Return love for anything thrown your way.

Your body sits silently;
Your mind is quiescent, unmoving.
This is genuine effort in practice.
Body and mind are at complete rest.
The mouth is so still that moss
Grows around it.
Grass sprouts from the tongue.
Do this without ceasing,
Cleansing the mind
Until it gains clarity
Of an autumn pool,
Bright as the moon
Illuminating the evening sky.
- Hung-chih

Practice asks for love.

To be itself.

Beyond all.

To observe is to care.

Observe what cannot be spoken.
Do not accept anything simply
Because it has been said
By your teacher,
Or because it has been written
In your sacred book,
Or because it has been
Believed by many,
Or because it has been
Handed down by your
Ancestors.
Accept and live only
According to what will enable
You to see truth face to face.
(- Buddha)

With care.

Seeing.

Is itself seen.

What makes us turn? What is it suddenly focuses and empties mind bringing bare gaze to the fore?

Returning.

If your mind is fixed on a certain spot,
it will be seized by that spot, and
no activities can be performed efficiently.
Not to fix your mind anywhere is essential.
Not fixed anywhere, the mind is everywhere.
The Original Mind is like water which flows freely,
whereas the deluded mind is like ice.
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says:
“The mind should operate without abiding anywhere.”
- Takuan (1573-1645)

"Nada" in Spanish is "nothing, not anything."

"Nada" in Sanskrit is "Sound; tone, vibration."

Metaphysically, the mystic sounds of the Eternal, of which the highest is the transcendent or Soundless Sound, Paranada, the first vibration from which creation emanates. Paranada is so pure and subtle that it cannot be identified to the denser regions of the mind. From Paranada comes Pranava, Aum, and further evolutes of nada. These are experienced by the meditator as the nadanadi shakti, "the energy current of sound," heard pulsing through the nerve system as a constant high-pitched hum, much like a tambura, an electrical transformer, a swarm of bees or a shruti box.
(--from Hindu Dictionary)

Different perspective, different meaning

Piano

Touched by your goodness, I am like
that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby
that someone had smashed and somehow
heaved through an open window.

And you might think by this I mean I'm broken
or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't
know exactly what I am, any more
than the wreckage in the alley knows
it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.

Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was.
But touching me, I know, you are the good
breeze blowing across its rusted strings.

What would you call that feeling when the wood,
even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?
(--Poem, "Piano" by Patrick Phillips, from Boy. The University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Being touched by goodness shows a lovely perspective.

Bright light singing.

Soundless.

Sound.

Long to see?

Filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
Then turning to his disciples he spoke to them in private, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.’
(--Luke 10:21-24)

In meditation, when we sit, we allow what is passing to come into focus.

Seeing, we affirm the seeing.

No more; no less.

We must change our mind.

Do not pursue the outer conditions
nor dwell in the inner void.
Rest yourself in oneness with things and all barriers will disappear
- Seng Ts’an (526-606)

We must change our heart.

Why stay awake? Why wake up?

Because we do not know.

Know what?

Name it!

So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake!’
(--from Mark 13: 33-37)

Mary thought about the invitation, then said, 'May it be with me as your word is -- creating from source --of all that is.'

Something was not done to Mary. Rather she asked it be with her as it was with God.

What is with God?

We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.

Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as "sins." When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.
(--Lesson 195, ACIM, "Love is the way I walk in gratitude.")

I like beginnings. Advent is a beginning.

I like endings. Death, in it's own way, is an ending -- at least a transition.

I dislike obituaries that don't reveal the person committed suicide. I dislike ones that claim "After a long battle..." with cancer, or MS, or some other medical designation. Life, in this way, is a losing battle.

I'd rather the obituary say that so and so surrendered to the source.

Went back in after being out for so many years.

Found surcease.

Decided to begin again.

Advent reminds me that life is beginning now. That love has no comparison.

An invitation to let life and love be with you.

And with each breath.

Joyfully awake!

