Leap



"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."



























"There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning, and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest."

Anais Nin

Heal

For some reason, this recurrent nonsensical vision continues to be my idea of happiness....a simple state of being, and wellbeing......

The earth is flat. So they should keep wooden park benches all along the round edges, brown ones with green paint on the legs, and you and I, some nice warm sunny evening, will sit down and share roasted grounnuts and trade childhood stories and laugh and laugh like a bunch of crazy bandicoots, while constellations turn somersaults playfully over the glorious setting sun, and our old wounds begin to heal, powerless in the face of such wellbeing....

Monday, October 03, 2005

:)

Separation

Your absence has gone through me  
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.

W. S. Merwin

Look!

Mysteries, Yes
Mary Oliver

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.

How two hands touch and the bonds
will never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
"Look!" and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

Photo: Weaver Ant Nest

Anchor

Anchor: A central cohesive source of support and stability.

To become un-hinged.
To come un-done.
To lose mooring.
To drift away.
To unravel.
To fragment.
To come apart.
To disconnect.

There are days we live

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

From Blossoms
by Lin-Young Lee

Now I seek mornings

"At the time (in my youth), I was seeking out late afternoons, drab outskirts, and unhappiness; now I seek mornings, the center of town, peace."

Jorge Luis Borges
Prologue to 'Fervor de Buenos Aires'

What Was Told, That
Jalal al-Din Rumi
Translated by Coleman Barks

What was said to the rose that made it open was said
to me here in my chest.
What was told the cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever
was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them
so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is
being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that's happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,
in love with the one to whom every that belongs!


Photo: Cubbon Park, this Sunday morning

But I want to be :)

Clarinet

Terrance Hayes

I am sometimes the clarinet

your parents bought

your first year in band,

my whole body alive

in your fingers, my one ear

warmed by the music

you breathe into it.

I hear your shy laugh

among the girls at practice.

I am not your small wrist

rising & falling as you turn

the sheet music,

but I want to be.

Or pinky bone, clavicle.

When you walk home

from school, birds call

to you in a language

only clarinets decipher.

The leaves whistle

and gawk as you pass.

Locked in my skinny box,

I want to be at least

one of the branches

leaning above you.

What now radiates...

The Irrelevant Song
Brian Patten

Already in the woods the light grass has darkened.
Like a necklace of deaths the flowers hug the ground.
Their scents, once magically known,
Seem now irretrievable.

Because joy and sorrow must finally unite
And the small heart beat of the sparrow
Be heard above jet-roar
I will sing,
Not of tomorrow's impossible paradise
But of what now radiates.

What a rich place it became, within our vocabulary

When a Friend
Stephen Dobyns

When a friend dies, part
of oneself splits off
and spins into the outer dark.
No use calling it back.
No use saying I miss you.

Part of one's body has been riven.
One recollects gestures,
mostly trivial. The way
he pinched a cigarette,
the way he crouched on a chair.
Now he is less than a living flea.

Where has he gone, this person
whom I loved? He is vapor now;
he is nothing. I remember
talking to him about the world.

What a rich place it became
within our vocabulary. I did not
love it half so much until
he spoke of it, until it was sifted
through the adjectives of our discussion.

And now my friend is dead.
His warm hand has been reversed.
His movements across a room
have been erased. How I wish
he was somewhere specific. He
is nowhere. He is absence.

When he spoke of things
he loved - books, music, pictures,
the articulation of ideas -
his body shook as if a wire
within him suddenly surged.
In passion he filled the room.

Where has he gone, this friend
whom I loved? The way he shaved,
the way he cut his hair, even
the way he squinted when he talked,
when he embraced an idea, held it -
all vanished. The books he loved
I see them on my shelves. The words
he spoke still group around me. But this is
chaff. This is the container
now that heart has been scraped out.

He is defunct now. His body is less
than cinders; less than a sentence
after being whispered. He is the zero
from which a man has vanished. He
was the smartest, most vibrant,
like a match suddenly struck, flaring;
now he is sweepings on a roadway.

Where is he gone? He is nowhere.
My friends, I knew a wonderful man,
these words approximate him,
as chips of stone approximate
a tower, as wind approximates a song.

And in the skin of the grapes, I thought I touched you...

Your Hands
Pablo Neruda

When your hands go out,
love, toward mine,
what do they bring me flying?
Why did they stop
at my mouth, suddenly,
why do I recognize them
as if then, before,
I had touched them,
as if before they existed
they had passed over
my forehead, my waist?

