Death Deconstructed

2012-02-02T07:24:00.000-08:00

There is no death.

Only a change of worlds.

~ Chief Seattle

2012-01-31T13:22:00.000-08:00

Contemplation on No Coming, No-Going

2012-01-31T13:06:00.000-08:00

This body is not me,

I am not limited by this body.

I am life without boundaries.

I have never been born,

and I have never died.

Look at the ocean and the sky filled with stars,

Manifestations from my wondrous true mind.

Since before time, I have been free.

Birth and death are only doors through which we pass,

sacred thresholds on our journey.

Birth and death are a game of hide-and-seek.

So laugh with me,

hold my hand,

let us say good-bye,

say good-bye, to meet again soon.

We meet today,

We will meet again tomorrow.

We will meet at the source every moment.

We meet each other in all forms of life.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

2012-01-28T06:18:00.000-08:00

Though we need to weep your loss,

You dwell in that safe place in our hearts,

Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn

Brightening over our lives

Awakening beneath the dark

A further adventure of colour.

The sound of your voice

Found for us

A new music

That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze

Quickened in the joy of its being;

You placed smiles like flowers

On the altar of the heart.

Your mind always sparkled

With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,

Your spirit was live, awake, complete.

We look towards each other no longer

From the old distance of our names;

Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath,

As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,

We know our soul’s gaze is upon your face,

Smiling back at us from within everything

To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,

Where we would grow lonely without you.

You would want us to find you in presence,

Beside us when beauty brightens,

When kindness glows

And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,

Darkest winter has turned to spring;

May this dark grief flower with hope

In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:

To enter each day with a generous heart.

To serve the call of courage and love

Until we see your beautiful face again

In that land where there is no more separation,

Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,

And where we will never lose you again.

~ John O’Donohue

2012-01-24T10:47:00.000-08:00

via larger loves

2012-01-24T05:42:00.000-08:00

We wanted to confess our sins but there were no takers.
White clouds refused to accept them, and the wind
Was too busy visiting sea after sea.
We did not succeed in interesting the animals.
Dogs, disappointed, expected an order,
A cat, as always immortal, was falling asleep.
A person seemingly very close
Did not care to hear of things long past.
Conversations with friends over vodka or coffee
Ought not to be prolonged beyond the first sign of boredom.
It would be humiliating to pay by the hour
A man with a diploma, just for listening.
Churches. Perhaps churches. But to confess there what?
That we used to see ourselves as handsome and noble
Yet later in our place an ugly toad
Half-opens its thick eyelid
And one sees clearly: “That’s me."

~ Czeslaw Milosz
At a Certain Age

via nobody

image via datura

2012-01-23T08:49:00.000-08:00

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I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;

I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

via datura

image deja vu

2012-01-22T10:43:00.000-08:00

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This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into his street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.

~ Steve Kowit
The Dumbbell Nebula

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image via the animal blog

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2012-01-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

via meandering wind

2012-01-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

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It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even.

Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its
celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.

~ Aldous Huxley, Island

via saturn rising

image via Vivre !

griefwalker

2012-01-20T07:23:00.000-08:00

a film by Tim Wilson

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2012-01-18T05:52:00.000-08:00

i have walked a long time

much longer than death that splinters

wid her innuendos.

my life, ah my alien life,

is like an echo of nostalgia

bringen blue screens to bury clouds

rinsen wite stones stretched among the sea.

you, man, will you remember me when i die?
will you stare and stain my death and say
i saw her dancen among swallows
far from the world’s obscenities?
you, man, will you remember and cry?

and i have not loved.

always

while the body prowls

the soul catalogues each step;

while the unconscious unbridles feasts

the flesh knots toward the shore.

ah, i have not loved

wid legs stretched like stalks against sheets

wid stomachs drainen the piracy of oceans

wid mouths discarden the gelatin

to shake the sharp self.

i have walked by memory of others

between the blood night

and twilights

i have lived in tunnels

and fed the bloodless fish;

between the yellow rain

and ash,

i have heard the rattle

of my seed,

so time, like some pearl necklace embracen

a superior whore, converges

and the swift spider binds my breast.

you, man, will you remember me when i die?
will you stare and stain my death and say
i saw her applauden suns
far from the grandiose audience?

you, man, will you remember and cry?

~ Sonia Sanchez

2012-01-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

Shall I be raised from death, the spirit asks.

And the sun says yes.

And the desert answers

your voice is sand scattered in wind.

~ Louise Glück

from Afterword

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via journal of a nobody

2012-01-13T19:23:00.000-08:00

a blessing from John O'Donohue,

spoken by David Whyte.

sigh.

2012-01-11T06:32:00.000-08:00

The stars are words

and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words,
and so is this world too.

And I realize that no matter where I am,
whether in a little room full of thought,

or in this endless universe of stars and mountains,
it’s all in my mind.

~ Jack Kerouac,
Lonesome Traveler

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via wait - what?

