I must be the sun

Solar

On a gray day, when the sun
has been abducted, and it’s chill
end-of-the-world weather,
I must be the sun.

I must be the one
to encourage the young
sidetracked physicist
working his father’s cash register
to come up with a law of nature
that says brain waves can change
the dismal sky.  I must be the one

to remind the ginger plant
not to rest on the reputation
of its pungent roots, but to unveil
those buttery tendrils from the other world.

When the sky is an iron lid
I must be the one to simmer
in the piquant juices of possibility,
though the ingredients are unknown
and the day begins with a yawn.

I must issue forth a warmth
without discrimination, and any guarantee
it will come back to me.

On a dark day I must be willing
to keep my disposition light,
I have to be at the very least
one stray intact ray
of local energy, one small
but critical fraction
of illumination.  Even on a day

that doesn’t look gray
but still lacks comfort or sense,
I have to be the sun,
I have to shine as if
sorry life itself depended on it.

I have to make all the difference.

Thomas Centolella

Views from along the Middle Way (yet to read)

But some bonuses, like morning

Yes

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.

William Stafford, 'The Way It Is'

Every town our home town

Every town our home town
Kaniyan Poongunranar [Sangam Period, 3rd century BC to 4th century AD]

​​"Every town our home town
every man, a kinsman
Good and evil do not come from others
Pain and relief of pain come of themselves

Dying is nothing new
We do not rejoice that life is sweet
nor in anger​​
call it bitter

Our lives, however dear,
follow their own course,
rafts drifting
in the rapids of a great river
sounding and dashing over rocks
after a downpour
from skies slashed by lightnings -

We know this from the vision
of men who see,
So,
We are not amazed by the great
and we do not scorn the little."

Translated by A K Ramanujan: "Poems of Love and War: From the Eight
Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil"

The Cinnamon Peeler

If I were a cinnamon peeler
I would ride your bed
and leave the yellow bark dust
on your pillow.

Your breasts and shoulders would reek
you could never walk through markets
without the profession of my fingers
floating over you. The blind would
stumble certain of whom they approached
though you might bathe
under rain gutters, monsoon.

Here on the upper thigh
at this smooth pasture
neighbor to your hair
or the crease
that cuts your back. This ankle.
You will be known among strangers
as the cinnamon peeler’s wife.

I could hardly glance at you
before marriage
never touch you
— your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
I buried my hands
in saffron, disguised them
over smoking tar,
helped the honey gatherers…

When we swam once
I touched you in water
and our bodies remained free,
you could hold me and be blind of smell.
You climbed the bank and said

this is how you touch other women
the grasscutter’s wife, the lime burner’s daughter.
And you searched your arms
for the missing perfume.
and knew
what good is it
to be the lime burner’s daughter
left with no trace
as if not spoken to in an act of love
as if wounded without the pleasure of scar.

You touched
your belly to my hands
in the dry air and said
I am the cinnamon
peeler’s wife. Smell me.

Michael Ondaatje

We must travel on our knees

Watching the Jet Planes Dive

We must go back and find a trail on the ground
back of the forest and mountain on the slow land;
we must begin to circle on the intricate sod.
By such wild beginnings without help we may find
the small trail on through the buffalo-bean vines.

We must go back with noses and the palms of our hands,
and climb over the map in far places, everywhere,
and lie down whenever there is doubt and sleep there.
If roads are unconnected we must make a path,
no matter how far it is, or how lowly we arrive.

We must find something forgotten by everyone alive,
and make some fabulous gesture when the sun goes down
as they do by custom in little Mexico towns
where they crawl for some ritual up a rocky steep.
The jet planes dive; we must travel on our knees.

William Stafford, 'Ask Me'

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all

We thought we were beggars, we thought we had nothing at all

But then when we started to lose one thing after another,
Each day became
A memorial day --

And then we made songs
Of great divine generosity
And of our former riches.

Anna Akhmatova, tr. Ilya Shambat

Thank you, Joanne Zeni. I first read Anna Akhmatova in my twenties. The fiery Russian poet whopassed away in 1966. It feels like something written now...

The first sign of civilization

"Years ago, anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. The student expected Mead to talk about fishhooks or clay pots or grinding stones.

But no. Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. Mead explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal.

'A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts', Mead said.

Ira Byock

Thanks, Kabir.

Gratitude arises from paying attention

Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us. Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the event, it is the deep, a-priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life

....Thankfulness finds its full measure in generosity of presence, both through participation and witness. We sit at the table as part of every other person’s strange world while making our own world without will or effort, this is what is extraordinary and gifted, this is the essence of gratefulness, seeing to the heart of privilege.

Thanksgiving happens when our sense of presence meets and fully beholds all other presences. Being unappreciative, feeling distant, might mean we are simply not paying attention.

© 2015 David Whyte, from ‘Gratitude’

In Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.

Photo: My Java Olive tree baby opening its eyes - pure magic! :) 

It's not the waking, it's the rising!

Great discovery, thanks to my friend Cavery who sees me at the entrance of Cubbon park at 7 AM on a Sunday morning, removes her headphones, and says, "Hey, I thought of you when I heard this....you are into music, aren't you?" :)

Well, I am into Beauty, in all its forms.... Listen to this!

"It's not the waking, it's the rising
It's not the song, it is the singing..."

