When sorrow lays us low
for a second we are saved
by humble windfalls
of the mindfulness or memory:
the taste of a fruit, the taste of water,
that face given back to us by a dream,
the first jasmine of November,
a book we thought was lost,
the slight key that opens a house to us,
the smell of a library, or of sandalwood,
the date we were looking for,
the twelve dark bell-strokes, tolling as we count,
a sudden physical pain.

Eight million Shinto deities
travel secretly throughout the earth.
Those modest gods touch us -
touch us and move on.
- Jorge Luis Borges

The hours I spend with you

The hours I spend with you...
I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden,
a dim twilight,
and a fountain singing to it.
You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.
Other men it is said have seen angels,
but I have seen thee and thou art enough.
~George Moore

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
- Pablo Neruda

Shame

Had the chance to see the Avett Brothers last night at Terminal 5 here in Nyc. The four piece had the entire crowd in the palm of their hands for the hour and a half set. Definitely worth seeing if they come through your town.


A little sampling of their work...

Okay so I was wrong about
My reasons for us fallin’ out
Of love I want to fall back in

My life is different now I swear
I know now what it means to care
About somebody other than myself

I know the things I said to you
They were untender and untrue
I’d like to see those things undo

So if you could find it in your heart
To give a man a second start
I promise things won’t end the same

Let's run away...from all of it.

Just you & me.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in
-Leonard Cohen



img: neil krug

You can close your eyes

Goodnight sweet girl.

Screening

I've watched "Paris Je T'aime" a number of times, and to me, the Place des Victoires segment (above) still stands out as the most touching piece in the film. Even if you don't understand the dialouge...just watch. The emotion still translates no matter what language you speak.

"Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point."

Sometimes we need to take a step back,
away from ourselves.
See the beauty in the world that surrounds us,
accepting that nothing is permanent.
Everything is in a constant state of change.

That cloud in the sky will not be there forever,
and when it goes you will miss it.

Take hold in the life we are given,
breathing in deep the air we are provided.
The only reality that exists is in the now,
the past only exists in the now,
and can leave whenever you wish it gone.
Find the the child spirit within and realize..

Everything will be okay in the end,
if it isn't,
it's not the end.
-S. Michael Sullivan

What matters is that you allow your heart - not your ego - to rule your life. Then very little matters because you will be a humble person and you'll take most of life as it comes.

If it rains, you get wet;
if they don't show up on time, you wait;
if they don't pay you, you eat less;
if they don't love you, so what, you didn't come to please them anyway;
if they don't think you're special, that's marvelous, it frees you from having to thank them for their compliments.

If life doesn't go the way you want, accept the way it does go, use it as your teacher.
- Stuart Wilde

E. Smith

If I could make you satisfied in everything you do
All your secret wishes could right now be coming true
And be forever with my poison arms around you.

Shadows

David Lynch, a surprising Au Revoir Simone fan, premiered their new video on his website. Worth a look - DLFTV

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves."
- Milan Kundera

img from: Them Thangs

We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust

Last week, the largest dust storm in 70 years, swept over Sydney Australia. The sky temporarily dyed a deep red from the airborne topsoil. The Big Picture has a nice collection of pictures.

You will never be alone,
you hear so deep a sound when autumn comes.
Yellow pulls across the hills and thrums,
or in the silence after lightning before it says its names -
and then the clouds' wide-mouthed apologies.

You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone.

Rain will come,
a gutter filled,
an Amazon,
long aisles -
you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock,
and years.
You turn your head -
that's what the silence meant:
you're not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.
- William Stafford

The thing is...

The thing is to love life,
to love it even when you have no stomach for it
and everything you've held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you,
it's tropical heat thickening the air,
heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it,
an obesity of grief,
you think,
how can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face between your palms,
a plain face,
no charming smile,
no violet eyes,
and you say,
yes, I will take you
I will love you,
again.

-Ellen Bass


words: whiskey river
img src: flickr

Unmap

Justin Vernon of Bon Iver fame has collaborated with fellow Wisconsin residents Collections of Colonies of Bees. The result is Volcano Choir. Worth a listen...or four.

May the road rise to meet you....

Safe travels to all my loved ones this weekend.

"Nothing can hold you back -
not your childhood,
not the history of a lifetime,
not even the very last moment before now.
In a moment you can abandon your past.
And once abandoned, you can redefine it.
If the past was a ring of futility,
let it become a wheel of yearning that drives you forward.
If the past was a brick wall,
let it become a dam to unleash your power.
The very first step of change is so powerful,
the boundaries of time fall aside.
In one bittersweet moment,
the sting of the past is dissolved and its honey salvaged."
- Tzvi Freeman



img: mutsumi makino

We do not find our own center.

It finds us.

We do not think ourselves into new ways of living.
We live ourselves into new ways of thinking.
-Richard Rohr

And because love battles

And because love battles
not only in its burning agricultures
but also in the mouth of men and women,
I will finish off by taking the path away
to those who between my chest and your fragrance
want to interpose their obscure plant.

About me, nothing worse
they will tell you, my love,
than what I told you.

I lived in the prairies
before I got to know you
and I did not wait love but I was
laying in wait for and I jumped on the rose.

What more can they tell you?
I am neither good nor bad but a man,
and they will then associate the danger
of my life, which you know
and which with your passion you shared.

And good, this danger
is danger of love, of complete love
for all life,
for all lives,
and if this love brings us
the death and the prisons,
I am sure that your big eyes,
as when I kiss them,
will then close with pride,
into double pride, love,
with your pride and my pride.

But to my ears they will come before
to wear down the tour
of the sweet and hard love which binds us,
and they will say: “The one
you love,
is not a woman for you,
Why do you love her? I think
you could find one more beautiful,
more serious, more deep,
more other, you understand me, look how she’s light,
and what a head she has,
and look at how she dresses,
and etcetera and etcetera”.

And I in these lines say:
Like this I want you, love,
love, Like this I love you,
as you dress
and how your hair lifts up
and how your mouth smiles,
light as the water
of the spring upon the pure stones,
Like this I love you, beloved.

To bread I do not ask to teach me
but only not to lack during every day of life.
I don’t know anything about light, from where
it comes nor where it goes,
I only want the light to light up,
I do not ask to the night
explanations,
I wait for it and it envelops me,
And so you, bread and light
And shadow are.

You came to my life
with what you were bringing,
made
of light and bread and shadow I expected you,
and Like this I need you,
Like this I love you,
and to those who want to hear tomorrow
that which I will not tell them, let them read it here,
and let them back off today because it is early
for these arguments.

Tomorrow we will only give them
a leaf of the tree of our love, a leaf
which will fall on the earth
like if it had been made by our lips
like a kiss which falls
from our invincible heights
to show the fire and the tenderness
of a true love.
- Pablo Neruda

'Curs in the weeds

A fitting song for a warm August evening.

horse feathers