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2012-01-09T11:10:00.001-08:00

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I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?

God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do

To you and me, so take the lively air,

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.

What falls away is always. And is near.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

I learn by going where I have to go.

~ Theodore Roethke

let the mystery be

2012-01-07T15:06:00.000-08:00

via the beauty we love

2012-01-06T08:11:00.000-08:00

I'm working on the world,

revised, improved edition,

featuring fun for fools,

blues for brooders,

combs for bald pates,

tricks for old dogs.

Here's one chapter: The Speech

of Animals and Plants.

Each species comes, of course,

with its own dictionary.

Even a simple "Hi there,"

when traded with a fish,

make both the fish and you

feel quite extraordinary.

The long-suspected meanings

of rustlings, chirps, and growls!

Soliloquies of forests!

The epic hoot of owls!

Those crafty hedgehogs drafting

aphorisms after dark,

while we blindly believe

they are sleeping in the park!

Time (Chapter Two) retains

its sacred right to meddle

in each earthly affair.

Still, time's unbounded power

that makes a mountain crumble,

moves seas, rotates a star,

won't be enough to tear

lovers apart: they are

too naked, too embraced,

too much like timid sparrows.

Old age is, in my book,

the price that felons pay,

so don't whine that it's steep:

you'll stay young if you're good.

Suffering (Chapter Three)

doesn't insult the body.

Death? It comes in your sleep,

exactly as it should.

When it comes, you'll be dreaming

that you don't need to breathe;

that breathless silence is

the music of the dark

and it's part of the rhythm

to vanish like a spark.

Only a death like that. A rose

could prick you harder, I suppose;

you'd feel more terror at the sound

of petals falling to the ground.

Only a world like that. To die

just that much. And to live just so.

And all the rest is Bach's fugue, played

for the time being

on a saw.

~ Wislawa Szymborska

Poems New and Collected

via joe riley

image via e x q u i s i t e ∞ p a r a d o x

2012-01-06T07:55:00.000-08:00

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It is time to lose your life,
Even if it isn't over.
It is time to say goodbye and try to die.
It is October.

The mellow cello
Allee of trees is almost lost in sweetness and mist
When you take off your watch at sunrise
To lose your life.

You catch the plane.
You land again.
You arrive in the place.
You speak the language.

You will live in a new house,
Even if it is old.
You will live with a new wife,
Even if she is too young.

Your slender new husband will love you.
He will walk the dog in the cold.
He will cook a meal on the stove.
He will bring you your medication in bed.

Dawn at the city flower market downtown.
The vendors have just opened.
The flowers are so fresh.
The restaurants are there to decorate their tables.

Your husband rollerblades past, whizzing,
Making a whirring sound, winged like an angel--
But stops and spins around and skates back
To buy some cut flowers in the early morning frost.

I am buying them for you.
I am buying them for your blond hair at dawn.
I am buying them for your beautiful breasts.
I am buying them for your beautiful heart.

~ Frederick Seidel

via wait - what?

2012-01-02T08:58:00.000-08:00

via the beauty we love

2011-12-26T07:52:00.000-08:00

At the end of my life,
with just one breath left,
if you come,
I’ll sit up and sing.

~ Rumi

via datura

Storm

2011-12-21T07:56:00.000-08:00

Now the walker meets the giant oak.

Stone elk, it's crown is
furlongs wide against September ocean's
murky green.

Northern storm. Rowanberries ripen.

Awake in the darkness, listening:
high above the tree top,
constellations stamping in their stalls.

Tomas Tranströmer

image via saturn rising

The Moment

2011-12-18T06:05:00.000-08:00

In every instant there's dying and coming back around.

Muhammad said, This world

is a moment, a pouring that refreshes and renews itself so

rapidly it seems continuous,

as a burning stick taken from the fire looks like a golden

wire when you swirl

it in the air, so we feel duration as a string of sparks.

~ Rumi

Version by Coleman Barks

The Soul of Rumi

image via ElemenoP

2011-12-12T06:28:00.000-08:00

Each day is a little life;

every waking and rising a little birth;

every fresh morning a little youth;

every going to rest and sleep a little death.

~ Arthur Schopenhauer

image via datura

2011-12-05T05:44:00.000-08:00

Birds were what became of dinosaurs.

Those mountains of flesh whose petrified bones were on display at
the Museum of Natural History had done some brilliant retooling over the ages
and could now be found living in the form of orioles in the sycamores across the street.

As solutions to the problem of earthly existence, the dinosaurs had been
pretty great, but blue-headed vireos and yellow warblers and white-throated
sparrows - feather-light, hollow-boned, full of song were even greater.

Birds were like dinosaurs’ better selves.
They had short lives and long summers.

We all should be so lucky as to leave behind such heirs.

