"I am not one who was born in the custody of wisdom. I am one who is fond of olden times and intense in quest of the sacred knowing of the ancients." Gustave Courbet

30 March 2018

Happy birthday, van Gogh.

van Gogh, Self-portrait, 1886


Vincent van Gogh was born on this day in 1853.

I haven’t got it yet, but I’m hunting it and fighting for it, I want something serious, something fresh—something with soul in it! Onward, onward.

Vincent van Gogh

Bach, St, Mathew Passion, BWV 244

Ton Koopman conducts the Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Cappella Breda Boys, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra ...

29 March 2018

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Atlanta Rhythm Section, "So Into You"

All skate, all skate ...

Billy Squier, "Whadda You Want From Me"

UFO, "Lights Out"

Priest, "Living After Midnight"

Always.


False ideas about yourself destroy you.  For me, I always stay a student ...

Cultural Offering points to The Alpha.

Whispered.


The HUMP-BACKED FLUTE PLAYER

The hump-backed flute player
walks all over.
sits on boulders around the Great Basin
his hump is a pack.

Hsuan Tsang (original name Ch’en I
went to India 629 AD
returned to China 645
with 657  sutras, images, pictures,
and 50  relics)
a curved frame pack with a parasol,
embroidery carving
incense censer swinging as he walked
the Pamir the Tarim Turfan
the Punjab the doab
of Ganga and Yamuna,

Sweetwater, Quileute, Hoh
Amur, Tanana, Mackenzie, Old Man,
Bighorn, Platte, the San Juan
he carried
“Emptiness”
He carried
“mind only”
vijnaptimatra

The hump-backed flute player
Kokopilau
his hump is a pack.

In Canyon de Chelly on the North Wall up by a cave
is the hump-backed flute player laying on his back
playing his flute.  Across the flat sandy canyon wash,
wading a stream and breaking through the ice, on the
south wall, the pecked-out pictures of some Mountain Sheep
with curling horns.  They stood in the icy shadow of the
south wall two hundred feet away; I sat with my
shirt off in the sun facing south, with the hump-
backed flute player just above my head.
They whispered; I whispered; back and forth
across the canyon, clearly heard.
In the plains of Bihar, near Rajgir, are the
Ruins of Nalanda.  The name Bihar comes from “vihara”
-- Buddhist temple -- the Diamond Seat is in Bihar, and
Vulture Peak -- Tibetan pilgrims come down to these
Plains.  The six-foot-thick walls of Nalanda, the
monks all scattered -- books burned -- banners tattered --
statues shattered -- by the Turks.
Hsuan Tsang describes the high blue tiles, the delicate
debates; Logicians of Emptiness, worshippers of Tara,
Joy of Starlight, naked breasted, “She who saves.”

Ghost Bison, Ghost Bears, Ghost Bighorns, Ghost Lynx, Ghost Pronghorns, Ghost Panthers, Ghost Marmot, Ghost
Owls:
Swirling and gathering, sweeping down, in the power
Of a dance and a song. Then the White Man will be gone.

The the butterflies will sing
on slopes of grass and aspen;
thunderheads the deep blue of Krishna
rise on rainbows; and falling shining rain --
each drop—
tiny people gliding slanting down: a little Buddha
seated in each pearl—
and join the million waving Grass-Seed Buddhas
on the ground.

Ah, what am I carrying?  What is this load?
Who’s that out there in the dust
sleeping on the ground?
with a black hat, and a feather stuck in his sleeve.
-- It’s old Jack Wilson,
Wovoka, the prophet,

Black Coyote saw the whole world
in Wovoka’s empty hat

the bottomless sky

the night of starlight, lying on our sides

the ocean, slanting higher

all manner of beings
may swim in my sea
echoing up conch spiral corridors

the mirror: countless ages back
dressing or laughing
what world today?

pearl crystal jewel
taming and teaching
the dragon in the spine --

spiral, wheel,
or breath of mind
desert sheep with curly horns.
the ringing in your ears

is the cricket in the stars.

Up in the mountains that edge of the Great Basin
it was whispered to me
by the oldest of trees.
by the oldest of beings,

the Oldest of Trees.

and all night long, sung on
by a vast throng
Of Pinyon
Pine

Gary Snyder

Baseball.

Detroit Tiger baseball is on the air!

Truth.

Opening.

Happy Opening Day!

26 March 2018

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Greta Van Fleet, "Safari Song"

Frankenmuth's finest ...

Solitudes.


In our childhood reverie gave us freedom ... we still dream of liberty as we dreamed of it when we were children.  Those original solitudes, the childhood solitudes leave indelible marks on certain souls. Their entire life is sensitized for poetic reverie, for a reverie which knows the price of solitude.

Gaston Bachelard

Happy birthday, Frost.


Robert Frost was born on this day in 1874.

