It was 11:37 west coast time when I knew it was soon time to burn the candle again. This is modern ritual and I do it so it lasts 7 days, the burning of the white candle that one may pass the bardo. But this is a new age, we are creating new myths, our tribe is our tribe and the new rituals matter only when so moved by one's own individual moment: therin, or where-in of course, is one's own truth. Which is why for Molly, the secret code words of power aren't Tibetan at all but live in poems. Make them read poems. She was a poet, and a painter, that's how she goes. Purity reigns here, reigns free, in poetry. These are power words then that will source her home.
We are creating new myths, here? Read this every one of you and scared, superstitious, alight, trust-full, heart of grief whatever you are trust that the choices you make matter. Raise your power, realize it is love. Love more. Think of love like fire. Fire transmutes, turns wood in to ash. Ash feeds earth, grows life again. Fire is like love, love changes things. Think of love like it's fire. It's a pure and real thing. Raise your love inside you start with the feeling in your heart of your own beam. Direct it at love, direct it at her.
From the back end of my eyes where the second sight lives I saw movement several times about my motel room here, it started an hour or more ago but it was 11:37 when it stirred in my heart. It must be close to 12 I thought when I felt the clear stir, bc no matter what midnight is a special time. The best name I've ever heard for the consciousness shift at midnite is, yes, the witching hour.
Everything is sacred, and profane. This is life. This is life god damn it! It's all sacred, it's all shit, that's the funny irony. She lived this. May her life be exemplary of this. As such, I didn't want to pray yet, Steven Colbert was on and I paid good money for this shitshack motel. I paid extra for wifi and still am stealing it on slow low one bar, unsecured, anyway. But then the time was right, it got closer to 12, I lit the candle and fell right in to prayer and she was here, in and out in and out of this room, more than once. I asked the Archangel Michael to be near, but as I write this Gabriel's name almost came out and so now, too, in that the candle's still burning I will pray to draw him near, as well.
Blessed be sister and friend. From the love beam place of grace that is the smile on her face I lifted up this prayer, I asked that she guide me in love to the poem/s she most wanted. I read aloud, I read fast, I read these leaves in and to the open air:
...O that man might take this secret, of which the world is full even to its littlest things, more humbly to himself and bear it, endure it, more seriously and feel how terribly difficult it is, instead of taking it lightly. That he might be more reverent toward his fruitfulness...Therefor, dear sir, love your solitude and bear with sweet-sounding lamentation the suffering it causes you. For those who are near you are far, you say, and that shows it is beginning to grow wide about you. And when what is near you is far, then your distance is already among the stars and very large; rejoice in your growth, in which you naturally can take no one with you, and be kind to those who remain behind, and be sure and calm before then and do not torment them with your doubts and do not frighten them with your confidence or joy, which they could not understand. Seek yourself some sort of simple and loyal community with them...
from Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, Worpswede, near Bremen, July 16, 1903
I asked that she guide me, smiles and love, and this was my favorite, for ecstat and ecstat love and I could feel her, feel her! beaming and near:
Revolutionary Letter # 49 (read loud and fast, see her smiling, whirling round)
Free Julian Beck
Free Timothy Leary
Free seven million starving in Pakistan
Free all political prisoners
Free Angela Davis
Free Soledad brothers
Free Martin Sobel
Free Sacco & Vanzetti
Free Big Bill Hayward
Free Sitting Bull
Free Carzy Horse
Free all political prisoners
Free Billy the Kid
Free Jesse James
Free all political prisoners
Free Nathan Hale
Free Joan of Arc
Free Galileo & Bruno & Eckhart
Free Jesus Christ
Free Socrates
Free all political prisoners
Free all political prisoners
All prisoners are political prisoners
Every pot smoker a political prisoner
Every holdup man a political prisoner
Every forger a political prisoner
Every angry kid who smashed a window a political prisoner
Every whore, pimp, murderer, a political prisoner
Every pederast, dealer, drunk driver, burglar
poacher, striker, strike breaker, rapist
Polar bear at San Francisco zoo, political prisoner
Ancient wise turtle at Detroit Museum, political prisoner
Flamingos dying in Phoenix tourist park, political prisoners
Otters in Tucson Desert Museum, political prisoners
Elk in Wyoming grazing behind barbed wire, political prisoners
Prairie dogs poisoned in New Mexico, war casualties
(Mass grave of Wyoming gold eagles, a battlefield)
Every kid in school a political prisoner
Every lawyer in his cubicle a political prisoner
Every doctor brainwashed by AMA a political prisoner
Every housewife a political prisoner
Every teacher lying through sad teeth a political prisoner
Every indian on reservation a political prisoner
Ever black man a political prisoner
Every faggot hiding in bar a political prisoner
Every junkie shooting up in a john a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
Every woman a political prisoner
You are political prisoner locked in tense body
You are political prisoner locked in stiff mind
You are political prisoner locked to your parents
You are political prisoner locker to you past
Free yourself
Free yourself
I am political prisoner locked in anger habit
I am political prisoner locked in greed habit
I am political prisoner locked in fear habit
I am political prisoner locked in dull senses
I am political prisoner locked in numb flesh
Free me
Free me
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free Barry Goldwater
Help to free me
Free Governor Wallace
Free President Nixon
Free J Edgar Hoover
Free them
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Free yourself
Free them
Free yourself
Help to free me
Free us
DANCE
by Diane diPrima
Amen, amen amen. I hold you all in my arms, our arms are heart long, heart strong.