Her daughter sat on stool. Her best friend on wood bench. She sat by wood stove. The conversation went from John O"Donohue to Eckhart Tolle, to what would I read if I had only a month or little more to live.

Then she said she'd decided. She'd stop chemo. How would the other two feel? They'd respect her wishes. The room fell quiet. That's what I'll do, she said.

To learn to be always in a state of meditation means never to let your vital energy wane. You would never allow it to do so if it were certain that you were to die tomorrow. It wanes because you forget about death. Grit your teeth, fix your gaze, and observe death at this moment. You have to feel it so strongly that is seems as if it’s attacking you. Fearless energy comes from this. At this moment death is right before your eyes. It’s not something you can afford to neglect.
- Suzuki Shosan (1579-1655) Daily Zen

The prospect of death focuses.

She'll come back, she says. I've ordered Anam Cara for her. The final chapter is worth the price of the book.

It's about dying.

It's First Advent.

It's about watching.

As we live and breathe.

The man just turned 75 remembers at age 8 deciding to walk from house to barn to tell his dad he loved him. He tells of how, half way there, he stopped, thought, turned and went back to house. He never did get to say it, his dad dying ten years ago just shy of 100.

But he'd said it out loud, tonight, right there in a circle.

All obstructions of defilements
and karmas of worry and trouble,
are in origin, empty.
All causes and effects
are dreams and illusions.
The great Way is empty and vast.
It is beyond thought and deliberation.
You, at this instant, have this
Dharma and are without lack.
- Fa-yung (593-657)

We think it is too late to retrieve or repair. It's not.

Origin is always at hand.

Fathers remain close.

Listening.

Near the open.

Barn.

I've never been where I'm not now.

Silent Illumination

Silently and serenely, one forgets all words,
Clearly and vividly, it appears before you.
When one realizes it, time has no limits.
When experienced, your surroundings come to life.
Singularly illuminating is this bright awareness,
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)

I'm just grateful to be here.

With you.

The light of presence through emptiness.

Singularly radiating is the wondrous Light;
Free is it from the bondage of matter and the senses.
Not binding by words and letters,
The Essence is nakedly exposed in its pure eternity.
Never defiled is the Mind-nature;
It exists in perfection from the very beginning.
By merely casting away your delusions
The Suchness of Buddhahood is realized.
- Seng T’san (d.606)

What is emptiness?

The light of presence-through.

Things get dicey in scripture as end of liturgical year plays out. The Book of Revelation fits the day -- early darkness, wet, chill, rain, gusts between 30-60mph. Maine coast is suitable backdrop for shivering warnings of destruction and decimation.

Before the cape on the harbor blows over we'll brace ourselves with Buddha's words.

Better than a thousand hollow words
is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
is one verse that brings peace.
It is better to conquer yourself
than to win a thousand battles.
Then the victory is yours.
(-- Buddha in the Dhammapada)

Of course its the end of the world as we know it. In passing, a former military man says he's exercising his rights before they're taken away by purchasing a lot of bullets and a new gun or two. When asked why, he says a lot of people are frightened by the new people coming into power in Washington. I wonder. He might be in a time-delay reaction-warp to the atmosphere of trepidation so rife these past eight years. Or, he could be a right-wing racist intent on survival once the 'coloreds' start to take over the country. Maybe he's a religious fundamentalist getting ready to shoot for Jesus to help the rapture along. Either way -- I don't know -- the end of the world at times seems an attractive scenario.

I don't own a gun. Like the Zen Abbot eye to eye with the fierce Samurai telling him he could run the monk through with his sword, the monk replies "Didn't you know I could be run through?" I'd like to think when the shooting starts (for some reason I cannot fathom) I'd be able to remember the colloquy and say: "Didn't you know I have one more second to breathe now that I've been shot through?"

