Month: December 2006

Water

Purple water lily

The temple bell stops but I still hear the sound coming out of the flowers. ~Basho

Greetings. I’m Robin. Heather invited me to join you all here in the Temple of Solace. I’ve been reading, occasionally commenting, but mostly lurking. It’s very peaceful here.

I brought along a small gift of my art, photography. This particular photo, for me, represents the element of water. Water represents the emotions, femininity, the soul, wisdom, and cleansing. Although water does have a harsher side to it, I see the water here as soothing, calming, purifying, loving, and healing.

I’m not sure what to add at this point. I’m still getting used to the format here so please pardon me as I blunder around a bit.

Inside – Sting

Inside the doors are sealed to love
Inside my heart is sleeping
Inside the fingers of my glove
Inside the bones of my right hand
Inside it’s colder than the stars
Inside the dogs are weeping
Inside the circus of the wind
Inside the clocks are filled with sand
Inside she’ll never hurt me
Inside the winter’s creeping
Inside the compass of the night
Inside the folding of the land

Outside the stars are turning
Outside the world’s still burning

Inside my head’s a box of stars I never dared to open
Inside the wounded hide their scars, inside this lonesome sparrow’s fall
Inside the songs of our defeat, they sing of treaties broken
Inside this army’s in retreat, we hide beneath the thunder’s call

Outside the rain keeps falling
Outside the drums are calling
Outside the flood won’t wait
Outside they’re hammering down the gate

Love is the child of an endless war
Love is an open wound still raw
Love is a shameless banner unfurled
Love’s an explosion,
Love is the fire of the world
Love is a violent star
A tide of destruction
Love is an angry scar
A violation, a mutilation, capitulation, love is annihilation.

Inside the failures of the light, the night is wrapped around me
Inside my eyes deny their sight, you’d never find me in this place
Inside we’re hidden from the moonlight, we shift between the shadows
Inside the compass of the night, inside the memory of your face

Outside the walls are shaking
Inside the dogs are waking
Outside the hurricane won’t wait
Inside they’re howling down the gate

Love is the child of an endless war
Love is an open wound still raw
Love is a shameless banner unfurled
Love’s an explosion,
Love is the fire at the end of the world
Love is a violent star
A tide of destruction
Love is an angry scar
The pain of instruction
Love is a violation, a mutilation, capitulation,
Love is annihilation.

I climb this tower inside my head
A spiral stair above my bed
I dream the stairs don’t ask me why,
I throw myself into the sky

Love me like a baby, love me like an only child
Love me like an ocean; love me like a mother mild
Love me like a father, love me like a prodigal son
Love me like a sister, love me like the world has just begun
Love me like a prodigy, love me like an idiot boy,
Love me like an innocent, love me like your favorite toy
Love me like a virgin, love me like a courtesan,
Love me like a sinner, love me like a dying man.

Annihilate me, infiltrate me, incinerate me, accelerate me,
mutilate me, inundate me, violate me, implicate me,
vindicate me, devastate me

Love me like a parasite, love me like a dying sun
Love me like a criminal, love me like a man on the run

Radiate me, subjugate me, incubate me, recreate me,
demarcate me, educate me, punctuate me, evaluate me,
conjugate me, impregnate me, designate me, humiliate me,
segregate me, opiate me, calibrate me, replicate me

http://www.lyricsdomain.com/19/sting/inside.html – also see www.Sting.com for more.

Sometimes songs say it better than we can.  After all, musicians and songwriters regularly delve into the world of feelings, emotions, creativity, and making statements.  It’s their daily work.  Solace can be found in another person articulating current feelings at a certain time.  I had to express my confusion at seeing the news daily, how mercenary it seems, and how it misrepresents society in favour of glamour.  Clearly I am not alone in feeling there is too much trouble in the world, so I went to a song to get clear.  It just seemed to express things better than I could.

Soulful Swans

From Swans at Night

Within the night, above the dark,
I heard a host upon the air,
Upon the void they made no mark
For all that they went sailing there.

