natural, infinite, yes

i thank You God for most this amazing day:

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees 

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything 

which is natural which is infinite which is yes  

(i who have died am alive again today, 

and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth 

day of life and love and wings:and of the gay 

great happening illimitably earth)  

how should tasting touching hearing seeing 

breathing any--lifted from the no 

of all nothing--human merely being 

doubt unimaginable You? 

(now the ears of my ears awake and 

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

e.e. cummings

cedar photo by me, this morning, in the backyard in cobourg. 

The Guest House (November 22)

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all.

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

- - Rumi, A Year With Rumi

Birds Nesting Near The Coast (November 1)

Soul, if you want to learn secrets,

your heart must forget about shame

and dignity.

You are God's lover,

yet you worry what people are saying.

The rope belt the early Christians wore

to show who they were, throw it away.

Inside you are sweet beyond telling,

and the cathedral there,

so deeply tall.

Evening now, more your desire

than a woman's hair.

And not knowledge,

walk with those innocent of that,

faces inside fire, birds nesting

near the coast, earning their beauty,

servants to the ocean. There is a sun

within every person, the you

we call companion.

- - Rumi, A Year With Rumi

nights.

"You darkness, that I come from,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence in the world,
for the fire makes
a circle of light for everyone,
and then no one outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything;
shapes and fires, animals and myself,
how easily it gathers them!—
powers and people—
and it is possible a great energy
is moving near me.
I have faith in nights."
- Rainer Maria Rilke, On Darkness

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon:

where there is doubt, faith ;

where there is despair, hope

where there is darkness, light

where there is sadness, joy

O divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

these roads don't move, you're the one that moves

There is no need to say another word

It will be golden and eternal just like that

Something good will come of all things yet

Simple golden eternity blessing all

-Jack Kerouac in Big Sur via Ben Gibbard & Jay Farrar's One Fast Move or I'm Gone album

Some Thing In The Air

Tonight wraps up one thing, retains another, and still is always beginning.
Remaining.
Tonight is a celebration, a reflection, and an inspiration.
Growing.
Tonight under a full moon fever, I appreciated the center of all life.

Seemingly disparate day-to-day assignments, those which arrive and flow like fallen leaves on a river, can completely dam one's progress. Perceptions can get clogged and warped, stifling the current of greatness that is being. So it was as I looked up into the crisp last night of February 2010, only to see the eye of passion beaming down back into me. Low gray cruising clouds in a mindless flight massed by between us. I could feel the night in a split-second-sight. The family dog I was asked to watch outside was now only a moment under a larger abounding truth. A chore to be cherished. I could feel the air as in a dream, or a vivid childhood recollection of reality surrounding. And above all this, all I felt was a thought, a seed, which has only grown into a feeling now as I type! And using that growth, building that boat, upon that same river, I can now 'know-row' past the leaves and see the forest for the trees......there are also flowers and moon beams, and it's only ever what you think it seems. Yes, someone I care for has a birthday today, the one I love is with her. If this passage is a flower, the one I love is the stem carrying and supporting all that is traveling to beauty. A birthday, even another's, is a new trip to an old dimension in and of itself; a new peddle to bask in the glory of age. These people keep each other, their Blood's pair is parallel. Yes, people I care for unspeakably are, right now, smiling and filing their concerns for another day.

This particular night also happens to be the end of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC, Canada. A coming together of what we humans know to be the largest spanning soiree in what we acknowledge to be life everywhere. Celebrities, aspiring amateur athletes and volunteers run a muck, intertwining to weave a web to catch the hearts and sew the souls of the nations of the world, to be one. Athletes combine their particular understanding of the Self, uniting in arms across borders, across rivers and oceans, and through the window of realization. They see themselves in each others' struggles and smiles. Although "the medium is the message", how is it that I should ignore what stirs in me, after I've left the television set to catch a wink from a wiser eye? Yes, the Olympics used to seem like a dream to me, but now it is such in another light. Patriotism, an act I never used, is now one of which I feel capable. My Blood runs deep, the Moon shines high, and there's some Thing in the air.

Even Suburbia seems sensuous. And, even now, I wonder what I'll stumble upon next.

My river and sunset

9. 

Who was to know what should come home to me?

Who knows but I am enjoying this?

Who knows but I am as good as looking at you now, for all you cannot see me?

I'm in my favourite place, which is actually no place, it's a place between places and it's always on the move. 

I'm with a comrade who is certainly our most earnest, he in antique military garb heading out of the wind to re-load his camera. 

So now I'm here alone in the greatness, in the wind, in the sound of ice and water turning into each other, and all I can think of is this, and I can't get the order, and I can't get the words, but what I have is this boat in this no-place and Walt Whitman in the sunset.

2. 

The similitudes of the past, and those of the future;

The glories strung like beads on my smallest sights and hearings--on the walk in the street, and the passage over the river;

The current rushing so swiftly, and swimming with me far away;

The others that are to follow me, the ties between me and them;

The certainty of others--the life, love, sight, hearing of others.

Walt Whitman

86. Crossing Brooklyn Ferry 

Leaves of Grass