Their softness came
flying over time,
over the sea, over the smoke,
over the spring,
and when you placed
your hands on my chest,
I recognized those golden
dove wings,
I recognized that clay
and that color of wheat.

All the years of my life
I walked around looking for them.
I went up the stairs,
I crossed the roads,
trains carried me,
waters brought me,
and in the skin of the grapes
I thought I touched you.

The wood suddenly
brought me your touch,
the almond announced to me
your secret softness,
until your hands
closed on my chest
and there like two wings
they ended their journey.

Nachiketa, or the Quickening Spirit

While trying to re-arrange the rising pile of books at home, I came across one of my late father-in-law's books, printed in 1921, a commentary on the Katha Upanishad by Swami Sharvananda. And was reminded once again of Nachiketa's story, and his conversations with Yama, the God of Death.

Nachiketa is the main character of the Katha Upanishad. The name Nachiketa, (nA chiketas, that which is unperceived) "refers to the quickening Spirit that lies within all things like fire, latent in wood, the spirit that gives."

Once when his father Vajasravasa was donating cows to gain religious merit, Nachiketa, who was just a teenage boy, asks him - "What merit can one obtain by giving away cows that are too old to give milk?"

His father does not pay heed to his questions, and is irritated that his young son is seeing through his hypocrisy, and spelling it out too.

To make his father realize the meaninglessness of this false ritual, he asks, "To whom will you offer me?" He asks this again and again. Angered, his father blurts out ,"To death I give you!"

So the obedient Nachiketa goes to meet Yama, the God of Death, and waits until he gets an audience with him.

All of the Katha Upanishad is the dialogue between Yama and Nachiketa, after Nachiketa asks to know about life after death, as the last of the 3 boons that Yama grants him, a boon that Yama hesitates to grant him at first.

Not swayed by the riches and pleasures that Yama offers him instead, he remains steadfast in his desire for the knowledge of the Self. Yama, impressed by the young boy's steadfastness and readiness, then proceeds to teach Nachiketa about self-knowledge, realizing the Atman, and emancipation from rebirth.

It will soon be a year since this death in my family. The Katha Upanishad is read during death ceremonies. And like the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and the Garuda Purana, it gives you so much perspective on life - on living so well, with so much understanding, that Death, when it comes, will hold no terror for you.

Roshi

Roshi
Leonard Cohen

I never really understood
what he said
but every now and then
I find myself
barking with the dog
or bending with the irises
or helping out in other little ways.

Your hands, trees borne away on a flood...

The Nails
W. S. Merwin

I gave you sorrow to hang on your wall
Like a calendar in one color.
I wear a torn place on my sleeve.
It isn't as simple as that.

Between no place of mine and no place of yours
You'd have thought I'd know the way by now
Just from thinking it over.
Oh I know
I've no excuse to be stuck here turning
Like a mirror on a string,
Except it's hardly credible how
It all keeps changing.
Loss has a wider choice of directions
Than the other thing.

As if I had a system
I shuffle among the lies
Turning them over, if only
I could be sure what I'd lost.
I uncover my footprints, I
Poke them till the eyes open.
They don't recall what it looked like.
When was I using it last?
Was it like a ring or a light
Or the autumn pond
Which chokes and glitters but
Grows colder?
It could be all in the mind. Anyway
Nothing seems to bring it back to me.

And I've been to see
Your hands as trees borne away on a flood,
The same film over and over,
And an old one at that, shattering its account
To the last of the digits, and nothing
And the blank end.
The lightning has shown me the scars of the future.
I've had a long look at someone
Alone like a key in a lock
Without what it takes to turn.

It isn't as simple as that.

Winter will think back to your lit harvest
For which there is no help, and the seed
Of eloquence will open its wings
When you are gone.
But at this moment
When the nails are kissing the fingers good-bye
And my only
Chance is bleeding from me,
When my one chance is bleeding,

For speaking either truth or comfort
I have no more tongue than a wound.

(1993)

How One Woman Revitalized a Watershed

This amazing woman prevented the Kosi river in Uttarakhand from drying up by teaching the villagers that the forests belong to them, not to the government – and therefore it is their responsibility to actively prevent deforestation, for their own survival.

http://www.thebetterindia.com/5131/basanti-and-the-kosi-how-one-woman-revitalized-a-watershed


Positive News. Happy Stories. Unsung Heroes: http://www.thebetterindia.com/