And from that host there came a cry,
A note of calling strange and high;
I heard it blown against the sky,
Till naught there seemed but it and I.

A long and lonely wraith of sound,
It floated out in distance wide,
As though it knew another bound,
A space wherein it never died.

I heard the swans, I heard the swans,
I heard the swans that speed at night;
That ever, where the starlight wans,
Fly on unseeen within the height.

I never knew how wide the dark,
I never knew the depth of space,
I never knew how frail its bark,
How small is man within his place,

Not till I heard the swans go by,
Not till I marked their haunting cry,
Not till, within the vague on high,
I watched them pass across the sky.

O trackless birds, far journeying,
What guide have you, or swift or slow
To give you trust in strength of wing
That must upbear you as you go?

What mark is set before your way?
What urging burns within the heart,
That bids you, at the close of day,
Uplift the wings of your depart?

What visions drawn from inner sight
Declare to you the way you go;
What power upholds you in your flight
To that unknown you cannot know?

I heard against the phantom sky
The swans their hollow music cry,
I felt the loneliness on high,
The dark where they went sailing by.

They say the swans sings but for death,
They say he wans in height to die;
Has he no more than that sharp breath
That whistles outward on his cry?

Is he but offspring of a vast
Where no hand shaped but gusty chance?
That draws no future from the past?
That move unconsious of advance?

Nay, though we were but shaken dust,
Nay, though in darkness still we went,
We still must measure by our trust
The Power that lifting o’er us bent;

And He Who held within His Hand
The trackless bird, by night and day,
Guided him out by sea and land
His hand will never cast away.

I never knew how vast the sky,
I never knew how small was I,
Until I heard, remote and high,
The distant swans’ far floated cry.

Mary Gilmore

Soul of the Swan

this is an extraction from ‘Light of Asia’ (Edwin Arnold) mentioned on the LemurianTour Blog
which seems appropriate here in sentiment and situation.

faucon, PST
……………………………………………………………………………………..

The Swan
(first experience with pain for the young Buddha)

In the Royal garden on a day of spring,
A flock of wild swans passed, voyaging north
To their nest-places on Himala’s breast.
Calling in love-notes down their snowy line
the bright birds flew, fond love piloted;
And Devaddatta, cousin of the Prince
Pointed his bow, and loosed a wilful shaft
Which found the wide wing of the foremost swan
Broad-spread to glide upon the free blue road
So that it fell, the bitter arrow fixed,
Bright scarlet blood-gouts staining pure plumes.

Which seeing, Prince Siddartha took the bird
Tenderly up, rested it in his lap –
Sitting with knees crossed, as Lord Buddha sits –
and, soothing with a touch the wild thing’s fright
Caresses it into peace with light kind palms
As soft as plaintian-leaves ad hour unrolled;
And while the left hand held, the right hand drew
The cruel steel forth from the wound and laid
Cool leaves and healing honey on the smart.

Yet all so little knew the boy of pain
That Curiously into his wrist he pressed
The arrow’s barb, and winced to feel its sting.
And turned with tears to soothe the bird again.
Then someone came who said, “My Prince has shot
A swan, which fell among the roses here,
He bids my pray you send it. Will you send?”
“Nay,” quoth Siddartha, “if the bird were dead
To send to the slayer might be well,
But the swan lives; my cousin hath not killed
The god-like speed which throbbed in this white thing.”
And Daveddata answered, “The wild thing,
Living or dead, is his who fetched it down;
‘Twas no man’s in the clouds, but fall’n ‘tis mine,
Give me my prize, fair cousin.” Then our Lord
Laid the swan’s neck beside his own smooth cheek
And gravely spake, “Say no! the bird is mine,
The first of myriad things which shall be mine
By right of mercy and love’s lordliness.
For now I know, by what within me stirs,
that I will teach compassion unto men
and be a speechless world’s interpreter,
abating this accursed flood of woe,
Not man’s alone; but, if the Prince disputes,
Let him submit this matter to the wise
And we will wait their word.” So it was done;
In full divan the business had debate,
And many thought this thing and that,
‘Till there arose an unknown priest who said,
“If life be aught, the savior of a life
Owns more of the living thing than he can own
Who sought to slay – the slayer spoils and wastes,
the cherisher sustains, give him the bird:”
Which judgment all found just; but when the King
Sought out this sage for honor, he was gone …
the gods come oftimes thus!… Yet not more
Knew he as yet of grief than this one bird’s,
Which, being healed, went joyous to its kind.

