The Clear and Simple Way

I bought the complete works of the poet Robert Frost at a used bookstore for only $2.00 which is quite a find. So I have poetry to fill my soul in my spare time. What could be more beautiful than that? Except maybe flying through a starry starry night on wings of gold, preferably with Vincent van Gogh.

Speaking of Tigers & WIlliam Blake (in the previous below) I just found out that in the Chinese calendar, this is the year of the Tiger.

I once wrote a poem about tigers when I lived in another land.

I called it Poem 10 then.

There are no tigers in my dreams,

but there are tigers in my poems.

I see them coming,

slinking, sliding, shining,

their massive bodies glowing

like liquid gold flowing

with obsidian.

Their amber eyes hold secrets

I long to know

how it feels to go

along the jungle trails,

paws padding gently

on the earth below,

hot breath pouring,

roaring,

from caverns deep within

fearing nothing

except man.

Last night, Uncle Clyde died,

murdered by the camels

that cluttered up his lungs.

He left me all his money,

with a note that said,

Have fun, honey.

When he found out I was wealthy,

My lover said, Will you marry me?
I said, No.

He said, Why?

I said, Your eyes aren't amber.

He said, You're crazy.

I said, I know.

I went to the travel agent

and bought a one-way ticket

to Africa.

I said to the safari,

Drop me off at the edge of the jungle.

I told them I was meeting someone.

They said, You're crazy.

I said, I know.

They left to look for elephants.

I said, Have fun.

I took off all my clothes

and stalked into the jungle

along the tiger path.

Soon, the tiger came

sniffing, smelling,

when he saw me, he stopped

and crouched low.

I could feel his hot breath.

I whispered, Thank you, Uncle Clyde,

for giving me such a death.

Such grace, such beauty

that tiger had,

I never will forget.

I couldn't even hear

his steps upon the earth.

When he looked at me,

there were ancient fossils

in his amber eyes.

He was as naked as I.

The new message for MARCH is published, and you may read it by clicking MONTHLY MESSAGE over there to your left, in the navigation bar.

They say March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. Both seem equally beautiful to me, and bring to mind the mystical poet, William Blake (1757-1827) and his beautiful poem (which is about a tiger, not a lion, but it does mention a lamb!) And he does use the imagery of lions in much of his work.

The Tiger

TIGER, tiger, burning bright    

In the forests of the night,    

What immortal hand or eye    

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?    

In what distant deeps or skies          

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?    

On what wings dare he aspire?    

What the hand dare seize the fire?    

And what shoulder and what art    

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?    

And when thy heart began to beat,    

What dread hand and what dread feet?    

What the hammer? what the chain?    

In what furnace was thy brain?    

What the anvil? What dread grasp      

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?    

When the stars threw down their spears,    

And water'd heaven with their tears,    

Did He smile His work to see?    

Did He who made the lamb make thee?    

Tiger, tiger, burning bright    

In the forests of the night,    

What immortal hand or eye    

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Another earthquake. Tsunami warnings. Let us pray for each being who is affected by these forces of nature, that each being find within the light to hold and guide them through the tragedies. The bell indeed tolls for all....

...sometimes, like now, it pours...

Sunflowers

Sunflowers are all that matter in this world

You may think other things matter,

like how much money you made today, or

if the stock market crashes,

or if you saved face instead of losing it.

Can you really lose your face? Ha!

Better pray to the God of your choice

to lose your face and replace it

with the lovely face of God

That would be a prayer of Grace

A Prayer worth praying

and then you would know, as I know,

Sunflowers are all that matter in this world.

   My favorite living woman poet Mary Oliver is appearing tonight here at UCLA. There are some joys of living in a big city, though give me a poem spoken by a tree overlooking a river any time....

...the tree is a weeping willow hanging over the river. The river is deep and rich. A small girl stands and watches the river.....

....she wonders where the river begins and where it goes. Back at her house, the little house with the green shingles, there are many emotions and demands, do this, do that, don't do that, be this, don't be that....

...and here there is only the river and her friend, the wind, blowing her white sundress into ruffles. She especially loves the wind because it is invisible to everyone but her. She didn't know this at first. She thought everyone could see the wind, rippling and glistening in its invisibleness. She realized only later that most everyone, particularly the adults, were blind.

...they did not know they were blind...

...she watched them, groping around in their blindness, stumbling over things they could not see. They stumbled over feelings a lot, quite often her own. She would watch them stomp her tiny feelings into the ground with their big feet and loud voices. They could never kill her feelings though....she knew this. There were always more feelings that came from the same place all feelings come from. She knew that feelings flowed like a river. She saw that the big people all had dams inside them, which blocked the flow of their feelings, the way a dam blocks a river.