When some were talking about the Temple, remarking how it was adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings, Jesus said, ‘All these things you are staring at now – the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another: everything will be destroyed.’ And they put to him this question: ‘Master,’ they said ‘when will this happen, then, and what sign will there be that this is about to take place?’
‘Take care not to be deceived,’ he said ‘because many will come using my name and saying, “I am he” and, “The time is near at hand.” Refuse to join them. And when you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened, for this is something that must happen but the end is not so soon.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will fight against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes and plagues and famines here and there; there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.’
(--Luke 21:5-11)

Destruction's not as interesting as you might think. It's something anybody can do. Murder/suicides are increasing. Shooting up malls, churches, and classrooms are happening at an odd alarming rate. Solitary self-inflicted wounds or death seems a choice these days in the same way one might say "I'd like that pink thingy with black trim" at a shop. We're blase about the carnage. We're a nation of options -- if you think this is bad, there's other ways it could get worse -- "choose your poison," the doomsday folks mutter, thinking it sounds profound.

Pema Chodron says that the spiritual life makes room for all of it -- the delightful and the desperate. Things continually fall apart then fall back together again -- only to fall apart once more then come back again. It is the nature of things to fall apart. It is the nature of humans to find a way to continue through the debris. Impermanence is run through and through all of existence.

Hail

Mary who mattered to me, gone or asleep
among fruits, spilled

in ash, in dust, I did not

leave you. Even now I can't keep from
composing you, limbs & blue cloak

& soft hands. I sleep to the sound

of your name, I say there is no Mary
except the word Mary, no trace

on the dust of my pillowslip. I only

dream of your ankles brushed by dark violets,
of honeybees above you

murmuring into a crown. Antique queen,

the night dreams on: here are the pears
I have washed for you, here the heavy-winged doves,

asleep by the hyacinths. Here I am,

having bathed carefully in the syllables
of your name, in the air and the sea of them, the sharp scent

of their sea foam. What is the matter with me?

Mary, what word, what dust
can I look behind? I carried you a long way

into my mirror, believing you would carry me

back out. Mary, I am still
for you, I am still a numbness for you.

(--Poem "Hail" by Mary Szybist, in Poetry Magazine, Nov.2008)

I knew two Marys in Albany. I knew a Mary in Pittsburgh. I knew a Mary in Camden. I knew a Mary in the Bronx. One in Attleboro. Another in Nanuet. All are out of my life. Three have died. No tellin' about the others. We fall apart and go beyond. I bow to their memory. They could be at these words the way southerly wind is at the windows with ecstatic rain. I don't know, at all, where they are. But these words carry them within.

As I set to leave this hermitage room I marvel at the force of wind pounding building, huge swells blowing into harbor, streets abandoned, night fallen. Buddhist conversation was intimate and rich with MaryAnn, Saskia, and Pema.

“Love of the Truth Puts You on the Spot,” is the Naropa Institute motto.

Fall apart and go beyond.

Spot on!

Fr. Joseph spoke about those being remembered (Saints Andrew Dung-Lac and his Companions, Martyrs of Vietnam) before mass this morning.

Like peace activists everywhere, punished, or those who worked and died for racial equality, these martyrs spanning time suffered at the hands of ignorance and uncaring.

A life can end at any moment. What would I want to be my final comprehension?

To look at life is like being in a dream;
It is really noisy being in the dream.
Everything stops when the dreamer suddenly awakens,
And in the same way as a dreamer awakes,
The wise understand how to wake from the dream.
The deluded believe in the dream and are disturbed
That understanding and dreaming seem to be two aspects.
When once the truth is comprehended,
There is no other comprehension.
- Master Pen Ching (d. 761)

There is something I would like to comprehend. Why is it we refuse so passionately to accept within us the broken and suffering? Thus there is lashing out at others, punishing them, treating with scorn and disdain, and finally, missing our true light as it is pushed closed behind doors of fear and clinging opinion. Shut tight with certainty.

Who are the people going beyond lie and fault? Who are they?

