At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?


-Mary Oliver

And He said, "Let there be light."

With a grimace I close my door and drive to work early. Vehicle after vehicle pull out from their driveways, with turn signals flickering. We merge onto the freeway joining this rapid accumulation, a moving parade; a tired, solemn parade. And then, one by one we are exiled, as we migrate to our exits, our cities, our streets.

All this going is characteristic of us. It is constant, essential, habitual. It is us. We are beings of moving and of moving things. Of work, of doing. Most of the time we love the suggestion, affection, rhythm, and pronunciation of movement, of goings and of comings. Doing is logical. Movement is natural.

Driving home at dusk, the beams of car and city lights very often administer existential meditations. Here we all are, going home. We are tired, maybe even worn. We have no choice, but as a congregating flock of beings to come, and now to go, like this. We cannot even recall, or remember, the day we arrived here, but still we are here. With nothing to do about it, but do as everyone else does, to smile at our friends, to make mashed potatoes and watch a film, and then later, sleep. Awakening in the darkened early morning to do it all again. To go. And then, come home.

Hoping tomorrow kisses us with fulfillment. Hoping perhaps tomorrow will glance at us with a heart of grace.

"And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?" {M. Oliver}

It was cold yesterday, and now again today. When I take a deep breath and exhale the warm air from my lungs and thermal interior, it slithers out between my lips and turns into a suspended flag of vapor.

I saw the the fog slumbering on the road this morning and on the river, and in between the trees and their branches. And I wondered what breathed those extensive masses of vaporous ensigns into flight and presence, for surely fog is only a larger likeness of my freezing human breath.

On wintry mornings the great wizardly Oak trees must blink their eyes and peel back their bark and yawn; and from them, and from the dark recesses of the quivering ground, must come the sweet breath of the dirt and rocks and roots. Stretching it's arms, bending and winding above the ground and below the power lines, coming to a stop; sleeping among the waters and houses and yellow lined roads.

And so the juncture of cold comes
like prancing paws
echoing on ice
here again,
gone again,
until it's here to stay
awhile
drowning the particles
of grasses and
ground
in a kind of liquid trinity.
The tide of seasons
rolls in ever
comfortingly
lapping at the weeks
and months
with a familiar-ness
of which we know
so well
we could feel in our sleep
or hear in our dreams;
or catch
blindfolded.
And we begin to think
that it has always been this way,
the way of the seasons;
of ebbing.

Of the way
of rain on the roof,
of clefts in the earth
given us from the
anguished skies;
of the joy of winter,
and the revival of our
souls in the hope
of Spring.

"The question isn't who's going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." {Ayn Rand}

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark. In the hopeless swamps of the not quite, the not yet, and the not at all, do not let the hero in your soul perish and leave only frustration for the life you deserved, but never have been able to reach. The world you desire can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.

{Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged}

"Where day never shuts his eye, up in the broad fields of the sky" {Milton}

In reading C.S. Lewis' Out of the Silent Planet last night, I came across the quote below. I wasn't thrilled with the entirety of the book, it was a little dull and uninspiring, and I much prefer L'Engle's metaphysical stories to this one. Maybe my judgment is partly due to the fact that I am not very much a space enthusiast, and pretty much find all Star Trek and Star Wars-esque fantasies silly and tiring. However, there were a few great passages worthy of quoting and I consider the following one of them. Briefly, this quote is of a human who was taken to a wonderful purple and bright world (Mars, if you can believe it!), who came across certain strange creatures, and of his perception of them:

"It was only many days later that Ransom discovered how to deal with these sudden losses of confidence. They arose when the rationality of the hross tempted you to think of it as a man. Then it became abominable-- a man seven feet high, with a snaky body, covered, face and all, with thick black animal hair, and whiskered like a cat.

But starting from the other end you had an animal with everything an animal ought to have-- glossy coat, liquid eye, sweet breath and whitest teeth-- and added to all these, as though Paradise had never been lost and earliest dreams were true, the charm of speech and reason.

Nothing could be more disgusting than the one impression; nothing more delightful than the other. It all depended on the point of view."

. . .