When Death Comes
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
— Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume I)
(Photo: Francisco Aszmann from Lotus Feet)
Autumn
The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,
as if orchards were dying high in space.
Each leaf falls as if it were motioning “no.”
And tonight the heavy earth is falling
away from all other stars in the loneliness.
We’re all falling. This hand here is falling.
And look at the other one. It’s in them all.
And yet there is Someone, whose hands
infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.
— by Rainer Maria Rilke
(Painting: Egon Schiele, “Four Trees,” 1917)
Endless Directions
There are two endless directions. In and out. — Agnes Martin
(Quote from riskywiver and photo by Alfred Stieglitz)
The Cycle
“It would be an endless battle if it were all up to ego
because it does not destroy and is not destroyed by itself
It is like a wave
it makes itself up, it rushes forward getting nowhere really
it crashes, withdraws and makes itself up again
pulls itself together with pride
towers with pride
rushes forward into imaginary conquest
crashes in frustration
withdraws with remorse and repentance
pulls itself together with new resolution”
— Agnes Martin
(A remarkable quote from Agnes that I have never encountered before, thanks to Whiskey River. The photo is from Igor Moukhin.)
Two Worlds
Walking down Cecil Street on my way to work this morning, my mind is scattered like old newspapers in the November wind. I am watching an old black and white movie playing somewhere behind my eyes. I am not there to witness anything; the sparkling diamonds in the street, the naked trees reaching to the sky like a prayer, or to hear the soft voices of the whispering wind. Still asleep, I spill out over the familiar neighborhood, forgetting who and where I am. Then, at the corner at the top of the street, suddenly unannounced, like a surprise phone call from my mother, there is a subtle shift in my awareness. It’s feels like a door that has opened slightly, revealing a small strand of light. Magically, an inner space appears. From here, I watch thoughts roar past and, paying no attention to them, they dissolve into a white canvas.
“In the world but not of it,” I think to myself and suddenly everything disappears, like a drunken magician has pulled away the tablecloth and all the dishes have come crashing onto the floor.
I spend the majority of my life being continually swept along by the natural current of both outer and inner circumstances. I call this my life. If I am lucky enough, I remember to make an effort to go against this current. As the river of life rushes past, taking me along with it, I try to grab onto a branch to avoid being swept out to sea. For a moment I realize that I am not just this whirling world of mind. There is something else here and maybe, for a few seconds, I am not entirely lost.
All spiritual teachings speak of an inner quiet or silence. How can I simply observe whatever is taking place in and around me without manipulating anything. Can I find a place in myself from where I am able to observe from, like Christopher Isherwood said when he describes that he is, “a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”
I look at the sky and ask, “Who am I?” If I am sincere with myself I realize that I haven’t got the foggiest notion. Sure, I have a lot of ideas about who am I am, but these are just a collection of old dusty photo albums and scratched vinyl that I have pillaged from garage sales over the years. It appears that I consist of a cyclone of thoughts and feelings, all vowing for supremacy over the other. If I am not presiding over this chaos by observing it, I am sold to the highest bidder, or the one who makes the most noise. In my case, it is usually the thoughts that are victorious. I am fooled into believing that is what I am. Continually I am taken by this process and repeatedly I fall asleep, drugged like an opium addict.
I search for an attention that can illuminate this mad house. A certain force that doesn’t waver, even when I am confronted with all the ugly and unbecoming parts of myself, or the predictable reactions from glimpsing something that doesn’t quite fit into the beautiful stories I have created. I need to embrace those to, like the second Bodhisattva Vow, “Delusions are endless; we vow to cut through them all.”
I see that I take in the raw experience of life in and around me and then I create a commentary or a story out of it. The next things that happens is a reaction to that, where I say to myself, “I shouldn’t do this,” or “I shouldn’t feel this way.” This is my situation. I am all in pieces and it is this continual functioning that keeps me from experiencing each precious moment of my life. It’s like living in a fog that filters my real life through a mechanism that spins out stories and dreams. These fictions keep on rolling out and repeating themselves of who I am and who others people are. It’s a poor substitute for a real life that could penetrate, right into the bones.
Would it be possible to have an inner quality, or a force that is strong enough to stay with whatever is taking place — quietly watching?
There is an idea in the Gurdjieff tradition and Zen as well, that there are two worlds or two pools. The first is the world of our functioning which includes the ordinary mind with all of its commentaries, opinions and ideas as well as the emotions that move through me like the weather. The second world is completely different. It utilizes different energies and is composed of an entirely different order. This second word is always beckoning to us, but it is hidden behind the veil of the first world. Siddartha describes this second world beautifully as “a stillness and sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.”
So where am I now? Do I have a wish to be? How do I experience this wish? Practically speaking, it is neither this nor that. How can I gather all that I am into this very moment? Can I make space for another level to appear? A level that is not something I have, but rather something that I am in, like a state of grace.
(Photo: Harriet Hoctor as human question mark, 1920’s – from Where is My Mind)
Put another log on the fire…
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”
— Kenji Miyazawa
October
A quiet autumn morning shakes off the dust
of an angry September.
We are sunk deep into October,
shipwrecked, sullen and clothed
in some deep impenetrable mystery.
The moon is wild and unknown.
It follows us everywhere.
The clocks are broken.
We feel insignificant and vaporous.
We could just vanish.
At first we would tremble like leaves,
then there would be nothing left
but a small wind gathering the dust of ourselves.
There is no time anymore.
The day is done.
I lie back and watch the curtains
lift and fall like someone breathing.
(Photo: Quiet Time)
Explorers
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
— T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,”
Photo scanned by Little Gold Poppy
3 Things
“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”
(Image: Stanslaw Maslowski (1853-1926), Moonrise, 1884)
For another wonderful poem married to this image see Astroinquiry.
Frederick Franck (1910-2006)
“Astonishing. Getting older and older, I still stand here at this window, watching as if never having watched anything like it before – the wrens, juncos, and purple finches picking the seeds strewn on the pile of frozen snow. Through my breath condensing into fog on the cold window pane, I still see bare branches chasing their shadows in the icy wind, black threads of water crinkling through fissures in the frozen river. I am aware that what I am seeing is no more, no less than the great Mystery, that of being here at all, that of seeing it – as from the other side of a mirror – snow, birds, my breath still condensing, that breath that started so long ago as my first cry.”
— Frederick Franck, from “Behind the Mask,” The Stranger, Parabola Magazine 1995