They never allowed a lie to pass their lips and no fault can be found in them. (--Apocalypse 14:5)

Do I just not see? So often I live a lie. Do the faultless and truthful pass among us without being...seen?

The thirteen years at this odd shop have taught me some. Some compassion Some wariness. Some patience. Mostly it has taught me some foolishness. The absurdity of my fixed opinions, the absurdity of others' hard and fast habits of thought. Kindness is lacking when we cling to fixed and hard habits of unreflective and uncompromising mental and emotional identity.

Only kindness is worth noting. Tonight I note kindness. Little gifts letting pass what faults rise up. Someone giving some length. Not pinning with flaws easily pinned. Things like waiting for time to go by, finishing making a fool of oneself without someone making it worse by pointing it out.

We are faulty at the same time as we are faultless; living in flaw while being flawless. We are hurtful and inconsiderate while being healing agents touching one another's lives with sudden sparks of gentle consideration. Maybe that's our crazed experience in this existence -- the convoluting glory of forgiveness, the surprising grace of genuine feeling for one another!

The armies of the righteous omnisciently rumble by. Pinning down and pointing out faults and flaws. There's a muteness undergirding all accusation, one that doesn't issue forth from marauding plunderers. The guardians and custodians of others' failures do not share their sound, the sound that reverberates within them that echoes the sound of judgment and castigation spewed from their lips. They hold themselves in camera. Nothing they externalize finds recognition internally. Correspondence is a severed ear. What remains is the projected failure of acceptance in the dismaying sound of detonation that blows hands from bodies. We experience the futility of an unforgiving hand.

If being a Christian means being right, I fail. There's a meanness in us when we refuse to allow kindness to come to light. Offense given, offense taken; defense on field, defense defining fear.

Let's try something new. Let's hold out our hand.

Look Deeply into the Palm of Your Hand

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

To be born means that something which did not exist comes into existence. But the day we are "born" is not our beginning. It is a day of continuation. But that should not make us less happy when we celebrate our "Happy Continuation Day."

Since we are never born, how can we cease to be? This is what the Heart Sutra reveals to us. When we have tangible experience of non-birth and non-death, we know ourselves beyond duality. The meditation on "no separate self" is one way to pass through the gate of birth and death.

Your hand proves that you have never been born and you will never die. The thread of life has never been interrupted from time without beginning until now. Previous generations, all the way back to single cell beings, are present in your hand at this moment. You can observe and experience this. Your hand is always available as a subject for meditation.
(-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment)

Once our hand is touched with kindness things come to light.

Through the gateless gate we pass.

Heart of Christ. Mind of Buddha. Mind of Christ. Heart of Buddha.

The trouble with being born is the forgetting of heart and mind.

Until we begin to lose both.

Oh!

What's the worse thing that could happen?

Don't ask!

The hermit practices the
Bleached Bones Meditation,
The Mahasattva vanishes into the void
Like sweet dew, each of the six senses
Is completely clean and pure,
Both the mind and the world
Are out of the ordinary.
For me, the True Source has
Not yet completely matured,
And the residue of unrooted
Habits still lingers on.
It is like the falcon who although set free,
Still feels the tug of the midnight leash.
- Su Shih (1075)

To ask is to extend from what is within the desire to be connected with what is without.

Any questions?

Stack cord of wood. Listen to Dogma Free America on ipod while carrying and fitting wood. There is no end to the awful things done in the name of dogma.

What will thaw us from the fearful clutch of rigid thinking?

Although we know that a
Frozen pond is entirely water,
The sun’s heat is necessary to melt it.
Although we awaken to the fact
That an ordinary person is Buddha,
The power of dharma is necessary
To make it permeate our cultivation.
When the pond has melted,
The water flows freely.
When falsity is extinguished,
The mind will be numinous
And dynamic and then its function
Of penetrating brightness will manifest.
- Kuei-feng

The notion of king is not attractive. Royalty is not a metaphor I pronounce. I prefer presence.

