(from A Book for the Hours of Prayer)

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song.

- Raine Maria Rilke

Inside this temple are mountains and rivers
there are forests of oak, mountain lions and moss

Seismic shifts and lightening bolts are inside
enervating every silent thought

All the dancing impulses of nature are here
laughter, grief, hunger swirling
in the winds and time

There is ecstatic music, echoing through these chambers
and starlight – all the infinite stars

Ruminations of the cosmos are within
the poet
says
inside this temple, is the one I love

bird song
in the city
false dawn

Oh great goddess,
mother of creation,
this earth

What silent hunger
causes big breasted women
to wander in my dreams.

Oh happy happy death – this fool
asphyxiated in the heaving depths
of the cleavage of the beloved.

“The world is not respectable; it is mortal, tormented, confused, deluded forever; but it is shot through with beauty, with love, with glints of courage and laughter; and in these, the spirit blooms timidly, and struggles to the light amid the thorns.” - George Santayana

Lewis drives us to a deserted beach just outside of town
There’s a tranquil, silky ocean. It’s silent but for a rushing
over the distant reef, and Lewis talking shit
A lone seagull stands on one leg feigning interest.

I’m just not in the mood – it’s cloudy
He strips of his shirt and performs yoga
There’s a significant paunch, a few old tattoos and
we sit there in the white sand, ignoring him politely but
he returns from the shore and talks
myopically and with too much enthusiasm.

Mirra is hungry for company – my sister is lonely too. It is a soulless city.
So we all end up on this desolate beach with a fool in thick glasses.
But, how did I get here really? Did I miss a turn?

I remember, as a kid, stabbing at my heart with painful thoughts,
probing for feeling. But at some point it had all become too much
and I cut myself off. Now here I am fumbling down a blind alley,
in the broad daylight of my life
while the one I’m trying to love
is far away.

I know in the deepest place of me, there is a love
and the truth of my feet rooted in the earth
that is so great, I’m afraid to let it rip through
and I hold on as tight as I can
to the little prison of my self
afraid if I let love in it’ll break me,
like it did in the beginning.

If I can forgive myself and all these innocent people
I might just find my way home, if I don’t die laughing.

I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist this unexpected TV interviewee on the bad streets of Toronto… !

An inspired remix: ‘We Are All Connected’
(ft. Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye)

more at symphonyofscience.com
melodysheep apparently uses Reason 4.0 (instrumentals), Adobe Audition (audio editing), and Melodyne (auto-tuning), but the musicality, art and inspiration is all his own. Good stuff.

Love the melodramatic ending at the end of this piece (“addicted to nonsense”) – The tragi-comic drama of reality!! It’s interesting to me that, whilst the picture is bleaker than we might care to acknowledge in our waking lives, the end isn’t necessarily nigh! On the contrary. Radical change is nigh – and the saviour is YOU, baby! [Yes, yes - like, Neo - WAKE UP - You are the One]

… What really matters in our lives—the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the steady deterioration of the dollar, the mounting foreclosures, the climbing unemployment, the melting of the polar ice caps and the awful reality that once the billions in stimulus money run out next year we will be bereft and broke—doesn’t fit into the cheerful happy talk that we mainline into our brains. We are enraptured by the revels of a dying civilization. Once reality shatters the airy edifice, we will scream and yell like petulant children to be rescued, saved and restored to comfort and complacency. There will be no shortage of demagogues, including buffoons like Sarah Palin, who will oblige. We will either wake up to face our stark new limitations, to retreat from imperial projects and discover a new simplicity, as well as a new humility, or we will stumble blindly toward catastrophe and neofeudalism…

read the article

And, in case nobody told you yet…

thereisnospoon

… And each and every one of you is being taken for fools. You work for an election or two to put chosen leaders in place, and expect those leaders to work their “leadership” magic to ram reforms down the throats of the corporate sector, failing to understand just how fully the corporate sector holds the cards. It’s not the campaign contributions: it’s the persuasion money.

You’re looking for a savior. And like that Savior of biblical fame, s/he isn’t coming, as long as there are people like me out there. I personally won’t work for a company or organization that goes against my personal convictions. But 99% of us certainly will…

Go on! Read the rest of this perspective piece here.

as above, so below

(underlying cultural influence on the theme of Christmas and New Year)

winter solstice is considered the strongest of the four main power points of the year. 
The light returns…
masculine sun gains strength from this day till summer solstice (when sun begins to wane again.)

Now…
is when we might ritually let go in our bodies, minds, hearts and spirit of what we don’t want to carry into the new cycle of increase. 

Celebrate, release, renew!

To elaborate, here’s astrological notes by Patricia Liles:
Winter Solstice – Sun enters Capricorn 0º at 10:47 AM MST on Mon. December 21st.
This is an important solstice and a time to do something with community towards change. …
Read the rest of this entry »