~ Jonathan Franzen

Name Your Link

via datura

2011-12-04T10:38:00.000-08:00

2011-12-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

The natural way of being after death of a loved one is suffering at first, then there is a deepening.
In that deepening, you go to a place where there is no death. And the fact that you felt that means you
went deep enough, to the place where there is no death.

Conditioned as your mind is by society, the contemporary world that you live in, which knows nothing about that dimension – your mind then tells you that there is something wrong with this. Your mind says “I should not be feeling peace, that is not what one feels in a situation like this”. But that’s a conditioned thought by the culture that you live in. So instead we can recognize when this happens, when that thought comes – recognize it as a conditioned thought that is not true.

It doesn't mean that the waves of sadness don’t come back from time to time. But in between the waves of sadness, you sense there is peace. As you sense that peace, you sense the essence of your children as well – the timeless essence. So death is a very sacred thing – not just a dreadful thing.
When you react to the loss of form, that’s dreadful.

When you go deep enough to the formless, the dreadful is no longer dreadful, it’s sacred.
Then you will experience the two levels, when somebody dies who is close to you. Yes it’s dreadful on the level of form. It’s sacred on the deeper level. Death can enable you to find that dimension in yourself. You’re helping countless other humans if you find that dimension in yourself – the sacred dimension of life. Death can help you find the sacred dimension of life – where life is indestructible.

Surrender can open that door for you. Complete acceptance of it. So honor that sacred dimension and realize that what your mind is saying, that it isn't right, is just a form of conditioning – it isn’t the truth. It is supremely right.

This is always the window into the formless. As you accept it, surrender. Because the form is gone, your mind becomes still when you surrender to death. It’s not through explanations that you accept death. You can have explanations, mental explanations that say, well, he or she will move on or reincarnate,
or go to some place of rest.

That can be comforting, but you can go to a deeper place than that, where you don’t need explanations –

a state of immediate realization of the sacredness of death, because what opens up when the form dissolves is
life beyond form.

That is the only thing that is sacred. That is the sacred dimension.

~ Eckhart Tolle

via the beauty we love

image via datura

2011-12-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

2011-11-30T09:27:00.000-08:00

When thoughts arise, then do all things arise.

When thoughts vanish, then do all things vanish.

~ Huang Po

The Zen Teaching of Huang-Po:
On the Transmission of Mind

2011-11-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.

When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.

No rhetoric, no tremolos,

no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling,

on tiptoes and no luggage,

not even a sponge bag,

completely unencumbered.

~ Aldous Huxley

from Island

Island

via the beauty we love

2011-11-29T06:14:00.000-08:00

via to the moon and back........

2011-11-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

You know the name you were given,

you do not know the name that you have.

~ José Saramago,
All The Names
trans. Margaret Jull Costa

All the Names

2011-11-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

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Arvo Pärt: De Profundis

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via couleurs

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2011-11-20T11:11:00.001-08:00

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Old men ought to be explorers
here or there does not matter

we must be still and still moving
into another intensity
for a further union, a deeper communion
through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
the wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
of the petrel and the porpoise.

In my end is my beginning.

~ T. S. Eliot
excerpt from East Coker V
Four Quartets

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Four Quartets

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via whiskey river
image via ELEMENOP

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2011-11-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.

If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.

If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

~ Tao Te Ching

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Tao Te Ching

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via meandering wind

heaven to be

2011-11-18T09:51:00.000-08:00

When I’d picture my death, I would be lying on my back,

and my spirit would rise to my belly-skin and out

like a sheet of wax paper the shape of a girl, furl

over from supine to prone and like the djinn’s

carpet begin to fly, low,

over our planet—heaven to be

unhurtable, and able to see without

cease or stint or stopperage,

to lie on the air, and look, and look,

not so different from my life, I would be

sheer with an almost not sore loneless,

looking at the earth as if seeing the earth

were my version of having a soul. But then

I could see my beloved, sort of standing

beside a kind of door in the sky—

not the door to the constellations,

to the pentangles, and borealis,

but a tidy flap at the bottom of the door in the

sky, like a little cat-door in the door,

through which is nothing. And he is saying to me that he must

go, now, it is time. And he does not

ask me, to go with him, but I feel

he would like me with him. And I do not think

it is a living nothing, where nonbeings

can make a kind of unearthly love, I

think it’s the nothing kind of nothing, I think

we go through the door and vanish together.

What depth of joy to take his arm,

pressing it against my breast

as lovers do in a formal walk,

and take that step.

~ Sharon Olds

The Wellspring: Poems

via wait - what?

2011-11-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

Our bodies are not final.

We are moving, all of us, in our common humankind,
through the forms we love so deeply in one another,
to what our hands have already touched in lovemaking and our
bodies strain towards in each other’s darkness.

~ David Malouf, An Imaginary Life

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An Imaginary Life

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thank you invisible stories

image via datura

2011-11-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

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How does a part of the world leave the world?

How can wetness leave water?

