Tags
2022, 7*, being, birth, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, clouds, compassion, identity, ignorance, jewel, knowledge, landscape, lifetimes, light, lightning, lost, mind, mirror, mist, mother sentient beings, opening, perspective, self-cherishing, self-grasping, shadow, Shantideva, sky, sun, young
taking birth
there is
the mind which cracks within the belly
of darkest clouds
throws relief to the landscape
and populace of the
whole of sky
if I could but turn
just 90˚ from my thin and lonely
trajectory
and open
so much more to just this tempered niche
of knowledge
that I could both mirror and shadow
every fluorescence even before and awhile
it contrasted
I’d be young
that I have long lost and mist
while evolving this sclerotic eye
and then
there’d be sun,
all my endless malapropriations burnished
and faceted to a tiny étincelant Indra-jewel
glinting all direction
within every perspective respective
…responsive over reactive; effulgent over productive;
avenue’d over viewed; abundant over possessed; dispelled over horded;
homeopathic over pathologic; being over mirror; caught over fallen;
the hand that scratches the foot; not-finished-yet over finished…
————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–
being & identity & mirror wormhole: mirror
clouds wormhole: Journey
compassion wormhole: ‘the practice…’
lifetimes wormhole: in deed
light & shadow wormhole: silence
lightning wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
mind wormhole: travel // when I die
mist wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
Shantideva wormhole: where it has taken birth / may it not decrease …
sky & sun wormhole: ‘in my car I pass…’
mlewisredford 
Oh shit. I have a lot to say about this poem. I hope I can gather myself well.
First, and I’m not sure why I want to mention this–whether your poem called it to mind, or whether it’s simply on my mind because I just today sent the quote to Johnny.
‘Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.” (Annie Dillard)
First, of course, I find the first two stanzas to be an ingenious description of light, and a perfect metaphor for mind and searching–the light that you’re talking about. I love “cracks within the belly/of darkest clouds”.
if I could but turn
just 90˚ from my thin and lonely
trajectory
I feel this so much, and I felt keen despair when I read this stanza. The entrapment, the almost-disorientation of it, the sense of being ensnared in a prism. I see you standing in a spectrum, Newton’s colors flaring out, and yet you are under a dark streetlight–ALONE.
and open
so much more to just this tempered niche
of knowledge
I don’t know if this is where the Dillard poem struck me as relevant or not. It might have been your paragraph at the end, since I travel back and forth between your italicized language in your posts, and your piece itself. This stanza also called to mind for me the many quotes by wise sages and writers of old (Tolstoy comes to mind, also maybe Marcus Aurelius, and I’m sure many others whose words of wisdom I’ve read….) ABOUT the value of wisdom over knowledge, or the dangers of stuffing your head with too many facts….I am guilty of ignoring their advice.
But this makes me wonder how you’re employing the word knowledge or, more specifically, how you might be thinking of the idea of knowledge…just curious….for a moment.
But then the rest of the poem speaks it so clearly, and I do not have to wonder.
I once had a conversation with a friend about Postmodernism and the concept of “truth”. This was many years ago. My friend told me he preferred the word “honesty” over truth, and this was all the while I had been saying to him that to me…”TRUTH” was like an infinitely faceted gem that sparkles, and each facet (plane) is whole in itself (maybe?) or was valid, or at the very least….beautiful.
Your “sclerotic” eye reminds me a little of my cloudy cataracts in my dragon poem. haha. But it means hardened, not cloudy, and you say it has evolved…and then truth comes to me as Science…but also maybe it represents a hardening of the spirit to my ‘eye’….?
And then the final two stanzas…mysticism in poem form….
Love it.
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You are so good to me Holly, I thank you
I think the Dillard quote got you subliminally – it’s been sitting on top of my ‘reference’-matter for quite a few years since I pinched it from https://iwastoldtherewouldbenomath.wordpress.com ; depending on the device you use it’s either top left of the page or under the main action, like film credits …
light and mind certainly: mind as mere consciousness, wherever it is (not ‘wherever it goes‘ it is not corporeal or even stuck in a jelly – if it but knew), it knows, whatever it knows, it lights
I’ve just started re-reading ‘The Sandman’ by Neil Gaiman: in the first issue Dream is trapped in a (sort of gem-like) container within a magic circle … waiting, saying nothing for 70 years until his captors die or make a mistake with the circle; but here one is caught in a prism (thank you – with spectrum) of your own device…
… trapped within the occasional pulse of one’s very filtered knowledge (no Newtonian flares here), knowledge accessed through the sclerotic (yes, cataractical) eye (… “I”), gathered under the strictly-applied contract of I-identification and its close boundaries
Indra’s jewel is an image of a jewel amidst a network of many identical jewels reflecting each other within each of their facets … exponentially infinitely: a place where no sclerotic “I”s can see
… what journeys we have while staying on the same page
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This is fantastic! I don’t know how much more I can add to Holly’s wonderful comment. But this section:
if I could but turn
just 90˚ from my thin and lonely
trajectory
and open
so much more to just this tempered niche
of knowledge
that I could both mirror and shadow
every fluorescence even before and awhile
it contrasted
is incredible. It’s really got me spinning. In a good way. To the possibility of ” so much more to just this tempered niche / of knowledge”
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ah yes: knowledge that is liberative rather than de-fined; thank you, Bob (I picture you singing ‘Dizzy’ by Tommy Roe)
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Haha! I just might start singing Dizzy. If only just to see the look on my wife’s face.
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Do it – do it!
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remember to go up half a key each time
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Hidden facets of the mind. The occasional glimpse, like this poem, is our reward for being watchful. Lovely.
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thank you, fellow watcher
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