A Lark

        Photo by Chari Wilder

 VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.

T. S. Eliot 
1930   

   

    Who shows up for the page?  And how is it that  the "I" who shows up for the page is connected to the creative exercise, in my case of writing?  Dr. Eric Maisel, a San Francisco-based therapist who works predominantly with artists, musicians, writers, believes that you should use the liminal state, that state between waking and physical sleep, for your creative work.  He recently spoke at a neighborhood bookshop.
    I asked him if that liminal state would not be better used spiritually, say by sitting in meditation?  Such a look he threw me!  I pushed on.  Wouldn't opening to a higher consciousness first thing, feed you for the rest of the day and nourish your creative work?
    "It's a matter of what you put first, what you want to accomplish,  next question!" He said.
    "I" can't accomplish much, I said.   But  it was plain to see his sails were full of wind and that perhaps, somewhere along the line he'd been pinched, narrowed to the idea of spirituality or dare I say, religion?

Religion - the word originates from the Greek, meaning to link back or make whole.

    And took them clean away!  Happy Valentine's Day!

   

    This striking image was awarded third  prize in the  Sports Features Singles category.  The photographer is Tomasz Gudzowaty  and  his subject is a Mongolian child  jockey.
    What does it mean to  ride a wild horse?  Literally, I have been aboard a runaway horse.  I grew up riding and at the barn we would dare one another to "throw  a leg" over a horse you knew was beyond your  skill. 
    We  were kids, so were immortals.  But beyond the stomped on feet and the bruises from being thrown, there was a quiet connection, an emotional connection that I craved at twelve, thirteen, fourteen years-old.  My world was changing but the rein in my hand was my tether to the earth.  Aboard a horse, I was alive, present in the moment and in motion.
    I keep a small laminated photo on my desk.  My dad carried it in his wallet for years.  When I was nine and it looked my horse fever was not going to pass, he had made me promise that I would only work on the flat, that is not ride over jumps.  I solemnly promised.  But some promises are not meant to be kept.

    One Sunday I was riding a brilliant pony that looked like a Mongolian pony but my Hobo was a jumper.  A steeple chaser at heart...and as we went round the course taking fence over fence the stable manager's son snapped my picture, mid-air.  The next Sunday he proudly presented my dad with a photo.  My dad never said a word about my love of jumping, he just bought me a hard hat.
    About a year before he died, he gave me the photo, laminated and sticky with bits of tobacco.  He said he had been and was proud of me.

William Patrick Patterson will speak and sign his new book, Spiritual Survival in a Radically Changing Time World tonight at East West Books, 324 Castro Street in Mountain View, Calif. at 7:30 this evening.  For more information call the bookstore at (650) 988-9800.
If you are out-of-state and would still like a signed copy of this remarkable overview of how we can use the new ideology, that is technology, to spur us to explore a new integration of body, senses and mind; simply call the store today.  You can purchase with credit card.  Give the store the spelling of the person to whom you would like to have the book dedicated!

Author: unknown

I see the moon
and the moon sees me.
God bless the moon
and God bless me.

When I see the moon
and the stars so bright,
I thank the Lord
for day and night.

    I was raised in a cult.  Yes, as an Irish Catholic I was taught to have a ferocious devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the BVM, as we smug 12-year olds smirked behind our rosary entwined hands.  That's Mary the Mother of God, for those poor souls who don't know her saving grace and are destined for hell, according to limited and dull Sister Francis James at St. Luke the Evangelist parochial school, circa 1964.

    But as an erstwhile adult, I have to say that the repetition of  the prayers counted on the beads of the rosary  do provide a comfort that can lead to a meditative state or a form of the quiet mind. 
    And rituals that are engraved on your bones can be of benefit in times of crisis.  As my father lay dead on his bedroom floor and  a police officer stood sentry in the small hall, my mother and I said the rosary together, aloud, tears streaming to be sure, but not a prayer was missed.

    I have a sense that everything we possess within our own physicality has a purpose but that the knowledge of the purpose of something as simple as our breath rising and  falling has been forgotten.  But there are threads of ancient knowledge that have survived and can be used to find a way to the whole cloth of an esoteric teaching.

    I recently read again a slim volume by Sir Paul Dukes, On a Single Breath, A Lost Interpretation of the Lord's Prayer.  On prayer, Sir Dukes transcribes for us what his teacher said to him:  "...The three pillars on which prayer is built are all runaway horses.  Each has to be trained and disciplined by restraint -- there is no other way because they are all runaway horses..."

    What a roan
Knows is that snow brings
    An oat feed.

How can it be that I had a stroke of  insight into my way of negotiating through the world while walking in a park in Tokyo?  Something came up as I realized that I,  a tall blond in 1996 trying to shake off jet lag by striding round a small city park was literally creating a following.  Japanese business men were following me.  Funny now, but not so then.
    The insight?  Well that's not the point.  The point is  that I received a shock when I saw in the moment what was happening.  And that moment pointed to a new understanding about how I had filtered my life.
    Virginia Woolf wrote "...We don't have complete emotions about the present only about the past." 
    Travel provides a prospective for me, a longer lens.  How can that translate to better writing?  According to Gail Sher,  it can.  
    She writes in her valuable, slender volume, One Continuous Mistake, Four Noble Truths for Writers:
    "..."The truth:  Though there may be an inflexible barrier between the self inside and the world outside, between the past and the present, language--in its ungraspable, incorrigible, unpindownable yet deeply personal nature can almost breach it.  Within the fable-ridden loom of  subjectivity, it catches a tenderness in the familiar that only posterity will discern."

   

This photo is from the recent Lake Shikatsu  Ice Festival in Japan.  Colored lights illuminate pillars of ice.

    I grew up in a midwestern city, one that Tennessee Williams referred to as a pseudo-southern town; he said it was as far north as the magnolia tree could stand.    I always thought he was speaking of himself.
    We had two Welsh pubs in my neighborhood.  One was a happy, upbeat place and the other was rather somber.  We called the bartender at the somber place the gray poet.  He wore gray, had gray eyes, and given the number of Winston cigarettes he inhaled with practically every breath, his skin was also a variation of gray ash.
It happened that two men, friends, wanted to open a Welsh pub together.  Only they couldn’t agree on the mood, the tone of the pub.  So they each opened their own pub within a block of one another.
Each was a success and on a snowy day like the one in London today, the pubs would be packed with neighbors.  Too risky to drive in snow and ice but not an issue to mince over icy sidewalks to Dressel’s…did I mention the fireplace?
But now we live in California and out my window I see three flowering plum trees.  Later I will take a walk on the beach.  So how is it that I am longingly dreaming about an old neighborhood pub with dark wooden booths and a fireplace? 
It’s because a snow day is a gift, a pass, an unexpected holiday where you pause and see your place in nature’s pecking order.  It’s a wonder.