Showing posts with label Rilke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rilke. Show all posts
April 8, 2010
A Poet's Date, & Jealousy
I am jealous of him, and I miss him, in both the way a needy girlfriend craves attention and in the way you miss tossing your hair over your shoulder when it gets cut off or miss the outline between the trees of sky when suddenly the winter's gone. The way it is with that old cliche about not knowing how much you love respect appreciate etc something until you lose it--that is how I feel this week about him and I tell him this. Over text message, cuz it's the only way I can. You'll only have the number of real, true friends in your life that you can count on one hand is a line I was raised on, heard again again and again and so I value so strongly the connections I have with folks and understand what a brave and great gift it is to be "friend." If this exact axiom is true or not I dont know tho, it hasn't been my whole life yet or at least I hope not, but it is true that there are to me legit qualifiers for true friends. And so as men go, he qualifies, really currently he is only one of two men who do. My bro is the other one.
He texts about getting lunch and I agree because I know he is on Artist's Retreat and still was willing to reach out to the needy-girlfriend part in me. He's not my boyfriend we are not at all romantic we long ago discussed and then established that, it's just that he's filled such a huge role and taught me to trust again so maybe there's some of my possessiveness. We go to the Market where we always almost every Thursday go and standing in line I ask him to tell me about how it's going and that is when I realize I am jealous. When he talks about the songs he's completed, the songs he's writing, the songs he's going to record. When he starts talking about getting up at 8 and working all day.
What will it look like for me? Working all day? I found this quote from Rilke this morning.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.
This confirmed for me what I am struggling to maintain belief in because nowhere, practically nowhere in the daytoday grind do I see this valued: the inner life, the spirit and surrendering to the rhythms of me again, the tides of my own soul. I am on an Poet's Date with me right now, and I stuck to it today as it was pencilled in. 3 o'clock Poet's Date with You. Which means time uncharted with nothing to do but follow inside of me what I yearn for. I am writing, I just read Neruda and got transfixed on the spanish differences in assumption that can be made versus the english tranlation. y que la edad escribe letras/con agua y piedra para nadie,/para que nadie sepa donde,/para que nadie entienda nada again and again until it rolled like washed pebbles with gemstones inside over and over on my tongue. Until the words confused me, the words confused themselves, the translation was one thing the words something else the sound they made too its own thing the heartfusionmomentofactiontransaction on the tongue a total other. The time to do this--to be brave and foolish and quiet and sighing long enough to raise and then honor the song. No place to go but here, with me, alight alight alive and in the moment with my spirit and its wants and its needs. I think of Oregon, I picture it in my minds eye and sometimes I am on retreat and it is just reading long books in bed, stopping trailside to write down the words, laying on my back on the hot sand the sun marking me and the combination brine and green buoyant sea smell of the Coast. But sometimes it is, it is writing all day. And to me both kinds of work, the action kind and the priming honoring the tides and spirit of me are equally important.
We are so sick with the lac of it.
We are so sick with the need for it.
I saw it, wordless in his eye today and want that, that fire that transpires to speak greater languages than I currently can, that writes itself on my skin with its words that makes it so I dont even need to speak them because it speaks for me so great from in my soul. I saw it in him today and made myself be happy for him We're in this together remember he reminded me last week so I chose to be happy and let my jealousy go.
Afterall I had a date with me today and here I am now and am swept whole in that clean deep sigh inside glisten way from listening listening and submitting to the rhythms and tides so he's right, and back I go....
He texts about getting lunch and I agree because I know he is on Artist's Retreat and still was willing to reach out to the needy-girlfriend part in me. He's not my boyfriend we are not at all romantic we long ago discussed and then established that, it's just that he's filled such a huge role and taught me to trust again so maybe there's some of my possessiveness. We go to the Market where we always almost every Thursday go and standing in line I ask him to tell me about how it's going and that is when I realize I am jealous. When he talks about the songs he's completed, the songs he's writing, the songs he's going to record. When he starts talking about getting up at 8 and working all day.
What will it look like for me? Working all day? I found this quote from Rilke this morning.
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. Only love can grasp and hold and be just toward them. Consider yourself and your feeling right every time with regard to every such argumentation, discussion or introduction; if you are wrong after all, the natural growth of your inner life will lead you slowly and with time to other insights. Leave to your opinions their own quiet undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be pressed or hurried by anything. Everything is gestation and then bringing forth. To let each impression and each germ of a feeling come to completion wholly in itself, in the dark, in the inexpressible, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own intelligence, and await with deep humility and patience the birth-hour of a new clarity: that alone is living the artist's life: in understanding as in creating.
