Respond.

CRY OUT YOUR WEAKNESS

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth

A courageous man went and rescued the bear.

There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save

anyone who cries out. Like mercy itself,

they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.

If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come

so quickly?" he or she would say, "Becuase I heard your helplessness."

Where lowland is,

that's where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.

Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.

Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton

of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.

Blow the phlegm from your nose,

and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.

Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.

Take the cure for impotence,

that your manhood may shoot forth,

and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot

of your soul, and let it race around the track

in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed

o tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness

to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.

A nursing mother, all she does

is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,

and she's there.

God created the child, that is , your wanting,

so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent

with your pain. Lament! And let the milk

of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind

are ways the cloud has

to take care of us.

Be patient.

Respond to every call

that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful

and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.

Rumi

Spheres.

The natural philosophers of antiquity believed that the planets are not silent in their orbits. Setting aside the question of whether they move through air or through some finer medium like ether, it seemed logical that these great bodies should make a sound, just as moving bodies do on earth; and the many theories of the Harmony of the Spheres remain as attempts to specify what that sound could be, translated into the language of music.

There are two main schools of thought as to how this translation should be made. The first one assumes that the relative distances of the planets from the earth relate harmonically, as if they were different points on a string. This theory derives from Pythagoras’s school, in which the distance of the earth from the moon’s sphere was reckoned to be 126,000 stades. Taking this distance as equivalent to a whole-tone, the distances to the other planetary spheres were proportioned like the intervals of a diatonic scale. The second school holds that it is the motions of the planets that relate harmonically, their different rates of revolution corresponding to differences of pitch. These all presume a stationary and silent earth, though it was not certain whether the revolutions should be calculated relative to the earth, in which case Saturn, having furthest to travel, would move fastest, or relative to the zodiac, in which case Saturn would be the slowest planet, taking 30 years to make one circuit, and the moon, with its cycle of 28 days, the fastest.

There are other schemes, especially those of the Arab astronomers and the various interpreters of the “scale” of Plato’s Timaeus, but they need not concern us here. What results from every scheme prior to Kepler is that the planetary tones are derived from some existing scale or interval-sequence that cannot possibly be valid in any scientific, quantitative way, because the known proportions of either distances or motions are vastly different from the proportions of the tones used to represent them. This is where Kepler’s approach differed from all his predecessors’: his work of 1619 was the first time that a theory of celestial harmony was derived directly from astronomical observation.

Hitherto, these theories had almost unanimously assigned a single, unvarying tone to each planet, as one would expect to result from a perfect circular orbit. However, with an inspired leap of the imagination Kepler saw that the planetary tones must now vary, their pitch rising and falling in proportion to their acceleration and retardation. He calculated the exact amount by comparing the daily motion of a planet at perihelion with its daily motion at aphelion, expressed as degrees of a circle. This gave a simple proportion, which like all proportions could be translated into musical intervals by regarding the two terms as different string-lengths.

CONNECT

Thank You, Jessica.

Beyond.

The Dawn

Æons may pass before my hopes for earth are all fulfilled;                                             

But let “the dawn” approach, I pray, Before my lips are stilled!

And let true knowledge cover earth As waters cover sea                                   

Knowledge of truth, knowledge of love, Knowledge, dear God, of Thee!

I wait the music of the spheres, The rhythmic pulse of earth,                                                

Which, when Death’s angelus doth ring, Announce immortal birth:

In that blest home beyond the veil No discord rends the air.                                                  

The law of harmony prevails And love reigns everywhere.

Dante

Live.