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Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.
Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress.
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountains start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
– – WH Auden
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
FSA/8d22000/8d224008d22491a.tif
The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:
This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can’t be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can’t hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?
In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
“Where to? what next?”
— Carl Sandberg
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
BY GARY SNYDER
Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing
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That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
—Those dying generations—at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.
O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.
Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.
– – W. B. Yeats, 1865 – 1939
Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
Sometimes it seems I had a dream, and, as a dreamer woke immersed in mineral baths closed within a cool, dark chamber fed by streams flowing in from the center of nowhere.
Hanging from the granite ceiling a kerosene lantern cast shards of light through the pale steam rising from the surface of the pools.
Ripples radiated outwards from the edges of my body and tapping faintly on the rock revealed the edges of the chamber.
Outside I could hear the wind slide across the spine of the mountains, speaking in a language that I remembered but could no longer understand.
Steam filled my nostrils and heat penetrated my bones until, after a time, I had no body, only a sense of silence and distance and calm.
As if I had just woken from all water into dream.
— Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, 1973
Comments on this entry are closed.
About as close to flying as an earth bound creature is gonna get.
Of course, cheetahs have incredible speed, but they also lack rectractable claws and powerful jaws. So other more powerful and thuggish predators like hyenas simply follow them and steal their kills away
And this is why, despite being the fastest land animals on the planet, cheetahs never prosper.
I slay myself
Do you mean the privileged Cheetahs have the skills and are the ones that do all the work in order to feed all the lazy hyenas and scavenger buzzards? Funny how that works.
lennie,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRs0OqV4uSc
To think such a magnificent creature could have evolved is mindless lunacy.
That’s true, particularly when you understand that there are many creatures who believe they are magnificent but have not evolved at all and, based upon their past and current history, never will.
My thoughts exactly. A belief in macroevolution is evidence of a stunted soul and a shriveled imagination, an emptiness of thought.
too, at any sequential moment any species is at the top of its game.
To be so occupied in the investigation of the secrets of nature, as never to turn the eyes to its Author, is a most perverted study; and to enjoy everything in nature without acknowledging the Author of the benefit, is the basest ingratitude.
Calvin – from commentary on Genesis
I do so agree. I have grown in my understanding of things to the point that I am unable to step beyond my door sill and not be immediately struck with awareness of His Hand in Creation. And maybe, best of all, to realize that He is still actively creating.
I suspect God is two things never otherwise seen in man, a supreme matematician with an irrepresible sense of humor. That the energy contained in any object would be its mass times the speed of light squared is amazing comedy. How can you not laugh at such a thing?
I spend very little of my day laughing in the minefield but that’s on me.
lennie,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRs0OqV4uSc
The one thing I noticed was the steadiness of the head. All that body motion, and the head is rock-solid locked on the target and traveling in a straight-line. The cheetah sees a clear image of its prey all the way to capture.
First thing I noticed, too. It’s like he was laser-locked on target.
Just an addition.
“His eyes are always on you, and you know that he knows exactly how he’s going to kill you. Loud snarls hiss at you like high-charged static, and at the moment he reaches for you, the world switches into slow motion. Clawing, ripping death becomes a slowly danced pantomime.”
— “When a Lion Comes to Kill You”
Look out for the cheetah.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNMUDfNLIsg
Wait until you see a Tranny Cheetah blitzing the field. Breathless David Attenborough Commentary to go with the visuals.
Sunflowers and your face fascinate me
You love only the tallest trees
I come running after you
But you’re fast, you’re the winner
Long distance winner
Long distance winner
Oh yeah,you’re the winner
Long distance winner…
I like the lions that used to ride in motorcycle sidecars for the Lion Drome sideshow.
My thoughts on evolution –
Macroevolution is contingent on pure chance, from the formation of star and planetary systems to the emergence of the smallest of life forms. A roll of the dice. We might well have evolved into cephalopod creatures.
We learned a long time ago that the earth and all it’s inhabitants didn’t just flash into existence five thousand years ago. There’s nothing “unspiritual” about this perspective. Think about it – if God wanted a Partner, one to reflect back at Him His true glory, then that Partner would have to have free will, the ability to choose. That Partner would have to be separate from God, and what better way to create separation than introducing chance into Creation? Even God can be surprised by what transpires in His Creation, and that’s probably the whole idea.
Make no mistake – from the beginning, the Divine Blueprint was, is there, and evolution is part of the intended schematic. On some planets, sentient life will evolve into whatever form it might take, and at a certain point, that life-form will achieve free will, the ability to accept or reject God. I suspect that very few will reject God, though it will be through considerable suffering that the slow learners will catch on.
At the end of time, most of all Creation will reunite with its Creator.
Smooth Words, Will M
“Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits:” Isa 30/10
If there was no Garden, there was no sin. If there was no sin, there was no need for a redeemer but the reward is only what the world always gives, – death.
” I suspect that very few will reject God” – your words.
“ Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” Matt 7:14 – Scripture words
I guess I’ll stop being a Christian and just listen to your preaching.
Well said. I have engaged Will M on a number of occasions. He has admitted to creating his own religion, that is, combining any number of faiths so as to be comfortable with himself and with the world. None of that of course bears any resemblance to Christianity.
He is an adherent of syncretism.
“Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs and various schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the theology and mythology of religion, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to other faiths.”
Simply stated, if syncretism is the way of finding spiritual truth, then Jesus Christ is a liar.
“He is an adherent of syncretism.”
You’re certainly right about that Mike. I had to reply.
“syncretism” is a much better word than what I call it, – “A Cornucopia of rambling nonsense”.