~ Rumi

The Soul in Grief:
Love, Death, and Transformation

2011-11-13T08:14:00.000-08:00

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Listen for the stream that tells you:

die on this bank

begin with me

the way of rivers with the sea.

~ Rumi

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image via the animal blog

Late Ripeness

2011-11-08T10:18:00.000-08:00

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.

We forget — I kept saying — that we are all children of the King.

For where we come from there is no division
into Yes and No, into is, was, and will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago -
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef — they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

~ Czeslaw Milosz

via reflections on the lake

image via datura

The Deer

2011-11-06T11:19:00.000-08:00

You never know.

The body of night opens

like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.

And on the hillside two deer are walking along

just as though this wasn't

the owned, tilled earth of today

but the past.

I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind's eye -

there they are, in the long grass,

like two sisters.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given

only so many mornings to do it -

to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,

the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.

Days I don't do this

I feel the terror of idleness,

like a red thirst.

Death isn't just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open

like a river;

the old body goes on, climbing the hill.

~ Mary Oliver

2011-11-06T03:18:00.000-08:00

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Here I am trying to live, or rather,
I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

~ Jean Cocteau

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via artemis dreaming

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beautiful

2011-10-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

find the other four clips on the You Tube page

more gratitude to the beauty we love

2011-10-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

Naturally it is night.

Under the overturned lute with its

One string I am going my way

Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.

I listen to both sides

But I keep right on.

I remember the leaves sitting in judgment

And then winter.

I remember the rain with its bundle of roads.

The rain taking all its roads.

Nowhere.

Young as I am, old as I am,

I forget tomorrow, the blind man.

I forget the life among the buried windows.

The eyes in the curtains.

The wall

Growing through the immortelles.

I forget silence

The owner of the smile.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,

Walking at night between the two deserts,

Singing.

~ W. S. Merwin

via wait - what?

image via artemis dreaming

2011-10-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

The world’s atoms are all drunk with love
drowned between negation and affirmation.

In the place where the sun casts its light
there’s neither life nor death for the atoms.

~ Farid al-Din Attar
from ‘Fifty Poems of Attar’
by Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh

via life love yoga

2011-10-22T08:06:00.000-07:00

The center clears.

Knowing comes:

The body is not singular like a corpse,

but singular like a salt grain

still in the side of the mountain.

~ Rumi

via mindfulness matters

2011-10-22T07:54:00.000-07:00

All beings are vortices through which the world pours.
All beings pass through each other.

One being contains innumerable others.

If we could free ourselves from our temporal blindness, we would see
ourselves not as individual units, but as interconnected nodes
within a cloud of matter and energy.

The idea that the sixty or seventy or eighty liters of space that our
limited body occupies is “our” space is hopelessly myopic.

In reality we occupy the world and each other.
This, in a sense, is our true form.

~ Bodhipaksa, Living as a River

via markings

the first night

2011-10-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

The worst thing about death must be
the first night.
—Juan Ramón Jiménez

Before I opened you, Jiménez,

it never occurred to me that day and night

would continue to circle each other in the ring of death,

but now you have me wondering

if there will also be a sun and a moon

and will the dead gather to watch them rise and set

then repair, each soul alone,

to some ghastly equivalent of a bed.

Or will the first night be the only night,

a darkness for which we have no other name?

How feeble our vocabulary in the face of death,

How impossible to write it down.

This is where language will stop,

the horse we have ridden all our lives

rearing up at the edge of a dizzying cliff.

The word that was in the beginning

and the word that was made flesh—

those and all the other words will cease.

Even now, reading you on this trellised porch,

how can I describe a sun that will shine after death?

But it is enough to frighten me

into paying more attention to the world’s day-moon,

to sunlight bright on water

or fragmented in a grove of trees,

and to look more closely here at these small leaves,

these sentinel thorns,

whose employment it is to guard the rose.

~ Billy Collins

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image via wait - what?

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All will come again

2011-10-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land.

And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me.

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth, lest we remain unused.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke

(Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God,

translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

image via the animal blog
via joe riley

nirvana

2011-10-05T11:39:00.000-07:00

via the lifting of the veil

.

I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

2011-09-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Love, love, love, says Percy.

And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.

Give up your body heat, your beating heart.

Then, trust.

~ Mary Oliver

.

thank you, wait - what?

When one has lived a long time alone

2011-08-24T07:58:00.000-07:00

1
When one has lived a long time alone,
one refrains from swatting the fly
and let’s him go, and one hesitates to strike
the mosquito, though more than willing to slap
the flesh under her, and one lifts the toad
from the pit too deep to hop out of
and carries him to the grass, without minding
the poisoned urine he slicks his body with,
and one envelops, in a towel, the swift
who fell down the chimney and knocks herself
against window glass and releases her outside
and watches her fly free, a life line flung at reality,
When one has lived a long time alone.