And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.
(--1 Corinthians 15:28)

Better to table the king talk and ask what "all in all" really means. It might change everything if that phrase were understood.

Everyone would be intimately present to the inner reality of Reality Itself.

And the King will answer, “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers [or sisters] of mine, you did it to me.”
(--from Matthew 25:31-46)

I never know who is in front of me. I often disappoint with lack of awareness. I'll have to look into a new way of seeing what is there, seeing through to what is behind what is there, and seeing light even in the darkest dimness in myself and others.

When I meet someone who knows better than anyone, whose criticisms are stored in a dim understanding of our mutuality, who fears that no one is as good as they are -- I have to learn to see.

Metaphors of dominion and dominance are unpronounceable to me. I stutter when they demand to be uttered in the open away from their boxed storage in musty closets.

I look away. I go elsewhere. I'm looking for a way to say a world without comparison.

Two conversation circles with inmates in prison followed by deliberations about teaching a college course on Aesthetics in there, then finding out at security desk I had some other guy's driver's license since two days ago leaving prison security window.

I've been someone else for two days. No wonder I couldn't think straight.

Good and evil all arise from one’s own mind.
But tell me, besides your activities,
thoughts, and discrimination,
What do you call your own mind?
Where does your mind come from?
If you can discern where your own mind comes from,
Then boundless karmic obstruction
Will be cleared away instantly,
And all sorts of marvels will come of themselves
Without being sought.
- Ta Hui (1089-1163)

Being someone else isn't anything you know about. It just happens, as one would look down at the picture on a license you begin to recognize is not yours. How long have I not been me? Not just this time, but at any time?

Stanley Kunitz believed, wrote Sven Birkerts in his essay Clarity and Obscurity in Poetry , "that poems can contain 'moments of wilderness' — lines that don't necessarily themselves make sense but which, when taken away, impoverish the work."

So too with our lives -- events or behavior that make no sense in the general intention of living sanely, but if left out, diminish the life.

Everything is the longing of the most intimate itself for relationality expressing the oneness within.

Chances are there is a progression something like the following: the reverential is the referential is the relational.

What is holy-real is self-referential in its relationality.

What is occurring below and beyond awareness is face to face encounter with who we are within the other. We look, but might not see. We listen, not hearing. Touch, without sensing. Become, and feel, but no comprehension.

What today is called "spiritual" is the web of life in its wholeness inviting and revealing itself to each one of us.

• Prayer, the kind that sits in generous oneness in the surround of the holy (the wholly-other/not-other), helps.
  

• Meditation, the kind that simply attends what is with gracious openness, helps.
  

• Service, the kind that proffers hand and time, presence and attentiveness, to whomever and whatever at the door of our being, helps.

Help, as they say, is on the way.

• When we bow we seem to be bowing to someone or something outside us, but we are bowing to that within ourselves reflecting what is holy-real.

• When we seem to be referencing someone or something outside ourselves, we are directing the energy of bringing back home what longs to belong where it belongs.

• When we surrender illusory autonomy and no longer cultivate separateness we retell original narrative of union and communion.

What is most intimate is that which is within us -- a oneness belonging to each and all.

Hide and Seek

It's hard not

to jump out

instead of

waiting to be

found. It's

hard to be

alone so long

and then hear

someone come

around. It's

like some form

of skin's developed

in the air

that, rather

than have torn,

you tear.

(--Poem "Hide and Seek" by Kay Ryan)

If I forget who I am, no need to remind me. I'll settle for a benign exchange, a kindly nod, a wave in passing.

The way falls lightly from the one within the intimacy of no-name presence.

Each way, found this way, is the way.

Kiewslowski, in Dialogue VII suggests we steal ourselves when we lie about or deny right relationship. This is sudden thought.