. . .She'd never seen a real dam, but she had seen them in picture books. The dams inside of people were similar, except they were not made of sticks and mud. They were made of darkness. All adults had places of darkness inside them, some more than others, especially when they were angry. Anger was the biggest darkness...and fear, but most people covered up the darkness of their fear with the darkness of their anger.

   Standing here watching the river with her invisible visible friend, the wind, and of course the weeping willow with its long feathery tresses trailing almost to the river, there was no darkness. Only light and the soft conversation of nature all around her. She knew the willow was not weeping at all. It never weeped. It never laughed either. It just was, as the river just was, as the wind was, as she was. Only sometimes she weeped. Sometimes she weeped and weeped because the darkness in the people hurt so much. Here, with her friends, she could just be. When she went back to the house with the green shingles, or to the school made of red bricks, or to visit her grandmother, she was squeezed to fit their ideas of the way things should be. This was because they were blind and could not see the way things really are. Sometimes she hurt so much from being squeezed into their concepts and ideas, that she weeped and weeped. They wanted to put the darkness inside of her, the way it was inside of them. The darkness wanted everyone to be blind.

   And here by the river, there was only light. The river was her teacher. She hadn't read Siddhartha yet, but she knew, as he knew, that the river was a Teacher. It was her best teacher. She had teachers at school and she was glad to learn useful things from them, like how to read and how to write and where oranges and tea and brazil nuts come from, but she knew these teachers also had dark places inside of them, that they were also blind, and so, while they could teach her about things and events, they could not teach her about the light, except occasionally, when the light in them grew stronger than the darkness. She knew this battle between light and darkness was always going on in the people around her.

   She knew it was also going on inside her. Well, not quite inside her yet. It hadn't gotten in yet. She kept her doors of light closed tight against the darkness and its tricks. She knew the darkness well. She knew that it put on many disguises to try and trick her. She knew that it also masqueraded as the light. Sometimes it got furious and tried to break down her doors of light. She would stay fast behind her doors then, trembling. Other times the darkness pretended to be sweet, but she knew it was not real sweetness. She knew the sweetness of the dark was cloying and would do its best to rot her soul. At times like this, she would tell her soul to run quick away and she would stand up tall to the darkness, and protect her sweet sweet soul.

   She knew her soul was sweet. Its sweetness had been with her for such a long long time. It was the same sweetness that was in the Weeping Willow and the River and the Wind. It was the sweetness in the people around her, except they had forgotten how to keep it safe. The darkness had masqueraded and battered and cajoled until it got inside them and began to cover up their sweetness with layers of darkness.

   The wind whispers to her, Nevermind. Nevermind, sweet one. It is the way of the world. Darkness comes. Darkness goes. Light remains. Just watch the river. Wonder. The river flows in the path of Light. The river is the way of Light.

It really is, you know. Sometimes it stretches out and seems to pass slowly, creating space and distance between people. Othertimes it comes together and all space and distance is forgotten. Sometimes it plays friendly notes; othertimes the notes are discordant. And so tis better to be the one who witnesses time going by. The eternal witness of all that is.

A Winter Night

My window-pane is starred with frost,

The world is bitter cold tonight,

The moon is cruel, and the wind

Is like a two-edged sword to smite.

God pity all the homeless ones,

The beggars pacing to and fro,

God pity all the poor to-night

Who walk the lamplit streets of snow.

My room is like a bit of June,

Warm and close-curtained fold on fold,

But somewhere, like a homeless child,

My heart is crying in the cold.

Sarah Teasdale won the Pulitzer prize for poetry in 1918. Although she was in love with the poet Vachel Lindsay who wrote her daily love letters (which must have been very poetical!) she married a rich businessman when she was 30. Because he was rich? I don't know. Anyway, they divorced. She committed suicide a few years later, and her old lover, the poet, killed himself two years before she did. But she did leave many poems. The one above also fits our world today, although my favorite Teasdale poem is called Stars.

If you look closely, you will find secrets hidden in these words. At first glance, they may seem like only normal words, and I assure you, they  are not. There is an energy that permeates these words. You cannot sense it, feel it, or experience it unless you are truly ready. This requires more than you know. A clue: Truth is always clear and simple.

Once again morning has broken over hill and vale where the faeries slip silently from sleep into the waking world which they wear like a thin veil, knowing it is but a dream within a dream. All dreams bring laughter and magic into tiny faery lives. Ofttimes they venture close and observe the human world, falling over each other in fits of glee as they watch huge clumsy human beings lugging their dramas from place to place, when all they'd have to do to walk lighter is set their burdens down and be real, like faeries are real. And angels. And God.

The dark cloak of night has wrapped its starry self around this part of the world once again. Sleep beckons and soon I will be floating in its velvet softness. Perchance to dream. Perchance to find God forever. Perchance to ride a black unicorn into the deep forest from whence I shall never return. The person who wakes up will seem like me, but I shall be far away, in the starry starry forest of night where lost painters and marauders go when the last pirate ship sinks beneath the sea and frothy mermaids masquerade as waves. Over it all Merlin shall swirl his purple cape and an owl will spread its wings over all the earth and cover it in warm down to sleep deep below blankets of snow which shall transform all the earth into flowers and tiny children holding hands in a land where war has forgotten how to exist.