2
When one has lived a long time alone,
one grabs the snake behind the head
and holds him until he stops trying to stick
the orange tongue – which splits at the end
into two black filaments and jumps out
like a fire-eater’s belches and has little
in common with the pimpled pink lumps that shapes
sounds and sleeps inside the human mouth -
into one’s flesh, and clamps it between his jaws,
letting the gaudy tips show, as children do
when concentrating, and as very likely
one does oneself, without knowing it,
when one has lived a long time alone.

3
When one has lived a long time alone,
among regrets so immense the past occupies
nearly all the room there is in consciousness,
one notices in the snake’s eyes, which look back
without giving any less attention to the future,
the first coating of the opaque, mikly-blue
leucoma snakes get when about to throw their skins
and become new – meanwhile continuing,
of course, to grow old – the same bleu Passe
that bleaches the corneas of the blue-eyed
when they lie back at the end and look for heaven,
a fading one knows means they will never find it
when one has lived a long time alone.

4
When one has lived along time alone,
one holds the snake near the loudspeaker disgorging
gorgeous sounds and watches him crook
his forepart into four right angles,
as though trying to slow down the music
flowing through him, in order to absorb it
like milk of paradise into the flesh,
until a glimmering appears at his mouth,
such a drop of intense fluid as, among humans,
could form after long exciting at the tip
of the penis, and as he straightens himself out
he has the pathos one finds in the penis,
when one has lived a long time alone.

5
When one has lived a long time alone,
one falls to poring upon a creature,
contrasting it’s eternity’s-face to one’s own
full of hours, taking note of each difference,
exaggerating it, making it everything,
until the other is utterly other, and then,
with hard effort, possibly with tongue sticking out,
going back over each difference once again
and canceling it, seeing nothing now
but likeness, until … half an hour later
one stares awake, taken aback at how eagerly
one drops off into the happiness of kinship,
when one has lived a long time alone.

6
When one has lived a long time alone
and listens at morning to mourning doves
sound their kyrie eleison, or the small thing
spiritualized upon a twig cry, “pewit-pheobe!”
or at midday grasshoppers scratch the thighs’
needfire awake, or peabody birds send schoolboys’
whistlings across the field, and at dusk, undamped,
unforgiving chinks, as from marble cutters’ chisels,
or at nightfall polliwogs just burst into frogs
raise their ave verum corpus – listens to those
who hop or fly call down upon us the mercy
of other tongues – one hears them as inner voices,
when one has lived a long time alone.

7
When one has lived a long time alone,
one knows that consciousness consummates,
and as the conscious one among these others
uttering their compulsory cries of being here -
the least flycatcher witching up “che-bec!”
or red-headed woodpecker clanging out his music
from a metal drainpipe, or ruffed grouse drumming
“thrump thrump thrump thrump-thrump-
thrump-thrump-rup-rup-ruprup-rup-r-r-r-r-r-r”
deep in the woods, all of them in time’s unfolding
trying to cry themselves into self-knowing -
one knows one is here to hear them into shining,
when one has lived a long time alone.

8
When one has lived a long time alone,
one likes alike the pig, who brooks no deferment
of gratification, and the porcupine, or thorned pig,
who enters the cellar but not the house itself
because of eating down the cellar stairs on the way up,
and one likes the worm, who by bunching herself together
and expanding works her way through the ground,
no less than the butterfly, who totters full of worry
among the day lilies, as they darken,
and more and more one finds one likes
any other species better than one’s own,
which has gone amok, making one self-estranged,
when one has lived a long time alone.

9
When one has lived a long time alone,
sour, misanthropic, one fits to one’s defiance
the satanic boast, it is better to reign
than submit on earth, and forgets
one’s kind – the way by now the snake does,
who stops trying to get to the floor and lingers
all across one’s body – slumping into its contours,
adopting its temperature – and abandons hope
of the sweetness of friendship or love,
before long can barely remember what they are,
and covets the stillness in inorganic matter,
in a self-dissolution one may not know how to halt,
when one has lived a long time alone.

10
When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of water repeats
the sexual cantillations of his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and disappears among the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one’s kind, toward the kingdom of strangers,
the hard prayer inside one’s own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one’s own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

11
When one has lived a long time alone,
one wants to live again among men and women,
to return to that place where one’s ties with the human
broke, where the disquiet of death and now also
of history glimmers its firelight on faces,
where the gaze of the new baby looks past the gaze
of the great granny, and where lovers speak,
on lips blowsy from kissing, that language
the same in each mouth, and like birds at daybreak
blether the song that is both earth’s and heaven’s,
until the sun has risen, and they stand
in the light of being made one: kingdom come,
when one has lived a long time alone.

~ Galway Kinnell

via relembramentos
image via the animal blog

Seeing For You

2011-08-23T08:20:00.000-07:00

The leaves left at the tops of trees

sound like rain in the wind. November—

the sparrows play at being leaves,

the leaves at being birds.

I play at seeing for you

now that you play at being gone.