…………………………………………………………..

and Heather might say,

“For now I know, by what within me stirs,
that I will teach compassion unto men
and be a speechless world’s interpreter,
abating this accursed flood of woe”

Touch of Heather

I just found this moments ago —
lines from a poem by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

faucon, PST
………………………………………………………………

In the hush of Spring weather,
with the bees in budding heather,
and the white clouds floating, floating,
and the sunshine falling broad;
While my children down the hill
Run and leap, and I sit still,
Through the silence, through the silence
art though calling, O my God?

Solace means Softness

SOLACE means SOFTLY

We shall come here often, you an I,
as we in sharing –
reach beyond the candle light –
the word’s pain softened,
but a flickering of memory.

Do not wait for grief,
nor hints of impending gloom;
for they are sharp and harsh
and chip away at resolve and soul –

seek instead a haven of softness,
where the shadows echo with pathos
drawn from living not from sorrow –
and just listen to the whispers –

“but do not wait until impending sunset
to lie in a meadow of dreams”

“I need not travel further
than softness of compassioned will
to find myself – well everywhere.”

“Come now softly ever –
press your love against my soul;
softly ever softly –
come now once again.”

“Will you softly whisper now
a song upon the breeze,
or just walk on in silence,
lost in velvet twilight hush?”

“Please breath softly on the glowing embers
of the passion of attention and creation,
and prepare to witness this born EverLight.”

“I don’t have to search for my lost love on
old paths we traveled by.
I’ll look for whispered hints of love
in soft, caressing breeze.

I’ll gather secret baby kisses in the brush of drifting leaf,
and flutter by with the butterflies to a place of golden song”

“and then to ever wander,
becoming a forest of dreams —
in which others may tread softly —
hear a ‘message gentle’,
and know of needs —
and the silence
of the trees.”

faucon, PST

A Bill Gates Lament

Taking Myself to Multi-task

I lie awake –
the contemptuous pillow having won
its ownership of my peace of mind and soul,
and reflect on what was learned in yesterday’s
buffeting of senses ‘tween Tours and Identity.

I expect of my computer some predictability,
as it can only do what it is told –
yet the myriad infusions of ‘help’ provided
unasked
from Bill Gates and minions most foul,
have created traps and pitfall
never imagined by my father.

The moment I am allowed to have the same
‘view of the world’ open more than once,
it is guaranteed that one view must be
out of sinc with time or place or spirit –
and if I should place a dream-thought
in the wrong ‘window’ then
what ‘could be’ is lost,
and ‘what was’ is confused
in memory.

Is not the same true of ever-sought
growth of mind and spirit?
If we hold open more than one view
of the world, or person met or concept considered,
then we might well have an ‘insight’
and wish to save it –
but place it in the wrong window;
and what should be of spirit is lost to reason –
and what should be practical is posted to dreams –
and what is offered in love is smothered in greed –
and what should be serious jostled in mirth.

Aye, I have the ability to be
‘of two minds,,
yet am not always the better for it.

papa

For Darryl and Heather

Today I found a raven caught in the bird net that cover our youngberries ( which will be ripe soon) He was obviously in search of eggs as one of our chooks has decided laying eggs under the youngberry bush is her thing. Anyway as I tried to untangle him he played dead and i could see no heaving of his little chest- I bade him promise tofly as much as much white light your way as is possible. I held him in my hands and his eye opened, and then he flew into the coming night of the east-I hope he brings the white light you so need- he promised.