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs.  The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
“Stay where you are until our backs are turned!”
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side.  It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors?  Isn’t it
Where there are cows?  But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”  I could say “Elves” to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself.  I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”


Robert Frost

Freely.


Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens up endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment. You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in. You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you. You must be able to freely move in and out of your mind. This is being free. There is no way you can’t open up your creativity. There is no ego to speak of. That is my belief.

Jeong Kwan

CONNECT

Thank you, Rachel.

Joy.

Exactly.

Unknown.


What are those of the known, but to ascend and enter the Unknown?

Walt Whitman

Monday.


Happy Monday!

25 March 2018

Seek.


BILBO'S LAST SONG

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship, my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the Star above my mast!

J.R.R. Tolkien

Ssssssssstones, "Under My Thumb"

1981.

Serpent.

Squier & Davis, The Serpent, 1846

Tavener, "God Is With Us"

The Choir of King's College performs ...

Dog.

Dowland, Earl of Essex Galliard

The Royal Wind Ensemble performs ...

Balance.

Chardin, Water Glass and Jug, 1759


Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it—either through effort or by some happy chance. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives.

John Dewey

von Bingen, "Studium Divinitatis"

VocaMe performs ...

Celebrate.

24 March 2018

Linda Ronstadt, "Tumbling Dice"

Environment.


When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.

Alexander Den Heijer

Star.


Like a star that can't wait for the night.

Well.

You have done well to keep so much hair when so many's after it.

Jerry Jeff Walker, "Pickup Truck Song"



It's sandwich time.

Knowledge.

Happy birthday, Morris.


William Morris was born on this day in 1834.

The MESSAGE of the MARCH WIND

Fair now is the springtide, now earth lies beholding
With the eyes of a lover, the face of the sun;
Long lasteth the daylight, and hope is enfolding
The green-growing acres with increase begun.

Now sweet, sweet it is through the land to be straying
’Mid the birds and the blossoms and the beasts of the field;
Love mingles with love, and no evil is weighing
On thy heart or mine, where all sorrow is healed.

From township to township, o’er down and by tillage
Fair, far have we wandered and long was the day;
But now cometh eve at the end of the village,
Where over the grey wall the church riseth grey.

There is wind in the twilight; in the white road before us
The straw from the ox-yard is blowing about;
The moon’s rim is rising, a star glitters o’er us,
And the vane on the spire-top is swinging in doubt.

Down there dips the highway, toward the bridge crossing over
The brook that runs on to the Thames and the sea.
Draw closer, my sweet, we are lover and lover;
This eve art thou given to gladness and me.

Shall we be glad always? Come closer and hearken:
Three fields further on, as they told me down there,
When the young moon has set, if the March sky should darken
We might see from the hill-top the great city’s glare.

Hark, the wind in the elm-boughs! from London it bloweth,
And telleth of gold, and of hope and unrest;
Of power that helps not; of wisdom that knoweth,
But teacheth not aught of the worst and the best.

Of the rich men it telleth, and strange is the story
How they have, and they hanker, and grip far and wide;
And they live and they die, and the earth and its glory
Has been but a burden they scarce might abide.

Hark! the March wind again of a people is telling;
Of the life that they live there, so haggard and grim,
That if we and our love amidst them had been dwelling
My fondness had faltered, thy beauty grown dim.

This land we have loved in our love and our leisure
For them hangs in heaven, high out of their reach;
The wide hills o’er the sea-plain for them have no pleasure,
The grey homes of their fathers no story to teach.

The singers have sung and the builders have builded,
The painters have fashioned their tales of delight;
For what and for whom hath the world’s book been gilded,
When all is for these but the blackness of night?

How long, and for what is their patience abiding?
How oft and how oft shall their story be told,
While the hope that none seeketh in darkness is hiding,
And in grief and in sorrow the world groweth old?

Come back to the inn, love, and the lights and the fire,
And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;
For there in a while shall be rest and desire,
And there shall the morrow’s uprising be sweet.

Yet, love, as we wend, the wind bloweth behind us,
And beareth the last tale it telleth to-night,
How here in the spring-tide the message shall find us;
For the hope that none seeketh is coming to light.

Like the seed of midwinter, unheeded, unperished,
Like the autumn-sown wheat ’neath the snow lying green,
Like the love that o’ertook us, unawares and uncherished,
Like the babe ’neath thy girdle that groweth unseen;

So the hope of the people now buddeth and groweth,
Rest fadeth before it, and blindness and fear;
It biddeth us learn all the wisdom it knoweth;
It hath found us and held us, and biddeth us hear:

For it beareth the message: “Rise up on the morrow
And go on your ways toward the doubt and the strife;
Join hope to our hope and blend sorrow with sorrow,
And seek for men’s love in the short days of life.”

But lo, the old inn, and the lights, and the fire,
And the fiddler’s old tune and the shuffling of feet;
Soon for us shall be quiet and rest and desire,
And to-morrow’s uprising to deeds shall be sweet.

William Morris