~ Linda Allardt

image via datura

grief

2011-08-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

The wise Prophet has said that no one who dies
and dismounts from the steed of the body
feels grief on account of departure and death,
but only for missed opportunities and having failed in good works.

Truly everyone who dies wishes
that their arrival at their destination might have come sooner:
the wicked, in order that their wickedness might have been less;
and the devoted,
in order that they might have reached home more quickly.

~ Rumi

2011-08-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

Children's Talk from Plum Village Online Monastery on Vimeo.

i am

2011-08-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

forget it

2011-08-04T03:01:00.000-07:00

now, listen, when I die I don't want any crying, just get the
disposal under way, I've had a full some life, and
if anybody has had an edge, I've
had it, I've lived 7 or 8 lives in one, enough for
anybody.
we are all, finally, the same, so no speeches, please,
unless you want to say he played the horses and was very
good at that.

you're next and I already know something you don't,
maybe.

confession

waiting for death
like a cat
that will jump on the
bed

I am so very sorry for
my wife

she will see this
stiff
white
body
shake it once, then
maybe
again

"Hank!"

Hank won't
answer.

it's not my death that
worries me, it's my wife
left with this
pile of
nothing.

I want to
let her know
though
that all the nights
sleeping
beside her
even the useless
arguments
were things
ever splendid

and the hard
words
I ever feared to
say
can now be
said:

I love
you.

~ Charles Bukowski

.

Burlap Sack

2011-08-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

A person is full of sorrow
the way a burlap sack is full of stones or sand.

We say, "Hand me the sack,"
but we get the weight.
Heavier if left out in the rain.

To think that the stones or sand are the self is an error.
To think that grief is the self is an error.

Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.

The mule is not the load of ropes and nails and axes.
The self is not the miner nor builder nor driver.

What would it be to take the bride
and leave behind the heavy dowry?
To let the thick ribbed mule browse in tall grasses,
its long ears waggling like the tails of two happy dogs?

~ Jane Hirshfield

.

via whiskey river

image via datura

truly

2011-08-02T06:40:00.000-07:00

In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light
that were never known before, presences that never came to
light or shape in any other individual.

To paraphrase Heidegger, who said, "Man is a shepherd of being,"
we could say, "Man is a shepherd of clay."

You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.
Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography
but to the clay out of which you are formed.

At other times, you will find sorrow moving through you,
like a dark mist over a landscape.
This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.

It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling.
It is more appropriate to recognize that this emotion belongs more
to your clay than to your mind.

It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;
it is on its way elsewhere.

Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient,
sisters and brothers of the one clay.

In each of us a different part of the mystery becomes luminous.
To truly be and become yourself,
you need the ancient radiance of others.

~ John O'Donohue

for more: johnodonohue.com

.

image via: datura

.

2011-08-01T07:43:00.000-07:00

via the beauty we love

2011-07-30T14:28:00.000-07:00

.

Do you give yourself to me utterly,
Body and no-body, flesh and no-flesh
Not as a fugitive, blindly or bitterly,
But as a child might, with no other wish?
Yes, utterly.

Then I shall bear you down my estuary,
Carry you and ferry you to burial mysteriously,
Take you and receive you,
Consume you, engulf you,
In the huge cave, my belly, love you
With huge waves continually.

And you shall cling and clamber there
And slumber there, in that dumb chamber,
Beat with my blood's beat, hear my heart move
Blindly in bones that ride above you,
Delve in my flesh, dissolved and bedded,

Through viewless valves embodied so –
Till daylight, the expulsion and awakening,
The riving and the driving forth,
Life with remorseless forceps beckoning –
Pangs and betrayal of harsh birth.

~ Kenneth Slessor

.

image John Fan

.

If I Should Die Before You Do

2011-07-30T14:12:00.000-07:00

.

When
you wake up
from death,
you will find yourself
in my arms,
and
I will be
kissing you,
and
I
will be crying.

~ Richard Brautigan

.

2011-07-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

Three times my life has opened.

Once, into darkness and rain.

Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and

starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.

Once, to the fire that holds all.

These three were not different.

You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.

But outside my window all day a maple has stepped from

her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping

the colored silks.

Neither are we different in what we know.

There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip

of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on

the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.

~ Jane Hirshfield

The Future

2011-07-29T05:07:00.000-07:00

The future: time's excuse
to frighten us; too vast
a project, too large a morsel
for the heart's mouth.

Future, who won't wait for you?
Everyone is going there.

It suffices you to deepen
the absence that we are.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by A. Poulin

Kindness

2011-07-29T04:56:00.000-07:00

.

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

~ Naomi Shihab Nye

.

The Day My Son Died

2011-07-29T04:50:00.000-07:00

The doctor came to tell us that he had died I thought it was just for that day, so I went to bed early and slept well.

But the next morning I heard them talking downstairs; apparently he had still died (even though the doctor wasn’t calling to tell us today).