"Andrew Hozier-Byrne is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter from Ireland. His debut single from 2013, “Take Me to Church,” was a massive, multi-platinum hit. In September 2018, Hozier released the song “Nina Cried Power,” which features the legendary gospel singer Mavis Staples. In this episode, Hozier breaks down how he made the song, and Mavis Staples tells the story of how she got involved.

Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/song-exploder/id788236947?i=1000427329678&mt=2 "

Nina Cried Power (Song): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBKPI5t9xI8

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Hozier-nina-cried-power-lyrics

No one should accept the whole of us. We're appalling! :)

"You probably believe that when somebody tries to tell you something about yourself that is a little ticklish and a little uncomfortable, they are attacking you. They are not. They are trying to make you into a better person. And we don't tend to believe that this has a role in love.

We tend to believe that true love means accepting the whole of us. It doesn't. No one should accept the whole of us. We're appalling! You really want the whole of you accepted? No, that's not love. The full display of our characters, the full articulation of who we are, should not be something that we do in front of anyone we care about.

So what we need to do is to accept that the other person is going to want to educate us. And that it isn't a criticism. Criticism is merely the wrong word we apply to a much nobler idea, which is to try and make us into better versions of ourselves. But we tend to reject this idea very strongly."

Minute 11, 'Mating Minds — Alain de Botton on Attachment Styles and the Art of Compromise'

Duration: 15.58 mins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLNaKCk_Pjo 

Mutual Education

 "And for the ancient Greeks, the whole notion of love is that love should be a process of mutual education. In which two people, under the auspices of love, undertake to educate one another to become better versions of themselves. And they do this not to be cruel, not as a way of bringing each other down, but because they have the sincerest best interests of the other at their heart. And therefore love is a process whereby a teacher and a pupil are constantly rotating roles. Everyone is the teacher and everyone is the pupil at certain points and has lots of things to take on board.

This is not a sign that love has been abandoned. It is the proof that love is in action."

Minute 34.39, Alain de Botton, 'On Love' (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-iUHlVazKk)

It was never success that transformed us

Though It Is Tough to Choose It

This is the path of failure. We see that our definition of success is what is not working. What is working is deep, unseen. —Joi Sharp

Even a small discontent is enough to shut us down,
convince us that the world is cold and indifferent.
Everywhere there’s evidence of this: The slush

that falls on your car seat when you open the car door.

The carrion eaters with their great black wings
that linger beside the road. You pray for sun,

and it gets darker. Someone asks
you a question, and you see your whole life
fold into one small envelope of failure.

Then one day you hit against the same
impassable wall you always hit and this time you fall
to your knees, not because you are weak,

but because at last you are ready to be opened.

Oh sweet failure, how it leads us.

Any unhappy ending is only an invitation

to crawl into the blank pages
of the next unwritten chapter.

It was never success that transformed us—

always the breaking. Not the breaking itself,
but the mystery inside pushing through us

like bindweed through pavement

making cracks in everything
we think we know, so that the world
can come streaming in.

Rosemerry Trommer

How we stand in the middle of it all, lost. How we love anyway.

Relearning

The world doesn’t want to be saved. It wants to be loved. That’s how you save it.
          -Richard Brendan

And isn’t that the way it is—
the truth that opened me yesterday
now puts me in shackles. Whatever
I knew about saving the world
must be lost. Today, the only truth
is the invitation to fall in love
with the world as it is.

Fall in love with the thorn, the sting, the loss,
the ringing in the ears after the shot.
Fall in love with all I’d rather not.
Easier when it’s metaphor. Harder
when it’s wound. Hate. Anger.
Dark snarl of contempt hurled in the face.
Harder when love feels far away.

There’s only one way then to save
the world. How we stand in the middle
of it all, lost. How we love anyway.

Rosemerry Trommer

https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2019/06/08/relearning/  

I carry her smile in my pocket all day

Of Strangers

And so it is that kindness stays with me,
the way the woman in the store smiles at me
when she can tell I might start to cry.

I carry her smile in my pocket all day,
like a coin, something I carry everywhere
with no effort, but sometimes forget, and then,

when my fingers again find the ridged edges,
when I feel the weight of the coin in my palm,
I am struck by how something so small

carries value, carries meaning. All day
the smile stays with me. All day, I touch
it again and again, feel how its weight

tips some invisible scale, how I remember
again to say hello to fate and fall in love.

Rosemerry Trommer

Oh yes. Smiles actually save lives - http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.com/2013/06/i-am-walking-to-bridge.html

Only if Love Should Pierce You

Only if Love Should Pierce You

Do not forget that you live in the midst of the animals,
horses, cats, sewer rats
brown as Solomon's woman, terrible
camp with colours flying,

do not forget the dog with harmonies of the unreal
in tongue and tail, nor the green lizard, the blackbird,
the nightingale, viper, drone. Or you are pleased to think
that you live among pure men and virtuous
women who do not touch
the howl of the frog in love, green
as the greenest branch of the blood.

Birds watch you from trees, and the leaves
are aware that the Mind is dead
forever, its remnant savours of burnt
cartilage, rotten plastic; do not forget
to be animal, fit and sinuous,
torrid in violence, wanting everything here
on earth, before the final cry

when the body is cadence of shrivelled memories
and the spirit hastens to the eternal end;

remember that you can be the being of being
only if love should pierce you deep inside.

Salvatore Quasimodo, translated by Jack Bevan