming project when the fire started. It’s being turned into a hangar for a prototype airship. If you’re frightened of this administration’s habit of spying on American citizens, you may want to stop reading.

The prototype is called the High Altitude Airship, or HAA. Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors in Akron won the $40 million contract from the Missile Defense Agency to build HAA in 2003. It is essentially another blimp. A giant one. Seventeen times the size of the Goodyear dirigible. It’s designed to float 12 miles above the earth, far above planes and weather systems. It will be powered by solar energy, and will stay in a geocentric orbit for up to a year, undetectable by ground-based radar. You can’t see it from the ground. But it can see you.

“The possibilities are endless for homeland security,” says Kate Dunlap, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson. “It could house cameras, and other surveillance equipment. It would be an eye in the sky.”

According to a summary released by the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, the HAA can watch over a circle of countryside 600 miles in diameter. That’s everything between Toledo and New York City. And they want to build 11. With high-res cameras, that could mean constant surveillance of every square inch of American soil. “If you had a fleet of them, this could be used for border surveillance,” suggests Dunlap.

Launch date: 2009.

Of course, mimicking its defense of warrantless wiretapping and phone-log data mining, the government maintains it only wants to protect its citizens from external threats. But as any geek can tell you, blimps were ubiquitous in The Watchmen, the seminal ’80s graphic novel in which heroes have been driven underground and Nixon is still president.

Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not watching you.

___________

Trees and the Gardener…

Our Cherry Tree, left over from when our part of town was the largest insane asylum west of the Mississippi. Some say it still is. We try to maintain the tradition in our own little ways….

When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher than

the ordinary, and shutting out the sky with their thickly inter-twined

branches, do not the stately shadows of the wood, the stillness of

the place, and the awful gloom of this doomed cavern then strike

you with the presence of a deity?

– Seneca

—-

Trees serve as homes for visiting devas who do not manifest in earthly bodies,

but live in the fibers of the trunks and larger branches of the trees, feed from

the leaves and communicate through the tree itself. Some are permanently

stationed as guardians of sacred places.

– Hindu Deva Shastra, verse 117, Nature Devas

—-

The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree;

they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies,

because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred,

the ganz andere or ‘wholly other.’

– Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries

—-

Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky,

We fell them down and turn them into paper,

That we may record our emptiness.

– Kahlil Gibran

—-

God is the experience of looking at a tree and saying, “Ah!”

– Joseph Campbell

—–

Give me a land of boughs in leaf,

A land of trees that stand;

Where trees are fallen there is grief;

I love no leafless land.”

– A.E. Housman

—–

We can see from the experience of Odin that the image of the tree was the template

within which all of the sacred world could be apprehended. The tree was the framework

within which one “flew” to these Otherworlds. And since the exploration of sacred space

was also a quest into the nature of human consciousness, the tree was regarded as an

image of the ways in which we, humans, are constructed psychically. It was a natural

model for our deepest wisdom, our highest aspirations.

– Brian Bates, Sacred Trees

________

Two Poems on Nature: William Cullen Bryant

A Forest Hymn

THE groves were God’s first temples. Ere man learned

To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave,

And spread the roof above them,—ere he framed

The lofty vault, to gather and roll back

The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,

Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,

And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks

And supplication. For his simple heart

Might not resist the sacred influences,

Which, from the stilly twilight of the place,

And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven

Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound

Of the invisible breath that swayed at once

All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed

His spirit with the thought of boundless power

And inaccessible majesty. Ah, why

Should we, in the world’s riper years, neglect

God’s ancient sanctuaries, and adore

Only among the crowd, and under roofs,

That our frail hands have raised? Let me, at least,

Here, in the shadow of this aged wood,

Offer one hymn—thrice happy, if it find

Acceptance in His ear.

