At least, in metaphor and as well as paraffin, vigil candle light shines.

Fourteen years later, my sister, glad for home port, finds harbor in fair weather and calm seas.

TERMINUS
by: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

T is time to be old,

To take in sail:--

The gods of bounds,

Who sets to seas a shore,

Came to me in his fatal rounds,

And said: 'No more!

No farther shoot

Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.

Fancy departs: no more invent;

Contract thy firmament

To compass of a tent.

There's not enough for this and that,

Make thy option which of two;

Economize the failing river,

Not the less revere the Giver,

Leave the many and hold the few.

Timely wise accept the terms,

Soften the fall with wary foot;

A little while

Still plan and smile,

And,--fault of novel germs,--

Mature the unfallen fruit.

Curse, if thou wilt, thy sires,

Bad husbands of their fires,

Who, when they gave thee breath,

Failed to bequeath

The needful sinew stark as once,

The Baresark marrow to thy bones,

But left a legacy of ebbing veins,

Inconstant heat and nerveless reins,--

Amid the Muses, left thee deaf and dumb,

Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.'

 

As the bird trims her to the gale,

I trim myself to the storm of time,

I man the rudder, reef the sail,

Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:

'Lowly faithful, banish fear,

Right onward drive unharmed;

The port, well worth the cruise, is near,

And every wave is charmed.'

Friday morning rain; new window

Nobody.

Disturbed not.

Conscious Presence.

1. To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.   (~ e. e. cummings, from A Poet's Advice, 1958) 

2. Men are disturbed not by the things that happen, but by their opinion of the things that happen. (~ Epictetus, Greek Stoic philosopher) 

3. If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are – the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined. Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence.                                           ...    In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem And true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.       (--pp.108-109, Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, 2005)

Presence, conscious -- not disturbed -- nobody.

Turn around!

Once I thought I was sane

Illusion is what fronts for truth. Don't ask about truth. Ask rather what is the cost of illusion. Truth is free. Illusion costs.

Ask congress.

Ask anyone.

Tonight truth sleeps where it always sleeps.

Inside.

Everything.

Where no one looks.

Updating deficiency

Literature points it out.

WAR IS PEACE. 

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY. 

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

George Orwell's 1984 was short by 20 to 30 years.

The Republicans and Democrats are trying to update the horror and terror of our mental/rational dissonant deficient projection. 

Rewards of long hike

Four deer run from woods darting across low tide beach at New River as sun wades into western end of stretching bay.

Wood deck, wood table, Water Street

It was Thanksgiving.

The day(s) in Canada.

For which we're grateful.

Apple pie, please

Thanksgiving eve in Canada. 

Sumatran coffee? Check. 18% coffee cream out of St. John's? Check. 

Walk around and through point of penninsula at St. Andrews by the Sea? Check.

Awareness alone, Rupert Spira wishes us to know.

Along with the quiet of pine boards holding mirror window shy.

Where does poetry hide? Is it time to eat?

Far right wing christian fundamentalists want America to fail and fall so that Jesus will return to earth in triumph to rule and judge, condemn and purify the sinful landscape of liberal terrestriality.

It may be an unreasonable hypothesis, but, it is delusional as well.

And it is gaining sway over sensible and concrete discourse in our body politic.

It is time to move to a new country. Perhaps a new planet. 

Let's try Earth!

Surely the soil there is not contaminated by besotted illusory belief!

Surely there's a poem still hiding in a sane and intuitive psyche!

The map is not the territory.  

The father of general semantics, Alford Korzybski stated, "A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness". What this means is that our perception of reality is not reality itself but our own version of it, or our "map".  

No two people can have exactly the same map. While we all have similar neurological structure, it functions differently in all of us. This is the basis for our problems in communication when we try to impose our map upon another person. Learning to recognize the structure of another person's map allows us to "see the world though their eyes" and therefor understand and relate to others respectfully and accurately.  

Our maps are created through gathering data through the five senses. Our senses bring certain aspects of the world to our attention, which go through neurological processes or filters, forming our values, beliefs, criteria (rules), and capabilities. These are often expressed consciously, yet most of the time they operate outside of our awareness and we don't realize that they can be changed to serve us in better ways.             (--from, The Map Is Not The Territory, by Rex Steven Sikes,  http://www.idea-seminars.com/articles/map.htm)

Surely there is something which is itself! 

Which is, and recognizes, that to be itself is to be no idea, no thought, no other. 

Only itself. 

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Indian philosopher, said, "The description is not the described." No description of food satisfies; it is not food. A hungry person wants food.

Be food.

Be poem.

Find one . . . another!