This confirmed for me what I am struggling to maintain belief in because nowhere, practically nowhere in the daytoday grind do I see this valued: the inner life, the spirit and surrendering to the rhythms of me again, the tides of my own soul. I am on an Poet's Date with me right now, and I stuck to it today as it was pencilled in. 3 o'clock Poet's Date with You. Which means time uncharted with nothing to do but follow inside of me what I yearn for. I am writing, I just read Neruda and got transfixed on the spanish differences in assumption that can be made versus the english tranlation. y que la edad escribe letras/con agua y piedra para nadie,/para que nadie sepa donde,/para que nadie entienda nada again and again until it rolled like washed pebbles with gemstones inside over and over on my tongue. Until the words confused me, the words confused themselves, the translation was one thing the words something else the sound they made too its own thing the heartfusionmomentofactiontransaction on the tongue a total other. The time to do this--to be brave and foolish and quiet and sighing long enough to raise and then honor the song. No place to go but here, with me, alight alight alive and in the moment with my spirit and its wants and its needs. I think of Oregon, I picture it in my minds eye and sometimes I am on retreat and it is just reading long books in bed, stopping trailside to write down the words, laying on my back on the hot sand the sun marking me and the combination brine and green buoyant sea smell of the Coast. But sometimes it is, it is writing all day. And to me both kinds of work, the action kind and the priming honoring the tides and spirit of me are equally important.
We are so sick with the lac of it.
We are so sick with the need for it.
I saw it, wordless in his eye today and want that, that fire that transpires to speak greater languages than I currently can, that writes itself on my skin with its words that makes it so I dont even need to speak them because it speaks for me so great from in my soul. I saw it in him today and made myself be happy for him We're in this together remember he reminded me last week so I chose to be happy and let my jealousy go.
Afterall I had a date with me today and here I am now and am swept whole in that clean deep sigh inside glisten way from listening listening and submitting to the rhythms and tides so he's right, and back I go....
February 5, 2010
From Letters to A Young Poet
Man, I just wrote the longest post ever, the kind that made me feel turned-out from the inside, flexed, stretched, fully-expelled with the hairs of my capillaries outreaching for a dance in the sun. Or the snow storm, as it were.
Guess that's all that really matters, hmmm? Since it got erased when I tried to post it.
That's only happened one other time, a long esoteric post from years ago when I was still on the farm, all about LSD the Merry Pranksters etheric wounds and generational vibrations, and acting our destinies unconsciously from our DNA. Too much witchywisdom at once for one hot shot to the blogosphere!? This post I just lost had secrets that maybe I wasn't really ready to give out...
The snow just started in Easton. I am at the Coffee Cat, writing. In my car is a home-made blueberry pie from the Amish Market. People there, unlike the Acme, or Foodlion or Wal-Mart, unlike the streets of downtown, were mellow, smiley, moving slow.
I am not going to include the links, thoughts and intentions that my post-lost-to-the-ether included. Instead I will give you this, from Letters to A Young Poet by Rilke. And I will say also that the Mama told us this, if we were listening, about the snow. Back September when Fall first got here, under the moon. Farmer's Almanac too says it will come and come through March. Mama says it just cuz we need a good deep rest, lots of time to listen. Which means come Equinox and tide-changing in March, there will follow lots and lots of time to grow....We'll either be prepared, or not!
Fine by me, I'll be writing!
You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must ," then build your life according to this necessity...
Guess that's all that really matters, hmmm? Since it got erased when I tried to post it.
That's only happened one other time, a long esoteric post from years ago when I was still on the farm, all about LSD the Merry Pranksters etheric wounds and generational vibrations, and acting our destinies unconsciously from our DNA. Too much witchywisdom at once for one hot shot to the blogosphere!? This post I just lost had secrets that maybe I wasn't really ready to give out...
The snow just started in Easton. I am at the Coffee Cat, writing. In my car is a home-made blueberry pie from the Amish Market. People there, unlike the Acme, or Foodlion or Wal-Mart, unlike the streets of downtown, were mellow, smiley, moving slow.
I am not going to include the links, thoughts and intentions that my post-lost-to-the-ether included. Instead I will give you this, from Letters to A Young Poet by Rilke. And I will say also that the Mama told us this, if we were listening, about the snow. Back September when Fall first got here, under the moon. Farmer's Almanac too says it will come and come through March. Mama says it just cuz we need a good deep rest, lots of time to listen. Which means come Equinox and tide-changing in March, there will follow lots and lots of time to grow....We'll either be prepared, or not!
Fine by me, I'll be writing!
You are looking outward, and that above all you should not do now. Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to write. This above all--ask yourself in the stillest hour of your night: must I write? Delve into yourself for a deep answer. And if this should be affirmative, if you may meet this earnest question with a strong and simple "I must ," then build your life according to this necessity...
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