Poems kept me company – poems of all shapes and sizes, from all cultures and times. Life took me down unexpected trails, unfolded adventures in another country, locked me up in the most gracious way imaginable and then threw me into quarantine on the return. It’s been many months since I last posted on this blog. Oil on canvas, 55.9 x 45.7 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington DC – Wayfarer, by Hafiz, from I Heard God Laughing, Renderings of Hafiz, by Daniel Ladinsky. Now, begin to rain intelligence and compassion – iiGloria, by Denise Levertov, from Mass for the Day of St. My neighor’s chimney casts on the tile roofĮven this gray October day that should, they say, – Joseph Campbell, from Sukhavati, A Mythic Journey Joyfully participate in the sorrows of the world It’s a very interesting shift of perspective. Is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. Or in this endless universe of stars and mountains,Īnd always when you’re going through a long tunnel,Īll you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise
Whether in a little room full of thought, Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realizeĪnd all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, – When I Am Among the Trees, by Mary Oliver, from Devotions Into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled In which I have goodness, and discernment,Īnd they call again, “It’s simple,” they say, I would almost say that they save me, and daily. – Road, by Don Paterson, from The Eyes, A Version of Antonio Machado.Įspecially the willows and the honey locust,Įqually the beech, the oaks and the pines, When something is described as being primordial, it means it has existed since time was invented. * Primordial comes from the Latin words primus, ‘first’ and ordiri, ‘to begin’. It is there that I’m adrift, feeling puncturedīy a holiness that exists inside everything.Īrt by Sydney-based computational artist Danielle Navarro It all, what we have that no one can takeĪway and all that we’ve lost face each other. In the next room, in the next song, in the laugh Makes the birds move from branch to branchĪs this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
Through the lace of the fern is as delicateĪs the fibers of memory forming their web Mark Nepo expresses this seamless interaction exquisitely in his poem, ‘Adrift’ Imagine the relief of realising there’s no way out and nothing to escape. It’s also inseparable from the space in which the entire show appears. This: Primordial * Awareness is inseparable from both the capacity to be aware, and whatever activity it is awareing.
I muse that it might be the most unholy black joke, the ultimate conspiracy of misinformation that humanity has dreamed up. The idea-lisation of some kind of primary state – Atman, Godhead, Emptiness, Creation – that somehow exists apart from the activity of my experience, turned out to be a monstrous red herring. As though one can step out of consciousness and still be conscious… It mystifies me that some speak of ‘Awareness’ as something separate from what it ‘awares’, or of ‘Knowing’ as separate from its ‘knowns’. I am caught in the crosshairs: At the still-point of being, where the wondrous ever-presence of that-which-can’t-be-lost and the streaming sadness of my losses intersect.