So it’s gonna be a few days, I figured; we might as well have a funeral. We drove hundreds of miles in dozens of cars finding and losing the way ‘round and ‘round standing ‘round and ‘round, crying, listening, crying listening standing and standing around.

But when it was over he had still died so there was nothing to do but drive home. It took hours and then the refrigerator had broken down. We soon fixed it but he had still died.

And every night after that I slept as long as I could to give him a chance to not have died.

But in the morning they were always downstairs and when I asked if he had still died the answer was always, "Yes."

And so it went into a week and then it went into two weeks. Eventually it went into months.

And it kept going.

It wouldn’t stop.

It kept on having happened.

No matter what I did, it refused to not have happened.

Even if I wrote in my diary about it

Even if I wrote a poem about it

Even if I forgot about it,

IT didn’t forget about it.

Not for a second was it caught off guard.

It was as stubborn as the music of the spheres.

It just wouldn’t let bygones be bygones.

To this day it has happened.

It insists on having happened.

It will never tire of having happened.

Nothing will distract it from having happened.

It was more than one day. It was more than one week.

It was more than months. It was more than years.

And it knew it – ALL the time

~ Marion Cohen

.

listen

2011-07-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

.

Be still.

Listen to the stones of the wall.

Be silent, they try

To speak your

Name.

Listen

to the living walls.

Who are you?

Who

are you? Whose

Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)

Are you (as these stones

Are quiet.) Do not

Think of what you are

Still less of

What you may one day be.

Rather

Be what you are (but who?) be

The unthinkable one

You do not know.

~ Thomas Merton

(excerpt from In Silence)

2011-07-28T09:54:00.000-07:00

I've paid no attention to Your warnings:
while claiming to be an idol-breaker, I've really been an idol-maker.

Should I pay more attention to Your works or to death?

Let it be death, for death is like autumn,
and You are the root from which all leaves spring.

For years death has been beating the drum,
but only when time has fled does your ear hear.

In agony the heedless man cries from the depths of his soul,
"Alas, I am dying!" Has death only just now awakened you?

Death is hoarse from shouting:
from so many astounding blows, his drum skin has split,

but you enmeshed yourself in trivialities;
and only now do you apprehend this mystery of death.

~ Rumi

2011-07-28T09:48:00.000-07:00

How to watch your brother die

When the call comes, be calm.
Say to your wife, "My brother is dying. I have to fly
to California."
Try not to be too shocked that he already looks like
a cadaver.
Say to the young man sitting by your brother's side,
"I'm his brother."
Try not to be shocked when the young man says,
"I'm his lover. Thanks for coming."
Listen to the doctor with a steel face on.
Sign the necessary forms.
Tell the doctor you will take care of everything.
Wonder why doctors are so remote.
Watch the lover's eyes as they stare into
your brother's eyes as they stare into
space.
Wonder what they see there.
Remember the time he was jealous and
opened your eyebrow with a sharp stick.
Forgive him out loud
even if he can't
understand you.
Realize the scar will be
all that's left of him.
Over coffee in the hospital cafeteria
say to the lover, "You're an extremely good-looking
young man."
Hear him say,
"I never thought I was good enough looking to
deserve your brother."
Watch the tears well up in his eyes. Say,
"I'm sorry. I don't know what it means to be
the lover of another man."
Hear him say,
"It's just like a wife, only the commitment is
deeper because the odds against you are so much
greater."
Say nothing, but
take his hand like a brother's.
Drive to Mexico for unproven drugs that might
help him live longer.
Explain what they are to the border guard.
Fill with rage when he informs you,
"You can't bring those across."
Begin to grow loud.
Feel the lover's hand on your arm
restraining you. See in the guard's eye
how much a man can hate another man.
Say to the lover, "How can you stand it?"
Hear him say, "You get used to it."
Think of one of your children getting used to
another man's hatred.
Call your wife on the telephone. Tell her,
"He hasn't much time.
I'll be home soon." Before you hang up say,
"How could anyone's committment be deeper than
a husband and wife?" Hear her say,
"Please. I don't want to know the details."
When he slips into an irrevocable coma,
hold his lover in your arms while he sobs,
no longer strong. Wonder how much longer
you will be able to be strong.
Feel how it feels to hold a man in your arms
whose arms are used to holding men.
Offer God anything to bring your brother back.
Know you have nothing God could possibly want.
Curse God, but do not
abandon Him.
Stare at the face of the funeral director
when he tells you he will not
embalm the body for fear of
contamination. Let him see in your eyes
how much a man can hate another man.
Stand beside a casket covered in flowers,
white flowers. Say,
"Thank you for coming," to each of the several hundred
men
who file past in tears, some of them
holding hands. Know that your brother's life
was not what you imagined. Overhear two
mourners say, "I wonder who'll be next?" and
"I don't care anymore,
as long as it isn't you."
Arrange to take an early flight home.
His lover will drive you to the airport.
When your flight is announced say,
awkwardly, "If I can do anything, please
let me know." Do not flinch when he says,
"Forgive yourself for not wanting to know him
after he told you. He did."
Stop and let it soak in. Say,
"He forgave me, or he knew himself?"
"Both," the lover will say, not knowing what else
to do. Hold him like a brother while he
kisses you on the cheek. Think that
you haven't been kissed by a man since
your father died. Think,
"This is no moment not to be strong."
Fly first class and drink Scotch. Stroke
your split eyebrow with a finger and
think of your brother alive. Smile
at the memory and think
how your children will feel in your arms,
warm and friendly and without challenge.