   The small black cat I befriended in September is sitting on the window ledge in the morning sun shining her fur. Her name is Blossom, yet she is more like a wild forest. She has spent her youth running through the house like a fire, investigating everything. Last night a crash woke me from my sleep, but since the dogs didn't bark, I knew there was no danger. Morning found a bookcase toppled, by a  young black cat who has come into heat and doesn't  know what to do with all those new feelings coursing through her body. Soon she will need a visit to the vet so she will not populate the over-populated cat world. I remember when she was a tiny ktten, hardly alive, doing her best to crawl her way up the steps. I fed her goats milk from a bottle and apparently it was just what she needed to arrive here on the window sill today.

The hot sun has returned to the soft blue sky and the recent rains have left the air clear enough to see the snowcapped mountains that surround this dessert. Normally smog obscures their beauty. This alone is enough to awaken a heart that burns for truth.

1st Corinthians  13

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,

and have not love,

I am become as sounding brass,

or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy,

and understand all mysteries,

and all knowledge; and though I have all faith,

so that I could remove mountains,

and have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,

and though I give my body to be burned,

and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.

Love suffereth long, and is kind;

love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own,

is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail;

whether there be tongues, they shall cease;

whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come,

then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child,

I understood as a child, I thought as a child:

but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly;

but then face to face: now I know in part;

but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three;

but the greatest of these is love.

Yes, it is raining again. I think I am deciding to stop posting my poetry here. I will think about it. Hmm. That might make this a common instead of an uncommon blog...could be.

Her hands held rose petals

that floated from her

wherever she walked

like scented butterflies

awakening

enligtening

enchanting

She wore gold bangles

around her wrists,

and silver bells

around her ankles

that played melodies

as she walked

through forests and meadows

and steely city streets

A soft grey elephant

followed her everywhere

She fed it gummy bears

and caressed its big flapping ears

and it gazed at her

with lovestruck eyes

Small fat children

ran after her laughing

and she laughed back

and that was the way

of her beautiful beautiful life.

(well...maybe tomorrow I will stop writing poety & prose here...)

The message for February is short and sweet, like the month itself. I hope you enjoy it!

     I have been writing writing writing until my poor fingers are numb, since I have lessons to get out for The School of Being Happy Being You!--it is nearly the first of February!

     It has been a year now since the school began and the first students enrolled. The response to the school has been tremendous. Most importantly, people are experiencing deep inner transformations and handling their lives in new and different ways.

     I love the emails, phone calls, and letters I receive from students who are happy to report happy changes in their lives! xoxoxo

I created these marvelous pancakes the other morning, by chance. Here is the sort of recipe.

1. Throw together: 1/2 cup organic buckwheat flour with

2. maybe 1/4 cup  coconut milk (the creamy kind that comes in a can, whole fat of course---I don't believe in low fat or non fat anything. I think non/low fat makes people fat.)

3. some almond milk (not more than half a cup or less, or whatever)

4. an organic free range egg (be kind as possible to the hens!)

5. a little blackstrap molasses (potassium, iron, magnesium, sweetness!)

6. a sliced banana (more potassium)

7. a little olive oil

and for extra health:

8. A tablespoon each of chia & sesame seeds, and a sprinkling of flax seeds

stit it all up with a fork and cook pancakes on skillet heated using coconut oil.

Coconut oil is great for heating up and it is good for you. You can buy it in a health food store. It keeps a long time and doesn't have to be refrigerated.

Make sure you have someone there to share them with, because they are so good, you will want to eat them all yourself. I put butter & blueberry honey on mine. Alternatively, eat them all yourself and enjoy every bite!

Go well with ethiopian coffee.

hugs & kisses, your gourmet chef.

The poet mystic saint, Mirabai, b. 1504 AD in India, is one of my favorite poets. Hers was the path of Bhakti Yoga (devotion). India allows there are many paths to God, and God comes in many forms, which are all to be honored. Isn't this gentler than telling people that there is only one way (and the one and only way is always, "mine").

I especially love Robert Bly's translation of her work; you can find 52 poems in, Mirabai: Ecstatic Poems (2004) The term Giridhara is just another name for God, but you knew that, right?

Mira Has Finished with Waiting

Mira Has Finished with Waiting

O friends on this path,

My eyes are no longer my eyes.

A sweetness has entered through them,

Has pierced through to my heart.

How long did I stand in the house of this body

And stare at the road?

My Beloved is a steeped herb, he has cured me for life.

Mira belongs to Giridhara, the One Who Lifts All,

And everyone says she is mad.