If correct relationship is the most intimate encounter with what is one within, we steal the wholeness from itself and deprive ourselves what we are

Nonviolence

Nonviolence belongs to a continuum from the personal to the global, and from the global to the personal. One of the most significant Buddhist interpretations of nonviolence concerns the application of this ideal to daily life. Nonviolence is not some exalted regimen that can be practiced only by a monk or a master; it also pertains to the way one interacts with a child, vacuums a carpet, or waits in line. Besides the more obvious forms of violence, whenever we separate ourselves from a given situation (for example, through inattentiveness, negative judgments, or impatience), we "kill" something valuable. However subtle it may be, such violence actually leaves victims in its wake: people, things, one's own composure, the moment itself. According to the Buddhist reckoning, these small-scale incidences of violence accumulate relentlessly, are multiplied on a social level, and become a source of the large-scale violence that can sweep down upon us so suddenly. . . . One need not wait until war is declared and bullets are flying to work for peace, Buddhism teaches. A more constant and equally urgent battle must be waged each day against the forces of one's own anger, carelessness, and self-absorption.
(- Kenneth Kraft, Inner Peace, World Peace)

We live and die in silent, oftentimes unknown, expression of the longing welling from within.

God is this longing for itself.

There is no path to God.

One's own way is what is longing for itself.

Cold arrives.

Under the trees, among the rocks, a thatched hut:
Verses and sacred commentaries live there together.
I’ll burn the books I carry in my bag,
But how can I forget the verses written in my gut?
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Just in time.

Lecture in prison today: Spirituality -- A Personal Way To What Is Within.

The most intimate is within us we are one.

Hay lay rolled by outer trees off field in Dover-Foxcroft.

Sun slant cold with flutter of flurry a November reminder of what she keeps at bay.

All of the hundreds and thousands of
Dharma doors return to the mind.
The immeasurable subtle virtues
are in the source of mind.
All the doors of perception,
meditation, wisdom,
spiritual penetration,
and transformation are
contained in one’s mind.
- Fa-yung (593-657)

The drive on backroad Maine was worth the winding hills.

There's nowhere, really, to go. And no end in sight.

It is the prayer of passing seconds and horses standing by fence that keeps us sane.

A new furnace and finished kitchen window trim inside as 20 degree dark outside keeps silence.

Are the dead as real as the living?

Moon quarters stretching cloud over cold mountain. At root, we are all homeless.

Sitting Alone

Meditating deeply upon Dharma
Reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence
Even though the heavens turn and the earth is upset,
You will not even wink.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)

I would find a boat with wood burning stove, enough room to turn around, sit and read, place words next to another, and let stars converse in vast aloneness.

"What one writes is merely the ashes of one's experience." (--Franz Kafka)

Black cat stealths to foot of bed. Night passes time playing with falling temperatures. New furnace arrives tomorrow. We burn paper money for warmth.

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” (--Gilbert Chesterton)

Chesterton is ambiguous. Read him both ways.

Be found gone.

White dog comes into room, looks at me, turns, leaves.

The French poet who edited Mythologies looks at words and wants them silent.

Buddhas and ordinary men are equally illusions.
If you go looking for the true form,
it is a speck of dust in the eye.
The burnt bones of this old monk
embrace heaven and earth;
Do no scatter the cold ashes to mountain and sky.
(- Bukko, d. 1286)

I have wandered far from the monastery of silent awareness. Then, tonight, in chapel/zendo, sitting. And walking. Then chanting compline by candlelight. When moon came through new glass wall not even clouds had a word in mind.

Passer-By, These Are Words

Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading
I want you to listen: to this frail
Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.
It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
To those that filigree the still unseen.

Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
The endless murmuring of all our shades.
Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
To fuse into a single heat with that blind
Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.

May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.
And for you who move away, pensively,
Here becomes there without ceasing to be.
(--Poem by Yves Bonnefoy)

We're not quite sure how to exist without form. Nor if it is wanted.

November today was desolate. Empty. So my soul spilt itself into no container.

All over.

The sense of impending news with formless silence deep enough to remain unsaid.

As we become absent names.