Father, thy hand

Hath reared these venerable columns, thou

Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down

Upon the naked earth, and, forthwith, rose

All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun,

Budded, and shook their green leaves in the breeze,

And shot towards heaven. The century-living crow,

Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died

Among their branches, till, at last, they stood,

As now they stand, massy, and tall, and dark,

Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold

Communion with his Maker. These dim vaults,

These winding aisles, of human pomp and pride

Report not. No fantastic carvings show

The boast of our vain race to change the form

Of thy fair works. But thou art here—thou fill’st

The solitude. Thou art in the soft winds

That run along the summit of these trees

In music; thou art in the cooler breath

That from the inmost darkness of the place

Comes, scarcely felt; the barky trunks, the ground,

The fresh moist ground, are all instinct with thee.

Here is continual worship;—Nature, here,

In the tranquility that thou dost love,

Enjoys thy presence. Noiselessly, around,

From perch to perch, the solitary bird

Passes; and yon clear spring, that, midst its herbs,

Wells softly forth and wandering steeps the roots

Of half the mighty forest, tells no tale

Of all the good it does. Thou hast not left

Thyself without a witness, in these shades,

Of thy perfections. Grandeur, strength, and grace

Are here to speak of thee. This mighty oak—

By whose immovable stem I stand and seem

Almost annihilated—not a prince,

In all that proud old world beyond the deep,

E’er wore his crown as lofty as he

Wears the green coronal of leaves with which

Thy hand has graced him. Nestled at his root

Is beauty, such as blooms not in the glare

Of the broad sun. That delicate forest flower

With scented breath, and look so like a smile,

Seems, as it issues from the shapeless mould,

An emanation of the indwelling Life,

A visible token of the upholding Love,

That are the soul of this wide universe.

My heart is awed within me when I think

Of the great miracle that still goes on,

In silence, round me—the perpetual work

Of thy creation, finished, yet renewed

Forever. Written on thy works I read

The lesson of thy own eternity.

Lo! all grow old and die—but see again,

How on the faltering footsteps of decay

Youth presses—-ever gay and beautiful youth

In all its beautiful forms. These lofty trees

Wave not less proudly that their ancestors

Moulder beneath them. Oh, there is not lost

One of earth’s charms: upon her bosom yet,

After the flight of untold centuries,

The freshness of her far beginning lies

And yet shall lie. Life mocks the idle hate

Of his arch enemy Death—yea, seats himself

Upon the tyrant’s throne—the sepulchre,

And of the triumphs of his ghastly foe

Makes his own nourishment. For he came forth

From thine own bosom, and shall have no end.

There have been holy men who hid themselves

Deep in the woody wilderness, and gave

Their lives to thought and prayer, till they outlived

The generation born with them, nor seemed

Less aged than the hoary trees and rocks

Around them;—and there have been holy men

Who deemed it were not well to pass life thus.

But let me often to these solitudes

Retire, and in thy presence reassure

My feeble virtue. Here its enemies,

The passions, at thy plainer footsteps shrink

And tremble and are still. Oh, God! when thou

Dost scare the world with falling thunderbolts, or fill,

With all the waters of the firmament,

The swift dark whirlwind that uproots the woods

And drowns the village; when, at thy call,

Uprises the great deep and throws himself

Upon the continent, and overwhelms

Its cities—who forgets not, at the sight

Of these tremendous tokens of thy power,

His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by?

Oh, from these sterner aspects of thy face

Spare me and mine, nor let us need the wrath

Of the mad unchained elements to teach

Who rules them. Be it ours to meditate,

In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,

And to the beautiful order of the works

Learn to conform the order of our lives.

———

The Gladness of Nature

IS this a time to be cloudy and sad,

When our mother Nature laughs around;

When even the deep blue heavens look glad,

And gladness breathes from the blossoming ground?

There are notes of joy from the hang-bird and wren,

And the gossip of swallows through all the sky;

The ground-squirrel gaily chirps by his den,

And the wilding bee hums merrily by.

The clouds are at play in the azure space,

And their shadows at play on the bright green vale,

And here they stretch to the frolic chase,

And there they roll on the easy gale.

There’s a dance of leaves in that aspen bower,

There’s a titter of winds in that beechen tree,

There’s a smile on the fruit, and a smile on the flower,

And a laugh from the brook that runs to the sea.

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles

On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,

On the leaping waters and gay young isles;

Ay, look, and he’ll smile thy gloom away.

_______________

Our Sky over the Roof…

Have a wonderful day…