~ Michael Lassell
For Carl Morse©

2011-06-17T06:27:00.000-07:00

2011-06-17T06:25:00.000-07:00

I had seen birth and death

but had thought they were different.

~ T.S. Eliot

uh huh

2011-04-26T08:58:00.000-07:00

thank you, http://heartmindspirit.tumblr.com

2011-04-24T17:29:00.000-07:00

It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die,
but only retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.

Nothing is dead; men feign themselves dead,
and endure mock funerals and mournful obituaries,

and there they stand looking out of the
window, sound and well, in some new strange disguise.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

.

thank you, The Lifting of the Veil

.

2011-04-24T17:21:00.000-07:00

So dying is very important to understand; to die;

to die to everything that one knows.

I don’t know if you have ever tried it.

To be free from the known,

to be free from your memory,

even for a few days, to be free from your pleasure,

without any argument, without any fear,

to die to your family, to your house, to your name,

to become completely anonymous.

It is only the person who is completely anonymous

who is in a state of non-violence, who has no violence.

And so to die every day,

not as an idea but actually - do do it sometime!

~ J. Krishnamurti,

image via: heart mind spirit

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

2011-03-22T04:40:00.000-07:00

Coming down out of the freezing sky
with its depths of light,
like an angel, or a Buddha with wings,
it was beautiful, and accurate,
striking the snow and whatever was there
with a force that left the imprint
of the tips of its wings — five feet apart —
and the grabbing thrust of its feet,
and the indentation of what had been running
through the white valleys of the snow —
and then it rose, gracefully,
and flew back to the frozen marshes
to lurk there, like a little lighthouse,
in the blue shadows —
so I thought:

maybe death isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light wrapping itself around us —

as soft as feathers —
that we are instantly weary of looking, and looking,
and shut our eyes, not without amazement,
and let ourselves be carried,
as through the translucence of mica,
to the river that is without the least dapple or shadow,
that is nothing but light — scalding, aortal light —
in which we are washed and washed
out of our bones.

~ Mary Oliver

.

2011-03-10T07:53:00.000-08:00

What death means is not this—

the spirit, triumphant in the body’s fall,

praising its absence, feeding on music.

If life can’t justify and explain itself,

death can’t justify and explain it.

~ Wendell Berry, Canticle

Roses, Later Summer

2011-03-09T13:30:00.000-08:00

What happens

to the leaves after

they turn red and golden and fall

away? What happens

to the singing birds

when they can't sing

any longer? What happens

to their quick wings?

Do you think there is any

personal heaven

for any of us?

Do you think anyone,

the other side of that darkness,

will call to us, meaning us?

Beyond the trees

the foxes keep teaching their children

to live in the valley.

So they never seem to vanish, they are always there

in the blossom of light

that stands up every morning

in the dark sky.

And over one more set of hills,

along the sea,

the last roses have opened their factories of sweetness

and are giving it back to the world.

If I had another life

I would want to spend it all on some

unstinting happiness.

I would be a fox, or a tree

full of waving branches.

I wouldn't mind being a rose

in a field full of roses.

Fear has not yet occurred to them, nor ambition.

Reason they have not yet thought of.

Neither do they ask how long they must be roses, and then what.

Or any other foolish question.

~ Mary Oliver

image via life love yoga

when

2011-03-09T13:21:00.000-08:00

. . . when you die, you are grieved by all the atoms
of which you were composed.

They hung together for years,
whether in sheets of skin or communities of spleen.

With your death they do not die.

Instead, they part ways, moving off in their separate directions,
mourning the loss of a special time they shared together,

haunted by the feeling that they were once playing parts in
something larger than themselves, something that had its own life,

something they can hardly put a finger on.

~ David Eagleman

thank you, whiskey river

Death Deconstructed

Contemplation on No Coming, No-Going

.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.

griefwalker

let the mystery be

Storm

The Moment

heaven to be

Late Ripeness

The Deer

beautiful

the first night

All will come again

nirvana

I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

When one has lived a long time alone

Seeing For You

grief

i am

forget it

Burlap Sack

truly

If I Should Die Before You Do

The Future

Kindness

The Day My Son Died

listen

How to watch your brother die

uh huh

White Owl Flies Into and Out of the Field

Roses, Later Summer

when

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.